Entwined

by Heather Dixon Wallwork

  Prayers said, pine boughs, holly, and mistletoe placed on the grave, and the masses of people sifted out the rickety gate. A luncheon for family and parliament members would be held afterward, at a coffeehouse. The King left with the mourners, without a word. He hadn’t even cried. Azalea tried to keep her nails from digging into her palms. They still stung from yesterday.

  The girls remained behind until the graveyard became empty and desolate. They stared at the weeping angel statue. Snow landed on their hair, bits of white against their heads of red, gold, and brown, melting to droplets in the silence.

  “They’ll miss us,” said Azalea, after a while. “And we’ll eat with the King. He has to, if there are guests. That’s the rule.”

  The girls kept silent, clutching their cloaks and shawls tightly around their shoulders, shivering.

  “Miss Azalea.”

  Azalea turned to see Fairweller, looking graver than usual. He motioned to a small path through the gravestones and trees, hat in hand.

  “If you will walk with me?”

  Azalea walked through the frozen twigs and frosted leaves with him, feeling the girls’ curious eyes follow her. She winced a little, thinking of all the endless teasing this would produce. Fairweller, handsome, young, disagreeable as hornets. He smelled like peppermints.

  “The Delchastrian prime minister was here,” said Fairweller at length. The snow crunched beneath his feet. “At the funeral. Did you see him?”

  Azalea recalled the bearded man with a monocle, and nodded.

  “You know that Delchastire has, for some time, been pushing us to fulfill our alliance in their current skirmish, and that your father—and I, and the regiments—will be leaving for war soon?”

  Azalea stopped abruptly. Her skirts upset the snow at the side of the path.

  “He’s not leaving now?” she said.

  Fairweller nodded, grave. “They gave him leave enough for your mother, but now he must tend to duty. The regiments may leave as soon as tomorrow, before the next storm sets in. I thought you should know before the papers do.”

  Azalea was speechless. Mother had always been the one to tell her such things before, and smooth everything over. Hearing it from Fairweller added iciness to the wind. Azalea pulled her shawl closer.

  “That’s so soon,” she said. “Surely he doesn’t have to leave yet? What about mourning?’

  Fairweller gave a slight shake of his head. “Politics is notoriously unfeeling,” he said.

  “But he’s the king! He doesn’t even have to go! The Delchastrian king won’t, surely!”

  Fairweller reached above him and snapped an icy twig from its branch. He considered it in his gloved hands before speaking.

  “There is an old magic,” he said slowly. “A deep one, made of promises. It hearkens back to the High King D’Eathe, and the first Captain General. Your father swore such an oath to Delchastire when we made this alliance. We all did. It cannot be taken lightly.”

  “He swore an oath,” said Azalea, in an empty, hollow voice.

  “As such, we must go. If it is any comfort, my lady, I do not believe it will be a long war. Less than a year, surely.”

  Azalea leaned against the trunk of a frozen tree, trying for the umpteenth time not to cry. Fairweller’s gray eyes, colorless like the rest of him, considered her, and after a long moment, he bowed. He left through the iron gate a length away.

  The bushes behind her rustled, not from the wind. Azalea stared at the snow-packed ground, and sighed.

  “You can come out now,” she said.

  Sisters emerged with hardly a sound from behind the tombstones and naked trees where they’d been hiding. They looked at Azalea with wide and frightened eyes. Clover clutched Lily to her chest. They remained quiet, all except eleven-year-old Eve, who scooped up snow, fashioned it into a snowball, and pelted Mother’s weeping angel statue. Piff.

  “I hate that statue!” she said. “It doesn’t look like an angel at all!” Piff. “She looks like she’s choking on a spoon!” Piff.

  “Eve,” said Azalea. Eve hiccupped, took off her spectacles, and rubbed her eyes with a red hand.

  They all stood, miserable and still, their hair whipping about in the wind, now gusting. Azalea took a breath.

  “Flora,” she said. “Goldenrod, can you do a mazurka step? Do it right here.”

  Flora sniffed and shook her head.

  “It’s not so hard,” said Azalea. “Just try it. It’s all right, you can do it here. No one will see you.”

