Chapter XXVI Mother
XXVI
Mother
Liuprand followed her into the corridor. Agnes quickened her footsteps. His legs were longer, and he could have easily caught up and even outpaced her, yet he kept himself at a slight distance—perhaps a yard or two behind. He was still near enough that he did not have to shout to be heard.
“Agnes,” he said, slightly breathless from the effort of chasing her, “please. Wait.”
She did not stop or turn to face him.
“Agnes,” he said again. His tone was more pliant this time—nearly desperate. “Listen to me, please. Just for a moment.”
She only quickened her pace again.
Liuprand was not deterred. He, too, hastened his steps, and he did not relent until he was at her side.
Agnes stared straight ahead; she could not even force herself to blink, and it made her eyes burn.
Liuprand reached out, nearly touching her, but he let his arm drop before he could grasp her hand.
Her hand. She had it clutched to her chest, wrapped in the fabric of her dress, yet it dripped persistently through, soaking the fabric and splattering to the floor.
Agnes had left a trail of blood in her wake, a path of red from the great hall through the corridor, like the tracks of a fleeing animal.
She reached her chamber, though exhaustion was beginning to drag at her.
The wounds would not kill her—Truss and Mordaunt, with their anatomical cunning, had made sure of it—but the loss of blood was great, and it made her dizzy.
Despite this she managed, one-handed, to turn the knob and fling the door open.
Yet before she could step through, Liuprand wedged his body into the threshold, one arm jammed against the doorframe, preventing her entrance.
In this position, she had no choice but to face him at last.
Liuprand’s eyes were dark, with more depths than she could fathom. She had not realized how changeable they were—like the ocean, one shade of blue at a moment, and then another with a shifting of the sun’s beams or the rippling of sand below the surface. Now they drew in no light at all.
And Agnes saw herself reflected in these inky cobalt pools. Her hair was bedraggled, the crown of braids coming loose. Blood was smeared and drying scarlet across her cheek, but her skin held no innate color. She was as white as a naked bone.
“Agnes,” he whispered one final time. There was a desolate look on his face, soft yet almost crazed. “I’m sorry.”
Apologies did not come easily to a prince, even one such as him. But Agnes merely pushed past him into the chamber. He stood there for one moment more and then slipped from the threshold, shoulders sagging, as if all the vitality had been siphoned from his noble form.
She shut the door firmly behind him, then turned with her back against it and slid down to the floor.
Agnes sat upon the hard stone until the sky outside the window turned glossy and deep blue.
If there were stars about, none of them winked at her through the darkness.
Time was her enemy. It perched like a hideous gargoyle on her shoulder, hissing reminders of what had been done.
Memories did not fade with the passing of moments; they only strengthened, as an oak grows thicker and sturdier in its years.
She pulled her legs to her chest and rested her chin in the crevasse between her knees.
And they pressed upon her, the memories: Of the king’s frenzied panting as he worked over her.
Of the sight of the knife driven through her palm.
Of Marozia’s quiet, wordless weeping. It was this memory that played itself over most relentlessly of all.
It was not what she had done, but rather what she had not.
She had not spoken up in Agnes’s defense.
She had only cried at witnessing the horror, mourned for her own stomach, which certainly churned, and her own mind, which would now be mutilated with these memories, too.
But the ruination would be inside, where no one else could see, while Agnes would wear her wounds openly, always.
No one who saw it would forget what occurred.
Nicephorus had left his mark on every soul in the great hall; he knew it, and the knowledge filled him, glutted him even, as an endless banquet of pig and fish.
And Liuprand. She had lost something there, though she could not precisely discern what.
Perhaps she had diminished herself in his eyes—perhaps he, like his father, thought her inhuman, little more than a walking corpse.
Perhaps now he would look at her and think about nothing but the mangle of her hand and the violent debauchery of the scene.
Or worst of all, perhaps he would look upon her and see only what he could not do.
He would look into her eyes but see his own shame and failure reflected back: how too late he had wrested himself free; how he could not protect her, nor the kingdom of Drepane, from his father’s horrible appetites.
