Chapter XXVII Waltrude Is Stricken
XXVII
Waltrude is Stricken
It was a terrible morning in Castle Crudele, though Waltrude had seen a great many of those.
The morning after Philomel’s death had been terrible, mainly for all the commotion and the soiled sheets that Waltrude had inherited the grim task of washing.
How miserable, she had thought, as if the Crown could not afford to burn these and buy new ones.
Was there some crippling shortage of sheets on Drepane?
Her hands trembled at recalling it. A spray of white seed and streaks of fresh red blood.
The same as their wedding night, she had realized with a shudder.
On this terrible morning, she had been called, too early, to the prince’s chambers.
Waltrude dragged her feet as she went. The scent of blood floated in a bitter mist through the corridors.
There was splatter on the floor leading out from the great hall, and Waltrude hoped her task would not be to scrub it.
She reached the prince’s door, the dread weighing heavily upon her. She raised a reluctant hand and knocked.
The prince’s voice rang out immediately. “Come in.”
Waltrude did.
A feeling of wrongness overcame her at once upon entering.
It was not only that the table where the prince took his meals had been overturned, along with several of the chairs; it was not that the hearth was ashen—though it had been a cold night, it looked as though it had never been lit; it was not only that there was a smashed carafe, wine spilled across the floor.
It was something intangible that hung in the air, limp and gray, as if the spirit of life had been drained from the chamber.
The prince stood at the window, facing away from her.
Waltrude took several steps inside before he turned around, and when he did, she stopped in shocked horror.
His hair was mussed and the top buttons of his shirt were undone.
But most alarmingly, a bright, pulsing bruise stretched across his cheek, marring the lovely golden skin beneath.
“My prince!” she gasped. “What has happened to you?”
His eyes were the dull blue of a languid tide pool. “Nothing. That’s the problem—nothing.”
Aghast, Waltrude approached him. With trembling limbs, she reached up and, ever so gently, touched her palm to his bruised cheek.
The prince closed his eyes briefly and leaned into her touch. His skin was very warm. She wondered, with no small amount of dismay, if he was drunk. But the carafe was shattered and the wine was on the floor.
“You must have heard,” he said lowly, “what my father has done.”
Her stomach clenched. She had not wished to speak of it. She was not even certain, really, of the truth—rumors had spilled from the mouths of the leeches like a spewing of insects from a bloated corpse, but these were rumors only. Ugly, garish, and bleak. She did not want to believe them.
But Waltrude felt the aura of the prince’s anguish and knew it was true. Even so, she needed him to speak it aloud—perhaps the reality would be not quite so terrible as the lascivious accounting of the leeches.
“Let me hear it from your lips, my prince,” she said.
A breath went out of him, hot with the smoldering anger in his heart.
“My father was enraged by the House of Blood’s absence at the desecration.
I told him it was a petty snub, but he could not be dissuaded from his rage.
He decided to repay this slight with an insult to the assembled leeches.
These dull, innocent men who could not be prevailed upon to thumb their noses at him, much less plot some sinister treachery.
He served them stale bread and watered wine and then had a gross feast brought for himself.
Naturally, one leech stood and gave a feeble word of protest… ”
The prince paused, and his gaze left Waltrude’s face. The anger had been fierce in his eyes, and now it had softened into an expression that was closer to shame.
“I should have prevented it,” he said. “Had I stood then, myself, and tried to cow him into silence. Had I told him to recant…”
The prince shook his head, as if to clear it, and his eyes sharpened once more.
“Of course my father could not let even the most pitiful protest lie. He went around the room and had each man swear fealty to him. Call him a true king. All the leeches he demanded this of—and then he turned his gaze to the high table.”
Waltrude’s chest tightened. She did not want to believe—and yet she found she could imagine it all so easily, as if she had seen it herself in a dream.
The king, spitting his fury. The leeches, bowing their heads in wretched submission.
And even that, she knew, would not have sated him.
The Sluggard, they called him, but perhaps he should have been titled the Glutton.
It made her ache for the little boy she had known, the one who had nursed so gently, had not even been overly solicitous of her breasts.
Something vile had poisoned his innocent spirit. The world had sullied him.
