Once we curled together under my cloak, I held his hand against my navel. A black stir roiled up to his touch. I wondered how long I’d have to feel the fester of the old wounds before they healed.
He buried his face against my neck. “Marry me, Love.”
All I had to say was yes, but I couldn’t. He didn’t yet know what the plague revealed to me; I didn’t know how to live with the truth. “Not tonight,” I said.
“Coy answer.”
“Better than none.”
21 MARCH – 30 APRIL /39
THAT FIRST WEEK, BEFORE THE death lists were printed, Nikolas told me Charlotte’s father had died. I rode out that afternoon to give my condolences. Her parents lived in one of the fine houses in The Manses, near the main entrance, where there was no longer a gatekeeper. Charlotte told me her father slipped away in February. While she’d had a month to grieve, her mother awakened to his loss. “I wish it weren’t so, but you understand how I feel,” she told me. “I can’t believe he’s gone. So peaceful, though. I was with him. One sigh, then . . .”
Midweek, I went to Warrick. No one answered when I knocked on the Misses Acutt’s door. As I went up the second floor, Julia thundered down. She squeezed me around the waist. When she released me, she took my hand. We saw Jane and Dora first, who were busy moving furniture around the parlor. The Misses’ furniture.
“Oh no,” I said, my eyes welling up.
“Both of them, late January,” Jane said, hugging me lightly.
“A blessing in a way. One wasn’t left without the other,” Dora said.
After a brief chat, I followed Julia to the stairs. She told me “her guardians” were living on the third floor in the Woodmans’ former place, three young women who’d cared for her and twelve other children. The moment we stepped into her apartment, Sir Pouncelot strutted from a bed near the door.
“He’s mine now. We miss the Misses, but I think he’s happy with us,” she said, taking his gray fluff into her arms.
Mrs. Elgin approached with an outstretched hand. I held it between my own. “I’m glad you’re well, Secret. Julia said you were very ill for a time, feared almost lost. You’ve been a dear to her, and I’m grateful.”
“So good to see you well, too. I am so sorry about Lucas,” I said.
“A piece of my heart is gone,” she said.
The door shut. Mr. Elgin was behind us. He extended a white paper rose to Julia. “There’s a man in a blue hat outside with a basket of more, if you want to see,” he said.
She dropped Sir to take it, her reach both hesitant and excited. “Thank you. Don’t leave without saying good-bye, Secret,” she said as she rushed outside.
“Mr. Elgin,” I said.
“Miss Riven.”
“Secret, please, after all this time.”
“Then for us, Edmund and Amelia.”
Without an invitation, I went to see about Leo. He and his wife invited me in for tea while Solden played with friends in their courtyard. They told me of the loss of several friends and acquaintances, among them our old Rowland and, sadly, Wesley’s wife, leaving Wesley with a six-month-old son. They were among the 5,375 adults who died, nearly 17 percent of those who remained in Rothwyke through the plague. The children’s total count, 1,159, 11 percent of them.
In the final days of March, I returned to Father’s house. That first morning, I carried my bag upstairs and stopped short at the closed door of my old room. My body’s memory led me there, although I knew I was to share the spare room with Harmyn. When I stepped across the hall, I found Elinor making one of two beds. Glad to see her, I dropped my belongings and walked to her with open arms. Harmyn and Father found us talking.
“Your bed is on the left, Miss,” Elinor said to Harmyn.
“You forgot again. No ‘Miss.’ Call me Harmyn,” Harmyn said. She placed a satchel on the bed to the left.
“Old habit,” Elinor said. “Fresh linens in yours now, Mr. Riven.”
“Thank you,” Father said, carrying a trunk. “Finish up while I make us something to eat. We’ll have a proper visit.”
The three of us moved through the room, shifting furniture, putting things away. On Harmyn’s side, she had a small wardrobe, a little desk, and a case of books. On my side, I had a chest for clothing, my old desk and chair, and a night table with a lamp and the carved stag. Next to the table was the faded blue chest, which Elinor said, when she saw me staring at it, my father had placed there for me.
