Our Lady of the Snow

by Louise Cooper

  The layers of her skirts were off now and the farthingale being lifted away. Only the bodice with its painful lacings remained, and under it the ancient slip. The thought of being rid of that foul thing was like a balm. Nanta wanted to scrub every inch of her skin to rid it of the half-rotted silk’s taint. Doubtless she would not be permitted to bath tonight, but tomorrow…

  Someone knocked on the outer door. The women looked up but neither seemed surprised; the hatchet-faced one picked up a blue velvet wrap and draped it around Nanta’s shoulders, while her silent companion went to answer.

  Prince Kodor was on the threshold. He gave the silent servant a meaningful look and she backed away, allowing him to walk unhindered into the room. Nanta opened her mouth to protest, but before she could speak Kodor addressed her other maid in a courteous but cold tone.

  “I wish to speak to my sister alone. You may return in two minutes.”

  Nanta said, “No, wait—” but the women were already departing. The door closed gently and emphatically behind them, leaving her alone with Kodor.

  Nanta’s fear and confusion combined suddenly into outrage, and it overcame her awe. Hugging the wrap defensively around herself she faced him, her cheeks white but her eyes angry.

  “Your Grace, I protest! To intrude on me here, without warning or—or invitation; it—”

  “‘Brother’”,” said Kodor. “Not ‘Your Grace’; ‘brother’. Remember?”

  He had taken the ground from under her feet and she turned from him in frustration. “Please,” she said after a few moments, “go away, Prince Kodor.” A pause, then: “I can’t cope with anything more tonight!”

  “I know you can’t, sister, and it’s the reason why I came.”

  Struggling, Nanta tried to remind herself that in the coach Kodor had been kind to her after a fashion. It was only fair to give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that his intention, now, was similar. Her shoulders sagged and she said indistinctly, “Forgive me. I’m … a little overwrought.”

  “We all are, I believe. May I say what I came to say?”

  “Please.” She made a helpless gesture.

  “Thank you. It’s simply this. I… sympathise with your situation, Nanta. As Osiv’s blood brother and your marriage brother, I wish only to help you both. Please remember that. And if you have need of a friend, think of me.”

  There was silence for several seconds, then, slowly, Nanta turned to look at him again. “That is all?”

  “That is all.”

  She swallowed. “Then I—thank you, Your G…brother. I thank you for your kindness. And I’ll remember what you’ve said.”

  A discreet cough announced the return of the handmaids, but Kodor’s business was finished. The pretext of his reassurance to Nanta had achieved the end he wanted; he had, finally, seen her face.

  The impulse had come in the minutes before her departure from the gallery. Kodor didn’t know why it had happened, or why it mattered so much to him. He did, however, know better than to try to quash it, for an all too familiar intuition told him that it was something far more, far deeper, than mere curiosity. There was a reason for this; it was a presage, a sign that he couldn’t ignore. He had to know what Nanta looked like.

  And the effect of the discovery was devastating.

  His own face showed nothing of his feelings; Kodor was too well-schooled to make that mistake. As far as Nanta was concerned he had simply come to offer her brotherly support,. and the only boundary he had overtly breached was that of etiquette. Nanta, though, did not know what was now seething in Kodor’s mind. For she had never been a party to the dreams that had plagued him since childhood. She had never heard the voices that he heard in those dreams. And she had never seen her own face, framed in a scene of ice and darkness, looking at him and offering him the sole hope of salvation from his recurring nightmares.

  Kodor said, “Good night, my sister.”

  Nanta lowered her head. She did not reply.

  ****

  The women led her in to Osiv ten minutes later.

  The Prince Imperial was not asleep. He was kneeling on the huge expanse of the nuptial bed, arms flapping at his sides as he bounced up and down on the thick goosedown mattress. Seeing Nanta he stopped, cocked his head sideways and gave her a look of candid and guileless curiosity. He seemed to recognize her. Then he smiled and said, “I was flying.”