  Flora tried halfheartedly. She stepped back, quarter turned, but stepped on the wrong foot over and lost the step. Her chin wobbled.

  “I can’t do anything in these boots,” she said. “They’re too stiff.”

  “That was good!” Azalea lined the twins up next to her. “You had it halfway. Break it apart. Come along, Goldy. Left foot first, step back. Turn, good, hop right, slide-turn together. Good!”

  “We did it!” cried Flora. She did the step again, her light brown braid bouncing with each hop. Goldrenrod echoed her steps.

  “It’s easy!” said Goldenrod.

  “You both learn so quickly,” said Azalea, smiling. “Let’s all try it, in a reel. Join hands. Holli, Ivy, you younger ones, just do the basic step. All right?”

  None of the girls objected, not even Eve, who almost smiled and said, “We must be breaking at least fifty rules.” They joined hands, Clover stooping to link her free hand with Kale. In the snow, trying to ignore the tombstones about them, they began. Step, slide, together, forward. They touched hands together in the center, then broke apart, gave a clap.

  The rhythm caught quickly. Azalea found herself forgetting about the wind and the cold, and dancing in a graveyard or even in mourning, about how wearing stiff boots hurt when she danced, and instead felt the familiar thrill flutter through her chest. The warm flickery bit. All the girls smiled now.

  Just as Azalea began the next quarter turn, the girls broke apart. They crowded behind Azalea, ruining the dance, then folded their hands and looked to the ground.

  “What’s wrong?” said Azalea. “You were lovely.” Frowning, she turned around—to see none other than the King over her.

  The dance was knocked from her. Azalea stumbled back.

  “Sir!” she said.

  The King opened his mouth, then shut it. Then opened it again.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Oh,” Azalea stammered. “Just…dancing, actually.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” said the King.

  The girls shuffled their feet in the snow.

  “We were quiet about it,” chirped Hollyhock. “Quieter than crickets!”

  The King scratched his head distractedly. Up close he looked so tired and worn, the little lines around his eyes deeper than Azalea remembered, as was the wrinkle between his eyebrows.

  “Don’t be cross,” said Azalea. “It’s all right, truly—no one saw us.”

  “Just because no one sees or hears, that does not mean it is all right,” said the King. He took Azalea by the shoulders, firmly enough that it made Azalea cringe.

  “Mourning,” said the King, “is meant to show the grief inside us. Dancing dishonors your mother’s memory. It is badly done, Azalea! As the future queen, you should know better! Badly done!”

  The reprimand stung. Azalea suddenly felt how cold the wind was, and how it bit her face. She turned her head.

  “Go home,” said the King, releasing her and rubbing his hand across his face. “All of you. At once, before it storms.”

  That evening, Azalea argued with her sisters. Very rarely did they argue, but tempers were high, and they had been made to eat dinner in their room, a cramped and stifling punishment. Rain pattered against the windows, and dripped into a bowl on the table from the leaky roof. The girls huddled around the massive fireplace, faces pinched as they sipped mushroom soup. At least the soup was hot.

  “I just think we should all apologize,” said Azalea. Sh
e buttered another leftover-from-the-luncheon roll for Ivy, who grasped it eagerly. “Even if we don’t agree with him. We can’t leave it like this.”

  “I just think it’s rum,” said Bramble, rubbing her hands against her steaming bowl. “The first time he speaks to us in days, and he yells at us.”

  “He’ll speak to us before he leaves,” said Azalea. “He has to. It’s rule number twenty-one. You remember? Giving a formal good-bye. We always line up in the entrance hall before he leaves on extended R.B.”

  Bramble smiled a thin, grim smile.

  “Eating with a family was also a rule,” she said.

  Delphinium’s lips, throughout the exchange, became tighter and more pursed. She kept casting glances at Eve, who had been drawn and silent all evening. Eve sat on the edge of her bed and let out the strangled noise of crying while trying not to cry.

  “Eve?” said Azalea.

  Eve toyed with her spectacles in her lap.

  “All right,” said Azalea. “Delphinium?”

  Delphinium raised her pointed chin, casting a stubborn, defiant look. Eve swallowed and spoke.

