Chapter XXXV The Mute Tongue Moves
XXXV
The Mute Tongue Moves
The torches were burning low by the time the feast was done, when all bellies were filled near to bursting, all cheeks flushed with wine.
The fullness in Agnes’s belly made her body feel alien to her, but it was not unpleasant at all; she had merely pared away the aching, banished the vestiges of pain from her mangled hand.
What remained was the essence of a real girl, red-blooded, warm-skinned, sated, even happy. A bride. A wife.
As the servants cleared away the plates, Fredegar reached out and took her undamaged hand, lacing their fingers together. She felt no prickle of heat, no shivering of anticipation, but she did feel his softness and steadiness, his uncallused palms. Hand in hand, they rose from the table.
There were no words passed between them as Fredegar began to lead her from the chamber.
Agnes had not thought she would look back, but some force deep within her soul compelled her.
She glanced briefly over her shoulder, gaze skimming over Waltrude, whose eyes were narrowed with unease, and Pliny, whose face was open, at peace. And then Liuprand.
He watched her, and suddenly Agnes was hurled back into a memory.
It was the memory of their first meeting, Adele-Blanche’s body being squelched into the dirt, Marozia smiling hopefully, exuding her charms. He had regarded her quizzically then, already bemused by her silence.
Then he had turned to go, leaving Agnes overcome by his obvious beauty, his golden aura, as if she had encountered the sun itself.
This time, it was Agnes who turned away from him. His beauty still burned behind her eyes. But so did his final words, whispering through her mind.
You will be happy with him.
And she knew that she would. She did not look back again as Fredegar guided her into the corridor.
Now that they were alone for the first time, Agnes felt a brisk flush of shyness. They paced on for a few moments in silence before Fredegar halted and turned to her.
“I must thank you, my lady,” he said, “for humoring me by wearing these flowers. They suit you as well as they did Eupraxia.”
Eupraxia, the mistress who had come before.
There was a faint tinge of grief in Fredegar’s voice, but it did not shame Agnes, did not make her envious of the dead woman or fear that her husband was overly loyal to a ghost. It only made her feel safe in the knowledge that Lord Fredegar, Master of Blood, was such a man to honor his wives, even when they were gone from the world. Agnes would not be misused.
“She was mute, too, for a long time,” Fredegar said suddenly.
“The sickness closed her throat and burned it raw. So for many months she did not speak. But it did not trouble me. I loved her without the ornamentation of words. I must confess I have never been an eloquent man, not like our prince.” He paused and let his gaze rest upon her poignantly.
“So your silence will never trouble me, lady. If you wish someday to speak, I would be pleased. But if you do not, it will not gall me. Our union will not be strained or burdened by it.”
A great swell of emotion gathered in Agnes’s throat. There were no words for it, even if she had wished for them. Instead she merely smiled and felt the corners of her eyes grow warm with water.
Fredegar smiled back. Then he raised her hand to his mouth and very gently kissed it.
“Come then,” he said in a low voice. “Let us rejoice privately the joys of the day.”
They walked together down the corridor, their pace unhurried. The walls of stone were solid around them, adorned with little more than torches and the occasional tapestry, simple yet undeniably lovely. It was warm in those orange pools of torchlight. And as always, it was very, very still.
As they turned a corner, one long shadow stretched across the floor in front of them. A narrow shadow, rheumy at its edges, the shape of a wiry and slender-limbed man. Unruoching.
“My son,” Fredegar said in surprise. “I thought you had retired for the night.”
“I had,” said Unruoching. “Yet as I lay in bed, sleep could not find me. I was plagued by the grimmest of thoughts.”
Fredegar frowned. “What such thoughts?”
Unruoching took a step toward them. Agnes was perturbed by his assurance, his graceful prowl.
As he had left the great hall she had seen him too deep into his wine, tired and ungainly.
But there was no clumsiness to his stride, no muddled quality to his eyes.
They were clear and sharp in their kaleidoscopic color.
And when he stood before his father, he did not slouch or quake.
