The Very Best of Kate Elliott (23 page)

“The outcome of what?”

“Of your question: ‘Where will I be next year?’” He turned it over slowly and I watched, staring, breath held in. His whisper coincided with my hissed breath.“Eight of Swords.”

Eight swords stuck point first into the ground and between them, bound by their sharp steel, stood a woman shackled by ropes.

“Mary!” The voice from the other side of the hall startled me out of my shocked contemplation of the horrible card. My brother’s voice rang out, strong and true, as he was strong and true, the rightful heir. “You must come and meet our guests.”

Mary. That is my name. I remember it now. The folk who come in and out of the gates of Joriun, about their business, on their way to and from the fields or the market, shout it sometimes, but as a curse.
“Mary,”
they shout.
“Hang that whore Mary.”
They call me slut and traitor, bastard and demon, apostate, heretic, cunt, and witch. They shouted it more often at first, when the Duke of Joriun’s men built and barred this cage and locked me inside it and winched it up to hang, suspended by rope and supported by wooden pillars, beside the central gates that lead into the town and castle of Joriun. They came in packs, in mobs, to jeer at me, and then I was thankful I hung so high above them. Few of them had strong enough arms that the rotting vegetables, the shit, the dirt, and the hail of wood shavings and nails and stones they threw actually hit me. They would have ripped me to pieces had I come within reach of their hands.

War has been hard on the people who live in Joriun. Some of them are refugees from the north. Perhaps a few pity me. I will never know. I never hear those voices.

Now only a few remember my name, or only a few bother to pause and curse me. They are used to me here. But maybe that is worse. I forget my name sometimes for days on end. They don’t remind me of it anymore. I cannot turn their hate into strength for myself, living on it as a dog laps water on a hot day, if they do not remember to hate me.

Even the woman who brings me my porridge each day no longer bothers to spit in it before she hands it over to me.

How many years I have been imprisoned here, in this prison hung out like a songbird’s cage? The bars are weathering and gray, the bench on which I sleep, swaying in the night wind, cracked and splintered. Gaps in the floorboards show the ground, littered with my refuse and the refuse thrown at me, far below. Too far to jump, even if I could pry open the locked door that abuts the parapet, even if I could break apart the thick bars. Perhaps it would be better to jump and be done with it.

A songbird is treated gently for the song it may sing for its master. I know the song they wish me to sing for all to see.

God help me. Let me not descend into madness.

Let me not weaken. It is so hard.

How many years? One year? Two? Five? I see my hands are weathered, though whether from age or exposure I do not know. I see my nails grow long; filthy and cracked, they curl at the ends. I break them off when they get in the way of eating, of caring for myself such as I can.

I do not know how many years it has been. The woman who brings my food is my only mirror, and she is a new woman every season so I cannot track my days by watching her age. She never ages, because she is always young. I have no knowledge by which to track the time except the round of stars and the procession of spring into summer, summer into winter, and winter into spring. Three winters I think I have been here, but perhaps it is four. I hang in limbo, suspended in this cage, this purgatory.

How fares my brother?

I pray you, God, watch over him and over my husband.

The watchmen tell me sometimes my brother is dead. They taunt me with it, his death, his dead body eaten by crows. I do not believe them. I cannot believe them. They must be lying.

But I don’t know. I know nothing but the opening of the gates at dawn and their closing at dusk. I know nothing except that the sun rises every morning without fail and that night comes and passes and comes again.

I must not believe them.

Today I hear a horn. At dawn the gates open. This activity I watch each morning, the opening of the gates below; it is one of my talismans. By this means I remember I am alive.

Today no farmers march out to their fields. No peddlers scurry out with bundles on their back; no carts or wagons roll out onto the morning road.

They
come instead, the lords and knights and ladies of Joriun Castle, in their bright procession, their fine clothing so painful that I shade my eyes, for I am dressed now in rags though once this gown was what any decent woman would be proud to wear in her brother’s hall, entertaining guests, coaxing reluctant allies to throw in their lot with his desperate cause.

The noble folk of Joriun Castle, no greater in rank than I, flood forth in their brilliant procession. They are off to hunt, I think, for they have hounds aplenty romping beside them or taut under leash and their horses are caparisoned as for a gala festival.

They are not alone.

They are led by their master, the young Duke of Joriun. He is, I see, not yet an old man, so must I be not yet an old woman. The master of Joriun and I were of an age once, and I suppose we remain so now although he walks in freedom and I wait, hanging, in this prison.

My lips are unused to smiling. I feel them crack as the corners turn up as I remember what everyone said: his father, the old Duke, died of apoplexy the night after my brother and I escaped from this castle.

How the son hates me, even after so many years.

