Chapter V An Encounter in the Tower #2
“I am a wet nurse,” Waltrude replied, lifting her chin, “not a slave. I serve the House of Berengar, as I have said. And your daughter has the blood of Berengar within her. I have cause to care for her, as well.”
Something in Marozia fractured in that moment, a small fissure in her facade. Her mouth quivered, the right side turning slightly down in a grimace that, Waltrude feared, might presage tears. She did not know if she could bear to see such a great and beautiful lady cry.
But instead she looked down at her daughter in her arms. “Go play with Ninian now, my sweet one,” she said. “I’ll be back with you in no more than a moment.”
Obediently, Meriope slid from her mother’s grasp and toddled over to Ninian to take her hand.
The girl was dressed finely, in pale-violet silk, her hair in a tight crown of braids.
Without words, she guided Meriope into one of the east wing’s farther rooms. Waltrude knew every detail of every chamber here.
The tower’s remotest room, small and tight and dark, which locked from the outside like a vault, was where Philomel had been kept in her latter years.
A queen in captivity, like some trapped lioness.
Waltrude felt a sudden draft of cold, though the room with its shut windows was airless.
Slowly, Marozia approached her. She had a leonine look, as well, and stalked toward Waltrude as if closing in upon her prey. But she paused before she was in reach of Waltrude’s arms.
“If you truly wish to help me,” she said in a low voice, “then you will tell me what horrors await my daughter in the House of Blood.”
Waltrude’s swallow was audible in the silence. Her wattled throat, which felt suddenly quite exposed, juddered and bobbed.
“My princess—” she began.
And then Marozia was upon her. She clutched the front of Waltrude’s dress with surprising strength, clenching the fabric in her ring-studded fingers. She was made briefly powerful in her desperation. Her lips were pulled back to reveal white flashing teeth.
“Spare me no detail,” she bit out. “I am not a wilting lily. If my daughter must bear it, then I am fit enough to hear it.”
Waltrude inhaled. The princess’s nails were sharp, and they dug into her skin through the thin summer linen. In little more than a whisper, she said, “I am not given to know every detail, my princess.”
“You said yourself you have served here for half a century. You have seen all facets of men’s natures and all that women must bear because of them.
The House of Blood is no different from Castle Crudele in this manner, and indeed no different than even the lowest hovel of the Outer Wall. Tell me, Waltrude. Speak.”
Waltrude looked down at her frock. The princess’s fingers were shaking.
“I have indeed seen the nature of men,” Waltrude replied softly.
“Not all are the same, but in this matter, they must fulfill their duties just as their women do. I know little of the character of the Master of Blood, save that he is a young man who prefers the wind in his hair to the stuffy stillness of the council chamber. He will certainly hold your daughter in high esteem—she is of the most glorious lineages, from her mother and father both. He will not risk the ire of the Crown or the House of Teeth. But yes, he will perform the functions of a husband. If he is of gentler nature, he will wait until your daughter’s first blood.
If he is not, then…the greater burden your daughter’s body must bear. ”
A sheen had appeared on Marozia’s brow, like the misting of a fever. Her fingers trembled more fiercely. And her dark eyes flashed with half a dozen emotions within moments: hatred, terror, grief, revulsion, anguish—and then deepest, blackest hatred again.
And then the princess’s grip loosed. Her hand fell, and Waltrude was released. Silence came swelling like an orchestra’s chorus.
All Marozia said was, “Very well.”
Waltrude regarded the princess and was struck once again by her graces and her beauty.
Even now, in her unimaginable turmoil, neither quality had abandoned her.
Yet—there were horrors that she still was ignorant to.
She did not know of her husband’s most perfidious indiscretion and her once-beloved cousin’s cruelest betrayal.
She could not know. This great and terrible secret, this great and secret terror, which could tear apart the realm like a body at its desecration…
no matter her sympathy for the princess, the truth would never fall from Waltrude’s lips.
In that same stiff, flat tone, Marozia said, “You may go.”
With a nod, Waltrude turned, but halfway to the threshold, she hesitated.
Marozia was no longer looking at her; she was staring blankly into the middle distance, her fingers clutching at the necklace of rubies around her throat.
Fat, lush rubies, like the most exquisite drops of spilled blood.
Waltrude’s old jaw opened, to speak, to say—what? Words fled from her.
She was only a wet nurse. She could not stop the gyre of time. As she pushed through the door and began her dismal, solitary walk down the stairs from the eastern tower, all she could think was that she had saved nothing, and avenged no one.