The Lumatere Chronicles

by Melina Marchetta

  Trevanion saw the queen the instant he arrived. She was dressed in peasant clothing like those around her, and she was hacking at the earth with the same determination he had seen when she walked ahead of them on their journey to Lumatere. One of the villagers with her pointed to Trevanion, and she turned and watched as he dismounted and strode toward her. He saw the slump in her shoulders as if she knew the time had come. Her guards appeared beside her, and Trevanion grabbed hold of them both in anger.

  “You said they weren’t to let me out of their sight, Captain Trevanion, and they haven’t,” the queen said calmly.

  “They do not need defending, Your Highness,” he said, glaring at the two guards before letting them go.

  She handed the hoe to the worker alongside her. “Can you continue without me, Naill?”

  “Of course, my queen.”

  She followed Trevanion to the manor house. “There’s much work to be done here,” she said.

  “Yes,” he acknowledged, “but not by you. We still have the borders closed for fear of reprisal from those kingdoms who have not yet acknowledged your reign,” he explained. “There are collaborators of the impostor king who are yet to be rounded up. The Forest Dwellers have not come out of hiding.”

  “If I return to the palace, you’ll lock me up like you and Sir Topher did that time in Pietrodore,” she accused. “Or have me surrounded by at least ten of the Guard.”

  “Yes,” he said truthfully. “Because if something happens to you, my queen, I don’t think we would survive.”

  “Then I must teach our people how to survive,” she said. “Because they can’t keep giving up every time something happens to their king or queen.”

  “Sir Topher’s on his way,” he said, and the sadness in her eyes stopped him from saying any more.

  Later, when the sun began to disappear and the wind felt fierce on their skin, Sir Topher sat on the hill alongside the queen, watching the workers below.

  “Next summer we will have a surplus of grain and barley and oats, and all the kingdoms around us will be keen to import our produce,” she said. “The ambassador has also managed to secure interest from the Belegonians for produce from the river, and the export from the mines will please those kingdoms who no longer want to deal with the Sorelians for tin. And we have enough in the treasury to keep our people from starving until then. Within two years, Sir Topher, we will be on the road to some kind of prosperity.”

  “And perhaps at war,” he said soberly.

  “I walked through the meadow in the village of Gadros,” she continued as if he had not spoken, “and I imagined that it could look like the one near the crossroads where I took ill with the priest-king. So I’m going to plant hollyhocks and wild strawberries and daffodils and daises and calendula and columbine.” Despite her words, she was weeping and he forgot all protocol and placed his arm around her.

  “I’ve crossed this kingdom many times over the last few weeks, Sir Topher,” she whispered through her tears. “So many people. So many sad stories. To be responsible for so many souls. How did my father do it?”

  “With the same expression on his face each day as you have now, my queen. With fear and with hope.”

  She wiped away her tears.

  “Isaboe,” he said gently. “These people do not need another peasant to help plow their fields. They want their queen. They want her in the palace, leading them.”

  “And a king?” she sniffed.

  “I believe you have already chosen a king,” he said quietly.

  She rolled her eyes. “When I’m with the Monts, he hides himself in the Rock Village, when I’m in the Rock Village, he’s in the Flatlands, and when I return to the palace, he’ll hide himself with the Monts. I’ve become accustomed to passing him by.”

  “While he’s been . . . traveling around the kingdom, he has written the constitution of the new Lumatere, which he wants you to look over, and I think he has convinced the king of Sarnak to try those who were responsible for the massacre of our people.”

  “In the Sarnak royal court or here?”

  “Negotiations are taking place as we speak. Last correspondence I received from Finnikin had the king of Sarnak inviting us to the palace. We will be advising you not to attend, of course. Not until we know it is perfectly safe. Finnikin is also against the visit from Osteria and he’s right. It’s too soon. When we allow visitors into Lumatere, we must look as if we are truly back on our feet.”

