TAKEN TOO SOON.
Abruptly, something blocked her throat, curdling as she tried to swallow. It took her a long moment to realize—
No, not death. Never death. Never again.
—it was a laugh.
Because it was all coming back now. Like a jet of bile. Hot and scalding and virulent. And it was everywhere, burning her right down to the core. If she scrubbed for a thousand years it would still cling to the bone, marrow-deep, just out of reach. No shred of peace left to ease the passage, only the squall and the tearing. Christ Jesus yes, it was all coming back now, everything.
And how could she have ever thought it worse to have forgotten?
Whereupon she let herself arch back, feeling all her vertebrae wrench together at once, as the howl twisted up from her cold guts through her still, still heart, and further.
Out in one rush, to scald the stars.
* * *
Most of the castle had fallen away with neglect and disuse over the years, until only the tower still remained stable, unhindered by any sense of its own mortality. From its peak, blue fire lit the walls of a five-walled room.
At length, a hand drew the drapes aside, and thrust a dagger through the frame to keep them open.
Then the room’s sole occupant gathered up his cards, and sat down next to it. To wait.
* * *
Carola de Guildhade, Lady of Raum.
The land was hers, to rule and serve. And she was the land’s. So it had been for every eldest child to bear her family’s name, time and beyond—since Bastard William had first breached England’s coast, with iron and fire and God’s holy Word.
A cold place, this inheritance of hers: Distant and small, but subject only to God and king. Raum stayed strong, always, as its lord was strong. To rule as child was one thing. It was necessity, made custom by constant threat. Threat of war, or quick successions. Of witchcraft, plague and poison.
But to rule as woman—required a husband.
“You are the land,” old Bede reminded her. The threshing fires cast a bloody shadow on his face, turning—for a flicker—his cataracts yellow.
“I know what I am,” she said. Softly.
“The land is yours, and you are the land’s. If it wither, you pine and die. This all men know.” He put one hand to his chest, rummaging in his robes, as if in search of his heart. “But if you be fruitful—”
“Say then that I marry, priest,” she said. “Say I bear children. To who, their fathering?”
So Bede brought out the letter of courtship, still warm from his skin, on clean parchment in a firm, red pen. From a knight of great name and little purse, with a hunger for speedy marriage. And three months later, mounted and jewelled, she had taken the flowery crown from Bede’s hands and turned it a long moment in her own, as if she’d never seen one so close.
“Shrive me, priest,” she said. “I go now to battle.”
“Only to woman’s true work, my daughter, as God deems both right and pleasant.”
Behind her, a young castrato scuffed the earth nervously with the toe of his shoe. The clouds hung waiting, air sweet with bees.
“Priest,” she said, at length. “I pray you, keep well.”
And put on the crown.
And rode away.
Carola shook her head, sharply. The world fell back into place with a sigh.
But the land is dead, she thought. My people fear me as damnation. And I—do not recall—my marriage night.