The Very Best of Kate Elliott

by Kate Elliott

  “My uncle,” I breathed, for although the card did not portray my uncle’s actual face it did indeed represent his aspect: a robed and crowned king, stern of face, armed with a sword.

  The king’s position was unassailable. Many people said so. Those people had no doubt predicted my brother and I would be dead within the year eighteen years ago when our father and mother died. We had proved them wrong.

  The mage continued. “At the base of matters, the Ace of Swords, the beginnings of conflict. What is passing away, the Two of Cups, happiness in romance.”

  I caught in a laugh, not wanting to show him open disrespect—as if what Duncan and I shared could ever pass away.

  “What crowns the matter, how the situation appears now, the Nine of Staves . . . a pause in the midst of battle. What is coming into being, the Three of Swords. Heartbreak.”

  Now, and only now, the mage paused. He hesitated, and I was suddenly afraid. I felt the crawl of the evil eye on my back even as I heard laughter in the hall behind me. The candles burned evenly. The mage turned a gentle eye to me and smiled sadly.“I must go on,” she said, “for once begun, a reading must be ended. That is the way of life itself.”

  “Of course,” I said, refusing to surrender to this sudden crawling fear. “Go on.” I would not give in to my weakness. Everyone knew that fortunetelling is for the superstitious and gullible, even in such a guise as this, for he asked no coin of me nor nothing in trade, and they say that is the sign of a true magician.

  He laid a card to the right of the cross he had made of the others. “This card represents you,” she said, “your inner being. Strength.” The card depicted a woman, unafraid, holding a lion. “This next card represents what influences you: the Knight of Swords.” A fierce and determined knight rode forward into the fray.“Is this your husband?”

  “No,” I said wonderingly, not knowing how I knew. “That is my brother.”

  “Ah,” said the mage, and turned another card.“Your wishes and fears. The Hanged Man.” I shuddered when he spoke those three words, for our uncle had promised us hanging, an outlaw’s death, should he ever catch us. He hated us that much for living and surviving and daring to contest what he had gained through treachery. But this hanged man was not a gruesome sight. He hung upside down with the rope around his ankle, and he seemed utterly calm, a light of wisdom shining behind his head.“The Hanged Man represents waiting,” said the mage. “Suspension. And the last card lies here, above and to the right of all else. It signifies the outcome.”

  “The outcome of what?”

  “Of your question: ‘Where will I be next year?’” He turned it over slowly and I watched, staring, breath held in. His whisper coincided with my hissed breath.“Eight of Swords.”

  Eight swords stuck point first into the ground and between them, bound by their sharp steel, stood a woman shackled by ropes.

  “Mary!” The voice from the other side of the hall startled me out of my shocked contemplation of the horrible card. My brother’s voice rang out, strong and true, as he was strong and true, the rightful heir. “You must come and meet our guests.”

  Mary. That is my name. I remember it now. The folk who come in and out of the gates of Joriun, about their business, on their way to and from the fields or the market, shout it sometimes, but as a curse. “Mary,” they shout. “Hang that whore Mary.” They call me slut and traitor, bastard and demon, apostate, heretic, cunt, and witch. They shouted it more often at first, when the Duke of Joriun’s men built and barred this cage and locked me inside it and winched it up to hang, suspended by rope and supported by wooden pillars, beside the central gates that lead into the town and castle of Joriun. They came in packs, in mobs, to jeer at me, and then I was thankful I hung so high above them. Few of them had strong enough arms that the rotting vegetables, the shit, the dirt, and the hail of wood shavings and nails and stones they threw actually hit me. They would have ripped me to pieces had I come within reach of their hands.

  War has been hard on the people who live in Joriun. Some of them are refugees from the north. Perhaps a few pity me. I will never know. I never hear those voices.

  Now only a few remember my name, or only a few bother to pause and curse me. They are used to me here. But maybe that is worse. I forget my name sometimes for days on end. They don’t remind me of it anymore. I cannot turn their hate into strength for myself, living on it as a dog laps water on a hot day, if they do not remember to hate me.

