The queen had won, as queens often did, but after only a few days of instruction, Lillia had decided fighting was not as interesting as she’d thought, and wanted to learn how to ride a horse instead.
During the long trip north to Elvritshalla, Morgan had grown used to not seeing her, to not being noisily awakened by her at terrible hours of the morning, or dragged out to the garden in the middle of a game of dice to see some exceptional bird or other, and the ache of her absence had subsided enough that he barely thought of it. But seeing how much she had grown in the months he was gone frightened him a little in a way he did not understand. She had cried when he rode out this time, not even trying to hide it, which was not like the Lillia he knew, who generally wept only in frustrated anger when kept from something she badly wanted. So alive, so fierce! How could he feel so strongly about her when her own mother hardly seemed to . . .
But at least his mother loved Lillia, in her own slipshod way. Morgan’s father had . . .
With a huff of breath, he pushed the memory away—that old, terrible memory. It often came to him when he was alone, and more frequently when he was both alone and sober, one of the great reasons that he hated that combination of miseries.
Will anyone else miss me? My mother? A bit, I suppose, though she did not seem overly troubled by my traveling for months with Grandmother Miriamele and Grandfather Simon. And of course she’d be wretched if I died, because who cares for the mother of a dead heir?
Morgan hoped God was not listening at this particular moment, because even as he thought it, he regretted it. It had been made very plain by Father Nulles and others over the years that loving one’s parents was God’s firm command. And he did his best to love his mother, he truly did. Surely God couldn’t expect anything more than his best. But he couldn’t understand how she could be so disinterested in her own daughter. Sometimes it seemed she scarcely saw her from one day to the next, except when Countess Rhona or one of the other women brought Lillia in to say goodnight.
But his mother, disinterested though she might be, at least would never . . . never have said . . .
Again he tried to push the memory away, but this time it would not be dismissed; it rose like some fierce, toothy thing sliding up through the water lilies in the deepest part of the Hayholt’s moat—a flash from the shadows, and then it had him.
? ? ?
It had been a very strange day, one of the strangest of his life, and only a fortnight or so after the disturbing Midsummer’s Eve when his father had caught him in the Granary Tower. First he had fallen out of the Festival Oak, where he apparently should not have been climbing for some reason he could never understand, since it was the finest climbing tree in the Inner Bailey. One knee and both elbows badly bloodied and aching, Morgan had limped into the residence, trailed by several worried chambermaids who, because he would not let them touch him, could only wipe up the red drops and smears he left behind, whispering and clucking like pigeons. His mother, interrupted in conversation with several court ladies, took one look at him and waved him off with a grand shudder, ordering her maid to take him to Lord Tiamak to be made well.
Later, after the little Wrannaman had cleaned and carefully covered the weals with lint and linen, he had given Morgan a sip of something from a small glass jar. It was sweet but strange. Tiamak said it would help him to rest easier.
The maid brought him back, and now that he was cleaned and his wounds hidden, his mother consented to let him lie on a little bed at the side of her retiring room if he kept quiet. The pain of his injuries began to retreat, only reaching out now and then to poke him and remind him not to move too much. Morgan slept a little, then woke, then slept again as his mother and her ladies spoke in quiet tones, but the second time he rose to wakefulness the retiring room was noisier. Someone was looking for John Josua, the prince was needed, Lord Tiamak was looking for him. Something about one of the chambermaids. Morgan wondered idly whether it had something to do with him, but for once he could not remember any guilty act. In any case, the bed was warm and he did not want to sit up and ask. After a bit, he drifted back down into comfortable absence.
He woke up, or half-woke, to see his father standing over him with eyes as wide and stricken as one of the martyrs on the chapel windows. This appearance was so sudden and unexpected that Morgan tried to cry out, but sleep still clung, and he made only a gasping noise. Even more astonishing, his father bent and kissed him on the side of the head and whispered into Morgan’s ear, “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”
As his heart sped at this strange confidence, and he came more fully awake, Morgan heard his mother saying, “And you came here? Are you mad, John? Did you touch her? What if some contagion is on you?”
“No, I did not go near her,” his father said. “But Tiamak and others did.”
“Sweet Elysia! I shall not let any of them near me.”
“The little Wrannaman is no fool. He said it was something else. He said it was poison.”
“Oh, my dear God, protect us.”
“An accident.” But Morgan thought his father’s voice sounded unsteady. “Bitten by a snake, perhaps.” With an effort, as if he wished to change what was being discussed, his father said, “And why are you so frightened, Idela? People die here from all manner of things. Death is all around. It is God’s way.”
“Because I am with child,” his mother said. Morgan heard what might have been triumph and anger in her voice. He was now completely awake, his heart beating swiftly, but he kept his eyes closed because his father still stood over him.
“You are . . .”
“I am carrying a child. I know it is true, and the midwives agree. Do you wonder that I take fright?”
“A child.” He said it as he might have said, “a chair” or “a stone”.
“Yes. But why are you so cold, John? Is this not what we wanted, another son to protect the succession?”
“I . . . I am sorry.” John Josua was holding himself rigid, but his leg trembled against the bed where Morgan lay miming sleep. “It is thinking of that chambermaid—they said she vomited black bile . . .”
“John! Are you mad?”
“Oh, Lord help me. I am not myself, wife. Again, I beg your pardon.”
“Give me your blessing, John. We will pray that he or she will be born safely. Hurry, John—God must think us ungrateful.”
“Of course,” he said, but the strange edge in his voice remained. “I pray that God will bless us all, and bless the child.”
Idela kneeled in front of a picture of the Sacred Mother Elysia and began to pray, asking God’s forgiveness for speaking of evil things when He had showered them with such good fortune, and would doubtless watch over all of them, and the boy would be raised as a good Aedonite—or the girl would be, of course, if it was a girl, but his mother didn’t want God to think that another boy would be a burden. As she enumerated all the things she hoped God would do to protect her family, Morgan heard his father say just above him, in a low voice that he doubtless thought no other mortal could hear, “And I pray that God will be just and the child is born dead.”
Morgan lay in horrified, rigid silence as his father went out. He could hear his mother praying—she hardly even noticed her husband’s departure. Morgan wanted to cry, but couldn’t, wouldn’t, because it would give him away, as though he himself had done some terrible thing simply by listening.
When she finished praying, his mother rose to admit her ladies-in-waiting, who had been waiting patiently in the antechamber. They swept in like a cloud of birdsong, their voices light and sweet, talking of the beauty of the summer day beyond the windows. Morgan rolled over and pulled a blanket over his head, wishing it was something thicker, heavier, like clay or even stone, wishing he could bury himself in the earth and not hear anything again. Eventually, after a very long time, he fell back into sleep.
? ? ?
“Are you awake, Highness? Would you like company?”
Morgan sat up, startled to find himself in the middle of the forest instead of the bed in his mother’s retiring room, and saw Sir Porto standing a short distance away. The old knight raised his hand in greeting, although none too steadily. He had stayed drinking with the soldiers longer than Morgan, which in itself told much about the prince’s current mood. “Awake, yes,” Morgan said. “As for company, though, I’m not certain . . .”
Missing the hint entirely, Porto seated himself on a rock nearby. “I know that look you wear, my prince.”
“You do?”
“Aye, yes. I left home when I was young myself to fight against the White Foxes. Left my family behind.”