Chapter XIII Innamorata
XIII
Innamorata
The candles would not go out. Pliny had seen to that.
Just enough wax remained that they would stay lit for as long as they needed, and offer enough luminance by which to read.
It would be better if he knew the words by heart, but this was not a ceremony he performed often.
The last had been, of course, for the lady Agnes and his old master.
And in that, his memory was pitted with black holes, like termite-eaten wood.
Small details had been lost. Jettisoned, like ballast, to preserve the soundness of the vessel that was his mind.
Because it could not comprehend so much tragedy and injustice; absolute reality was too much for any human to bear.
So he had arranged the candles, as was his task.
He had read the lines in the book, murmuring them aloud to himself, until he could replicate their rhythm.
He was not fluent in the tongue of old Seraph, and the vowel sounds demanded quite a lot from his untrained mouth.
The Lady Agnes would not understand, but, he suspected, the prince would.
He was a learned man. An honorable man. Just.
Perhaps it would be only Pliny who saw this act as one of honor. But it did not matter. Because no one else would ever be given to witness it.
The prince came first, his golden aura beating back the bleary darkness of the chapel.
His clothes were not especially fine—Surgeon forbid he be stopped on his way, and his ceremonial dress questioned—but the beauty of his form was infinite, regardless of how he was robed.
One concession he did make was the small golden circlet, which he only placed upon his head within the chapel’s dim safety, for Pliny’s eyes alone.
What was the significance of the circlet, what was its provenance?
It was not quite a crown, and it seemed both old and new at once, both tarnished and gleaming.
A relic of Berengar’s? But Pliny imagined that the king would guard such an artifact jealously.
What meaning did this piece of hammered metal hold for the prince?
Pliny never learned.
No words passed between them. They waited, but not for long. The door opened, and the sudden shift in air made the candles gutter, flattening and then leaping upright again, revived. A shaft of pale light patterned the floor.
The Lady Agnes entered. She wore a gown of gray so pale, it was almost silver—it was silver, in fact, in the borrowed glow of a thousand candles.
The white flowers were in her hair, and the necklace of teeth around her throat.
She, like the prince, was not adorned in any especial finery, nothing that might reveal their purpose if they were encountered on their way to the chapel.
Her dark hair fell to her waist, and Pliny realized that he loved her.
She was his new mistress. His devotion slid into place like a wheel finding its groove.
Agnes did not come alone. Pliny was surprised, though perhaps he should not have been, that she was arm in arm with Waltrude.
The wet nurse did not smile—he would not expect her to—but there was a ripple of fondness radiating from her, something invisible to the eye, something Pliny could only perceive with his mind. Or was it his heart?
Waltrude led Agnes through the chapel, footsteps hushing against the stone. She maneuvered the lady before the altar and placed her, as a draughts tile, across from the prince.
Liuprand’s eyes were the precise shade of the ocean under a midnight moon.
Pliny had heard the other leeches whisper that this was the color of Seraph’s great lagoon—but he could not confirm or deny this himself, having never touched the mainland’s shores.
The gash across his cheek had still not been attended, and so it would heal crudely, into a thin white scar.
It would be the first blemish upon the golden prince’s beautiful face.
It was said that no creature born from the marshy soil of the island could ever equal the beauty of pureblood Seraph.
Pliny had always accepted this to be true—why not?
Beauty was not a virtue that moved him either way.
Yet now, when he cast his gaze over the lady Agnes in the half-light, he was astonished to find that she looked for all the world like Liuprand’s matched half.
Her beauty was a secret thing, perhaps best perceived in the darkness.
Waltrude still did not speak, though her mouth quivered, as if she wished to.
Instead, she reached up and drew a veil of lace over Agnes’s hair.
The only concession she would make to the specialness of the occasion.
It was a thick veil, not gossamer, and it hid the white flowers well beneath it.
Pliny’s throat grew unaccountably tight.
The prince and the lady Agnes joined hands. Pliny opened the book, which was new to him, but also unfathomably old.
He spoke the sacraments in the tongue that had died, and only he and Waltrude were witness as the prince and the lady repeated them, stammering a bit with their strangeness.
From his pocket, the prince produced a ring.
It was a rather simple one, such that would not call particular attention to itself when the lady wore it.
A black pearl was set in its center, cushioned by two smaller pearls of white.
The band was silver, engraved subtly. Words that, from this distance, Pliny could not make out.
With difficulty, the lady flexed the fingers of her left hand.
Outstretching them, she allowed the prince to slip the ring onto her trembling and blemished fourth finger.
Pliny felt a sting of failure against his skin, like the lash of a whip, but the pain was driven out by the poignancy of this moment.
All his senses gathered to him, as soldiers called to arms. He smelled the burning wax and the candles’ cringing wicks.
He felt the paper rasping under his palms. He saw Waltrude’s lips pressed into a thin and sober line.
He heard the prince exhale softly as he admired the ring on his lady’s hand—no, not his lady, not any longer.
She was more to him, in secret. She was all.
Pliny tasted his own perfidy, which was as sweet as it was strong, like wine without water. He gulped it down remorselessly.
The vows themselves had been spoken. Pliny closed the book, which gave a soft thudding sound, and the candles flickered and revived themselves yet again with the disturbance in the air.
This moment would return to him often, in waking and in sleeping—especially in dreaming—with all its accompanying senses.
But none would be more clamorous, more forceful, and more evocative of emotion within himself than this: Liuprand raising his hands and, so very gently, cupping Agnes’s face.
“My love,” he whispered.