by Jade
Never seen a queen? Not possible. Unless...
Realisation dawned, turning into horror.
"You're not Sir Warin," Rosamond choked out. "You have all my things, and you look like him, but you're not him. Who are you?"
TWENTY-SIX
Siward's heart sank. He'd known all along this was too good to be true. A beautiful woman waiting for him, inviting him into her bed, where he was unable to resist her charms. She'd been waiting for someone else.
He rose. "I am Siward, Lord Protector of the Realm and Regent appointed by the king until a suitable heir is found. By my count, for only a few weeks more." Siward bowed low before her.
Her lips moved, but no sound came out. "Regent? But...what is wrong with the king?"
Did she truly not know? "He died," Siward said gently. "Just this spring. He was an old man, and he rarely left his bed. He passed peacefully in his sleep, but not before he named me Regent."
"How long ago did the queen die?" she whispered.
"Almost fifty years ago now. Before my father was born, and after the Wall closed us in," Siward said.
"What of Sir Warin?" Her voice was so quiet now it was barely audible.
"If by Sir Warin, you mean my grandfather, who was the captain of the guard who lost the princess, he died when I was a boy, but not before he told me every story he knew." Siward swallowed. "He had one regret in his life, and he spoke of it more and more as he got older. He wished he'd found a way to save her."
Rosamond didn't seem to be listening any more. Her eyes had a faraway look. "How long did I sleep?"
Siward scratched his head. "I don't rightly know. You were asleep when I found you, just before you woke."
"Did Sir Warin tell you how long ago he lost his princess?" Her voice shook as her eyes filled with tears.
Siward considered his words before he spoke. "She was never his princess. Too high for him, and he knew it. He was just a captain of the guard. He would have given his life for her, if he could. She was his charge, and he failed her."
Tears spilled down her cheeks. "How long?"
He relented. "Fifty years."
She started to sob.
Siward had no idea why she was crying – what was so sad about some princess who'd been dead for fifty years? – but he could at least try to comfort her. He opened his arms to her and held her close while sobs shook her body for what seemed an eternity.
Finally, the storm seemed to subside and she mumbled something into his tunic.
Cautiously, he asked her to repeat it.
"Release me," she ordered.
He complied.
She straightened, wiped the tears from her face and managed to look every inch the queen he wanted her to be. "How dare you," she said, her voice shaking with fury now. "You pretended to be another man to make me feel affection for you, stole my maidenhead, and only now you tell me the truth? Your grandfather was a good man and an honourable one, but he would turn over in his grave if he knew what you have become."
"I stole nothing you did not give me freely," Siward shot back. "You opened your arms and your legs and all but begged me to climb into your bed. You never asked my name, and I never pretended to be anyone but myself. What kind of woman waits naked in the woods, anyway? Not an honourable one, that's for certain."
If anything, this only enflamed her further. "When I took to my bed, I was clothed as modestly as I am now. You know nothing about honour, or what I have endured." Green eyes blazed.
Siward spread his hands wide in invitation. "Tell me, then. Make me understand."
She gave a slight nod. "Very well. The day I went to sleep, I was dying of a plague picked up shortly after King Erik and Queen Margareta's coronation. Two of my travelling companions were struck down with it, too. I managed to heal them both, but not myself, so I barricaded myself in that courtyard and lay down to die. If what you tell me is true, fifty years I lay there, dreaming without waking, as my body slowly rid itself of the deadly disease and everyone I knew and loved died. Until the day you woke me."
No. She couldn't be. If the princess were still alive, she'd be more than sixty years old. Nothing like the stunning beauty before him, who didn't look a day older than twenty. It wasn't possible.
Steadily, she continued, "Then I was Crown Princess Rosamond, daughter of King Almos and Queen Maria. Now...I am your queen."
TWENTY-SEVEN
The strange man who looked like Warin – Siward, was that what he'd said his name was? – didn't look particularly impressed by her announcement. Weren't men supposed to bow to their queen?
"Well? Aren't you going to say something?" Rosamond said finally, exasperated.
"You did hit your head," Siward said drily.
She blew out an angry breath. "You mean you don't believe me? You think instead that I am mad, or making this up? You said it yourself – why would a maiden wait in the woods without her clothes? Well, I gave you my answer. I slept for fifty years, safe until you broke into my bower."
"Even if you are the lost princess, no one will believe you. Even I am not sure if I believe you. You should be the same age as my grandmother, not standing before me, looking younger than I am." Siward shook his head. "If I were to place you on the throne today, the King's Council would declare that I am mad, and give the throne to someone else."
"They would try to steal my throne from me?" The very thought made her shake, though with fear or fury, she was not sure.
Siward laughed. "No, for none of them would believe it's yours in the first place. They would steal it from me."
She bristled. "So you steal not only my maidenhead, but my throne as well?"
