“A squirming baby seal, washed to shore?”
“No!”
“And what about a wolf cub, tumbling out of its mountain den?”
“No, no, no,” said Tisander, clapping Waltrude delightedly on each cheek. “You are being silly.”
“Yes, a bit silly,” she agreed. “Your father was only a little boy once, just like you. Gold of hair, blue of eye. His favorite place was the library. He could read before he could walk. He loved his mama dearly, and kept always to her side. He did not much care for the rough play-fighting of the other boys. His soul was a gentle one; he had no constitution for violence, even when it was pretend. He had two kittens and called them Feather-Tail and Bright-Paw.”
Tisander was listening raptly, that sober gaze of his unwavering. But the boy was not the only one. With a quick sideways glance, Waltrude saw that Pliny was watching her intently, as well. His lips were pressed into a thin line, almost white with the reduction of blood—and his eyes were fixed and unblinking.
“It is all true,” Waltrude insisted, shifting her gaze back to Tisander. Discomfort prickled her skin. “And now he is a man grown, but his heart remains as it was: fair and humane, more inclined to be injured by the cruelties of the world than to inflict them himself.” She swallowed, and then with greater conviction went on, “He is a good man, and will be a good king, and you will follow in his footsteps, sweet one. You have the blood of Berengar, but just as important, you have the blood of your father. His kindly nature. His noble intentions. Under his rule, Drepane will flourish.”
Waltrude now glanced pointedly at Pliny, but the leech had averted his gaze.
Satisfied, Tisander laid his head on Waltrude’s breast, his lashes flickering. “I wish to see him,” he said, with a soft sigh. “My papa…will he come tuck me into bed tonight?”
“I imagine so,” said Waltrude. “And Agnes, as well—neither wishes to ever be too long parted from you.”
With yet one more contented sigh, Tisander closed his eyes. Waltrude indulged herself to stroke his golden curls, finding as much ofher own comfort in the gesture as she wished to impart upon the boy. Yet this moment of peace was not long-lived. When she looked up, she found that Pliny was staring at her again.
She felt like snapping at him—it was unjust, this dour sulking of his, when Waltrude could not so much as glare back. For weeks he had persisted in this glum and bitter behavior, his disquiet rising from his flesh like barbs, and only further irritated with time, not soothed. Waltrude felt it, even if Liuprand himself was still ignorant to how he was beginning to lose his leech’s faith.
Over Tisander’s head she frowned, sure to keep her displeasure invisible to the little boy’s eye.
Pliny continued to glower at her, wordlessly, and Waltrude’s chest began to smolder with something greater than mere annoyance. Had he not helped to raise that cruel, stupid man, Unruoching? Who had come to slay his own father and aggrieve the lady Agnes so? He had no right, she thought with anger, to pass such judgments upon her and the boy she had reared. He had been at Castle Crudele for seven years; she had been here for seventy. He could only know a small part of what had caused the prince’s lapse. For all he had endured, at his father’s hand alone, he could by now have become a tyrant.
Yet you reared the king, as well,a voice in her head whispered.He was a sweet boy, as gentle as his son, and look what has become of him.
Waltrude closed her eyes a moment—she could not entertain such musings; they would lead her to ruin and madness. When she opened them again, Pliny was staring still, and she could bear it no longer. She stroked once more the princeling’s hair and said, “Perhaps I shall look for your father, sweet one, and bring him here. Would you like that?”
Lifting his head, Tisander nodded. There was a slackened, sleepy expression on his face, and Waltrude realized that the hours of the day had passed and dusk was settling now, the dark, deep purple of an infected wound. Thrasamund’s contingent remained outside the barbican. They were no longer jostling and muttering; they had gone silent and still. A hot, heavy wind swept over the courtyard and then came through the window, carrying with it the vile human scents of theOuter Wall. In the distance the moldering bell tower made a faint impression on the clotted purple clouds.
“Very well, then,” Waltrude said, and lifted Tisander gently from her lap. “Stay here with Pliny, and I shall fetch him.”
The boy went obediently to Pliny and raised his arms to be picked up. The leech did, settling the princeling on his knee. Tisander was weary of his lessons but not so tired that he was yet ready to sleep, and would eagerly accept a story read aloud to him. He rested his chin on Pliny’s shoulder, and his small mouth cracked with a yawn.
Waltrude locked stares with the leech one final time. No words passed between them, only this charged look. His eyes were lidded and cloudy with secret thoughts, treacherous thoughts, though so far contained only within the lockbox of his mind. She almost wished he would speak them aloud, so she might make a rejoinder, defend the honor of the prince to which he had sworn his now-faltering allegiance. Yet even Waltrude’s uncommonly sharp gaze could not penetrate Pliny.
She turned and went into the corridor, the leech’s name still a whisper on her tongue.
In the hallway, Waltrude’s steps became hurried. In a pace as urgent as she could manage, she wound her way through the corridors and up the spiral of stairs. All the while her mind raced, each thought like the bolting of a spooked horse.
The world has sullied him, as it sullied his father.
No—it is your rearing that has tainted him, as black rot consumes a ripe fruit.
Were you only wiser—were you only younger, or older—were you a softer touch, or a sterner hand—
Ah, she would not survive such anguished musing for much longer! She had to speak with the prince. He was the only one who coulddissuade her from this self-torture. Perhaps he need not say a word; perhaps merely seeing him as he was, beautiful and noble and just, would reassure Waltrude that he was not some brutish creature, that he had not been transfigured as though by the work of magic.
By the work of love,she thought. Only his affection for the lady Agnes could drive him to such lengths. A ruinous thing, then, love. He had gorged himself on it, just like his father had gulped down every succulent morsel on his plate. A glut of love was more dangerous than a dearth of it. Liuprand had drunk from the ever-flowing fountain of romance, and look what it had done to him.
The hour was late and Waltrude knew, with a sense of unfolding dread, where she would find the prince. Not once in these seven years had she disturbed his meetings with the lady. Even now she was fearful of it. What occurred behind the closed doors of the chapel was not her right to witness.
Yet as she approached, her resolve only grew.I must hear the justifications from his mouth. I must see the gentleness of his gaze myself.She was halfway there now. The last stretch would be most arduous—climbing all those steep, crumbling stairs to the most airless and disused section of the castle, visited only by two. She was astonished by her own desperation, which seemed to imbue her with an impossible strength and an even greater endurance.
So fixed was her course, so intent was her mind, that it did not even occur to her that she might encounter any obstacles on her way. Thus, when she rounded a corner and nearly collided with two figures in sepia robes, Waltrude was startled to a gasp.