  She sighed and stood, looking over the village where some of the guards were helping to thatch cottage roofs.

  “When he returns, Isaboe, he will have made the most important decision, not only of his life but for this kingdom. You must have patience.”

  “Ask me to also maintain my pride, because it slowly dwindles away each day that he does not come to see me.”

  “You know how he feels about you, Isaboe.”

  “I know nothing,” she said sadly. “He gives me nothing and I cannot rule with nothing. But I know what my people want. For me to have a king. So a king I will give them, even if he’s not my first choice.”

  Trevanion waited for them on the road to the palace with several of the Guard and the horses. “Will you mount the horse, my queen?” he asked as she approached, holding the reins out to her.

  “I’d prefer to walk,” she said quietly. It was the road the impostor king and his men had used to take the women and girls of Lumatere to the palace. The road where they used to hang the children of men who chose to rebel.

  “It would be easier for us if you rode, my queen,” Sir Topher suggested.

  She stopped for a moment, shame on her face as she looked up at both men. “If the truth be told . . . I don’t think I’m ready to return . . . to my home.”

  Trevanion was silent, remembering the first time he had reentered the palace. It was still full of memories of the horror he had witnessed that terrible night all those years ago.

  “We have prepared the eastern wing for you, Isaboe,” Sir Topher said gently. “It has not been touched for the last five decades.”

  She nodded, relief in her expression. “If I promise to return on the next day of rest, then we can invite the people to celebrate with me. It could be a celebration of our journey back to some kind of normality.” Her eyes held a plea.

  “That is five days from now,” Sir Topher said reluctantly.

  “The priestess of Lagrami has moved her novices back to their original cloister and is keen to have me visit. The cloister is not far from the palace, so it may be the perfect place to stay until then. I can visit the people of the palace village. They were once my neighbors, and they treated my sisters and brother and me as if we belonged to them.” She fought to hold back her tears.

  Sir Topher caught Trevanion’s eye and nodded. “I will ride ahead to the cloister and have Lady Milla organize the festivities to celebrate your return to the palace.”

  As they traveled on, Trevanion politely repeated his request for her to mount the horse.

  “I hear you found Froi,” she said, politely ignoring it. “Keep an eye on him, Captain Trevanion. Let him play peasant farmer, but remind him he belongs to the queen.”

  “He doesn’t think he’s worthy.”

  She stopped for a moment. “Froi? Humble?”

  A hint of a smile touched Trevanion’s lips. “For a moment or two.”

  “When I choose to call him back, he will have no right to refuse.”

  “Yet you haven’t exercised the same right to call Finnikin back.”

  She stopped again. “You speak out of place, Captain, and too much conversation today has revolved around your absent son.”

  He nodded. “And for that I apologize.”

  “For what part are you apologizing?” she asked.

  “For what part would you like me to apologize?”

  She held his gaze, and he remembered this steadfast look of hers from the time in the prison mines. He sighed, gazing beyond her to where the Flatlands
were beginning to look rich and dark, the soil in perfectly aligned mounds.

  “I belong to queen and country first,” he said after a while, “but I am his father, Isaboe. You will have to pardon me on this occasion for speaking bluntly, but I will always want to tear out the heart of anyone who causes him pain, and whether you’re the queen or Evanjalin, you have that power. You always have. For feeling that way, I apologize.”

  “And you think I’d use such power?”

  He didn’t answer, and she continued to walk.

  “When the time comes to tear out the heart of anyone who causes him pain, Captain Trevanion, know this,” she said fiercely. “I will fight you to be first in line.”

  After a moment, he smiled. “Will you mount the horse, my queen?”

  “No,” she replied, also with a smile.

  They entered the village of Sennington, and the villagers ran toward the road to greet her.

  “Is Lady Beatriss home, Tarah?” she asked one of the peasant women, whose cheeks flushed with pleasure at the queen using her name.

  “Should be soon, my queen. She’s down by the river with Vestie.”

