Chapter Thirty-Four #3
“You will not tell me what happened,” she instructed in a whisper. Her face paint had begun to crack about her mouth. The rouge on her cheeks looked violent.
“Only a moment ago, you were insisting upon it.”
“He is not a villain,” she protested. “Just a boy. Unaware of the force he wields.”
“A boy old enough to marry is a man.”
The door opened at the far end of the room, pushed by Wenthelen bearing a tray of refreshments. Rosie and Mathilde close behind, faces carefully blank.
Sigrid smoothed her hair, remembering herself, but did not acknowledge them. “Well,” she said, “he will return. He will return and we will plan the wedding.”
“Certainly,” I said, the lie as easy on my tongue as a glug of oil.
I turned to the tray, to Wenthelen, to my daughters, as they made their way across the room.
“Ah, look—something to eat. But, Your Majesty, I must warn you before you settle in—it really is not safe for you to be here. With the damage to our roof, the structure is not sound. We could not have anything happen to you here.”
Sigrid shook her head and regained her haughty composure. “I’m taking my leave,” she declared, as if the idea were her own. “It seems your entire household is hanging on by a thread.”
“Now, now,” I told her, laying a soft hand on her arm. “Let us not resort to insults. If all goes as planned, we will soon be sisters, after all. That is the word you used, is it not?”
“In name only.”
“Yes, well.” I walked over to the door and held it open so that she might pass. “No one really cares what happens behind closed doors.”
The queen was denied the satisfaction of a dramatic exit.
Her retinue had to vacate the driveway in reverse order of its arrival, and Sigrid’s carriage was the last to leave.
I did not wait to watch the slow maneuvering, the climbing and turning of horses, the reversal of the carriages, though I could hear the noise—the shouting of men, the hoofbeats, the creaking and jangling of coaches and wagons—as I went up the stairs.
As I was climbing, I heard footsteps behind me. Otto stood in the doorway. He looked back over his shoulder to confirm no one had seen him and then turned to me, brown eyes concerned. I beckoned that he should come upstairs. He followed me and we went down the hall without speaking.
I had taken a gamble, being so impertinent with the queen.
But I believed myself to have calculated well.
A guilty conscience might have tried to smooth things over, to curry favor, which in turn might eventually have pointed to my guilt.
But I felt none, and instead had behaved as a woman with little to hide—and little to lose.
Sigrid had been right that our household was hanging on by a thread, but I no longer felt any conviction about what we hung on to.
I did not fear a little snip and a fall.
It might be better, in the end, than all the clawing upward.
I led Otto to my bedchamber, but no lust or curiosity lit our faces. For on the bed was a box, and inside it lay Lucy. Her feathered body inert, her eyes lifeless. A wing still bent at the wrong angle. A few extra feathers loose, gathered in a corner of the carton.
Otto put a hand on my arm.
I looked at Lucy for a long moment—fruitlessly hoping that she would raise her head, glare at me, and hop onto my glove—before turning to him, my eyes full.
His hand stayed on my arm and I raised both of mine to return the gesture, holding him by the elbows.
“You shouldn’t be here.” It did not mean, I do not want you here.
He looked me over. Asked questions without words. I knew he saw the bruises on my neck when his pupils widened, his eyes darkening. The hand on my arm tightened. Otto’s gaze flicked to the door, as if Simeon might be in the room, or just down the hall. “Where is he?”
“We are all safe now. Except for Lucy.”
“I never should have left.” His face contorted. He looked me over again, searching for more injuries. “You are covered in mud.”
“My natural state.” I attempted a smile.
“He will not rest. You will not be safe.” He let go of me to rub a hand over his face. “We must get you out of the kingdom.”
“Otto—”
“There are routes—”
“Simeon will not be coming home,” I told him, voice low.
“You are in danger.”
“Simeon will not be coming home,” I repeated, with more force.
His eyes searched mine. I nodded. And his jaw ticked—understanding. He held his face close to mine, pressed his forehead against my own. “We are in worse danger, then.”
“We?” I asked, in surprise. “You were at the palace.”
“I should have been here.”
“You need to go back outside,” I whispered. “To keep yourself above suspicion.”
He nodded and then began to speak quickly.
“I’ve told the queen the truth, as far as I knew it.
That Simeon acted without honor, taking Elin, lodging with her, without marrying her, and without her family’s permission.
That I assisted in recovering her, and that I believed her family—you—were within grounds to do so.
That we left Simeon there, and that a prince, in the eyes of his kingdom, needs to act with honor or the kingdom will lose respect for him.
Sigrid does not know all that I know—not about Simeon’s child—for I thought this was the best way to protect you.
But maybe if I had told her, maybe, she might have predicted—”
“If you told her, then you would only put yourself in danger without protecting anyone else. You have to go back and pretend all is normal.”
“You—” he started, but I cut him off, dropping his arms and giving him a small push toward the door.
“Go!”
“Ethel—” he started again.
I could not stop myself. I went to him. Let him hold me a moment.
His arms around my shoulders. We did not speak.
The words did not feel necessary. “I’ll make my way back here,” he said, into my hair.
He went to the door and with a final look—how all the world can fit in one look—he slipped back out and into the hall.
I watched Otto return to his horse and rejoin the caravan.
And stayed at the window until the queen’s carriage passed through our broken gates.
I knew, but did not fear, that it would be gracing our property for the last time.
I could see the future clearly: There would be no more invitations to balls.
No more cause for overdone dresses. No more hopes of elevating my girls.
Maybe at one point, I might have reached for the coach’s receding form.
Grasped at all it represented, at what was slipping away from me.
But rather than loss, its disappearance brought relief.
We dug another grave that afternoon. A small one. A little burrow carved into the rich earth beneath the oak tree. The excavation was gentle and done with all the care our hands could muster. But it was only my hands that lowered Lucy, wrapped in linen, into the ground.
We took turns dropping shovelfuls of dirt.
Saying goodbye. And when everyone had said their part, I knelt on the grass in front of the dark spot of upturned ground and offered my falcon wordless gratitude.
For what good are words when you have all of life to express?
I had thought myself Lucy’s teacher, showing her, reminding her, of the correct ways of being: loyalty, patience, and fidelity.
Except, it had been she that taught me: Loyalty.
Patience. Fidelity. I sank my fingertips into the dirt and breathed.
And Elin and Alice and Rosie and Wenthelen and Mathilde swayed behind me.
Put their hands on my back, on my shoulders.
And in their touch, I felt it: All I had given.
All I would take. Live, live, live. Slender wrists holding up a falling roof.
I did not know what would come next. What time and circumstance would spit up into our lives.
If the events of the night before would be discovered and spell our end.
But I could grasp on to what was in front of and around me.
Elin, still covered in the night’s mud. Rosie and Mathilde, holding one another.
Wenthelen and Alice, silhouetted by the branches of the oak, heads bowed.
A bird in the ground that had saved my life.
More than once and in more ways than one.
I looked around at my family. They looked back at me. I nodded, stood, and we went back into the house together.