The Very Best of Kate Elliott (24 page)

It is so cold in the winter.

I am so weary of the cold.

But it is not cold now. It is not even autumn, the season for hunting; I see by the green of the fields and the ripening fruit in the orchard beyond the moat that it is summer, the season for war.

They are not hunting at all. Here they come back, so soon, too soon. They are so cheerful, the young lovers gazing at each other, the men boasting and laughing, the women talking sternly of serious matters or giggling over light ones. I do not exist to them. I am nothing.

I am Mary.

They are no longer alone. They have gone out in such festive attire not to hunt but to greet he who has come to Joriun, ridden north at long last. No army that size has ever marched behind my brother’s standard. Great clouds of dust mark their coming, and I see the king my uncle’s standard at the head of the army long after I see that an army has come to Joriun.

The duke and his company ride at the head of the procession, flanking the king my uncle. I curse him—all the words I have ever heard cursed and spat at me—but he does not even look up. He does not even seem to know I exist. He does not even glance my way or at the cage, as if I have become invisible. As if I no longer matter.

I must matter. I have to matter. Am I not my brother’s strength? Isn’t that what everyone has always said?

The nobles enter the town and the gates close behind them. Out, beyond the walls of Joriun, the army encamps. Their tents cover the fields like locusts.

God help me. I am so weary.

The woman brings porridge that night and this night she remembers to spit in it first, as if the king’s presence has reminded her that she must hate me. Almost I recoil, too sickened by the gesture to eat, but then I remember that I must eat and that her hatred is a spice to make the bland porridge taste better, to be more nourishing to me in my solitude.

She speaks to me, though this woman has never spoken to me before. “His Majesty has brought the whole army, hasn’t he?” she says with a coarse grin. “There’s a big battle to be fought, isn’t there, and that will make short work of that traitor of yours.”

Is that why the king my uncle did not look at me? Does he know I am truly nothing now? That he has pikes and swords and shields enough, soldiers enough, armor and gold enough, to defeat my brother even though I still live? Their campfires burn like stars fallen to earth: I see no end to them as I stare out all through the long long night.

Let me not weaken. Let me not fall into despair.

At dawn the gates open and the mobs come with their curses and their stones and their shit and their rotting meat and fruit. I cower by the bench, arms flung up to cover my face. An ancient mildewing apple splatters against my thigh. A stone grazes my elbow. I have forgotten what their abuse is like. They are themselves the hammer, beating me down. They are themselves the hands strangling the breath out of me. My tattered shawl cannot cover me. I have no armor. I am weaker than I was in the beginning. I begin to cry and, seeing that, their clamor increases. I am peppered with stones, each one a nail driven into my skin.

Please, God, let this cease.

The horns call and at last the mob retreats from the road to let the nobles pass through the gates. They ride in their glory, the men arrayed for campaign and the women with their false brave faces to goad on their menfolk.

He comes, the king my uncle. He draws up his horse below me and yet by every aspect above me. He wears a fine white surcoat over his armor, glittering in the sunlight, magnificent. Gold embroidery traces the symbols of crown and scepter on the surcoat; his sword is my father’s sword, the scabbard plated with gold and the hilt fixed with jewels. He is an older man now, silver-haired, and yet by no measure weak.

He raises his gaze to touch me, and it is worse than the stones and all the rotten things that have ever been thrown at me. But I must show a brave false face. He must not sense my weakness and my despair. I dry my tears and strangle my sobs in my throat.

He speaks.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” he taunts.“Are you still there, hanging? Or is that another woman, another criminal, who hangs there in fitting punishment for her crime?”

I say nothing. If I speak, I will betray my weakness. He must never know.

“Do you even know your name?” he demands. “Do you remember how to talk or who you are?” He laughs, delighted by this prospect: that I have gone utterly mad. Dear God, how I wish to speak sharply to him while all can hear, for the mob and the nobles and the army all look this way and many can hear his voice.

But I am too weak to answer. My voice will break, if I even have a voice left.

