4. Chapter 4
Chapter 4
T he first thing Julia noticed upon entering the chapel of the keep was the stained-glass window. It represented the Lady walking the waves, with an exquisitely rendered ship floundering in the corner of the landscape. The goddess” robes were white and rendered radiant by the sunlight streaming through the window. The glassy waves shone brightly, too.
So much so that it was easy to forget that the scene was meant to represent a catastrophe, one where only the deity’s intervention saved the sailors from death.
“I see you have noticed the window, my lady”, Father Telmen’s voice was soft and polite, if rather distant.
“It would have been hard not to,” Julia managed to say. “It’s very different to the chapels and temples of Ielthe. There, the Lady usually walks the fields of ripened grain.”
“That would have been incongruous here. After all, most people on the coast here are either fisherfolk, traders, or workers who pleat their ropes and sew their sails.”
“Or sell the fish,” Julia pointed out. “Or trade in sea-silk.”
“That too,” the chaplain agreed. “All of these livelihoods suffered, though. During the… recent events.”
This was peculiar, Julia decided. Was this man so decided on gentle withdrawal that he could not even bring himself to say the words civil war?
“You are very well-informed,” she flattered him. “I’ve heard that you fulfil many roles in Greyharbor. The keep proper, I mean, not the town.”
“I do my best.”
“Are you also in charge of Lady Roxane’s education?”
“I taught her her letters when she was very young, but otherwise she had been entrusted to a Sister from the Convent of the Lady’s Mercy”.
Julia nodded. That sounded ordinary enough.
“Can I meet the esteemed Sister?”
“I’m afraid she had crossed the Radiant Bridge.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”
“The siege.” The answer was laconic. “May I ask about the reason for your interest?”
She could not exactly tell him I want to be a perfect noble wife to make sure my husband does not annul our unconsummated marriage.
So, instead, Julia settled for a partial truth:
“Lady Roxane looks somewhat abandoned. I can’t help but feel sympathy for her. Besides, a good education would be important even if…” Saying if His Majesty never calls her to court would sound rather blunt. “If not in the nearest future.”
Father Telmen”s expression stiffened.
It seemed she had said something wrong after all.
“Lady Roxane is a beloved sister, and far from abandoned. I assure you, my charge would never neglect her interests.”
“Your charge?”
“His Lordship is my spiritual charge still, isn’t he?”
Julia wondered if this grey-haired man had once taught the Waite brothers their letters, too.
“Was there any attempt to find Lady Roxane another governess?”
“If there was, I am unaware of it.”
“Could you help me with looking for one? Surely you would agree…”
“I would”, he inclined his head, politely, but rather curtly. “But such things need to be ruled by His Lordship. He is, after all, her guardian.”
“I see”. Julia was growing exasperated with this clear habit to see her questions as an attack on his beloved charge . “Do you know where I can find His Lordship now?”
***
Julia was walking slowly, putting her foot one in front of the other in such a way as though she had recently risen from a sickbed.
Was there really a time when she danced easily across the decks of storm-tossed ships? After years of dark seclusion between stone walls, she found even the small dunes running down to the sea to be an unstable ground.
Truth be told, Julia was not even sure she was supposed to be here. Was not sure she was even allowed to. A noble wife had plenty of duties, after all. Julia had no aversion to any of that, but the nipping tang of salt in the air felt good, too.
She thought of the little Roxane, now likely weaving in the solar. Sea-silk indeed. It was a good occupation, of course, but Julia could not find any evidence of other solid skills taught to the little lady.
Julia raised her eyes from the ground and saw, in the distance, the dark figure of the very man who could help her answer her questions.
She quickened her steps. She wanted to call out to him, to make him turn, and only remembered in the last second that ladies were not supposed to do that, and wasn’t she a lady once again, now? A kin to the royalty, at that?
She supposed that ladies were not supposed to grab their husbands by the sleeve, either, though, and that was precisely what she did when she saw that Lord Waite was not responding to her presence.
He turned sharply:
“I did not expect to see you here, my lady.”
A fear raised its head in Julia’s heart, a fear bred over the years. What if she had committed a great transgression by coming here? A married lady she was now, but still, a woman walking alone in a half-wild place.