  The queen smiled her thanks and took the small gifts made for her by the children. “Could you locate Lady Beatriss, Captain Trevanion?” she asked without looking up from the villagers. “I would like to rest here before I present myself to the priestess.”

  Trevanion knew exactly where to find Beatriss. He had watched her disappear behind the manor house and walk down to the river many times. Part of him wanted to keep his distance and call out rather than join her by that tree, but the yearning inside him was too strong and he found himself walking toward her. Yet he could not go all the way. He knew what lay before him. A grave. With more buried than their dead baby. Like most days, Beatriss was with the child, and he wondered at her ability to adore a reminder of the times her body had been savaged by the impostor and his men.

  “The queen is waiting to see you, Lady Beatriss,” he said from his position on the slope.

  She nodded, as if it was the most natural thing for him to be there, and then walked toward him. “She is returning to the palace?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  The child looked at him from where she stood by the grave, and he returned her stare, this strange miniature Beatriss. But then she went back to busying herself with her seeds.

  “Your silence makes things difficult, Trevanion,” Beatriss said quietly. “It would be wrong to pretend we have nothing to say, so I will be the one to speak. I cannot go back to being who I was, or desire what I once felt. The thought of a man touching me, any man . . .” She swallowed, unable to finish, and he nodded, choking back something inside of him that ached to be let loose. He turned to walk away, feeling as if his insides were splintering.

  Her voice stopped him. “I woke with your name on my lips every morning. Like a prayer of hope. For now, that’s all I can offer.”

  He hesitated, remembering something Finnikin had said to him on their journey. That somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.

  “Then for now, my Lady Beatriss,” he said, “what you have to offer is more than enough for me. I’ll wait.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “How long will you wait, Trevanion? A man like you?”

  “A man like me will wait for as long as it takes.”

  They stood and watched the child sprinkle seeds around the grave, humming a sweet tune to herself. When she dropped the little cup that held the seeds, Trevanion walked over to where she stood by the headstone and read the words inscribed upon it: Evanjalin. Beloved child of Trevanion and Beatriss.

  He bent to pick up the cup, placing it into the child’s hand. On the earth beside the grave was a stray seed. As he laid it on the rich mound of dirt, he felt tiny fingers press into his.

  “Like this,” Vestie said, patting his hand. “So the seed can take.”

  That night, Finnikin of the Rock dreamed he was to sacrifice the rest of his life for the royal house of Lumatere.

  The message came to him in a dream from Balthazar and his sisters as he slept in the cottage of the queen’s yata in the mountains. Yata did not seem surprised the next morning. “They visit me often, my babies do,” she said, pressing a kiss to his temple. “It’s time for you to go home, Finnikin. You do not belong in these mountains. You have other places to be.”

  Five days past, he had returned from Sarnak and somehow found himself traveling to the Monts. He stayed, completing the census and the trade agreements with several of their neighboring kingdoms. As he left Yata’s home that morning, he knew that a part of his life was complete and that whatever path he chose, he would experience the ache of unfulfilled dreams. For a moment he allowed himself to feel regret at the thought of never building a cottage by the river with Trevanion. Or living the life of a simple farmer connected to the earth. Or traveling his kingdom, satisfying the nomad he had become. To be Finnikin of the Rock and the Monts and the River and the Flatlands and the Forest. To be none of those at all.

  Yet he also knew that to lose the queen to another man would be a slow torture every day for the rest of his life.

  Lucian walked with him down the mountain. “I will meet with her this evening,” Lucian told him, “when we celebrate her return to the palace.”

  Finnikin did not respond.

  “She said it’s cruel that everyone she loves is together while she is miserably alone. I could have told her you were turning into a miserable bastard yourself, but instead I told her how much time you’ve spent working on the archives, flirting with your scribe. Your sweet and passive scribe who lets you be in charge.”

  Finnikin shook his head, amused in spite of himself.

