Chapter V An Encounter in the Tower
V
An Encounter in the Tower
She had passed her ninety-second name day, though there was no one alive who knew that.
Waltrude was the oldest creature on the island, save perhaps for a tortoise.
She had only heard of such an animal; she had never seen one.
They did not live on the pebbly beaches around Castle Crudele—there were just the seals that occasionally sunned themselves on sharp outcroppings of rock.
But Pliny the leech had brought with him from the House of Blood an astonishing encyclopedia, a fat leather tome that showed, on each page, a different plant or creature that existed on Drepane.
It was the accumulation of all his life’s work, and the work of many leeches that preceded him.
So Waltrude had learned of animals like tortoises, which lived longer than mortal men, and plants like henbane that, if consumed, would infect the eater with strange delusions and terrible dreams until they sweated the poison from their system.
She traced with her thumb the ink drawings of these flora and fauna, feeling almost as giddy as a girl again, delighted, after nine decades on this earth, to find that there was still something new to her in the world.
But these vivifying discoveries could not turn back time, and they could not erase what was ancient and eternal.
The halls of Castle Crudele were still gray and cold.
Ghosts still lurked in corners and down empty corridors, like pale accumulations of cobwebs.
Her bones still cracked and ached and her flesh still slipped about loosely, sagging further with each passing day, soft as rot on a log.
Her twisted nipples still pained her, each pang reminding her of the four children she had nursed, two princes and two kings.
Never a princess and never a queen, though these ghosts did not cease to haunt her.
In fact, the phantoms of Iphigene and Philomel trailed after her as she climbed the stairs to the east wing of the castle.
Their golden hair floated out around them, translucent as a jellyfish, another creature of whose existence she had newly learned.
Their eyes were wide with fixed horror, and while they did not vocalize, they spoke to Waltrude anyway.
Save me, Iphigene whispered.
Avenge me, Philomel said.
Waltrude could not. She could only aid the living. And so, as she raised a trembling hand to knock on the princess Marozia’s door, her old bones grew suddenly stiff and taut with determination.
There was some scuffling behind the door, and a bitten-out stream of words, mostly unintelligible. Waltrude waited. There was another thud and then a whisper. And then, moments later, the door opened to a narrow crack. The sliver of a face showed through.
It was not the princess. It was her handmaiden, Ninian, peering at Waltrude with her mismatched eyes. Suspicious eyes, almost hostile. Waltrude had grown used to their strangeness, but now they regarded her as if she were a most unwelcome intruder.
“Good day,” Waltrude said. “I am here to see the princess Marozia.”
Ninian’s gaze narrowed. “She does not wish to speak with you.”
“Well, nevertheless,” said Waltrude, “tell her that I am here.”
Ninian did not move. Her stare remained cold; she bristled with silent anger.
Once Waltrude had wondered if she were simple—but oh, she had been a fool to think it.
There was nothing simple about this girl, and her na?veté had been shed long ago, within months of serving at Marozia’s feet.
What Waltrude had mistaken for idiocy was merely love.
A handmaiden in love with her mistress was far from an uncommon thing.
It was only Ninian’s feral passion that surprised her.
She had brought with her some of her peasant roughness and animal-like aggression.
It was instinctual and without true malice, but Waltrude was sure, at least in that moment, that she would scratch out the eyes and bite out the throat of any whom she perceived to threaten her dear princess.
But clearly she did not perceive Waltrude—diminished, stoop-backed Waltrude—as too much of a threat, for after staring at her a moment longer, she vanished from the doorway, shutting it behind her.
There was more shuffling from within the room, more snarling whispers.
Then, with heavy footsteps, Ninian appeared in the threshold again.
She opened the door just wide enough for Waltrude to enter, and wordlessly waved her through.
Given the circumstances of the princess’s self-confinement, Waltrude had expected to see the chamber in disarray, perhaps reeking of unwashed chamber pots and musty, moth-bitten clothes.
But it was impeccably neat, from the velvet coverlet to the drapes, which were matching in their deep-red color, to the dark wooden furniture, which did not show even the faintest veneer of dust. The hearth was swept and there was no ash, only bright, snapping blue flames.
