Chapter VI Milk, Teeth #2
“Did you see the prince today?”
Agnes, not expecting her question to be answered with yet another question, furrowed her brow. “Yes,” she said. “In the library. Not in our…” She trailed off, heat rising to her face.
Waltrude stared at her impassively. The corner of her mouth twitched, then froze, then twitched again. At last, she said, “And did you see the princess?”
The heat rose from Agnes’s cheeks to her scalp. It made her hairline dampen at once with sweat. “No,” she replied. “I did not.”
“Hm,” was all Waltrude said in response, though it was a very solid and heavy hm. She turned away from Agnes yet again to bundle up laundry.
“She does not wish to see me,” Agnes added hurriedly, in her own defense. “She does not wish to be seen.”
Waltrude’s tone was pregnant with indiscernible emotion as she said, “And why is that, lady?”
Agnes could have scolded her, she supposed.
She was only a wet nurse, and an unused one at that, as Tisander had long outgrown his need of her.
And Agnes was a noblewoman of great esteem: the Mistress of Teeth, secret bride of the prince of Drepane.
Waltrude spoke so boldly out of turn. A crueler mistress might even raise a hand for it.
But instead Agnes said, “Because she is as stubborn as you are, and as bitter as an old shrew. What privilege, what joy, has she ever been lacking in her life? The most profitable marriage any lady could hope for, a surfeit of children, the inheritance of the wealthiest house in Drepane. She is princess; one day soon she will be queen. If indeed she suffers, it is only because the world is not enough for her. It has never been enough.”
Waltrude was silent a moment, and Agnes felt briefly, perversely pleased that she seemed to have prevailed in their argument. Then the wet nurse turned back to Agnes, laundry held to her chest.
“Her husband lay with her but once, against his will, and now dishonors their marriage vow every night,” Waltrude said.
“She has lost her title. She has one child she holds dearly, who will soon be taken from her. And she has no friends in this castle save her handmaiden. She has gold and jewels and fine silks, yes, but what is their use, when she cannot leave the confinement of her tower?”
“She is free to come and go,” Agnes bit back. “She is free to do as she pleases.”
“Free is not always free,” Waltrude murmured, and Agnes could not deny that she knew well what that meant.
Feeling, unexpectedly, a rush of cold, even though the windows of her bedchamber were shut, Agnes wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.
The risen, aged white scars brushed against the silk of her nightgown.
Just as with her hand, the damage was grievous enough that Agnes lacked sensation in various places across her rib cage and her stomach, the undersides of her breasts, her mound.
These days she rarely thought of it; the memory was fuzzy, like a half-faded ghost. But now—
“I will not be shamed,” Agnes said in a whisper, “for seeking my own freedoms, my own passions and pleasures. You know what a deprived creature I was once. You have seen the permanent etchings on my person that time will never erase. You, of all beings, Waltrude, should not place judgments upon me. You should understand my reasons and my cause…”
“I have said nothing to shame you, lady.” Waltrude’s voice was even. “You are the one who flounders and rambles in your guilt.”
“No,” Agnes said forcefully. “Not guilt.”
She had decided, the evening that she wed Liuprand in the dark, that she would not feel it.
She would forbid that emotion to blaze its path within her.
She had chosen her course; she would not be blustered from it.
It was the only way she could live—to lock her guilt behind a great stone door, within an impenetrable vault.
It was a cursed object, like a talisman imbued with black magic centuries old.
Waltrude merely lifted one shoulder and then let it fall back again. “Very well, lady,” she said. “I will bring your cold milk from the kitchens.”
Later, when she was alone in bed, Agnes sipped her chilled milk—the summer was nearing its apex, and its hot, gusty breath even managed to penetrate the walls of the castle, ordinarily so cold as to bastion its inhabitants against such heat—and she thought.
She thought of Adele-Blanche, who had long since ceased to visit her in her dreams.
She thought of her mother, and the taste of infant’s flesh.
She thought of Marozia, and the musky slide of juice in her mouth.
But in the end, her thoughts always returned to Liuprand.
It was not only passion she felt for him, the torrid, desperate longing that slicked the place between her thighs; it was exquisite and immeasurable tranquility, a peace and safety she had never thought possible.
He had vanquished all of her ghosts. His embrace was a blessed haven.
A refuge. She had yearned for it all her life and had not even known her own loneliness until she had seen his face and felt his kiss.
There was no force greater in the world than this.
Than love. Nothing could dissuade her—she did not dare to give it up.
She was the lady Agnes, Mistress of Teeth, Liuprand’s bride in the dark, queen by the candlelight.
She curled up beneath the covers and pressed these thoughts of him into her mind; the theater behind her eyelids was a riot of light and color.
And yet, when she did find sleep, her dreams were of Marozia. Her dreams were sweet milk and sharp teeth.