Chapter XII Adele-Blanche Visits
XII
Adele-Blanche Visits
“He was pleased, don’t you think? The king? It was a good amount of gold.” Marozia fiddled with her necklace of teeth. “Perhaps we should have brought more jewels. Or had the metalworker forge the gold into goblets. Perhaps the king would have preferred that.”
Agnes half listened, but she was much more intently focused on the mortar and pestle and henbane and mandrake arranged before her on the desk.
The steady motions of the task were so well known to her now that it was an unconscious act, like the drawing of breath.
She carefully placed six berries in the mortar and one mandrake root.
This was the least of what the ritual required.
She would have to be sparing in her usage of the materials until she found some secret place to safely grow the plants.
Marozia knew of these heady rituals she performed, but she did not inquire about their purpose. Adele-Blanche had never allowed her into the library, into that cold workshop, protecting her heiress by armoring her in ignorance.
Her cousin was perched on the edge of the bed, running her finger along the gilded edge of the coverlet. “I do think the prince was pleased,” she said. “He is so courteous in his manner. And so, well, lovely to look at. Surely even you can agree.”
Agnes nodded and then absorbed herself again in the arrangement of berries. Liuprand’s manner was gentle, she now knew; her cousin would not marry a man who would treat her meanly. That should be enough to satisfy her.
“Liuprand has already been charmed.” Marozia’s smile was softer now, more private, as if this victory were hers alone to enjoy. Perhaps it was. “Do you think I should work on endearing myself to the king? It will be an ugly task, I know.”
Agnes was sure to catch her cousin’s eye when she nodded.
Marozia would certainly not find a willing audience in Nicephorus, but the betrothal could not proceed without his approval.
She considered how best to advise Marozia.
After a few moments lost in deliberation, she took a parchment and quill and scribbled on it, then handed the paper to her cousin.
Marozia read it with a furrowed brow. “Dine with him?”
Agnes nodded.
“I suppose that is the king’s favorite activity.
” Marozia put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle.
“Then I shall. It might be best to become allies with the castle cook. They surely are the king’s closest confidante.
” Laughter spilled from between her fingers.
“Better than befriending that old crone Waltrude.”
She wished Marozia had not been quite so impertinent with Waltrude.
Marozia had no experience in endearing herself to her lessers; at Castle Peake, all of their servants had been in the employ of the House of Teeth for longer than Agnes or Marozia had been alive.
Even if their servants did not love them, they had been taught to worship their blood.
The servants of Castle Crudele had no such natural loyalty.
They might kneel at Marozia’s feet and then spit behind her back.
When Marozia was less overwrought, Agnes would suggest naming Waltrude Mistress of Robes, if she could not be Lady of the Bedchamber, as was now Agnes’s official title. A show of goodwill.
Agnes picked up her pestle. But before she could grind it down, Marozia shot to her feet and snatched it out of her hand.
“Agnes!” she exclaimed. “No, you mustn’t. The smoke will smell and bring guards to our chambers. It will alert that nasty Waltrude. You cannot do this now.”
Clenching her empty fingers, Agnes looked at the mortar and then up at her cousin.
Marozia bit her lip meditatively. “It will still work if you consume them, will it not?”
So perhaps Marozia had paid more attention than Agnes had imagined. Agnes had caught her, once, lingering outside the library door, but Agnes felt her own embarrassment as well as her cousin’s shame, hot in her blood and on her cheeks, and neither had ever spoken of it or acknowledged it.
This new room was made of gray stone, and although it was large, it felt in this moment very small, as small as their bedchamber in Castle Peake, and despite the air that blew in from the window in large cold gusts, Agnes suddenly found that she was aching for breath.
The heaviness and pallor of their old home spread out over them and then descended upon her, like a mantle made from the gaspings of ghosts.
“Well?” Marozia prompted, very gently.
Agnes felt herself nod.
“Here,” Marozia said, and rose from the bed. She took the mortar with its bellyful of black berries; it looked inordinately heavy in her hand, like a blunt instrument for stoning. She sat back down on the bed, then beckoned Agnes toward her.
Agnes rose and came to sit at her side. The weight of hours was dragging at her body.
All of the sand that was clumped into the soles of her slippers, the mud at the hem of her skirt, the filthy vestiges of Castle Peake.
She wished to be relieved of it all. She exhaled with a force that was almost sound, but not quite.
She lay her head in Marozia’s lap. Marozia stroked back the strands of hair that seemed always to slip from her braided crown and fall against her cheeks. Marozia tucked them behind her ears, once, then again when they fell, and then at last the hair stayed in its proper place.
Marozia dipped her delicate fingers into the mortar and removed one of the berries.
Agnes opened her mouth, like a weaning babe.
She let herself be fed the berries, one after another after another, until the black juice was running down her chin.
Marozia wiped it clean with greatest devotion.
Agnes took her cousin’s fingers between her lips and sucked until they, too, were rid of that dark nectar.
Agnes closed her eyes, lashes fluttering against the red silk of Marozia’s skirt. The bitterness of the berries parched her tongue, but when she swallowed, she tasted the human sweetness of Marozia’s skin. It coated the inside of her mouth.
“Shhh,” Marozia whispered. She bent over Agnes, lowering herself until their foreheads touched. “Tonight I shall dine with the prince and the king. I shall tell them you were too fatigued from our journey to join us. They will not take offense. Do you agree?”
Icy perspiration had begun to bead along Agnes’s brow. It required momentous effort to nod.
Marozia arranged her body in the bed, on her side, close enough to the edge of the mattress that her fingers could brush the floor, should she let her arm hang down.
The world was a swampy tangle of light and shadow behind Agnes’s eyes.
Then Marozia lay the dusty coverlet over her, smothering the last embers of her consciousness.
The mists and vapors of the dream-world hung heavily in the air. Three Adele-Blanches fluttered down and landed before Agnes like crows. One held a spindle, red yarn unfurling from it and into a heavy pile at her feet. A dead serpent, limply coiled.
Another held a brass scepter, though the top had been broken off, whatever idol had adorned it now forsaken. There were small cracks running down the remaining length, as though the entirety of it risked shattering with a single indelicate movement.
The last held a pair of enormous shears, which glinted with great evilness, like the sneer of a striga. These shears were too large for any domestic task. They were meant for snapping weak branches from bothersome trees.
“Well, you have found your way here, though it took rather longer than I expected.” It was the one with a scepter who spoke.
I know. I am sorry. There were matters at hand—but now we are at Castle Crudele and Marozia dines with the king.
“That is the least of what you can do,” said Adele-Blanche with the shears. “Every wasted moment is a drop of precious death-blood.”
“Leave nothing up to your cousin,” chimed the spindle-clutcher. “Let her ply the prince in peace. She will draw his attention while you seek, seek, seek.”
I shall. I thought I might start—
“With the tomes,” the scepter-holding Adele-Blanche cut in dryly. “Indeed. Did I misuse my years teaching you strategy? Of course you will start with the tomes.”
You did not misuse them. The words, unvocalized, still somehow caught in Agnes’s throat. The tomes, and then the tomb. There must be a way inside.
“There will be.” This came from the Adele-Blanche with the shears. “The words will be in the tomes, and the bodies will be in the tombs. If you forget, take off your gown and read your own stomach.”