by Ward, Tracey
He smirked at me. “You’re mad.”
“Yes,” I agreed, intentionally squeaking my cheese in my cheeks.
“How is Frederick?”
I lowered my eyes, feeling sad just thinking about him. “He’s upset. Always very sad. The funeral is tomorrow. I don’t want to go.”
“But you have to?” he asked. When I nodded, he sighed. “You have to do a lot of things you don’t want to do.”
I snorted a laugh before saying emphatically, “Yes.”
“I wish I could go with you. I’d hold your hand and let you cry on my shirt.”
“I wish you could too.” I felt my heart pound in my chest as I considered my truth, then I whispered, “I wish you could always be with me.”
“Me too,” he whispered back, no hesitation.
We smiled at each other conspiratorially, sealing our secret inside the manicured walls around us.
“How did she die?” Roarke asked abruptly. “No one in our village knows.”
“I don’t know. No one here knows either. I guess it was the storm.”
“The lightning storm a few days ago? That’s when she died?”
“They think so.”
“How do they not know?”
I glanced around, knowing we were alone but double checking anyway.
“They can’t find her body,” I told him quietly.
His eyes widened. “Then how do they know she’s dead?”
I lowered my voice further, forcing Roarke to lean in closer. I wasn’t supposed to know any of this and my father would lose his mind if he heard me talking about it. It was all things I’d overheard whispered at dinner when people thought I wasn’t listening. But I was always listening.
“They found her shoes and a scrap of her dress. That’s all. And it was surrounded by dead grass. Everything else was alive, but the grass in a circle around her shoes was completely dead.”
“Was it burned? Was she struck by lightning?” Roarke asked, taking a bite of his cheese, loving the mystery.
“It wasn’t burned, just dead. No one knows what happened to her. It’s like she disappeared. And you know what else? They say no Queen’s body has ever been found. They die all the time and none of them are ever seen again. They call it the Queen’s Curse.”
Roarke looked at me dubiously. “No Queen has ever been buried? Ever?”
“Only one,” I insisted. “Forever ago one Queen died of old age in her bed, but her life was awful. Her and the King’s. All kinds of things went wrong for them.”
“Like what?”
“Like unborn babies and strange illnesses. Like a terrible storm with fiery rain and huge waves that swept people out to sea. The same storm that brought in a ship full of strangers that crashed in The Shallows…”
“The night my people arrived,” he said in a hushed tone.
“What are you two whispering about?” Roarke’s mother asked, suddenly appearing in the orchard.
“Nothing,” Roarke said immediately.
“Uh huh,” his mother replied doubtfully. “I know that ‘nothing’ and it always means something. Usually something I’ll end up apologizing to someone for.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong in a week.”
“Oh, well, let’s throw a party for you. Roarke hasn’t misbehaved in days. Ring the church bells and shout for joy.”
I giggled as she pretended to dance in celebration. Roarke scowled at her.
“You’re being weird,” he told her.
She laughed. “Oh, honey, if you’re just now realizing that your mother is weird, you’re not nearly as smart as I give you credit for.”
The next day I attended the funeral. It was boring. It wasn’t that it didn’t make me sad that Queen Elizabeth Anne had died, but the entire day was dedicated to the mourning process. To a seven year old girl used to being active, sitting for hours in a cathedral wearing the bleakest, heaviest dress imaginable was pure torture. Not to mention the fact that because it was the Queen’s funeral, the reclusive High Priest, who the very sight of gave me chills, was performing the ceremony. He was short and withered, looking impossibly old with loose gray skin and faded eyes. I’d only seen him up close twice and both times had terrified me. His voice was hollow and raspy, but hypnotic and lilting at the same time. It was so quiet it seemed impossible I should hear him, yet it carried across the cathedral, over the hundreds of heads ahead of me and nestled into my ears.
I didn’t care for it.
