Chapter 37
Cressyda
SITTING BEFORE HER dressing table, she pressed her fingertips to her eyes.
They stung. All night she had lain awake, listening to the comings and goings of horses and carriages in the front courtyard.
Everyone was flooding back to Syonno Castle in preparation for the upcoming revelries.
It was set to be a glut of celebrations, each more significant than the last: the Maiden Sacrifice, the funeral of King Borto and the coronation of the new King. No one wanted to miss it.
The castle had been quiet and neglected for so long that the flurry of commotion felt magnified.
Suddenly the corridors echoed with chattering voices and muddy footprints scattered the terracotta hallways.
The air of the castle had become heavy with the presence of bodies and excitement.
And amid it all had come the news that Master Jakespurcia had died in the night.
Cressyda had been told by the maid who brought in her breakfast tray that morning.
The castle was abuzz with murmurs that it had been a mercy.
The Master had been old, they said, and suffering.
His passing was a release. But Cressyda did not agree.
She had tried to visit his sickbed again yesterday afternoon, only to be turned away by the physicians because he was sleeping.
‘Come back tomorrow,’ they had said. And now he was gone.
Cressyda had been relying on Master Jakespurcia to tell her more.
Without him, she was back where she started. Adrift in uncertainty.
A knock at the door startled her. A maid entered and hurriedly babbled that the Queen was coming. Cressyda had just enough time to rise from her stool before her mother appeared.
A shape swathed in black loomed at the threshold. Queen Flavria entered the room, her wide skirts rustling. ‘Not dressed yet, my child?’ she asked.
Cressyda plucked at the ties of her silk robe. ‘No, Mother.’
‘But my household are about to gather in my chambers.’ The Queen caught sight of a breakfast tray laden with fruit tarts and honeyed porridge left on a side-table, untouched. She paused. ‘You still have not eaten?’
‘No, Mother.’
The Queen gave an approving smile. ‘I’ve also been fasting since the passing of our dear King, may he rest with the Great Creator.’ She stepped close and touched Cressyda’s cheek.
At such close quarters, Cressyda could see the stiffness of her mother’s lean face.
Charms and glamours could smooth wrinkles and enhance beauty, but they never looked quite natural in the brightness of daylight.
Her own appearance was too rigid, her hair a little too bouncy and her eyes a little too bright.
‘You are thin lately,’ continued the Queen.
She took Cressyda’s right hand in her own, linking her thumb and finger around Cressyda’s wrist, an absent-minded gesture she had repeated often throughout Cressyda’s childhood, as if always checking that her daughter still fitted. ‘Small and delicate,’ she added softly.
In the past, such a comment from Queen Flavria would prompt a warm glow of approval, but now Cressyda felt nothing.
‘Mother, we must speak about something.’
Queen Flavria moved to the dressing table and began sorting through the perfume bottles lined up before the mirror. ‘Hmm?’ she said.
‘Samsel will arrive soon, and he’ll want to make some changes to the Calestran court.’
‘Yes, I suppose as the new King that would be expected.’
Cressyda did not know how to broach what had always remained unsaid between them, but she must try. ‘Samsel’s going to change things for us. For me.’
Queen Flavria picked up a glass vial and sniffed it. ‘I don’t understand,’ she replied, dabbing some scent on her wrist.
‘He’s never liked me … He hates me.’
The Queen hesitated. She put the perfume bottle down and her gaze skittered away, falling somewhere on the far wall. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, her voice high and forced.
‘But it’s true—’
‘Samsel is your brother. Of course he doesn’t hate you. What nonsense.’
Before she could stop herself, Cressyda cried, ‘He’s not my brother!’
Queen Flavria stilled. Her hands drifted to her sides. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
Cressyda took a deep breath. She must say it.
She must say what had always been unsaid.
Perhaps if she explained to Queen Flavria what she had learnt – that she was one of the Mountain folk, that she had a Gift – then she could reclaim control.
If she revealed it before Samsel did, perhaps she could shape the truth in her own way and stop it being twisted against her.
Cressyda swallowed, her pulse quickening. ‘Samsel isn’t my brother. He isn’t my blood kin. And …’ She squeezed her fingers into fists, her nails biting into her palms. ‘And you are not my mother.’
The Queen’s lip quivered. She took a step back, pressing a hand to her chest.
‘Not my birth mother,’ Cressyda added quickly.
‘Why would you say such a thing?’
‘Because I’m—’
‘Enough!’ cried Queen Flavria. ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’
Fear and panic burned in the Queen’s amber eyes as she flew to the door, skirts billowing.
The older Cressyda grew, the more she had come to understand, with a creeping realization, that the Queen was not the untouchable, commanding figure she had always seemed.
Beneath her frilly clothes and enhanced beauty, Queen Flavria was fragile and damaged.
She had been moulded by a lifetime of indulgence, first as the cherished only daughter among eight brothers in the Kingdom of Carniva.
Then, as a wife, she had been adored and sheltered by a husband whose jovial nature made it easy to overlook her flaws, a man so besotted with his lovely bride that he never questioned the consequences of his blind devotion.
And now, soon to be stripped of those comforts under the rule of her cruel eldest son, she was sinking into denial.
‘Wait!’ cried Cressyda. She tried to grab hold of the Queen as she swept past, but the black taffeta skirts slid through her fingers, soft and supple like dark water.
She had known the Queen would not take this well, but she had not expected a complete rejection. ‘Please, I need to explain it to you.’
But Queen Flavria did not turn back. ‘You’re unwell,’ she called over her shoulder as she sailed out of the door. ‘You’re saying absurd, hurtful things!’
‘But—’
‘You will stay in your bedchamber until you are better. I’ll send someone to attend to you. I no longer feel well myself.’
And before Cressyda could stop her, the Queen was gone.