He did not speak. After a long silence, I added, “It is my father I crave, not his throne.”
He cleared his throat and said, “Despite my regrettable upbringing, I will try to keep that in mind.”
“Please.”
“But that is not the only rub. There is this matter of Albaric, on which we disagree.”
“Yes. Father, in regard to Albaric, I would ask you to think on this question: why did the ring try to kill you?”
“The ring! I had nearly forgotten that foul thing! What has become of it?”
I pretended not to hear the question, saying earnestly, “What if I were to tell you the ring is not a foul thing, Father, but can be fair? Again, I ask, why did it wish you harm?”
“I dare say I am the foul thing and deserve to die.”
“You are all contraries, my Sire. You know that is not so. Please do me this favor, and think. Why was the ring sickening you?”
He sighed, folded his hands, and set himself to the task. His eyes looked for memories. After a while, he said, “I detested that thing, hated it at first sight, especially as I could not remove it from my hand. I wanted to be rid of it.”
“You hated it? Why?”
“Because it hated me, uncanny thing! And I did not know where it had come from.”
“Father. Could it be perhaps that, while you did not remember, somehow you sensed it had followed you from a place where you had been held captive? A place you therefore hated?”
Like a weary child, he shook his head, uncomprehending. Clearly, he had reached his limits for the time being. I wanted to continue, reasoning with him that Albaric, like the ring, had come from the place he had hated, and for no other reason he hated Albaric—but compassion made me say, “Think no more of anything tonight. Could you sleep now, Father? Or eat?”
“I believe I will sleep. Thank you, my son.”
As we made our way back to our bedchambers, he asked, “How badly did I cut your neck? Tell me the truth.”
“How can I tell you anything? I cannot see my own neck.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes, just as I wished, for I was tweaking his beard. “Bloody blazes, Aric, is it deep? Is it swollen? Does it fester?”
I raised my hand to feel the bandaged wound, with muted surprise finding it very hot, or else my hand was cold. The touch hurt. “It’s sore, Father; what can one expect? Will you let it go and sleep?”
“Yes, I will sleep. But Aric—tomorrow may be not much easier than today was.”
“Perhaps, then, you could remember to drop your sword on the floor directly after you draw it, rather than a moment later?”
He laughed—only a chuckle and a shake of the head, but he did laugh.
Father was right. The next day was bad, although not in the way he had meant. It was perhaps worse, because chills and fever awoke me around dawn. My skin all goose bumps, I sat up to get the bearskin—for at the moment, I felt as if I were freezing—but my head spun so that I almost fell over. I had to clutch the bed with both hands. Blast and confound it all, what was the matter with me? I never got sick.
Therefore, this was a moment’s weakness and would pass. Not wanting to awaken anyone, I sat waiting for it to do so—but the next moment, a spasm of dizziness and shaking toppled me back onto the bed, willy-nilly, and my head bumped something.
Someone. Albaric awoke and knew instantly that all was not well, I think, for I heard no drowsiness in his voice. “Aric?”
“Blasted bloody blazing hell.” The words might have been strong, but my voice sounded weak.
“Aric!” My brother jumped up, ran to light a candle at the hearth, brought it to my side of the bed, and looked at me. “Aric, what is wrong?”
“I’m sick, confound it.”
“The wound! Is it from the wound?” He knelt to look at my neck and reached to undo the dressing, but I stopped him with my hand. “Don’t. It hurts,” I said, peevish.
“But—but what am I to do? I know nothing of mortal ailments.”
“Here.” I reached under my nightshirt, pulled off the leather thong holding the ring—it was white, still white—and crammed thong and ring into his hands. “Hide this. Then get Mother.”
