While Beauty Slept (13 page)

The Great Hall was more crowded than I had ever seen it. Usually the room appeared vast, for even when all the tables were pulled forward for a feast, great open spaces remained. Today, however, there was barely room for the king and queen to move through the crush of people toward their seats on the dais. The heads of all the landed families in the kingdom had been summoned, and it appeared none had declined the invitation. Members of the Royal Council sat at a long table directly in front of the dais. Other titled families received chairs directly behind them. Standing, and filling the rest of the room, were the landowners, some finely dressed and most likely residents of town, others in country clothes years out of fashion.

Heralds sounded their trumpets when the king entered the room. Pages cleared a path for the king and queen through the throng, and I followed close behind. A murmur of greetings rustled around us as we passed. As we neared the front of the room, I saw Millicent sitting with the other elderly ladies of the court. She stared intently at the queen, who passed by without turning her head.

Only one person stood on the dais as we approached: Prince Bowen, watching with an expression of grim pleasure. I wondered at the recklessness that had led him to claim his place before the king entered the room. Already, it seemed, the protocols of the palace were shifting in his favor. Would that further embolden him to do as he wished with me? Looking at his haughty, arrogant face, I felt sick with apprehension. I could still feel the violation of his hands pressing between my legs.

“Stay by my side,” Queen Lenore whispered as we walked up the steps. I took a place behind her chair and watched the mass of people filling the hall, waiting with an unnatural stillness.

“My lords,” the king began. “Ladies.” He nodded to his wife and the women of the court. “I have requested your presence here today on a matter of the utmost importance. A matter, one might say, of survival. The survival of this kingdom.”

The silence was so complete it was as if all had forgotten to breathe.

“For some time I have been aware of rumblings of discontent. An heir, my people demanded! My prayers and those of my queen joined your own, yet God did not grant us our most fervent wish. The question of succession has grown more insistent in recent years. My distant cousin, Marl deRauley, has been especially vocal in his concerns.”

I remembered the king saying the name in the queen’s bedchamber. Was it possible someone else had a claim to the throne?

“Nothing would pain me more than to see these lands descend into war upon my death,” the king continued. “My father, and his father before him, labored hard to bring harmony to our realm. I wish it to remain so. We must secure a future as peaceful as our present.”

Prince Bowen stirred in his seat, anticipating the moment when he would rise to be acclaimed by the crowd. To those watching he might appear suitably regal, but to me he would always be the man who leered with pleasure at my helplessness. My stomach lurched in disgust, and I shifted my body farther behind Queen Lenore’s chair, anxious to avoid his attention.

“My younger brother, Prince Bowen, is next in line for the succession. That is common knowledge, yet he has not been formally recognized as my heir. My doing so would settle the whispers that have plagued these lands.”

Prince Bowen was smiling. His moment had arrived.

“When I sent word of this gathering to all of you, I was prepared to proclaim my brother as my successor.”

Was
prepared? Had he chosen another course?

“My intention was to urge you to accept him as your next king. Yet I find my circumstances much changed. Today I stand before you to announce something far more momentous. My wife is with child.”

I heard a gasp to my right, from the women. I looked at Queen Lenore, whose face was turned modestly downward. With child? I had been by her side for months and knew nothing of it. My mind reeled, caught between joy at the news and hurt that she had not trusted me enough to tell me.

Gradually a sound began to sweep across the room. First a few claps, then muttering rising louder and louder until it was a unified cry of delight. The wave of sound rose to a peak, filling the hall. The king rose from his seat, basking in the rejoicing, then raised his hands for silence.

“I welcome your good wishes, as does my wife. In celebration of this blessed news, I invite the members of the court to join me for prayers in the chapel. This day cannot pass without thanks to He who brought this miracle. After the service all are invited to the hall for a feast. I promise, our cooks have outdone themselves today!”

There was another smattering of applause, and then the crowd parted to allow the king and queen to leave the room. I found myself staring at Prince Bowen, who sat utterly still, his mouth pressed in a rigid line. Though relieved beyond measure that he would soon be gone from the castle, I was chilled by the ferocity of his gaze. Shaken, I turned away and caught sight of Millicent, her face set in a self-satisfied smile.
She knew,
I realized with a flash of understanding. She knew that the queen was with child, and she knew how this announcement would unfold.

Blind to the ways that a lust for power can entrap a man of strong will, I could not understand why King Ranolf would choose to publicly humiliate his own brother. The king had established his dominance, but he had created a dangerous enemy. One who would never forget what had been done to him.

I joined the rest of the court for the chapel service, mouthing words of thanksgiving even as my mind reeled. Sitting directly behind Queen Lenore, her head bowed in prayer, I could not ward off my feelings of betrayal. How had I missed the signs of my mistress’s condition? Why had she not told me?

When the queen requested leave to retire afterward, the king dismissed her with a kiss on the forehead. Upstairs, the queen and I found ourselves alone in her rooms. I stood behind her to unclasp the brooch that fastened her cape. Knowing it my duty to conceal my own hurt in favor of my mistress’s happiness, I offered my congratulations on the blessed news.

Queen Lenore reached up and wrapped her hands around mine. “Thank you, Elise.” Her voice was so warm, her gratitude so genuine, that my childish anger withered.

“You cannot imagine how difficult it was to remain silent. But I had been disappointed so many times before, I did not want to raise false hopes until I was sure. Isla and I even kept the news from the king, until Bowen’s return forced my hand.”

Isla. She would have known if her mistress had no cause to use women’s cloths for some months. Their shared secret was yet further evidence of their bond, one I could never hope to replace once Isla was married.

Married. To Prince Bowen’s manservant.

“Isla!” I exclaimed. “What will she do?”

