Quintana of Charyn (33 page)

Froi stopped, waiting until the others were out of hearing distance.

‘Will you promise me something?’ he asked.

Gargarin nodded and Froi could see he was shaking.

‘Allow me the honour to name my son,’ Froi said, his voice husky with emotion. ‘He’ll be called Tariq. Tariq of the Citavita.’

 

 

‘
I
t will be a boy,’ the oldest woman on the mountain told Isaboe. She had never once guessed wrong. It was all about the roundness of Isaboe’s belly and the shape of her face. As she stood naked among her kinswomen, she caught her
yata
’s eye and saw the flash of emotion. A boy. A king. Balthazar.

The women on the mountain had gathered in
Yata
’s home to watch the blessing of the unborn. It was a tradition among the Monts.

‘He’ll come into this world with secrets,’ the oldest woman on the mountain said. ‘But only few remember what they are by the time they are old enough to speak. Perhaps yours will be the one, my queen. Perhaps your son’s secrets will cure that which ails this land.’

Isaboe’s young cousin Agata held a small bowl of oil from a Mont olive tree, with a sprinkle of sage in it, and Isaboe shivered when she felt the old woman’s cold fingers on her skin. ‘Your milk is strong. It will feed a king.’

There was a murmuring of appreciation from the others. ‘He’s ready,’ the old woman said. ‘Wherever he is now, he’ll
follow your voice home. Talk to him, my queen.’

Isaboe thought for a moment. She remembered her words to Jasmina before her daughter had entered this world. The oldest woman on the mountain had guessed right that time. ‘You will have a daughter and she longs to hear your voice.’ Later, after the birth, Isaboe had spoken to Finnikin about it. ‘I told Jasmina that she belonged to Lumatere’s rebirth and that she would be loved for the hope she brought to this kingdom.’

But what would she say to this babe, now that she could not get the Priestking’s words out of her head? That spirits have their own world and language long before they enter ours? Each night since Celie and the blessed
Barakah
had come to visit, Isaboe had studied the mad Yut’s chronicle and learnt to say the words in her heart so that her child could hear and understand.

Be my guide, beloved son. Rid me of my malice and my fury. Don’t let it be suckled from my breast.

‘I’ve smelt you all,’ Quintana said bluntly to Phaedra and the women late that afternoon in the cave. ‘This whole week. You’ve smothered me.’

‘Because our days of bleeding all came at the same time,’ Cora said. ‘It’s a sign. We need to bathe now that it’s over. Together.’

‘To cleanse ourselves?’ Florenza asked.

‘There’s nothing dirty about us,’ her mother said. ‘It’s a blessing. We’ve been given a gift of unity. It’s our gift to Quintana of Charyn and her child. The coming of the blood is renewal. So we celebrate it together.’

‘Bathe?’ The Princess stared at Cora, all savage teeth. ‘If you place my head under water, I’ll –’

‘Yes, yes. You’ll slice us from ear to ear,’ Cora said, dismissively. ‘We’ve heard it before. Up you get.’

Despite the warmer spring days, the evening air was cool. They undressed by the rocks on the stream, hanging their clothing on the branches nearby.

‘I don’t like to put my head in the water,’ Quintana said for the umpteenth time.

‘A bit of water over your head never hurts, and if –’ Cora stopped, a sort of horror and wonder in her eyes. The others followed her gaze and in the half-light of the moon, they stared in fascination at Quintana’s bare, scarred body.

‘It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,’ Ginny said, referring to the belly. Phaedra had to agree. Sometimes when she was walking behind Quintana it was difficult to believe she was carrying anything. But it was Quintana’s scars that made Phaedra want to weep, a cruel reminder of what the Princess had endured at the hands of Charyn.

Phaedra suddenly felt conscious of her own bareness. They all did, except for Ginny, who was pleased with her form, as one would expect her to be. Charynite women were not like their Lumateran sisters. It was the way they were raised. Phaedra wondered if the curse had made them all more inhibited, or whether it had been like that since the beginning of time.

Florenza was the first to wade into the stream, squealing from the cold. Phaedra thought she was being precious and then she stepped in and squealed herself, until they all were there, shushing each other, but laughing all the same.

