The Black Prince: Part II (38 page)

That she hadn’t wanted to marry Hart was apparent. But few women wanted to marry their husbands, at least among the upper ranks, or even if they did were prepared for married life once it came to them. Still, they made the best of their lot. They didn’t sulk. Isla had no sympathy.

Hart was a good man. Isla didn’t condone violence, against women or men, but he’d been right to slap her. Solene’s tongue could get her in trouble. Teaching her to hold it now might help her save it later. Especially in these troubled times, the penalties for imprudent speech could be harsh. Solene might see her tongue cut out, for words against the king. Or, if she upset the wrong person, lose her head for treason.

That Solene didn’t see this also worried Isla. Solene might have lived a sheltered life, but within the same world as Isla. She had to understand its workings, on some level.

The church considered a troubled mind to be the product of witchcraft, or even demonic possession. Church-prescribed treatments included shaving the sigil of the Mediator into the afflicted’s hair, forcing them to pray for hours on end, or giving them ice-cold water. Or, if all of that failed, subjecting them to exorcism. Some supposed experts advised that the best means of encouraging the demon to leave was making the body it inhabited so unpleasant a vessel that it had no choice. This was accomplished by torturing the victim—patient—almost to the point of death.

And sometimes beyond.

If Solene’s mind had turned against her, it was no wonder that her family had kept her with them. Those who loved their family members, or at least bore them no active ill will, did so. It would take real hatred, Isla thought, to subject one’s own flesh and blood to sulfur baths, pears of torment, and hot irons at the hands of a priest.

She saw a brief flash of Father Justin’s face, and her hands trembled.

“What?” Hart asked.

“Your wife is ill.” Although that hadn’t been what she’d been thinking. Not at that moment.

“I know.” And then, “she doesn’t understand that I bear her no ill will.”

Solene still hadn’t moved.

“Ultimately,” Isla said, “none of us chooses our own path.”

Greta had chosen to sit near the fire, on the floor, and Aveline was beside her. There had been another woman, a pretty thing who looked very young and who seemed to have been acting as some sort of protector, but she’d been left outside. This was not a conference for casual ears. Aveline, in the meantime, seemed to have transferred some of her trust to Greta. Who, since she’d come to Caer Addanc, had become like family to all of them. She radiated an aura of warmth, and of calm, both of which were sorely needed in this cold place.

Asher, initially, had ignored Aveline completely. But now, from his own chair, Isla saw him watching her. Aveline’s small size made it difficult to tell, but Isla suspected that they were of an age. Or close to it. There were, of course, any number of other children around the castle and in Barghast for Asher to play with, and get to know, but none who shared his peculiar life situation.

However friendly they were, they must make him feel like an outsider.

But here was someone, for the first time, who was in—to borrow Arvid’s phrase—in the same boat.

Isla had been relieved to hear that Arvid was fine, only left behind to govern in Hart’s stead. She hadn’t known, until she’d begun searching the crowd for his beard, how attached to him she’d grown. Arvid, for all that he’d repulsed and quite frankly terrified her when they first met, had brought joy to Caer Addanc. Arvid and his wives, and his stories, and his talismans.

Greta, Isla saw, wasn’t paying much attention to either Asher or Aveline. Although she was friendly enough to them both. Her eyes were for Rudolph. Who was gazing into the fire, and almost as still as Solene. He had a cup of wine, which remained untouched in his hand. His good hand. The expression in his one eye was dark.

She returned to the group, and sat.

Tristan turned to Hart. “Tell me what you propose for the child.”

“That she remain here, as a ward.”

Isla noted that he didn’t use the term hostage. Although that was what he meant. For the child’s benefit, she guessed.

Tristan nodded. “Isla and I would be pleased.” Which was true. He didn’t have to ask her to know. “And the companionship will be good for Asher.”

Asher bristled at this last.

Aveline was looking around, considering her new home. She hadn’t been asked, of course, what her preferences might be and she clearly hadn’t expected that she would. Which, to Isla, said a fair bit about her life up until this point. No one had ever asked Isla what she wanted, either.

Isla and Tristan exchanged a look across the room.

H
e could chew willow bark for the pain, and sometimes it even helped. But there was no cure for the knowledge that he was hideous. Oh, his friends told him he wasn’t. Including some who were equally hideous, through accident of birth or later intervention. So of course they were a bit biased. And regardless, they were his friends. What were they going to tell him?

He knew women would lie with him. If he paid them. But he didn’t want to pay them, and not just due to those sappy, woman-hearted religious principles that everyone thought were so hilarious. Yes, he loved the Gods. Yes, he got down on his knees and said his prayers to them every morning and no, he didn’t care who watched. But he wanted someone to love
him
.

Not to touch him because he gave them coin but because they wanted to feel his touch. But who would? His own wife had run from him in horror, not relieved that he’d come home but plainly furious that he hadn’t succumbed to his wounds. Better to die, in her eyes, than to be so—she’d said it best. Ugly.

His church taught that outward deformity was a sign of inward sin. Rudolph didn’t really believe that; there was a great deal his church taught, that he didn’t really believe. But, being an educated man, he understood that the church was run by men. Fallible men, just like himself. No organization, however holy, could exist in this dispensation and be free from its taint. Nor from the taint of sin that inhabited all men. But he worshipped the Gods, not Their earthly shepherds.

Was enjoyment of sex a sin? He used to—not so much think so but worry that it was. Now he no longer cared. He knew that there was no sin in the love shared between Isla and Tristan. Nor was there some sin innate in Hart, or Asher. It was foolish to assume that one’s birth determined one’s destiny and even went against the other and to Rudolph’s mind more important teaching: that all were granted free will, to use as they chose.

