Chapter Six - Mercy
CHAPTER SIX
Mercy
THE PEOPLE AROUND her were intent on pushing and jostling her out the way.
Keen to barrel their way forward to whatever Bastian’s spectacle was to be.
One of them stamped on the hem of her already muddied dress and her foot slipped on the slick cobbled stones.
She reached out to steady herself, finding her hand clasping a steel arm.
The sandy haired man that Dorian had been speaking to stood beside her.
He nodded to her before turning to push one particularly rambunctious lord before he careened into her.
“Lady Rosamund,” his smooth voice rising above the noise of the crowd, “this way.”
He made a path through the crowd, holding his arms either side of her to stop others from knocking into her.
They broke through the front line, and he guided her to where the rest of the Royals, and her aunts, were stood.
She had been about to stand with her aunts when the armoured man directed her to a spot beside Dorian, whose eyes were fixed on where his brother paced in the centre of the courtyard.
A dried-up oak tree rose up from the middle, its pale brittle branches creeping out like long clawed fingers.
Pity swelled inside her to see the old tree so badly abused.
As her eyes travelled along the old broken branches they came to rest on the rope that had been hung from them.
Thick, solid rope. The kind of rope you found on the grand ships that sailed down the Aurelcart.
With a growing sense of dread she looked further down and spotted the wooden barrel that had been placed below the rope.
An execution.
Rosamund remembered the first hanging she had seen.
Her father had allowed her and her brothers to travel into the town without a chaperone, relying on Edmund to ensure they were safe.
However, Rosamund had slipped her brother’s sight as soon as she could and had happened upon the public execution.
Like the set up before her, the man had been hung from the tree in the local square.
The crowd had frenzied around her as the man’s legs kicked at the air seeking purchase, the rope having been too short.
Her brother had found her too late, and she had watched the man as he took his last breath.
The conjured memory of the sweat and piss of that moment caused her to feel faint, and she felt an arm rise beside her to hold onto.
It had been her betrothed that had offered it.
She pulled her hand back and forced herself to stand upright.
She would not let him see her weak. She would not give him the satisfaction.
She would witness this awful spectacle, and she would not flinch.
She owed it to whatever poor wretch Bastian had seen fit to torment.
Looking at the prince now, she was put in mind of a tiger her father had taken her to see in the city. Prowling up and down until he was satisfied that enough people had gathered. Waiting for his prey. He raised a hand and the crowd immediately fell silent.
“As many of you are aware, this day has been a long time coming,” Bastian said, his voice echoing around the courtyard, “my darling brother has finally found someone to marry him, and here she is.”
Rosamund wished for nothing more than to melt into the crowd behind her, but a hand on her back pushed her forward.
“Lady Rosamund,” Bastian sneered, “Valehart.”
A hiss rose up from the crowd, like they were at pantomime and not an execution. She fought down the bile that threatened to rise and satisfied herself with turning her attention to those in the crowd, memorising their faces.
“Yes, yes. It would appear our father had to travel far, and low, to find someone to marry my little brother.”
There was laughter from the crowd, and Rosamund turned to look up at Dorian. If he was affected by his brother’s words it did not show. His focus remained on the tree.
“However here we are at last,” continued Bastian, “so on this very special occasion, I thought I might prepare a betrothal present for my darling brother and his future wife. Courtesy of our father, his majesty. What better present for our Prince of Death, that the final breath of one of the remaining traitors of Valdyr.”
Bastian gestured to the guards on the far side of the courtyard, and they parted to allow another troop through, their prisoner between them.
Her breath caught in her throat.
A cry went up behind her.
Her aunt went to push past her, but Prince Cedric blocked her way and grabbed her frail arms in his two meaty hands. Beatrice pulled against him, tears falling down her cheeks as she watched her son walk towards the tree.
“Mother!” he called out, his voice high and shaking, barely audible above the growing jeers of the crowd.
“Todric!” she screamed back, pulling against Cedric’s grasp, “My son! Please!”
“This was not what was agreed,” shrieked Aunt Cecily, “his majesty said he would be released!”
Another liveried guard stepped forward to grab Aunt Cecily as she fought him off with her cane.
“He did,” conceded Bastian, “but he did not specify how he should be released. That, I am glad to say, he left to my interpretation. And I have decided that we shall release him of his sins. Through death may he find forgiveness for his family’s betrayal.”
Todric. Her little cousin. Ages with her own brother Tristan, he had always been a little more na?ve, filled with a childlike wonder as he looked at the world.
Even as the first hairs of a beard smattered across his face, he never lost that wide eyed look, or his kindness.
Todric was not a traitor, he was a sweet boy who wouldn’t even swat at the bees that danced around his favourite flowers.
They had dressed him in white, his ghostlike skin more translucent except for the bruises on his arm, and the red bands around his wrists and ankles from the manacles.
He was barefoot, and she saw the cuts and burns on his feet.
Before she knew what she was doing she was moving forward.
Someone reached out to grab her, but she ducked them, quickening her pace as she moved towards her cousin.
She could hear her aunt Beatrice still calling out to her son, and her Aunt Cecily shouting at Bastian about the agreement.
The guards around him stepped forward to block her way, but with a gesture from Bastian they stepped back.
Rosamund threw her arms around her cousin.
He clung to her. She could feel the dampness of his tears on her shoulder, the bones of his ribs. He whispered, “I don’t want to die Rosie. Please, don’t let them. Please help me.”
