by C. E. Murphy
“And what of Seolfor?”
“Unchanged. Biding time. We have enough of it.”
Robert nods, swirling wine without slopping it. “Well enough, then. Keep me apprised of Essandia, and get back to Khazan when you can. If you’re successful with Rodrigo, I’ll call Seolfor to be the guiding hand there.”
Dmitri stands, draining his wine. “I will.” He sets the glass aside, ponderous action, then turns back to the broad-shouldered lord by the fire. “Is three enough, Robert?”
“It always has been.” Robert keeps his eyes on the fire. “And if it isn’t, you can be glad you’re not the queen’s favourite, and that you won’t be the one to answer for failure.”
Belinda woke with a clear memory.
She knew in her belly that she wasn’t meant to, and that Robert’s peculiar actions had somehow failed in their purpose. She remembered shadow gathering around her; she remembered Dmitri, and the snippets of conversation she’d overheard.
What she could not remember was how she had hidden in the shadows. How the stillness escaped from her and surrounded her; how she had stood all but in plain sight and gone almost unseen. Over the next three years, she practised and tried to bring that stillness out again.
She failed.
Irina, imperatrix of Khazar, gave birth to a daughter, Ivanova, four months after Dmitri visited with Robert. The whole of Echon sent gifts and congratulations to its eastern neighbor; Lorraine sent Robert himself to bear Aulun’s presents. For the child, a baby rattle made of eggshell and gold; a rabbit-fur cloak, trimmed in royal ermine; and for Irina, the sister queen on the Khazarian throne, a gown of the latest Aulunian fashion, littered with jewels and nearly as elegant as Lorraine herself wore. Belinda asked, without real hope, to journey across the sea, north and east, with Robert, to see Khazar’s capital city of Khazan and help bear Aulun’s gifts to the new mother and child.
When Robert denied her with a fond, patronizing smile, she curtsied and slipped away again. He would be gone for three months, perhaps longer. It was time in which Belinda studied.
Unable to re-create what memory told her she could do, she learned to hide in plain sight more conventionally. She learned to dress conservatively; she learned to sew servants’ garments, so she might slip in and out among Robert’s guests without announcing herself. He returned, and noticed, his contemplation of her thoughtful and interested, but he said nothing. Belinda took silence as tacit permission, and continued. She learned to be unremarkable, if not wholly invisible, and slowly gained confidence in an ability to hide in shadows, if not disappear into them entirely.
Even now, her forehead numbing against the cold pane of glass, Belinda reached for the ability that had enveloped her just one time, three years earlier. The duvet around her shoulders held her safe in its warmth; the glass held her safe from the plummet to the earth, but shadows would not enfold her in their safety.
You are waiting, a voice inside her whispered, and she knew it to be true. Waiting for a sticking point, for a moment of culmination that would explain the solitary, focused studies of her almost twelve years of life. It felt like standing on a knife’s edge, fathomless depths below her and impatience prodding her on. There was purpose there somewhere; Robert would not otherwise have troubled himself with the cost of her eclectic education.
Lately she had realised that girls were not taught the things she had been taught; they did not study the blade, or learn politics and history. Rather, their days were filled with learning embroidery and managing households. Belinda had learned those things, too, but her math went beyond the numbers to balance the manor books, and her languages, written and spoken both, were numerous. Robert had purpose in educating her. Belinda only waited to learn what it was.
Lamplight glittered on the road beyond the manor walls. Belinda blinked twice, hardly realizing her eyes had been open, then knelt up to peer through a windowpane unstained by fog from her breath.
Light flashed again, then spread out more broadly as a distant corner was rounded and Robert’s carriage, black against shallow snow and starlight, came into view. Protected lanterns, glassed-over and swinging wildly, made streaks of brilliance to Belinda’s dazzled eyes as the carriage came pell-mell for the gate, horses’ breath steaming in clouds as they galloped.