“To speak truthfully,” he murmured, “I have been plagued by these dark thoughts for quite some time. I have seen you grow infirm and less than wise in your age, Father. Yet you persist in ruling this house as you once did. You have even taken an unsuitably young woman to wife. I fear you do not see your own deficiencies. I fear it will be the ruin of the House of Blood.”
Fredegar blinked in bewilderment. “How long have you harbored such concerns? You have not spoken honestly to me; you have shown a false face. Yet I swear I will hear you, at another time. These are matters for the council chamber, not for my wedding night, not in the presence of the lady.”
“Ah,” Unruoching said, with a cluck of his tongue, “but the lady is precisely the audience I desire.”
“Why?” Fredegar stiffened, standing up straight and shifting slightly so that Agnes was now behind him, shielded by his broad body. “Speak plainly now, Unruoching.”
A very faint smile toyed at the corner of Unruoching’s mouth, but it was humorless, and it was even cruel.
“I cannot allow a child born of your union to usurp my place as heir,” he said. “And now I shall speak plainly indeed—the time of Lord Fredegar is over.”
His next motion was so quick, Fredegar could not even gutter out a noise of shock. Unruoching’s hand went to his belt and unsheathed a dagger. There was the sharp glint of metal in the torchlight. It gashed the air and then, fast as it had been drawn, it was buried in his father’s chest.
Fredegar did not raise an arm to defend himself. He merely looked at Unruoching, confusion and sorrow clouding his gaze, and then down at the wound, which was curiously bloodless, and perhaps even more horrific for that fact. The stillness of the air now seemed perverse.
But then the knife was drawn out, and all that was still in the air became frenzied and mad.
Blood spurted from the deep gash; it splattered on the front of Agnes’s dress, her face.
Her mouth was open in shock and she even tasted it, oily on her tongue.
But this was not the end. Unruoching drove the blade again, deep into Fredegar’s stomach, and here blood came more dramatically, a torrent that could not be quenched, closer to black than to red.
The wound was long, and something slippery showed through—his intestines?
They spilled out and piled on the floor.
Astonishingly, Fredegar stood. A corpse with a still-beating heart. He turned, wobbling, to face Agnes, something childlike in his expression. In death all men became children again, for it was something that no human could truly comprehend.
Then his knees began at last to quiver, and he reached up, grasping at Agnes for purchase, to keep himself upright. He found it on her necklace of teeth, but it broke easily in his scrabbling fingers. The chain snapped. The teeth went scattering all over the floor.
Unruoching reached around his father’s shoulder and made one last cut. Fredegar’s throat opened under his blade. The blood was like a geyser, and Agnes was drenched in it.
And then, at last, he fell.
Agnes looked down at her husband, crumpled in a heap on the floor.
Blood poured out, stretching in all directions, like shadows lengthening as the sun cached away its light.
It lapped at the hem of her dress, over her slippers, a dark and slimy tide.
The life went out from him. His eyes were like smoked glass, matte and opaque, nothing to be seen behind them.
He did not even moan or otherwise protest his exit from the earth. It had all been too quick.
Slowly Agnes lifted her gaze to meet Unruoching’s.
He stood as still as his father lay there at his feet, his face blanched like naked bone.
The fury was all in his eyes; they were wet, and whetted, and sharp.
And he breathed heavily, shoulders rising and falling, like a man in the throes of finding his pleasure, moments before the crest of climax. The dagger was held limply in his hand.
Blood soaked her shoes, and something else died in that corridor.
The beautiful, immortally frozen canvas, the work of art she had imagined her new life to be, was torn up, ripped from its frame and shredded into irretrievable pieces.
Set alight, then stamped into ash. And that bauble of light, the gleaming object of loveliness that Agnes had polished within herself, that shattered, too.
Hope misted out of it, like perfume from a broken bottle, and then was dissolved into the air.
With trembling fingers, Unruoching raised the blade.
And Agnes screamed.
It was at first a wordless shriek, high and thin, and it burned as if her throat were blazed through with fire.
The agony was beyond what she could have imagined, the dredging of her voice, at last, from its cold tomb within her.
It was so loud and so sudden that the knife fell from Unrouching’s hand and clattered to the ground, shock making him stumble back.