Chapter 43
Forty-Three
If anger is a storm, what is guilt?
Tremors, the unsteady shaking of the ground beneath my feet.
The roof rocking overhead, sconces rattling on the walls, like a giant had passed by and made the ground tremble with every step he took.
It gnawed on me like a dog worrying at a bone and bled into my surroundings as well.
I would see the ever-graceful Lileas trip over something not yet in her path, then stare with confusion where it had not been.
Jamie would run to the doorway and cower in fear, as the world around shook for no apparent reason.
The wilder, more beast-like fae darted for cover or ran about in a manic fashion, like a cat during a storm, their fur or feathers or hair standing on end with fright.
I did this. Faery responded to the guilt and uncertainty in me.
I must take Lord Elidor’s life.
He was a murderer and attempted murderer; he had slain my mother and tried to kill me as well. His deeds could have cast all Faery into that land of dust and nothingness Amadan had showed me so many times. How fitting it was that his death should spare us that fate.
But I had to kill him, and that was quite another thing.
I had always been a healer, but Elidor was like a diseased limb, which must be removed for the body to thrive. Yet I still felt death as a mortal does. I had only ever killed by instinct, without a plan. Did I have the strength to knowingly, deliberately, take a life?
Mortal kings have their advisors for reassurance, confessors, priests who will absolve them of the difficult choices they must make.
But I could seek no such absolution among the Fae.
We of Faery do not fear damnation; it is either a forgone conclusion or, as I suspect, it is nothing, an illusion no more real than gold that turns to dry leaves in the end.
Yet I still longed to know my deeds would not leave me sullied for all time.
For that, I believed I must cross to the other side of the Veil.
I had never passed through the Veil from the Faery side.
Once I had stood in Carterhaugh and looked through a tree, the passageway that led to Faery.
Through it, I had seen a bonny glen, more welcoming than any place I had ever known, where every flower of the springtime bloomed at once.
Now, as I stared across the Veil at the mortal world, it seemed faded, not fully there, as if by pulling myself away from it I had removed some of its substance.
Nor did it tug on me, drawing me towards it the way it had once.
Faery, on the other hand, did not want me to go.
Rain poured down more like tears, falling steady and slow from a cloudless sky.
The trees around me drooped, their limbs hanging to the ground, shedding their leaves like molting birds.
The mulch squished beneath my feet and clung to them, as if by doing so it could prevent my departure.
“Do you want quakes and tremors to rock you endlessly?” I asked, and felt a bit silly for it, as if I were speaking to myself. “Allow me to leave my guilt behind in the mortal realm. They have more use for it there.”
I turned from Faery and closed my eyes. “By oak and ash, yew and willow, by the blood of my mother Una and the kinship we share, you know where I must go.”
All at once, a howling wind picked up around me, tearing at my hair and clothing, threatening to knock the crown from my head.
It scoured my skin and pulled at my limbs and sounded as if my world were being rent in two.
I cried out in alarm, and a light flashed, so bright I must throw my arms in front of my eyes.
And then—silence.
Followed by birdsong.
I stood in an ordinary mortal garden. Grass lush as the finest velvet carpeted the ground, and all around me bloomed the flowers of late summer.
Buzzing bees there were, caterpillars and ants, even a small rabbit who went hopping away. A thick arbor stood amid it all, canopied with woodbine and draped with vines. The hedges were thick, grown taller than the top of my head; trees of alder, birch, and pine clustered all around.
I know this garden. Why do I know this garden? I looked around it, and saw wild celery growing, as I had harvested for the Baroness de Lyne.
I was in her manor. The garden, specifically, the one place Amadan had told me would be safe for me. My eyes cast about for the shadow fae, his shadow fae, as I thought them now, whom once I had seen on the walls of Malcolm’s bedroom. But the creatures had long since fled.
The ground was firm beneath my feet. I felt steadier than I had in weeks. Until the scent of the iron hinges wafted towards me and, from further away, the stench of incense and the cross. I heard church bells ringing and they assaulted my ears.
From the other side of the door came the sound of footsteps, and a shouted “My lord!”
“Never mind, Ivor,” said a familiar voice. “I heard a rat in the garden is all. I will see to it myself.”
The door opened and there stood my shepherd king.
Resplendent in dark velvet, he had hung a thick chain upon his chest. His handsome face was now bearded, his curls neatly combed and trimmed. His waist had thickened somewhat, and he looked nearly ten years older, shoulders rigid as with the weight of new responsibilities.
He remained the finest mortal I had ever seen.
My pulse picked up and my belly stirred. I reached out, wanting to touch him, hold him, but for the surprise I saw in his eyes.
Mab’s tits! I still wore the Faery Queen’s seeming.
That was a mistake. I ducked behind the arbor, muttering under my breath. “Thistle and thorn, petal and rose, let him see me as the girl he knows.” As I straightened, my figure plumped out and my height shrank, while my hair lightened to a ruddy gold.
Thomas stared at me a moment then chuckled. “You need not have bothered. I knew it was you, lass.
