AUDREY FLAMESWORTH
Dawn had come, and she had already been scrubbed and garbed by the serving maids that had been sent to her chambers at the cry of the rooster to help set her up for what was to come.
Even if she was to forget what the day was as she watched the men below, shirtless and thick, while they polished their steels and plates, the fit she wore would not let her memory fail her. She was dressed in a silk gown of snow, pure and unstained, with a flowing ermine white overall robe that was embroidered with the feathers of doves and sparrows. Her hair, silvery in grace, adorned with jewels and rubies and garnets, each in the form of a tear that came together to turn her hair into a pale and faceless maiden of tears, crying beautifully in different shades of colours.
Around her neck was a silver choker, and a golden neck chain large but light went round her shoulder bones. In the middle of the choker rested a single ruby pale with crimson red, while the neck chain was ornamented with pearls all around. Audrey had not placed her eyes on this outfit until the sky had turned thick with fog, but she had no problems about it. Whoever the seamstress had been, they were skilled and well learned. One of the serving maidens had told her that it was the queen’s own seamstress, old in age but tender in hands. The texture of the clothing about Audrey’s body made her feel the most graceful she had ever been, and she did not need to look at herself before she knew that her beauty must have grown furthermore.
Her legs were covered with vintage leather flat-heel-boots, white as her gown, and they made her little pacing with light breaths a little easier. She was going to become queen soon, it was only wonted that she was anxious even a bit. Through her pacing and watch of the bare-chested men below, Renly waddled into her chambers.
“My lady,” the steward said, and Audrey wasted no time swirling on her feet to put her gaze on him.
“You stupid man,” she spat. “Might you tell me what your problem is, Bailiff? Do you not reckon you should let me know if you have been possessed?”
Renly was taken aback, so much that he quaked slightly on his feets. “What prompted this sort of ferocity so early, my beautiful lady of Flamesworth? Did I do anything wrong? I cannot seem to think of any.” For once he was not dressed too plainly. He garbed himself in a slightly golden quilted doublet of samite, so slight that you might think the gold was fading, while his legs were covered in high boots the same colour of brown as his neatly gelled hair which was groomed backwards majestically. If not for his horse-face, he might have looked one of the most handsome men in the realm.
Audrey almost reddened a fury at his words, but as usual, she would not have that. “You stupid, stupid man. You left me all alone again at the feast, and you did not even come to see me before I slept. You’re my steward.”
Renly Bailiff sighed. “Is this why I’m being called stupid so much?” He nudged one eyebrow downwards.
“Yes,” Audrey said to him.
“My apologies then. Next time I will…” he paused, “still not sit with you on the high table.” He chortled after as Audrey’s nose wrung up. Audrey was about to hiss violently at him next, but her steward acted so fast. “What is that?” He pointed to the ring on her finger, the one she had been fumbling with unrelentingly.
“A ring,” Audrey told her steward, a bit too calmly that it was almost as though the boiling rage that had been welling up inside her had never existed.
“From the king?” Renly asked her.
“Yes,” Audrey smiled. “He gave it to me at the feast before he left.” She picked up her gown from its skirt and rushed closer to Renly, plonking her face just a finger length from his. “Look,” she showed him, “custom made. One wing is the one of a raven and the other the one of a phoenix.” She seemed so excited, she could not even put her own feelings into words.
“Beautiful,” she heard Renly say in something almost like a whisper, while her eyes remained fixated on the ring. Then he cleared his throat next as if to pry his mind from something. She was still fumbling with the ring though.
“It truly is,” Audrey finally said after a while. She walked away from Renly slowly and made her way back to the window, leaning elbows down on it as she heaved a huge sigh. “He told me he wanted the comforts I have to offer. What do you think that means?” She was gazing up at the foggy clouds which had begun to clear bit by bit.
“I can hardly say, my lady,” Renly answered. “I could not dare to think the way the king thinks.”
Audrey tsked. “Stop with your nonsense, Bailiff. Anyone can think the way the king thinks, we’re all flesh and blood.”
