Chapter Nine
Rosamund’s wails had been drowned out by the thick stone of the tower keep, but when I descended the stairs, they arose once more, increasing in volume with each passing step.
It is difficult for a mother to feel immune to her child’s tears, but after a certain volume, after a certain number of years, the innate response becomes, at the very least, muted.
I found Mathilde in the study, sitting in front of her ledgers.
“I wanted to check we had paid all the appropriate levies,” she said, without looking up. When she did, her brow was furrowed with worry. “We have.”
“I don’t doubt it.” I sat down across from her.
The room was one of the many we had stripped of valuables.
There were darkened squares on the walls where paintings used to hang.
The shelves sat empty. But the account register on the table in front of my daughter was filled with meticulous notes.
She explained: “I thought if I found an error, perhaps we could fix it.”
I felt the weight of my secrets and looked down at the desk.
“I doubt it would be that simple.” The surface was covered in organized piles of Mathilde’s things: half-written letters, neat stacks of old books, a writing quill, and a dried inkpot.
Noticing a familiar volume beneath her register, I reached out and nudged the ledger aside.
An open book, bound in green. I knew it well. “Mathilde,” I said, in exasperation.
She stuck out her chin. “There is no prohibition on women hawking.”
Down the hall, Rosie’s crying reached a new intensity.
As with all musical arrangements, crescendos must naturally, and eventually, find diminuendo.
I waited a moment for this softening before responding.
“Just as there is no approbation for a lady hunting. If you’re looking for a pastime, I could suggest ten other things worthy of your attention.
” I picked up the volume—Henry’s edition of Practical Falconry—and pulled it toward me, running my fingers along the spine.
“Your father did not even use the book—it just sat on his shelf.”
“You cared enough to keep it.” Mathilde reached for the manual, but I moved it to my lap, and she widened her eyes in frustration. “He would have allowed me if he were alive! He taught you.”
The small tome sat heavy on my knees, and I closed my eyes at the exhaustion of a repeated argument. “Please, Mathilde.”
She scowled. “If I am not introduced this year, we will have to wait until the following season. I will be one-and-twenty. And even then, there is no guarantee of a happy outcome. I may never find someone you deem worthy of marriage, and there is not infinite time. You might be willing to leave everything to chance, but I am not. And it is my future we are discussing.”
I pressed on my temples, willing away the stories of unwed women. The bodies in the streams. The bellies beaten black-and-blue. “Your best chance at a happy life is to prepare yourself for the ball—”
She tossed her head back in exasperation. “To which I am not invited!”
“And to comport yourself properly and continue to work on your accomplishments so that when you are—”
She placed both hands on the desk in front of her, and though she did not slam them down, the movement had all the dramatic impact she needed to silence me. “I need to be able to take care of myself!”
“You do. You boil the sheets and carry your own water. I must draw the line somewhere. You must keep up appearances. I do not want a future where you must rummage for woodcock and snipe in order to eat your supper!” I looked out the window, toward the apples, and then back at my daughter, hair falling around her face, her worn hands splayed on the desk.
I reached out and took one of them between my own.
She had large knuckles and thin fingers.
I saw, despite the rawness around the nail beds and the thickness on her palms, beauty, and strength.
(I saw, also, all her hands from all her years: Her newborn hands and her three-year-old hands.
Her five-year-old hands holding a quill and her eleven-year-old hands peeling grapes.) Her fingers pulsed in mine, as fragile and full of life as a small bird.
“You know well,” I told her, “that I have always done whatever was needed to take care of you.”
After Errol’s visit—and proclamation—I was determined to find a different way forward.
I shed my mourning black and set about attending a litany of parties, balls, and dinners, saying yes to as many as I was offered, with the idea, or goal, of finding a suitable partner for marriage—for myself.
My actions had nothing to do with grief, which still throbbed like an animal trapped under my skin.
But if I could secure a second husband, our marriage settlement would present an opportunity to negotiate.
I could find someone willing to take the role of guardian of my daughters, to cover their future dowries, and in turn, wrestle control from Errol and his looming intentions.