  Even the woman who brings me my porridge each day no longer bothers to spit in it before she hands it over to me.

  How many years I have been imprisoned here, in this prison hung out like a songbird’s cage? The bars are weathering and gray, the bench on which I sleep, swaying in the night wind, cracked and splintered. Gaps in the floorboards show the ground, littered with my refuse and the refuse thrown at me, far below. Too far to jump, even if I could pry open the locked door that abuts the parapet, even if I could break apart the thick bars. Perhaps it would be better to jump and be done with it.

  A songbird is treated gently for the song it may sing for its master. I know the song they wish me to sing for all to see.

  God help me. Let me not descend into madness.

  Let me not weaken. It is so hard.

  How many years? One year? Two? Five? I see my hands are weathered, though whether from age or exposure I do not know. I see my nails grow long; filthy and cracked, they curl at the ends. I break them off when they get in the way of eating, of caring for myself such as I can.

  I do not know how many years it has been. The woman who brings my food is my only mirror, and she is a new woman every season so I cannot track my days by watching her age. She never ages, because she is always young. I have no knowledge by which to track the time except the round of stars and the procession of spring into summer, summer into winter, and winter into spring. Three winters I think I have been here, but perhaps it is four. I hang in limbo, suspended in this cage, this purgatory.

  How fares my brother?

  I pray you, God, watch over him and over my husband.

  The watchmen tell me sometimes my brother is dead. They taunt me with it, his death, his dead body eaten by crows. I do not believe them. I cannot believe them. They must be lying.

  But I don’t know. I know nothing but the opening of the gates at dawn and their closing at dusk. I know nothing except that the sun rises every morning without fail and that night comes and passes and comes again.

  I must not believe them.

  Today I hear a horn. At dawn the gates open. This activity I watch each morning, the opening of the gates below; it is one of my talismans. By this means I remember I am alive.

  Today no farmers march out to their fields. No peddlers scurry out with bundles on their back; no carts or wagons roll out onto the morning road.

  They come instead, the lords and knights and ladies of Joriun Castle, in their bright procession, their fine clothing so painful that I shade my eyes, for I am dressed now in rags though once this gown was what any decent woman would be proud to wear in her brother’s hall, entertaining guests, coaxing reluctant allies to throw in their lot with his desperate cause.

  The noble folk of Joriun Castle, no greater in rank than I, flood forth in their brilliant procession. They are off to hunt, I think, for they have hounds aplenty romping beside them or taut under leash and their horses are caparisoned as for a gala festival.

  They are not alone.

  They are led by their master, the young Duke of Joriun. He is, I see, not yet an old man, so must I be not yet an old woman. The master of Joriun and I were of an age once, and I suppose we remain so now although he walks in freedom and I wait, hanging, in this prison.

  My lips are unused to smiling. I feel them crack as the corners turn up as I remember what everyone said: his father, the old Duke, died of apoplexy the night after my brother and I escaped from this castle.

  How the son hates me, even after so many years.

 
; He looks up though the others ignore me. I am no longer of interest to them, I am ugly and dirty and mad and lost and sometimes it seems I am a hundred years old, but he never neglects to look up. He always marks me on his comings and goings. He looks, and he smiles, in answer to my smile.

  I remember his smile.

  The magicians stayed for an entire month while we wined them and dined them better than we ate ourselves and then they went away. But they left behind them promises, or so my brother said. I asked him how one can hold a promise and suggested he would have been better off asking for a wagonload of spears and a herd of cattle.

  He laughed and agreed. Of course, you see, I could never be angry with him because he always agreed with me. That he then went and did as he wished made no difference to his amiability.