One thing Agnes did not do, as she sat, was look at her hand. It remained cloaked within the folds of her gown. The blood would not cease spilling, and the red stain flowered outward, like a burst of poppies, opening suddenly and violently in the summer heat.
When nearly all the force of life had drained from her, Agnes rose, unsteadily, and walked toward the bed. Marozia had not come; no one had come. She was as alone as she had ever been. She collapsed onto the mattress and dove into the dark water of dreams.
She had expected Adele-Blanche to rise out of the eerie mist like a wolf raising its head mid-feast, bloodied muzzle pointed to the moon.
But it was Celeste who came, shedding the mantle of clouds as if they were a white-furred cloak.
She was as pale as any lady from the House of Teeth, and her black hair was wet, plastered to her forehead and cheeks.
She stepped out of the water, and the cattails rustled as they were parted by her naked knees.
Mother.
Celeste was clutching a bundle to her chest. She rocked it gently and hummed a tuneless song.
She kept her gaze to the ground as she walked, stopping before Agnes, though not close enough that she could have reached out a hand and touched her.
She kept the same watchful distance that a vulture keeps from an animal that is dying but not yet dead.
“Agnes,” she said, at last raising her head. “What has happened to you, my daughter?”
Agnes looked down and realized that her hand was still dripping blood. But in her dream-world, the blood was a silvery color, not red, like the slime on a rotten fruit. She looked away again, momentarily squeezing her eyes shut, as if she could make this dream vanish.
She could not. Even her dreams had never been her own. Celeste stared back, water in her dull dark eyes.
“I didn’t mean it,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean it, darling, I didn’t know.”
If she had not already known she was dreaming, Agnes would have known it then. Her mother had never called her darling.
Liar. The word was not vocalized, but Celeste stiffened at once, a sharp inhale making her lips quiver.
“Why are you so cruel?” she asked, and tears gathered on her lashes but did not fall. “Is it not enough; have I not paid the highest price?”
The bundle in her arms began to shift. A fold of the blanket fell away and revealed the squirming child beneath. It had no eyes, and no mouth, and only two slits in the place of its nose. Yet still a noise came from it, a muffled, impossible keening.
Agnes’s heart jumped into her throat. Get that thing away from me.
Celeste’s eyes widened, and she clutched the bundle closer to her chest. “No! You cannot take him!”
Agnes wondered if her dead mother was somehow dreaming her own dream.
She wondered if, in her dream, she could not distinguish between her own daughter and Adele-Blanche.
Perhaps they had always been the same to her: one twisted creature, though her grandmother had been the hands and Agnes had been the mouth.
The not-child’s fleshy arms were riddled with bite marks. Bile pooled in Agnes’s belly.
It never would have lived. These were Adele-Blanche’s words, but they were Agnes’s words, too. You chased a corpse over a cliff. You left your living child behind.
“I didn’t know,” Celeste insisted, jutting out her chin. A shiny trail of mucus ran down from her nose. “How could I have known?”
Easily.
And then one dream shimmered away into another.
All seven torches were aglow, painting the stone walls of the library in daubs of orange and gold.
Light gathered along the spines of the books and set them gleaming as well, bright as goblets of yellow nectar.
Adele-Blanche stood, which was strange on its own.
In the library, her grandmother always sat.
If a tome needed to be fetched, Agnes did it.
If a torch needed to be relit, that was Agnes’s duty, as well.
Stranger still was the presence of Wrestbone.
As a rule, Adele-Blanche allowed none within the library but Agnes and herself.
It was Agnes who dusted the shelves, who scraped wax from the wooden table, who wiped up spills if her grandmother toppled a cup of wine.
Even Marozia was forbidden to enter, not that she would have wanted to.
“You are especially silent today, Agnes,” Adele-Blanche said. “Is it your mother’s fate that troubles you still?”
Agnes bit her lip. “I keep thinking how I might have stopped it. How I might…”
“Come now. It could not have been prevented. She has always been a tricky one. In some ways I am surprised it did not happen sooner.”