I cannot help that I love you - you are the Queen of my Heart, and I loved you at first sight. It has been two years now since your husband’s death, and you are two years a widow. Aurelius was my friend, and so I held my silence until now - but will you not hear me? I do not wish to be your kind, or your friend, but only to love you, and know just once the touch of your lips before we pass from this world.
* Caius, first Exarch of Theliel, in a letter to Queen Elantia 18 AC
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8th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC
It was afternoon by the time they departed the column; once the storm clouds cleared, Trist was able to judge that easily enough by the height of the sun in the sky. He set as hard a pace as Sir Florent judged they could get away with. If the older, veteran knight hadn’t cautioned him repeatedly, Trist would have made them all ride even harder. They alternated between a trot and a canter, and at every ten mile post they swapped horses. By the time the setting sun had stained the clouds red, purple and orange, the knights who had taken this road west with the army judged they had made perhaps half the distance to Rocher de la Garde.
“If we had left in the morning,” Trist complained with a scowl, “We would be there by now.”
“In the morning we hadn’t yet been attacked by two daemons,” Florent pointed out, swinging down out of his saddle. They’d chosen a spot where the old Etalan road curved slightly around a hill to the north, crowned by an old holm oak with a broad trunk that seemed to climb up from the ground at an angle. The boughs and leaves spread overhead, shading a great circle beneath which they planned to pitch their tents and dig a fire pit. Camping atop the hill would ensure that, in the event of another daemon-sent storm, the water would at least flow down hill instead of gathering under their tents and swamping them.
“I know it,” Trist said, with a sigh. “But I still itch to be there.” He slid down out of the saddle, handing off the reins of the rouncey he’d been riding to Yaél. The squires would walk the horses to cool them, then tie them all up in a line between two stakes driven into the ground, rub them down, and give them each a helping of the oats which had been brought along for this purpose.
Clarisant guided her own spare gelding over. “A hand down, Trist?” she asked, and he reached up to ease her off the saddle and onto her feat. “I don’t think I’ve ever ridden that long in a single day,” she admitted, with a wince.
“Aye, the lady has it right. And I never want to do it again,” Henry agreed, walking gingerly by with a pair of pheasants he’d shot along the roadside. Now that they weren’t stuck in the midst of a marching column, he’d been able to do a bit of hunting and foraging. Whenever they’d stopped to change horses, it seemed like Henry was gathering herbs, or taking a shot into the brush.
“We should reach the city early in the day tomorrow, I should think,” Sir Florent promised. “Take a moment to walk it out, m’lady. We’ll see to getting camp set up, Exarch.”
Trist nodded, and offered Clarisant his arm. They took a turn around the hillside, and by halfway around, she was walking normally. “Is this how you rode coming down from the mountains?” she asked, once they were out of earshot of the bustle.
“Aye,” Trist confirmed. “Though we did not have enough horses to swap like this, so we had to alternate walking to rest them. All of them but Caz, anyway,” he said, with a chuckle.
“And then, as now, you were riding into battle,” his wife said. “It is all strange to me. Did it frighten you then, Trist? Does it frighten you now?”
“I did not have time to be frightened,” Trist said. “I was desperate to get us down into the pass before Adrammelech slaughtered everyone.”
“And now?” she asked, looking up at him. The evening breeze caught Clarisant’s dark hair and tumbled it about her face in waves. Her careful pins and veils had been abandoned halfway through the hard ride, and Trist thought she looked all the more beautiful for it.
“There is some of that,” Trist said. “I fear for my father. The King wants me to see Camaret-à-Arden evacuated south to the city, along with all the wood we can bring, if it is at all possible.”
“And I fear for my brother,” Clarisant sympathized.
“I fear for you, as well,” Trist admitted.
“I won’t be flinging myself into battle against daemons,” she pointed out. “I intend to remain safe behind the castle walls, husband. The only blood I intend to see is from sewing up wounds.”
“I recall Brother Alberic said you had a very neat stitch,” Trist said.
“Did he now? He never told me,” she said, with a smile. “Alright, husband.” Clarisant stopped beneath the shade of the oak, with the trunk between them and the camp. She held his arm, pulling him to a halt with her. “It is evening. Let us have this out, and not let it fester.”
“Aye.” Trist looked down at his feet, then back up to meet his wife’s eyes. “Under the hill, I stabbed Acrasia through the heart with an iron dagger, then cut her head off with my sword. I set her body on the stone bier opposite where Percy seemed to rest.” Clarisant’s brow furrowed, and he tried to explain. “Not his true body, but more of his… spirit. And I thought it was done, then. That I’d killed her. I still thought that when I rode back, and you stitched me up that night.”
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Clarisant nodded. “You had several wounds, and none of them looked well. I honestly wasn’t certain you would survive.”
“I woke up in the night, and she spoke to me,” Trist said. “From the sword.” He rested his hand on the pommel. “And then I slept again, and when I rose in the morning I half thought it a dream. But the sword was on the floor.”
“I remember,” his wife said. “I picked it up, and it was ice cold.”
Trist nodded. “That was when I told you that I could not wed you. But then my father asked to speak to me alone, and he said,” Trist tried to remember the exact words, “that I should never tell you. That it would do you no good to know. And that I should not speak of the things I saw or did at war to you, either.” He sighed. “I am ashamed to say that I did as he instructed me. And now I see that it was a mistake.”
