by Jack
The vision is very clear. I hold a knife, the real-size version of the miniature with its two gems in the handle. Around me is a winter’s landscape. Pure white snow, and a huge spreading rowan tree with leafless branches casting skeletal shadows. Underneath the tree sits Wengest, fat and merry, drunk and hung with jewels and gold. His sword has been discarded a few feet away, and is rusted from never being used.
‘I do not want to be here,’ I try to say, but my jaw is clamped shut and the knife is finding its own path towards Wengest’s heart. My whole body lurches forward as though someone else is inside me, controlling my limbs. I strain every muscle against it, but it is no use. The knife plunges into his chest. I scream, but the sound is just an echo in my mind. Blood begins to pulse from him, staining the snow and then melting it. Steam rises, the rowan tree creaks to life. In moments, leaves are sprouting, buds are unfurling, fruit ripens fatly and drops. The profusion of life is almost grotesque, feeding on my husband’s spilled blood. I know what this vision means: only with Wengest’s death can my daughter flourish, can she be queen of Netelchester.
A blast of cool air hits my face. I blink slowly and the vision dissolves. I am looking, instead, at my sister Ash.
My mind lights up and, without greeting, I press the figure into her hands. ‘A sending,’ I say. ‘Who is it from?’
Ash’s face is confused a moment, but then her fingers scrabble to grasp the object. She focuses, her eyes flutter closed. A few moments later they open again, and she shakes her head. ‘I tried to chase her, but she withdrew the instant she sensed me.’
‘She? A woman sent this?’ I lean forward. ‘Is her name Yldra?’ Even as I say this, I realise it must be true. Yldra, whoever she is, trying to convince me to kill Wengest so that my daughter will thrive. The daughter she thinks I will name Rowan.
‘I had no sense of a name,’ Ash replies. ‘But it was odd ...’ She bites her lip, then smiles apologetically. ‘I’m afraid I am sometimes not so in control of this gift of mine, but she was familiar somehow. And unfamiliar, too.’
I frown, trying to discern her meaning.
‘As though,’ she says, ‘she might be related to us, but distantly.’
My father’s sister.
Ash is stroking my hair. ‘Are you well, sister? Was it a sending of ill news? Heath?’
I shake my head, the old sad longing welling up again. ‘No. I have no news of him,’ I mumble, profoundly uncomfortable with speaking of my love aloud. ‘It was nothing. Confusion. Trees and snow.’ I have not told Ash or anyone about the message these visions are sending me. I cannot bear even to say the words, kill Wengest, next to each other. Nor do I want to alarm my sisters about the possibility that my daughter — whom I have never considered naming Rowan — will not rule Netelchester. This possibility still fails to strike my heart strongly. Becoming a queen is, after all, not a kind thing to wish upon innocents. All I can think is that I must be in danger of being discovered, for how else could my husband’s first child not succeed him? I vow to stay well clear of Wengest until the child is born.
I smile weakly at Ash. ‘I’m glad you are here.’ It is the truth.
* * * *
Ash’s presence brings me great joy. As summer deepens, I sleep easier at night with her beside me. I try not to think of Heath, or, at least, I try not to worry about him. I tell myself Bluebell will keep watch for me and I can ask for no greater assurance. We begin to plan the midsummer feast, raising the polite ire of Nyll and his small band of curmodgeonly trimartyrs, who grow more vocal with every seasonal festival. The predicted date of my child’s birth comes and goes, and I am both glad — for a late birth will mean less suspicion directed at me — and horribly disheartened. I am so very, very tired.
* * * *
VI. Trimilcemonath
Sleep does not come easy in these last days of pregnancy. Some reasons are material: it is simply impossible for me to get comfortable. But some are immaterial: I feel lost somehow, and guilty all the time. The dark of early morning is not a betrayer’s friend. Something has woken me and I strain my ears into the dark to hear what it might be.
Voices. From the king’s bower. Muffled through the wall, but voices nonetheless. Wengest is talking to somebody in his room, very late. My first thought is that he has a woman in there, and my heart grows indignant. But the second voice does not sound like a woman’s. I listen for a while, trying to make out words but there are none clear enough. There is occasional laughter, but then there is quiet. The quiet stretches out. Ash breathes softly next to me. Sleep doesn’t return.
I rise, curious about the voices in Wengest’s bower. Is it a woman? If so, would I have the courage to confront him? I pull on a shawl and go to the door, out briefly into the starry clear night, then back in through Wengest’s door. The fire is low in the hearth, just enough light for me to see that he is asleep now. His dark features are shadowed. He does not flinch when I come in, and I see that there are two empty cups on the chest of drawers. He has been drinking, but now his companion — whoever it was — has gone.
I move to back out, but my eye is caught by the dull gleam of steel. His sword.
My gaze moves, as if outside of my control, between the supine figure of Wengest and the hard blade.
Kill him before the child is born.
And I allow myself to imagine it. Not the act itself, not the resistance and gristle of his body to the blade. But the aftermath, where I am queen of Netelchester and Heath is my consort. My blood rushes with it, my good sense is in danger of being swept away.
