Chapter Twenty-Three The Maiden and the Lord
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Maiden and the Lord
When Marius was a squire, he sent many letters telling Caracalla of his two new friends.
It was very exciting. Neither he nor Caracalla had ever had friends before.
She knew Marius wished to be close to Prince Octavianus, so he might one day serve as the king’s most loyal knight.
Still, Caracalla had the feeling she would like Lord Lucius the best. She had the oddest suspicion Marius did too, really.
Marius said Octavian was witty, but he actually wrote out Lord Lucius’s jokes.
In all Marius’s tales, laughing Lord Lucius took the lead.
When Lord Lucius visited the manor, Caracalla understood why. When the knock came echoing through the still manor, from dark stair to empty hall, it was young Caracalla who swung the great door wide. A dream stood upon her threshold, charm blazing brighter than his red hair.
The young lord rode past the manor on an errand, he explained, and wished to call on his dear friend Marius’s family.
Desperate though Caracalla was to send Lucius away before her father the duke saw him, he lit the grey manor as if a star had come to tea.
At parting, Lucius kissed her hand as if she were a lady, though Caracalla was a child of nine.
Maids never lasted long in Ancilley House, but for the short time the maids stayed Caracalla would eavesdrop on them giggling and passing sketches of the Three Graces: the three lords who graced the court. It made Caracalla proud.
The young heroes: Octavian who would be king, Marius who would be the noblest knight, and laughing Lord Lucius, the light of the court. All handsome, all talented, all surely bound for glory.
And all doomed.
That was the only time she saw Lucius alive.
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
Caracalla was the happiest she had ever been.
Marius had come home, and brought the marquis.
Along with many other people. There was a red-headed woman who wore radiantly phosphorescent cosmetics.
On the strength of the redhead’s shiny eyes and lips, Mama clearly hoped the lady would seduce Marius so he would give up his vow of chastity and there might be heirs to the dukedom.
There was also a stable girl who wore breeches.
Caracalla saw how breeches would be an advantage when riding.
There were even bandits, who shared tales of banditry, thrilling because they were not happening to you.
So many fascinating people now filled the manor, but the Cobra was the most fascinating of all.
Her mother warned civility was the best that could be hoped for in a marriage, but Caracalla was certain the Cobra loved her back.
He never seemed bored by her. He and Marius went around the house to see what had changed since Marius had left – nothing, of course – and the Cobra invited Caracalla to come along.
The drawing room made the Cobra frown deeply. “I don’t see how you possibly could, but do either of you like these curtains?”
“I have no opinion about curtains,” said Marius.
Nor did Caracalla: “If you don’t like them, you should change them!”
The Cobra eyed the curtains as though they had insulted his mother. “Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?”
“Do exactly as you wish,” Marius told him, sounding as puzzled and fond as Caracalla felt. She and her brother were, as always, in perfect agreement.
So it was agreed that the curtains must be changed. The new curtains, which the Cobra “rush-ordered” from the village because he felt they were in a curtain emergency, were filmy and as pretty as ladies’ dresses. The new curtains let a lot more light into the house.
Her mama told Caracalla all men preferred the company of other men, so they could discuss weaponry and indecency.
But the Cobra chose to spend time with Caracalla.
Her tutor Engus wheeled beside them as they went through the manor, filling in the Cobra on the history of their house, and all the trophies the Valerius family had won from battles long ago.
“Are there any items the Valerius family bought with actual money?” asked the Cobra.
Caracalla let out a peal of laughter. “Oh, Lord Popenjoy.”
People didn’t get rich buying things with money.
The Cobra winked at her. “Silly me. You can call me Eric, by the way.”
Invited by a gentleman to call him by his first name! It was true what they said: the Cobra was a flirt. Fate presented Caracalla at that moment with the perfect opportunity to flirt back.
“And here is the betrothal dagger of the Second Duke, given to a lady the First Duke disapproved of. It was a forbidden love! In our family, you know, ah… Eric… daggers are most romantic. The Valerius bestows a ceremonial dagger on their beloved, so that if a berserker rage takes the Valerius, their beloved can kill themselves before the worst happens!”
“Highly romantic,” murmured the Cobra.
“That hardly ever happens these days,” Caracalla assured him breezily, refusing to think of her father. “If the beloved of the Valerius loves and trusts them very much, the beloved signifies it by giving the dagger back.”
“I presume you don’t mean by stabbing them.”
Caracalla laughed again. The Cobra was so extremely droll. They proceeded down the staircase. She was adroitly guiding him into a walk around the grounds, which would end in a stroll about the shrubbery, a perfect place for him to officially propose.
She dropped a subtle hint.
“I am sixteen, which is a perfect age to wed.”
