by Katie M John
My stomach knotted with the anticipation of what James might want from an evening walk through candlelit corridors and shadowy corners.
The many times he had spent here before had created an indelible map in his memory and we made swift progress to the games room, which was of the few rooms to have escaped being turned into an interior small-holding. He closed the doors behind us and my tension piqued. I wasn’t ready for this. I wasn’t ready to be seduced by a man I hardly knew, and who in truth partly terrified me.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked, pouring out a generous measure of amber liquid from one of the several decanters that were placed on a silver tray.
I shook my head and then changed my mind. I was already half bewitched, a drink wasn’t going to do me any worse at this point. I took the glass and wondered if James had seen the tremor in it that I had.
“Sit with me for a while, May,” he said sitting down and patting the chair next to him. I did as he commanded. He was now my king.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I said before chewing down on my lip.
“How well do you know Robert?”
Before I could answer, my blush answered for me.
“Ah,” James said. “You’ve been here, how many sunrises? Two? Three?”
“One,” I said with embarrassment.
“One day, and already he has charmed you.”
“I don’t…” I began to protest. “It’s not like that.”
“No?” James asked, eyeing me over the glass as he took a swig.
“Has he kissed you yet? I’d be surprised if he hasn’t. He’s always had a certain charm. A way with the ladies. As soon as the boy could grow a beard, he seemed ready to conquer the world, or rather the world’s women.”
“I don’t think Robbie, I mean, Robert, is like that.”
“Don’t you mean, Lord Rime?” He asked me pointedly. “Or are you already past such formalities.”
“I think you need to understand that I hold no affection for Lord Rime. I am grateful for his hospitality and for him resucing me, and yes, maybe, I got a little swept up in the moment of it all – near death can do that to you, but as for any kind of romantic inclination, you have my word that I have no such feelings for Lord Rime – or anyone for that matter.”
“No one?” James asked incredulously. “You’re telling me that someone so full of youth and optimism, not to say, beauty, has no one back home that is waiting for them. I don’t believe it.”
I drank down on the burning liquor in an attempt to avoid answering the question but James was still waiting patiently for my answer. “Home is a very long way away, James – and I’m not sure I even know the way back.”
James impulsively leaned forward and placed his hand on my knee. “Sweetheart, we never forget the way home.” He withdrew his hand and placed it over his heartspace. “It’s engraved on our heart. A map that can never be destroyed.”
“And you?” I asked emboldened by the sudden atmosphere of intimacy that was running between us. “Why did you never remarry?”
“Have you heard my sad story?”
I nodded slowly. “I’ve heard a version, which having met you, I’m not sure I can fully trust as truth.”
“Ah,” he said, draining his glass and topping it back up. A crack of lightening lit up the gloomy room momentarily. “The weather is going a little crazy. Everything is out of synch. I guess I’m having an emotional crisis,” he winked and smiled and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“It must be really annoying knowing that everybody knows exactly how you’re feeling all of the time.”
“Mostly, although they don’t seem so concerned when the summers are long and the harvests plentiful.”
“So, how does it all work exactly. If all four of the seasons are important, then what happens if the king is a king who is too happy and winter never comes?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. Fortunately, I have always been a moody bastard,” he laughed. When his laughter had died down, he turned more pensive. “I’m glad you were here tonight May. It’s nice to have someone with a fresh soul and a new pair of eyes to talk to. Everybody else is so quietly angry of me. I think they secretly hate me. Actually, not so secret. If I heard one more time, ‘Why don’t you just try and be happy, your majesty’, ‘Things will get better in time, you have to look to the future’, ‘Perhaps some exercise,’” he said, opening and closing his hand as if it were the mouths of his advisors.
“And what does your physician say about it?” I daringly asked.
“Doctor Yarataris? He’s a quack. I only keep him on because he was my father’s doctor, and his before that.”
“How old is he, exactly?”
James shrugged. “I have no idea. We’re not big on age in our Kingdom.”
“He came to treat me when I had been attacked by the Ghoul.”
James raised his eyebrows. “And how did that go?”
“It seemed is the man had more powers than a usual mortal.”
“Perhaps he does. There are many at court who think the old man is a wizard. There are some who still blame him for my ex-wife’s dabble into the occult.”
“Yes, I had heard something to that effect,” I said carefully.
“My! You have been a busy little spy, haven’t you? Here just one day and already taking part in a romantic tryst with one of the most powerful men in my kingdom and getting the low down from gossiping servants.”
“I told you, there is nothing between Lord Rime and me.”
“I was only teasing,” he said, leaning back into the chair and extending his legs out in front of him.
“Well don’t.”
“Duly noted,” he smirked. “That tiara. It looks familiar. An heirloom of Robert’s perhaps?”
“It was his mother’s,” I say, knowing that I am being played like a game of chess. “It’s simply a loan as I packed light for my stay.”
“Ah,” he said before pressing his lips together and nodding.