“Do you even know it has been seven years?” he says. “Your brother the traitor is married now and they say he has a girlchild whom he named Mary, but his wife will be a widow soon and the child fatherless. And you brotherless. I am going to hunt him down whether it takes a month or a year or five years. And you shall hang there, my dear niece. You will never know the outcome. That is what I have decreed, that you wait and always wonder. That will be your reward for your treason toward me.”

He turns, triumphant, still laughing, and rides away. His army follows him and the clouds of dust that mark their passing are visible long into the day. My voice has vanished. It has fled, along with my reason. Oh, God. Oh, God.

Seven years.

Why fight any more? How can I go on?

How did it get to be night so soon? For it is night, or night coming on. It is twilight, the quarter moon hanging low in the sky, soon to set.

The gates are closing and the last traffic of the day quickens to gain entry before night falls. I sit slumped on the bench, staring. Just staring. Why fight any more? How can I go on? How can my brother defeat such an army? How can he defeat a king who is so rich and so cunning? Why bother to go on? I am so weary. I am mad and lost and a hundred years old. I stare at the stars above, but I see no patterns in their spray of light; I only see the campfires of my uncle’s army.

Shadows stir and fragment and coalesce along the roadway. A man— or is it a woman?—emerges briefly from the shadows onto the road and, unable to pass up a last chance on this awful day to insult me, throws a big stone. It bangs against the slats and falls inside to land with a thunk on one of the splintering planks.

But it is no stone. Suddenly I sway forward and grab the thing lying there. My hand touches a small rectangular package of cloth, concealing something hard. I open it, surprised. By the dim light of the quarter moon I see what lies inside: a pack of painted cards.

I look up, but there is no trace on the roadway of that person, half glimpsed, who threw these up here. I see only shadows as twilight fades to full night.

I handle the cards for a long, long time that night, though it is too dark to see them. I feel them, I trace the film of paint on each card and I remember what each one is, for the twilight mage, in his month at my brother’s hall, taught me the meaning of each card. I only learned this knowledge then to pass the time while I waited for Duncan to return. I never dreamed I would be glad, someday, to remember it all.

Near dawn, I bind them up again and tuck them into my filthy bodice. Should anyone suspect I had them, they would be taken from me.

I hoard them for seven nights as the moon waxes. I hoard them until there is light enough to see for eyes trained in darkness, as mine are now. The mobs come every day while I wait, but I think only of the cards. I do not hear their voices.

I wait until the watchmen meet and turn on the parapet below and head away from my cage before I shuffle the cards and set them down. I have already picked a Significator: The Knight of Swords.

I lay it down and ask my question: “Where will my brother be next year?” It is the only question I know how to ask.

Placed atop it, the current situation. I turn the next card over. Seven of Swords. It is hard to remember, but here in my cage, memory is all I have. Thievery. Something stolen. I turn another card and lay it athwart the first two. Crossed by—I turn another card—the Wheel. Fate. His situation is going to change.

I pick up another card and set it down below the first three. At the base of matters, Strength. The woman holding the lion. Tears sting me and I brush them back impatiently. Have I not always been strong? Will it still, and always, be demanded of me? Next, what is passing away. The card I turn over now shows a heart pierced by three swords. Three of Swords. Sorrow.

For the first time in many years—years whose count I have lost track of—I feel hope stirring in my heart. Hope is so painful.

The watchmen return on their round, and I must wait in stillness while they pause, stare at the sky, hiss a joke one to the other and laugh boisterously, then at last spin and head back each on their separate slow walk of the parapet.

But I am used to waiting.

What crowns the matter. When I think of crowns, I can only think of my uncle in his crown-embroidered houppelande, condemning me to this cage; I can only think of my father’s crown resting on the usurper’s head. I can only think of his victory and our defeat, our escape as children into the summer’s night that led me at the last to this cage.

