I brought my fingertips to my temples and dropped my voice to a whisper. “And while I am as surprised by this development as you are, we cannot lose sight of the situation. Your sister—” I paused, already feeling discredited by my own falseness. “Stepsister,” I conceded, “is going to be a part of the royal family.”
Going to Rosamund, I tried to pull her to me, to comfort her, to impart every ounce of feeling and regret and love that was hammering in my temple and pounding in my throat.
She pushed me away.
“How can I call her sister now?” Mathilde attempted and failed to match my whisper. “When she is to be queen one day? And there is little sisterly feeling between us?”
“Mama,” Rosie interjected. “Her whole world has changed. But what will that mean for us?”
“That is precisely my point.” I held out my hands. Neither of the girls took one.
Through the window, I could see the weak sun had all but disappeared from the sky, which had turned to a dark, threatening gray. A steady rain had begun. Down below, Lucy would need to be exercised. Water required fetching. Firewood demanded gathering. Beds called to be made. Returning to the ongoing activities of our daily lives—churning and cleaning and mending—felt improbable in the face of all that had happened. How many other guests of the ball had had to rise that morning and remove a film of frost from their washbasin? How many of them had to wash the chicken dung off the eggs that went into their morning omelets? Still, I stood, hands extended. Neither daughter was willing to return the gesture.
A knock on the door, and we all stopped breathing. But when it opened, it was only Alice who stuck her head through the crack. “There’s been a royal summons.”
I looked around. “Elin isn’t in here.”
She frowned. “You, my lady. The queen wants to see you. Immediately, it says.”
I looked at her, my own mouth now agape. My hands fell to my sides.
“You can’t go on that drive in this weather,” Mathilde protested. “It isn’t safe!”
“Please, Mama, stay here.” Rosie reached for me, finally willing to take one of my hands.
I looked back and forth between them. “I can’t not go. It’s a royal summons!”
“I’ll ready the coach.” Alice’s voice was sober.
I didn’t meet my daughters’ eyes as I rushed to get ready. There was no time to marvel at how quickly shifting allegiances laid all else bare.
On the drive to the palace, I saw the weather had turned toward winter. Many of the trees we passed branched upward with a nearly naked grasp. The fallen leaves had revealed oversized crow’s nests from seasons past and these sodden bundles loomed above us, empty cradles waiting to be used and repurposed once more. The steady, drizzling rain came, not just down from the sky but misting inward; it covered cheeks and kissed tender necks and curled a halo of little hairs at our temples. Alice and I had bundled ourselves, but our outer layers had gone damp and it was hard to tell how much of the jolting, shaking movements of our bodies was from shivering or the jostle of the chaise itself. The miserable wetness, the grayness of the day, felt fitting—my feelings and the world around me alloyed as one.
“M’lady.” Alice interrupted my thoughts with a nudge of her shoulder. I ignored her and tightened my soggy cloak around my neck. I was wretched with disappointment. My darling Rosie. I had made a home of hope and wishes and asked her to live inside—only to watch the walls crumble. I had ticked through every evidence of her anguish—the hitched breath, the rending of her skirts in her hands, the wet pillowcase in the morning, the grayness of her skin as she stood by the window—remonstrating myself for each one in turn. The only subject that had succeeded in distracting me from my expostulation was my own humiliation. I had been summoned to Sigrid’s side like a criminal. I wondered what new mortifications I would be subjected to. What ways I would be told the girls were unsuitable. What slights I would have to swallow under the guise of Sigrid’s smile. What news I would have to bring back to Elin, who had already begun stitching her trousseau, smiling placidly at some private vision of the future.
“M’lady,” Alice said more forcefully, chin jerking forward. “Look ahead.”
I peered through the precipitation. An envoy made its way through the mist. Black-booted guards and plumed horses and an oversized carriage. Pennoncels dampened by weather. It could only mean one thing.
Alice said it first: “The queen has come to you.”
We stared at one another with worried eyes. Neither able to produce an explanation for this odd turn of events—this urgency—that didn’t foreshadow some kind of misfortune.
An outrider escorted me through the teams of horses and guards. Men and animals alike stamped and snorted and braced themselves against the cold. I was led to a large carriage marked by heraldic symbols painted onto its leather—the real version of what Moussa’s artifice had attempted to emulate. Feathers burgeoned from the roof’s corners, though the plumage had become bent and bedraggled in the rain. The windows were glass, but the interior curtains were drawn, so I did not see Sigrid until a footman helped me climb inside.
She started talking even before I could settle to face her. “Traditionally,” she said, speaking as I clambered over her feet, “this conversation would happen between two men. But my husband is traveling, and you no longer have one. So, the details about how to proceed are left to be worked out between the two of us.”
“Your Majesty,” I said, settling into the bench facing her. The carriage was overwhelmingly warm, and the windows, though covered, had fogged.
“Mind the coals.” She nodded toward a cylindrical brass container on the floor that had been filled with burning embers. I shifted my feet away. Sigrid, sitting under a pile of fur blankets, did not stir. “I feel keen to assure you, Etheldreda, when it comes to my children, I do not muck about.”
I took a breath. “And I can assure you, Your Majesty, I am as surprised by this development as yourself.”
I had no view of the men I had passed outside, and little light crept in. But I could see Sigrid’s face well enough. She flicked her eyes away, toward the covered window. It reminded me of her long-ago habit of staring off into the horizon, despite obstructions in her view.
She ran a gloved hand along her furs, against the nap. “Someone sitsat my door when I sleep. Someone else wakes me in the morning. Do you know I am never alone? Except in this carriage. When no one is looking, I can put my feet up on that bench where you sit. Except now you are sitting on it.” She leaned forward. Her furs slipped down off her torso, and she made no move to retrieve them. “I will admit I was surprised that fortune is so intent on keeping our paths intertwined. But I should not have been. You have always managed to badger about until you get your way.”
“My way.” I realized Sigrid viewed Elin’s engagement as a triumph on my part. The heat from the coals. The smoke in the air. The smell of burning. I felt thickheaded and encumbered by my layers, which, in the heat, had begun to give off the fetid barnyard smell of wet wool.