  His smile was sweet, the smile of an infant who had never known anything but comfort and care. Nanta said, “Yes…”

  “Can you fly?” Osiv’s arms started to flap again. “Like this! Look!”

  Nanta glanced at the women and said in a small, tight voice, “Leave us.”

  Again she was surprised when they obeyed her instantly. Osiv watched them go, then as the door closed behind them he put both thumbs in his mouth, stretched it and stuck out his tongue. “Don’t like them,” he declared.

  In spite of everything, Nanta felt a tiny bubble of laughter trying to rise in her. Masking it with a discreet cough, she told him, “Neither do I. One looks like a hatchet, and the other—”

  “Hatchet! Hatchet-hatchet-hatchet!” Delighted with what was clearly a new word, Osiv tried to spring to his feet, got tangled in his cloth-of-gold nightshirt and collapsed on the bed in a kicking, laughing heap. The laughter ceased as suddenly as it had started, and, on all fours now, he pointed across the room. “Look at my bricks!”

  The cloisters of the Academy had given Nanta very little contact with and less experience of children, but at that moment she began to understand her husband. Kodor had said he was gentle, and Kodor was right. Humor him, play with him, indulge him, and he would be her devoted friend. These first moments alone with Osiv were lifting a little of the darkness and terror inside her. What was there to fear?

  “They’re… splendid bricks.” She took a hesitant step towards the bed. “May I—could I—” Something caught in her throat; she cleared it. “Would you like to playa game with them?”

  Osiv’s face lit like a sunrise. But before he could speak, with no announcement, not even a knock, the door to the outer offices opened and Father Urss walked in.

  “Your Highness.” He looked directly, almost challengingly at Nanta, and though he used her title there was no deference in his tone.

  Osiv screwed his head round and stared at Urss with a look of open dislike. Straightening slowly, Nanta tried to summon the courage to react as a princess. “Exalted Father…” Her voice was too high-pitched; she forced it to drop a few semitones. “Would you please explain this…” She wanted to say “intrusion”, but Urss’ impersonal eyes intimidated her and the sentence trailed off unfinished.

  Then she saw that Urss was not alone. Grand Mother Beck stood behind him, and with her were three more priests; all High Fathers. Urss glanced over his shoulder, nodded, and Beck moved past him into the room.

  “Make yourself ready, please, Your Highness,” she said briskly. “This need not take long.”

  Nanta stared at her. “What do you mean? What need not take long?”

  Beck didn’t answer the question. “Your robe, please,” she said.

  “My robe?”

  “Yes. Please take it off and lie on the bed.”

  The Fathers had converged on Osiv; there seemed to be some small altercation going on, and abruptly the bones of the truth dawned on Nanta. “Grand Mother, you’re not expecting to—that I—that Prince Osiv should—”

  “Naturally, Your Highness, in the circumstances of his condition nothing is expected of Prince Osiv.” Beck’s smile was icy. “Nonetheless, we must leave no room for doubt.” She indicated the bed. “If you please.”

  Nanta was too astounded to resist as Beck took hold of her shoulders and started to pull away the blue velvet robe. Beneath it, the maids had put her into an elaborate cloth-of-silver nightgown that scratched and tickled her skin as she was steered towards the mattress. Then came a frightened wail from Osiv. Nanta’s head snapped round, but apart from one flaili
ng leg her view of him was eclipsed by the priests” bulks. They were trying to pick him up between them; Osiv wailed again, then started to cry like a baby.

  “Grand Mother, this is a travesty!” Nanta said desperately. “He’s a child!”

  Beck was implacable. “The formalities must be observed, Your Highness. Or if they cannot be observed, the fact that they cannot must be witnessed and made a matter of record. Come, now. If you co-operate, it will be over in a few minutes.”

