2. Chapter 2
Chapter 2
O n the day of the wedding, Julia was bedecked in all the finery her family’s wealth could afford. She would have said that it was like a debut at court all over again, except she did not have a debut at court - masques and balls and opulent tourneys having been prohibited since the dead tyrant’s ascension as mere vanities. Noble daughters were kept at home, ostensibly to protect their chastity, really to protect their safety.
It was all at an end now, wasn’t it? The long winter, bleak and hard as stone, was over, and the sun was shining once more. All the more appropriate, Julia supposed, that her wedding gown was a shimmering cloth-of-gold, the sleeves embroidered with seed peals from the unimaginably far eastern lands. A walking sunshine, here to dispel the last dregs of darkness.
The new dynasty clearly agreed with that intention. It was not just the tables laden with magnificent swans and fresh venison from the great woods - royal again, ripe for hunting again. It was also the intricacy and grandeur of the ornaments, the things beyond the dishes - there was, for example, a dough-and-sugar creation in the middle of the table that was clearly meant to represent Craerenth with all its five provinces. Mearnt, the one where the Waites once held a castle, was painted in the hues of white and blue and grey, with suggestively jagged edges denoting cliffs.
Why once held, though? Julia corrected herself. I imagine they still do. It’s not as though the threats beyond the coast have disappeared with King Orwyn”s victory. These lands are just considered the crown estates now, most likely.
All these splendid rewards were for later, of course. First, she had to actually get married. Not to disappoint her family, glaring from the wings. Not to disappoint the guests, rustling in silks and damask. Most of all, not to disappoint her husband-to-be.
The man in question was waiting for her where the sacred grove began. Dressed in black as he had been during their first meeting, Lord Athelstan Waite resembled a dark spirit coming to trouble a place holy to the Triad more than he did a bridegroom about to honor it.
Julia swallowed, and walked towards him.
She tried to recall everything she knew about the Waites. But what was there to know, before their recent ascension to heights of power? They were the greatest family in Mearnt, the small wave-lashed province. Her intended’s mother died young, and his stepmother, Lady Sybel Waite, had not lived for long, either.
Julia did not want to think of what that said about the salubriousness of Greyharbor.
His expression remained impassive. Was he really so very indifferent to the ceremony that was about to change both their lives, Julia wondered? Or - perhaps, the change would not be so very great for him. After all, it was different for men - they were not brought up to expect a good marriage to be the apex of glory they could achieve; and, if they were unfortunate with their spouse, it rarely meant a sentence to horror.
He took her hands in his once she stood in front of him. His fingers were icy-cold.
Julia gave him a smile. Now that they were standing so close together, she could notice the color of his eyes. Not the bright blue of his brother’s, but something more storm-like and grey.
He did not smile back, but, to her surprise, he did squeeze her hands in a brief, awkward gesture of comfort.
Father Telmen, who was, as she’s heard, the Waites’ family chaplain, coughed with the utmost delicacy to gain their attention.
Most people throughout the realm, especially those of poorer folk, dispensed with the officiating of priests and contented themselves with private vows. Even some noble marriages were concluded thus, although such cases were not common. But, of course, King Orwyn would not have had his brother marry in such a simple fashion - partly, Julia suspected, because he didn’t want the more pious members of the nobility to dislike him completely.
Which, for a monarch who had just vanquished and slain a priest-king, must have been a difficult challenge to accomplish.
Father Telmen said the usual opening to such ceremonies, his voice soft.
Then it was their turn to pronounce the actual vows.
“I, Lord Athelstan Waite of Greyharbor, swear to take Lady Julia Milburn of Fellsong as my lawful wedded wife. I pledge my word to honor her above all others, to be her shield in times of danger, to be her rock in times of peace. I shall never hurt her, with word or deed, nor slander her, nor abandon her. If I ever break those vows, may the Virgin, the Lady, and the Fate all smite me with their might”.
Of course, Julia knew these were just standard vows, the vows that every marrying couple said. She knew, too, that plenty of men broke some of them - some all of them. But there was something sweet and reassuring in hearing these words in Lord Waite’s steady, deep voice.
She knew what to say now. She had practiced it a number of times in her room.
“I, Lady Julia Milburn of Fellsong, swear to take Lord Athelstan Waite of Greyharbor as my lawful wedded husband. I pledge to honor him above all others, to be his home and hearth in times of danger, to be his balm in times of peace. I shall never hurt him, with word or deed, nor slander him, nor abandon him. If I ever break those vows, may the Virgin, the Lady, and the Fate all smite me with their might”.
Her heart beat a little faster at these words, and her head grew lighter, as though she had lost some blood.
Which was understandable, she supposed, given the momentousness of what had just passed. She was not precisely free - she knew that she would never again be free. But she had passed from the father’s protection, such as it was, into her husband’s, and that was something.
That was some sort of escape.
Lord Athelstan Waite looked at her without a smile. His hands, though - his reassuring, firm hands - remained firmly upon hers.
***
“Has this extravagance really been necessary?” Athelstan grumbled, tuning to his royal brother.