“Yes, it was a mistake.” A storm seemed to gather in his wife’s eyes. “I did not wed your father, Trist, I wed you. If you’re going to be my husband, you need to be honest with me. And the entire time I lived with him, before I rode to Falais, he said nothing,” she continued, pacing. “I knew you’d become an Exarch, and it was easy enough to hear everyone speak of your ties to the faeries of the Ardenwood, but I never thought it would be her, Trist. I thought she was dead. Perhaps I didn’t want to hear anything that would say otherwise.”
“Now you know the truth,” he said. “The King - while he was still Prince, that is - had an oath out of her, that she would protect you and your children, nor would she allow you to come to harm if she could prevent it. It satisfied your father, somewhat.”
Clarisant stopped moving, and blinked. “My father knew, as well? Am I the only one who was kept out of this?” Her hands balled up into fists. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I cannot speak to what your father does or does not do,” Trist said.
“No, I suppose that is unfair of me to ask.” Clarisant took a deep breath, visibly swallowing her anger. “Thank you for coming out with it, now. That is something. And I suppose it is an explanation of some sort, that you were following your father’s advice, even if it was bad advice.”
“Can you forgive me?” Trist asked, reaching one hand out for her waist, but she stepped away instead if into his embrace.
“I am still cross, Trist, but I think I am more cross with our fathers, and with that faerie witch, than I am with you,” she said, maintaining her distance from him. “Look me in the eye and answer me this, and give me only the truth: is there anything between you and her, now? Do you still love her? Are you sleeping with her?”
Trist stepped towards her, reached down and caught both of his wife’s hands in his own, before she could retreat again. This time she did not stop him, and she met his gaze with hard eyes. “Clarisant du Camaret-à-Arden,” he said, and tried to pour all of his heart into his words, so that she would know them true. “I have had no woman but you since the night of our wedding, nor will I. I have told Acrasia that we will never again be as we were; that even if one day I am able to forgive her, we will never be lovers. When I was dragging myself up those stone steps, bleeding out from Adrammelech’s claws, it was not Acrasia I thought of. I thought of you, and then I reached out and grabbed another step, and another.”
Clarisant flinched, and looked away. “We were honest, that we did not love each other,” she murmured, avoiding his eyes.
“When we said that, we hardly knew each other,” Trist pointed out.
“And you know me so well, now?” his wife asked, finally turning back to him, catching him with her beautiful hazel eyes. Trist was not certain what he saw there.
“I know that you are smarter than I am,” Trist said, with a shrug. “That you were kind and nursed me when I was wounded. That you see things I do not - that my squire was not a boy, for example. That we would not know which daemons we faced, now, if not for all of the time you spent and the hard work you did back in the library. That whatever pain you have been feeling, you have never been anything less than the perfect wife at my side when we were together in public. That once I allowed myself to think of you as anything but my brother’s betrothed, it was impossible to forget how beautiful you are. That when the daemon threatened you today, my heart pounded as fast as galloping hooves, and that I could not get back fast enough for fear of what might have happened to you.”
“Stop,” Clarisant said, turning away from him.
“I know the taste of your tongue,” Trist insisted. “I know the scent of your pillow, and how your body fits up against mine when we sleep in the same bed. I know the softest skin of your body is that place where your belly meets your hip, and that I-”
“Trist!” Clarisant hissed, protesting. She turned back to him, and put her palm up over his mouth to shut him up. “Stop. That isn’t us. It was her that you loved, like in a song, and I know that you wed me for duty. I don’t need you to love me, so don’t say it. Don’t say it,” she repeated, turning and marching away from him, through the summer grass, “Unless you mean it.”
Trist was left alone in the deepening twilight, watching her walk away. “Perhaps I do,” he said, but by that time she was too far away to hear him.
Supper was two iron cauldrons of pottage, bubbling over a large cook-fire, enough for all thirteen of them. One of Henry’s quail went into each pot, along with the food they’d brought from Falais: grains of rye and beans, slices of apple and pear, with dried parsley from the castle gardens and wild thyme and rosemary Henry had picked along the route. They broke out day old loaves of bread from the castle kitchens, and a wheel of cheese which was sliced up with their belt knives.
“Mmmph,” Dame Etoile moaned around a mouthful of bread dipped in stew. She was scooted up against a rather awkward looking Henry, and had been, Trist observed, quite invested in the archer’s cooking. “That’s it,” she continued, after swallowing and washing her food down with a swig of watered wine. “I’m marrying this man.”
Henry sputtered and coughed up a mouthful of pottage. Chuckles rose from all around the fire, where knights and squires alike were eating.
“I’m not even jesting,” the blonde knight with the broad shoulders continued. “I can’t let cooking like this get away.”
“Alright, then, enough,” Sir Florent chastised her. “We made good time today. Tomorrow we should reach Rocher de la Garde. What then, Sir Trist?”
“Most of you reinforce the city,” Trist said, after swallowing a mouthful of his own food. Clarisant sat on one side of him, with Yaél next to her, and Henry was on his right. “While I go on to face the daemons at Camaret-à-Arden.”
The laughing stopped.