Running even as he slipped the thong over his own head and hid the ring under his tunic, he darted out of the chamber. Only after the door closed behind him did I think what I had just done by telling him to fetch Queen Evalin, a task that should have fallen to the bleary-eyed manservants who had started sitting up on their pallets. With terror, I knew that I might as well have sent my brother into a dragon’s den as to the King’s Tower. Father would be sleeping with Mother, most likely, and if Albaric set foot in their bedchamber, I wouldn’t have put it beyond the king to take a sword to him then and there.
Breaking into a sweat of terror and fever, I thrashed in the bed, crying out in dismay, and the manservants sprang up and stood over me, gawking as they saw the state I was in, asking each other what they should do. They had not yet settled which one should stay and which one should go for help when the door opened and a tall, robed figure hurried in.
It was Mother. “Albaric!” I cried at her.
“Right here,” he said, appearing out of a kind of mist in my eyes, bending over me. With both hands, I clutched at his shoulders.
“Don’t leave my side again!” I babbled. “Promise you won’t leave me again! Father might kill you!”
Mother said “Aric, hush,” and made the admonition sound as tender as a kiss. “There’s no harm done. Your father is sound asleep at last.” She took my hands in hers, loosened their grip on my brother, and made them lie still, then knelt beside me, bidding one of the servants to hold the candle while she unwrapped my small wound, the insignificant cut Father had given me yesterday. Even before she spoke, I knew from the pain what she would find.
“It’s very fiery and swollen.” She turned to the other servant. “Go rouse the kitchen. Bring water, and have them send up more, both hot and cold.”
“Why not just throw me into a horse trough?” Calmer now, I tried to jest.
“Because you’re too big for me to carry, Son.” She stroked my hot forehead with a cool hand. “Now I want a promise from you. Do not give way to this contagion. Do not let death take you away from us.”
“What? You think I might die from this little thing?”
“It will get worse before it gets better. Promise me all your strength, my Son.”
Oddly, I found that I could not speak the promise. Instead, I nodded.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH
SOMETIME MUCH LATER IN THE DAY, my father’s face loomed over me, the skin behind his beard a chalky mask to hide emotion, and my mother’s voice was saying, “You slept well, dear? And you ate?”
“Yes, confound it, was that what you wanted? Why did you not tell me about this immediately?”
“Merry-go-sorry,” I explained to him earnestly from my pillow, already drunk with fever; I thought I made perfect sense.
“Because you needed rest, Darling,” Mother said. “And what good can you do here?”
“The way is long and the crossing strange,” I pleaded with him, for I felt Albaric’s silent presence somewhere behind me, I saw how Father avoided looking at him, and I felt that I must reconcile them.
“I’m upsetting him,” Father admitted, his voice stark and low. “I’ll go.” He blundered out.
My memories of that time are like shards of a shattered platter in my mind, its pattern all in pieces.
Hot compress on my neck. Draperies soaked in cold water on the rest of me. Mother’s hand on my forehead.
Soft harp music that soothed me. Albaric, of course. Yet at the same time, I thought the horses, Bluefire’s kin, had come down from the sky. They had wings. Flying, they danced, and dancing, they flew.
Albaric’s voice: “Queen Evalin, I beg you, let me sit by him a while. Lie down on the other side of the bed and rest. You shall know at once if anything changes.”
Things to drink.
Broth. Milk. Wine. My father asking, “Have you tried ale?” I had to be held up to sip at a cup, and I could not swallow anything solid.
The chirurgeon, a bent old man, arriving to lance the wound. Pain, but all the poison did not come out, he said. He placed his leeches, their triangular raspy mouths to my skin and their dark dank eely bodies hanging down, all around the cut on my neck, so that they might suck the swelling away.
Albaric asleep beside me. Perhaps I appeared to sleep, but I languished amid fever dreams. Vividly and vehemently on a blue stallion through my mind rode the White King, his long, thick hair pure white, but his face youthful and surpassing even Albaric’s in beauty. His crown, all formed of crystal, shone with white light, and he wore no sword, no armor under his white cloak, for they were not necessary. Just by his being the White King, all was peace, his kingdom a paradise.