Queen Lenore looked at me sadly. “She has followed her future husband, as I insisted she must. She packed her things earlier, in readiness for a hasty departure.”

So there was to be no castle wedding for Isla, no leisurely leave-taking from the woman who was both her mistress and her friend. My sometime rival was gone, leaving me responsible for all the queen’s needs. I can still remember the terror that washed over me at the magnitude of the task ahead. Though accustomed to carrying myself as one older than my years, I found that the thoughts racing through my mind were those of a frightened child:
I am not ready! I need more time!

“This should be a day of great happiness,” Queen Lenore said quietly. “Yet I fear that my husband has made a terrible mistake.”

I remembered Prince Bowen’s face, the hatred that blazed from his eyes. Was it my place to warn my mistress about what I had seen? It is hard to believe I was once so fearful of speaking my mind. But I was young, and inexperienced, and I believed that proper etiquette dictated respectful silence over honest conversation. So I said nothing.

“I did protest.” The queen almost whispered the words, as if assuring herself she had been in the right. “I told my husband we must inform Bowen of the news in private, to prepare him beforehand. But there is no convincing Ranolf once he has made up his mind.”

She sighed, worn out by the day’s events. “Would you like to bring down your things? Best you got settled in now, before the feast.”

A lady’s maid slept in her mistress’s chambers, ready to be of assistance at all hours. For the last time, I made my way to the servants’ quarters under the eaves. As I pulled together my few possessions, I set aside a slim volume Mrs. Tewkes had given me, a collection of prayers I had long since memorized and the only book I had ever owned. I placed it on Petra’s bed, remembering the nights we’d huddled together with a precious candle stub, sounding out the letters as I praised her progress. Her desire to learn was only one of the qualities I cherished in her, and I determined that despite our different stations and paths I would not allow our friendship to fray.

It was only later that night, as I lay in an alcove off Queen Lenore’s bedchamber, that I began to revel in all I had achieved. Leaving the company of jealous chambermaids was no great sacrifice; I now slept within footsteps of the queen herself. Soon there would be a baby in these rooms, and perhaps another after that. I had soared to a position of great prestige in only a few months and found favor with the kindest of mistresses. I smiled to myself in the dark, thinking how my mother would have marveled at my change in circumstances.

In one hand I clutched Millicent’s wishing stone. I prayed—to God? to Millicent?—for the health of Queen Lenore’s baby, for an heir who would brighten the future of the kingdom. Most of all I prayed that Prince Bowen would never return. How ignorant I was, to think that distance would weaken his ability to do us harm. The prince would have his revenge. And I would learn that every wish granted comes at a price, one we cannot foresee until it is too late.

Five

A CHILD IS BORN

I
f fate had made Queen Lenore suffer in her wait for a child, it was done with her once her womb proved fertile. She bloomed along with her stomach. Her cheeks flushed with color, and her skirts rustled as she walked with a bounce to her steps. She dreamed up patterns for blankets and swaddling clothes and urged me to sit by her side at her loom as she brought those designs to life. I marveled at her swift fingers just as I marveled at my own ability to converse easily with a woman who treated me more as a younger sister than as a servant. On the day I turned fifteen, she presented me with a hand-crafted shawl, the loveliest piece of clothing I had ever worn, made all the more valuable by the knowledge that my mistress had woven the garment with me in mind. Those were the days that I first heard the queen laugh—not her usual polite acknowledgment of a jest but outbursts of unabashed delight. How it breaks my heart that I can no longer recall that sound, for it would bring me great comfort to remember her when she was capable of such joy.

The change in Queen Lenore’s demeanor rippled through the court to those around her. King Ranolf abandoned his daily hunting trips and doted on his wife like a love-struck suitor. Millicent was just as solicitous, though her visits were far less convivial than the king’s. She ordered Queen Lenore about in an imperious manner I thought unseemly for one who had never borne a child herself. She brought flasks of foul-smelling concoctions for the queen to drink, telling her they would make the baby strong, and nagged at her to lie abed into midmorning. Queen Lenore smiled politely and thanked Millicent for her concern, but she began spitting the drinks into her washing bowl when Millicent’s back was turned.

“Something that tastes so horrible cannot possibly do the child any good,” she told me.

Indeed, she put more stock in my own advice; since I had seen my mother through half a dozen pregnancies, there was little I did not know of the changes a woman’s body undergoes during those nine months. It was a heady feeling, realizing that my words were having some small influence upon the future heir to the throne. At times it almost felt as if I were mothering her, sharing the reassurance and nurturance she would have received from her own family, had she not been living so far from her homeland.

By all indications Queen Lenore’s pregnancy progressed with none of the troubles that can so bedevil a woman at such times. But as the queen’s stomach grew more prominent, filling even her roomiest gowns, Millicent began to insist she recuse herself from public life.

“A royal wife should keep to her quarters once her condition becomes manifest,” she said authoritatively.

“In my country it is very important that a queen be seen with a full belly,” Queen Lenore argued. “If not, it could be whispered that an heir had not been borne of her body.”

Millicent rolled her eyes dismissively. “Such reassurances may be necessary in your part of the world, but no one here would dare insinuate such a thing. You simply cannot be seen prancing about in your delicate state.” The king, mindful of family tradition, took his aunt’s side.

The queen felt the loss of her freedom deeply, and I was no less affected. As autumn announced itself with cool breezes and shorter days, the castle took on a grimmer, more shadowy cast. I began to dread the upcoming winter and the months of confinement it would bring, for I had few opportunities to escape those gloomy halls. I received the occasional invitation to dine at my aunt Agna’s, but the bond between us had not deepened with time. Her home was a self-contained world with little place for outsiders, and my cousins treated me with barely disguised snobbery. I might answer to the queen herself, but in their eyes I was still a servant, while they were the favored children of one of the town’s leading citizens.