  “He won’t say good-bye,” she said. Her dark blue eyes remained focused on her spectacles. “He’ll leave without even coming to see us.”

  Everyone looked at each other, then at Azalea. Azalea’s brows creased.

  “Now, Eve—”

  “She’s right,” said Delphinium, tossing her wadded-up napkin to the ground. “Oh, crabskins. I can’t believe you all haven’t figured it out yet. Eve and I figured it out two days ago!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The King,” said Eve. “He doesn’t—” She tugged on the ends of her thick dark hair. Delphinium stepped in.

  “He doesn’t love us,” said Delphinium. “And he doesn’t want us.”

  She was so pale, Azalea wondered if she actually would faint, instead of just feigning it. Hollyhock, Ivy, and the twins looked from Azalea to Delphinium, their eyes wide. Azalea crossed her arms.

  “What? Of course he loves us,” she said. “Of course he does. Delphinium, really.”

  “He—he would eat meals with us,” said Flora bravely. “And—and he let us have dance slippers, for lessons.”

  “He ate meals and gave us dance slippers,” said Delphinium, “because Mother was here and she wanted him to. Can’t you see? The only time he ever paid any attention to us was if Mother wanted him to. Now that Mother’s gone, why would he care? He’s probably glad he’s leaving.”

  “Delphinium—”

  “Lea?” said Flora.

  Azalea stacked the empty bowls together so hard they knocked together. She told herself she didn’t have favorite sisters, but if she did, Delphinium would not be one of them.

  “It’s nonsense,” said Azalea. “Bramble doesn’t believe it, either.”

  “Well, Az.” Bramble tapped her spoon against the rim of her bowl. “He hasn’t made a great show of loving us.”

  Azalea set the bowls down on the table with a clatter. “You too? How could you all think such a terrible thing? He—he wanted to open the ball with me, remember?”

  “Because Mother told him to,” Delphinium whispered. “And he left you with Fairweller.”

  Azalea threw a spoon at Delphinium—it missed and hit the drapes of the window seat behind her—and she turned hard, her skirts swishing behind her. She strode to the door.

  “I’ll go fetch him, and bring him up now,” she said, her hand grasping the latch so tightly her hand throbbed. “You’ll see. It’s not true! You’ll see!”

  The door was open when Azalea reached the library. She knocked on the wainscot next to the doorframe, and peeked in.

  A figure hunkered over the King’s desk. Azalea, disappointed, saw it was not the King, but Mr. Pudding. He was wrapping books in cloth, in his slow, elderly sort of way, and smiled when Azalea came in.

  “Miss!” he said. “It’s dropping chill, miss.”

  “Where is the King?” said Azalea.

  Mr. Pudding’s smile faded, and he couldn’t seem to meet her eyes.

  “He’s left, miss. Off to th’ port.”

  Azalea’s nails dug into her palms; something hard tangled in her throat.

  “He didn’t!” she said.

  “He said he didn’t want to disturb, what with the bustle and upset of business and such, miss. Er…miss…”

  Azalea swept from the library, her knuckles ghost white.

  Azalea knew, in her subconscious mind, that what she was doing was quite stupid. She disliked horses, yet managed to saddle Thackeray with a side saddle by herself, and now jostled upon him to the port. Azalea hated riding. Dancing was easier, and it couldn’t buck you off. It also didn’t smell so…horsey.

  In her fervor, Azalea had forgotten a cloak. The freezing sleet soaked her thoroughly. She hardly noticed it. Hot, burning blood flooded through her, and it kept out the chill.

  The port wasn’t far. All the ships docked and managed their trade at the Rosings River, which ran through the city. Pinpricks of streetlamp lights grew larger as Azalea neared the dock. By this time she had lost the reins, which dangled and whipped about, and she grasped for dear life to Thackeray’s mane. Sleet cut in drifts as Thackeray’s hoofs clattered onto the wooden planks.

  In spite of the weather, the port hustled with activity. Dozens of men led soaked horses up a ship’s plank, and loading cranes lowered nets of crates onto other ships. Azalea caught the smell of wet, old wood and saw Fairweller in the distance, before she heard the King shouting orders. She wove through the mass of cavalrymen and horses.

