Wrede, Patricia C - SSC (19 page)

"Oh, Anne. She has grieved me
enough in my life; this time it is her turn."

"Do not say that," I said,
distressed. "Love should not serve spite, and she is your sister, as much
as I am."
And you have given her grief for grief, all your lives,
I
could have added, but did not.

"Dear Meg," Eleanor said.
"Always the peacemaker. Well, I suppose I can do that much for you. But I
cannot give him up now, even if I would. He will not have it so."

"I know," I said. "I
wish he had never come here."

So, on the first of May, before the
assembled court, William asked my father for Eleanor's hand, not Anne's. It was
scandalous, of course—the youngest daughter to be married before either of her
sisters!—but there was already so much scandal about the match that it hardly
mattered. Anne was pale as milk, but she kept her head high. Only I knew how
she wept in the garden afterward, and only I seemed to notice the white stiffness
around her lips, which I had not seen since that day when she pushed Eleanor
into the briars.

It was that memory that sent me to
Eleanor once again, to beg her to make peace with Anne. Yet I was surprised
when she agreed; I had not expected her to hear my plea. I did not expect Anne
to listen, either, but she did. I wonder, now, if things would have happened as
they did, had I not interfered. Perhaps Eleanor wanted only to gloat over her
latest and most final victory, and not to mend matters as she said she would;
perhaps Anne wanted to vent her anger and pain, and not to ease her heart.
There is no way to know. I tell myself that if those things were true, what I
did can have made no real difference. But I do not really believe it.

All the world knows what happened
next: how Anne and Eleanor went walking by the river that ran dark and swollen
with snowmelt, and how only Anne returned, her dress torn, her hands scratched,
and her hair in wild disarray. She told us Eleanor had slipped and fallen into
the torrent, and she had struggled through the briars along the bank, trying
without success to pull her out.

My father sent his men off to
search at once, of course. William was first among them, his eyes a little
wild, and Anne looked away as he rode out. Then she collapsed, all in a heap. I
was almost glad. Tending Anne gave me something to do while we waited for the
men to return.

They returned without Eleanor. I
heard one of them say that with the river swollen as it was, she had doubtless
been swept out to sea. Anne heard, too, and we wept together. Father sent more
men for boats, though he must have known by then that it was hopeless. "At
least we can bring her back to the churchyard," he said, and his voice
cracked when he spoke.

We were not allowed even so much as
that. My father's men found nothing, though the fisherfolk, too, joined in the
search. Three days later, there was a terrible storm, with wind and hail and
lightning and the sea in a wild rage. Afterward, everyone could see that little
likelihood remained of finding Eleanor's body. The priest said a memorial mass,
and my father paid him for a year of daily prayers. Things began to slip back
into the routine of ordinary days, save that when we glanced out at the kitchen
garden, or in at the sewing rooms, or down the long high table, we did not see
Eleanor's bright hair, nor thought we ever would again.

Anne took it hardest of us all. She
picked at her food but ate little, and she slept hardly at all. After that
first day, she never spoke of Eleanor but once. "She was so
frightened," Anne told me, "and I could not pull her out. I could not."

I did not know how to comfort her.
Indeed, I was surprised that she should need comforting. The rest of the court
might marvel at her devotion to her youngest sister, but I knew how little love
had been lost between them. I thought it was the horror of watching Eleanor
drown that shadowed Anne's eyes, and perhaps it was. Or perhaps she was lost
without Eleanor to rail against. Perhaps.

A month went by, and the grief of
Eleanor's passing was no longer a sharp knife in the heart, but a dull, heavy
burden that ached the muscles and tired the spirit. William stayed at court,
and now and then I saw him watching Anne covertly. He had loved Eleanor, I was
sure, but Eleanor was gone and he still wished to marry one of my father's
daughters. It was too soon for him to transfer his affections back.
Nonetheless, he could watch and judge his chances.