“They all answered yes, of course, you are a true king.” Liuprand’s voice was pained. “The Most Esteemed Surgeon, the princess—even I wrenched the bitter and reviled words from my throat. But then he came to the lady Agnes…”
The silent Lady Agnes. The statue-girl. The living corpse. Waltrude swallowed down her own horror.
“She did not speak. He knew she would not. He knew it all along. He had arranged the moment, like a tournament spectacle. Some sort of grand joust,” Liuprand bit out. “When she refused to answer, he…”
The flush of passion on his face vanished, and his skin took on a cast of gray.
It was no less angry, but it was a cold sort of rage, laced through with anguish and disgust. The disgust was mostly for his father, of course.
It was easy to be revolted by the king and all his deranged appetites.
But Waltrude knew the prince well enough to know that a bit of the disgust was for himself.
An arrow pointed inward, aiming at his defeated heart.
This, to Waltrude, was the vilest of all Nicephorus’s crimes: to make his son loathe himself for every one of his own repugnant acts.
To make him believe that each atrocity occurred not because of the king’s nature, but because Liuprand failed to prevent it.
“He drove his knife through her hand.” Now the prince did little more than whisper.
“Again and again. I could not…the Dolorous Guard thundered in and held me back. As I said, he had planned it. He said he would stop if she spoke, but I do not believe he meant it. He did not want her words; he wanted her blood. To prove his power—as if the torture of an innocent girl proves anything but his own barbarity.” Liuprand laughed, a hollow and joyless sound.
“I broke from the grasp of the Dolorous Guard and stopped him, though not before he had destroyed her hand. He has ruined it, Waltrude. I do not think she will ever hold a quill again.”
Waltrude felt her own voice wither in her throat. She croaked out, “And all that time, she did not speak?”
“No. I did not see even a tear fall from her eye.”
A bit of perverse, ill-timed curiosity tugged at her.
She could not help it. The same question had been winding through the halls of Castle Crudele since the arrival of the princess and her cousin.
It had reached the ears of every servant, every guard, every kitchen girl, and of course all the leeches, who worked their tongues as cannily and dexterously as their hands.
Each one offered a different story, from the innocent to the truly depraved.
Still, Waltrude tried to keep her tone mild as she spoke.
“Whatever do you think is wrong with the lady Agnes, my prince?”
As offhand as her question had been, it aroused the prince mightily. He drew himself up to his full height, shaking off Waltrude’s hand, eyes narrowing to sharp points. His face regained its flush of passion.
“You should ask what is wrong with the world, that it has forced her into silence,” he replied. His voice was so bitter, Waltrude regretted having spoken at all.
“Yes,” she said hurriedly. “You are right, my prince. I am sorry.”
But just as quickly as it had overtaken him, the vital spirit evacuated again. His shoulders slumped, and he exhaled a low, tremulous breath.
“I could not sleep,” he confessed. “I could not excise my own rage.” Shame touched his tone once more.
“And every time I closed my eyes, I saw her tearless face. I heard the princess’s sobs.
The memories would not leave me.” For all his largeness, his noble beauty, the manhood that had welcomed him early and eagerly, in this moment Liuprand appeared to her like a very little boy, one she could still hold on her knee and regale with nursery rhymes about too-clever hares and grandmother’s stew. “Waltrude, you must go to her.”
“To the princess?”
“To the lady Agnes.”
Her brow furrowed. She tried to mask her bewilderment as she replied, “To what end, my prince?”
“To see to her wounds. To offer her comfort.”
It was a less ignominious task than scrubbing the blood off the floor, to be sure, but it vexed Waltrude nonetheless.
“I’m afraid I am not very fit for the tending of wounds.
” Nor for offering comfort, though she did not say that.
“Are you certain you do not want to send for a leech? It would likely be more effectual.”
“No,” Liuprand said sharply. “No leeches. In fact, do not allow any past her door.”
Waltrude frowned at this odd request, but she did not challenge it.
“Go to her, treat her wounds. She will try to refuse your aid. Do not let her. She is stubborn and willful, so you must be resolved. I am entrusting this to you, Waltrude. There is no other in this castle I can depend on.”
She nodded, chest swelling. “I will not fail you, my prince.”
“I know.” His gaze upon her was brief but tender. “Now go to it.”