A knock came on the door soon after, and a voice called out along with it. “My lady,” the voice rang. “It is time.” She remembered the voice. The deep and tender voice was for the man who had been knighted as a Kingsknight during the feast on the night of the yester. He had been sent to bring her, she discerned. She had already grown used to Ser Aaron’s voice calling from beyond the door of her chambers whenever it was time for any occasion that needed her presence, so much that she wondered why he had not been the one to come. Maybe he was busy with some other tasks, most like. She should not be dwelling on something of small importance like this. It mattered little.
Audrey took her gown up by her fingers. “I wrote some letters,” she gestured her chin at the table for Renly. “One’s for mother and the other’s for Lucian. Do you mind sending it to them?”
Renly nodded. “Will do just that, my lady.” He strode there and picked both up.
“Do that after the ceremony though,” Audrey put in. “I will not have you miss it.” She walked to the door, nimbly and elegantly, white of hair and white of dress. “You may open,” she notified the Kingsknight who stood beyond her door, and the man pulled it open, showing himself gilded and dignified in his steel. He was without his helm, and that allowed his pale hair of yellow, which was permed on one side, to be visible to her and her steward that was made to follow closely behind her.
The knight bowed with a courteous smile. “You look beautiful, my lady.”
Audrey returned a smile as well. “I know,” she said, and she heard a quiet giggle from the knight before he took his head back up to her, his green eyes opening softly from its close.
“I’ll lead the way,” the knight added before he noticed Renly standing behind her. “Pardon me. A wonderful morning to you too, my lord.” He nudged his head slightly. It was not a bow like the one he had given Audrey, but it was a sign of respect nonetheless.
“A good morning to you too, Ser,” Renly reciprocated politely with a slight bow.
“Then, shall we go?” The knight waited for Audrey’s approval.
“We shall.” And she gave him what he wanted.
By the time they got out of the holdfast, the mist had begun to clear up considerably, not enough that she would be able to see the yellow of the sun showing itself, but just enough that she could now make out the clouds blanketing the sky. Blue they were, and with the look of cold. Cold her body would have shivered for if not for the ermine fur that had taken her skin into its cover. A soft whinny brought her out of her sky-gaze, prompting her to see the silky-black palfrey that sniffed the cold air with gracefulness. She was saddled already, and beside her stood a black cloak that bowed as soon as he saw Audrey.
“A horse?” Audrey found it surprising. “What for?” She added, her fingers still holding onto the skirt of her gown.
“For your ride, my lady,” the knight told her. “If you will?” He outstretched his hand in a gesture towards the horse, giving rise to Audrey’s movement of her legs towards it.
“Why a horse?” She asked again in wonder as she took a step at a time to the beautiful horse that kept stomping her hooves gently into the sand, the knight and her steward maintaining the same slow strides as she did but just behind her. “Is the place so far that I’ll need one?”
“It is, my lady,” the knight told her. “It was from there I came to your chambers, and the king would not have you walk the same way I had done. He had me bring the palfrey for you.”
They were before the horse now. Audrey let one of her hands free from lifting her skirt and she sent it to the neck of the horse. She stroked it gently, back and forth, and then she heaved a sigh. “And where’s yours? And my steward’s?”
“I shall walk, leading you by the reins, but I had no idea your steward would be at your chambers. Pardon me.” The knight slumped his head in apology, his permed hair shuffling about as he did. It was getting all rough, Audrey saw.
“Very well,” Audrey turned back to the horse and peeled her hand away from its neck, the horse snorted in response. “Renly will ride with me. Help me up.”
As the knight hurried to help Audrey up, Renly Bailiff decided to make her mood as sour as it had been when he had found his way into her chambers. One leg over the back of the horse and into the stirrup, and Renly Bailiff’s voice came. “I shall walk too, my lady,” he said, but his words fell on deaf ears and a tightened face.
