by Rebecca Hahn
Not with that lady reaching out a hand for anyone to see. He doesn’t say it, but I know it’s what he’s thinking. I shake my head. “If I cared what the king thought, I might as well have thrown myself from the castle walls by now.”
“He is the king. He has the ears of many powerful lords, and he is more dangerous and more desperate now than I’ve ever seen him.”
“He’s a bully and an idiot.”
“A bully with a sword.”
I reach down and pull him to his feet. The blanket slips off to lie huddled on the floor. I say, still holding his hands, “Don’t you have a sword too?”
He goes all still. I see the thoughts churning again in his head, and I see him looking at me, his eyes sweeping from my hair to my cheekbones to my smile. “Yes, lady, I do,” he says, quiet.
“Then what do I have to care about the sword of my old, stupid uncle?” I say.
“Not a thing,” he says, still looking at me.
So I keep on smiling, and I let him take my arm as we walk out to the porch and down the steps, and if he stands a bit close as he lifts me onto my horse, I don’t say nothing to that, neither, and he’s smiling too as we turn our mares and start back up the path to the castle together.
Six
THE THING IS, this Lord Edgar, head of the Ontrei family, confuses me. He’s an arrogant, stubborn man, and he’s closer to the king than almost anyone at court. He’s asked for my hand not once, but twice, in the most insulting way both times, and still he doesn’t seem ashamed or see any reason why we shouldn’t be friends.
But he also laughs with me in this open, unworried way when I poke fun at him, and he taught me to ride, and he saw the lady in the woods without going mad. He doesn’t tell anyone about that, or about our visit to the hut, or about the way the trees there haven’t moved in any, even though all around the country they’re leaping forward, a whole row of them every night.
In the days since that ride, the king has started to scowl at him instead of smile, and I think it’s because this lord has been paying his attentions to me. And that scowl is the best mark in his favor so far.
“You could tell my uncle you’re controlling me.” We’re out on another ride. There won’t be many more of these before the snows wall us in. We’ve gone to the east; we don’t take the road with the path leading off to my Gramps’s and my hut anymore. There’s no discussion of this; it simply never happens.
“Why would I do that?”
It’s too cold to race, even. We plod along through frozen fields, huddled up in our layers and coats, the horses huffing big steaming breaths.
“Well, so he’ll like you again.”
Lord Edgar laughs. He does that, too, laughs when I’m as serious as can be. It’s a less endearing trait, I think. “What do I care if the king likes me, Marni? We’re allies, you and I. The king’s my friend as long as he’s yours.”
I think this over. I may be new to court games, but I know who’s the boss there and who’s the boss of this lord. “Seems treasonous, that.”
“Are you going to tell on me?”
He’s grinning, but I only give him a frown. “I’m nobody still, you know. The king won’t scarce speak my name. You’ll do yourself no favors by linking up so openly with me.”
“I think the king can decide who’s nobody when he has a prince of his own to put on the throne.”
I’m shaking my head. “So you’re in it for the power,” I say.
“Aren’t we all?”
I give him a look, hard and searching. I want to know what’s lurking behind that smile, whether it wants to help me or to bite off my head as I sleep. “It’s a dangerous game you play,” I say, but the teasing is back in my voice now too, and before I know it, we’re laughing and pushing the mares into a gallop, never mind the weather, and I’m forgetting, anyway, why I should care about the king when there are hills to thunder across and a sky to run and meet.
After that ride, the cold gets to be so much that we wouldn’t want to push our poor brave mares out into it, and so the friendship, or the alliance, or whatever it is between the Lord of Ontrei and the king’s niece becomes less a partial secret and more common knowledge for all the gossiping nobles.
The country lords and ladies begin galloping in on their stallions and rolling in on their carriages for the start of the winter festivities. At first these lords try their luck with me just as the court lords have been doing for weeks now, fetching me things and hanging on my words and in general turning themselves into fools. I don’t mind so much with these new ones, to be truthful. They listen eagerly, but they don’t simper. They flatter, but they don’t compose poems like the moody Lord Nakon or wave handkerchiefs like the pale Lord Lesting does, with his runny nose and his red eyes. And they talk, too, about more interesting things than the courtiers: their neighboring farmers and their own fields, the weather patterns this fall and what they mean for the spring planting—the woods moving in.
They don’t talk much of that, though, of the woods. Seems the moment they bring it up, it’s brought back down again, with a look at me and a kind of unease that makes me all fidgety. I want to know. I want to hear every bit about the woods, but I also don’t mind them stopping, neither. I think of what Edgar said that day in our hut, and somehow I don’t care to hear how far the trees have come, how many miles the shadowed places have crept into our land now.
It isn’t long before these new lords see what the castle folk have been whispering about for days, and they give up on me.
“Will it be soon, then, lady?” my maid Sylvie asks one morning as I’m letting her put up my hair in the twists and curls the ladies are wearing this week. It’s the first day of the festivals, and I’m to go to a dance in the city’s main square, as castle folk do every year, at midday, when the sun is high and the air is as warm as it gets. The city folk come and dance too, though not with the castle folk, as far as I can make out.
