Viper's Nest

by Rachel Ford

  He wanted to say, “Always.” But he just smiled, and asked, “How do you feel?”

  “Weak. Tired. But the pain is gone.”

  He nodded. “Thank the All-Father.”

  “Thank you, Tryg; I don’t think I’d have survived, if not for you.” Her gaze was soft, almost tender.

  He had an overwhelming urge to draw her to him, to hold her close enough that he could hear her heartbeat and feel her breath; to reassure himself that she was truly alright. “I will always keep you safe, Cass.”

  She smiled now, but it was an expression tinged with sadness. In a moment, she asked, “Where is Faustus? Did he come back?”

  Trygve forced his emotions into check, and his voice grew stronger, and more businesslike. “I’m not sure.”

  “Were you here all night, then?” She held his gaze, and seemed to read her answer in it, for she reached out and took his hand. Squeezing it, she said, “You must be exhausted, Tryg.”

  “I’ll live.” He squeezed her hand in return, and then released it. He didn’t trust himself, in his current state, to allow himself any more contact, lest he say something stupid. “Let me get the doctor, though, now that you’re awake.”

  “Alright. And Trygve?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you see if Faustus has returned?”

  “Of course.”

  Tiberius had gone. “On account of his injuries,” Aemilia told him through a scowl. Another doctor had been summoned to replace him, a younger man called Aetius.

  “Tiberius told me that the worst was behind her,” he said. “And since she was sleeping, I thought I would wait until she was awake to check on her, lest she wake to the presence of a stranger.”

  “Tiberius almost killed her,” Trygve said.

  “He mentioned something of the incident,” Aetius offered carefully. “I am glad that you were there to – persuade – my colleague, Mister Ingensen. The empress might not have survived the night without your efforts.”

  “I think,” Trygve said in a moment, “we may get along better than your predecessor and I did.”

  Aetius laughed. “I hope so. But I should go check on her now.”

  “Yes. Tell me, before you go, do you know if the emperor is back?”

  “I do not. I’m sorry.”

  It was an answer he heard more than once in his search, but on reaching Faustus’ apartment and finding only his servant, who likewise had not seen the emperor, Trygve felt he had done his duty.

  He returned to Cassia’s apartments. The physician was finishing his examination. “It’s a terrible business,” he told her, “and you have my utmost sympathy, Empress. But with rest – lots of rest – and quiet, you will be right as rain.”

  Aetius prescribed a week’s bedrest, followed by a week of only the most moderate exercise. “And I will stop by twice a day – more, if necessary – to monitor your progress.”

  “What about Tiberius? Forgive me – I do not mean to be ungrateful – but I would have thought he would be here this morning.”

  The physician threw a glance at Trygve. “He, uh, will not be in today. Perhaps for many days yet. He broke his jaw.”

  The Northman checked a grin as Cassia gasped. “Poor Tiberius.”

  He could not, at this, refrain from commenting, “He’s lucky broken bones are all he’s got to worry about.”

  Her eyes widened. “You mean…was it you, Trygve?”

  “Yes. And I’d do it again.”

  “There was a dispute,” Aetius put in by way of explanation, “over the medicine you needed.”

  “Oh. Oh, I remember now.” Her expression changed. The confusion melted away and was replaced with something like warmth as she gazed at him. “It felt like a dream. I didn’t realize it was all real.”

  “You had a bad fever,” the physician reminded her mildly.

  It was now, of all times, that Faustus chose to return. Trygve could not forgive him for having left in the first place, but his manner of return filled the Northman was such a virulent anger that it bordered on hatred.

  Faustus was inebriated. But that was too mild a term. He was drunk out of his mind, reeking of alcohol and vomit. His step was unsteady, and his words slurred. He burst into Cassia’s chambers, demanding to see her. “My wife. I must see my wife.” Somehow, he managed to mumble it and shout it all at the same time as Aetius tried to moderate his entry.

  “Of course, my lord. But the empress is very weak. She cannot be excited.”

