"Maman," Flint objected over my commentary, "you're not old!"
Maman gave me a wry smile, and, equally wryly, said, "I'm very old, my boy," to Flint. "Far older than any mortal should be. I didn't know," she admitted to me. "Until now, when you told me. I didn't know what Nell knew, that I've been leeching magic from the kingdom's very land. I'm afraid I can't maintain this artificial youth much longer without irreversibly damaging the country I fought so hard to hold." She sagged a little even as she admitted it, and I remembered she'd been bed-ridden for over a week.
As had I. I finally sat, a slow sink into cushions. "You'd better tell us everything, Maman."
"I did come to check on Nell's children," Maman said to Father, then shook her head. "No, but I must start earlier than that, when the spell to bind our borders began to fail. I knew it was my own doing. My own fault. The magic was never meant to be held by a single monarch for so long, but to be passed down from child to child, renewed by birth and love. But I had sworn to never marry again, to never carry another child until my son's curse was broken and he could kneel before me to take the crown." She smiled briefly. "I was arrogant and angry, which are bad traits in a queen. But the border began to break down, and I knew I had to do something.
"For the first years of the Border Wars I fed the land with my own blood, as I had done when I buried Euard's bones so many years earlier. It helped, but not enough. It took almost seven years of fighting before I was willing to concede that I must bear another child and give this country a future beyond me."
"Maman!" Flint's eyes rounded and he looked about as if he'd been caught with his finger in the sugar. "Me?"
A bittersweet smile creased Maman's features. "No, sweet. This was fifteen years or more before you were born. I couldn't bring myself to marry again, not for convenience, but there were child-makers among the men in the fields. I had a handful of affairs, and when I was certain I had caught, I retired from battle to bear the child."
"But there is no heir." Pearl spoke with a sorrowful intelligence, and for a moment Maman seemed to lean into that understanding before gathering herself to go on.
"There is no heir. The child was born too early, and never breathed outside the womb."
Opal whispered, "Oh, Maman."
Maman's smile turned bleak with thanks, then bleaker still with what she had to say. "I'll never be sure what I did was the right thing. The baby would have been my heir, had she lived, but she did not, and I had cast the spell with Euard's bones once already."
It was I who said, "Oh, Maman," this time, with a knot of heartbreak and pity tightening in my stomach.
She nodded, reciting the next part carefully and without emotion, as if to allow emotion would be her undoing entirely. "I returned to the field, burying her bones and saying the spell all around the kingdom, as I had done before. And for the second time, it worked. The borders rose again, and we were safe. Safe," she repeated, with a weary laugh. "Safe, save for Nell having crossed back into the kingdom while the borders were down, and for her having born children to a man of my people."
"I didn't know," said Father, helplessly. She took his hand and squeezed it, all the acceptance and apology necessary.
"I know. Nor do I condemn you, Jacob. You might have slain her, you know." Maman closed her eyes, as if recalling the part of the story that I had told, how Father had stood over Eleanor's faery form and stayed his sword.
Father's chin lifted and his eyes darkened with memory. "I felt—I felt a compulsion not to kill that faery woman. A demand that rose from the bottom of me, as if it came up through the—"
"Through the earth," Maman said. "And spoke to you. I can't think I did it deliberately, Jacob, but even now I don't know what will happen to my oldest son if Nell dies. My fear of that unknown kept her alive that day, and what came after is therefore of my making as well. She found you, and began again. I know better than that Nell's love was intoxicating, so I can never blame you for loving her." Maman took a breath, as if steadying herself. "I only discovered her by happenstance. She was right, Amber. I'd spent decades traveling and meeting my people, without them ever knowing who I was. I wanted to see, and be seen, as a citizen, not a monarch; how else, I thought, to know the needs and wants of the people? So I was in the city, and we saw one another by chance."
"How did you disappear?" Jasper asked, fascinated.
Maman chuckled. "I'd had decades of practice by then. A cart went by while she was curtsying. I flung myself in the back amongst the rutabegas, and by the time she rose I had been carried safely around a corner. And I'm small, and had my hood up. It's easy enough not to notice me."
Father murmured, "I would disagree," and earned another sweet smile from her as she continued.
"I set someone to learn who she was, and it took little enough time, but Nell was no fool. She had fled already, and I let myself hope she had returned to the Border Kingdom. But I needed to know what I could about her children, too, and that," she said apologetically to Father, "is why I came to check on them. I was afraid I would find her greed and possessiveness embodied in them, that I would find young witches easy with using their magic to get what they wanted. Instead I found you three girls," she said, with a smile as fond for us as she'd had for Father. "You seemed to have no magic amongst you at all, but I could see the best of Nell in your mannerisms and glances and smiles. You, the four of you, showed me something of what a family could be; something I had known little off, with my campaigns and my politics and my lost child. I loved that life," she said simply and without remorse, "but I had lived it for a century, and wanted to try this other thing too. I was lucky that Jacob came to love me, as I had come to love all of you, and luckier still to have had three fine strong sons so very late in my life."