Belinda slid from her window, throwing her duvet off as she ran for the door. “The gate! The gate! Papa is coming! Open the gate!” Alarmed and startled voices, rough with sleep, took up her cry. Belinda, clutching a pair of fur-lined slippers in one hand, raced down the steps to the great hall behind Marshall, the thick-bodied manservant who tended to Robert when he visited his country estate. Heedless of the icy ground outside, Marshall flung open the broad manor doors and ran through slush, his booming voice rousing the stablehands from their roost. Belinda, more prudent, hopped and shoved her feet into slippers as she reached the main floor, then ran past Marshall through the courtyard.
It was she who scrambled up to the heavy gates and pulled the pins that kept them locked at night, and she who put her feet through the iron bars and rode the swing of the gate as it opened. She waved through the bars, then climbed higher on the gate, standing on the cross-bars halfway up. Her fingers and cheeks were numb with cold where she pressed against the iron, hanging on with one hand and waving with the other. Her breath came in short, hard gasps, heart hammering inside her with an excitement that bordered on pain. The air she drank down was no longer bitter with cold, but burning with hope. For the moment, Belinda forgot stillness, and prayed.
Robert, lit by the frantically swinging carriage lamps, leaned out a window, laughing and waving in return. “Pack!” he bellowed over the carriage’s rattle and the horses’ hooves. “Take yourself off the gate, and pack, girl!”
Belinda touched Robert’s outstretched fingers as the carriage thundered by, the coachman calling out to the horses as he reined them in. The touch was hard enough to be painful, her cold fingers aching with the impact, but Belinda savored it, drinking in the ache the same way she relished the hard hammering of her heart. Maybe the night’s dream of her birth had been a portent, a harbinger of coming change. Perhaps that was what had driven her from her bed in time to see Robert’s impetuous midnight arrival.
Robert swung out of the coach before it stopped moving, his ground-eating strides bringing him to her before she could jump down from the gate. He swept her off the iron bars, disregarding her size, and spun her around before setting her on her feet again. “You’ve grown,” he said approvingly. “Now go on, Belinda. Pack your things. We leave the moment the horses are changed.”
Belinda gaped. “Tonight?”
“Tonight. There is a man at court whose business is yours, and the need is urgent.”
Ice slid through Belinda’s insides. Stillness overtook her even more quickly than the ice, and her gaze remained steady on Robert’s face, her hazel eyes expressionless. “Papa?”
“Your wardrobe, Primrose. Come, quickly now. I’ve no time to tarry. I’ll tell you what you need to know in the carriage.”
“Of course, Papa.” Belinda curtsied, an instinctive thing, and stepped around him. Wind picked up, sending freezing shards through her sleeping gown, and her feet took her back into the manor heedless of the turmoil in her belly and mind. Her maidservant, Margaret, met her at the head of the stairs, hands twisted in her skirts with excitement.
“A husband, my lady, think of it,” she whispered, herding Belinda down the hall. “Do you think he’ll be young and handsome, or old and rich?”
“I’m sure Papa will have made the best match for me,” Belinda replied, as reflexive as her curtsey earlier had been. She was very nearly twelve, the legal age for marriage, though young. She hadn’t expected it so soon: adopted daughter or not, Robert was not yet old, and a marriage might yet be made for him. Heirs of his blood might still be possible, though Lorraine’s favouritism showed no signs of waning, and the queen had flown into tempers before when her courtiers made matches of
their own. The man Robert had in mind for her would be without an heir himself, a child bride extending the years it might be possible to get one. If he was old enough, he might die before she caught, and his lands would become Robert’s.
Belinda expected him, then, to be older. Not handsome, but wealthy, with any sons already dead in wars or foolish accidents. She allowed Margaret to dress her without awareness of what she wore. Her dagger caught in the folds of her chemise, pressing uncomfortably against her spine. Belinda straightened it before the stiff fabric of her corset was tightened around her. He would be minor nobility; a duke or an earl was beyond her scope.
“Your boots, my lady.”
Belinda startled, looking down. Margaret knelt, waiting patiently for Belinda to respond and be done with the dressing process. “We’ll want to bring makeup,” the woman said as she slipped first one boot, then the other, onto Belinda’s feet. “It’ll run if we apply it so early, my lady, but you can’t be seen at court without it.”