“You will ride,” Audrey demanded. “It’s not up for discussion. Do not speak any further and climb.” She stared straight ahead into the never-ending length of the castle, watching the maid and guard folks that dwelled within the inner bailey move around to perform the tasks they had been handed. Those in roughspun woollen gowns bearing trays or buckets in their hands, while those shirtless and in pants, bearing steels and plates and metals of any sort.
As the knight took hold of the reins from the guard that had been watching the horse, Renly spoke again, denying Audrey any victory over him, “How do you expect me to ride on the same horse as the king’s bride? This is even a harder request than coming to sit with you on the high table, and that one I did not have any part with, do not expect me to have any part in something harder.” He was stubborn. So stubborn that he never failed to tick her off.
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Audrey turned to look at him sharply from high up on her horse. “What is your problem, Bailiff?” She voiced, angrily. “Ever since we got into this castle you’ve been stubborn beyond reasoning. Might there be ghosts here messing with your brain?” She heard a soft chuckle from the knight handling her reins, but she had no thoughts for any other but her hard headed steward.
“I can follow you into…” the words he wanted to say remained stuck in his mouth for a while and Audrey raised a brow in awaitance, one he cleared as soon as she raised it. “I can follow you wherever you want to go, but there are some things I cannot do, my lady,” Renly had sighed and began to say softly. “I cannot put myself wherever the king is meant to be. The high seats are for the king and his family, I cannot be there. Behind you now on this saddle is a place only meant for the king, you do not expect me to just casually take my place up there too as well. Please, just let me walk.”
“But we have ridden before, what is so different now?” Audrey took to remembering when they had still been little children. She had never been a fast learner with horses, that was until Renly had come. He would take up her pony’s reins then by astriding himself behind her, his hands softly placed beneath her elbows while he gripped the reins tightly, and they would gallop gently about Redflower’s backwoods with smiles on their faces. That used to be the only time she would never stumble and fall from the pony’s back, and it also used to be the only time she would feel the joy of riding a horse as the wind embraced her face either coldly or warmly depending on what season had rode over the realm at that moment. And she would smile. Now he doesn’t want to ride behind her?
“That time you used to be just the lady of Flamesworth,” Renly told her, “but now you are to be queen. The queen of Ravenwing. The one who will bear the children of His Grace. If you think about it, things have changed quite a lot.”
What a joke… “You’re a fool,” she scoffed at him.
“Maybe I am.” Renly shrugged. “But a wise one.”
Audrey took her eyes away from him and faced straight ahead again. She was steaming and her cheeks almost reddened. “Lead,” she vented at the knight.
“As you wish.” The man bowed and began to lead them through the Great Yard, Renly following behind the horse’s hind after a soothing sigh, one that Audrey was annoyed at, but she would not have her face screwed. She had to look beautiful for her king, for her soon-to-be husband.
After walking and trotting the length of the great yard, not without taking some corners here and there, they arrived at the end of the castle, a place Audrey had never seen before—not like she had ever gone anywhere beyond the holdfast’s walls, unless that place was the tourney ground, but from the look on her steward’s face, the one that did a lot of walking and scurrying about, it was obvious that this place was as foreign to him as it was to her.
From less than a mile out Audrey could see a small gate, a postern one, and before it were two guards, the only ones that were about this vicinity aside from her and her steward and the Kingsknight, and of course the palfrey she rode as well. Audrey glanced to her rear and began to feel a bit uneasy. She liked neither the look nor the feel of this area. “Where are we?” She turned to the knight still leading the horse by its reins.
“Somewhere in the castle, my lady, for sure. I only came into this castle for the first time on the yester, I do not know where this place is exactly, but from my walks today I do know this is the way.” The knight looked around as his lips moved slightly into a smile, none she had any pleasing for. She looked about again as the thick mist shrouding the air in cold began to fade, while the bright, soft yellow slowly creeping out from between the blankets of the clouds drifting high above in the sky, made visible the ramshackle structures and baby edifices ladening the area. She began to feel cold for the first time today since she’d donned this ermine.