“Will what be soon, Sylvie?” I ask. It’s a pretty fashion, this new hairdo. I tilt my head at my reflection, and my maid turns me upright again with the tips of her fingers.
She leans down next to my ear, catching my eyes in the mirror. “The announcement,” she says. “When you tell us of your engagement.” She raises her thin eyebrows at me, as though this is our secret, as if we’ve planned it all out, her and me, and our triumph is at hand.
I keep my face blank, but there’s a twisting in my stomach. “No,” I say. “No, there won’t be any such announcement.”
“He hasn’t asked, yet, then,” Sylvie says, straightening up to finish with my hair.
“I haven’t said yes.”
Then I wish I could take that back, because I can feel her hands pausing in their task, and I know I’ve given the servants, and through the servants the ladies and the lords, a new piece of gossip.
“You’ll be wanting the king’s blessing first, of course,” Sylvie says, but it’s a question more than a fact.
“Mmmm,” I say, not yes and not no. The instant she’s finished tying back the last loose curl, I’m up and grabbing my things, and she gets nothing more out of me that day.
But everyone’s thinking as Sylvie is, I can tell. Why shouldn’t they? Lord Edgar asks me for the first dance in the square that afternoon, and he spins me so fast and grins at me so happily I can’t help but laugh, and when my hairpins fall, what do I care? But ladies always care, unless they’ve lost their mind to love or some such. So what are they all to think?
And I won’t say he’s not handsome, not even to myself, not with those dark eyes and that infectious smile turned right on me. He’s charming when he decides to be, and he holds me close and sure as we spin through dance after dance.
As the head of the House of Ontrei is offering his arm to walk me back up to the castle, and I am taking it without even a protest, shaking my hair back over my shoulders and lifting my head to glory in the bright blue sky, the king is watching. He has his men around him, the ones who ride
with him all about the kingdom—all but my escort, of course—and there are always lords and ladies near the king, ready with a flattery on their tongue or a simper in their eyes. But my uncle stands as though alone. It’s more than a frown upon his face; it is a hard and present anger. As I hold his eyes for those few seconds, the queen comes up beside him and touches his arm. He looks down at her. He says something, low and quick. When she turns to look my way, that sparkling smile of hers is not to be seen.
By the end of the day, not even the newest-arrived of the country lords is paying me his attentions anymore.
But after a few days of these festivities I scarce remember that look the king gave me or how dangerous it is to let Lord Edgar spend as much time with me as he does. I even think less on that empty place inside where my Gramps is supposed to be.
Gramps and I had our own celebrations, of course. We’d bring in holly leaves and berries and drape them around the fireplace. We’d cook honey cakes and sunflower-seed bread, and long into the night we’d tell each other stories we made up on the spot.
We used to go to the nearest village for dancing, too. When Annel was there, I’d join in sometimes. She’d swing me around, and I’d get passed from villager to villager, on down the line as if I were one of them.
It was something, to twirl and smile and pretend I was one of them.
But we never went more than once or twice in the festival weeks. Gramps would have brought me as often as I liked, but I never was good at making friends with the village lads and lasses. I didn’t go to their school; I didn’t play with them in the evenings.
And—I’ll admit it—as I got older, I grew more and more to like the way I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t a villager—not just because we lived outside the village, but because I was born for other things. They didn’t get close to me, because they knew I was different. And I didn’t get close to them, those later years, because I didn’t want to become the same, to forget the life that had been taken from me.
Here, though, where the ladies laugh and talk with me as though I’m a princess in truth, and where a great lord courts me, and where to wake in the morning is to remember the thousand happy things that are coming to me today—here I am having myself festivals galore. We hold parades across the hills outside the castle, the ladies throwing dried flowers this way and that, the lords reaching high to catch what they can; we sing songs and tell stories, hours of them from anyone who cares to sing or speak, in a great circle in the castle’s main hall; and we have feasts and dances and more feasts all week, and we will all the next week too, before the country nobles return to their estates for the winter.
It surprises me at times to think on how much I’m enjoying myself, how much I’m enjoying being around the Lord of Ontrei. I’ve scarce had time for knitting these last few days, even though the king is here and I’m eating dinner with him every night, so every night I’m reminded of the reason I came to this castle. But I’m finding that I don’t want to give up thinking on Lord Edgar’s laugh, or the way he looks at me. I want to hold on to this sweet sense of happiness, so strange, so unlike anything I’ve ever known. When I get to my room at last, after dancing half the night away, and I know the needles are there waiting for me, tucked beneath my mattress, more times than not I let them lie. More times than not I crawl into bed at once and let my dreams take me away.
These days seem to last forever, and that is Edgar’s fault. With him, I’m thinking always of the moment, of the cutting remark he’s just made about the king, of his laugh as we break off from the rest of the nobles to run over the hills together, of the fleck of yellow in his deep brown eyes, and how, when he turns them on me, I don’t think that he’s judging or afraid, but that he knows me, with all my wishes and my yearnings, and he likes me even so.
Everyone knows for certain now that he’s after me.
