9) Cloak

A month passed, and then a season. At Midsummer the people of the kingdom were invited, as dictated by tradition, to bring their joys and their grievances to the palace itself. Most simply came for the festival, their differences having been resolved by local magistrates, but some problems festered until they could no longer be healed by local wisdom.

The day before Midsummer a young man who had once been a constable in the town below the castle traded duty with one of the Queen's guards. On that morning, a small pack containing a cloak and pouch and dagger, among other small but humble things, made its way into the Queen's suite. Bronwyn took them all out and held each piece, shaking the wrinkles out of the cloak. Its earthy color shimmered and bled to a deep scarlet in the early light. She set it aside and reassembled the pack. After helping the Queen dress in a gown of blue embroidered with red and yellow flowers, Rebeka thoughtfully hid the pack in the bottom of the wardrobe.

That morning, the maid looked at her mistress carefully, noting how thin she'd become, and the slight bloom of a child growing in the cradle of the young Queen's hips. Bronwyn was unable to disguise her horror when she looked up and Rebeka met her eyes. Impulsively, the maid embraced the Queen who she'd grown to love. No word was spoken between them, but Bronwyn was silent at breakfast, and reserved with Lady Wilham on their walk afterwards. That afternoon there was no rest for Bronwyn; she was required to hear the domestic disputes. Janette sat at her left hand, ostensibly to learn the wisdom of queenship, but the woman-child contradicted her stepmother whenever possible, making cruel observations about the poverty or poor education of the commoners who came before them. After the third case was heard, Bronwyn firmly asked Lady Elaine, the chatelaine who was admitting the plaintiffs to give them a few moments before bringing them the next family. She considered the princess for a moment, words rising from the source of the deep pull of fate that drew her to the girl.

"When you're finished with your game, Janette, we can continue."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," the girl said with poisonous sweetness.

"I think you do. You've worked to undermine me all morning. I might not have asked to marry your father, I may never have wanted to be Queen, but while I am the Queen of these people I will do my best to give them justice and kindness. You think it doesn't matter if you cut down what they are trying to build, but these people are the foundation of your kingdom, it's wealth. Without them, you are nothing more than an overeducated and spoiled blue-blooded heiress with no lands, since all the royal lands belong to the kingdom, not the King's family."

"How dare you, you filthy grasping whore-"Janette flushed an ugly red and Bronwyn slapped the princess firmly across the mouth.

"Be silent, child, before you say something you will come to regret." The girl stared at her in shock, tears of surprise and pain standing in her eyes.

"I'll tell my father -" she began, but Bronwyn laughed bitterly.

"So that he'll do what? Beat me like a servant or a dog? Abandon me, finally, so you can go to his bed like the incestuous stupid chit of a woman you were becoming before I married him away from you? You will never be Queen as you are, Princess Janette, you are not strong enough and certainly not well enough liked to earn the support of the Chancellors and Lord Mayors or the Knight Commander."

"It's not about being Queen," Janette protested. "I love him, and he doesn't even see me anymore! You have cut my very heart out, and you laugh at me as I bleed to death!"

"You're more pitiful than I thought. You speak of bleeding? I've bled myself dry every night because I thought you might be worth rescuing from that monster." The words stirred memory, and fire, and anger, and the salamander murmured in her mind like the crackling of fire. "You will sit," Bronwyn pointed to the Princess' chair beside her own, "and you will listen Janette. These people are more human than you will ever be, and you don't deserve the respect or loyalty of any one of them." The girl sat abruptly, forced down by an invisible hand.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"You really are a witch," the girl whispered, fear suddenly growing in her eyes.

"I'm whatever I'm needed to be, but your precious father declared that I am not a witch, foolish child. Since my husband, our King, has decreed that I am not a witch, I cannot curse you. I can only wish, on a thousand tears shed and fed to dragons, that your heart will open to these people, and that you will come to love them as I do." The fire in the massive hearth flared. Even in Midsummer the stone walls of the castle were cold, and the salamander and its relatives had grown in size and power as they fed on the tears and blood of a witch's pain. Bronwyn glanced at the flames and saw the jewel blue eyes of a fiery lizard watching. It nodded graciously and Janette began to glisten with a faint dew of perspiration as the magic began to change her blood. She tried to speak, but could not.

"Lady Elaine, please admit the next petitioner." The chatelaine, pale from the scene she'd just witnessed, quickly opened the door.

"Friar Seco of Deep Woods Monastery," she announced.

An elderly man entered, his hat in his hands. Ink stained fingers twisted the worn leather out of shape. He dressed plainly, much as any poor farmer would dress, but his fingers were knobby with a lifetime of fine writing and illustration, not bone-breaking toil. He bobbed a bow and mumbled something indistinct, his eyes on the ground. Janette looked at him, stunned, as if she'd never seen anyone like him before.

"Please, Father Seco, you'll need to speak up," Bronwyn encouraged gently.

"Your Highness, my brothers and I are in a bad way. We been transcribing texts that are almost three hundred years old, and our housekeeper died with the fevers this spring. It's not a bad thing, to cook and clean and keep things in order ourselves, but every moment we spend away from our work we risk losing some of the knowledge, some of the history of our land to bad eyesight or old age or just simple senility." His passion for his work was plain in his eyes, dark blue and slightly myopic. "I wish, if you know of any woman willing to put up with and look after seven old men who are set in their ways, we'll be sure she's provided for, give her whatever she wants, if you could be so kind as to send her to us." His words rang out into the audience chamber, startling him a little.

"I'll make inquiries, Friar Seco, I promise you that."

"Just... It would be a boon if she could read, even a little," he said wistfully. "So that maybe she might understand."

Bronwyn nodded. "That will be more difficult, but perhaps it can be done." She glanced at Janette, who stared at the little old man as he left, spell-struck.

"He really does love what he does," the girl said, as if the idea had never occurred to her. She looked stunned, something unfurling in her mind like a bright banner in the wind.

"Yes he does, as much as a kitchen girl might love her garden or a farmer loves his land.” Words crowded through Bronwyn’s mouth, half driven by her own fear and half pulled by the current of fate blowing through the princess. “And you don't deserve any of them, a spoiled and thoughtless brat who just now recognizes that there are other people in the world." Bronwyn reeled with the sharpness of her words, their deliberate cruelty, and the tears in Janette's eyes began to fall. She buried her face in her hands, slumping forward in her chair, sobbing. Bronwyn waved the chatelaine away and beckoned to her friend the former constable. He came away from the door and met her at the foot of the dias. "The princess needs some air, I think," she said, loudly enough for the girl and the chatelaine to hear her. Sobbing still, the princess bolted from her chair and ran from the room, followed closely by the older woman. Bronwyn turned back to Dale. "It's very likely that she will try to run away. Watch after her. Not for me, but for the sake of a kitchen maid who thinks highly of a constable who saved her from the cold."

He nodded and bowed deeply, pausing as he turned to go. "Perhaps, things could have been different, if I had spoken -" he began, his eyes searching hers.

She smiled sadly. "No, I don't think they could have been. We were born to do different things. You to protect a princess in the wilderness, and me to save her from herself. Go, now. You will know when the time is right to return."

"But who will save you, Queen Bronwyn?" he asked, and left her there to finish the task set before her.