"Enough with this this stealing nonsense!" he snapped. "No matter who you thought I was, you ordered me to make love to you, and I did. Several times. The king has been dead for weeks now, with no clear heir anywhere in the kingdom. I have searched, but still found no one who could take his place." When Rosamond opened her mouth to protest, he held up his hand to stop her. "Let me finish. Until a few minutes ago, I believed no one in the kingdom had a claim to the throne. That is why the King's Council decided this morning to crown me as king on St John's Eve."
"But you believe me now?" she ventured, feeling hope blossom in her chest.
Siward's expression withered that idea. "Heaven knows I would like to, for I don't want the throne. For years, since long before the king named me Regent, we've been talking around in circles in Council meetings, arguing who should and shouldn't be the next king, but never making a decision until today. It might take years before they would be willing to accept you as the lost princess, but even then they would still argue over what to do, for in the end, they would force you to marry the man they chose. Because without an heir, we would be back in the same mess where we started. Stuck behind the Wall, unable to bring in anything from outside the kingdom, with cellars full of fifty years' worth of berry wine that we cannot trade for what we need."
"Why?"
"Because men are stubborn, and they have never been ruled by a woman before. They squawk like chickens if I suggest even the slightest change."
Rosamond shook her head. "No, why this embargo on trade? Did Father insist upon it, or our neighbours? Queen Margareta spoke of war, but only in jest. I can't imagine she or King Erik..."
But Margareta had given her the diseased cloth. Cloth that had nearly cost Warin and Monika their lives. Could she have done so on purpose, to wipe out her people? She weighed the possibility thoughtfully.
No, Rosamond decided. The plague in her body had been a far more advanced stage of the disease than what she'd seen in Monika or Warin's blood. Yet she had been the last of all three of them to touch the cloth. She most certainly hadn't caught it from the cloth but from the dressmaker's girl, Melitta. That laid the blame far from Margareta, who knew nothing of the girl's illness. In fact, that meant all of this was....
"My fault," Rosamond whispered. "Whatever ails the kingdom now is my fault. I thought by isolati
ng myself in that convent, dying away from everyone else, I could save it, but I've only made matters worse. If I had done what my mother and father asked me to, I would have brought home a husband and settled down to have as many children as the kingdom needed to ensure the succession. Instead, I went haring about the palace, looking for a dress. I did not want a throne, but I wanted a dress like Queen Margareta's gown. Even when I realised what trouble I'd brought home, I thought my death would make things right. And now I am awake, I shall mess things up for you even more. Perhaps Warin was right, and I am cursed."
"No. You could not have known this would happen. No one could have predicted the Wall." Siward sounded soothing, but his words were unsettling.
"What wall?" Rosamond asked.
"The wall of brambles that marks our borders, closing us off from the world," Siward explained.
"The berry bushes? I know they're old, but they are hardly menacing enough to be called a wall. Why, they have marked our borders for centuries before my time, and may still for centuries more." Rosamond shook her head. "The world might have changed much in fifty years, but you can't tell me berry bushes have suddenly turned from six-foot shrubs into towering trees."
Siward nodded, his expression serious. "That is almost exactly what I am telling you. They have formed a hedge more than thirty feet high in places, easily ten feet thick, ringing the kingdom round so that none may enter, and none may leave. Except for birds, and air."
"So cut it," Rosamond suggested. "We are a nation of farmers, labourers, woodcutters. Surely there are enough axes in the kingdom to keep a few bushes from getting out of hand."
"They tried that. For years, every man has tried his hand at chopping through the Wall, but for every blow you strike, it grows back into the breach. If you try to climb it, it sends you back to the ground. I have had swords and axes plucked from my hands countless times, for at the start of every summer, it is my duty as Lord Protector to test the Wall for weaknesses. I have never found one." He stared at her. "That is what I was doing when I found you."
Rosamond shook her head. "It must be magic, but who could put so much magic into miles and miles of bushes? To make plants behave so unnaturally, a witch would have to be constantly manning the Wall, pouring her power into it to keep it from being broken. How long has the Wall stood in its current state?"
Siward's gaze fixed on her. "Since the princess was lost."
Rosamond didn't miss the accusation in his tone. "You think this is my doing? That I would imprison my own kingdom, which I would have died to protect?"
"You're the witch, or so you say. You tell me."
Rosamond's hands clenched at her sides. "Show me this Wall."
TWENTY-EIGHT
It was several days' ride to the nearest section of Wall, but Rosamond did not complain once. She still appeared pale, but she had regained so much of her strength since their first ride together that she seemed like a different woman to the frail creature Siward had carried to his home only weeks before.
Knowing she was perhaps a princess did not change his opinion of her at all. If anything, it made him want her more. If he had to be king, though blood and birth had ill prepared him for such a role, better that he ascend the throne with her at his side. Her father had often said how he'd raised his daughter to rule, or he would never have sent her as an ambassador at such a young age.
If she'd been raised so differently to other girls, no wonder she held his interest so tenaciously. No other woman had ever invaded his thoughts quite so successfully. Even though she remained tucked firmly into her own bedroll on the opposite side of the fire, every night she stole into his dreams and reminded him of their first night together. If that was what it was like to bed a princess, he had no desire for any other woman.