I did not think they were good.
Anne was not one to take such a slight as he had put on her and then return to
him smiling when he crooked his finger. William did not understand that. Once,
he tried to speak with her, and she walked away without answering. Later in the
evening, I heard him telling Robert that it touched his heart to see how Anne
grieved for his Eleanor. He knew that I was near, and he spoke louder than he
needed; I think he meant for me to carry tales to Anne. But that I could not
do, even if I would have. Anne spoke no more of William than she did of
Eleanor. It was as if they had both died, together, in that swollen river.

And then, suddenly, Midsummer was
upon us. As was the custom, my father planned a feast, though none of us
rejoiced in the prospect. It was to be the first great feast since Eleanor's
death, and everywhere we turned we were reminded anew that she was no longer
there.

To turn our minds from the empty
place at the high table, my father sent out word that any harpers who wished to
join us would be welcomed and would have a chance to play before the king and
queen and their daughters. Harpers are always guested and gifted, of course,
for harpers are known to hold some of the old magic and it is ill luck to do
otherwise, but in the normal course of things only the best perform in the
great hall. My mother complained of it, when she heard. She said we would spend
an evening listening to every bad and boring player who earned a bit of bread
on the highways and in the taverns, but by then it was too late to take back
the offer.

For the most part, she was right.
The harpers nearly outnumbered the guests at our Midsummer feast, and though
Father set a limit of two songs apiece, each seemed to have chosen the two
longest and most boring pieces he knew. It was nearing
midnight
when the last man rose to take his seat and play for
us.

He was a tall man, blond and full
of bony angles. He did not move with the practiced grace of the other
musicians, and he carried his harp case as if it were an infant.

"My lord king, I bring you a
wonder," he said, and even in those simple words, his voice was gold and
silk.

My father nodded. "Sit and
play for us, harper."

"I shall not play, my lord,
but you shall hear a song the like of which no man has heard before."

"If you do not play, why do
you carry a harp?" my father asked.

"It is the harp that
plays," the minstrel said. His voice deepened and seemed to call shadows
from all the corners of the room. "Listen, O king! For this is no ordinary
harp. I made it of the bones of a drowned maiden I found upon the seashore and
strung it with her hair, and as I worked I sang the ancient songs of magic,
that the harp might sing in its turn. And now, indeed, it does. Hear the tale,
and marvel!"

With that, he opened the harp case
with a flourish and set his instrument on the stone floor before him. He did
not seem to notice the horror that dawned upon the faces of our guests at his
bald claim, or the way my father's face had gone white when he mentioned the
drowned girl, or how my mother swayed in her seat when he told what gruesome
use he made of the body. His attention was all on the harp.

A moment later, so was ours, for as
soon as the minstrel stepped back, the harp began to play itself. One after
another, the strings sang in notes of piercing strangeness, sweeter and more
biting than the music of any ordinary harp. They filled the hall and echoed in
the flickering shadows. The notes ran up and down the scale, then began to play
a simple song, a tune that all of us had heard a hundred times and more. But
the words that sang among the notes were no song any of us had heard before,
and the voice that sang them . . . the voice was Eleanor's.

"Mother and father, queen and
king,
Farewell to you, farewell I sing.
Farewell to William, sweet and true,
Farewell, dear sister Meg, to you.
But woe to my fair sister Anne
Who killed me for to take my man."

The harp played its scale once more
and then began to repeat the verse. We sat frozen, all of us—all of us but
Anne. She rose, her lips white and stiff, and walked to the harp. As it reached
the final lines, the lines that named her Eleanor's murderer, Anne picked up
the harp and smashed it against the hearthstone with all her might.

The bone splintered, stopping the
music in a jangling discord. The jarring noises hung in the air long after Anne
turned to face the assembled guests once more. She stood there, her chin high,
every inch a king's daughter, while the last lingering sounds died into silence
and the silence stretched into dismay and horror.

It was the minstrel who broke the
silence. "You have killed your sister a second time," he said to Anne
in his beautiful, silken voice.

Anne looked at him coldly.
"Then that much of what she sang is true, now."

My mother slid to the floor in a
faint. My father stood, though he had to brace himself against the table to
keep his feet without trembling. "Take her away," he said in a hoarse
voice.

"No!" I said before I thought.