  When Duncan rode in empty-handed from the Alarn clan, my brother decided then and there to journey to Alarn himself. It is true he needed the Alarn clan to swell his army, such as it was. He needed their support. He needed the support of every ancient lord and old retainer who had once sworn fealty to our father, especially the ill-tempered and independent lords of the craggy northcountry highlands. If you have not the riches of the south, then you need the rock-hard stubbornness of the north. Gold is not harder than granite.

  It was a difficult road into Alarn country. The paths were the known haunts of bandits. So, despite my irritable objections, the ladies were left behind. Even Duncan protested that it might be too difficult for women, though he truly did not want to leave me. His mother and young sister were among the ladies who lived now for part of the year in Islamay Castle and for the rest moved to other estates with my brother or some group of his adherents.

  “Of course you could make the journey, Mary,” said my brother sweetly, “but what of the others? What of Widow Agnes and Lady Dey? They are not strong like you. I must leave someone to watch over them.”

  So I remained behind. We stayed another month, we ladies—twelve of us and our servants. But as autumn laid in its bitter store of cold and the meager harvest was brought to the hearth to be measured and stored, I knew we would have to split up and move south. I sent Widow Agnes and Lady Dey and most of the other ladies to the western estate of Lord Dey, the lady’s husband; it had a milder climate but was more vulnerable to raids from the south. Duncan’s mother and young sister I kept by me, for I was fond of them—I knew I could love Duncan soon after I first met him not just for himself but because of the care he took of his widowed mother and his dear sister.

  We rode east to the fortress of old Lord Craige, an inhospitable setting but rather safer than the valley manor of Lord Dey.

  It was not a trap, precisely. It was only that I did not know that in the skirmishes that raged in the border country, Craige fortress had just fallen to the Duke of Joriun. Few riders dared the high roads alone, and it was easy to miss a fleeing messenger on the road. I did not know, as I rode into the courtyard, where peace reigned and some few men whose faces I did not recognize stared at me in surprise, that but three days earlier Lord Craige had been deposed and sent to the tower.

  I did not know until they escorted me with all due respect into the hall and I faced the man who sat in the high chair.

  And the young Duke of Joriun smiled that smile at me.

  “So the woman who killed my father walks like a lamb into my hands,” he said when they put the chains on my wrists and neck.

  How the son hated me, even after so many years.

  But like his father before him, he was ambitious. He wanted reward more than revenge, so he took me south with Duncan’s mother and young sister to the court of my uncle the king.

  The king had mercy on the old and the young.“Let them be placed in a convent,” he said, and I was not even allowed to kiss them nor they me before they were led away.

  “But you,” he said, turning to look on me, “you I have promised a hanging.”

  “Hang me if you will,” I said, smiling.“It will not alter my brother’s cause, nor the outcome, for the just shall triumph and the wicked perish.”

  “It will give him a martyr,” he muttered. He twisted the rings on his hands musingly, for he had many rings, gold encrusted with rubies and diamonds, a black opal set in silver, a ring of green malachite and one of turquoise that had once been my mother’s but had failed to change color when danger loomed, as turquoise was said to do. Most impressively, the large seal ring of the king’s authority half covered the knuckle of his right middle finger. He wore a houppelande sewn of brilliant blue cloth embroidered with small gold crowns, trimmed with ermine at the neck and lined with a heavy cloth of gold. The hem was beaded with pearls. The crown that rested so easily on his brow I had last seen on my father’s head.

  At last he stilled himself and came to some conclusion. I was not afraid of him, not then, not yet. I knew my cause was just and I knew I was stronger than he was because I was not afraid of death.

  And he knew I was not afraid.

  But I should have been afraid. Only a man as cunning as he could have stolen the throne and crown and scepter and husbanded it so well. He smiled oddly and crookedly and beckoned to the Duke of Joriun, calling him before the rest.

  These words did the king my uncle the usurper speak.

  “Hang her in a cage at the gates of Joriun so that all may see and abuse the sister of the traitor. All may see that I hold captive that which gives him strength.”

  How many years has it been since I was captured?