Anybody who found themselves loving this man would need a double dose of human patience. He was a tease and a flirt and would be quite infuriating if he wasn’t so gently humoured.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“No you don’t. You may guess at what I’m feeling, that’s plain for everyone to see. I’m enchanted by you. I’m having a good time in your company. I haven’t laughed or felt so felicitous in many moons – the weather attests to my good humour, but no,” he shook his head, “you don’t know what I’m truly thinking – or what I truly know.”
“Perhaps you are right.”
“Maybe we should play a game. You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”
“I don’t know what you would find to interest you,” I said.
“How old are you May – in your world? Are you a child, a woman, or something inbetween. It’s difficult to tell when you’re dressed in readiness for being a queen.”
His question shocked me. Did he know what the plan had been all along? Was he under the spell and he somehow knew, but like me had resigned himself to the magic that might save a kingdom, to the happy ever after fairytale.
“I guess,” I shrugged. “I’m somewhere in between. In my own world I am seventeen years old, soon to be eighteen. When we are eighteen, we can vote for our government, we can legally drink,” I said raising my glass in toast, “and we can get married without our parents’ permission. If we murder someone, we are tried as an adult. However, I have only kissed two people, and only one in a way that made me feel that perhaps I was more woman than girl.” I blushed at the memory of the kisses I had shared with Robbie, the kisses that had told me more about myself than I perhaps was ready to know. “And I’ve never had a boyfriend, so men and their motivations are still alien to me.”
“Our motivations?” he asked, pinching his chin between his fingers. “I guess your father has warned you that all men are essentially brutes with one thing on their mind
, defiling his daughter,” he laughed.
“Not quite, but close enough. My dad is a good man, and a gentleman. He fell in love with my mother when they were fifteen years old and they married at nineteen. They kissed and held hands every day until the day she died.”
“Your mother is dead?” James asked with sympathy. “I’m so sorry to hear that. A daughter needs her mother, especially when she is about to navigate a whole new landscape.”
“Yes. A car accident.”
“A car?”
“A motorised carriage.”
“Ah, your world is quite different to ours it would seem.”
“Today is a year to the day that she died. I thought by now it might feel different, better, hurt less, you know?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And yet it was you who made that choice,” I said boldly, past caring if I upset him or not.
“You know, you are the first person to ever call me out on that. I respect that. For all my men and advisors, and counsellors and experts, nobody has actually presented me with the truth in their hands and said, here this is what you did, look at it and own it. Perhaps if they had, things might have been different. Maybe I would have faced up to it a little and moved on – but as it was, everybody pretended that my wife dying was some kind of accident. Perhaps they wanted to believe that more than the truth – perhaps we all did.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Murdering my wife.” He raised an eyebrow. “Of course I do. I wasn’t acting with my head but my heart, which had been betrayed by two of the people I loved most in the world. I was full of rage. Monsoons and storms lashed the kingdom for weeks. When evidence came to me that she had been engaging in the dark arts, that she was practicing black witchcraft and that her whole intention had been to harm the kingdom and destroy its people, I had little choice. She was making terrible bargains behind my back. She had promised to send our poor as slaves to other kingdoms, and other things too terrible to really think about.”
“So you were justified?” I ask.
“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, things weren’t as black and white as some folks think they were.”
We continued to talk about our lives. About how I was still angry at my dad, no matter how many times I told myself, or him, differently. I told James things I had never told anyone else, and whether it was the drink or a nihilistic acceptance of my future, I discovered in those hours more about myself than I did James, and I think the same could be said for him, because sometimes it’s through opening ourselves to others that we truly open ourselves to our self.
“You know I can’t go home,” I said, smiling.
“No? Why not?”
“Because of what’s happening outside. Because we have both been cast under an enchantment to fall in love and make each other happy – and clearly it’s working because I can’t say that I’m sad I’ve spent this time with you, and you clearly, judging by the weather, aren’t either.”
“Our Winter Queen our summer hope,” he said, tipping his glass in salute in my direction.
“Does it bother you that we’ve been spellbound.”
James stood and let out a groan as he stretched out his limbs. “Ah, but here’s the thing. We’re not.”
I look at him, confused. “That’s the magic speaking.”
“No, it’s not. Did you not wonder where Doctor Yarastsia is this evening?”
Yes, I had wondered but I was still confused over what was happening. “I guess I did.”
“Before I came tonight, he came to see me and he told me exactly what was planned for me and for you. He’d had what some might call a crisis of faith. I haven’t drunk a love potion tonight, and for the last few hours, you haven’t been wearing an enchanted headdress.”
My hands moved to my head and sure enough, the tiara was no longer there. It had slipped down into the cushions of the chair as we had been talking.
“Then … how?” I asked, searching his face for answers.
“I had come knowing I was walking into a trap and that you were the honey. But when I saw you, something happened. The sight of spring on your dress – your beauty, your willingness to sacrifice your own happiness for a people you don’t have any connection with. And then, as we began to talk, something short of a miracle happened; I found you charming and funny, and smart, and I found myself becoming increasingly happy. I knew you were being charming because of the spell – but even when the tiara fell from your head, you were just as open and warm.”