  To this, Faustus made an incoherent reply, and thundered past the man. He fell upon Cassia’s bed weeping, crushing her under his weight. “My Cassia. I thought you were dead.”

  It was everything Trygve could do to stop from seizing the fool and pulling him off her. Aetius’ intervention, though, was more tactful, and more effective.

  Cassia had returned her husband’s embrace, but said, “Faustus, I can’t breathe.”

  Here, the physician stepped in, taking the emperor gently by the shoulder and sitting him back so that he was no longer compressing her chest. “Gently, my lord. Gently. She has barely survived the night: we must be careful.”

  At first, it seemed the emperor would bristle and refuse the instruction. But at this last part, tears began to flow again. Instead of a crushing hug, he took her hands, and began to kiss at them. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  Trygve grimaced. If Cassia remembered how he’d abandoned her, she didn’t show it now. She extracted one of her hands from his and ran it through his hair, speaking softly to him. The Northman glanced away.

  Aetius spoke quietly. “This has been hard on us all, my lord. I will get you something.” The physician stepped away, and in a moment returned, mixing powders into a glass of water. “Here. Drink this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just something to calm your nerves, after the shock.”

  Faustus nodded and took the glass. He drank it, and for a minute returned his attention to Cassia. But after a space, his words grew more slurred, and his eyelids drooped.

  “You look very tired, my lord,” Aetius said. “Perhaps you should rest.”

  The emperor protested, and the physician assured him Cassia was in the best of care. Faustus relented. “Help the emperor to his rooms, will you, Trygve?” Aetius instructed.

  “Sleep well, my love.”

  The physician had administered a powerful sedative. “This has been very hard on him, of course,” Aetius explained, as much for Cassia’s benefit Trygve thought as anything. “Like you, Empress, the best thing he can do is sleep – sleep off the shock and sleep off the wine.”

  Faustus did sleep, all through the rest of the day and until the next morning. But when he returned to Cassia’s room, it was in a very different fashion than he’d last entered it.

  Trygve had been asleep. Once he was convinced that Cassia was on the upward swing, he’d allowed himself to doze in an armchair. He started awake, though, as the door burst open and Faustus entered.

  The emperor was sober now, and his eyes flashed.

  “Faustus,” Cassia greeted. “Your timing is impeccable, husband. I am only just awake myself. How did you –”

  “Is it true, Cass? What Aemilia tells me?”

  She frowned at this. “Is what true? What does she tell you?”

  “That you – that he –” This was said with a gesture toward Trygve, and a particular vehemence of tone. “– murdered our child? That you poisoned my son?”

  The Northman was for a moment blindsided by the unexpectedness of the accusation. He hadn’t forgotten the incident with Tiberius – how could he? – but he’d been so preoccupied with Cassia’s recovery that it seemed a distant memory, as far away as his homeland in the moment. He wondered, too, at Faustus’ reaction. How could a man who the day before was slobbering drunken kisses all over her today begrudge her, her very life? Anger kindled in his breast, but he remembered the emperor’s source of information. Aemilia had opposed the plan from the start. Who kne
w what self-righteous tale she’d spun to work Faustus into this rage? “The empress was dying,” he said. “So was the fetus. It was the only way: to lose both or to lose one.”

  The emperor turned a gaze so venomous on Trygve that he blinked stupidly in the face of it. “Did I address you, bloodletter? Minerva, what an imbecile I’ve been to let a Northman, a mercenary, into my household.”

  “Faustus,” Cassia interjected, “it’s not Trygve’s fault. It’s true: there was no other way.”

  He turned back to her. “That was our child, Cass – our child!”

  “He was dying,” she said, her tone grave. “I was dying, Faustus.”

  “So you made the choice to kill my son, to save yourself?”

  This was too much for Trygve, and it at last roused him from his stupefaction. Even if the scenario described was accurate, he could see no other option. But in the particular, Faustus’ bare facts were wrong. “Your son was fifteen, maybe sixteen, weeks along,” he said. “The choice was not to choose one over the other, but to save Cassia, or lose them both.”

