Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
Marguerite has agreed to send me monthly reports of Roland’s progress in Lionesse. I am not optimistic.
—PROSPERO THE ALL-KNOWING, DIARIES, UNDATED
Four and a Half Years Ago
Hal watched from a window as Roland’s carriage rolled beneath the portcullis. He dragged his fingers down the glass in a silent farewell, then reached for the knife in his sheath, stabbing a notch in the wall. As he gouged out the wood, shavings floated to the ground and spun in the sunlight.
“He’ll write,” I assured him.
Hal jabbed the knife in again. A twist as he laughed. “No. He won’t.”
For several minutes more, we stared down into the courtyard. We were both thinking Prospero and the king would change their mind, that the horses might charge through the gates, and Roland would step down from the carriage, returned to us. Neither of us knew what to say to the other without him.
Hal wished he were the one leaving. His father dangled battlefields in front of him, but he was too precious to the king for any real combat.
So Hal champed at the bit for any responsibility at all.
He was skilled on horseback and with a sword.
Skilled with a longbow and halberd. Those born under the archer Sagittarius, Prospero said, couldn’t just laze about with lovers and wine and wait for their fathers to die.
I was eighteen. He was twenty-one. He’d packed new muscle in his shoulders and back, grown a thin layer of stubble that Roland always insisted he shave.
These past few years, he’d become ruggedly handsome.
While the ladies of the court had once shown interest in him because of his birth, now they were interested in his face, too, and his figure when he and Roland swung at each other in the tiltyard.
“What would you and Roland be doing now?” I asked. “If he were here, I mean.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “I suppose we would ride out.” He squinted into the sun, using his hand to block the light. “Do you—” He hesitated. “Do you like to ride?”
“Oh. Um. I suppose I do. Where would we go?”
He frowned. “No matter. We don’t have to ride. What do you—like to do?”
“Is your falcon still injured?”
She’d been caught in a fox’s jaws a month ago, and Hal had been nursing her back to health. “Yes,” he said slowly, unsure where I was leading.
“Do you need a new one?”
I perched on his leather glove, and when he thrust me up into the cold mist that day I was changed.
To be a falcon was to see the fog-draped field below in every gorgeous detail: a mouse scurrying beneath the snow, its heat stark against the frozen, hard ground, the hoarfrost coating every branch.
I wheeled above as Hal whooped below, and I flew, I flew for hours, cresting above the tree line and carving up air that chilled my wings.
Hal said I blended into the clouds. He pinched his fingers together. “Only a speck. Could you see me down here?”
“A little,” I said. A woman again, I struggled into my gown behind a tree. “You could have been a mouse. I nearly dove for you.”
“You’re still the mouse, Mouse.”
I believed, in those days, that we were running from loneliness and simply found ourselves in each other’s company.
And this suited us fine: We didn’t have to talk much if I was a bird and he a man.
While I flew, he nocked arrows and shot at targets he’d set in the trees.
Sometimes we’d ride together—it was easier for me once I’d practiced calming my horse’s moods.
Sometimes we’d sit before the fire in his rooms and read or play cards.
“Listen here,” he said one night in the deep, long winter, holding up a rare letter from Roland.
He raised his tone a decibel, though Roland’s voice was deeper than his.
“Lionesse is more wonderful than you could imagine. Here they drink and fuck until dawn, and then rise late to do it all again. They do not guard coin like dragons—they spend it well. I have been asked to sit for a portrait and begun writing plays. Shall I send them to you? I hope court is not too dull, and I send my love to Prospero. His punishment has become a reward, and he doesn’t even suspect!
Is the mouse still trailing—” He broke off and flushed a deep red. “I’m sorry.”
I turned toward the fire. “I don’t think I’d like to watch his plays.”
“Oh, me neither. Every part is surely designed for him. He’d run around reciting all the dialogue, telling the actors he could do it better. Like Wyatt Francis.” His head lolled to the side of his chair, and he noted my expression. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
He rubbed his jaw. “You frighten him, you know. He was Prospero’s only apprentice, chosen above all others, and then you showed up. No master has two apprentices, just as no king has two heirs.”
“I didn’t ask Prospero to teach us both.”
“I know. And deep down, Roland knows that, too.” He hummed thoughtfully, throwing down the letter. “Should we go into the city? I’ve always thought we should take you along, and now he isn’t here to protest.”
