Chapter Thirty-One
After our pause—dew-covered grass, babble of the brook, apple-flavored kiss—we had another short ride.
Back on the horse, I was glad Otto couldn’t see my face.
Was it a failing that, as I rode forward to find my stepdaughter, my thoughts were on myself?
I had some ease, and some embarrassment still, around what had happened.
There were whole swaths of my life I had written off, unknowingly sentencing them to the past. Now I thought of my own future.
And marveled how one kiss—one inane, stupid grappling—could cause a woman to open up her entire self, her entire hereafter, for examination.
Which is not to say I had no nerves about what lay ahead. I oscillated between rejoicing in an imagined success––coming home, with Elin, triumphant––and the simultaneous certainty that we were pursuing a dead end.
But, of all these ruminations, of all my wild thoughts, danger did not cross my mind. Blood was not something I considered.
Elin and Simeon’s inn was bigger and noisier than the one we’d come from.
Sitting at the edge of a small village, the building had a central courtyard, which was filled with coaches and clamor.
When we entered, an ostler came over to take our bags.
Seeing we had none, he directed us toward the innkeeper, who sat behind his desk in a cave-like entry hall.
Otto described what we were after, and though I thought I saw some flicker of recognition on the man’s dour face, he shook his head. “Don’t know ’em,” he told us. “Now, either let a room or make way for folks who will.” He added a please the way one slaps on a bonnet when headed outdoors.
Otto reached into his shirt and withdrew the coin pouch. He held it out. “Don’t know them?” he repeated.
“Don’t know ’em,” the innkeeper affirmed but extended an upturned hand.
Otto put one coin in his fingers.
“Still don’t know ’em,” the innkeeper said.
“Good god.” I stepped forward and grabbed the ledger on the desk.
“Hey!” the man cried in surprise. But we were divided by his wide table. I ran my fingers down the column, scanning the day’s entries, and flipped one page back. A man and woman had checked in late the night before.
“Terrible penmanship,” I reproved. To Otto, I said, “Upper north corner,” and set the ledger back on the desk.
“You can’t do that,” the innkeeper growled.
Otto shrugged in apology and put another coin on the table.
“Two floors up on the left side.” The man sighed, dejectedly collecting the second coin.
We knocked on the door and waited. The ceilings were low, and Otto’s head nearly touched one of the wooden beams that crossed the hall. After a few moments, when no one had answered, I knocked again.
“Simeon,” Otto called, loud enough to be heard on the other side. “Open the door.” When we were met with silence, he knocked, more forcefully. After a long moment, he stepped back. “Perhaps they are here no longer.”
Our journey up until that point had been hypothetical.
Everything a long shot. And felt a long shot still.
But we stood in front of the door we had sought, and I would not just turn around.
I would not give up. Not when I was sacrificing so much, to come this far.
Not when I had not followed Lucy. If they were inside, I would get through.
“Elin,” I called, banging more loudly. “Elin, it is Ethel. Open up.”
Another door down the hall yanked inward, and a man stuck out his head to see what the commotion was about. “Pipe down,” he called, scraggly eyebrows knit into a scowl.
“You pipe down,” I retorted.
“You—” He eyed Otto, standing beside me. His sword in its scabbard. The man slammed his door.
I turned back to banging on the wood in front of me. “Elin—”
The door opened. She stood on the other side of the frame, fully dressed. “Hello, Stepmother,” she said, evenly. As if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be barricaded in a room at an inn a two-day ride from home.
Still, I felt immediate relief, seeing her in front of me, in one piece, with no marks on her skin—a picture, at least, of bodily health. I tried to see around her, inside the room, but could make out only the end of a made bed and an oversized chest. “Did you marry?” I demanded.
“Where is Simeon?” Otto nudged beside me.
Elin pulled the door open an inch farther, and then stopped herself. She was surprised to see Otto with me, the confusion plain on her face. “Hello, Otto,” she said, politely. “How do you do?”
The girl had run away from home, defied every rule of proper behavior, and was still acting as though we were dropping by for tea unannounced. “Did you marry?” I repeated.
“No—” she began, and my relief surged. She pursed her lips. “Simeon is not here. He will be back soon. He ran out of coin and is off to get more.” She paused, hesitant. “He said not to let anyone in.”