  “I think she was jealous, you know,” Lucian continued, waving to a family of Monts who had settled further down the mountain. “Said she would have me beheaded if I said another word.”

  “We don’t behead people in Lumatere,” Finnikin said dryly.

  “Ah, Finnikin, in Lumatere we do whatever our queen wants.”

  At the base of the mountain, Lucian embraced him and handed him a package. “Yata wants you to give this to Lady Beatriss of the Flatlands. Can you find time to pass by today before the celebrations?”

  Celebrations indeed, Finnikin thought bitterly. It would be a long time before the kingdom remembered how to celebrate.

  Finnikin knocked on the front door of the manor house in Sennington, the package under his arm. When there was no response, he entered the house and walked toward the kitchen.

  “Finnikin?” he heard Lady Beatriss call, her tone warm and welcoming. He reached the doorway but stopped when he saw Tesadora standing by the stove, her arms folded, an expression of disapproval and hostility on her face. Lady Abian sat with Lady Beatriss at the table.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered, cursing himself for his bad timing. “But Yata of the Monts requested that I pass by this way to give you a package.” He placed it on the table as the three women stared at him.

  “Stay, Finnikin,” Lady Beatriss said. “Drink tea with us. You must be exhausted after your travels, and you’ll need to rest before tonight.”

  “Your appearance is a disgrace,” Tesadora said sharply.

  He touched his hair self-consciously. It resembled tufts of lamb’s wool. Yata had managed to braid it, although she had found it difficult to separate the knotted strands. The color had dulled to a murky shade.

  “I will have it taken care of tomorrow,” he conceded.

  “Sit,” Tesadora said firmly. “You are fortunate that I have time today.”

  Fortunate indeed, he thought. He reluctantly sat, and Lady Beatriss handed Tesadora a cloth to place around his neck.

  Tesadora tugged at his hair as she cut at it with a knife. It was easy to hate her. There was no gentleness in her hands, no softness in her eyes, despite the beauty of her face. He watched the thick
clumps of his hair carpet the floor. Already he felt naked with half of it gone. As he went to feel the bristles of his hair, Tesadora slapped his hand away.

  He stared at the package on the table and then at Lady Beatriss. He realized too late that she had expressed no interest in it. She looked at him solemnly.

  “What is it that you fear, Little Finch?” she asked gently.

  “I fear that the queen accuses me of running the kingdom from my rock village, yet she runs it from the hearts of you women, along with her yata,” he said, anger in his voice. “Is this where you planned the poisoning of the impostor king?”

  There was silence.

  “No,” Lady Abian said finally. “But if such a thing were to be spoken about, Finnikin, it would have been in my parlor. Next to the room where my three sons play. Oh, to think of a world where I would have to give them up to a futile war.”

  “Why is it that you keep our queen waiting?” Tesadora demanded.

  Finnikin longed to leave, but Tesadora had the knife against his scalp.

  “I believe I know what it is, Finnikin,” Lady Beatriss said. “To be king would mean your father would one day lie prostrate at your feet.”

  Tesadora held him down by his remaining hair as he tried to leap to his feet. “I will never allow my father to lie prostrate at my feet!”

  She kept a firm hold on his hair. “Then you are not the man for our queen. So let her go, Finnikin. Go to her now and tell her that she must choose a king. When she hears it from you, she will know there is no future between you. She will not listen to anyone else. The prince of Osteria will have no problem with your father lying prostrate at his feet and in time she will find happiness with him. I hear he’s a strapping boy.”

  Finnikin snorted.

  “Nothing will make Lumaterans happier than to know our beloved queen is being taken care of by one who loves her,” she continued, pulling viciously at his hair. “Waking each day in the arms of a man who will keep her marriage bed warm and fertile.”

  He realized he did not hate Tesadora. He despised her. “What would a novice of Sagrami know about a bed being kept warm and fertile, Tesadora?” he sneered. “It seems to me that you hate all men.”