It was a greater agony than the severing of a limb. Tears pricked at her eyes, but of course they did not fall. She had lost herself in Castle Crudele. She wondered if her silence had ever been strength at all. She wondered if perhaps she had been wrong—that it was no more than a festering wound that would not close. That her grandmother had relished it, that Marozia had relished it, and she had been the only one who was bereft, and was too dull to even realize. She felt ashamed and foolish now to ever have called her silence power.
There was a soft thudding sound. Agnes broke from her reverie, and followed the sound to its source.
Upon the window ledge there was a moth. Its antennae flickered,and its large eyes shone like two lanterns in the dark. She approached, and the creature cocked its head, a gesture that made it look curious, as if it did not know its own purpose there.
Tentatively, Agnes reached out with her undamaged hand. The moth crawled up onto her outstretched fingers. Its wings were dappled black and white, like the bark on a birch tree. The moth then ascended her arm and perched on her shoulder. It was nearly the size of a hunting hawk.
An unexpected yearning filled her—filled her in a manner that reminded her so bitterly of her own emptiness. Speckling, she remembered, as the creature nuzzled its head against her cheek, was for an apology.
XXVII
Waltrude is Stricken
It was a terrible morning in Castle Crudele, though Waltrude had seen a great many of those. The morning after Philomel’s death had been terrible, mainly for all the commotion and the soiled sheets that Waltrude had inherited the grim task of washing. How miserable, she had thought, as if the Crown could not afford to burn these and buy new ones. Was there some crippling shortage of sheets on Drepane? Her hands trembled at recalling it. A spray of white seed and streaks of fresh red blood. The same as their wedding night, she had realized with a shudder.
On this terrible morning, she had been called, too early, to the prince’s chambers. Waltrude dragged her feet as she went. The scent of blood floated in a bitter mist through the corridors. There was splatter on the floor leading out from the great hall, and Waltrude hoped her task would not be to scrub it.
She reached the prince’s door, the dread weighing heavily upon her. She raised a reluctant hand and knocked.
The prince’s voice rang out immediately. “Come in.”
Waltrude did.
A feeling of wrongness overcame her at once upon entering. It was not only that the table where the prince took his meals had been overturned, along with several of the chairs; it was not that the hearth was ashen—though it had been a cold night, it looked as though it had never been lit; it was not only that there was a smashed carafe, wine spilled across the floor. It was something intangible that hung in the air, limp and gray, as if the spirit of life had been drained from the chamber.
The prince stood at the window, facing away from her. Waltrude took several steps inside before he turned around, and when he did, she stopped in shocked horror. His hair was mussed and the top buttons of his shirt were undone. But most alarmingly, a bright, pulsing bruise stretched across his cheek, marring the lovely golden skin beneath.
“My prince!” she gasped. “What has happened to you?”
His eyes were the dull blue of a languid tide pool. “Nothing. That’s the problem—nothing.”
Aghast, Waltrude approached him. With trembling limbs, she reached up and, ever so gently, touched her palm to his bruised cheek.
The prince closed his eyes briefly and leaned into her touch. His skin was very warm. She wondered, with no small amount of dismay, if he was drunk. But the carafe was shattered and the wine was on the floor.
“You must have heard,” he said lowly, “what my father has done.”
Her stomach clenched. She had not wished to speak of it. She was not even certain, really, of the truth—rumors had spilled from the mouths of the leeches like a spewing of insects from a bloated corpse, but these were rumors only. Ugly, garish, and bleak. She did not want to believe them.
But Waltrude felt the aura of the prince’s anguish and knew it was true. Even so, she needed him to speak it aloud—perhaps the reality would be not quite so terrible as the lascivious accounting of the leeches.
“Let me hear it from your lips, my prince,” she said.
A breath went out of him, hot with the smoldering anger in his heart. “My father was enraged by the House of Blood’s absence at the desecration. I told him it was a petty snub, but he could not be dissuaded from his rage. He decided to repay this slight with an insult to the assembled leeches. These dull, innocent men who could not be prevailed upon to thumb their noses at him, much less plot some sinister treachery. He served them stale bread and watered wine and then had a gross feast brought for himself. Naturally, one leech stood and gave a feeble word of protest…”
The prince paused, and his gaze left Waltrude’s face. The anger hadbeen fierce in his eyes, and now it had softened into an expression that was closer to shame.
“I should have prevented it,” he said. “Had I stood then, myself, and tried to cow him into silence. Had I told him to recant…”
The prince shook his head, as if to clear it, and his eyes sharpened once more. “Of course my father could not let even the most pitiful protest lie. He went around the room and had each man swear fealty to him. Call him a true king. All the leeches he demanded this of—and then he turned his gaze to the high table.”
Waltrude’s chest tightened. She did not want to believe—and yet she found she could imagine it all so easily, as if she had seen it herself in a dream. The king, spitting his fury. The leeches, bowing their heads in wretched submission. And even that, she knew, would not have sated him. The Sluggard, they called him, but perhaps he should have been titledthe Glutton.It made her ache for the little boy she had known, the one who had nursed so gently, had not even been overly solicitous of her breasts. Something vile had poisoned his innocent spirit. The world had sullied him.
“They all answered yes, of course, you are a true king.” Liuprand’s voice was pained. “The Most Esteemed Surgeon, the princess—even I wrenched the bitter and reviled words from my throat. But then he came to the lady Agnes…”
The silent Lady Agnes. The statue-girl. The living corpse. Waltrude swallowed down her own horror.
“She did not speak. He knew she would not. He knew it all along. He had arranged the moment, like a tournament spectacle. Some sort of grand joust,” Liuprand bit out. “When she refused to answer, he…”
