Cinder-Ugly

by Laura Strickland

  That very afternoon the weather cleared, and I climbed the steps to the tower, hoping to see what lay around us.

  To the south and as far east as the sea—all our land—everything slept beneath a blanket of white. To the west the rolling hills, blue and white in the distance, stretched to the neighboring kingdom of Khett. To the north…

  Devastation. Everything lay burnt and torn and plowed as if a giant boar had raged across it. The horror of the blackened scene hit me in waves, just as the ruin lapped against the edge of the city.

  And there—there…

  Two forces, one great and one small. I blinked as my eyes refused to believe what they saw, and blinked again. A straggling line of dark figures made its way through the now-deserted streets of the town, like a short chain threatening to fail. Pursuing them came a moving blot on the horizon, appearing amorphous and almost harmless from my high perspective.

  Ortis’s army.

  A scream rose to my throat. Wildly, I judged the speed of the two parties and the distance between them. Would our men—what remained of them—make it to the safety of the castle in time?

  I screeched like a blackbird and ran. Still wailing, I went down the tower steps at a speed that might well have tripped me up with grave consequences for Rupert’s child. I steamed through corridors, telling everyone I passed, “They come. They come!”

  I picked up a tail of others as I went. Behind me I heard their voices and cries of, “Queen! Queen!” By the time I pelted through the bailey and reached the gates, I could not speak.

  Rellison happened to be there, consulting with the guards. He eyed me in alarm.

  “Your Majesty! I was just saying that perhaps we should take advantage of this break in the weather—”

  “Open the gates. Open the gates!” I whooped.

  “Precisely. There are three more dead…”

  “They come!”

  “The dead, Majesty?”

  I hoped not. Oh, how I hoped not. I looked him in the eye. “Our army. What’s left of it.”

  Glad cries sounded all around me. Rellison and the guards jumped into action.

  “Open.” Rellison nodded to those manning the gates. “But, Majesty, are they pursued? Is it safe?”

  “Ortis’s forces are hard after them.” I turned to the guards who stared at me. “You will need to be quick and clever. How fast can you raise and lower the portcullis?”

  “Fast,” said Edward, the head guard. I’d heard he had been a fierce warrior in his day. “Majesty, you are certain?”

  “I saw them from the tower. But I could not tell who…” My throat closed.

  “Back! Back, everyone! We open the gates!” Edward added to me apologetically, “You too, Majesty. I would take no chances with your safety.”

  “If you think I am budging from this spot,” I told him, “you are mad.”

  He grinned at me and turned to his work.

  “My Queen,” Rellison asked, “how long before our men reach us? Could you tell?”

  I tried to calculate swiftly. “They have just entered the northern edge of the city.”

  Edward said, “They may have wounded with them. Should we send men out to meet them, that they might move more swiftly?”

  Dangerous. I calculated it with as much dispassion as I could muster. Rupert might not be with them. He might have been captured; he might have perished.

  No.

  But these, the very men who’d stood with him through the bitter defense of the kingdom, now ran like exhausted hares before fierce hawks.

  “Yes.” I and Rellison spoke at the same time. Edward bellowed to several of his men. “Who wants to volunteer? I’ll send no one against his will on such a mission.”

  Five of our bravest—all aged, like Edward himself—stepped up. We opened the gates, and they ran.

  ****

  Even now, emotion swamps me when I describe what happened next. The story—the one that’s been told and retold—never includes this part. It’s all about coaches and grand balls and a magical transference into beauty. It skips right over the war and the siege and how our men returned to us, broken.

  But they did return, at least some of them. Bloodied, beyond exhausted, and so changed that, once again, I barely recognized them.

  Even my husband.

  Uniforms in tatters, wearing filthy bandages as much as anything else, they limped in, assisted by those we’d sent out to them, as well as others who flooded out from the castle in an unstoppable wave. Of the strong force we’d sent out at the beginning of autumn, fewer than fifty returned. I did not at first know the man who came at the front of them, half his face swaddled in bandages stiff with blood, clad in rags, and with his head shaved. God help me, I recognized his voice, giving orders.

  “Get everyone inside. Leave no one behind! Shut the gates. Is that everyone? Certain? Shut them. Shut! Bar them!”

  “Rupert? Oh, God, oh, God—”

  He failed to hear me amid the hollering and confusion. People still streamed in from all over the castle. The newly arrived were collapsing where they stood. Someone called for the medics, and I moved forward like a woman in a dream, driven to get closer.

  People parted for me, bless them. They bowed, and a few called, “Sire!”

  I called out also. “Husband!”

  That, he heard. He turned, saw me, and froze. I will remember that moment until I die—the staggering relief and gladness of it, which very nearly took me to my knees. Oh, my heart wanted to break for him, seeing the exhaustion in his face, the expression in his one uncovered green eye, and the weight that sat visibly on him.

  But none of that mattered. He had come, come, come.

  I flew forward straight into his arms. They opened to catch hold of me, and for a moment I knew only bliss—pure gladness at the feel of him, the gift of his presence, the impossible wonder of his return when so many women’s husbands hadn’t come home and never would.