“Yes, of course. I leave the details to you, Margaret. I know you won’t embarrass me.”
Margaret dimpled and ducked her head in a nod. “I won’t, my lady. I’ll have you packed within the hour. Lord Robert will be waiting for you downstairs now, I think.”
“Yes, of course,” Belinda repeated. “Thank you, Margaret.” Skirts and petticoats gathered, she ran to the great hall, then to the kitchen, where Robert sat on a rough wooden table before the fire, gnawing a goose leg to the bone.
“Margaret says my things will be packed within the hour, Papa,” she said from the door. Robert glanced up, gesturing with his meal. Belinda came in, smoothing her skirts as she sat on the table’s bench, facing the fire. Robert twisted, propping a foot on the table.
“An hour. Worse than I’d hoped, better than I’d imagined. Keep that one, Primrose; she’s efficient.”
“Yes, Papa.”
Robert split a grin, toothy in the darkness of his beard. It was longer than when she’d seen him last, coming to a full lengthy point and trimmed shorter along the line of his jaw. He stroked his hand over it, noting Belinda’s critical gaze. “Does it suit, Daughter?”
“Yes, Papa,” Belinda repeated. Robert’s grin cracked through the beard again.
“‘Yes, Papa, but I would like to know about this man whose fate is entwined with mine,’ is that what I hear you saying?”
Belinda swallowed. “I am sure you’ve made the best choice for me, Papa.” She waited a few seconds, a fingertip tapping against the table, hard-won stillness at war with the opportunity Robert presented her. The latter won out: she blurted, “Yes, Papa!” and Robert threw his head back with a laugh.
“All right. All right, my Primrose, let me tell you of Rodney du Roz.”
“Du Roz,” Belinda echoed. “He’s Gallic?”
Robert nodded. Belinda’s eyebrows drew down. “Papa, an Ecumenic?” Gallic sympathies lay with Cordula, heart of the ostentatious Ecumenic Church in southern Echon. Aulun’s break with Cordula was still fresh, and her people still wounded from it. Lorraine herself followed the Reformation, and her religious passion held Aulun in its sway. Belinda’s faith was in the asture Reformatic God to whom Lorraine declared herself devoted. In all her hours of waiting and considering what she waited for, marrying outside the Church was a thought that had never risen.
“Is he…wealthy, Papa?” she asked cautiously. Religious differences could be put aside when profit was on the line, but Robert’s status as viscount was a gift from Lorraine, and had little money to go with it. Belinda herself was pretty, with wide hazel eyes and soft brown hair that made her pale skin dramatic, but she hadn’t the beauty that would make an unprofitable marriage worth considering, not to a man whose religious trappings were the opposite of hers.
“Merely a baron,” Robert replied. “Landed, but not extravagantly. You, barring blood of my blood, are heir to more.”
“Then—” Belinda traced a half-circle on the table’s surface, thoughtful motion. “Then I am a good match for him,” she said slowly. “With land and a title, if you should have no children of your own. And…with a father who has the queen’s ear.” She looked up to see Robert’s smile, so pleased that he hid it behind another bite of goose.
“That’s a clever lass.” The smile faded into drawn-down eyebrows, making his expression unusually dark. “And this is how it shall go, Primrose. Heed me well.”
Belinda listened, her arms drawn around herself as if for warmth, despite the heat of the kitchen fire turning her cheeks pink. She listened, and learned what it was she had been waiting for all her life.
BELINDA PRIMROSE
14 February 1577 Alunaer, Aulun; the Queen’s Court
He was younger than she expected.
Belinda stood at her father’s elbow, studying du Roz across the gathered court. In his twenties and thin-cheeked, he might be handsome if his disposition were choleric, but standing in the court, speaking with a courtier dressed far more expensively than he, du Roz looked mild to Belinda’s eyes. His hair, like his cheeks, was thin; his hands, in motion as he spoke, were long and elegant. There were worse matches to be made, if a glance could tell her anything.
But it had not yet been made. The queen’s approval came first, and that could not be granted until Belinda had been presented to her. Only after that would the nominal steps of courting be taken and permission to wed asked of Lorraine.
