“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course I will do this. It is a great honor that you would think me suited for the enterprise.”
“Why should I not? Your mind is sharp, your imagination colorful, your knowledge immeasurably vast. You will write something superb, such as those stories you scribbled as a girl; I know it.”
It required all the strength of Agnes’s will not to take Liuprand’s faceinto her hands and kiss it. Yet she need not feel entirely bereft, for what followed was one of her most treasured occurrences—a small and humble thing, but vivifying nonetheless. Liuprand relaxed back into his chair while Agnes rose and began searching among the shelves for a book that might inspire her masque. She returned with an armful, spreading them out across the table. She picked up one, Liuprand another.
And then, as they had once before, a long, long time ago, when Agnes was still silent and Liuprand yearning against all hope, despite all odds, they read together. Not a word needed to be spoken between them. Their love was an airborne thing that could be felt, like the mists of the Dogaressa’s perfume, a gift from one of her many suitors. It was the scent of roses, sweetest just before the moment of rot.
Agnes could even be contented not to reach out and take her lover’s hand. His nearness was enough, the pulse of his golden warmth. In the midst of this moment, which seemed to stop time itself—or at least make it roll slowly, languorously past—Agnes managed to half convince herself that it would last forever.
That night, when Agnes returned to her chamber, her mind was abuzz with ideas; her thoughts spread out in all directions, like dark-veined rifts racing out across an expanse of cracked ice. Below the surface of that frozen water, so many creatures lay in wait: a calico shark, a blood-red squid, a whale as black as midnight. Whimsy, passion, death. Every element, every facet of existence, would make an appearance in Agnes’s masque. As Waltrude undressed her, she found herself shivering in anticipation.
But still, she sensed the wet nurse’s distraction. Her motions seemed almost too rote, bordering on brusque, and she kept her gaze lowered to the floor. Agnes’s gown fell away from her body, and Waltrude did not quite catch it in time, leaving the deep-purple silk to drift to the ground, like the blown petals of an orchid.
“Apologies, my lady,” Waltrude said, bending to pick it up.
Agnes, standing nude before the mirror, saw herself frown. “You seem ill at ease,” she said.
“No. I am not.”
Stubborn as a carriage wheel in the mud, Waltrude was not one to argue with in such a manner. Agnes instead regarded her reflection. There had been a time when she had looked in the mirror and loathed with every aspect of her being the creature that looked back. But that was long ago. That gray, silent, wilting flower of a girl had been coaxed to blooming life by Liuprand’s hands.
If she had been a girl then, she was most certainly a woman now, near thirty herself. When she had come to Castle Crudele she had come pale, her skin stretched tautly over her bones, her rib cage pressing upward through her flesh. Now fat had filled her once-sunken cheeks, and love had painted them with the most delicate flush. Her breasts had grown to pert and modest peaks. Agnes came to appreciate her own beauty—as though she were seeing herself through Liuprand’s eyes—and her frown lifted into a smile.
Waltrude was not smiling. She was folding Agnes’s dress with the same brisk ministrations and placing it on the chair to be washed. With the wet nurse’s attention averted, Agnes plucked her own nightgown from the wardrobe and put it on, the gauzy silk gliding across her bare, supple skin.
“Where has your mind gone?” Agnes asked, approaching Waltrude. “Speak.”
There was a subtle rising of her shoulders, like the bristling hackles of a cat, and then Waltrude turned. Her lidded eyes were watchful and too knowing. Agnes remembered how, at their first meeting, she had been surprised to see how lively they were, how clever, for a woman so old and otherwise weary looking. Now she sensed again that Waltrude knew too much.
“Did you see the prince today?”
Agnes, not expecting her question to be answered with yet anotherquestion, furrowed her brow. “Yes,” she said. “In the library. Not in our…” She trailed off, heat rising to her face.
Waltrude stared at her impassively. The corner of her mouth twitched, then froze, then twitched again. At last, she said, “And did you see the princess?”
The heat rose from Agnes’s cheeks to her scalp. It made her hairline dampen at once with sweat. “No,” she replied. “I did not.”
“Hm,” was all Waltrude said in response, though it was a very solid and heavyhm.She turned away from Agnes yet again to bundle up laundry.
“She does not wish to see me,” Agnes added hurriedly, in her own defense. “She does not wish to be seen.”
Waltrude’s tone was pregnant with indiscernible emotion as she said, “And why is that, lady?”
Agnes could have scolded her, she supposed. She was only a wet nurse, and an unused one at that, as Tisander had long outgrown his need of her. And Agnes was a noblewoman of great esteem: the Mistress of Teeth, secret bride of the prince of Drepane. Waltrude spoke so boldly out of turn. A crueler mistress might even raise a hand for it.
But instead Agnes said, “Because she is as stubborn as you are, and as bitter as an old shrew. What privilege, what joy, has she ever been lacking in her life? The most profitable marriage any lady could hope for, a surfeit of children, the inheritance of the wealthiest house in Drepane. She is princess; one day soon she will be queen. If indeed she suffers, it is only because the world is not enough for her. It has never been enough.”
Waltrude was silent a moment, and Agnes felt briefly, perversely pleased that she seemed to have prevailed in their argument. Then the wet nurse turned back to Agnes, laundry held to her chest.
“Her husband lay with her but once, against his will, and now dishonors their marriage vow every night,” Waltrude said. “She has lost her title. She has one child she holds dearly, who will soon be takenfrom her. And she has no friends in this castle save her handmaiden. She has gold and jewels and fine silks, yes, but what is their use, when she cannot leave the confinement of her tower?”
“She is free to come and go,” Agnes bit back. “She is free to do as she pleases.”
“Free is not always free,” Waltrude murmured, and Agnes could not deny that she knew well what that meant.
Feeling, unexpectedly, a rush of cold, even though the windows of her bedchamber were shut, Agnes wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. The risen, aged white scars brushed against the silk of her nightgown. Just as with her hand, the damage was grievous enough that Agnes lacked sensation in various places across her rib cage and her stomach, the undersides of her breasts, her mound. These days she rarely thought of it; the memory was fuzzy, like a half-faded ghost. But now—
“I will not be shamed,” Agnes said in a whisper, “for seeking my own freedoms, my own passions and pleasures. You know what a deprived creature I was once. You have seen the permanent etchings on my person that time will never erase. You, of all beings, Waltrude, should not place judgments upon me. You should understand my reasons and my cause…”
