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He turned and entered a room off of an upper passage. Still upside down, I saw a barrel-vaulted ceiling, a blur of tapestries on the walls, a fire blazing in the hearth. The heat on my face was sudden and wonderful. The guard pushed me off his shoulder, sending me crashing onto the floor and knocking the breath from my lungs.
I lay still, waiting, as pain flooded every inch of my body. When I could speak again, I asked where I was.
“Don’t you know what a bedroom is,milady?” said the bald one mockingly.
The guard who’d carried me took an exaggerated sniff and said, “No, and I don’t think she knows what a bath is, either.”
“You’re both very funny,” I whispered. “But I was kept in a dungeon for days. What’s your excuse for smelling like pig shit?”
The bald one raised his hand to strike me, but the black-toothed guard caught his wrist. “She’s not to be touched anymore,” he said. “Baron’s orders.”
The bald one spat angrily at me. “You’d best hold your tongue, or I’ll yank it out with my bare hands, orders or no.”
I just closed my eyes, listening to the fire as it popped and crackled. I could feel its heat beginning to seep into my bones. I was overcome by a fatigue so deep that I could not even move a finger.
If I lie very still like this, I thought,maybe they will leave me.
And soon enough, they did.
CHAPTER 34
I must have slept. When I opened my eyes, the fire was lower and a blanket had been draped over my shoulders. I sat up and pulled the warm wool tighter around me to cover my ripped, bloodstained dress.
I was still alone, and the castle was quiet. I looked numbly around the richly decorated chamber. To my left was a huge four-poster bed, its wine-colored velvet curtains pulled back to reveal a mattress covered in more velvet and bearskin. The dark stone walls were softened with tapestries showing forests of flowering trees, multicolored birds, and horses with horns protruding out of their heads. Thin white candles flickered in iron sconces.
The room was beautiful, but there was a staleness to the air, as if no one had slept in here for years. I saw delicate cobwebs in the corners, a thin fur of dust across the windowsill.
Am I still dreaming?
I went to the door and pulled. It was locked from the outside.
I knew then that it wasn’t a dream. I’d simply been brought to a new kind of prison.
I pressed my forehead against the door as a wave of grief overwhelmed me. I had made mistake after mistake, and people I lovedhad paid for them with their lives. The guilt made my stomach feel like it was filled with stones.
Then I turned away and walked to the window on the other side of the room. Opening its shutters, I gazed into the winter night. The sky was a huge, cold darkness. Though I could see fires flickering in the courtyard, there was no other sign of life.
I thought of Otto out there in the cold, and I shivered, clutching my arms, fingers digging into my skin. Father Alderton, our village priest, always claimed that dying was a blessing. “We go home to heaven,” he would say, “where there is no such thing as sin or pain.” But how could I believe him when he’d fought death the way he had? The whole village had heard him calling out to God from his sickbed, begging Him to spare his life.
Did God deny him—or simply not hear the old man’s pleas? It was blasphemous to even wonder such a thing. All I knew was that we’d buried Father Alderton in the churchyard, and two days later, the wolves had dragged his corpse from its grave.
Horror shuddered through me. Where was Mary now? Had they buried her, or left her deep in the dungeons to be eaten by rats?
I couldn’t bear to think of it. Instead I cast back to when we were younger, before our father went to war and when the summers were sweet and endless. How we’d lie on our backs on the edge of the meadow, watching twilight bats swoop and dive, and together, Mary and I would sing.
We rest upon the great green earth as night comes dropping down
And above the forest the moon shall rise, wearing a silver crown
It was a song I’d written for her on her sixth birthday.
Now’s the time to be at peace, our day’s long work is done
And mothers are calling their children in, one by one by one.
Come home, my son, come in, my love
The night grows dark and wild