Orwyn”s cheeks were bright - he had clearly already sampled some of the Ielthan wine, delivered from the bride’s home province for the wedding. He was still young and radiant, though, and therefore this evidence of drunkenness looked dashing on him rather than repulsive.
“I have no idea what do you mean, Athelstan. The food is no grander than necessary.”
“Necessary for what?”
“For showing the realm that better times have come. That there is peace and plenty ahead. Fruitfulness, marriages... or, rather, the other way around,” he winked. The notion of his grim brother in a marriage bed with a nubile young wife clearly seemed rather funny to him.
Nubile might have been an overstatement, though. No, Lady Julia Milburn - Lady Julia Waite, now - was not bad-looking by any means. She was, however, different from the golden-haired, apple-cheeked maidens praised in songs - and by means less exalted. Her dark hair was braided simply, her hips narrow, her figure as slim as a boy’s. The only truly striking feature about her were her eyes - bright-blue like the sky on the sort of days that seem drunk on summer.
“What do you think about her?” Orwyn asked, lowering his voice.
“She will make me a good wife,” he replied steadily.
“I mean the fountain lady.”
Athelstan followed his gaze to the fountain, shining with new marble, the statue depicting a bare-breasted nymph with wine steaming out of her mouth and the tips of her fingers.
He grinned his teeth.
“I think she is quite inappropriate for a wedding. This is not one of those feasts with your bachelor friends.”
“I actually think she is more than appropriate. We cannot well literally undress the bride - not that I would have wanted that, she is all sharp angles - but we might hint at what comes after the wedding, can’t we? I’ve heard some great families from beyond the Glittering Sea do something like that when they commission paintings for a grand wedding. One half of the picture depicts some virginal beauty from ancient stories, resembling the bride quite a bit, the other their goddess of love half-undressed in red silk.”
“Well”, Athelstan replied steadily, “then I suppose it’s a good thing I live on this shore of the Glittering Sea”.
“Closer to it than you think.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I want you and your new wife to go to Greyharbor as soon after the wedding as is possible.”
“What on earth -”
“You have to hold the Greyharbor for us,” Orwyn shrugged, as though the jump between the topics was the most natural thing in the world. “Is that not what you’ve always wanted?”
“Of course not”, Athelstan said, rather awkwardly. “I knew that, as a younger brother, that would never be my fate. I knew my duty and my place.”
“Well,” Orwyn smiled his sunlit smile. “Now it needs to be your fate in truth. You will actually be the lord of our family castle. I shall raise a cup to toast your luck, brother.”
Yes, Orwyn was right. He should be glad. He should. He had always been in the shadows, and this was a reward.
Not the way he wanted, not the way his child self dreamed of – becoming a hero of a singular fate and all – but he should not have expected it otherwise, in the real world.
He tried to smile, he really did. He even raised the cup.
It was merely that he was no fool, and knew that generous rewards were not the real reasons why his victorious brother was sending him away. He, Athelstan, was going home at last because he was the unwelcome dark crow at this court of gold and glitter. That was the tawdry, prosaic reason behind it all - he was interfering with his brother’s fresh pleasures.
But the duty was to his brother, as befitted the younger sibling. Therefore, he inclined his head and murmured:
“Of course. You are the most generous of monarchs.”
Athelstan couldn’t help but glance at Lady Julia, smiling in her cloth-of-gold gown merely a few seats away from him. The spring sunlight was washing her skin ivory-white.
He wondered for a second just what was she to say about being spirited away to a bleak castle on the seaside after having barely tasted the life of the new court.
But then, if she had been bred properly, she knew her duty as well as he did. She would raise no complaints, of that he was sure.
***
Julia had already been sitting upon the bed for a while when she heard the knock upon the door. A very stiff and polite knock, as though the man on the other side was not a husband come to take what was, by law and custom, his, but a supplicant standing on ceremony.
“Come in, my lord,” she called out. She knew she was looking rather fetching, sitting on the uncovered sheets, surrounded by candlelight, and did not want to change her position.
“The door opened, and Athelstan Waite stepped inside. The amber light of the candles did little to make his face appear warmer, even if it did color his cheekbones in a slightly golden hue. The look of resignation in his grey-blue eyes remained the same, however.
“I have been awaiting you for a while,” Julia whispered, leaning forward. It was not as though she was seized with desire for this unsmiling man, even though he did possess a kind of stern, dark handsomeness. She was rather seized with desire to give him - or law and custom, for that matter - no possible pretext for sending her back home again.
Non-consummation, for instance.
“I am sorry to be disappointing you.”
“Whatever do you mean?” She understood very well what he meant, of course. “Your company cannot possibly disappoint me.”
“My lady. I will be frank. I did not want this marriage, and I am not a fool enough to imagine you were breathing with passion for me, either.”
“Not then. I am very much - curious now.”
He remained standing where he stood, straight-backed and unmoving as a commander riding in an ancient triumph.
“Please, my lord,” Julia whispered, tugging the gown a little down, baring her shoulders. Taking it off completely just to entice him might have been too much - might have been something to awaken in him suspicions of her maidenly virtue, especially if he had already heard the rumours. But some innocent enticements can’t possibly make him think ill of her, can they?