Trumpets blared, half a dozen courtiers nearby flinching into squared shoulders and sucked-in guts. Belinda smoothed a hand over her skirts, watching du Roz. He straightened, but not in startlement, and turned to the far end of the hall with calculated smoothness. Belinda, guided by Robert’s hand on her shoulder, turned as well.
The doors swept open with a rush of warm wind that carried the sound of the queen’s footsteps down the length of the silent hall. Seconds passed before Belinda saw her clearly; the room from which Lorraine entered was dark, making her entrance all the more dramatic. From darkness into light; Belinda, despite her own excitement about being at court, could not help a rise of amusement at the deliberate pageantry behind the staged arrival. Then, fighting down laughter, she admonished herself for the thought that Her Majesty, queen of all Aulun, had to earn her, Belinda’s, approval for how she manipulated her court. Belinda shifted forward a little to see beyond the barrel chest of the courtier beside her.
Titian hair fell loose, bloody curls against translucent skin. A crown, gold and understated, nestled among the curls. Lorraine bucked fashion—or, more likely, set it—with a gown of stiff brocade that pushed her breasts high and left her throat and shoulders exposed, sleeves set further out than fashion dictated, just at the curve of shoulder. Thin grey eyes, a high forehead, and a proud chin, lifted in expectation of received adoration.
Thunder pounded through Belinda’s veins, narrowing her vision to pinpricks, until she saw no one but the queen. Motion of bodies nearby told her to curtsey deep and slow, as the men and women around her did, and she did, black gaze fixed on the floor. When she straightened again, Lorraine had moved beyond them, and Belinda could stare openly at the queen’s fine, slender shoulders. Robert had not told her.
It must not be found out. Belinda closed her eyes, letting Robert’s chuckle wash over her. “Beautiful, isn’t she?” he murmured above her. “Fear not, Primrose. Very few, upon their first visit to court, are affected differently.”
The very lowness of his voice itched through her, making it seem as though he spoke from much farther away. Through a distance of comforting grumbles, perhaps; through a barrier of red-tinged warmth so familiar it wrapped around the edges of her dreams. It seemed extraordinary that she had never quite known it before, not the way she knew it now. Her vaunted memory had not abandoned her, but neither had it offered the puzzle piece that she now recognized. Heat burned her cheeks, a thing so unusual that she had not yet learned to control it with the stillness. It was something to work on, as she’d worked on keeping her breathing steady and h
er presence unremarkable even when, as now, astonishment and curiosity sparked through her like the promise of a blaze. She knew. She knew. She had thought she’d understood when Robert had spoken of her fate, but now, in the press of courtiers and hangers-on among the queen’s court, Belinda Primrose knew the heart of what had gone unsaid for all her short life, and wanted to fly with it.
“Then I will try not to be too embarrassed.” Her reply was soft and clear, betraying nothing of excitement. Blackness had faded from her vision. All around her, the queen’s attendants exchanged astounded whispers over Lorraine’s daring gown. The women of the court clutched at their partlets and blouses as if they longed to rip them away at that very moment. The men looked as if they hoped the women would.
Belinda, in unconscious sympathy, pressed her hand against the embroidered partlet that covered her throat and chest, even curling her fingers against the fabric. Robert’s touch stayed her and she nodded without argument, letting her hand fall again. Lorraine approached the throne, turning with an elegant swish of skirts to sit. The gathered court let out a collective breath, voices rising into low murmurs as, Lorraine’s procession over, they began to fill the empty space in the middle down which the queen had walked. Robert put his hand on Belinda’s elbow, guiding her through the crowd. Every step echoed through Belinda’s heels and rattled into her bones. She curtsied as deeply as she could, her eyes lowered, when they reached the throne.
“My adopted daughter, Your Majesty. Belinda Primrose, the daughter of my late sister and her husband.”
“Yes.” Lorraine’s voice held no remembered warmth; it was rich and cool and arrogant. She leaned forward a scant inch, examining Belinda as if she were a mote found on a piece of jewelry. “Born in Brittany and raised by your people at your Aulunian estates.”