“We commit the soul of our loving Queen to The Saints of the sky and sea and to the eternal peace found there within. Pray they find her soul a worthy showing of our people. May she arrive as testament to our faithfulness and gratitude for their eternal protection. What better thanks can we give than the spirit of our beloved Queen for their constant love? What better home for her essence than in the bosom of our perpetual guardians? Would that they continue to stand watch over our Kingdom and never again let us fall victim to the dangers of the outer realms.”
It was here in hour three of his pleadings for mercy and protection that I inevitably began to doze. I rather unfortunately leaned over onto my father’s shoulder. I awoke with a start when he sharply pinched my arm.
Mercifully the service ended two and a half hours later, around the same time my backside went from numb to aching. The Cathedral cleared out slowly and I had to remind myself not to hop from foot to foot with my anxious energy. I was eager to go outside, to catch a few forbidden glimpses of the bustling city of Kilmarnock.
When our carriage joined the processional trailing the large ornate vehicle that bore her ‘remains’, we were paraded through the city. People lined the streets to wave their hands and handkerchiefs at the somberly adorned carriages. I wondered if they knew she wasn’t there. That the lead carriage was filled with nothing but a pair of old shoes and a tattered square of gossamer. Would they still line up to say goodbye to such things?
“At least attempt to look sad, will you?” my father scolded as I craned my neck to look outside the carriage.
“I’m sorry, father.” I said, but I wasn’t.
Soon we reached the edge of town and began to make the journey up the steep hill toward the graveyard. To the large tomb overlooking the sea where the monarchy were laid to rest. I had begun counting the pearls in the length around my mother’s neck to keep my eyes busy and away from the windows when something caught them anyway. I lurched to the side, reaching out the window to catch the falling white flakes.
“Is it snowing?” I cried delightedly.
My father gave me such a stern squeeze of my hand that I whimpered as I cowered back in my seat. His green eyes shot down to mine and the stern line of his mouth pared with the tension in his jaw spoke volumes. I would pay for this moment.
“I’m sorry, father,” I said, and I was.
He shook his head, looking away. I knew I wasn’t forgiven. My mother gently wove her fingers through mine. When I looked up at her with tears of fear in my eyes, she grinned and shook her head gently.
All is well, she mouthed.
I wasn’t as sure as she was, but my troubles were momentarily forgotten as I watched white flower petals drift in through the carriage window and land in her red hair.
Craning my neck, I looked beyond her to see the ground strewn with wild flowers of all kinds and colors. I stifled a giggle of joy as I wondered if the sky was raining flowers. If the clouds were in mourning as well. Was this the Saints crying?
Then I saw them up on the hillside. At its peak, gathered on an outcropping directly above us, were the Tem Aedha. They wore simple cotton clothes in all different colors, but each one was bright, vibrant and alive. Each and every one of them held a basket from which they pulled handfuls of flowers, casting them down on top of us. Onto the road leading to the tomb.
“Disrespectful savages,” my father growled.
“I think it’s beautiful,” my mother said softly, smiling up at them.
“Do you see what they’re wearing?
”
“I do. We’re mourning her, they’re celebrating her. It’s a wonderful gesture. Ellie would have loved it.”
“You should not refer to her in such a familiar way, Evelyn. She was your Queen.”
“She was my friend first. I watched her eat mud as a child, pinned her hair on her wedding day and held her hand as she gave birth to Frederick. We were familiar as two people could be.” My mother looked at him hard and held his eye. “It’s why you love me, Charles.”
I expected this to start a fight, as any contrary statements always did with my father, but I was shocked to find he couldn’t hold her eye. He looked down at me briefly, but my mother tugged me away from his hand, pulling me closer to her side. He shocked me again when he let me go willingly.
That night I was certain I would be punished for my offenses during the funeral, but my father was whisked away by the other Lords of the Court to pass the night in mourning with the King. Still not convinced of my reprieve, I begged my mother to let me sleep in her bed with her.
