Chapter XV The Princess and the Mistress
XV
The princess and the mistress
Agnes was a connoisseur of silence, but even she had never heard quite such a silence before.
It was unique not only for its totality but for its brittleness, too. The air in the chamber had a fragile quality, like glass. Even so much as a sharply drawn breath could shatter it.
All around were the ruins of the feast, the broken goblets, the toppled tables, the wine and food spilled and splattered, and of course the blood.
It was in garish smears across the floor.
It soaked the hem of Liuprand’s golden cloak.
And the whole room reeked of it, that salty tang, like rusted metal, like water from a stinking, stagnant pool.
The guests from the remaining houses did not speak or even move.
The women did not attempt to wipe the stains from their skirts, and the men did not call out to their retainers for aid.
Agnes’s gaze cast about the room and she saw only blankly horrified faces, wide eyes.
Perpetua’s chin was quivering, and she gripped tightly her husband’s arm.
Beside her, Lord Rabanus stood as still as a corpse.
It was Marozia alone who shifted. Her arm fell, while her shoulders, cloaked in that stiff black cloth, drew up around her ears. She stared unblinkingly down at the floor, her chest heaving.
Something fell silently from her face—a tear?
And Agnes found she could not bear it, any of it.
The pressure of the silence was like the pounding of mallets against a thin, taut drumskin.
It echoed through her bones; it gave a hot pulse to the blood in her veins.
She thought she had conquered silence, that indeed, she had even conquered pain, but now, in the ebbing haze of her drunkenness, she knew she had done no such thing.
How arrogant she had been, how witless. Her pain had only learned new shapes and new currents.
The silence was shattered at last by Agnes’s shallow, stuttering gasp. She was appalled at herself, at her lack of restraint; surely it was the wine that had slicked the path for her to make such a sound.
But before any heads could turn, before she could be burned with those dozens of eyes, Agnes fled from the feasting hall.
She hurried down the corridors, arms wrapped around herself as she shivered, not even quite sure where she was going. Her body was leading her and her mind was merely jerked along after it, like a horse choked by its bridle. Her vision blurred and multiplied.
Agnes only made it halfway down the corridor before she heard footsteps and realized that someone was following.
Bewildered, panicked, she turned. She could not have predicted what she saw when she did: Marozia, holding up the black skirts of her gown and striding briskly after her.
Agnes let out a startled noise of shock. She paused briefly and blinked, as though her cousin were a mirage, a vision that she could vanish. But Marozia’s pace only quickened, her slippered feet striking the stone floor.
And Agnes, her forehead pricking with a cold sweat, her heart careening in her chest, broke into a run.
She hastened through the corridors, making indiscriminate turns, clambering up spirals of stairs. She was still clumsy with drink and tripped once, twice, thrice over her skirts.
Somehow Agnes’s frantic flight led her to the parapet. As she emerged, she felt the hot gusts of summer night air blast her cheeks, blowing back her hair. The darkness was misty and muddled, smoke-colored clouds blotting out the stars and moon.
“Don’t you dare run from me!”
Marozia’s voice shot out like an arrow, and Agnes felt struck by it, pinned in place. She stopped, bracing herself on the balustrade, panting with exertion. Her whole body trembled.
In a single beat, Marozia was upon her. One of her hands clamped down on Agnes’s shoulder, and the other grasped the front of her gown. She slammed her back against the balustrade, hard enough that Agnes’s teeth rattled in her mouth.
“Traitorous whore!” she screeched.
Agnes raised her own hand to Marozia’s shoulder, trying to shove her away, but her cousin had the advantage of a clear head, and her movements were not hampered by the clumsy sluggishness of wine. Agnes could not push her off.
“You may have fooled those dull cattle in the feasting hall, but I see how you swan your treason right before their eyes!”
The sky rumbled with thunder, drowning out the end of Marozia’s words. It was a dry summer storm, such that would make wildfires bloom wherever lightning struck the parched and depleted land.
Agnes swiped helplessly at her cousin’s face, yet that served only to further enrage her. With a quavering howl of fury, her grip slackened for a moment—but then her hands came around Agnes’s throat.
The sudden pressure, the shrinking of her breath, made Agnes seize with terror. Lightning cracked the sky, and it blanched Marozia’s face, clarifying every feature: her lips, pulled back into a snarl, her white teeth bared, her eyes glossy with the sheen of wrath.
“Marozia!”
Liuprand. He emerged from the staircase and approached them, each stride long and powerful, his previous quivery drunkenness now shed. The lightning washed him, and Agnes saw the blood still drying on his gold doublet and gold cloak, turning the silk a muddied, reeking red.
Marozia’s attention was diverted for no more than a second, eyes flickering to Liuprand and then back to Agnes again, and never losing their rageful gleam.
“Martyr, you think yourself,” she bit out, “so meek and so innocent. But you have always coveted what is mine. My title, my beauty, my children…and now you have taken my husband, too, out of a barren spinster’s sourness and spite.”
Her grip on Agnes’s throat tightened. Agnes could only wheeze, and a red haze fell across her vision.
“Release her,” Liuprand ordered, encroaching another step. “Now.”
Marozia turned her head—slowly, and as she did her hands began to shake, so fiercely that Agnes could feel their trembling through her skin, to the very marrow of her bones.
The corners of Marozia’s mouth dragged down into a grimace that Agnes recognized, one that presaged tears, only there was no weeping now.
Just the faint gathering of water on her dark lashes.
“She’s your daughter,” Marozia whimpered. “Your own blood.”
“Let her go, Marozia,” Liuprand said. “You’ve gone too far.”
Her cousin’s nails dug into the flesh of Agnes’s throat.
And then there was a terrible, groaning, creaking sound, coming from below.
Through the mist of her darkening vision, Agnes saw, with horror, that the stone of the parapet was beginning to break apart beneath them.
That was why, she realized dimly, Liuprand remained at a distance.
If he moved so much as a pace more toward them, the ground would give way completely.
“I have done my duty.” Marozia’s voice thickened. “Followed every law to the letter, every posthumous order. All while you have snuck about, shirking yours for stolen kisses and fleeting pleasures, shaming our family—our house.”
Agnes scrabbled at the hands around her throat but could win herself no reprieve. Her chest burned with the very last embers of breath, and the stone beneath them continued to groan and crack.
Her vision had ebbed to near-total darkness. She could only see the blurry canvas of her cousin’s face, her mouth a passionate smear of red, her eyes two black gashes. Tears wavered on her lash line, but still they did not fall. Her eyes only burned and raged and hated.
And then, all of a sudden, she was released.
Marozia let her go so brusquely, so unceremoniously, that Agnes dropped to her knees on the fractured ground.
She saw the vanishing swish of her cousin’s skirts as she knelt there, sucking in desperate, rasping breaths.
Marozia brushed past Liuprand on the parapet, dark gown fluttering after her, while Agnes was too stunned and pained to move, listening to the creaking and groaning of the stone.
This will be my end, she thought, either way.
But in half a heartbeat Liuprand had his arm around her waist and was hauling her to her feet. He pulled her to safety just as the ground at last crumbled away, into the sea below. Where each bit of rock broke the water’s surface there was a harsh, violent sound, like the crunch of bone.
Then the ocean swallowed the sounds and the tide rolled on again, returned to its ceaseless, restless rhythm. Liuprand clutched Agnes to his chest as she wheezed and gulped. Another bolt of lightning scattered the clouds. And Marozia was gone.