I had no doubt he’d be willing to give us over easily.
But finding such a second husband wasn’t without its challenges.
Though I was elevated in status by my first marriage, I now had two daughters, no land, and a meager amount of coin.
I was not as young as most women on the marriage market.
I could only consider widowers, most of whom were so far beyond my own years, I felt like a child bride myself.
Still, I said yes to each invitation: I had only a few months before the girls were meant to board a ship that waited for them like a curse I could not break.
One evening I went to a supper hosted by a wizened neighbor who, I believe, understood my situation.
After I arrived, Tabitha pulled me aside.
“I’ve seated you next to Lord Robert Bramley.
He is visiting and titled and has every one of his teeth.
A well-tended estate in the southern province, if you don’t mind me being direct.
He lost his wife five years ago, and also has a child, and, from what I hear, has been uninterested in taking a new wife.
Yet every woman I know would throw themselves at his boots.
Goodness.” She glanced over at her husband, who was twisting his ear hair while listening to another guest. “I would, too, if I had half a chance.”
It was an illustrious send-up for a man who, I soon discovered, spoke so softly it was as if he had swallowed his own sentences. Perhaps, I reasoned, that was why he gave the impression of being so sought after: People had to lean toward him to hear what he said.
Once we were seated and introduced, I turned to face him.
“It seems we have been placed together because you are without a wife.” He looked surprised, but I leaned in, adding a twinkle to my eye.
“And I without a husband. You have a daughter, our host has told me, and I have two. I think that should give us sufficient material for discussion, and if we keep it up properly”—I put a hand on his arm—“we may avoid chiding from dear Tabitha yet.”
He glanced over at our host, then back to me, and swallowed. “Two daughters,” he repeated.
I looked at him carefully. He had a pale complexion, blond hair, pillowy, purplish lips, and the posture of a person unused to their own body. I dropped my arm and decided to take a different approach. “They are seven and eight. Insatiable ages, and yet I miss them the moment I step away.”
“Mine is seven and a half.” He withdrew a watch from his pocket and flipped it open. On the inside of the gold lid there was an engraving of a young girl, maybe three years old. “When she was younger, of course.”
“She looks like a cherub,” I exclaimed, though it was hard to tell what she looked like at all from the simple etching.
“Her mother had it made for me.” He shut the face of the watch abruptly and, in the hurry to shove it back into his pocket, dropped the gold object onto the floor, where it rolled under my chair. He colored, embarrassed.
“Allow me,” I assured him, bending over to retrieve the timepiece from under my skirts. “We cannot let our precious objects escape, if even for a moment.” Upright once more, I handed it to him. The watch was heavy and likely worth as much as a horse. “Tabitha tells me you are from the south.”
“Yes—near the palace. Just a quarter day’s journey.”
“Do you spend much time in the city?”
“Not much,” he admitted, eyes distant.
“Do you not care for it?”
“I do. But I don’t. In some ways, I find it all right. In others…” He trailed off, as if flummoxed by the question.
“So, you prefer the country, then.” I nodded. “I love a good walk in the countryside.”
Our small talk continued in such a vein until an attendant interrupted us, offering a choice between regular wine and sherry.
“The wine,” Robert asked, “is it good?”
The attendant nodded. “A fine year, my lord.”
“But you’d say the same of the sherry?”
“Both are excellent choices.”
“Indeed,” Robert said softly, but continued deliberating until the silence grew unnatural.
“Sir?” The attendant held out one of the bottles. “Shall I pour you the wine?”
“That should pair nicely.” Robert nodded. “But perhaps—would you suggest the sherry instead?”
The attendant cleared his throat, perplexed. “I think you’ll be pleased with either.”
“The wine, then,” Robert decided. “No—the sherry.”
The man could not make a decision. I leaned forward and addressed the attendant. “Please bring another glass. Lord Bramley will have one pour of each.”
Robert slumped into his seat, relieved, and nodded at me gratefully.
Sweat beaded on his brow—from the warmth of the nearby fire, or the anxiety of choice.