After Elinor went downstairs, I was about to carry the chest away when Harmyn asked to look. She studied the painted animals on the side and opened the lid. Although I remembered I’d burned the nesting dolls, I almost expected to see them inside. All Harmyn found within was the one-sentence note Mother had left as a clue to the cipher. Harmyn’s hands traced along the bottom as if she missed something, but there was nothing else to find.
She closed the chest. “The plague is over. What had to be seen, has been. For you and many others, that was an end and a beginning. You know the truth about what your mother did and also about yourself, your gold. There is more to discover as you find your way to peace, possibly forgiveness.” She smiled at me. “But right now, we’ll be glad to be together with cookies and tea.”
I sighed, wishing for more respite than the next hour would give.
At the beginning of April, Nikolas received word that the war had escalated on every front. With allied troops from Seronia and Bodelea, Haaud was now marching through the rest of Kirsau, with Kirsau and Ilsace viciously on the defense. Prev and Thrigin continued to help Uldiland against Haaud, while Prev did as expected, marching into Emmok to drive out their men and Haaud’s.
At last, Nikolas agreed to substantively increase troops at our borders with Giphia and Ilsace, with the order to make no move unless our boundaries were breached. This satisfied the Council to a degree. They were ready for a war they wouldn’t fight with their own hands. As well, Nikolas contacted Dru Kai and Milan Visham to ask for aid. Their Guardian warriors would stand along with our army, waiting. Waiting, Nikolas said, because he believed the plague’s spread would end the conflict by summer. His refusal to take action for so long hadn’t been through cowardice or indecision but faith that a stronger force would prevail to finish it.
Also in April, there was an initial meeting among ward leaders, mayor’s representatives, twelfth-floor men including Father, and local merchants independent of Fewmany Incorporated. They were determined to work quickly, and cooperatively, to figure out what to do with so many vacant shops and offices and how to return jobs for the thousands who were still without them.
What would become of Fewmany Incorporated was uncertain, as his surviving top men pondered who might take the helm, or if anyone should. The longer Fewmany was away, the more they felt his grip of influence release, his energy fade from what he had built, the power lost. Having had no word from him in almost a year, some believed he was dead.
In the meantime, the people carried on. Streets, buildings, and sewers needed repairs. What hadn’t collapsed into the crater but had been destroyed had to be hauled away. The ward gardens required tending, since volunteers and children had worked to prepare and plant for spring and summer harvests. Long lines remained to get rations. With everyone awake, there was much to cook and clean, that daily rhythm of life familiar. Performers and audiences filled the halls again. The leisure activities which had occupied many during the first months of the plague began again—the athletic leagues, music, crafts, to name a few. The volunteers from other towns and three hundred of Rothwyke’s oldest children prepared to leave, some remaining in Ailliath, the rest traveling to Thrigin, Giphia, and Ilsace to help before the plague spread.
The Guardians were no longer hidden in plain sight. The children identified them openly. Everyone knew then, if they’d never discerned so before, that there was something different about the people who wore a certain shade of blue. A quiet, a kindness, a sense of peace.
In those ea
rly weeks, the grief consumed us, too—for the dead, for what had been revealed, for what had changed. Everyone had suffered, together and in their own secret ways. No one could deny what they’d seen of the people they loved, the strangers among them, or within themselves. All was not idyllic. Fear, grief, resentment, and guilt took hold. There were still arguments and fights, some of them brutal, but none which could last as they once did.
The children wouldn’t allow it.
With words and with their bodies, they wedged themselves between parents and siblings, friends and strangers, stepping in to make peace. We don’t have to do this anymore, they said. We dreamed it another way, remember? We know we have a choice.
In mid-April, Nikolas’s sisters arrived with their families to attend his coronation. He invited me to a dinner in their honor, which I couldn’t avoid. He’d written to them about me and they wished to make my acquaintance. Pretty was remote and inquiring; I sensed her scrutiny. Charming remembered meeting me almost eight years before and said she was happy to know her little brother had someone so close when their parents died and through the kingdom’s trouble. How close they believed we were, they didn’t say, and if they disapproved, I detected no clear hint.