“You do not know?” She asked again, her tone slowly slipping from docility into sharpness. “You lead me to where you do not know?” The horse neighed a reply as though it was her Audrey was speaking to. Audrey’s eyes did not cease from darting about, and with each silent whoosh of the wind her exhale would deepen, and she began to feel as though she was trodding closer and closer to the end of the world. It dawned on her that for some reason—reasons she had no knowing of—she did not feel too safe within this castle’s walls. It was as though something or someone was watching, lurking somewhere and waiting for the right time to pounce out and gobble her whole. This place had darkness, not the one she loved that came at night, but a more sinister one that showed itself even in the light of day.
“My lady,” she heard Renly Bailiff’s call, and for a moment she felt calmed. This was why she always wanted him close, if only he understood. “I believe everything is fine,” he told her. “I’m sure this place is just one of the endless unseen parts of the castle.”
No… Audrey wanted to tell him. This place is different. It has something… she knew how crazy it would sound saying things like that, so she chose to keep it to herself. After a sigh she cleared her throat and adjusted herself on the palfrey’s back. “Pardon my harshness, Ser,” she begged the knight.
“There’s nothing to pardon, my lady.” The knight bowed his head slightly before he continued to lead the horse once again.
Half a mile reduced to nothing before long, and Audrey now found herself well past the ramshackles filled with a darkness unseen to her, and before the two guards that stood on the opposite sides of the postern gate with the heads of their spears pointed to gaze up at the sky, while their black cloaks remained stiff same as the armet which covered their face. They both bowed as soon as they saw the pure white of her gown which shrouded her from where she sat gracefully atop the silken palfrey flanked by her steward and the Kingsknight.
“The gate,” the knight mentioned to the guards, and without wasting a second they flung the yett, a grille of latticed iron bars wrought together, open.
Within the gate swayed a murky stench, sometimes thick as they passed and sometimes thin, but nevertheless the stench was there all the same, the stench of dead rats. Some were still of life though, such she came about from the never ending squeals and scratch of paws that she heard on the uneven mossy walls of the cave they had meandered into. Those walls were lined by sconces plugged with lit torches that did no other job but guide their path through the dim darkness. They never seemed to end, the torches, they were everywhere, and so were the dripping sounds of the droplets of water that fell from the stalactites hanging in sparse amount from the high up stone ceilings, and into the puddles of water that were diversified into splotches all over the jagged detritus that surrounded their steps.
The farness to wherever they were headed was one reason the horse had been brought to her, but now that she was beneath these cave walls she understood that this place had also been a reason. Her white would have been riddled with stain if not for the palfrey that was taking her through, but she could not say the same for her steward. He kept hopping on one foot to the other trying to avoid as much of the splotches and dirt as he could. Serves him right… she thought. The Kingsknight on the other hand did not seem to matter. He had crossed here twice already today, and this was his third, so maybe he felt it no need to waste his time hopping about seeing as he would still cross here another again.
It was not long after she had begun to admire the jet black mane of the horse she was riding that the stench of rats upon her nose exchanged itself for the stale, cold air of salty sea. She inhaled deeply, it was the first time the salty smell of the sea had come to her nose but she liked this smell better. It did not do the choking that the stench of the dead rats did to her, this one was pleasant and calm, and the salt even found its way to her tongue. She could taste the air.
Her eyes went up from the mane she had been admiring, and before her filtered in light from an open door, light that was neither yellow nor from sconces, a bright white light that spelled nature and not caves.
As they found their way out, so did the tender sound of the waves shuffling against the sandy shore of wherever they were, make their way to her ears and filled them with the refreshing music of water and wind, while her nose took in a stronger scent of the salty smell of sea. It seemed in whatever time they had spent within the cave walls, the mist had finally given way for the arrival of the yellow orb that had begun to peek slowly from behind the clouds that wafted about softly.