“Did Prospero give his permission for you to go out?”
An eye roll. “I’m never given permission to do anything.” He held out his arm to show me a scab on his elbow. “He said to be very careful this week. Mars, of course. But see, I’ve already fallen! I won’t injure myself further, will I?”
“Will we go to a brothel?”
His face slackened in shock. “Would you like to go to a—”
I shook my head frantically.
We slipped out through a passageway in the back of his rooms I hadn’t known existed, through a boundary that answered to the prince, to him, alone.
Hal led the way to the tavern. To be safe, my hair and eyes were a soft brown hue. Patrons slapped cups of ale onto tables, picked at wet slabs of food that reminded me of what my father used to serve. There was no meat here; it was far too expensive.
Hal snapped a finger at me. “Drink? Supper? Both?”
“A drink.” I scanned the room for minds that frightened me, but they were looser here than at court—no calculation, no darting suspicion.
The contours of their emotions were startling: the depth of their frustrations, the bone-deep sadness they nursed here.
When Hal returned to my side, the barman was smiling toothily.
“Young and pretty.” He smacked Hal’s back as he passed. “Congratulations, George.”
Hal scowled and handed me ale.
“George?” I whispered when the barman was gone.
The scowl turned to a crooked grin. “You, who so loathe being yourself, ought to understand. The owner thinks I’m a knight’s son hellbent on wasting his family’s coin.
Naturally, I’m one of his very favorite customers.
” He tugged on his lip. “I’m starting to wonder if this is a place for you.
You’ve been very…” Our eyes met. “Isolated.”
We both looked away. Hal watched the dancing and nursed his drink, shooting me a glance every so often.
The drumbeat accelerated. The first time I was asked to dance, it was by a thin boy with a scattering of freckles on his nose. I said no.
The second time I was asked, it was by a man with grease on his hands and a lewd mind, so I said no again, and when he insisted, Hal shoved him to the side.
The third time, Hal was the one who held out his hand.
I said yes then, because he’d been tapping his boot against the floor.
Because I didn’t want him grieving Roland tonight.
Though he’d been taught all the dances at court, the basse and pavane and gavotte, Hal was not very graceful, and these tavern dances were nothing like those in the great hall.
We mostly spun about with our hands clasped, hopping to the right, then back to the left.
He said sorry every few steps for stumbling over my feet.
Something caught his attention by the door, and he cursed under his breath. His shoulders tensed. A boy we both knew had stepped into the tavern. This must be a place the nobility frequented when they wanted to escape court for the night.
It was Fulke Roet, his cousin.
Fulke walked right over to us, prancing onto his toes to make himself seem taller.
His men followed behind him. “Had enough of your father’s tongue down his whore’s throat, have you, Hal?
You’ll be glad you skipped tonight’s banquet.
Alice Seton sat right beside him. Your poor mother.
” He clicked his tongue. “And Bianca Mortlake.” Fulke handed his feathered cap to one of his men, his pale hair flattened beneath it.
“Funny, I was just speaking to Prospero about you. My family has always had a Jupiter magician, but ours has recently died. I wouldn’t mind a Moonborn.
You’re a rare prize, they say. The first in five hundred years? ”
“More,” corrected Hal, and I shot him a look.
“Prospero said you are still too young to make your oath, and he can’t bear to part with you just yet, but I—” Fulke’s gray eyes swept down my body. “I don’t find you too young at all. And I’d love to hear what my future sounds like in your mouth.”
Hal leapt forward and punched Fulke in the jaw.
Fulke stumbled back, his lip torn open by one of Hal’s heavy jewels.
Baring his teeth, he smacked Hal, sending him sprawling to the ground.
The revelers still swung in a circle, unbothered by the brawl.
Fulke was lunging again. Hal moaned and tried to stand, but I needed no fists for this. My mind shot forward, grasping Fulke’s.
You will be the one ashamed now, I thought.
I sent him every moment of humiliation I had endured since childhood.
The stolen glances. The laughter of the noblemen’s daughters as they passed me in the halls.
His own words about me, the way my skin crawled.
The sanctuary of my books, when all I ever wanted was friends.
But who would be friends with someone with such terrible power?
Someone who could make Fulke Roet—a prince—fall to his knees, eyes welling as memories spun in his mind—memories that were not his own?