  Only after that first wave of joy did other truths become apparent. He stank, and the body beneath the tattered uniform felt like a rack of bones.

  I drew back far enough to question him with my gaze. He returned my look gravely and with so much love it stole my breath. His hand flew to cup my cheek and then moved, slowly and with wonder, to hover over the gentle swell of my belly.

  “Cindra, never say…”

  “Your child, Husband. Your child and heir.”

  He kissed me there in front of everyone, a kiss of need and yearning, of pledging and gratitude. His subjects might have reacted in a number of ways. They cheered mightily, and I wept.

  Rellison stepped forward to say, “Your Highness, we give great thanks at your return. Your wife the Queen has been a shining light to everyone in your absence.”

  To my astonishment, another cheer arose from the onlookers.

  Rupert said, “I am not surprised. My wife is a star in the heavens, one that helped steer me home. But we are hard pursued. It grieves me to tell you, my beloved people, we have all but lost this fight. Ortis set us a trap on our own border and called in mercenaries to fight us. I’m afraid we never stood a chance against so vast a horde. But our men fought bravely and without thought to themselves. Heroes, every one. Now we are faced with two choices: siege or surrender. Which shall we choose?”

  “Siege,” I whispered.

  All those including Rupert’s battered troops took up the word.

  “Siege.”

  “Siege!”

  “Siege.”

  And someone said, “If our valiant Queen can endure it, so can we.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Not till many hours later did I have a chance to be alone with my husband. It didn’t matter that there were a thousand details to which he must attend. It satisfied me just to have his voice in my ears as he gave orders and spoke with all who came to him. I delighted over and over again in the fact that I could see him, and touch him if I chose.

  He breathed, he reached for my hand. He live
d.

  Being Rupert, he saw to everyone else’s needs before his own. His men were, without exception, shown to the chapel to be seen by physicians. All hands were pressed into service bringing hot water and swiftly scrounged bandaging. Questions ran rife.

  As did the delivery of bad news. Many of our dead had not been brought back and lay where they’d fallen. Some few had been captured by the enemy. The tales of brave sacrifice abounded.

  Rupert broke the news personally when he could. I remained at his side and wondered what kept him on his feet. He seemed so terribly depleted. But he reached often for my hand and more than once touched my belly reverently.

  I sat through an eye-opening meeting while he briefed Rellison and others of his advisors. By then, Ortis’s army had reached the city. They would soon be at the gates.

  Full dark fell before Rellison said, “My King, may I suggest that now, before the siege begins in earnest, you have your own wounds tended? And perhaps take some refreshment.” The old man glanced at me. “Alone, perhaps, with your wife.”

  Rupert smiled ruefully. “I’m not at all certain I can climb so far as the tower.”

  “Then another chamber can be prepared.”

  Several among the advisors promptly offered their own.

  “Please, Rupert,” I begged. I did—and didn’t—want to see what lay beneath those dreadful bandages.

  “Take my chamber, please, Your Highness,” Rellison implored. “I share with several others, but we will busy ourselves here for the time.”

  In the end, Rupert agreed. When it came time to remove to Rellison’s chamber, however, he could not stand. I and two others helped him walk to the small room, where hot water and food were soon brought and a physician sent for.

  The physician—the same who had labored over Robin—and I thereafter worked together, and I struggled all the while to keep from weeping.

  Beneath his rags and bandages, my husband had wasted to nothing. Every rib showed, and I counted twelve wounds, great and small, some of them months old. The worst were to his leg—I do not know how he walked upon it—and to the left side of his head, where a deep cut lay close beside his eye.

  The physician, examining that, asked, “Majesty, can you see?”

  “Yes,” Rupert replied and, God help me, I could not tell if he lied.

  “Sleep,” the physician ordered in parting. “It is the medicine you need most desperately.”

  Rupert nodded.

  “We will not have long,” he told me when we were at last alone. “The castle will be surrounded by morning.”

  “Sleep.” I repeated the physician. Already Rupert lay stretched on Rellison’s bed.

  “Lie with me.”

  “I will, gladly.”

  We lay together, I with my arms wound closely around him. I could feel his ribs sharp beneath my fingers—I could also feel his heart beating low but steady.

  I began to weep. “Oh, Rupert, I can scarcely believe you’re here, that you came back to me. I was so afraid.”

  “Hush, Cindra. You drew me back like a lodestone draws iron.”

  “What happened to your poor hair?”

  “Lice, I’m afraid. It was the only remedy. In fact, I probably still have them…”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Fleas too.”

  “I don’t care,” I reiterated and kissed him softly. The tears started again.

  “Don’t weep, my wonderful, miraculous wife.”

  He once more splayed his fingers on my belly. “You carry my child. And our people love you. Love you. As much as I do. Did you hear them, back there?”

  “Yes.” My mind whirled. “I did only what I could for them.”

  “You stood strong, as I knew in my heart you would. Cindra…” He sucked in a breath. “You do know we are likely to go down to defeat.”

  “No.”

  “We can endure a siege for a time. Likely we will not hold out till spring. We have too little of anything—food, water, fuel.”

  “We can fight back.”

  “With what?”

  “Arrows. Boiling water. Stones.”

