Chapter XXVII Waltrude Is Stricken #3
I am entrusting this to you, Waltrude. There is no other in this castle I can depend on. No leeches. No princess. No handmaidens. The Lady Agnes was, in every possible manner, alone.
And Waltrude thought again of Philomel, locked in that remote tower, where she screamed herself hoarse to no avail and then at last fell silent.
Even her son was not often allowed to visit.
The prince was a creature of great compassion and keen observation.
Clearly, he had seen the lady’s lonesomeness and sought to remedy it.
That was certainly not beyond the boundaries of etiquette.
Waltrude let her hands fall back. “Very well,” she said. “The prince did say you would refuse all aid. Stubborn and willful, he called you.”
As before, mention of the prince aroused Agnes. She glanced up at Waltrude, a sudden, shimmery light enlivening her gray eyes. She seemed to be asking a question, but Waltrude did not speak the tongueless language of mutes. So she merely returned the lady’s steady gaze.
Then, with what appeared to be great effort, Agnes leaned forward and reached for a parchment upon the desk.
She took it and smoothed it flat. Then she reached for a quill—all of this, of course, with one hand.
By the clumsiness of her movements, Waltrude presumed she was left-handed, and unaccustomed to performing these functions with her right.
But she tried. That slight defiance flared in her again.
Waltrude saw then the willfulness that Liuprand had alleged.
Her writing was slow, labored. Her fingers trembled. She bit down on her lower lip, consummately focused. The letters she made were blocky and tottering, a child’s scrawl. But she did not relent until she had finished writing out the two words.
Thank you.
And then, something extraordinary happened.
Waltrude was overtaken by a wave of knowledge.
It was not simply a sequence of facts that hardened like diamonds in her mind, but a total and encompassing awareness, one that engaged all her senses.
Liuprand had impressed upon her his purpose, and now, it seemed, he had impressed upon her his total perception and judgment, as well.
She saw the lady Agnes as the prince did.
She did not see a walking corpse, a ghost in a grayish gown.
She saw a vivid creature, all the intricate faculties of life occurring with great subtlety beneath the surface, as roots writhe and swell underground before at last showing themselves green and tender in the dirt.
She saw again the slant of defiance to her nose and to her chin.
She saw the clever shifting of her gray eyes—and oh, she felt a fool for ever thinking them dull and lifeless; they were so compelling to her now, perceptive but coy, somehow both solemn and earnest. She could have lost herself in those eyes, pondering their multitudes, searching their immeasurable depths.
It was not the same vibrant life as her cousin Marozia, the ever-more-resplendent flower.
Agnes was another plant, trickier in its arrangement of petals, not so easy to find within a field of many blossoms, all competing for the attention of the sun and the admiration of humans.
She was a night-blooming flower that did its growing in the dark, nurtured by the moon and weaned by the stars.
Waltrude saw the contrast of her black hair against her skin, with its soft, pearlescent luminance, and was made weak in the knees.
She saw the way her full lashes curtained her eyes.
She saw the tender bow of her lips and felt suddenly, alarmingly, obliged to kiss them.
She saw even the faint swell of her breasts beneath the bloodied bodice and felt a pull in the base of her belly.
The Lady Agnes was beautiful. And that realization filled Waltrude with a cold, infinite terror.
Very briskly, Waltrude snatched the note from Agnes. She found that her own fingers were trembling as she folded it into her palm.
“I will take it to the prince,” she murmured. “I am certain it will please him.”
She was certain—horribly, wretchedly certain.
She doubted that Liuprand had betrayed his wife in body—he was an astonishingly restrained man in that regard—but in spirit, his vow was broken.
With despair, Waltrude knew that his heart did not belong to the princess.
And she knew, because the Seraphine were not quite human—they were something slightly greater, with an augmented and refined capacity for love—that his heart never truly would.
Was the lady Agnes afflicted with this same catastrophic sentiment? Waltrude could not be as sure. But it did not really matter. The treason of the prince’s emotion was enough. Kingdoms crumbled and crowns were lost for less.
As Waltrude left the lady and began her terrible journey back to the prince’s chambers, her knees wobbled, and her back ached beneath the burden of this knowledge. You fool, she thought bitterly. You could well be the ruin of us all.