Chapter 15
Cressyda
CRESSYDA SAT IN bed, staring at the far wall of her chamber, sniffing.
Distantly, she could hear the revelries of the Winterwane Feast wafting from the Great Hall: shouts, laughter and the thumps of dancing feet.
Longing clutched at her chest. It was a Calestran celebration she actually enjoyed, and she hated being unwell and away from it all.
She shifted on the feathered mattress and there was a clink. A tray lay by her hip, set with tea, broth and crackers. She gazed at the meal, feeling her mouth fill with saliva. Her stomach gave a painful twist. Then she forced herself to look away.
Alinore had carried the rattling tray into their room earlier this afternoon. ‘You’ve only got a sniffle, not the pox,’ her friend had moaned. ‘You’ve been in bed all day. Just eat something and you’ll feel better.’
Cressyda knew Alinore was right, but she had outgrown more than one of her dresses recently and Queen Flavria had started pouting in disapproval. ‘Your waist is thicker, my child,’ she had sighed a few days ago. ‘Such a shame.’
Cressyda’s gaze drifted to the stack of books on her bedside table, and her spirits sank lower.
She knew she ought to use this time to read, but the thought filled her with weariness.
She had scoured every tome in the castle library, sifted through every brittle scroll in the Sanctuary, and still she had not found the answers she was looking for.
She had even attempted to peek though the magical books in Master Jakespurcia’s office, but the door was always locked.
Fighting back despair, she had resolved to begin again, to comb through every page and scroll as though for the first time.
Perhaps she had missed something. She must have missed something.
Because there had to be an answer – she just needed to find it.
She had borrowed the same books from the library, deciding to study them closely a second time, and their spines now teetered in an uneven tower beside her bed.
At least she was now known to be a reader, and she did not need to creep around at night.
Alinore and Ottone merely rolled their eyes at her ever-growing pile of tomes and even the Queen had noticed, often chuckling, ‘You and your silly ways, my child.’
Cressyda’s fingers twitched towards the nearest volume, then stilled. She knew she should open it, but she could not bring herself to. She could not bear to fail again.
Instead, she slipped her hand beneath her pillow and drew out her pink, frayed ribbon. She had taken to keeping it tucked into her bedclothes while she slept or knotting it around her fingers at night: an absent-minded, soothing gesture.
‘What’s that?’ Alinore had asked a few nights ago, and Cressyda had jumped, startled, not realizing she was being observed.
They were both tucked up after the maids had blown out the candles, trying to get to sleep, Cressyda in the large four-poster bed and Alinore on the pallet under the window.
‘It’s the ribbon I’ve had since …’
She had told Alinore about her mysterious origins just once – the day she explained why she was called ‘the Pet’. Though Cressyda thought of it constantly, she rarely mentioned it. It was too painful, too difficult.
‘… since I was born,’ she had finished.
‘Your mother?’ Alinore had breathed, dark eyes lighting up for the first time in a while. She had been sullen and glum since Ottone had left for the Ferente court last moon. Though Cressyda also missed her beloved brother, she was at least glad to be rid of Samsel for a while.
‘Possibly,’ she had replied. ‘I can’t be sure.’
‘Could you ask the Queen?’
‘No.’
Cressyda had clenched her teeth in exasperation.
This was exactly why she never shared such things.
Alinore was only trying to be helpful, but her friend had always been completely oblivious to Cressyda’s precarious position at the Calestran court.
If Queen Flavria even suspected that Cressyda thought about her birth mother, she would be furious.
‘What about one of the ladies-in-waiting? Or the schoolmaster? Someone must know.’
Cressyda had shaken her head. ‘Whoever my mother is, she gave me away,’ she had said between gritted teeth.
‘But don’t you want to find out?’
‘No,’ she had lied.
Sometimes she allowed herself to wonder who her birth mother might have been.
Perhaps an actress who played in the theatres along the river that snaked through Tormale – she had heard ladies-in-waiting whisper that such women were always having babies.
But whoever she was, she had given Cressyda away and the pain of that reality was almost too much to bear.
Sometimes Cressyda managed to convince herself that she did not want to know about this woman at all, who must surely be cruel and heartless. But still, she would keep wondering.
‘What about if we—’
‘Leave it alone, Alinore,’ she had snapped, turning away. ‘Just forget about it.’
They had been terse and irritable around each other ever since. Without Ottone’s steady good nature to smooth the edges, the hostility between them had grown heavier.
Cressyda wanted to tell Alinore the truth; she wanted to tell her about the terrible shadows, the way they materialized from nowhere, otherworldly and disturbing.
She had seen one again just two days ago as she had passed by the old nursery, a small, scurrying being that had flitted from the doorway, grumbling and muttering in a hissing, eerie voice, its features distorted and grotesque.
The sight of it had made her stumble and almost scream.
Before it could notice her, she had picked up her skirts and run in the opposite direction, not stopping until she had reached the safety of her chamber.
But somehow, she could not say any of this to Alinore.
The words stuck in her throat. She could not bear to speak aloud what she had carried alone for so long, and yet still did not understand.
The thought of Alinore’s perplexed, distressed expression as she tried to explain it made Cressyda feel sick.
Her friend would have so many questions, of course, and she would have no answers.
To reveal so much and still have nothing certain to give felt too unnerving, too exposing. It was easier to say nothing.