I worried, from the way the door wavered in her hands, that she might push it shut in our faces.
“He meant strangers,” I said, quickly. “You’re traveling, after all.
It’s wise advice. But I am family.” The invocation of the word felt false, but I pushed forward.
“Otto is Simeon’s closest advisor.” I took a step toward her, willing her to let us in.
“We’ve come to take you home. Surely, you must see something wrong with this situation.
Why would a prince run away with you? With no guards and no retinue? ”
She fidgeted with the trim on her kirtle, and I saw her cuticles had been gnawed ragged. “To marry me!”
“And yet”—I lowered my voice—“you are staying with a man alone in an inn, and you are not married. What would your book of virtues have to say on the subject?”
“He means to marry me. And it is a woman’s duty—a wife’s duty—to do as her husband wishes.” She swallowed and began to sway on her feet. “You do not think he means to marry me?”
“Please listen to us.” I lowered my voice. “Otto is Simeon’s own man. This situation is not right. Surely you can see that. Surely all your dreams of being swept off your feet did not look like a flea-infested room at an inn.”
“I did not see any fleas,” Elin protested.
But she bit her lip and took a step back.
I pushed through the doorway. Inside, I saw the room was simply appointed, with a table and chairs, the oversized four-poster bed, and a wash basin.
A mirror leaned on the mantel above the small fireplace, and I could see in its reflection that Simeon was not present.
Elin sagged against one of the four posts of the bed. I looked around for smelling salts, but she steadied herself and turned to me. “You have not heard what he has said to me. The kindnesses. The words of … my nature!”
I reached for her. “Compliments are not kindnesses.”
“He means to marry you,” Otto said, coming into the room behind me. “And that is the problem.”
Elin’s face clouded further.
“Just come with us and hear what we have to say.”
“He will wonder where I am.” She shook her head. “A woman’s duty lies in obedience to her husband’s will.”
“He is not yet your husband. And you may not wish him to be after you’ve listened.
But it will be your choice. If you hear what we have to say and wish to be reunited, then consider us powerless to stop you,” I promised.
She looked uncertain, so I decided to put it in terms Elin would understand: “Knowledge is all we offer. And knowledge is the lantern that illuminates the path to wisdom.”
She considered my words. “I suppose,” she admitted, “if you love a bird, you should set it free and see if it will fly back to you.”
I did not know if she was the bird or Simeon, but I did not bother to ask, for she reluctantly gathered her things and followed us back down the hallway.
Otto spoke to me in a hushed whisper as we went down the stairs. “We won’t all fit on the horse. I’ll go let a carriage. You should stay here, tucked away. Simeon is somewhere nearby and it will be much better if he doesn’t see you.”
Before he departed, he paid the innkeeper a few more coins to allow Elin and I to sit in the buttery.
No one would think to find us there, tucked in amongst the barrels of wine and ale and beer, he said.
But I could see Otto looking at the window.
At the door. The habit of a soldier. Or perhaps the mind of a mapmaker.
Charting our exits. The alertness, that careful awareness, reminded me that I, too, had reason to be afraid.
Elin and I settled on two barrels, for there was nowhere else to sit.
“This is unnecessary,” she told me but, with a mind primed already to obedience, said nothing further.
Outside, through the one small, high window, I could hear that the courtyard was busy.
Coaches leaving. Men throwing about trunks and strapping them aboard.
Doors opening and shutting. When it felt that we had settled, lulled by the noise, I turned to Elin.
“We’ve made a mistake,” I told her. I tried to think of the right words to make her understand.
“I know you must be upset that I went off.” She put her hands in her lap. “But he is to be my husband. I must listen to him. I know it is a flexible application of my moral duties, but I do believe it is for the greater good.”
I leaned toward her, thinking of all the ways one can be harmed without visible evidence. “Has he…” The words were uncomfortable in my mouth. “Did he take your maidenhead?”
She blushed, a deep crimson, and shook her head.
“We kissed.” She said it as if this, too, were shameful.
“He wanted to marry straightaway, but I insisted we at least do it properly, on the coast, as he had promised when he first came to collect me. He has been remarkably patient with me. In a hurry, yes, but patient all the same.”
“He has not hurt you, then?”
She sat up straight, in surprise. “He has been nothing but kind! He has shown me no aggression.”