Chapter Five #3
She’d wanted something, too, so perhaps Claudius wasn’t completely to blame, but she realized that she had wanted a happy life with a man who was kind to her.
Perhaps he might even grow fond of her. Perhaps they would laugh together and work alongside one another, building a life that would hopefully include a family. Aye, she did it for the children, too.
Perhaps she was just as guilty as Claudius.
But hope for that pleasant future was dead.
Dead.
Perhaps she’d be better off dead, just like her dreams. She couldn’t run from this marriage.
She couldn’t have it annulled. There was nothing she could do to escape it other than the ultimate escape.
Maximilian would have the mines, and the money, and he could do as he pleased, and she didn’t have to live a solitary life as her husband was out favoring other women.
Ernest may not have been interested in her, but at least he hadn’t chased other women.
She didn’t have to worry about the shame of a husband who needed more than one woman.
But now, she did.
This is a business arrangement and nothing more.
She simply couldn’t face it.
Emmeline found her way out of the keep, but that wasn’t a simple task because Berwick’s keep was quite large and several stories.
There were numerous stairwells, but only one door that she could find.
It spilled out into the enormous bailey, lit by dozens of torches as men walked their rounds on the battlement.
The moon was full overhead, with scattered clouds, and off to the west, the River Tweed snaked alongside the town and out to the sea.
There was a great deal of noise and music coming from the great hall.
The doors were open, ventilating what was probably a steamy, smelly hall, and she could see people milling about.
But her attention kept being pulled toward the river, and beneath the full moon, she found herself wandering in that direction.
There was a door, guarded by an iron gate, that led up to the battlements, but there was also a wall that stretched down the side of the hill and out into the river to create a protected jetty.
Emmeline had seen that steep wall from her chamber.
It was a wall, with steps on the top of it, that led all the way down to the river.
A river that would offer icy death to someone who couldn’t swim.
She’d never learned. Perhaps plunging into the cold water wouldn’t hurt so much when her life slipped away.
It would sweep her out to sea, and Maximilian would never find her.
Not that he would look for her.
It was devastating to realize that no one in the world cared whether she lived or died.
With tears in her eyes, Emmeline headed to the iron gate, unlocked at this hour as the soldiers went about their rounds.
She made her way up a dark spiral stairwell and found herself on the top of the wall.
The portion of the wall that went down the slope was to her right, and she found herself going down the steep staircase, heading toward the river as it reflected the moonglow off the gentle waters.
It would have been a beautiful night and a beautiful sight, but all Emmeline could think of was the darkness that awaited her.
Of a life wasted.
As Emmeline took the stairs, she thought on her useless life.
She’d been born to a bastard daughter of King John, a woman who had married a simple knight, and they’d lived a quiet life with their daughter and three sons.
Emmeline had been the eldest, bright and lovely, and her life had been relatively bucolic, but in spite of their royal connection, they hadn’t lived that kind of life.
No real extravagance. No parties, no grand feasts.
Her parents, her mother in particular, weren’t thrilled with the royal connection, so Emmeline—or Emmy, as she’d been known in her youth—had fostered in two homes of lesser nobility, and she’d had a penchant for sums and writing.
She loved to write about characters from the Bible—only, in her stories, she would give them great adventures, or she’d change the dynamics.
David and Goliath became friends, Adam and Eve made friends with the animals and had a farm of sorts, and Moses built a castle somewhere in the Holy Land.
Emmeline had a great imagination.
But it was an imagination, and a mind, that had been prone to bouts of sadness.
Melancholy, her mother had called it. Melancholy so deep that it was beyond tears.
It was something that had, at times, crippled her, sitting in dark rooms, staring from windows, and it was a melancholy that had only grown worse when she married Ernest. The past ten years with an apathetic, older husband and an unhappy life had made it a struggle to go on at times. That was the truth of it.
And that was why she’d hoped her marriage to Maximilian might be better.
But it wasn’t.
Now, she was heading down the steep stairs, looking at the ribbon of the River Tweed and thinking that it was perhaps a fitting end for her.
She was well acquainted with darkness and sadness.
The icy drink of no return. The river was the physical embodiment of every darkness she had known, so she was familiar with it. There was a comfort in it.
It called to her.
And she answered.