  It is so cold in the winter.

  I am so weary of the cold.

  But it is not cold now. It is not even autumn, the season for hunting; I see by the green of the fields and the ripening fruit in the orchard beyond the moat that it is summer, the season for war.

  They are not hunting at all. Here they come back, so soon, too soon. They are so cheerful, the young lovers gazing at each other, the men boasting and laughing, the women talking sternly of serious matters or giggling over light ones. I do not exist to them. I am nothing.

  I am Mary.

  They are no longer alone. They have gone out in such festive attire not to hunt but to greet he who has come to Joriun, ridden north at long last. No army that size has ever marched behind my brother’s standard. Great clouds of dust mark their coming, and I see the king my uncle’s standard at the head of the army long after I see that an army has come to Joriun.

  The duke and his company ride at the head of the procession, flanking the king my uncle. I curse him—all the words I have ever heard cursed and spat at me—but he does not even look up. He does not even seem to know I exist. He does not even glance my way or at the cage, as if I have become invisible. As if I no longer matter.

  I must matter. I have to matter. Am I not my brother’s strength? Isn’t that what everyone has always said?

  The nobles enter the town and the gates close behind them. Out, beyond the walls of Joriun, the army encamps. Their tents cover the fields like locusts.

  God help me. I am so weary.

  The woman brings porridge that night and this night she remembers to spit in it first, as if the king’s presence has reminded her that she must hate me. Almost I recoil, too sickened by the gesture to eat, but then I remember that I must eat and that her hatred is a spice to make the bland porridge taste better, to be more nourishing to me in my solitude.

  She speaks to me, though this woman has never spoken to me before. “His Majesty has brought the whole army, hasn’t he?” she says with a coarse grin. “There’s a big battle to be fought, isn’t there, and that will make short work of that traitor of yours.”

  Is that why the king my uncle did not look at me? Does he know I am truly nothing now? That he has pikes and swords and shields enough, soldiers enough, armor and gold enough, to defeat my brother even though I still live? Their campfires burn like stars fallen to earth: I see no end to them as I stare out all through the long long night.

  Let me not weaken. Let me not fall into despair.


  At dawn the gates open and the mobs come with their curses and their stones and their shit and their rotting meat and fruit. I cower by the bench, arms flung up to cover my face. An ancient mildewing apple splatters against my thigh. A stone grazes my elbow. I have forgotten what their abuse is like. They are themselves the hammer, beating me down. They are themselves the hands strangling the breath out of me. My tattered shawl cannot cover me. I have no armor. I am weaker than I was in the beginning. I begin to cry and, seeing that, their clamor increases. I am peppered with stones, each one a nail driven into my skin.

  Please, God, let this cease.

  The horns call and at last the mob retreats from the road to let the nobles pass through the gates. They ride in their glory, the men arrayed for campaign and the women with their false brave faces to goad on their menfolk.

  He comes, the king my uncle. He draws up his horse below me and yet by every aspect above me. He wears a fine white surcoat over his armor, glittering in the sunlight, magnificent. Gold embroidery traces the symbols of crown and scepter on the surcoat; his sword is my father’s sword, the scabbard plated with gold and the hilt fixed with jewels. He is an older man now, silver-haired, and yet by no measure weak.

  He raises his gaze to touch me, and it is worse than the stones and all the rotten things that have ever been thrown at me. But I must show a brave false face. He must not sense my weakness and my despair. I dry my tears and strangle my sobs in my throat.

  He speaks.

  “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” he taunts.“Are you still there, hanging? Or is that another woman, another criminal, who hangs there in fitting punishment for her crime?”

  I say nothing. If I speak, I will betray my weakness. He must never know.

  “Do you even know your name?” he demands. “Do you remember how to talk or who you are?” He laughs, delighted by this prospect: that I have gone utterly mad. Dear God, how I wish to speak sharply to him while all can hear, for the mob and the nobles and the army all look this way and many can hear his voice.