  She pushed Nanta respectfully but firmly on to the bed and made her lie back. The priests had control of Osiv now. Ignoring his howls, they manhandled him across the floor, and as they approached, Beck leaned down, grasped the skirt of Nanta’s nightgown and in a single, unceremonious movement pulled it up to her waist. Nanta shrieked a protest as her body was exposed to the priests” gazes. In shame and terror she tried to hunch into a tight, foetal position, but Beck had powerful arms and hands and a white-haired Father came to help her, grasping Nanta’s ankles and forcing her back to her previous position. Father Urss looked on, but his eyes were focused on Nanta’s face and his expression was glacially disinterested.

  They all but threw Osiv on to the bed beside her, pulling his nightshirt over his head and leaving him naked. Nanta knew little enough of men, but even to her it was pathetically obvious that Osiv hadn’t the least idea of what a bridegroom was expected to do. All he knew was that the Fathers were coercing him and hurting him, and he screamed his grievances with helpless desperation. Twice one of his thrashing hands caught Nanta across the face, the first time bruising her mouth, the second stinging her eyes; once, she herself tried to fight as he was doing, but Beck and the white-haired Father stopped the rebellion. At last her will went under and she could only submit, lying rigid and immobile in a waking nightmare as with relentless hands and harsh voices the Fathers tried to force Osiv to perform a duty that he could not even comprehend.

  It was a grotesque and degrading farce that spared no humiliation and no trespass. But finally—though after far longer than Mother Beck’s prophesied few minutes—it was over and the priests lifted Osiv away from the bed. Nanta felt Beck pulling her gown down to her ankles once more and she wanted to scream with hysterical laughter: Yes, Mother, cover me, preserve my modesty; you’ve debased and abused me but the formalities must be observed!

  Father Urss said frigidly, “Good night, Your Highness,” and in disbelief Nanta saw him make a bow to her. Her mouth worked but she didn’t reply; didn’t know any of the obscenities that were the only words she could have uttered to him at this moment. Osiv was in a corner, hugging himself and sobbing. He had lost control of his bladder during the ordeal; Nanta’s thighs were wet with the result and there was a large dark patch on the magnificent bedcover, but Beck and the priests pretended not to notice. They were withdrawing, the Fathers making lower bows than Urss had done, Beck not bowing but pausing at the door to tell Nanta that if she should want anything during the night, the bell by the fireplace would summon her maids. Then the door closed.

  Nanta did not move for some time, but stared blindly at the opulent room. If she should want anything. Want anything. What could she possibly want from these cruel and brutal manipulators? What could they give her that would be of any value? Comfort? Understanding? A reverse of time, so that this travesty had never happened?

  She laughed then, loudly and chokingly, and it broke the inertia that had held her. It also triggered another and more violent reaction, and she fled from the bed and ran through the connecting door, leaving it wide behind her. Her bathing room was an extension of the dressing room; by the time she reached it Nanta was retching uncontrollably, and with hands cupped to her mouth she doubled over the ornate basin, just visible in the dim, cold glow from the snow-filled sky.

  She had eaten almost nothing all day and her stomach was empty of anything but bile. The retching seemed to go on and on, tearing at her muscles and burning her throat; but at last the spasms receded and, finally, stopped. Nanta raised her head slowly, gasping, her skin and hair dank with sweat. The marble bath had a ewer of water set beside it. The water was cold and only filled the bath ankle-deep but she didn’t care. She would have bathed in ice, flung herself into snowdrifts, plunged into the river with its currents and its creaking, frozen sheets, just to be clean.

  She was crouched in the bath, hurling water over herself and shivering with far, far more than cold when the door was pushed open and Osiv came in. He had managed to don his nightshirt again, though it was badly creased and put on back to front. He stood in the doorway, staring at Nanta with tears streaking his cheeks and a face so innocently and tragically bewildered that any hostility Nanta could have felt towards him instantly dissolved.

  Osiv said: “They hurt me…” Then his face crumpled and the tears started to stream once more.

  Nanta got out of the bath and took him in her arms, rocking him gently from side to side until his tears began to subside. She was crying, too. Then she washed him, all the while talking soothing nonsense in a voice that only quavered and cracked a little, and took him back to the nuptial chamber, where she threw aside the soiled bedcover and tucked him beneath the blankets. Her cloth-of-silver nightgown she screwed into a ball and flung to the furthest corner of the room. Tomorrow she would order it burned, and if the servants refused to comply she would do the deed with her own hands.