But then I heard my father saying bleakly, “He’s getting worse. Even I can see the contagion spreading in red streaks up and down his neck.”
Promise me all your strength, my Son. I knew that I could not die. Must not die.
Pain. Some sort of ghastly plaster placed on my wounded neck. Then more leeches.
Father’s voice, grim. “Albaric, I would like some time alone with my wife and my son.”
“I swore not to leave his side, my King.”
“Aric made him swear,” Mother’s voice put in gently.
“Why, in all the names of misery?”
“Because he feared you would do away with me, my King.”
A silence, and then Father said without ire, “You are as frank as he was. Is. Do you really think you will die if you leave this room?”
“No.”
“Then will you please do so?”
“No. My King, I once offered to swear fealty to you, but you refused me; do you remember?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“You are fair, always. You must recognize that my fealty now is to Aric and the promise I made him, no matter how my heart—”
“Bah. Keep your heart to yourself.” The bear with burrs was coming back; I could hear it in his voice.
“My King,” Albaric said, “Aric will not die. For if he does, I will go with him, and he knows it.”
The only answer was the shutting of the door. Father had gone out. Why did he wear black? I was not dead. I had seen black garb on him, although my eyes, like my mind, could see only shattered, jumbled pieces. I closed my eyes, hoping that I could see again the White King.
“Albaric,” I whispered.
“Right here.” He spoke from directly beside me. Mother must have gone out with Father.
“Albaric,” I said again, reaching toward him, and somehow he understood at once what I needed, giving it to me: not the soft touch of a nurse, but a strong clasping of hands into fists, a warrior’s grip.
As long as he was there, I could keep fighting.
Finally the fever came down, the wound stopped being swollen or painful, I slept long and peacefully, then opened my eyes to see, clearly now, a smile on my mother’s weary face, and I should have felt that I had won.
But I felt no such thing. Now, what I could see most clearly were the wide black wings of death hovering just over the bed canopy.
Father came in. I saw the invisible drawing of swords between him and Albaric; I felt the tension in the close air of the bedchamber. Dark, it was too dark in there because of the shadow of death. Father wore black. He looked at me, his face still a mask, even though he showed his teeth in a smile of sorts. “Well,” he said, “I am glad to see those ugly leeches taken away.”
Courteously, I agreed. I felt no anger at him or love for him. I felt only hollow, like a seashell washed up on the some far cold strand. After a moment, I closed my eyes.
“Some barley soup, Aric?” my mother coaxed. “Some white wheat bread?”
I shook my head. Servants brought the food anyway, but I could not eat, or would not. What was the use of getting well? Once I regained my strength and got up out of the bed, it would be Father and Albaric again, Albaric and Father, and heartache and constant fear.
I did not want to die, but neither did I want to live. I hung like a leper in a cage between earth and sky. Albaric played the harp and sang for me to no avail. I do not know how long this went on, for I had lost any sense of time, but it must have been too long, for my father and mother ceased smiling, and without much feeling, I sensed their fear that I might yet be taken from them, even though they, of course, could not see the black wings still waiting.
“Can you see it, Albaric?” I asked when he was alone in the room with me.
“See what?”
“Death overhead.”
“The black wings? They have been here the whole time.”
“Can Mother see them?”
“I think not. You call them Death. I dare say you are right. Yet why have you not made them fly away?”
I gazed at him, uncomprehending.
“Yours is the choice,” he said. “The fever has left you. The wound is calm. Why do you lie shadowed by death?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
Albaric confronted me, his fair, scarred face inches from mine. “Aric, what is wrong with you?”
I shook my head.
“Tell me. What is the matter?”
“I truly don’t know,” I muttered. Sooth, as my thoughts were far from clear. My heart, usually my best guide, seemed to have left me without so much as a good-bye. I felt like an empty room, a chamber where no air moved.