But then I feel a strange pain in my back, down very low, and water splatters onto the rushes between my feet. Wengest stirs, so I know that I must have groaned with the sudden pain. He opens his eyes and says, ‘Rose, is that you?’
‘The child is coming,’ I say.
He sits up. ‘Return to your sister,’ he says, fear and anger infusing his voice. ‘Men should have nothing to do with such things.’
I want nothing more than to hurry back to Ash, but another pain grabs me and I have to stop and lean forward, groaning. As I do, my eye falls on a folded vellum book on the end of Wengest’s bed. Wengest cannot read, and the book is clearly marked with the triangle of the trimartyrs. Nyll has been here. Nyll has been laughing with Wengest until the early hours. With the sudden clarity of anybody pulled forcibly out of her self obsession, I see why my daughter will never be queen. It has nothing to do with Heath; it has everything to do with faith.
‘Go on, off with you!’ Wengest exclaims. He is out of bed now and helping me — thrusting me — towards the door. ‘Ash!’ he calls as he slams the door open. ‘Tend to your sister.’
All thoughts of Nyll, of Wengest, even of Heath flee from me as the pain grasps my body again. I am as confused and terrified as a pig being led to the butcher’s block. I try to catch my breath and clear my mind, but the pain is far worse than I had imagined and Wengest hands me over to Ash with a barked order that he wants to hear and see nothing until the child is born and wrapped in clean linen.
At least I am back in my own bower, near my own bed. Ash bustles about me, unfolding clean cloths and offering soothing words. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she says.
I almost laugh. An unforgiving monster has fastened sharp jaws around my back and groin and is squeezing harder and harder. I had heard that there should be a rhythm of pain and relief, but I have no relief. Ash is concerned enough by this to feel my belly carefully. She frowns and says, ‘The baby is facing the wrong way. Her back is against yours.’
‘Is that bad? Will she die?’ Will I die?
‘No, no,’ Ash says, brushing my hair from my face. ‘She is safe, you both are. But it will hurt, Rosie. I’m sorry, but it will hurt and it will be long.’ She helps me onto the bed, arranging me so I am kneeling over a pile of cushions. I fear the unremitting pain, the long night ahead. I want to cry, I want to be a young virgin again who never thought of the passions of the body and all their black conseque
nces.
* * * *
The night unfurls, the sun returns and climbs high into the sky, and finally the child slides from my exhausted body. I sob with relief, and Ash sobs too. The child — hot and squirming — is a girl. A dark-haired, slate-eyed girl. I bundle her against me and offer her my breast as though I have been preparing for her arrival for my whole life. There is a pause in life, a moment of still, warm silence. A moment, perhaps, of pure happiness.
Then Ash asks me, ‘Do you want me to get Wengest?’
I clutch the baby jealously. She has settled to suckle. ‘No.’ She is not his, anyway. He would be a stranger in here.
‘I think it would be wise to show him the child,’ Ash says carefully.
I gaze at her. She has dark rings under her eyes, and I realise she must be tired too. She is looking back at me with eyes as dark as mine, eyes as dark as I suspect my daughter’s will be. Of course she is right. Wengest is likely in the next room. He will have heard the moaning stop, he will have heard my daughter’s keening cry. He will be waiting for Ash to tell him to come, that the bloodied sheets have been piled away and that the child and I are cleaned and covered up.
We prepare ourselves and the room, and Ash goes to fetch my husband.
In the few moments remaining, I study my daughter’s face and hands, her impossibly soft cheeks and ears. She is purely mine in this last sliver of time before the king — the man who will be her father — comes to meet her. If I wasn’t so exhausted, I would consider running away.
No. I would not. I know what duty dictates. The door opens and I apply a smile. Wengest looks young, but almost afraid to show his excitement. I realise that we have spent too little time together in these last few months, and we have grown strange to each other.
‘It’s a daughter,’ I say. ‘I hope you aren’t disappointed.’
‘No, of course not,’ he replies, approaching and sitting next to me on the bed. ‘There will be other children.’
I do not remind him that my father had five daughters and no sons at all. He is gazing at the child with soft eyes. ‘She is pretty like you,’ he said. ‘Dark like me.’
‘Like both of us,’ I say, hoping that I do not sound as relieved as I feel.
‘I should like to name her after my mother,’ he says.
In an instant, I remember that his mother’s name was Rowan. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Must we burden her with someone else’s name? Can we not give her her own name?’
Wengest arches an annoyed eyebrow. ‘Queen Rowan was much loved by her people. You cannot deny them the joy of remembering her in the image of her grand-daughter.’
I cannot resist him. Under any other circumstances, I would like the name Rowan. The rowan tree has long been associated with power and mystery.
‘Come,’ Wengest says, his voice growing soft. ‘You have had her all to yourself these past nine months. Allow me one small mark of ownership.’ His eyes drop to her face. ‘She is beautiful, is she not? Perfect?’
I say nothing, imagining this serious dark creature growing into a little girl named Rowan, into a woman who will never be queen. I decide to ask Wengest directly. ‘You are considering taking the Trimartyr faith, are you not, Wengest?’