There would be no hawks or blackberries, no nestled cups, but I decided in that exact moment, we would be married.
It wasn’t only the money and the title and his docile nature: I would be able to shape him to do as I saw fit with all three.
I nodded toward the pocket in which he had secured his watch. “A daughter without a mother? That must be quite a heartache. Though no doubt your closeness makes up for a great deal.”
“I try to make up for it.” He smoothed the tablecloth with his hands, which looked soft in the way that came from lack of challenge. “I do.”
“Naturally,” I encouraged him. “I am sure you’ve had plenty of opportunities to remarry.
But no one could replace her real mother.
” I felt a pang then, something far more genuine than all the other feelings I had had sitting next to him.
The quick throb of loss that pulses until you push it away. Discreetly, I wiped my eye.
He nodded in agreement. “Or a father,” he acknowledged, respectfully, averting his gaze.
“Do forgive me.” I tried to smile. Sometimes the false self and the real one become so intertwined you do not know where one starts and the other ends.
“Though I do not think anyone else here would understand as you do.” I dabbed at my eyes again.
“And if I may overstep, perhaps it is not a woman’s touch your daughter needs, but rather a mother’s. ”
He cleared his throat.
I nodded, confirming my meaning. He smiled back, uncertain.
The rest of the evening was much the same: like pushing a rock down a hill on which it was already rolling.
I directed. He received. All his timidity landed somewhere soft and unpleasant on the back of my tongue.
But I thought of Rosie’s songs and Mathilde’s animals and knew I could make peace with a lifetime of the feeling for the sake of my girls.
In a few weeks’ time, all was settled. There was no one to ask permission of—a detail that held satisfaction and heartache in such equal balance, I could not be convinced there was any way but forward.
I have wondered: Was it deceitful to orchestrate a marriage based on my needs?
We are all designed to sate our desires—and what is hunger if not a drive to survive?
Is deceit less insidious if it is with noble purpose?
There is nothing more noble than taking care of children—even if they are your own.
Hearing a hiccup behind me, I twisted in my chair and looked back across the study. Rosamund stood in the doorway, tearstained and swollen.
“Mother,” she said, and I extricated a hand from one daughter to offer it to the other. She sank down beside me and put her head onto my skirts. “What should we do?”
“Whatever do you mean, do?” Mathilde watched her. “We can hardly show up in front of the palace and juggle to catch their attention.”
“I know that.” Rosie lifted her head to narrow her eyes at her sister. “I don’t know how to juggle.”
Mathilde sighed and spoke before I could. “We wouldn’t make it past the gatehouse.”
“We could petition. Or at least ask.” Rosie turned to me once more. “Mother,” she pleaded.
“I don’t see what you’re hoping to accomplish,” Mathilde said.
Rosie paused her tears and frowned. “I am not crying for my own amusement. It is not frivolous to be concerned with one’s future.”
“Are you concerned with your future, or about missing a party?”
“Well.” She sniffled. “Why can’t it be both? Many great futures are decided at parties.”
“Just as many great parties derailed many futures,” I said.
But my girls’ pleas and the unending talk of the near hereafter twisted in my gut.
I looked around at the bookless bookshelves.
How could I allow Elin, younger than Mathilde, to be introduced and not offer the same chance to my daughters, my own blood?
I heard my father: You use the tools you have.
I would do whatever it took to protect my family.
I always had. In all the years, nothing had changed: Whatever shred of pride I had, the scraps I’d coveted, I would trade for them.
“I suppose,” I said, “that I could pay Sigrid a visit.”
The girls glanced at one another, and then back at me, a question on their faces.
There are boundaries you make for yourself that you still end up crossing. There are selves that your children do not know. I nodded, confirming. “Before she married the king, her name was Sigrid White.” I sucked in much-needed air. “Sigrid Camelia White.”
They realized, both at once, and gasped.
“You know—” Mathilde began.
Rosamund finished: “The queen?”
They looked at each other, and then back to me, aghast.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I suppose I do.” I looked down at my own red, raw hands. “I’ll need gloves.”