Julia thought of ladies of the night in the taverns across the Glittering Sea, the way they moved and spoke when they thought her a young man in possession of coin. She could not repeat most of that without appearing a little too knowledgeable for a newly-wedded damsel.
Which was a shame.
“You don’t have to pretend, Lady Julia. Lady Waite.” His gaze landed on her now-bared white shoulders. For a second only. Then he was looking once more upon the far wall, as though it were a sunset over the sea.
“I am not -”
“I am not my brother, I do not make comely young ladies forget their modesty in a grip of desire. I highly doubt that you, who is seeing me for the third time in your life, is going to prove an exception”.
His words stung, and in more ways than one. Julia had never thought herself an irresistible temptress, either, but to be rejected so blatantly -
“We have a duty”, she managed to find another angle. “To make sure the marriage is sound. They are going to inspect the sheets in the morning...”
“So they would”. At this, he came closer, and took from his pocket a knife.
Julia’s breath caught in her throat. He could not be intent on harming her, could he? But what if - what if there was more to the younger Waite brother’s unpopularity than muted looks and lack of eloquence? What if he was as unsound of mind as the priest-king he helped to vanquish? What -
He was standing very close to her, towering over her, a dark and silent figure. The candlelight was gleaming upon the knife-blade, making the thing come alive.
Athelstan Waite extended his hand over the unraveled bed, and slashed at his own palm.
A shiver ran though Julia, but her new husband did not cry out - did not even flinch. He simply watched, his pale face impassive, as blood welled up in the cut, drops forming like beads upon a necklace, then falling upon the white sheets without breaking the silence.
“Here,” Athelstan Waite said briskly, not looking at his bride. “All done. I dearly hope your lady friends are not going to pester you for details come morning.”
“Worry not,” Julia managed to say. “I have no lady friends to speak of. Or any kinds of friends at all.”
“Do you not? That is peculiar, for a lady as fair and well-spoken as yourself.”
“Will you allow me to at least bandage your wound?”
“It’s hardly a grievous thing”.
“Anything can become a grievous thing if left unattended. I would have thought that a warrior with your experience would know that. Do you have anything I could use as a bandage?”
He produced a sturdy handkerchief, gave it to her as though it were a white flag of surrender.
Julia quickly crossed to the table where a pitcher of wine stood, no doubt arranged by someone to calm the nerves of the undoubtedly sheltered bride. The sheltered bride in question poured some into a cup nearby, wetted the corner of the handkerchief in the liquid, and waited for her new husband to offer his bleeding hand palm up. He did not emit any sound when Julia applied the wine-soaked cloth to the wound, but she noticed him clench his teeth.
Tying the makeshift bandage around his palm was a quick thing. She thought she might have forgotten the basics of such first aid, but it looked like her muscles stored the memory even through the years.
“You are very capable, my lady.”
“I congratulate you on paying your wife her first compliment, my lord.”
“It was not a compliment. A compliment would have been to compare your hair to the hue of a raven’s wing, or something else of that sort. Remarking on your competence is merely stating a fact.”
“Very well. Then I have quite enjoyed it, and hope you are going to state such facts more often in the future.” Julia looked up. “Here, all done. Not too tight?”
“Not at all. Just perfect, in fact.”
“How are you going to explain the bandage to people come morning? His Majesty is hardly a fool. He would be able to put two and two together.”
“First of all, you seem to be greatly overestimating Orwyn’s capacity for strenuous thought. Second, I think, with the hubbub of packing, people are going to have better things than to look at my cuts.”
“Packing? What packing?”
“Did Orwyn not tell you? He danced with you twice at the wedding. I thought he might have...”
“Tell me what?”
“Of course he left me to break the news.” Athelstan Waite sighed. “Well, not that I don’t see the rationale. I am your husband now, after all.”
“My lord, you are beginning to frighten me. What is the news about?”
“He wants us to move to Greyharbor as soon after the wedding as humanly possible.”
“To leave the court! But - we’ve barely arrived!”
“So we have. My place is not at court, my lady. It was never meant to be, in truth.”
“And where your place is, so is mine,” Julia murmured, masking her turmoil with the trite phrase of tradition. “I understand.”
Greyharbor! The Waites” ancestral seat, and one as far from the capital as was humanly possible - and not simply in terms of the number of miles.
“Your father had been made Master of the Horse, and his lady wife, of course, is going to stay at court with him. I suppose it would be a great burden to be so far away from your parents.” His face was deadpan, betraying no irony. Nonetheless, Julia wondered if Lord Waite was not joking.
Which seemed a more and more scandalous notion by the second.
She thought about his words. Greyharbor . From what she heard, a bleak place on the cold seaside, a castle that still remembered the first chieftains and their mounds.
It was not what she had wanted. She had never dreamed of the remoteness and isolation of being a chatelaine to a faraway country seat. But what she dreamed of was of little importance. She was going to be far from her family, and far from anyone asking questions about either her marriage or her past.
That was good enough. That had to be good enough.
“It would be a great burden indeed,” Julia said, trying to match him in impassivity. “But I think I would bear it well.”