  Osiv grasped hold of her thumb as she settled him, and put it in his own mouth. She didn’t protest, only waited until he was asleep before carefully pulling her hand free. Osiv sighed and mumbled, but did not wake.

  Nanta put on her blue robe. The room felt hot; though there was no fire in the hearth the great underfloor furnaces that kept the palace’s imperial suites free from winter cold had been stoked high, and the air was stale and oppressive. She wanted to walk out of this sumptuous prison, out into the night and away, walking, walking, until she forgot. She wanted to find someone who could—or would—explain this mockery to her. She wanted her mother. She wanted to take a knife and thrust it into Father Urss’ heart.

  She had moved to the empty fireplace and was sitting on a settle padded in gold velvet, though she had no memory of how she had got there. Candles burned brightly everywhere; they would probably last until morning. Nanta felt a twisting pang in the pit of her stomach, and the feeling rose, clutching at her, intensifying.

  She lowered herself to the settle until she was lying full length, and her arms curled around her head, as though to shield her from the light. Then quietly, exhaustedly, she cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Grand Mother Beck summoned Marine to her office an hour before noon the next day.

  Marine was not feeling well. The banquet had not ended until dawn, and it had been made quite clear to her that to leave before the finish was unthinkable. She had finally gained her bed as daylight was breaking, but had spent four miserable, wakeful hours suffering severe indigestion. She disliked wine and was not accustomed to rich food, and the banquet’s seventeen courses and as many toasts, none of which could possibly be avoided, had taken a heavy toll. Her stomach was leaden, her eyes ached and prickled, and she felt as if someone had attempted to tie a tourniquet around her skull. But she answered the summons, as she must. Her only consolation was that she had at last been able to change her intricate court dress for the simpler, comfortable gown of her calling.

  Beck looked none the worse for the night’s excesses, and greeted Marine briskly, waving her to sit down. She was signing letters; after a minute or so she looked up and regarded the younger woman with a penetrating gaze that made Marine wonder apprehensively if she had committed some infraction last night and was in disgrace. However, Beck’s scrutiny had another purpose.

  “Marine.” Beck put her pen aside. “There has been a change of plan.”

  “A change, Grand Mother?”

  “Yes. My original intention, as you know, was that you should chaperone the new Princess Imperial until the time of
her marriage, after which the duty would be taken on by more experienced palace servants. However, Father Urss and I now feel that it will be in the Princess” better interests if you stay on.”

  This was so unexpected that Marine’s expression gave her away before she could mask it. “Oh…” she said in a small, dismayed voice.

  Beck raised her eyebrows. “I’m aware that the prospect doesn’t please you, Marine. I know you prefer the cloistered quiet of a sanctum to the—animation, shall we say, of court life. But there are good reasons for this decision. And of course you have your own future to consider.” She smiled her familiar, hard little smile. “I have a robust constitution, but I’m seventy now and I won’t live forever. I might even choose to retire before too long, and before I do, I want to make sure that I have a worthy successor as head of the religious women.”

  Marine was stunned. She knew Beck’s political skills, knew that she herself had no such abilities. Yet Beck was giving out a clear hint that she was in line to take her place.

  If she co-operated now. That, Marine thought, was the crux of it. Beck wanted something from her, and this was the bait. A promise of the ultimate advancement, the highest ambition that she could achieve. At a price.

  Flushing, and looking down at her own tightly clasped hands, Marine stammered, “I—I truly don’t know what to say, Grand Mother. The honor—to think that you might consider me suitable—”

  “Don’t pretend that flimflam with me, Marine,” Beck interrupted testily. “You know perfectly well that I’m satisfied with your abilities; as well I should be, seeing that I trained you myself. You have your flaws, but that’s largely a matter of experience and can be corrected. What matters above all is the fact that I can rely on you.”