  “Sir!” Azalea yelled. She pushed her horse into a graceless canter to the King, some lengths away, but lost her balance on the saddle and fell as Thackeray pulled up next to Dickens. She grabbed at the satchel hanging over Dickens’s back and discovered, as it clanged to the ground, that it was the silver sword.

  The sword was a dull, dented, mottled thing with a swirled cage handle, and it usually lay in a case in the portrait gallery. The King brought it to speeches and parades, because it had been owned by Harold the First, and had Historical Importance. Azalea realized he would be taking it with him to the war, too.

  “Azalea!” Two sturdy hands helped Azalea from the wet wood to her feet. The hands turned her around, and Azalea found herself face-to-face with the King, worry lining his brow. “For heaven’s sake! You haven’t even a cloak.”

  “I didn’t think of it,” said Azalea, realizing that she shook. Her black dress clung to her, wet through.

  The King unbuttoned his thick-weave coat, pulled it off, and slung it over Azalea’s shoulders. It encased her so heavily she nearly buckled underneath it. He then lifted the sword from the planks and inspected it, frowning.

  “You’ve put a crack in it,” said the King, showing her a tiny hairline mark before slipping it back into its satchel sheath. “This is governmental property, Azalea. What are you doing here?”

  “You’re leaving,” said Azalea between shivers. “You didn’t even say good-bye! The girls—”

  Shouting interrupted her, men yelling to the King about load lines, splitting regiments, supplies. The smell of wet horse, the words the King shouted back, the creaking of the poles and hooves on the planks—all felt foreign to her. Azalea grasped the King’s coat about her neck, tightly, and the boiling hotness escaped to her tongue.

  “You can’t leave yet!” she said. “Rule number twenty-one! We have rules!”

  The King turned to her, his fine red uniform now black from the rain. Lightning flashed, casting harsh shadows across his face. “I cannot leave the men here, Azalea! They need their general.”

  “If you don’t come,” said Azalea, “the girls will think that you…that you don’t—please, sir, you’ve got to come and say good-bye!”

  “Minister Fairweller,” the King called out. “Minister, escort Azalea back to the palace. And for heaven’s sake, don’t let her fall off!”

  In a moment, th
e King had lifted Azalea back onto Thackeray and handed the reins to Fairweller, who had pulled astride on his pure white horse, LadyFair.

  A teakettle screamed inside Azalea, burning her fingers, making her throat tight and her head dizzy. Fairweller led her off the dock, LadyFair’s tail twitching and bobbing in front of her. Fairweller, thankfully, remained silent.

  The anger that burned in Azalea was so acute, so searing, that her hands acted of their own accord. Azalea leaned forward, and before Fairweller had fully escorted her onto the cobblestone street, she yanked the reins from his hand.

  “My lady!” said Fairweller. She left him behind at a gallop.

  “So!” cried Azalea through the pounding sleet as hoofs clattered back over the wood. “So!” She pulled up to the King, so hard that Thackeray skidded.

  The King looked up from the reins in his hand. His eyebrows rose at her, then furrowed.

  “Azalea—” he said. Azalea cut him off.

  “You knew how much we thought of you! You could have at least—at least acted like you cared!”

  She pulled his overcoat from her shoulders, and wadded it into a heavy, wet ball.

  “Shame on us for giving our affections to someone so undeserving. If you don’t want us, then—fine! We don’t want you!”

  She threw the coat with all her might at the King. It fell only a foot from her in a soggy pile on the platform.

  “Good-bye!” she said.

  She jerked Thackeray around and pushed him into a hard gallop, away from the port, through the slick streets, back to the palace. A marvelous, euphoric feeling fired her to her fingertips and cheeks, and she almost laughed with a sheer, angry giddiness.

  By the time Thackeray had reached the palace gate, though, the blaze had faded to a dull throb, the giddiness to hurt. She turned the horse about and stared down at the sliver of river, lit by the pinpricks of port lamps. The sleet melted on her face and weighed her down to exhaustion.

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  CHAPTER 6