Albaric put his mouth close to my ear so that no one could possibly hear and told me, “The ring—it fought the fever with you, all golden like a small shining crown, but now it has turned a muddy, bilious yellow.”
Not understanding what he was saying, I lay blank and silent.
“The color of cowardice,” he told me between his teeth.
Oh. It was a distant concept of no significance. “I don’t care.”
He pulled back to glare at me. “By my troth, I don’t believe you do!”
I looked up at him, mildly interested, for I had not seen him like this before, or never at me. “You are angry, my brother.”
“Yes, I am angry, when you are the one who should be!”
“I should be angry?”
“At the one who did this to you. How not?”
How not, indeed? But I had forgiven Father. Now Albaric wanted me to hate him. And Father wanted me to hate Albaric. This was like a black dragon that wanted to nest in my chest, and this could go on forever. This was the reason I lay abed without rising.
“I need some fresh air, Aric.” Albaric’s low voice carried scorn barely constrained. “As you no longer care, might I be released from my promise? Might I go outside?”
“Of course.”
He shut the door behind him softly enough. I did not watch him leave. Already, I had closed my eyes.
“Prince Aric!”
Her brash young voice made me open my eyes wide, just in time for me to see her running, as was her wont, with no ladylike airs or dignity, across the bedchamber to me. Her brown braids loosened from her head and flew. Her great-eyed face bloomed like a flower, a creamy heart-shaped blossom, above her green kirtle. Behind her in the doorway stood my parents, smiling. Father’s smile looked real.
“Marissa!” I cried in utmost surprise, for I had forgotten about her, yet knew her at once, to my bones.
“Aric,” she scolded, bouncing to a perch on the bed beside me, “I’ve come all the way from Domberk to see you, and—”
“I thought it was to free your father,” I interrupted, teasing.
“Oh. Him.” She tossed her head. “He’s already gone, without so much as a how-are-you-daughter. I care no more for him than he does for me. But I rode all the long and dusty way here—”
“You rode? No horse-litter?”
“And no sidesaddle either. I rode astride. Everyone was scandalized. I brought my own palfrey because I wanted for you
and me to go riding together, I on Cherub and you on Bluefire—but you’re sick! How dare you?”
She said this without flirtation, but with the honest frustration of an outspoken girl, and beyond her, I saw my father’s smile widen. He liked her. That must have been a great surprise to him, to like a Domberk.
“It was not my idea, I assure you.”
“Just look at you!”
I quipped, “Do I look like a prince now?”
She all but shouted at me, “You look like something made out of goat’s-milk curds and thistledown! You’re so thin! What is the matter with you?”
I gazed up at her, speechless with the joy of seeing her.
“Oh, botheration,” she complained, and bending over me, with her hands embracing my face, she kissed me full on the lips.
It was not the kiss of a girl.
Nor was it yet the kiss of a woman, but something in between, like nothing I had ever felt before, and it startled my heart so profoundly that I could only gasp and stare.
My heart. It seemed to have returned and taken up residence in my chest where it belonged. Far from feeling hollow and empty, I had barely space to catch my breath.
Marissa turned pink, and no wonder, for I was gawking at her as if I had never seen a girl before. “I must go unpack my things,” she said with decision, and away she went in a whirl of brown braids and rumpled green frock.
Mother hurried away with her, to help her with the task, I suppose. Father remained. He still wore black, but my bedchamber seemed brighter than it had been before.
Of course. A shadow was gone. The great black wings overhead had flown away.
Just inside the door, trying to control his countenance, Father said nothing.
I asked him, “Sire, could you send to the kitchen for something good to eat? I’m hungry.”
He stared. It seemed to me that he was trying very hard not to say anything he might regret, or to let peculiar emotions show on his face.
Then, turning to stride out of the door, he bellowed at the top of his lungs, as if it were a proclamation, “Prince Aric is hungry!”
The resultant hullabaloo vexed me, because truly I felt famished.
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