I forget sometimes the power he holds at court. I forget the way the nobles are splitting, some rallying round the king and the queen, some following the Lord of Ontrei to my side. When we gather all together in the hall for a story or to mingle before we go in for dinner, the king’s nobles stand on one side of the room, Ontrei’s on the other. The queen doesn’t come over to talk to me anymore, and for that I’m sad. I smile at her when she looks my way, but either she doesn’t dare smile back, or she doesn’t want to. She turns her head, and I’m left smiling into empty space.
“I didn’t ask them to do it,” I say one evening as I take Edgar’s arm to walk into the dining hall. We’re bringing up the pack tonight; I’ve held him back so there’s no one left to hear us as we walk. “I didn’t ask them to pit themselves against the king.”
“You didn’t need to,” Edgar says. “They were ready; they were ripe for it. There are plenty of us who never felt right about what happened to your mother or how he abandoned you. A king who can kill his own sister . . .” He shakes his head, and I near love him at that moment for what’s in his eyes as he looks at me, all fierce and bright. “And now that there’s trouble with the woods, and the king hasn’t been able to stop it—”
“You said they blame me for that.”
“Some do. It’s not your country, though, is it? You’re not in charge of what happens to its people.”
We’ve reached the entrance to the dining hall; the others have found their seats, and the king will be arriving soon. He won’t look kindly on us if we’re dawdling outside the doors. “Well,” Edgar says before we walk on through, “it’s not your country yet.” And then we’re making our way to our seats. The nobles are watching us, wondering, no doubt, what we’ve just been speaking of, and I feel a thrill despite myself, to be this center of attention, to be the subject of their thoughts.
I love that, too, the sudden power of being courted by him. I love his talk of me taking the kingdom for my own, even though I know—I know—he’s thinking that when I have the kingdom, he will be king.
He pulls out my chair for me as I sit down, and he whispers into my ear, “It won’t be long now, Marni, before the king gets what’s coming to him and you get what’s yours.” He raises his eyebrows at me as he slides into the seat beside me, and I smile back at him.
When the king walks in with the queen on his arm, I let his glare wash over me. Edgar’s words, his nearness, and his friendship keep me safe, and for a moment I believe him. I believe in the truth of the future that he’s offering to me.
Seven
COME THE SECOND week of the festivals, Edgar starts trying again to get me to marry him.
He asks me in silly ways, in breathtaking ways, and in serious ways. He asks me in the main hall as we’re passing out berry tarts that the ladies have cooked up as a midwinter treat; we both reach for the same blueberry one, and we’re standing like that, holding the tart between us, and he whispers, “Marry me,” and I shake my head, laughing.
He asks me while we’re dancing; every time he spins me around, as I turn back to face him, he says it quick, then spins me away again. I don’t have the breath for answering, even.
He asks me when we’re sitting by my fire after dinner with only my maid Sylvie for company, and she’s knitting and muttering to herself about something, and I don’t know if she sees when he edges his chair over next to mine, takes my hand from where it’s resting on my lap, and says, as solemn as anything, “Marni, I know I’ve made light of this, but I wish you would give in and marry me.”
The firelight is painting his face in orange shadows. His eyes are dark, darker than the corners of the room, and I want to look away because I don’t know what I’m to do when he looks at me like that.
“I won’t,” I say, but I keep on looking at him. I like the dark of his eyes and the light on his face. I like the seriousness in his voice. I’ve even grown familiar with the arrogance in every inch of him. He keeps asking because he knows I’ll say yes. He owns near half the court now, their loyalty, their fear. It’s not just him who thinks he’ll win me. It’s everyone who thinks so. They’re only spl
it on whether they like the idea or not.
“You think I’m asking only for the throne,” he says. He folds his other hand over the first, so that my fingers are cocooned between his warm palms. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this way before. I think, As long as he doesn’t let go, I’ll be safe. I won’t have to watch out for myself anymore.
“Yes,” I say.
“I’m not,” he says. “I don’t like what the king has done, and I’d be happy to bring him down. I don’t think I’m imagining that you feel the same way.”
“No,” I say.
“But it’s more than that.” He’s looking at me so softly, as if he cares—not just about my rights as a princess, but about me, the girl who thinks and dreams. “I like you, Marni. I want to love you. There’s something pure about you, though you keep yourself hidden away. There’s something unwilling to yield to any injustice, any untruth. I like that about you.”
He’s so close now, and I’m not leaning away. Why am I not leaning away?
“I like a lot of things about you.”
And then—then he’s kissing me. I suppose that’s what this is, the warm rush of his skin, the taste of his tongue, the melting all through me. My fingers are tingling, and now his hand is on my waist, and now my hands are in his hair.
I don’t want to stop. I want to keep on like this forever, and not care what it means, and not care whether he’s lying or what the king will do about it. My eyes are closed, and I’m someone I’ve never been—free, certain, disconnected from the world. There’s no thought of the woods and no thought of any vengeance.
I love it, this feeling. I love the melting into nothing; I love the fierce refusal to care anymore.
But it also terrifies me.
“Marni? What is it?”
I’m up; I’m standing by the fireplace, and Edgar’s still sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning over my empty one. I’m breathing fast; there’s tingling through me, still, but it’s sharp, as though I’ve just shaken myself awake.