He turned to look at me.
"Margaret, it must be," he said, and his tone was gentle, though I
could see the effort it took for him to speak so. "You heard the harp. See
to your mother." He turned back to the hall and repeated, "Take her
away."

The guards moved forward jerkily,
like ill-managed puppets. I looked away, for I could not bear to watch. They
took Anne quickly from the hall, and as the door closed behind them, the guests
unfroze and began to murmur in low, stricken tones. I could not bear that,
either. My mother's ladies were all around her, leaving nothing for me to do. I
rose to leave.

The minstrel stood beside the door,
holding his empty harp case. He looked at me with sympathy. I think that under
other circumstances, I might have liked him. "It is hard for you to
compass," he said softly. "I am sorry for your hurt."

I am not so good as Anne at giving
people a look or a glare that freezes them to the bone, but I did the best I
could. "You desecrated my sister's body, and for what? To cut up our peace
and raise doubts where there were none."

"To find out the truth,"
the minstrel said, but he sounded a little shaken.

"The truth? What truth? My
sister Eleanor was a liar all her life, and all her life cast the blame for her
own errors on Anne. Why should death have changed that?"

"The dead are beyond such
pettiness."

"Are they?" I said.
"For most of what the harp sang, I do not know, but this much you can hear
from anyone at court: 'William, sweet and true' was true to neither Anne nor
Eleanor. And if the harp lied about that, why not about the other matters?"

I left while he was still casting
about for an answer. I was tired and sore at heart and much confused. I did not
know what to believe. Eleanor was a liar, and I know better than anyone the
lengths to which she would go to spite Anne. But Anne had a temper, and when it
was roused . . . well, I could not help remembering the briars. She might have
pushed Eleanor into the river the same way and regretted it after. She might
have. But did she?

We buried the shattered remains of
the harp, which were all we had of my sister's bones. The ceremony brought no
one any peace or comfort. The memories of magic and possible murder clung too
close, and the tiny coffin made everyone think of the minstrel plucking and
coiling Eleanor's golden hair for harp strings, and shaping her finger bones
into tuning pegs, and cutting apart her breastbone for the harp itself. It
would have been better if someone had thought to use a coffin of ordinary size.
At least then we could have pretended to forget what had been done to her.

They could not try Anne for murder
on the strength of a harp song, and that was all the proof they had. Still,
after such an accusation, made in such a way, something had to be done. In the
end, my father sent her to a convent to do penance among the sisters. She died
of a chill less than six months later. She never denied what the harp had said,
any more than she had ever denied Eleanor's lies in public. But the sisters say
that she never confessed her guilt, either.

And I? I am the only daughter now,
and it is a hard position to fill alone. William, "bonny William, brave
and true," gave the lie to the harp's description once more by making
sheep's eyes at me almost before the convent doors had closed behind Anne. I
sent him away, and I was firm enough about it that he has not returned, for which
I am grateful. But there will be others like him soon enough.

Even those who see me, Margaret,
and not merely the king's last daughter, do not understand. They say I grieve
too long for my sisters, that I should put their tragedy behind me. I grieve
for Eleanor and Anne, yes, but it is my own guilt that takes me to the chapel
every morning. If I had spoken sooner, if I had made our nurses and our tutors
and our parents see the depth of the rivalry between Anne and Eleanor, perhaps
one of them could have put a stop to it before it ended in this horror. At the
least, perhaps they would have listened when I tried to make them see that the
harp was not to be believed without question.

It is too late to change what
happened between my sisters, but I still hear more than others seem to, and I
have begun to speak of what I hear. It is hard to break the habit of so many
years, but I think that I am getting better at it. At least, my efforts now
have met with more success than did my attempts to soothe my sisters. Lord Owen
and Lord Douglas set their argument aside after I spoke with them last month.
My father says I stopped a potential feud, and speaks of having me attend the
next working court, to advise him about the petitioners. So much attention
makes me uncomfortable, but I suppose I shall become accustomed in time. It is
the price I must pay for saying what I know. And if I have learned anything
from this, I have learned that it is not enough to see. One must speak out as well.