Late in the night we were awakened by aggressive shouts from the hall. I shot up straight in bed, clutching the covers in my hands so tightly my skin ached. When a gentle knock sounded on the door, I nearly screamed.
“Just a moment,” my mother called, leaping from the bed as though she had been expecting this.
She wrapped herself in a dark robe then motioned me over to her side of the bed with a small smile. I moved quickly as she hurried to the door.
I heard mumbling between her and whoever was on the other side, then a garbled shout and a light airy sound that startled me more than the shouting. My mother was giggling. I made my mother laugh often, but I had never in all my life heard her giggle.
She moved aside from the door to let our guests pass into the room. In the low light coming in from the hall I could make out two men of equal stature, though one was all but being carried by the other. Thinking someone was wounded, I hurried to my mother’s side. Up close I could smell alcohol and vomit coming from the two. I scrunched my nose in disgust.
“What’s happened?” I asked, feeling scared.
“Nothing, darling,” my mother said quietly, pressing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Your father has simply…mourned excessively. He’ll be alright.”
“Not for a day or too, he won’t,” the man carrying my father chuckled.
He grunted as he hefted his load onto the bed where he let him crash back onto the mattress. My father’s arms splayed at strange angles as his head lolled to the side. He promptly began snoring.
My anxiety slipped away as I watched Duke Walburton stand to his full height, his dark blond hair curling down onto his forehead. His face was flushed and unshaven and I realized I had never seen him look so disheveled. He smiled at my mother. When I glanced up at her I saw her smile back. She looked perfectly wonderful there in the moonlight with her long red hair down on her shoulders and a smile on her face. I wished she could be like this always. Ever comfortable and happy.
“Thank you, Patrick,” she told him quietly.
He gave her a small bow. “Given a job, milady, I will see it through to the end.”
My mother laughed, glancing at my father. “You may have been overzealous. I said intoxicated, not dead.”
“Did you say intoxicated? I could have sworn it was incapacitated.”
“Which is what he will be for days, it appears.”
“Then I have done you more favors than asked.”
“I am further in your debt. If I live a hundred years I will be never be able to repay you.”
“Yet there is no harm in trying,” he replied with a roguish smile. “Maybe you would both agree to have dinner with me tomorrow at my home? There will be no meal in the Great Hall and Charles won’t be able to look at food, let alone eat it.”
My mother hesitated, her smile faltering. I couldn’t bear it.
“Yes!” I shouted.
The three of us froze, looking nervously at my father’s sleeping body. He did not move. Duke Walburton smiled again, then looked from me to my mother.
“Annabel Lee is on board. What about you, Evelyn?”
I looked up at her imploringly. “Please? Can we?”
My mother laughed quietly. “When did you become such a fan of the Duke’s?”
I shrugged. “Anything to get out of this castle.”
“Amen to that,” Duke Walburton heartily agreed.
***
The King never married again as I so surely thought he would. I imagined that every woman in the kingdom would want the chance to become Queen. Everyday Frederick and King Phillip took their places beside the empty throne on which Queen Elizabeth Anne had sat for my entire life. Probably longer, though I wasn’t sure. As far as I knew, the world sprang fully formed into existence on the day of my birth.
When my mother and I finally were able to make good on our dinner date with the Duke it was nearly a month later. My father was at some important meeting for some very important council he was a part of, leaving my mother and I to our own devices for an evening.
My mother came alive that night. She was always happy and wonderful with me, but there was something different about her there in that large home with the clever man at the head of the table. She seemed younger somehow. Lighter. They talked for hours, laughing until tears trickled from their eyes. I found Duke Walburton charming, but what they found so funny often escaped me. My true joy in being there was Rupert.
Rupert was a large gray dog the Duke said he had purchased for hunting but who really sat around the house and shed on everything. He spoke of him with distain but rubbed the dog’s ears affectionately. My favorite part of the night was when we all retired to his study where I was allowed to roll around with Rupert on the large, ornate rug on the floor. With my father, animals were dangerous and forbidden and I giggled at the thought of the fit he would have seeing me playing with a dog that weighed more than myself.
