Agnes ducked, and the candleholder shattered against the wall. The white wax broke into pieces, like fragments of bone. The babe at her chest began to squirm and fuss, unlatching its mouth at last so it could give that same low, wheezing whine. Agnes righted herself, blood boiling with adrenaline.
Marozia screamed again, this time a wordless howl. And so Agnes turned and fled the chamber, leaving her cousin alone in her thrashing rage.
VII
Wanting, Which Lies Like Sleep
It occurred to her only when she had exited the room and stood alone in the corridor that Agnes held Drepane’s future king in her arms. Liuprand had gone—to fend off his father, she guessed—so he did not know that his seed had sprouted two children, that he now had a daughter and a son. One to wear a bridal veil, and the other to wear a crown. In a single labor, the alliance between the king and the House of Blood had been guaranteed, and Drepane’s royal line had been secured. Such grand and weighty things, to rest upon these tiny infant shoulders.
Agnes had seen a newborn babe but once. She wished she did not remember the flavor of it. When she recalled this, she felt her throat fill with bile and her stomach turn sickishly empty. It was hunger and disgust, both at once. She was not fit to hold such an innocent creature; she was tainted by what she had done; she would never cease to taste newborn flesh on her tongue. Her hands trembled around the infant, her arms turning limp. Perhaps she should let it fall—perhaps the cold stone floor of Castle Crudele was a safer place for the babe than the lady Agnes’s depraved grip.
Yet she held on, perhaps only out of instinct, the predisposition of a woman to succor a child even if she was not and never would be a mother. Adele-Blanche, with her concoctions of herbs, had made sure Agnes’s womb would remain forever empty. The thought had not brought her particular grief until now, when she clasped Liuprand’s son to her chest. His blood and Marozia’s, mingled irrevocably, their union manifested in flesh and bone. She might have Liuprand’s love,but it was an intangible thing. This that she held in her arms was solid, real. It could be seen and felt. It breathed; it lived.
She could have hated it, she supposed. It could have borne the burden of her grief and her dearth. But as Agnes examined its softly suckling face, she found that she could not summon up any such emotion. The opposite, in fact—Agnes found that she loved it. So simple and base was this epiphany that it seemed almost childish. Yet here was a creature upon which the world had so far left no mark, who held no ill feelings in its heart, whose mind was too unformed for thoughts of malice or vice. A fear clutched at her then, a terror that the world would sully it. That her arms would never be protection enough.
What had her arms even done, before she held this child? What had her soul done with this surfeit of love? Agnes wished so terribly and so bitterly that her breasts were not as barren as her womb, that she could at least nurse it—but that job would fall to Waltrude, she knew.
And Waltrude would come soon, either chased from the chamber by Marozia’s roiling rage, or of her own accord, to see to the future princeling Agnes had stolen away. Soon this brief time of solitude between them would be done. But for the moment Agnes merely clutched the infant in her arms, its mouth still searching for purchase against her lacking breasts, and imagined that this time might stretch on forever, time in which she was not the hollow creature Adele-Blanche had formed from the red clay of her own wrath.
It then occurred to her that she should take the child to meet his father. She had gotten him, the little princeling, to stop fussing, though Agnes paced the halls of Castle Crudele with excruciating slowness, so very careful not to disturb the bundle in her arms. It slept now, but not deeply. It was restless with its new embodiment, with the first breaths of worldly air. Agnes paused often to stroke the soft crown of its head. With the oils of birth wiped away, she could now see the very paleblond fuzz there; he would be a golden prince one day, just like his father.
She had never been to Liuprand’s chambers before—she had never dared, afraid that her passion would overtake her and she would commit yet another act of treason there—but she found her way eventually. She knocked quietly once upon the wooden door. There was no answering voice from the other side.
Agnes was then gripped by a nauseous sort of fear, fear that, in his grief and confusion, Liuprand had gone to enact some punishment upon himself—or perhaps he had not gone anywhere and was instead engaging in private torment in his chamber. It was this thought that eclipsed all her better judgment and urged her to push open the door.
She stepped inside, and the chamber was empty. Yet she could see Liuprand everywhere: in the gold-and-midnight-blue livery in the wardrobe, in the half-gulped carafe of wine on the table, in the bed that was unmade, suggesting no servants had been allowed inside, and in the books that were stacked in a perilous manner all over the floor.
Had it been anyone else, had Agnes not known Liuprand down to the soul, she would have been alarmed, would have seen this all as evidence of a disordered mind. As it was, she could imagine how the anguish and turmoil of these months had reflected themselves in the state of Liuprand’s chamber. She wandered over to the pile of books and began to examine the spines; still the infant slept against her chest.
In the midst of this prying, Agnes heard the door to the chamber open. She whirled around, and the infant began to mewl at its sudden jostling.
The ember of hope in her heart was immediately snuffed, for it was Waltrude who entered the room, not Liuprand. The wet nurse’s hands had been cleaned, her fingernails even scrubbed, yet the dark blood still dried in blotches on her white shift. When she saw Agnes, her ice-green eyes grew wide.
“What are you doing here, lady?” she demanded, in a voice far too rough for her station. But Waltrude was not just a servant here; she was too ancient for that, and too beloved. “Are you mad?”
“No,” Agnes said, though her shoulders rose defensively around her ears. “How is Marozia? Is she well?”
“Well enough to hiss at me like a she-cat when I offered my breasts to the babe,” Waltrude said. She clucked her tongue. “She insists on nursing the child herself. I am to understand this is a custom in your house, but it is unbecoming of a princess.”
In half hope, half fear, Agnes asked, “Has she not demanded to see her son?”
Waltrude shook her head grimly. “She has demanded the opposite. She does not want the second child anywhere near her chamber—nor anyone else. She banished me; she banished Pliny. She wishes only to have that dull sparrow of a handmaiden at her side.”
Agnes’s stomach clenched. The princeling stirred again, searching its small mouth along her chest.
“Give the child here, lady,” Waltrude said. “And leave this chamber at once. You cannot be seen here, much less in this state of undress. It is indecent.”
Instantly, a flush rose to her cheeks. For all these months she had convinced herself that Waltrude did not know—could not know—yet it was hollow comfort now; she could no longer make herself believe it. But she was safe in her knowledge that Waltrude would never betray Liuprand—even if she did not love the thing he loved. And still, no crime had been committed beyond that single night in the House of Blood. A man could not be punished for the secret thoughts in his mind. Agnes swallowed.
“Unless you believe your breasts will begin to leak within several moments,” Waltrude said dryly, “pass me the infant so he may eat.Lady.”
Every muscle of her body resisted the act of letting him go. She was awash again with the grief that her breasts could never nourish another, that she was such a deficient woman in that manner. She petted the babe’s head. She wondered, with anguish, whether she would ever be permitted to hold him again. But she swore forever and ever she would not be the covetous creature Adele-Blanche had been. Sowith painful reluctance, she shifted the princeling into Waltrude’s arms.
The wet nurse had warmth enough for the infant, and she rocked him gently against her chest. “There’s a sweet boy,” she whispered. “Already he is a picture of his father. He will be a strong king one day.”
Agnes felt the weight of this expectation on her own shoulders, and she pitied the child. Already the world was beginning to press itself cruelly upon him. She wished he could have remained cached in her embrace. She wished such a great many things that it was like a knife, jabbed within her and twisted endlessly, stirring her organs and tangling her intestines. Once she had been able to elide this pain. But swallowing the poison of love had made her weak, and she could bear it no longer. Agnes left the chamber, her deprived heart beating brokenly.
VIII