And the princess stood in the very center, her posture perfectly straight, her neck as long and white as a swan’s.
Her black hair was bound up in a gold hairnet, and she wore rubies at her throat.
There was nothing to betray a mind addled with grief.
And that made it all the more vulgar to Waltrude, all the more chilling and dreadful and dire. Here was a great lady, most noble in her pedigree, most surpassing in her beauty, clever of wit and strong of spirit. And yet still everything could be taken from her at the wave of one man’s hand.
Marozia lifted her gaze to meet Waltrude’s.
Her eyes were as black as tide pools at midnight, and Waltrude saw no resemblance between her and her cousin.
Her heart-shaped face, her taut cheeks like two fresh figs, and the natural flush that painted them, even now after countless days without seeing the sun—so different from the lady Agnes with her eerie, unworldly beauty.
She almost could not fathom it that the two could be related by blood, that the two had once been so close as to be almost a single being, a symbiotic creature that fed on itself so that it was both always feasting and always starved.
The princess’s voice was stilted as she said, “Waltrude.”
“Good day, my princess.”
“There is nothing good about it, or any other,” said Marozia dispassionately. “What brings you so imprudently to my chamber?”
Waltrude’s skin prickled; she had never been described before as imprudent.
She had always done precisely her duty, no less and no more.
And she remembered then her very first impression of the princess, as a vain and ungracious girl, and she was, perversely, cheered to see that she had retained some of that brazen spirit.
So very different, Waltrude thought again, from the lady Agnes. So very different indeed.
She was not such a one that could have ever pleased Liuprand, aberrant as she was to the prince’s tastes. Now that Waltrude knew what stirred his heart, she realized that Marozia had been doomed from the very start.
And so, filled with a pity so forceful that it was almost love, Waltrude said, “I have come to offer you my sympathy, Princess, and all the services at my disposal, modest as they may be.”
Marozia opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, a tiny figure bounded into the room.
Her golden curls were long and loose and a bit unruly, and her shift was wrinkled in the way of a lively and active child.
She ran to her mother and leapt into her arms, clinging to her like a kitten.
Marozia took a moment to cup her daughter’s face, kissing each cheek and the little button of her nose, while Meriope wriggled and squirmed.
She was Tisander’s twin, grown together in the womb, though if not for their physical features, Waltrude would never have known it.
They had their father’s Seraphine coloring, dark gold and ocean blue, and their mother’s cherub face and dimpled chin.
Yet in all other respects they could not be more dissimilar.
And it struck Waltrude that this distinction was quite obvious, and devastating in its simplicity: Tisander was a strange, precocious being, too knowing for his years, and Meriope was an ordinary child.
Marozia turned to Waltrude, her daughter in her arms. Her brow had grown suddenly pinched with suspicion. “And what services are those?”
Waltrude drew a breath. It was difficult to speak, with the little girl now as her audience.
She did not know how much Marozia had told her daughter of her fate.
She searched the princess’s face for clues, and then Ninian’s.
The handmaiden was standing a few feet from the princess, hands clasped in penitent obedience. Her expression was unreadable.
“I may look nothing more than a withered crone,” Waltrude said carefully, “but I have passed more than half a century in service of the Crown, laboring for the house of Berengar. I nursed King Nicephorus at my breast. And so I believe that I may still have some influence over his thoughts.”
Marozia’s gaze flashed—those crow-black eyes. Her grip on her daughter tightened. A moment passed, and then she said in a low voice, “You are too boastful for a wet nurse.”
Waltrude stood in silence, waiting.
“Nothing holds sway over the king save for drink and feast,” Marozia went on, bitterness cracking the words.
“I would be better off enlisting the aid of a kitchen wench.” Still Waltrude did not speak.
“And do you think I am a fool? You are slave to my cousin’s whims. Why should I trust your intentions here? ”
Perhaps Waltrude had not appreciated, until that moment, how very lost to each other Agnes and Marozia had become. It was not a cord that had been withered by time and strained with distance. It was a string that had been brusquely cut.