But memory is a strange thing, like a fish in the shallows, darting suddenly into view when before it was invisible to the eye. All at once I remember what the magician said, that what crowns the matter is how the situation appears now, what seems to be coming in the near future but which may not be true. I turn the card to see a man standing with his hoe, eyeing a verdant bush now blooming with seven pentangles: reaping the rewards of hard work. Is it for naught? Will my brother’s rebellion, now more than seven years old, be fruitless?

Once begun, a reading must be ended.

I turn the next card. What is coming into being. The Hanged Man.

Almost I weep with frustration. But the magician told me that the Hanged Man represents waiting, not defeat.“Bide your time,” I whisper to myself, and that voice—
my
voice—gives me the strength to go on.

Now I draw the last four cards.

First, I turn the card which represents my brother, his inner being. A man battles with a staff, six more below him. Seven of Staves: success against the odds.

What influences him. I gasp, for now, appearing in the pale light of the waxing moon on the warped plank floor before me stands the Magician.

His wishes and fears. An angel blows the horn as the dead arise: Judgment. Is judgment not all my brother ever wished for?

But I hesitate before I turn the last card, because it signifies the outcome. I wait so long, trembling, that the watchmen return on their round. One spits over the parapet as the other gossips, and then they turn about and each goes on his way before I gather enough courage to turn that card.

Only the gullible believe in fortunetellers and magicians. But I have nothing left, nothing but this. I close my eyes and turn over the card, fingering the patterns in the paint. At last I look.

The World. Utter success.

My breath comes in bursts and I feel dizzy.

God help me. Let me not fall into madness.

I slide the cards roughly together and shuffle them again, violently. I will read the cards again. I cannot trust myself, my eyes in this moonlight, my terrible hope. I saw the king my uncle ride out with his great army, and I know that as seven years passed without my knowledge, it could take another seven for this struggle to end.

I search through the pack and take out the Knight of Swords, but then I remember what the twilight magician said, that the same question must not be asked a second time on the same day. I am shaking now so hard I drop the card and almost lose it between the warping planks. A cloud covers the moon and I weep in silence—I must never let the watchmen know I weep. It is so hard. Hope is not enough to live on.

But I can ask another question. I can ask a different question.

The moon emerges at last from the clouds. The watchmen meet and move away again. I root through the cards and draw him out, the king my uncle, King of Swords—the little emperor. I place the card firmly in the center place, the Significator.

“Where will my uncle be next year?” I ask.

“Covered by.” I flip a card. “The Five of Staves. Conflict.” Crossing it, I set down . . .“The Knight of Swords.” The whispered words are like a second voice in my ear. Surely this is no coincidence, though I shuffled the cards very very well, too well, too violently in my anger and terror and pain, bending some, chipping off a few flecks of paint on others, before this second reading.

At the base of matters, the Devil. Malevolence. What is passing away, the Emperor.

I glance at the road, visible in the moonlight, but although there are shadows nothing lurks there. No person waits, watching me read. Yet I feel his—her—gaze on me. I feel her—his—presence beside me, even though I know it is impossible. I am alone, as the king my uncle decreed.

What crowns the matter, Eight of Staves. Quick success.

What is coming into being, Seven of Cups. Illusory success.

Yet I saw him march out on that road with a huge army. I heard him, in his confidence, abuse me and promise victory for himself and death for my brother.

There are four cards left to turn. The watchmen come, and gossip, and leave. The moon rides higher in the sky, which is bleached almost gray by its light.

I turn the next card.

His inner being. A man sits with each foot on a pentangle, a pentangle resting on his head, and a fourth gripped in his arms: Four of Pentangles. The hoarder. The usurper.

What influences him. Here, now, floats a hand in the air, cupping a Pentangle, the Ace. Material wealth and success.

His wishes and fears. When I turn over the card, I stare at first, thinking I am only remembering and not actually seeing what lies before me right now. Memory, like a fish, can quickly dart out of view and leave you grasping at shadows. Then I blink. The angel with his trumpet still plays as the dead rise.