He looks up though the others ignore me. I am no longer of interest to them, I am ugly and dirty and mad and lost and sometimes it seems I am a hundred years old, but he never neglects to look up. He always marks me on his comings and goings. He looks, and he
smiles,
in answer to my smile.

I remember his smile.

The magicians stayed for an entire month while we wined them and dined them better than we ate ourselves and then they went away. But they left behind them promises, or so my brother said. I asked him how one can hold a promise and suggested he would have been better off asking for a wagonload of spears and a herd of cattle.

He laughed and agreed. Of course, you see, I could never be angry with him because he always agreed with me. That he then went and did as he wished made no difference to his amiability.

When Duncan rode in empty-handed from the Alarn clan, my brother decided then and there to journey to Alarn himself. It is true he needed the Alarn clan to swell his army, such as it was. He needed their support. He needed the support of every ancient lord and old retainer who had once sworn fealty to our father, especially the ill-tempered and independent lords of the craggy northcountry highlands. If you have not the riches of the south, then you need the rock-hard stubbornness of the north. Gold is not harder than granite.

It was a difficult road into Alarn country. The paths were the known haunts of bandits. So, despite my irritable objections, the ladies were left behind. Even Duncan protested that it might be too difficult for women, though he truly did not want to leave me. His mother and young sister were among the ladies who lived now for part of the year in Islamay Castle and for the rest moved to other estates with my brother or some group of his adherents.

“Of course
you
could make the journey, Mary,” said my brother sweetly, “but what of the others? What of Widow Agnes and Lady Dey? They are not strong like you. I must leave someone to watch over them.”

So I remained behind. We stayed another month, we ladies—twelve of us and our servants. But as autumn laid in its bitter store of cold and the meager harvest was brought to the hearth to be measured and stored, I knew we would have to split up and move south. I sent Widow Agnes and Lady Dey and most of the other ladies to the western estate of Lord Dey, the lady’s husband; it had a milder climate but was more vulnerable to raids from the south. Duncan’s mother and young sister I kept by me, for I was fond of them—I knew I could love Duncan soon after I first met him not just for himself but because of the care he took of his widowed mother and his dear sister.

We rode east to the fortress of old Lord Craige, an inhospitable setting but rather safer than the valley manor of Lord Dey.

It was not a trap, precisely. It was only that I did not know that in the skirmishes that raged in the border country, Craige fortress had just fallen to the Duke of Joriun. Few riders dared the high roads alone, and it was easy to miss a fleeing messenger on the road. I did not know, as I rode into the courtyard, where peace reigned and some few men whose faces I did not recognize stared at me in surprise, that but three days earlier Lord Craige had been deposed and sent to the tower.

I did not know until they escorted me with all due respect into the hall and I faced the man who sat in the high chair.

And the young Duke of Joriun smiled
that
smile at me.

“So the woman who killed my father walks like a lamb into my hands,” he said when they put the chains on my wrists and neck.

How the son hated me, even after so many years.

But like his father before him, he was ambitious. He wanted reward more than revenge, so he took me south with Duncan’s mother and young sister to the court of my uncle the king.

The king had mercy on the old and the young.“Let them be placed in a convent,” he said, and I was not even allowed to kiss them nor they me before they were led away.

“But you,” he said, turning to look on me, “you I have promised a hanging.”

“Hang me if you will,” I said, smiling.“It will not alter my brother’s cause, nor the outcome, for the just shall triumph and the wicked perish.”

“It will give him a martyr,” he muttered. He twisted the rings on his hands musingly, for he had many rings, gold encrusted with rubies and diamonds, a black opal set in silver, a ring of green malachite and one of turquoise that had once been my mother’s but had failed to change color when danger loomed, as turquoise was said to do. Most impressively, the large seal ring of the king’s authority half covered the knuckle of his right middle finger. He wore a houppelande sewn of brilliant blue cloth embroidered with small gold crowns, trimmed with ermine at the neck and lined with a heavy cloth of gold. The hem was beaded with pearls. The crown that rested so easily on his brow I had last seen on my father’s head.

At last he stilled himself and came to some conclusion. I was not afraid of him, not then, not yet. I knew my cause was just and I knew I was stronger than he was because I was not afraid of death.

And he knew I was not afraid.

But I should have been afraid. Only a man as cunning as he could have stolen the throne and crown and scepter and husbanded it so well. He smiled oddly and crookedly and beckoned to the Duke of Joriun, calling him before the rest.

These words did the king my uncle the usurper speak.

“Hang her in a cage at the gates of Joriun so that all may see and abuse the sister of the traitor. All may see that I hold captive that which gives him strength.”

How many years has it been since I was captured?