“My wood nymph, Bess-Grieve-you-seem, returned to the mortal realm at last.”
I blinked at him, mouth wide in wonder. You knew? You saw? And then, twisting my face, What did you know and see?
The shepherd stared at me. A butterfly alit on the side of his face, and he distractedly flicked it away. A bee could have stung him, and he would have done the same.
“Did you think I would not know you, whatever form you chose?” he finally asked. “I know the scent of you, your warmth, I feel the weight of you on the earth, whatever your seeming might be. I always have.”
I shook my head. What he implied, what he spoke of, seemed more of fae senses than mortal. I squinted at him, looking for the greenish paste I had seen in visions of Mairi Grieve, the ointment spread around her eyes to see through any glamour. There was none.
Why was his face so beautiful? It wounded me so.
“I remember the night you left as though it was yesterday.” He turned from me, and his gaze was distant, as though he stared into the past. “I had fallen from my steed, cornered by that ungainly Host, limbs tossed every which way.
The beings who looked down on me, with their snarling hounds lunging and drooling, so vicious were they, and so cadaverous. I nearly wet myself in fright.
“But you were there, came between me and the Host before my men—well, then they were my father’s men—had any hope of getting near. You revealed your true nature to the Wild Hunt and, I think, to yourself. But I had always known.
“You saved my life twice.” His eyes were intense upon my face. “Was I meant to forget that—like the wolf?”
You remember the wolf? Shame flooded through me, shame like I had never permitted myself to feel on the other side of the Veil. A mortal’s shame, no less.
“I am sorry.” These were words the Queen of Faery was never meant to say.
I said them anyhow.
Thomas cocked his head at me. “I never thought you were a saint, my love. Lord knows, I have my faults as well. For one thing, I dearly love a woman who is not my wife.”
My breath caught, my hand fluttering to my breast. Still? After all this time? It was the worst and the best news I had ever had.
Thomas stepped forward, cupping my cheek in one hand. “I told you once. No one is perfect. We leave that to the angels and to God.” He shrugged and smiled bitterly. “The rest of us muddle along the best we can.”
Was that what I was doing? I did not feel like the all--powerful, all-knowing Queen of Faery much of the time. It was a relief to hear from him I did not have to be.
My skin craved Thomas’s touch. A thousand pixies darted about inside me. Thomas no longer smelled of old wool, but the essence of him still made me weak in the knees.
The scent of roses, calendula, and honey wine emanated from me, wrapping around the shepherd in a ribbonlike caress. The arbor shed its leaves and berries to crown my plaits; gorse sprung up wherever I stepped.
Thomas shook his head and took a step backwards. “I cannot submit to your enchantments now. I am a married man.” His eyes avoided my own.
“Margaret,” I said.
He nodded. “Like I said, we all do things we have no wish to, simply because we must.”
He swallowed hard, closing his eyes. “I have tried to be the best husband I can to her, even though my heart lies elsewhere, trapped in a faery bower I cannot hope to find.” He took a long, shuddering breath. “She now carries my heir.”
“No.” I stumbled back into the arbor, bruising my hips. It was still less painful than the words he’d said. Margaret of Roxburgh carried his child.
I should have known. Had known. His betrothal to Margaret had put me to flight. But to father her child . . . ?
The shepherd king is mine. He owes me his life. Is this how I am repaid?
I am the queen. Lightning filled me; I wanted to claw out his eyes, make him regret he had ever been born. Force him to his knees before me, crush his neck under my foot.
The trees shook around us, alder dropping their catkins to the floor.
I was the woman who loved him, too.
I pictured Thomas as he once was, splashing me with the bathwater, nuzzling the side of my neck, rutting with me like a beast under the blankets until we were spent, and curled in each other’s arms. I had loved that Thomas. For his sake, I bid the storm grow quiet inside me.
Thomas raked his fingers through his hair. “There are no shepherd kings, nor wood nymphs. There is only you and I, doing what we must.”
I felt the flowers dying at my ankles, woodbine uncurling from the arbor, drying out and falling away. Trees went bare of leaf, winter with no autumn preceding, and I felt unsteady on my feet.
Thomas did not seem to notice. A wan version of that old familiar smile curled upon his lips. “Still, I am glad to have seen you one last time. Even if it does make it harder in the end.”
I nodded. There was something so sweet in this meeting, for all it was sorrowful as well.
“It is near suppertime and Margaret will be waiting for me.” He shifted his weight, and added quickly, as if it were a shameful truth. “For she loves me as well.”
It broke me. A crack ran through my heart, yet still a string wrapped around it, a bond between us that could not seem to break.
I would hold Thomas forever, did he bite and claw me, drip venom and burst into flame. Keep him in my grasp, though he transformed into beast and brute and someone I recognized no more, keep him so close we might be separate entities no longer, and there was nothing that might pull us apart.
But this was not my job anymore. I had given myself over to the care of Faery, not of him.
And Faery needed me to take Elidor’s life, as reluctant as I might be.
For we all did things we wished we had no need to, simply because we must.