The Fate of the Tearling (The Queen of the Tearling #3)

“There’s no divorce in God’s Church, child. A husband always has the right to drag his wife back home.”

Da had done that, Aisa remembered. Several times during her childhood, Maman had made them pack their few belongings and steal away, but the journey always ended up back at home with Da.

“Then what?”

“Well, Lady Cross was wasting away, still refusing to budge. It became quite a matter of contention in the kingdom.”

“Didn’t her fiancé do anything?”

“There wasn’t much he could do. He had offered Tare the few pounds he had. Lady Cross’s family tried to ransom her as well, with no luck. Lord Tare was in the grip of something by then, you see; his pride had become wrapped up in making the woman submit. Many nobles applied to the Regent on Lady Cross’s behalf, but the Regent refused to send in the Tear army for what he deemed a domestic matter. Finally, when it was clear that Lady Cross would die in that tower before anything changed, the Crosses pooled their money and hired the Caden to get her out.”

“And did they?” Aisa asked. She found herself enchanted; it was like listening to one of Maman’s fairy tales.

“Yes, and a slick piece of business it was too,” Elston chimed in. “James posed as the lady’s cousin, come to beg her to relent, and Christopher and Daniel his two retainers. They met with the lady for an hour, and when they came out, she agreed to marry Lord Tare. He was overjoyed, and arranged the wedding for the very next week.”

A feint, Aisa thought. Sometimes she thought that all of life could be reduced to the fight.

“In the week before the wedding, Lord Tare kept Lady Cross under heavy guard, but the entire kingdom thought she had truly given in. The Captain, here, insisted that she had not”—Elston saluted the Mace with two of his fingers—“but the rest of us were fooled, and we thought no less of Lady Cross for it. Starvation is a terrible death.”

“Then what?” Aisa asked. Coryn had gone to work on her bicep now, but she barely noticed.

“The day of the wedding, and Lady Cross was dressed and in her best. The Arvath sent the local bishop to perform the ceremony. Lord Tare invited half the kingdom to witness his triumph, and the church was stuffed with his guards and guests. The Crosses refused to attend, but the rest of the nobility were there, even the Regent himself. Lady Cross went up to the altar and followed the bishop through the ceremony, every word, two hours of it, until they were married.”

“What?”

“The wedding concluded peacefully, and I tell you, the minute it was over, Lord Tare’s worries were done. He had her lands and title, and that’s all he wanted. He stayed downstairs to get drunk with his house guard while Lady Cross went upstairs to take off her wedding gown. An hour later Tare went looking for his wife, and she was gone, snatched easily. By the time he had mustered a recovery party, she was already halfway across the Reddick.”

“But she was married.”

“Seems so, doesn’t it? Lord Tare pitched a fit, went after the Caden with bloodhounds and such, and when he couldn’t find them, he appealed to the Regent. It took two days for anyone to even think of consulting the bishop, but when they did, they found him bound in his palace, along with his guards. The bishop was starving and furious, and certainly a very different man from the one who’d performed the wedding.”

“This is the clever bit, hellcat,” the Mace cut back in. “I don’t speak Latin, but I know several people who do, and they told me that the marriage ceremony was gibberish. There was a long sermon on the virtues of garlic, another on the rules of rugby, God knows what else. Lady Cross promised to love and serve beer all of her life. She spoke Latin, you see, and Lord Tare did not.”

Aisa considered this for a moment. “What about the people in the audience?”

“Plenty of people at the ceremony spoke Latin, and a few of them were even Lord Tare’s friends. But none of them said a word, not until later, when they bore witness that the marriage had been a sham. Those three Caden took a gamble, but a good one. By the end, the entire kingdom sympathized with Lady Cross. The only people who truly wanted her brought to bay were the sadists and woman-haters, and the Caden bet high that none of them spoke Latin.”

“A good gamble,” Arliss grumbled. “I lost a fortune on that wedding.”

“What did Lord Tare do when he found out?”

“Oh, he swore up and down the Tear that he would have his revenge on all of them: Lady Cross, the Caden, the false bishop—who was never found. But he had no legal claim on the lady, and by the time the matter was sorted out, she was already with her farmer.”

“Did she marry him?”