  This brought Faustus’ rage back to him. Cassia was in her sickbed, and Trygve on his feet by the armchair where moments ago he had sat. The emperor was standing between the two of them. He crossed the little distance between himself and Trygve and brought a bejeweled hand hard and swift across his jaw. “Do not speak again, Northman, unless I command it,” he snarled. “You’re lucky I’ve not ordered you drawn and quartered for what you’ve done.”

  Rage boiled inside Trygve’s breast hotter than the waters of a hot spring. But he could see Cassia across from him, struggling to sit up. He could hear her gasping, “Faustus.” He stood, he knew, on a razor’s edge: one action, one wrong move in this moment, might take him from her forever.

  So he bowed his head meekly and studied his shoes.

  “Listen to me, Faustus,” Cassia implored. “It was not Trygve. It was I who ordered it. Do you understand? Me.”

  The emperor turned from him now, and Trygve looked up. Apprehension was written on her features, and he felt his heart churn that she should have to lie to protect him from a truth of which he was proud: he’d saved her life. He would have done it again, a hundred times, if necessary. No man of sense or decency would have done less.

  And yet, here they were. The anger had lessened in Faustus’ tone, and been replaced with something else, something like aggrievement. “You, Cass? Minerva, how could you?”

  “I was dying, Faustus.” Now there was anger in Cassia’s voice as well. “Do you not understand that? I was dying!”

  “But to kill our son?”

  Her eyes, sunken and tired though they were, flashed. “Our son? And what of your wife? Do I not merit even a little consideration, Faustus? Is my life, then, so disposable?”

  “Of course not.” His tone rose. “You know I love you. You know I would do anything to keep you safe.”

  “Do I?” she shot back. “Anything, except the one thing that actually did save it.”

  “Anything but kill our boy. You know how long we’ve been trying to have a child. There had to be another way.”

  “There wasn’t,” she said, and her voice hardened, “which you would have known if you had stayed. If you hadn’t left me to die alone while you slipped into your cups.”

  “You know I can’t stand a sickroom. But is that what this is about? Your vengeance, Cass? What, you would kill our son to punish me?”

  This was too much for the Northman, and he started to speak, to recall the facts that the emperor ignored. But a look from Cassia, sharp and urgent, silenced him. Faustus, meanwhile, turned fierce eyes on him. “Did you say something, cur?”

  “No, my lord,” he answered through clenched teeth.

  Faustus held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. “You’d better not have. Now leave us. You have no place in my wife’s sick room.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Trygve looked to her at Faustus’ command, and she nodded. She wanted him to stay. She felt weak, drained; and the argument was more taxing than it should have been.

  But Faustus was in a combustible mood. He was looking for someone to blame. She didn’t want it to be Trygve. She’d keep him safe from her husband’s wrath, of course; but if he fixed on the Northman to blame for the loss of her pregnancy, Faustus would not rest until he was out of their household.

  And she felt that she could not lose Trygve. Not now, especially. So this was a battle she must fight on her own.

  The Northman’s expression was grave, but he took his cue from her. She watched him go, stepping out of direct sight, a hazy silhouette visible through the airy curtains of her bed. She heard the door open; watched him step through; and heard it close.

  She was alone. No. She was with Faustus, and seeing the anger in his eyes, the tension in his posture, she realized that that was far worse than being alone.

  He stared at her now, and she at him. She wondered what those hate-filled eyes saw as he studied her. She wondered at what her own eyes saw now, for the first time.

  But, not really the first time. She’d seen this Faustus before. She’d just never seen so much of it, all at once; all directed at her.

  “What do you want from me, Faustus?” she said at length, and she could hear the weariness in her own voice. “Do you want me to say that I’m sorry I chose to live? Do you want me to say that I would not make the same choice again?” She shook her head. “I’m not sorry. I would make it. I’ll not die so that you can bury a wife as well as the son who might have been.”

  “You are a cold woman,” he said. “A heartless woman.”

  “And what kind of husband,” she wondered, “are you, to abandon me as I lay dying, and remonstrate with me for living?”