She reached up and smoothed his hair down, hating how tangled, thin and greasy his once thick brown hair had become, “It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay.”
“I’m scared Rosie,” he said as he continued to cling at her.
“I’m here, it’s going to be okay,” she lied as her mind raced, searching for anything that she could do.
With pain, she felt her cousin’s muscles relax as her words brought him comfort.
What can I do? What can I do?
“Dorian, please control your future wife,” said Bastian with a sigh, feigning boredom at the interruption, but with a glint in his eye that betrayed his excitement.
Strong hands clasped down on her arms as the guards moved in to pull her cousin back.
The sandy haired knight gently, but firmly, pulled her away from him, and Todric’s tears renewed as she was drawn away.
She watched the guards move her cousin under the largest branch of the tree where the rope hung.
They lowered it, and through the tears she watched them sling the noose around her cousin’s neck and pull it tight.
Two guards lifted him onto the barrel. She wanted him to fight back, she wanted him to kick and scream, but her gentle cousin did not know what to do.
He stood precariously on the wooden barrel as the guards began to pull the rope taut.
It was too short.
A longer rope would mean a quicker death. His neck would snap before the rope strangled him. With the shorter rope, it would be longer. He would struggle and dance in the air, just as the man she had seen in the town.
Bastian wanted him to suffer.
Rosamund looked to the other royals. Cedric still held her Aunt Beatrice, an uncompromising stoic expression on his face as he held her in place.
Lavinia danced from foot to foot with anticipation, chattering to the ladies around her excitedly.
Isolde clung to Aurelian’s arm, whispering something to him, a concerned expression on her face as he frowned.
Elswyth stood frozen, staring at her husband with a defeated expression as he commanded the crowd.
Aurelian stepped forward and cleared his throat, “Brother, perhaps-”.
“Sorry,” cut in Bastian, “remind me again who is here with father’s authority?”
It looked like Aurelian was about to say more, but then he curtly nodded his head and took a step back, Isolde moving in to clutch his arm again, a disappointed look on her face.
“Brother dearest,” said Bastian as he turned to Dorian, “perhaps you might do us the honour?”
Rosamund looked at her betrothed, who even as his brother spoke to him did not look his way. His focus remained on Todric.
He did not move.
Bastian sighed and folding his arms across his chest said, “Are you really refusing father’s wonderful gift? The chance to rid Valdyr of another traitor?”
Again, Dorian did not move. Still, he looked at Todric, his gaze unwavering.
She shook off the hands of the knight and crossed to her future husband, falling to her knees at his feet.
He tore his gaze away from her cousin to look down at her, irritation flashing across his face as if she had interrupted some study.
“Please,” she pleaded, “please, stop this. The rope, it’s too short, he’ll suffer. I will do anything. Anything. Just don’t let him die. Please, I beg of you, please. Stop this, do something.”
She meant it. If he did this for her, she would do anything.
She would follow demurely and unquestioningly.
She would endure Bastian’s cruelty, the court’s disdain, her betrothed’s rotting power.
She would do it all if he would just save her cousin.
He looked at her with a curious expression, like he did not quite understand her.
He turned his attention back to his brother and the makeshift gallows.
“Do you really want to disappoint father?” said Bastian, a little quieter where only the three of them might hear, “Like your mother did?”
Dorian moved towards the gallows and Bastian broke out into a grin.
Rosamund scrambled to her feet and once again found herself in the vice like grip of the knight.
She thought she could hear him trying to soothe her, but she was not listening.
She struck at his hard chest and kicked at his steel covered shins, fighting him, desperately trying to remove herself from his grasp to reach her cousin.
He held fast. Her Aunt Beatrice’s weeping was the only sound left in the courtyard.
As the Prince of Death approached her cousin the rest of the courtyard fell silent.
Rosamund’s efforts ebbed as she turned to watch Dorian’s approach.
He walked around Todric standing precariously on the barrel.
Examining every inch of it like an architect reviewing the work of an apprentice.
She half expected him to tut or suck air through his teeth when he saw something he did not like, but that was the hysteria rising within her.
Her gaze was drawn to his hand that made a strange repetitive motion, and she imagined him working out some kind of calculation.
He came to stand in front of Todric and looked up at him, her terrified cousin not needing to look far to meet the prince’s gaze.
Without turning to face his brother he said, “The rope needs to-”
With a groan of frustration Bastian crossed towards the barrel, “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”
The last thing Rosamund saw was Bastian moving towards the barrel, ready to kick it out from under her cousin, just as her betrothed moved forward. A cloak was swung around her, and she was turned to face the cold armoured chest of the knight.
Snap.
Snap.
Even through the thick material of the knights cloak she could hear it. The sound of bones clicking, and the rip of rope.
The crowd around them burst into cheers, drowning out the shrieks of her Aunt Beatrice. She heard Bastian above them all calling out, “One less traitor for Valdyr.”
She shoved at the knight and he relented his grip.
Tears soaked her cheek as she turned around.
Todric looked almost serene, his eyes closed as if only sleeping.
The only indication that anything was amiss was the strange angle of his neck as he lay sprawled on the ground, the rope loose around his neck.
She followed the rope and saw the snapped end of it, however before she could look any further a thick black cloak was thrown over Todric’s body.
Rosamund collapsed to the stone floor and watched as the Prince of Death then leaned down to lift the body of her lifeless cousin, to the cheers and applause of the courtyard.