I received word from Charlotte that she was settled with her husband again. Muriel wrote to say her mother died during the plague. Whether Muriel would return to the conservatory next term remained unknown, her mother’s supportive influence absent now.
By the end of the month, Nikolas was no stranger to my father’s house any more than I was to his own. With Harmyn among us, we shared dinners and conversations, as amiable as I could have ever imagined. How Nikolas and I felt about each other was no secret, but Father did not pry about what that might mean.
Nikolas and I hid nothing between us. In our time alone, we spoke of what we’d found in our shadows. Eventually, I would talk to Father about my mother’s neglect but never tell him what she’d done to my brothers or tried to do to me. To Nikolas, I told everything, even though I feared how that would alter me in his eyes. My grief, rage, bewilderment, shame—he was strong enough to stand to it. He loved me still, as I loved him more than ever. He insisted nothing I said changed his desire to marry me, but I knew I wasn’t free of the darkest shadows, only aware of them. I feared what I might do to myself or someone I loved when they returned and leached their poison. Even if I did agree, one distant day, I refused to promise him an heir and didn’t quite believe him when he said that didn’t matter to him because he didn’t need one.
Aside from whether we had a future together, I puzzled over mine. What of the hopes I’d once had for myself? Did I still hold them—high academy, a life of my own, away from Ailliath? What would be possible in these next years as the plague spread?
Through April’s final week, Harmyn didn’t leave the house. She had no complaints other than she was exhausted. Julia and other friends came to visit, bringing mirth into the house at last. Harmyn studied the lessons Father gave her, history and geometry, and sat in the courtyard with her hands out to the sun.
On one of those days, I heard her and Father walk up to his bedroom. When I went to see what they were doing, Harmyn sat on his bed with an empty box. Father stood in front of Mother’s open wardrobe. I detected a hint of her perfume, but I walked next to him and touched the violet gown he had draped over his elbow.
“Before I awoke for good, I dreamed of her in the tower where I first saw her,” Father said. “She was beautiful as ever. She said she waited for me, but I had time left, time to make myself and someone else happy, as I did for her. Then she kissed me good-bye and flew out of the window with the wings of a black swan.”
As he started to cry, I wrapped my arms around him. “Make room. You’ve grieved enough.”
1 – 8 MAY /39
ON NIKOLAS’S CORONATION DAY, FATHER arranged for a luminotypist to come to our house early that morning. “Well that we should have a record of our happy faces,” Father said. The man set up his machine and a chair in the courtyard, inviting us to sit one by one.
We did look dashing. Margana had sewn most of our garments as gifts, along with something for Nikolas, which I hadn’t yet seen. Father looked elegant in his finest suit and a new cravat, which one of Margana’s students had embroidered to resemble an ancient map. Harmyn’s gift included straight-leg trousers in a thin black wool; the shirt, white silk with dozens of tiny tucks along the front; and her jacket, Guardian blue, embroidered with vines and berries. Margana had made my gown, too, and as I brushed lint from a blue bird appliquéd on the skirt, I thought what an honor it was to wear the color. I thought, too, of the costumes she’d made for me and realized, had circumstances been different, there would have been a masquerade ball that night.
After a late breakfast, a carriage arrived to take Father, Harmyn, and me to the green. Unlike the ceremonies to crown our former kings, this one was to be held outdoors, among the people, where there would be a feast, though modest as the kingdom faced the plague’s spread. By now, I knew the plants and creatures had sickened through the northeast of Ailliath, the east half of Ilsace, all of Giphia, Haaud, and Kirsau, the southern edge of Thrigin’s mountain range, the northwest of Uldiland, and up to the foothills of Seronia. As Nikolas hoped, the war would not endure once the plague struck so many.
The carriage stopped behind the dais. A footman escorted us to our seats. Father shook hands with several men, acquaintances from before the plague, and introduced me and Harmyn. From the height, I could see an aisle marked with gold ropes, which reached through the crowd to the dais. On a decorated platform was a throne.
