XVII
Rimmed in Red
Waltrude had mixed the wine and water herself, but still the leech did not drink. The carafe between them remained untouched. He sat across from her at the table in the little princeling’s chambers, close enough that her hand could reach out to touch him, ghosting through his beige robes. Yet she did not dare. He was not a creature to desire comfort, or to offer it. So Waltrude merely looked on as Pliny’s stare, which was unblinking, grew glazed with a grief that seemed quite unlike him. He was also not a creature to linger on what had been lost.
“You have seen her, have you not?” At last, the leech’s eyes slid to Waltrude.
“Seen, no,” Waltrude replied, “but heard—yes, heard. A great many things I have heard. I have thought to ask you which are true.”
“All and none,” Pliny said. “Words are only representations of things, flitting shadows on the walls of our minds. I can tell you what I was given to witness, but it will still not be exactly the truth.”
Waltrude did not like this version of Pliny, morose and submersed in enigmatic philosophies. With a stifled sigh of irritation, Waltrude said, “Then speak.”
The leech was silent a moment, his gaze watchful. As lost in obscurities as he seemed, he was still canny and missed nothing, not even Waltrude’s quiet, ornery exhale.I have known him too long,she thought. Seven years was hardly a notch on the long white branch of her life, and yet—We have become as accustomed to each other’s flaws as our virtues.
“You departed after the masque,” said Pliny, jolting her from thesethoughts, “with the young prince Tisander. You took him straight to bed, and remained in his chambers for the night—yes?”
Waltrude nodded. “Yes.”
“And did he sleep in peace?”
“Yes,” said Waltrude, “as a dormouse in its winter nest.”
“Then he heard nothing from the feasting hall, or from the corridors, or the parapet?”
“No.” Waltrude frowned. “Nor did I.”
“That is for the best,” said Pliny. “He will not be haunted by such horrors as we witnessed, and he will still regard his father as a just and noble man.”
This greatly alarmed Waltrude. Her heart beat faster, and the skin of her neck prickled with cold. “I grow no younger, Pliny the leech. Tell me—what transpired that night while I sat ignorant in the dark?”
Pliny drew up his narrow shoulders around his ears, giving him the look of a bald, dour vulture on its perch. When he spoke, his voice was low and bitter. “The success of the lady’s masque did not presage what was to come,” he said. “At the outset, all was joyous, at least at the prince’s table. The guests came one by one to give their honors. The prince and the lady amused themselves especially well with the Master of Hearts and his lady wife—I am told she was once handmaiden to the queen.” He paused, his lips thinning into a grimace. “Much wine was drunk by all.”
“By all?” Waltrude shook her head. “No, it cannot be. The prince does not indulge himself in such mortal pleasures. He has always been ascetic by nature, heedful and restrained.”
“Yet is he so restrained? For years he has carried on with his mistress while his legal wife languishes in a locked tower. We who know him well can see this as love—as heed of another duty. He has sworn a vow with his heart that even the laws of man cannot trespass.” Pliny’s voice grew yet lower. “But others will not think the same.”
Waltrude’s chest had become almost unbearably tight. “Go on.”
There was a beat of silence, and the leech again averted his gaze as he spoke. “The last house to come pay honors was the great House ofEyes. Lord Thrasamund approached with his son and heir, Childeric—a man of good, if facile, humor, and graciousness to compensate for his lack of wit. Yet Thrasamund had none of his usual jocular disposition. He was remote and cold, even while asking for gold and arms from the Crown. And perhaps…perhaps if the prince had not been too deep in his goblet, he would have recognized this for the ill portent that it was. Had he only quarreled in words with Lord Thrasamund instead.”
“What was Lord Thrasamund’s grievance?” Waltrude recalled him very dimly as a pleasant, boisterous man, not given to sulking.
“He did not say,” Pliny replied, “though it is plain enough for those with half a mind to see. His daughter was in attendance. The dowager lady of the House of Blood, Ygraine.”
Ygraine. Waltrude remembered her from Agnes’s calamitous wedding to Lord Fredegar: a rather nondescript slip of a woman, pretty enough though no great beauty, but well mannered as befit a lady of her stature. And she had already performed the foremost duty of her station: She had given her husband a son, and the House of Blood an heir.
Her late husband, Waltrude amended. Indeed she remembered as well the horrors of the scene in the dungeon. Ygraine on her knees, a dreadful sight, and even more dreadful as the moments ticked on. As the blood poured and Lord Unruoching choked. She had swooned then, and fainted, and her retainers had carried her out. Waltrude had not imagined she would ever hear of the woman again. She knew well what happened to ladies whose minds were lost to grief.
“She has remained all these years a ghost of herself,” Pliny said, “mired in her sadness. Time has not strengthened her spirit. She has only withered. I saw so myself at the feast.”
Waltrude looked down at her hands. They were ancient hands, more bone than flesh, hands that had served two kings, reared two princes, and attended two queens. The kings had both gone uncaringly to their vices. The princes were gentle boys who had become men she struggled now to recognize. And the queens had died.
“What of her son?” Waltrude asked. “The Master of Blood. Gamelyn.”
“I have not known him since he was a boy. He was sweet then, his only flaw being the ordinary impatience and impertinence of youth. But I cannot say how he has grown. Manhood can as easily corrupt virtues as it can engender them.”
“Yes,” Waltrude said. “That I understand well myself. I ask only for the sake of the little girl…Meriope. Her husband’s character will shape the rest of her life. If she is to be happy, it will be all to his credit. And if she is to suffer—”