No, that was not entirely true. What would it be like to bed her when she was queen?
Rosamond most certainly owned him, body and mind, even if she didn't know it yet, but she did not completely possess his heart. Not yet. Though he could feel her fingers closing around it...
What did it matter? They had shared one night together, when she'd mistaken him for another man. Now she knew the truth, he would never touch her again.
On the morrow, he brought her to where the Wall blocked the road.
She dismounted from her palfrey – she'd turned up her royal nose at the jennet Siward's groom had tried to give her, to Siward's amusement – and strode right up to the hedge. Like so many men before her, at first all she did was reach out to touch it, to confirm that what her eyes were seeing was true.
Then...she demonstrated how different she was. Closing her eyes, Rosamond pushed her sleeves up and thrust both hands elbow deep into the brambles.
Siward stepped forward to stop her. "Don't, you'll scratch yourself!"
Too late. A thin trickle of blood travelled down her arm before dripping to the ground. She didn't even seem to feel it.
"It's protecting us," she said slowly. "Keeping us from harm."
"How is keeping a kingdom prisoner protecting us?" Siward scoffed.
"They are plants, not politicians. They keep things out to protect us. Because...I wished it." Rosamond blinked. "They did this for me."
No evil queen, no curse, just a princess the plants wanted to protect? Siward wasn't sure what to believe any more. Rosamond didn't seem mad, and then she made such extraordinary statements that no one in their right mind would believe.
"Can you tell them to stop?" Siward ventured.
Rosamond's brow wrinkled. "I could try, but why would I? These brambles have kept us far safer than any castle wall for decades."
"They also stop trade. New knowledge, new stories. We are a small kingdom, and there are things in foreign lands that I can only imagine, for I have not seen them because we are closed to trade. We need metals, goods, food from other climates, somewhere to sell fifty years' worth of berry wine..." If Siward never tasted the stuff again, it would be too soon. He'd heard of something called beer, a drink like ale but with a finer flavour, which he'd always wanted to taste.
"I can ask them to give me a tunnel through which the road could run, as it did when I last saw this spot."
Siward could scarcely believe it. "Could you bring down the Wall?"
Rosamond pulled her arms from the bush. Though blood still stained her skin, there didn't seem to be a scratch on her. "I could, but I will not. A tunnel for the road will be sufficient. One that we can close again, if it is necessary."
Even that would be a miracle. "Do it, then!"
She folded her arms across her chest. "I will. When I am queen, and not before."
Siward's heart sank. This was an argument he sensed he would not win. Inwardly, he applauded the princess and her late father, the king. He had trained his replacement well.
"You would hold your own kingdom to ransom, just for a crown?" he asked heavily.
Rosamond smiled sweetly. "It is my kingdom, and my crown. I've laid down my life for it once, and while I did not die, I still paid a heavy price. If your Council does not want me, then they are fools who don't deserve me, or my powers. I will not touch the Wall until the kingdom is mine."
"You expect me and the rest of the Council to believe not only that you are their lost princess, miraculously alive and not aged a day after all these years, but that you alone can shift an impenetrable Wall that whole armies could not conquer?" Siward wasn't even sure he believed it.
She bit her lip. "Yes." She lifted her hand, tracing a lazy curve in the air. "You see?" Rosamond stared at the Wall with a slight smile on her lips.
Siward forced himself to turn around, both dreading and hoping for what he might see.
Branches twisted and moved, shaping a hole that grew larger as he watched it. The hole ended on the road, arcing up in an arch more than high enough for a mounted man to ride inside. Nay, not inside – through, he realised, as a shaft of sunlight shot through the tunnel from the other side.
Siward fell to his knee
s. "My God."
"No," Rosamond said sharply. "Your queen." And, with another wave of her hand, the tunnel closed as if it had never been.
TWENTY-NINE
Siward said very little for the rest of that day, and most of the next. It was not until after dinner on the second night away from the Wall that he finally broke the silence between them.
"There is only one way you will be queen."
Rosamond sipped from her cup of wine. "Go on."
Siward hesitated. "You won't like it."
She stared at him across the fire, wishing she could read his thoughts. "I will not condone violence. The King's Council were appointed by my father, which meant he trusted their judgement, or at least their loyalty. I will not have them killed."
Siward looked stunned. "I had not considered that possibility."
Rosamond rose. "Then consider it now. I will not rule a kingdom by fear."
"But you would hold it to ransom with the Wall."
She waved his accusation away. "That is not the same. The Wall is not a threat. I am certain most people regard it as a simple fact of life. If it were to disappear overnight, or open with no explanation, then you will see fear. But if a rumour were to spread that the Wall appeared when the princess was lost, but it will open when she returns, and then you announce my miraculous return...the people will accept me, and the change."
Siward shook his head. "But not the Council. You will waste years arguing with them, and even then, they might not believe you. You might never regain the throne."
Rosamond stamped her foot in frustration. "No matter how stubborn they are, I will not let you kill them!"
Siward laughed softly. "Stubborn as they are, the Council are worth more to me alive. They at least had the good sense to make me king."