No matter how hard she scrubbed, Phaedra couldn’t remove the layers of dirt and grime, but after a while she didn’t care anymore. They all seemed bewitched by the moon’s glow on the water and they waded towards a place in the centre of the stream where its shimmering surface beckoned them. They held onto each other, arms around shoulders, in a circle of something so strange that it made Phaedra feel a lightness of being.

‘Did you like Florenza when you first saw her, Jorja?’ Quintana asked, teeth chattering as she gripped Phaedra and Cora around the neck.

‘We won’t let your head go under, so you mustn’t hold so tight,’ Cora said. At first Quintana refused to listen, but then Phaedra felt her hold loosen.

‘What a thing to ask,’ Florenza said with a laugh. ‘Of course Mother liked me.’

‘What I fear most is that I won’t like him,’ Quintana continued. ‘I don’t know what I’ll say to the little King when I first see him.’

‘You’ll know what to feel and say the moment you first see him and not a moment before,’ Jorja promptly said.

‘But what if Florenza was the ugliest babe in the world and you couldn’t bear to touch her?’ Quintana demanded to know.

‘Well, she was quite ugly, come to think of it,’ Jorja said and Florenza laughed even more. ‘All babies are quite ugly.’

Jorja pressed a kiss to Florenza’s cheek. Despite the broken nose and bruised face, Jorja still looked at her daughter as if she was the most beautiful creature the gods had ever made. Phaedra remembered her mother looking at her in such a way, those days before the plague took her. If Phaedra had been certain of anything, it had been of her mother’s love.

‘How did it feel, Jorja?’ Phaedra asked. Never had she dared imagine Lucian’s child in her arms. It was too cruel a dream. ‘To hold your babe for the first time, I mean?’

Jorja thought a moment. ‘I cried for my mother. I was a very spoilt young girl and my mother and the servants had done everything for me.’

They heard a snap of a twig and Ginny cried out softly.

‘We’ll be safe. Don’t you worry,’ she blurted out, staring out into the semi-darkness.

Despite everything, Ginny seemed more affected than anyone
else by the incident of Galvin the hangman. She appointed herself guard of their cave, disappearing at times to ensure they were safe from intruders.

‘There’s nothing strange out there,’ Cora reassured. ‘It’s the night world scurrying around, going about their chores.’

‘Go on,’ Quintana said to Jorja.

‘Well, crying for my mother caused much friction between Harker and me,’ Jorja continued.

‘Father’s very practical and doesn’t like fuss,’ Florenza told the others knowingly.

‘Yes, well, your father grew up with fuss and resented it,’ her mother said. ‘He was furious to find himself betrothed to me and threatened to send me back to my mother over and over again.’

Phaedra was surprised by the words. ‘But you love each other,’ she said. ‘I saw you together.’

‘Well, I always loved him and he grew to love me,’ Jorja said haughtily. ‘It’s the power I have over him now.’

‘When did he fall in love with you, then?’ Quintana demanded to know.

Jorja thought for a moment. ‘It was during the drought when Florenza was five. He said I was resourceful and managed to keep the village fed.’

‘It’s very decent,’ Phaedra said. ‘Not many noblemen care whether their villagers are fed.’

‘Well, that was Harker for you,’ Jorja said. ‘Whatever food we had on our table, our neighbours would have on theirs. To be honest, I did it more for him than the villagers. If it pleased him, it pleased me.’

‘My father’s an idealist,’ Florenza said proudly. ‘And my mother is a secret one,’ she added, feigning a loud whisper. ‘It’s very unfashionable where we come from.’

‘Never marry an idealistic man,’ Jorja advised them, ‘because
one day you’ll find yourself dragging your daughter through the sewers of your province, or living in a filthy cave with nothing but the putrid clothes on your back.’

It wasn’t a grumble in Jorja’s voice. Just sadness. She looked at her daughter. ‘We imagined a better life for you, Florenza.’

‘It’s good enough for now, Mother. You all did enough, those of your age. Those born in your time and before suffered most because you knew Charyn before the curse and after. Cora would agree.’