Soon, a fanfare announced the ceremony’s start. We sat down. Harmyn craned her neck to see what was happening.
The procession was long, attended by heralds, officers of the royal house, members of the Council, bearers of regalia, the royal family, personal attendants to the king, and among the latter, Nikolas himself.
The robe he wore wasn’t the one from the night of his departure banquet. This, too, was purple velvet, but trimmed in white ermine, with a jeweled clasp at his neck. He looked confident, strong, earnest.
After several speeches, at last came the moment of coronation.
“Look closely. This was especially made for him,” Harmyn said.
“By whom?”
“An Ancient Elder. Ingot,” she said.
On a tufted pillow, held by Nikolas’s sisters, was the crown. The top was scalloped, each segment alternating gold and silver, with a band of jewels along the bottom edge. Mounted to the two crosspieces within, striped with the same metals, were two interlocking circles of gold and silver, the union between them in amethyst.
After cheers, Nikolas’s speech, and more cheers, he stood before the crowd and announced the pomp would now give way to merriment. Musicians began to tune their instruments. He walked to the back of the dais, talking with guests, and placed the robe and crown in his valet’s hands. A woodwind piped up the first notes of a spirited waltz.
“We should have King Nikolas honor us with the first steps,” Lord Sullyard said. “So, who shall dance with the King?”
Nikolas had turned when he heard his name. He walked over, looked past everyone, and gestured to me formally. “My beloved—friend, Miss Riven.”
My instinct to refuse made me freeze until Father nudged me. I tried to ignore the murmurs as I went ahead.
I had never seen Nikolas more handsome than he was that day, his eyes and hair brilliant in the sunlight, jaw firm, square across the chest, steady on his feet. He wore the gift Margana had made—an emerald-green tailcoat piped in a certain shade of blue.
His gaze traced me head to toe as I approached. Tailored perfectly, the lavender gown had fitted sleeves with cuffs which flared like petals. The neckline was modest, but the back plunged almost scandalously low. Silver birds, mingled with blue ones, twirled down from the bodice and around the narrow skirt.
My hand fell into his. His fingers glanced the small of
my back as my palm rested on his shoulder.
“Now, aren’t you glad I taught you to do this all those months ago?” he asked.
“I’m in your debt,” I said.
He led me into the dance, our steps almost perfect. There was applause in the end, and the sight of Harmyn and Father giving us an approving look.
Nikolas held my wrist as the next song began. People clapped when they recognized the lively tune. Couples joined on the green and the rest moved toward the banquet tables.
“No one’s looking. Kiss me,” he said.
“I will not,” I said.
“Shy in public, brazen otherwise.”
“You’ll provoke rumors.”
“Oh, the wicked scandal.”
“Be quick, if you must.”
Nikolas swept his fingers under my chin and kissed my cheek. “Now I have to be kingly.” He smoothed his coat’s lapels and bowed. I curtsied.
Above me, three blue birds whisked past in a line. Swallows, a hopeful sign, I thought with a smile, remembering what Old Woman once told me years before.
Into midday, the celebration continued. Volunteers alternated with the castle’s servants so that everyone could spend some time at play. I was stunned but pleased to see Father speaking alone with Mrs. Knolworth’s sister. Harmyn spent hours with her friends as I visited with mine. Nikolas circled by every so often, drawing me into conversations with his family and advisers, and I acquiesced to another dance.
Near two o’clock, I was ready to go home and went to find Harmyn.
I saw her in the middle of the green. As I went closer, I heard her singing to herself.
Descendants and survivors, we know this story, told in the tone of myth.
She turned her face to the open sky, arms out wide. The melody which flowed so sweetly transformed to a chant, primordial yet newborn. Soft though it was, the child’s voice soared beyond Rothwyke, past rivers, mountains, and seas. Where it was day, people lifted their heads to listen; where it was night, they turned to the sound in their dreams. The beauty of that voice poured light into every space of every being, every body, giving resonance to all it reached.
The Plague Diaries Page 46