The Cobra made the expression of someone who had tasted something unexpected. “Caracalla. Any gentleman you wished to marry would be happy to wait until you were older. Until you were twenty at least.”
“What if I didn’t want to wait?” Caracalla bit her lip and realized she was being shockingly forward. Gentlemen didn’t like when a lady was too daring.
Her lady mother had presented the Cobra with a Valerius betrothal dagger, which the Cobra had accepted. Caracalla understood the dagger must have been lost in the tumult of leaving a city under attack, but surely the Cobra didn’t regret their betrothal.
Caracalla read in the scandal papers that the notorious Lady Rahela gave people sultry looks. She gave the Cobra a look she hoped meant: Marry me.
“Are you feeling all right?” asked the Cobra. “Did you eat too many cakes last night? Should I make myself scarce while you make friends with the chamber pot?”
One of the many interesting people who had come home with Marius and the Cobra was a pastry cook, so the Cobra had taken them all down to the kitchen to show them how confectionery was made.
Caracalla had eaten eighteen cakes, which was nothing to a Valerius, but the Cobra’s concerned expression gave her an idea.
Chamber pots were not romantic, but she’d been told gentlemen liked to care for delicate ladies.
“I do feel rather—”
“Sick?”
“Faint,” Caracalla said firmly. “If you please, would you fetch my fan?”
The Cobra smiled indulgently, and went up to her embroidery room to get it. A handsome man was running errands to win her favour! Caracalla sighed with happiness, leaning back against the front door.
The knock jolted her out of daydreams and into annoyance. Now her brother was safe home, Caracalla did not wish to hear anything further about the silly war. She was busy being courted.
She lifted the latches and swung the great door wide. “This had better be important—”
Caracalla cut herself off with a scream.
She was frightened of many things: saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, disappointing Marius, and her mother’s friends seeing her embroidery.
She was terrified of very little. Neither blades nor fists wielded with mortal strength posed much threat.
Not to a Valerius, a woman who wore the mark, to the manor born and with bones as strong as the stones in the Mountain of Truth.
No strength, no matter how great, could stand against unearthly terror. A nightmare stood upon her threshold. Her scream burned her throat and echoed off the stone walls before she even realized she was screaming. For help. For Marius.
Marius didn’t come. Instead, there came a flash of gold in the corner of her eye, like a golden bird on the wing.
The Cobra vaulted over the balustrade, landing lightly in a crouch then launching himself in Caracalla’s direction.
He didn’t wince even when Caracalla threw herself into his arms with all the force of which she was capable.
The Cobra caught her hands in his, rings cool against her heated flesh, grip steady and firm.
Caracalla gathered courage from him. The Cobra was so brave, but she was the one with Valerius blood in her veins. She must protect him.
Only when she and the Cobra held each other fast did Caracalla turn, and rest her eyes on horror.
She didn’t live on the Edge, teeming with the dead, but even here in the countryside some poor people died without a stone to keep them safe from rising.
Beggars died in ditches and woke starving before anyone knew they were dead.
She had watched her father’s men put stray ghouls down from afar.
Caracalla had visited the capital and seen a ghoul imprisoned.
The ghoul spoke her name, but it didn’t know her.
Names were the last echo in minds from which all else had slipped away. The dead knew nothing.
A dead man stood in the doorway of the manor. He looked at her, and knew her.
Lord Lucius took his hat from his shining red hair, and bowed. Though the Cobra continued to hold Caracalla carefully, every muscle of his body locked tight.
So the Cobra saw what she saw.
The nightmare was real.
Lucius looked the same as when he kissed Caracalla’s hand seven years ago, sweet-faced, intelligent and animated.
Yet not for a second did Caracalla believe this was a miraculous return, that Lucius had been supposed dead yet returned alive after all.
Lucius was as pale as something that had never known warmth.
When he turned his head to track her movements, the dappled light edging through the leaves of the trees around the estate caught a flicker briefly in his green eyes that made Caracalla think of the film that spread over the eyes of the dead, like milk poured into tea before it was stirred.
More than any sign of strangeness was the familiarity of memory. Lucius looked exactly as Caracalla remembered. The pretty young lordling had died at eighteen, and not aged a day since then.
Lucius smiled in such a knowing fashion. “Hello, Lady Caracalla. Might I inquire if your brother is within?”
Nothing had prepared her for death to be a gentleman.
The Cobra broke in. “Hello, Lucius.”
The dead don’t blink, but a startled pause followed in which a blink might have been. “I don’t believe I know you.”
“Oh, but I know you,” murmured the Cobra. “And I know why you’re here.”
Lord Lucius kept smiling. “It is no secret. I bear glad tidings. The Divine Order needs a leader. Lord Marius is summoned by a god.”