He studies me a few moments, a puzzled smile at his lips. ‘You are terribly astute, Rose. I thought you had nothing in your head but thoughts of babies.’
‘Nyll has you ...’ I do not say, in his thrall. ‘He has you interested?’
‘I like the faith well enough, though it is a little gruesome. But a king in the trimartyr faith is appointed by Maava. No man can take his kingship without offence to the one god. It is a decision of strategy more than faith, Rose. It will make me more powerful, cement my position in my people’s estimation.’
I stroke Rowan’s soft head. Her eyes are falling closed. ‘Then Rowan will never be queen.’
‘If she marries a king she will. We will make an advantageous match for her. Put your mind at rest.’
I do not have energy for protests. In truth, Rowan is not Wengest’s child so has no right to his throne. Perhaps the next child will.
Wengest kisses my cheek softly, his beard scratching my skin. ‘Are you happy, Rose?’
I shake my head, teary now. ‘I am so very tired, Wengest. Send my sister back in. I am sorry to send you away, but I must sleep now.’
He rises, tracing a soft line on the baby’s cheek. ‘Very well,’ he says. ‘When you are feeling better, we will consult with Nyll about an appropriate feast of welcoming for the child.’
I nod, crying now. My tears do not unnerve him. He merely turns his back and walks away.
* * * *
Rowan is eight days old when the messenger comes. He has ridden from Is-hjarta, but not in the hard, urgent way that a bearer of bad news would ride. When he appears at Wengest’s hall, he looks well rested, cheerful, and he sends for me directly.
I leave Ash folding swaddling clothes in our bower, and take little Rowan in the crook of my arm to the hall. She has been fractious today, unable to settle to the breast or the crib. She seems happiest in motion. I rock her idly, tired beyond measurement and yet stupidly happy most of the time.
Wengest and the rider wait between the carved columns that line the outside of the hall. The doors are thrown open and inside there is the bustle of dinner’s preparation, the smell of roasting meat and baking pie. When I see Bluebell’s standard, my pulse quickens.
‘I have news from your sister Bluebell,’ he says, before I have a chance to greet him.
My heart is caught up high in my chest, waiting. ‘She is ... well?’ It is news of Heath, I know it. Wengest is standing right next to me. How on earth will I hide my fear, my hope?
‘Yes, she is. She wanted to pass on that the campaign goes well, she is unharmed and looks forward to a swift end to war in Bradsey. She wanted me to pass on, too, news that she has taken your husband’s young nephew as third-in-command.’ Here the messenger turns to Wengest and nods his head deferentially. ‘You would be proud, King Wengest. He is by her side at all times.’
Wengest smiles and shakes his head. ‘Is that so? I would not have imagined it.’
I allow myself to smile too, but for different reasons. This is Bluebell’s way of telling me Heath is alive, he is whole, he is by the side of the greatest protector I could wish for him.
‘I thank you for your good news,’ I say to the messenger. ‘Will you stay for dinner?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, I will start the return journey immediately, for I have family in Dunscir who are expecting me by nightfall. Have you any message to pass on to your sister?’
I choose my words very carefully, feeling Wengest’s presence close to my elbow. ‘Tell her I am delivered of a daughter named Rowan.’ I glance down at my daughter’s face, and notice that she is finally asleep. ‘That she is a perfect beauty and a compliment to the loving bond of her parents.’ Here, Wengest touches my arm tenderly, assuredly; and guilt touches my heart with just the same finesse. ‘Tell her I am happy,’ I finish. ‘But that she and her army cannot come home soon enough.’
‘As you wish,’ the messenger says, nodding and turning. ‘Farewell.’
‘Farewell,’ I say.
Wengest takes my free hand and I hold it for a moment, then pull away as gracefully as I can, crossing my arms over the baby. He does not notice this small act of defiance; and we stand under the colonnade and watch the rider wind back down the hill, on his way to deliver my message of love.
* * * *
Afterword
‘Crown of Rowan’ is my first journey into Thyrsland, a country where I look forward to spending much more time. Thyrsland is based on Anglo-Saxon England (around the 8th century), and the backdrop is meant to be vast and epic; but the stories are meant to be intimate, human, and draw very close to the five sisters at their centre. Look for the first volume of my intimate epic, The Garden of the Mad King, in coming years.
— Kim Wilkins
<<
Contents>>
* * * *
Born in the dry, flat lands of South Australia, #1 New York Times-bestselling author Sean Williams has been described as ‘the premier Australian speculative fiction writer of the age’ and dubbed the ‘King of Chameleons’ for the diversity of his output. He writes for young readers and adults, and is best-known internationally for his award-winning space opera series, such as Astropolis, Evergence and Geodesica, and his work for the Star Wars franchise. 2004’s The Crooked Letter was the first fantasy novel to win both the Aurealis and Ditmar Awards in history. 2002’s The Storm Weaver & the Sand was recommended by Locus alongside novels by Neil Gaiman and Isabel Allende. In 2009, The Changeling and The Dust Devils were nominated for three Aurealis Awards between them. Sean lives in Adelaide with his wife and family, and is still dreaming of new stories to tell about the magical land around him.