  “We will soon run out.”

  I rose on my elbow and looked at him. “You only say that because you are tired, disheartened. We will not quit.”

  He smiled sadly and touched my cheek. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”

  “I am not…”

  “Hush. Yes, you are. Beautiful. I dreamed of your eyes—deep as the night sky. I felt your kiss. Tasted your breasts. You are what kept me alive.”

  “Oh, Rupert, I’m glad. So glad—”

  “I kept thinking if only I could reach you, all would come right, as it used to in your garden, where the world fell away. But, Cindra, the world won’t fall away this time. It’s all around us. We’re trapped here. Rats in a cage. How can I tell my people that? How tell them we’re going to die?”

  “We are not,” I declared, even though I knew very well how strapped for supplies we were, how difficult life had been even before we absorbed another fifty men. “We will share and ration and live on less if we must. But we will live.”

  Rupert smiled at my words but closed his eyes for a moment like a man in pain before he asked, “How fares your brother?”

  “Robin? Well, the poison at the site of his amputated foot has refused to subside. The physicians thought they would need to remove his leg.” I left out the fact that Robin now battled fever.

  “And Donella?”

  “Nearly ready to deliver their child.”

  Any trace of a smile fled Rupert’s face. “Born to this.”

  “Into the arms of love. Now sleep while you can.”

  “Only if you kiss me again.”

  And I did.

  He slept with his shaven head on my shoulder, his hand resting over our child—a few short hours’ respite only, if it could be called that. He twitched and groaned and cried out in pain. All too soon, Rellison came to the door.

  “Forgive me, Majesty. Daylight has come. We are surrounded.”

  Rupert struggled up—only Rellison and I saw what it cost him. I wanted to weep for his courage but would not insult him with tears. His ruined body hidden beneath clean clothing, he went out to face the impossible.

  I went at his side, determined he would not stand alone.

  Panic beset the castle. Everyone had seen what now lay beyond the walls—a seething sea of men and horses.

  “They will build siege engines,” Rupert said.

  I told him, “We will destroy them.”

  “They will pick apart our city and fire the rubble at us.”

  “We will endure.”

  Rupert addressed his subjects, pulling no punches. “We stand together, but we stand confined. If we are to outlast our attackers, it will require sacrifices. We have a well in the depths of the castle—I hope it will supply sufficient water. Food will be strictly rationed, as will fuel. We must all help one another, share and share alike. We are now one family.”

  They received his words in silence, save for weeping. No one voiced the protests sounding in my mind—we had already rationed the food, and fuel stores lay dangerously low. They could see to what their King had been reduced. They saw the way his fingers clung to mine.

  The Dowager Queen, a mere shadow of her former self, stood beside him. It was she who asked, “And, when spring comes?”

  Rupert lifted his head. “Spring means rebirth. It means new life. It means hope. We will not think beyond that.”

  In the spring, our child would be born. When first I’d known I carried his heir, I’d worried it might be born like me—misshapen and ugly. Now I worried it would be born to slavery.

  “Pray,” Rupert bade his people. “And fight with your every breath. Remember, to endure is to fight.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I want you to be in charge of rationing,” Rupert told me. “It will have to be carefully done, but I know you’ll be merciful and fair.”


  I sighed. I’d been struggling for months with the necessity for rationing but knew we would now need to knuckle down severely.

  “I think measures should be maintained for the children,” I said, “and the nursing mothers.”

  “Have we many nursing mothers?”

  “No.”

  “What about expectant mothers?” We were alone in our—Rellison’s—chamber, and he caressed the swell of his child gently.

  “We can endure. I would not be accused of self-serving or favoritism.”

  “You may have my portion.” His kissed me, and I ached for him, all of him, the way I had in the night when he lay far from me. But we had no time to share ourselves with one another now.

  King Ortis’s troops ringed the castle on all sides, and Rupert expected him to send a demand for surrender at any time.

  “It is a dance in which we have engaged many times during this fight,” he told me. “Ortis offers terms for surrender—I refuse. We fall back and back. Now we have retreated as far as we can.”

  “But we are not vanquished,” I reminded him. I knew the depths to which one could fall and the strength in endurance.

  “If we do not surrender, the true hardship will begin. Ortis will batter these walls. We will have nothing but our lives.”

  He was interrupted at that point when the door of the chamber flew open. Donella stood there gasping for breath, her face white as paste, her black hair straggling loose down her back.

  For an instant I believed her to be in labor and I flew to her, exclaiming, “For pity’s sake! What are you doing on your feet?”

  She sagged into my arms, eyes reaching for mine. “It’s Robin. I think—I think he’s dying.”

  I flew and Rupert behind me, all else forgotten for the instant. Through crowded corridors where people slept, past those who called to us, and into the chapel that, to me, now always smelled of death. Robin occupied a corner. One of the physicians remained with him when we arrived.

  Robin already looked dead. His pallet lay on the cold stone floor, and I dropped to my knees beside him. Donella came down also, heavily.

  “Your Majesty,” the physician murmured, “I fear—I fear it is not good.”

  I gazed into the man’s eyes; he looked exhausted, but I saw what I did not wish to see, deep regret.