‘No,’ Cora said, her voice flat. ‘Not enough.’ She turned to look at Quintana. ‘Look at what wasn’t done for this one. Me. The mothers of Charyn. All of us. Turned our backs on Charyn’s last child. We knew what was happening in that palace and we did nothing. We should have been beating down the palace walls and protecting you. But we turned our backs in bitterness and did nothing!’

‘Isn’t it the place of men to protect?’ Florenza asked.

‘Men,’ Cora said with disdain. ‘What good are they?’

‘That’s because you’ve never had a man,’ Ginny said.

‘Oh, I’ve had a man,’ Cora said. ‘And a more useless species the gods have never created, apart from Kasabian and that young Mont.’

‘Lucian?’ Phaedra said, surprised to hear such praise from Cora.

Cora snorted rudely. ‘That idiot? Don’t be ridiculous. I mean the Jory lad.’

‘What happened to your man, Cora?’ Quintana asked. ‘Did he break your heart?’

Cora made a rude sound again. ‘The only reason I put up with the panting and the grunting was because I was expected to produce a child and I failed time and time again. Do you want to know when I stopped feeling like a useless woman? When every
woman in Charyn was considered useless. Charyn’s curse set me free. I left that lump I was wed to, and all I took was four Klin tree seeds. Have you seen a Klin tree? They hail from Osteria and their seeds are hard to come by. Osterians say the Klin tree flowers hope. So I took hope in my pocket that day I left and joined my brother Kasabian on his farm outside Jidia. That year we felled the trees surrounding his cottage and we grew a garden of wonder. My brother says I have a gift with the land. That I can speak to it.’

‘Then why didn’t you stay there?’ Jorja asked.

‘Drought. Plague. The earth stopped listening and we had nothing to feed us. The Klin tree still grew, but I never saw it flower hope and was forced to leave it behind. We were convinced to travel north where we’d find a new life in Alonso. But Alonso did not want us. It was as though the gods were saying, “You don’t belong to this land.”’

Phaedra looked away, shamed. Alonso was crowded and her father had refused to allow the travellers in. She remembered those days when people arrived in droves. Alonso land was fertile and it seemed to promise everything after the curse on the Lumateran border was broken. But her father’s people threatened to turn on him if he allowed another traveller in.

‘But there’s still some land left to share,’ she’d hear him cry to his lords.

‘And there are other men we can find to lead this province,’ they threatened. And that was how Phaedra’s family, whose ancestors had ruled Alonso for centuries, could have lost the province. Not from war or the enemy or even the palace. But because her father dared to allow the landless into the walls of Alonso.

‘It may count for nothing,’ Phaedra said to the women. ‘And I make no excuses for my father’s behaviour, turning his back on anyone who begged at Alonso’s wall, but there were some
nights I’d hear him weep as he prayed to the gods and to my dead mother. I never imagined a man so proud could weep.’

Ginny was already bored with their talk and decided it was time to return to the cave. She waded away with Florenza and the others began to follow.

‘I saw my father weep before me,’ Quintana said to the others. ‘When he was dying.’ She was pensive. ‘Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.’

Phaedra’s eyes met Cora’s and then Jorja’s, who warned her with a quick shake of her head.

At the rocks, they collected their clothes and wrapped themselves in blankets, hurrying back to the cave to dry. Jorja gripped Phaedra and Cora as they were about to follow the others.

‘If you value your lives … and hers, never repeat what you heard her say here today,’ Jorja said.

‘She couldn’t possibly have …’ Cora said.

‘Couldn’t she? We would always hear of her madness. And these weeks I’ve understood it is anything but that. It’s survival. She has a madness to survive now. What more could we want from a little king’s mother?’

Up ahead, Phaedra saw Quintana shiver despite the blanket covering her body. Phaedra dressed quickly, her body still damp, and hurried towards Quintana, wrapping her own blanket around the Princess, fussing about her. She felt Quintana’s gaze and their eyes met.

‘You were his thirtieth, Phaedra.’

‘Thirtieth?’ Phaedra asked absently, leading Quintana along the uneven ground before them. ‘I don’t understand. Whose?’

‘Froi’s, of course. He said, “Phaedra of Alonso is kind.” So he chose you to be on his list of those he trusted. It’s why I came to you.’