No, the greater sin was the one he’d witnessed at the dinner table each night, growing up: resentment festering into hatred, between two people the Gods had joined to live as one. His parents, whom he knew perfectly well had declared for Maeve, would gladly have killed each other long ago but for mutual self-interest. The survivor would look bad.

He’d come to look for Rowena because, in part, he hadn’t wanted to share the taint. It was only a matter of time before his father’s—or really his mother’s—dealings were discovered and his lands and titles confiscated. As Hart’s predecessor’s had been. And, if justice served, they lost their heads.

So while he hadn’t told anyone this, even now, when he’d left it had been for good. He’d always been a coward. He was still a coward, only now he was a coward in a uniform he hadn’t earned. Regardless of what Hart claimed. He’d run from his family’s situation because he hadn’t known what else to do. Run…straight to Rowena, because he hadn’t known where else to go.

He had friends. Everyone had friends, even if they were ridiculous like him. But he hadn’t trusted them and, if he was really being honest with himself, the truth was that he had wanted his wife. Because she’d felt like home.

True perfection might exist only in the heavens, but for the longest time Rowena Cavendish had seemed perfect to him. She was, indisputably, the most beautiful girl in all of Ewesdale but it was more. She was—he’d thought she was—all that was virtue.

His parents had been against the match, rightly pointing out that she was a girl with no prospects. Which, to his love-heated mind, hadn’t mattered. He’d save her, bring her out of that terrible place like the fairytale princes he’d idolized as a child and give her the life she deserved.

But again, being a coward, he’d only disregarded his parents in his mind.

He’d continued to hang around Rowena like a lovelorn calf, never really pressing his suit but never really cutting her off, either.

So after…she’d needed him. He’d told himself that she’d needed him. And hadn’t he loved her? Didn’t he still?

He’d told Hart that he regretted marrying her, and that was true. He’d been thrilled to find her again, had seen their reunion as nothing short of a true miracle, but during their brief time together he’d seen a side of her that he honestly hadn’t known existed. Still, he’d made a promise. And one she seemed intent on holding him to. He’d thought, at the time, because she loved him. Because she needed him to rescue her, just like in his boyhood fantasies.

And, when it came right down to it, he couldn’t run from everything.

He had to stop somewhere. Stop and make his stand. Or he’d be a coward forever, just like his father.

That he’d married his mother hadn’t truly occurred to him until after the wedding, when his blushing bride had dropped the last of her pretense. She’d utterly rejected him on their wedding night and made clear, in the nights and days that followed, that she felt she’d married beneath herself.

Why had she married him?

He didn’t know.

He could only hope that her reaction to him had been the product of wedding-related jitters. He’d been taught the same catechism as she and understood only too well the internal conflict that it produced. One couldn’t simply drop a lifetime of enforced celibacy like a cloak.

And he could only hope too that, now that they were married, they could make the best of things. He’d thought he wanted to die but he hadn’t; that had been just another form of cowardice. Another means of escaping his problems rather than facing them head on. They’d force fed him who knew how much wine before cauterizing his eye but he’d still woken regardless when the brand sank into his skin. He’d been too weak to cry out, too weak to do more than feel his stomach lurch at the smell. Like roasting pork. Even the pain hadn’t been that bad, strangely.

His first coherent thought after that hadn’t been that he’d lost his eye but that he was alive. And that, in whatever condition, he was grateful to be so. And that was when, he realized, he’d decided to go home and fight. For his marriage, and for the love he chose to believe, at least, that he and Rowena had once shared.

He’d been wandering the halls for some time, ever since their family conference of sorts had ended. Tristan had another hostage and she was better off. If she was lucky, he’d adopt her, too. Solene was interesting, in a disturbing sort of fashion. And Isla. He’d always liked her, and had been pleased to see that she was looking so well. A little thinner, but less drawn.

He’d spent most of it thinking about Rowena and had, he had to admit to himself, been looking for her ever since.

What would he do when he found her?

He didn’t know.

But he found himself in the chapel, eventually, and there she was.

He thought he might have gone there to pray. The Northern gods weren’t his Gods, true, but that didn’t matter. For those who appreciated beauty, it was here in this tranquil space. And to those who knew the Gods, They were everywhere. In a foreign chapel as much as under a spreading willow. There was no part of the world Their grace didn’t touch.

Rowena looked so small, in the enormous space.

She was sitting in a pew, alone, her hands in her lap.

She didn’t turn, although she must have heard him approach. His boots echoed on the tile, up to the vaulted arches overhead. He stopped. “Might I join you?”

“If you must.”

He sat down.

He liked this chapel. He appreciated the Northern gods, after their fashion. More so now, but he’d never hated them as some did. They might not be the true Gods, but there were glimmers of truth everywhere. For truth to
be
truth, it must be universal.

“I understand,” he began, “that you were upset.”

His wife said nothing.

“I know I look different. Frightening, even. But I’m still the same man inside.”

“You’re not. The man I married was beneath me in every possible respect, but at least he had his looks to recommend him. Now he’s—what? A nobody. Worse than a nobody.” Her tone was cutting. But she wasn’t done. “At least in Ewesdale you’re something. There’s that. Even a cripple can inherit. Except,” she added, “I refuse to go back.”

“You don’t have to,” Rudolph said, latching on to this shred of good news. “I’ve renounced my claim to my father’s lands and taken a position with Hart. As his sheriff. It comes with an income, and a household.” Rowena wouldn’t have to live in someone else’s keep, on their sufferance, but could have her own. To order as she pleased.