She made an effort to stifle the terror. She would achieve nothing by cowering. And there was a time she did not cower, was there? There was a time she could face a moonless night full of dangers.
“Am I forbidden to walk these dunes and cliffs, my lord?” She raised her eyebrows, as though laughing at how ridiculous the notion was. “Greyharbor is a fine castle, but one has to leave it sometimes.”
“Of course you aren’t forbidden. This is your domain now, too, after all. The dunes and the cliffs and the sea as far as we can see until the horizon. I would have been a fool to forbid you any of it.”
“Thank you, my lord.” A sense of relief. “I imagine you are glad to be back here, after all the tribulations?”
“I suppose. I’ve never been bred for a place beside a throne, in the end. I have been bred to be Orwyn’s helpmeet, though. He was supposed to be the Lord of Greyharbor, after all.”
“But now you are. A sovereign of the sea until the horizon.” Julia smiled, looking at her husband’s profile, stone-chiseled against the stormy sky.
“Not quite a sovereign. I am still answerable to Orwyn.”
“We are all answerable to our king. Even younger brothers.”
“I imagine you have no interest in those matters. What did you wish to talk to me about, my lady?”
“Little Roxane. It seems that her education so far had been... patchy at best.”
“She did have a tutor in a priestess of the Triad. An old woman from The Convent of the Lady’s Mercy, not far from here”.
“I’ve heard about it, but is she not…”
“Six feet underground. She had been too feeble to last the siege of Greyharbor.”
“Roxane must have been very brave.”
“She was.” His voice softened a fraction. “She is. Brave and resilient and curious. She did not deserve the starvation the last ruler’s forces unleashed upon her.”
“I am sure your presence was of great comfort to her.”
“My presence was on the other end of the country, my lady. I wasn’t there. She had to weep of hunger alone, thinking that her brothers have both abandoned her now. I wonder if that is going to be featured in one of those glorious songs you said my deeds deserved.”
“You mean...” It took Julia a second to recall that conversation. “You remember what I’ve said to you then? It was months ago.”
A pause. Only the sound of the waves” harsh caress upon the shore.
“Our meetings have not been that numerous,” Lord Waite finally said. “It was - not hard to remember.”
“Are you looking for a new governess for your sister, or else a tutor?”
“Not at present.”
“I would have never thought you an indifferent brother.” Her words likely hurt. She meant for them to, just to snap him out of this sullen brooding.
“ Indifferent brother?”
“Lady Roxane needs to be taught her numbers, her manners, her household management, music…” She almost said dancing . The treacherous nature of rote-learned truths.
“The war had ended practically yesterday. My lady sister is still hurt.”
“It’s been almost a year,” Julia pointed out. Then an inspiration struck. “I can teach Roxane myself, while we are looking for a suitable new tutor.”
“What subjects?”
“Languages, for instance.”
He looked surprised at that:
“I did not know the Milburns thought such knowledge suitable for their sons, let alone their daughters. From what I have heard, your family has never had a connection to foreign trade. If they did, they would have done their best to make everyone forget about it.”
“You seem to find these pretensions useless.”
“We have all come from someplace ignoble, if one digs deeply enough”, he shrugged. “Usually more ignoble than the counting-house. The first Waites had been pirates turn mercenaries fortunate enough to get a grant of land. I dislike people who pretend they had been there when the Triad sprung to life.”
“I bear no love for empty preening, either.” Julia was relieved he seemed to have been unwilling to dig deeper into the origins of her peculiar skills. “Though some of those stories and songs are the gilding upon the world we all need.”
“No one needs gilding, strictly speaking.”
“We do, to make our lives bearable. Did you yourself not enjoy tales of heroes from the days when the Triad walked the earth, when you were a boy?”
“I have enjoyed a great many things when I was a boy, my lady.”
“Do I have your permission to teach Roxane?” Julia asked, growing impatient with her husband’s grim pronouncements.
“You do, my lady. Although I am not sure whether she will need this particular knowledge,” Lord Waite added. “It is not as though any of us is ever going anywhere.”