Below this shy yellow orb that was the sun, stood in clusters the high lords and ladies that had been at the feast on the night of the yester. They were fewer than they had been then, but still a large crowd nonetheless, and that large number of nobility bowed as the horse she sat upon swayed past them. The gazes that had been given to her on the day she had been chosen to become queen were absent here, none she felt behind her back and none she could see from where she sat. Renly had spoken the truth, things had changed. She was no longer the young lady of House Flamesworth, the lowest noble house in the realm. No, no. She was about to be queen, the peak of any dream a court lady would and should have.
Audrey inhaled the salty air and let it do her the honours of calming her, and it was not until she took her eyes away from the bowed lords and ladies did she notice it. At the edge of the shore raised a large pulpit made of cement and granite, and on it stood a colossal twin statue of ravens poking their beaks at each other in what her mind told her was nothing short of a romantic and emotional kiss, while their wings spread out into a casing canopy of embrace over the pulpit. They were carved beautifully of limestone, and the small splashes of seawater that found its way onto the giant ravens glittered majestically in the break of the sun. She had seen nothing of the sort before, it was beautiful, so beautiful that she almost found her mouth wide open, but she would not have that here. Not now when people see. Maybe when she returned to her chambers she would relish more on the thought.
Then it struck her. Her chambers were going to be changed after this was all done. She saw him then, another beauty that was neither her nor the statue of ravens, but one that was the king himself. He was dressed almost the same as her, in a white gown with an ermine robe overall that was feathered, but he had a golden belt about his waist, large and wide and covered about with gems of all sorts. That took his dressing apart from hers. He smiled at her as she watched him, oily blue hair glistening in the finger of rays the sun gave it at the moment. It was so pretty she almost reddened, and it was then she added another moment to the times she had thanked the ravens with all her heart. The horse she was riding had been reined to a stop, allowing her face the leeway of pulling itself from the king’s beguiling gaze.
The knight offered her his hand to help her down, but so did her steward. Without a moment of hesitation she reached for Renly Bailiff’s outstretched hand, and with his help she swung down from the horse, her bare feets covered within the flat heels she wore, unable to bask beneath the sandy feel of the shore. Her mind was readied then as Renly loosened his hands from her waist, she was going to come here again without boots or heels. The sand, the sea, she wanted to feel it all, just like she used to feel the flowers at Redflower. But her exploring nature had to be put on hold for now, something else was to be done.
Renly took his lady by her hand and led her towards the stairs of the raised pulpit, but that was as far as he could go. He let her free at the base and went his way to join with the crowd. Audrey eyed around for a moment. She noticed the absence of the king’s half-family, only one of them was present, the one known as Dante. He was dressed in a doublet and he stood where Zephyr’s mother and younger brother stood, and with them was a horse, a mare pale and as white as her gown, and it would have been unstained as well if not for the little blemishes that found its way upon the foots of the horse, spotting them all the way to the hooves. But that did little to harm the mare’s beauty. It was graceful and looked nothing short of benign. With every snort she made, the wind blew over her mane, swaying it majestically and Audrey found herself entranced.
“My lady,” the entrancement broke and Audrey turned back to the pulpit. She saw Ser Aaron gesturing up the stairs. “If you will.” He was flanking her right while the other Ser of the Kingsknight, the lord commander if she remembered correctly, was flanking her left. She sighed and took to climb, one step at a time, her fingers holding up her gown’s skirt, and it did not take long before she found herself beneath the twin wings of the ravens and before Zephyr Ravenswood, the man she was about to wed, with a smile on his face.
A serving maid brought a large bowl filled with water close to them, and with her came the grand savant. He washed his face, his hands, and his hair with the water from the bowl, then gestured for Zephyr to do the same with a: “If you will, Your Grace.” And so the king did as well, then he gestured at her, prompting her to repeat the same thing they had done. After she was all through, the serving maid retreated with the bowl and returned with two golden goblets which she gave to the grand savant. The old man offered one to Zephyr and the other to Audrey, then looked up at the crowd below the pulpit and announced, “The wedding rites shall now begin.”