  “You bitch,” he said. “You cold-blooded, murdering bitch.”

  An hour ago – fifteen minutes ago – the words would have stung to her core. They might have cut her to the bone, to the deepest, tenderest part of her heart. But now, somehow, they didn’t hurt at all. She laughed, then said, “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Get out.”

  His eyes flashed. “Like hell I will.”

  “You’ll get out,” she said, and her voice sounded cold as ice to her own ears, “or I’ll call the guard and have you thrown out.”

  He hesitated, hovering over her bed. The truth was, his nearness and her own weakness frightened her. She’d heard men speak of seeing murder in someone’s eyes. She wasn’t sure what it looked like, but as Faustus stared at her, she felt she had a good idea. She wished, now, that she hadn’t sent Trygve away.

  But he was gone, and she was alone. So she squared her shoulders and held her husband’s gaze. He blinked first and shook his head. “Minerva, what a bitch I’ve married. And here I was, wondering what we’d done for the gods to leave you barren so long. Now I know: why would they send us children, when you’ll only murder them?”

  Cassia snorted. “Me, barren? Are you sure about that? How many affairs have you had over the years, Faustus, love?” She laced the last word with venomous dose of sarcasm. “And how many sons have you sired? You should have an army at this point. Have you even one?” She knew well enough that he did not. “No, husband: I don’t think the fault lies with me.”

  “You whore,” he snarled. This time, he didn’t restrain the fury in his eyes; and he did something she’d never seen him do before. He raised his hand to hit her.

  Trygve had left when Cassia told him to go, but he didn’t leave her apartments. He only stepped out of her bedroom.

  He didn’t trust Faustus much in the best of circumstances, but now? No, he wasn’t going anywhere until he knew Cass was alright – until her husband had left.

  He wasn’t eavesdropping, exactly. But their voices were raised, and it was no effort to hear what was said; so he did hear it.

  And his blood boiled anew at Faustus’ words. It boiled with every imputation against Cassia, with every insult.


  But then, he heard something else. He heard her cry out.

  He didn’t wait to be summoned. He opened the door, and burst in. He couldn’t see clearly; the curtains around Cassia’s bed sheathed her in a thin film of fabric. But he could see enough. Faustus was poised over her, an arm raised; and she was struggling, as if he held her with the other hand.

  “Cassia,” he said.

  “Trygve.”

  Faustus, meanwhile, slunk back away from her. “You,” he said. “I told you to leave.”

  Trygve had rounded the bed, and Cassia was visible now. She held up a hand, gesturing for him to stop his advance. He wasn’t sure how to take that. He knew what he’d seen; he knew what he still saw in Faustus’ eyes. And yet she was cautioning him to hold back. “I…I thought I heard the empress call me.”

  “Get out,” Faustus said. “I told you to get out!”

  “No,” Cassia said. “Stay, Trygve, at least until doctor Aelius arrives.” She turned to Faustus, adding, “My husband is just leaving now, and I don’t want to be alone.”

  The other man reddened from the roots of his hair to the collar of his shirt. For half a second, he remained fixed in place. Then, he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room.

  Trygve didn’t move until he’d gone, but now he flew to her side. She was pale and shaking. He saw a red welt on her arm in the shape of a handprint. His heart sickened at the sight of it. “Cass, are you alright? Did he hit you?”

  She glanced down at the arm, and the mark. “Oh, he grabbed me. He would have…hit me.” She seemed dazed, almost.

  “I’m going to send for the doctor,” Trygve decided, rising to go.

  “Wait.” She caught his arm. “Don’t leave yet, Trygve. Please.” He turned his eyes to hers, and she flushed. “Let me catch my breath before you go.”

  He waited until her trembling stopped. They didn’t speak much, she propped up on her bed and he kneeling beside her. But, finally, she said, “Alright. I think I’m better now, Tryg. Thank you.”

  Aelius was called for. He’d been on his way already, he said, and the messenger intersected him halfway to the palace. He arrived looking concerned. “What’s happened? Is everything alright?”