ancient as to have taken place in an entirely different world. He wanted to get up off the bed, perhaps even to leave, but he saw Briony stiffen from the corner of his eye and decided to stay quiet. Everything had been so difficult of late he couldn’t bear the idea of having to fight with his stubborn sister.
“It was a small thing, just short of war, actually,” Merolanna was explaining. “One of the sea barons of Perikal—a dreadful man, I cannot remember his name now—was harrying the shipping on the western coast, and Ustin sent his brother to the assistance of the King of Settland Daman went away and I was even more lonely than I had been, day after day by myself in this unfamiliar, cloudy place, all these dark stones, under all these frowning old pictures.
“There is no excuse, as I said to Hierarch Sisel, but… but after some months I found myself keeping company with one of the young men of the court. He was the only one who bothered to visit me, the only one who treated me as anything other than an outsider too clumsy with her new language to speak wittily, too removed from the center of court life to have any interesting gossip to share. He alone seemed to admire me for who I was. I fell in love with him.” The old woman sat up a little straighter, but her eyes were fixed on the ceiling. She had stopped moving the fan. “More than that. I gave myself to him. I betrayed my husband.”
It took Barrick a moment to understand what she was saying, then he was astonished and disgusted. It was one thing to understand that older people at one time must have felt the lusts of the body, another to be told about it and then be forced to imagine it. But before he could say anything, Briony s hand tightened hard on his arm.
“You were alone in a strange place, Auntie,” his sister said gently. “And it was a long time ago.” But Briony looked shocked, too, Barrick thought.
“No, that is just the thing,” Merolanna said. “It would seem that way to you—that to someone my age it must be so far back that it can scarcely be remembered. But one day you will see, dear, you will see. It seems like it was yesterday.” She looked at Barrick, then Briony, and there was something in her face that overcame Barrick’s dislike of what she was saying, something lost and sad and defiant. “More than that. It seems like today.” “I don’t understand,” Briony said. “What was the man’s name, Auntie? Your… lover.”
“It doesn’t matter. He is even longer dead than Daman. All gone, all of them.” Merolanna shook her head. “And in any case, by the time Daman came back from the fighting in the west, it was all over. Except my shame. And the child.”
“The child… ?”
“Yes. You do not think I would be so lucky, do you? To have my one transgression end so easily, so . . harmlessly?” Merolanna laughed a little, dabbed at her eyes. “No, there was a child, and although when I found out I thought I might pass it off as my husband’s since he was expected home soon, he was delayed by storms and squabbling among the victorious captains and did not return for almost a year. The Sisters of Zoria helped me, bless them. They saved me—took me into their temple at Helmingsea for the final months while all in the castle thought I had returned to my family in Fael to wait for my husband’s return. Yes, well you may look, dear. Deception upon deception. Did you ever think your great-aunt was such a wicked woman?” She laughed again. Barrick thought it sounded like something broken and rasping. “And then… then my baby came.”
Merolanna took a moment to regain her breath and her composure. “I could not keep him, of course. The Zorian sisters found a woman who would have him to raise, and in return I brought the woman back to Southmarch with me, to live on a farm in the hills outside the city. She is dead now, too, but for years I quietly sold some of my husband’s gifts every year to pay for her living there. Even after the child was taken.”
“Taken?” Barrick became interested again. “Taken by who?”
“I’ve never known.” The old lady dabbed at her eyes. “I used to visit him, sometimes, the little boy. Oh, he was bonny, fair as fair could be! But I could not go there often—too many would notice, and some would have become curious. My husband was the king’s brother, after all So when the woman told me he had been stolen, I didn’t really believe her at first—I thought her somewhat simpleminded greed had at last turned into something worse, that she had hidden the child and was going to threaten to tell my husband if I did not pay her more, but I saw quickly that she was truly heartbroken. She was a poor woman, and of course she blamed it on the Twilight People— ‘The fairies took him!’that’s what she said. Just a little less than two years old, he was.” The duchess stopped to blow her nose. “Gods, look at me! Fifty years ago and it could have been yesterday!”
“But after all those years, why does it pain you so much now, Auntie?” asked Briony. “It is terrible and sad, but why have you taken to your bed like this?”
“Such pain never really goes away, dear. But there is a reason my heart is so sore. Merciful Zoria, it is because I saw him. At Kendrick’s funeral. I saw my child.”
For a moment Barrick could only look at Briony. He felt queasy and strange Nothing made sense anymore, and the duchess’ confession was just another crumbling of what was ordinary and safe. “A shadow,” he said, and wondered again what Merolanna’s dreams were like. “The castle is full of them these days.”
“Do you mean you saw your child grown? Maybe you did, Auntie. No one ever told you he was dead…”
“No, Briony, I saw him as a child. But not even the child he was when I saw him last. He had grown. But only a little. Only… a few years…” And she was weeping again.
Barrick grunted and looked to his sister again for help making sense of this, but she had clambered across the bed to put her arms around the old woman.
“But, Auntie,” Briony began.
“No.” Merolanna was fighting to keep the tears from overwhelming her. “No, I may be old—I may even be mad—but I am not foolish. What I saw, ghost or figment or waking nightmare, it was my own child. It was my boy—my child.The child I gave away!”
“Oh, Auntie.” Suddenly, to Barrick’s immense discomfort, Briony was crying too. He could think of nothing to do except to get up and pour Merolanna another cup of wine and then stand beside the bed holding it, waiting for the storm of tears to pass.
17. Black Flowers
THE SKULL:
Whistling, this one is whistling
A song of wind and growing things
A poem of warm stones in the ashes
The Grand And Worthy Nose, larger and fatter than his fellow Rooftoppers but still no taller than Chert’s finger, had spoken these strangers smelled of wickedness. There was to be no meeting with the queen. Chert didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed—in fact, he didn’t know much of anything. When he had risen this morning, the idea that he might end up on the roof of the castle with a crowd of people smaller than field mice had not even occurred to him.
Most of the Rooftoppers had backed away in fear from their two large visitors after the Nose’s pronouncement. The boy Flint looked on, his thoughts and feelings well hidden as always. Only the tiny man named Beetledown seemed to be actively thinking, his little forehead pinched into wrinkles.
“A moment, masters, I beg ‘ee,” Beetledown said suddenly, then skittered across the sloping roof with surprising quickness to the Grand and Worthy Nose and said something to that plump dignitary in their own tongue, a thin, rapid piping. The Nose replied. Beetledown spoke again. The assembly of courtiers all listened raptly, making little noises of wonder like the cheeping of baby sparrows.
Beetledown and the Nose trilled back and forth at each other until Chert began to wonder again if he had lost his mind, if this entire spectacle might be happening only in his own head. He reached out to the roof tiles and stroked the fired clay between his fingers, poked at the damp moss between them. All real enough. He wondered what Opal would make of these creatures. Would she put them all in a basket, bring them tenderly home to hand- feed them with crumbs of bread? Or would she chase them off with a broom?