“It wasn’t hard,” I said, standing to match him eye to eye. “I don’t think I needed magic to warm to you, or to think you a good man.”
He smiled and took my hands in his. “As I’ve sat here tonight with you, I’ve been wondering how selfish and rotten and mean it would have been to keep you enchanted long enough to walk you down the aisle and trap you in a marriage you never asked for, and I realised that everything I have fallen in love with about your spirit would be extinguished should I allow that to happen. The young woman who I have found love and respect for is the unenchanted you. If I allowed the sham of a marriage to take place, we would both bring about an eternal winter beacause as much as you would suffer me with dignity and grace, I think your heart belongs to someone else.”
“Not to Robert!” I protest.
“No. To the boy who you managed to properly avoid talking about whenever you spoke of your life back home.”
“Tom? But what about your kingdom. If we don’t follow through with the spell, and you are not made happy then…”
“Don’t you realise that the magic has worked exactly as it should have done, and no one is harmed. Spending time with you this evening has made me realise I am both ready to love and to be loved again; that I can find happiness if I allow myself to look for it. You have brought the spring to me, May.”
“I’m not sure that’s how it was all meant to be.”
James leaned forward and kissed me chastely on my cheek. “It’s exactly as it should be. And now, we need to try and get you home before Robert gets other ideas and tries to keep you for his own bride. He was a jealous heart tonight, which is part of the reason why I asked you to walk with me, although I don’t expect his imagination will have done him much favour.”
“I shouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.”
“I think that’s exactly what you should do – and don’t feel any regrets.”
We hurried through the quiet corridors. It was near dawn and most of the revellers had either found a quiet corner to sleep, or had passed out. The final few were still in the main ballroom, and the quieter tones of the piano could be heard as we made our way through to the main hall and the doorway.
James grabbed a couple of riding cloaks from the small room under the stairs where travel clothing was stored, and we left as quietly as we could. Part of me couldn’t help feeling guilty at just leaving and not saying goodbye to Robbie, or the even bigger regret at leaving my camera behind, but we couldn’t risk it. If I stayed the people, and Robbie, was convinced that the spring, and their salvation, would only come if I stayed. There was no doubt in my mind that they would ensure this happened.
James’ carriage was waiting, although his driver was drunk under a table back in the main ballroom. He helped me in and I instructed me that were furs to help me keep warm.
“Do you know where you need to go?” he asked, prodding the horses as quietly as he could. They were being particularly stubborn and in the end, he had little choice but to use the crop and make far more noise than he’d hoped.
“In the woods there is an ancient stone circle called The Widows, do you know of it?”
He shook his head, his face falling. “I’m afraid I don’t. The only standing stones I know of in these parts are The Three Sisters.”
“That could be them,” I said, trying to sound more optimistic than I sounded. Afterall how many three pillared standing stones could there be? Yeah, right, hundreds. But it was the only thi
ng I had to go on. “Robbie said it was about half an hour ride away, north. Does that sound right?”
“Right enough,” James said as we sped through the gates at the bottom of Snow Wood Manor.
As we travelled through the snow dusted woods, the carriage lanterns barely lit our way in the gloom of morning. At any other times, the atmosphere would have been grey and sombre, James couldn’t contain his glee as large slushy lumps of snow slid from the tree branches and fell with a wet plop to the ground. At last the thaw was in motion, which meant that it wouldn’t be long until spring arrived.
“Thank you,” he called out over the sound of the horses’ heavy hooves.
“What for?”
“For showing me that I can be happy again.” As if to emphasise the point, his face split into a wide grin. “Suddenly, anything feels possible.”
James seemed to confident in his knowledge of the woods. The result of having been raised a prince and heading out on hunting parties as soon as he could sit on a horse. Whereas to me, everything looked the same, he seemed to navigate from the smallest signs the woods gave him; a split tree, a certain branch, a rocky outcrop. And I couldn’t help the feeling that fate and time were working in our favour, too.
Eventually he slowed the horses before leaving the main track and informing me that we had to dismount. Earlier I had lamented not having something more dainty to wear on my feet to compliment the delicate fabric of the dress, but now, I was grateful for my heavy leather boots. We would have to make the rest of the way on foot, and even though there was a definite sign of the thaw happening, it would take weeks for all the snow to disappear.
James grabbed a lantern from the side of the carriage, and then from under the seat, a large shot-gun to help ward off the last vestiges of night and her guardians. All along our journey, we had heard the distant calls of the wolves who, James told me, lived in the craggy cliffs by the large river they also called the River Ouse. My relief at hearing a shared landmark renewed my confidence that we were at least travelling in the right direction for my home.
The woods here had a misty quality, and I shuddered, not with cold but with the memory of the Ghoul who had so brutally attacked me.
