Chapter Twenty-Eight The Cobra and the Duke #3
“You are not listening. I was never something safe. Each Valerius kills the thing he loves. Valerius children kill from the cradle. Siblings and playmates die on blades and under pillows, through falls and fire and drowning. Every kindness my lady mother ever did me was at the risk of her own life. I was graciously permitted to be alone with Caracalla, and with her. Once, I fell ill as a child. My lady mother came to the east wing and nursed me with her own hands. She slept under my father’s roof behind an unbarred door to do it.
She did everything she could. And I – I left them.
My father wished me at court, to befriend the young king and command Eyam’s armies.
I wished to leave the manor and… to make friends. ”
There was no end to his list of shameful weaknesses.
“It had been years since my father paid much heed to my mother and sister.
I visited – sometimes. Not often enough.
I preferred the Palace on the Edge. I liked being with Lucius and the crown prince.
I thought if I could swear the oath of blood and gold to my king, and be made commander general, take my sister and mother away – die in battle for my country, for a cause, and in all honour, knowing they were safe…
When I was seventeen, I knew I dreamed. I rode down to visit the manor unannounced.
It was sheer chance I chose that evening and not the next, when it would have been too late.
“My father broke down the door to the women’s wing. His men let him do it. His men helped him do it.
“He was nothing but wrath that day. Divine wrath, he calls it. A maidservant lay dead on the stairs I used to carry Caracalla up as a babe. I wonder what divinity there is in murdering the staff. The chamber door lay in fragments on the ground. My lady mother was cornered like a rat by a dog, trying to shield Caracalla. I pulled my father off her. I was never strong enough before. I didn’t know if I would be strong enough then.
But I had to be strong enough. There was no one else.
I forced him out of their rooms onto the battlements. I fought him there.”
Marius broke off. Eric, chief among Marius’s shameful weaknesses, regarded him with luminous sympathy in the deepening dark. It was unfortunately clear that Eric had misunderstood everything.
“You think it was awful for me, don’t you?
I was laughing. It was the closest I ever came to playing a game with my father.
It was the closest we ever came to love.
Every Valerius father, every Valerius son, knows the day may come.
If wrath comes upon them early or late, one of their own might meet them in equal combat.
Anybody else would be slaughtered like an animal.
It would have been a clean death, if I’d stabbed him through the heart.
He would have welcomed that, rather than what I did.
I threw him off the battlements. I broke him upon the ground. ”
“You were protecting your mother and your sister,” Eric said firmly.
“My own mother knows better. It was only after my father fell that I ran back to find their chambers empty. My mother took my sister and ran. She couldn’t get past us, so she barricaded herself and Caracalla in the tower room.
She knew we were two beasts battling, starving for blood, hungry as fires.
She knew, no matter who won, they were not safe.
I knocked upon the door, I bid them come out, but they didn’t answer. They didn’t trust me. They were right.”
“They love you.” Eric spoke of love more quietly than he had spoken of desire.
His mother and sister had written him letters when he was in the Ivory Tower, had visited him at court. Marius knew they loved him. Their love had little to do with him and everything to do with their gracious hearts.
“Valerius warriors might slay each other, but none ever left another with shattered legs and back. I did that to him.”
“Showed mercy? He tried to kill your mother and your sister, and you let him live. A man with shattered legs can live a full life. Your mother brought in Engus to teach the duke how he lived. Engus became your sister’s tutor because the duke wouldn’t see him.
Your father turned away from every chance you offered him. ”
“Was it a chance?” Marius asked heavily. “Was it mercy? Perhaps it was revenge. Perhaps I wanted to show him how it felt, to be defenceless.”
The dust of the training grounds silvered with evening. His father’s blood had dyed the ground at the foot of the battlements deep red, his hands scrabbling at the red dirt. Marius had towered over his father, and for once his father had been helpless.
“In the end, it was cowardice,” Marius admitted. “I could not bear to do it. I have to live with that.”
His father had to live, when it was not what he would have chosen. His mother and sister had to live with the duke. His whole family had to live with Marius’s failure.
“You know all that, don’t you?” The horror had poured out of Marius, so now he was empty. And tired. “You always have.”
Eric hesitated, then nodded. “It’s different that you chose to tell me. It means something more.”
Marius wanted to ask, What does it mean?
He was aware Eric might not have an answer.
At Eric’s literary salon back in the capital, everyone besides Marius often discussed stories and said, “There must be some significance” and analysed every detail of the story, down to the colours of the curtains.
Everybody wanted to believe their story meant something.
Everyone said “mean something” because nobody ever had any idea what that meaning could be.
Eric said, “I believed this before we ever met. I had this argument online, and I’ll tell you what I told everyone then. You did nothing wrong.”
“Online” was something Eric referred to often. It seemed people talked wildly, without fear of repercussion or duels, when “on the line”.
“You went to the Ivory Tower afterward. You swore the line of violence ended with you. You took a vow never to touch a weapon.”
“I broke it.”
“To save my life!”
Marius nodded. That changed nothing.
Eric was beginning to look bewildered. “So you must have thought that it was the right thing to do. You always try to do the right thing.”
“Not any more,” said Marius.
It was simple. He didn’t know why Eric seemed taken aback, staring around the manor as though he found himself in a place he’d never been before.
“I thought…” Eric began. “I thought you believed you were doing the right thing.”
How could anyone believe that?
“What could be right about what I did? I betrayed my king to his death. I swore the oath of blood and gold to a traitor. I failed as I did with my father. I could not bear to let you die, so I chose to be an evil coward.”
“What?” Eric whispered.
Marius could understand why this truth might distress Eric, who seemed able to find some path of light even in sinful darkness. Eric was probably worried that Marius felt guilty. Eric had a higher opinion of him than Marius deserved. Marius didn’t feel guilty. He only knew he should.
“It’s all right. I’m not sorry. I have pledged myself to you and villainy. I would do it again.”
“To me and villainy,” Eric repeated.
“You knew my king would die, and told me nothing. Can that be good?”
Slowly, Eric shook his head.
“Whatever wickedness you wish of me, I will carry out. Only ask. I will do anything.”
That was the oath.
Eric’s eyes fixed on nothing with a kind of blank terror, as though he was trying to read and had forgotten how. Marius should not have kept him so long near the east wing.
Marius said, “Enough horror. Let us go talk to the dead.”