Marozia lifted her gaze to meet Waltrude’s. Her eyes were as black as tide pools at midnight, and Waltrude saw no resemblance between her and her cousin. Her heart-shaped face, her taut cheeks like two fresh figs, and the natural flush that painted them, even now after countless days without seeing the sun—so different from the lady Agnes with her eerie, unworldly beauty. She almost could not fathom it that the two could be related by blood, that the two had once been so close as to be almost a single being, a symbiotic creature that fed on itself so that it was both always feasting and always starved.
The princess’s voice was stilted as she said, “Waltrude.”
“Good day, my princess.”
“There is nothing good about it, or any other,” said Marozia dispassionately. “What brings you so imprudently to my chamber?”
Waltrude’s skin prickled; she had never been described before asimprudent.She had always done precisely her duty, no less and no more. And she remembered then her very first impression of the princess, as a vain and ungracious girl, and she was, perversely, cheered to see that she had retained some of that brazen spirit. So very different, Waltrude thought again, from the lady Agnes. So very different indeed.
She was not such a one that could have ever pleased Liuprand, aberrant as she was to the prince’s tastes. Now that Waltrude knew what stirred his heart, she realized that Marozia had been doomed from the very start.
And so, filled with a pity so forceful that it was almost love, Waltrude said, “I have come to offer you my sympathy, Princess, and all the services at my disposal, modest as they may be.”
Marozia opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, a tiny figure bounded into the room. Her golden curls were long and loose and a bit unruly, and her shift was wrinkled in the way of a lively and active child. She ran to her mother and leapt into her arms, clinging to her like a kitten. Marozia took a moment to cup her daughter’s face, kissing each cheek and the little button of her nose, while Meriope wriggled and squirmed.
She was Tisander’s twin, grown together in the womb, though if not for their physical features, Waltrude would never have known it. They had their father’s Seraphine coloring, dark gold and ocean blue, and their mother’s cherub face and dimpled chin. Yet in all other respects they could not be more dissimilar. And it struck Waltrude that this distinction was quite obvious, and devastating in its simplicity: Tisander was a strange, precocious being, too knowing for his years, and Meriope was an ordinary child.
Marozia turned to Waltrude, her daughter in her arms. Her brow had grown suddenly pinched with suspicion. “And what services are those?”
Waltrude drew a breath. It was difficult to speak, with the little girl now as her audience. She did not know how much Marozia had told her daughter of her fate. She searched the princess’s face for clues, and then Ninian’s. The handmaiden was standing a few feet from the princess, hands clasped in penitent obedience. Her expression was unreadable.
“I may look nothing more than a withered crone,” Waltrude said carefully, “but I have passed more than half a century in service of the Crown, laboring for the house of Berengar. I nursed King Nicephorus at my breast. And so I believe that I may still have some influence over his thoughts.”
Marozia’s gaze flashed—those crow-black eyes. Her grip on her daughter tightened. A moment passed, and then she said in a low voice, “You are too boastful for a wet nurse.”
Waltrude stood in silence, waiting.
“Nothing holds sway over the king save for drink and feast,” Marozia went on, bitterness cracking the words. “I would be better off enlisting the aid of a kitchen wench.” Still Waltrude did not speak. “And do you think I am a fool? You are slave to my cousin’s whims. Why should I trust your intentions here?”
Perhaps Waltrude had not appreciated, until that moment, how very lost to each other Agnes and Marozia had become. It was not a cord that had been withered by time and strained with distance. It was a string that had been brusquely cut.
“I am a wet nurse,” Waltrude replied, lifting her chin, “not a slave. I serve the House of Berengar, as I have said. And your daughter has the blood of Berengar within her. I have cause to care for her, as well.”
Something in Marozia fractured in that moment, a small fissure in her façade. Her mouth quivered, the right side turning slightly down in a grimace that, Waltrude feared, might presage tears. She did not know if she could bear to see such a great and beautiful lady cry.
But instead she looked down at her daughter in her arms. “Go playwith Ninian now, my sweet one,” she said. “I’ll be back with you in no more than a moment.”
Obediently, Meriope slid from her mother’s grasp and toddled over to Ninian to take her hand. The girl was dressed finely, in pale-violet silk, her hair in a tight crown of braids. Without words, she guided Meriope into one of the east wing’s farther rooms. Waltrude knew every detail of every chamber here. The tower’s remotest room, small and tight and dark, which locked from the outside like a vault, was where Philomel had been kept in her latter years. A queen in captivity, like some trapped lioness. Waltrude felt a sudden draft of cold, though the room with its shut windows was airless.
Slowly, Marozia approached her. She had a leonine look, as well, and stalked toward Waltrude as if closing in upon her prey. But she paused before she was in reach of Waltrude’s arms.
“If you truly wish to help me,” she said in a low voice, “then you will tell me what horrors await my daughter in the House of Blood.”
Waltrude’s swallow was audible in the silence. Her wattled throat, which felt suddenly quite exposed, juddered and bobbed.
“My princess—” she began.
And then Marozia was upon her. She clutched the front of Waltrude’s dress with surprising strength, clenching the fabric in her ring-studded fingers. She was made briefly powerful in her desperation. Her lips were pulled back to reveal white flashing teeth.
“Spare me no detail,” she bit out. “I am not a wilting lily. If my daughter must bear it, then I am fit enough to hear it.”
Waltrude inhaled. The princess’s nails were sharp, and they dug into her skin through the thin summer linen. In little more than a whisper, she said, “I am not given to know every detail, my princess.”
“You said yourself you have served here for half a century. You have seen all facets of men’s natures and all that women must bear because of them. The House of Blood is no different from Castle Crudele in this manner, and indeed no different than even the lowest hovel of the Outer Wall. Tell me, Waltrude.Speak.”
Waltrude looked down at her frock. The princess’s fingers were shaking.
“I have indeed seen the nature of men,” Waltrude replied softly. “Not all are the same, but in this matter, they must fulfill their duties just as their women do. I know little of the character of the Master of Blood, save that he is a young man who prefers the wind in his hair to the stuffy stillness of the council chamber. He will certainly hold your daughter in high esteem—she is of the most glorious lineages, from her mother and father both. He will not risk the ire of the Crown or the House of Teeth. But yes, he will perform the functions of a husband. If he is of gentler nature, he will wait until your daughter’s first blood. If he is not, then…the greater burden your daughter’s body must bear.”