At only seven years old I had come to realize something that I wouldn’t fully understand for quite some time. I loved my father dearly because he was just that; my father. I did not, however, like him.
Not at all. Not a whit.
The world continued to turn, a year passed and the kingdom eventually came out of mourning for the lost Queen, though Frederick was never quite the same again. He had always been very kind to me and he was still was, but something was missing. The playfulness I was so used to seeing never returned. As he spent more time with his father he became much more like him. He was more interested in the older women at Court while he became much louder in his opinions on all things regarding the kingdom. His kingdom, he was quick to specify. I lost interest in speaking with him. He was a young man and I was still a little girl, something that set us worlds apart. Still my father paired us together every chance he could find. Frederick walked me into the Great Hall for meals, we played croquet and horseshoes in the courtyard lawn together when his father was busy and Frederick wasn’t called upon to run his kingdom.
Though we’d known each other all our lives, I’d never called him a friend. So when he pulled away from me, I didn’t miss him much. What mattered to me most was the light in my mother’s eyes and the plain cotton ribbon I tied in my hair on delivery days.
“Why do you still have this?” Roarke asked, tugging on the bow in my hair gently.
“Because you gave it to me,” I said, swatting his hand away.
“I gave you a tart.”
“Well this was wrapped around it and it matches your eyes and I love it so I keep it,” I explained, turning the page in my book.
We were sprawled on a blanket on the ground together. I was on my stomach with my feet in the air and my face hovering over an adventure book Duke Walburton had brought me from the city. Roarke sat facing me, his legs crisscrossed in front of him, an interlocking metal puzzle being worked furiously in his hands. One of the people in his village had made it for him and Roarke pondered over it all aftern
oon, never making headway in solving it. He was determined to defeat it whereas I was convinced it was an unsolvable joke being played on him.
“Oh,” he said, putting the puzzle down in his lap. “Well then I want something from you. Something I can keep of yours.”
“You can have this book when I’m done with it.”
“No, it should be something meaningful to you.”
I looked up, my face doubtful. “Was the ribbon meaningful to you?”
He shrugged.
“Well, what do you want then?”
That’s when he attacked. He moved quick as a fox, his face darting in close to mine, his warm lips brushing across my own. It was the briefest of touches, feather light and ticklish, but it took my breath away.
“Why did you do that?” I whispered, staring at him in shock.
“Because that’s what I wanted from you,” he replied matter of fact. “Was it your first kiss?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now I have it and I can keep it always.” He grinned, his eyes shining in the sunlight, making my heart stumble in my chest.
I had never thought of my first kiss. Like all of my firsts, I’d assumed it would go to the Prince. That it, like I, would belong to him. But that idea was shattered the second Ro’s lips touched mine. One of my firsts, this intimate, simple thing that hadn’t even existed until moments ago, was ours. It was born of us. I felt like we owned it entirely, Roarke and I, and I would leave it with him to guard for the rest of his life.
That was the second time I fell in love with him.
Chapter Four
Five years later I turned thirteen. It was due in equal measure to sheer strength of will and the turning of the Earth around the sun. I was desperate to be older, dying to be a grown woman. Of course by the time I truly was grown I would wonder what the rush had been about.
For my birthday that year all I wanted in the wide world was to visit Roarke’s home. It was an outlandish wish, an undeliverable gift, but I wanted it just the same. I dreamed of what his house looked like. Of what the village was like. I wanted to see his mother making pastries on a table beside a fire. I wanted to watch his father walking through their village looking so tall and impossibly sure of everything. In the eight years Roarke and I had been friends I had only seen his father a handful of times. He was an odd looking man with mismatched features that seemed almost ugly. Until he smiled. When he smiled, it all came together in a portrait of joy and light.
