CHAPTER 29
Bethel and I ate our morning meal alone in the Warwick family rooms until Torgrin arrived with a king’s guard escort for our visit to the queen.
Dim torchlight flickered on the cold moss-covered stones as we descended worn, narrow stairs to the dungeon.The air was damp, carrying the musty scent of neglect, and heavy wooden doors loomed over us as we reached the bottom.
The guard took an oversized key from a ring attached to his waist and used it on the iron lock.The doors opened into a torchlit room, where several soldiers sat around a rickety table playing a game.Across the room was another locked door.
How would Cillian and the others get past the soldiers, let alone unlock these doors?
When the guard opened the second door, the smell of human misery overwhelmed us.The gloomy tunnel felt like a passageway leading to the underworld.Several solid-iron doors to the left and right were all that broke up the monotony of the long, dark tunnel.
The king’s guard led us to the end, where an older lady dressed in white sat.A long veil covered her hair, and she wore a mantle bearing the queen’s emblem: a fist holding a sword circled by arising sun, a lightning bolt and a tree.It was the first time I’d seen it in Capita.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I looked at the insignia and thought of Iain.He must have served here at the castle, I was sure of it.
‘Move,’ the king’s guard ordered the woman.
The lady in white had been embroidering something using a small lantern for light.She stood stiffly and shuffled away from the door.Torgrin moved her chair and placed it on the other side so she could sit back down.She nodded in thanks and watched us curiously from her seat.
Did she serve the queen?What could she do for Queen Yaris, sitting here in near darkness, surrounded by the accumulated stench from every cell we passed?
The king’s guard opened a small sliding window on the cell door.After a quick look inside, he opened it with a key from the ring at his waist.Torgrin entered, followed by Bethel, who was holding her sleeve over her nose.I was last to enter the small space, and I jumped when the cell door behind me closed with an ominous bang.
A lone figure sat in the corner on a narrow cot, with a long black veil covering her face.The cell was sparse; the only other furniture was a chair and a full chamber pot.We stood shoulder to shoulder before the frayed woman.The walls behind her were coated with slimy mildew, adding to the dank and putrid air trapped inside the windowless stone coffin.
Torgrin nudged Bethel, who scowled at him over her hand clutching her nose.‘Hello, Aunt Yaris.It’s me, Bethel.I’m here to check that you are doing well?’
Doing well?Bethel was an utter fool.
‘Also, Captain Torgrin has brought you a message from Father.’
The queen was silent.Nobody had heard Queen Yaris speak in two decades.Lord Warwick told us she could communicate by hand gestures or writing like Webber.But she did not respond to Bethel.
‘Well, that will be all then,’ Bethel announced.‘I shall leave you, and perhaps the king will allow you to attend my wedding!’Bethel sniffed, then gagged.‘Open the door,’ she ordered, looking green.
Torgrin and I shared a look of disbelief.How could she be so cold to her dead mother’s sister?After the cell door closed behind Bethel, Torgrin spoke to the silent queen.Her black veil still covered her face, and she remained motionless.
‘Lord Warwick has asked me to give you this letter.He wants you to understand that it is for your eyes only – you must destroy it as soon as you’ve read it.’The figure on the bed did not respond to Torgrin’s words or take the sealed envelope he held out to her.
I moved closer to her, wondering how I could help this poor woman.‘We want to free you, Queen Yaris,’ I whispered, hoping the king’s guard couldn’t hear me through the door.
Queen Yaris turned her head towards me.I took this as encouragement.‘Will you please read Lord Warwick’s letter?’I pleaded softly.I held my breath, hoping she would respond.
Queen Yaris raised her veil with her pale, thin hands, revealing the firm chin and full lips I had seen in her portrait.When she reached her nose, she paused.The queen inhaled shakily before she removed her veil completely, exposing the rest of her face.
Her eyes were gone.We looked into empty eye sockets covered in freshly charred skin.Her hair had been shorn, leaving an uneven golden fuzz over her soft scalp.She showed no outward sign of the pain she must surely be in.
Torgrin’s grimace reflected the horror I was feeling.He swallowed and reached out to squeeze my icy fingers.
I moved towards the bed and grasped her dry, papery hands resting in her lap.Looking into the charred mess of her empty eye sockets made me sick.This was the cruellest thing I had ever seen.‘I’m so sorry this happened to you.’
She startled at my touch.Recovering quickly, she moved her hands up and over my shoulders, seeking my face as if trying to see me through touch.The queen began struggling to speak, but her words were nothing more than garbled sounds.My heart ached at the way she held me, so I made soothing noises, trying to calm her distress.She stroked my hair and pulled me into an embrace against her frail chest.
‘Hey, no touching!’came the guard’s words from the window in the door.I ignored him and continued to let the distraught queen hold me and stroke my hair as if I were a child.
With a bang, the guard opened the cell door and pulled at my shoulders, dragging me away from the queen.Torgrin stepped in and pushed the guard so hard that he hit the cell wall, smacking the back of his head against the slimy stone, leaving him slightly dazed.
‘Stay back,’ he growled at the guard, who slumped against the wall.Torgrin spun back to me.‘We have to go, Caris.’
