C. Murphy - The Queen_s Bastard

Even now, her forehead numbing against the cold pane of glass, Belinda reached for the ability that had enveloped her just one time, three years earlier. The duvet around her shoulders held her safe in its warmth; the glass held her safe from the plummet to the earth, but shadows would not enfold her in their safety.

You are waiting, a voice inside her whispered, and she knew it to be true. Waiting for a sticking point, for a moment of culmination that would explain the solitary, focused studies of her almost twelve years of life. It felt like standing on a knife’s edge, fathomless depths below her and impatience prodding her on. There was purpose there somewhere; Robert would not otherwise have troubled himself with the cost of her eclectic education.

Lately she had realised that girls were not taught the things she had been taught; they did not study the blade, or learn politics and history. Rather, their days were filled with learning embroidery and managing households. Belinda had learned those things, too, but her math went beyond the numbers to balance the manor books, and her languages, written and spoken both, were numerous. Robert had purpose in educating her. Belinda only waited to learn what it was.

Lamplight glittered on the road beyond the manor walls. Belinda blinked twice, hardly realizing her eyes had been open, then knelt up to peer through a windowpane unstained by fog from her breath.

Light flashed again, then spread out more broadly as a distant corner was rounded and Robert’s carriage, black against shallow snow and starlight, came into view. Protected lanterns, glassed-over and swinging wildly, made streaks of brilliance to Belinda’s dazzled eyes as the carriage came pell-mell for the gate, horses’ breath steaming in clouds as they galloped.

Belinda slid from her window, throwing her duvet off as she ran for the door. “The gate! The gate! Papa is coming! Open the gate!” Alarmed and startled voices, rough with sleep, took up her cry. Belinda, clutching a pair of fur-lined slippers in one hand, raced down the steps to the great hall behind Marshall, the thick-bodied manservant who tended to Robert when he visited his country estate. Heedless of the icy ground outside, Marshall flung open the broad manor doors and ran through slush, his booming voice rousing the stablehands from their roost. Belinda, more prudent, hopped and shoved her feet into slippers as she reached the main floor, then ran past Marshall through the courtyard.

It was she who scrambled up to the heavy gates and pulled the pins that kept them locked at night, and she who put her feet through the iron bars and rode the swing of the gate as it opened. She waved through the bars, then climbed higher on the gate, standing on the cross-bars halfway up. Her fingers and cheeks were numb with cold where she pressed against the iron, hanging on with one hand and waving with the other. Her breath came in short, hard gasps, heart hammering inside her with an excitement that bordered on pain. The air she drank down was no longer bitter with cold, but burning with hope. For the moment, Belinda forgot stillness, and prayed.

Robert, lit by the frantically swinging carriage lamps, leaned out a window, laughing and waving in return. “Pack!” he bellowed over the carriage’s rattle and the horses’ hooves. “Take yourself off the gate, and pack, girl!”

Belinda touched Robert’s outstretched fingers as the carriage thundered by, the coachman calling out to the horses as he reined them in. The touch was hard enough to be painful, her cold fingers aching with the impact, but Belinda savored it, drinking in the ache the same way she relished the hard hammering of her heart. Maybe the night’s dream of her birth had been a portent, a harbinger of coming change. Perhaps that was what had driven her from her bed in time to see Robert’s impetuous midnight arrival.

Robert swung out of the coach before it stopped moving, his ground-eating strides bringing him to her before she could jump down from the gate. He swept her off the iron bars, disregarding her size, and spun her around before setting her on her feet again. “You’ve grown,” he said approvingly. “Now go on, Belinda. Pack your things. We leave the moment the horses are changed.”

Belinda gaped. “Tonight?”

“Tonight. There is a man at court whose business is yours, and the need is urgent.”

Ice slid through Belinda’s insides. Stillness overtook her even more quickly than the ice, and her gaze remained steady on Robert’s face, her hazel eyes expressionless. “Papa?”

“Your wardrobe, Primrose. Come, quickly now. I’ve no time to tarry. I’ll tell you what you need to know in the carriage.”

“Of course, Papa.” Belinda curtsied, an instinctive thing, and stepped around him. Wind picked up, sending freezing shards through her sleeping gown, and her feet took her back into the manor heedless of the turmoil in her belly and mind. Her maidservant, Margaret, met her at the head of the stairs, hands twisted in her skirts with excitement.

“A husband, my lady, think of it,” she whispered, herding Belinda down the hall. “Do you think he’ll be young and handsome, or old and rich?”

“I’m sure Papa will have made the best match for me,” Belinda replied, as reflexive as her curtsey earlier had been. She was very nearly twelve, the legal age for marriage, though young. She hadn’t expected it so soon: adopted daughter or not, Robert was not yet old, and a marriage might yet be made for him. Heirs of his blood might still be possible, though Lorraine’s favouritism showed no signs of waning, and the queen had flown into tempers before when her courtiers made matches of their own. The man Robert had in mind for her would be without an heir himself, a child bride extending the years it might be possible to get one. If he was old enough, he might die before she caught, and his lands would become Robert’s.

Belinda expected him, then, to be older. Not handsome, but wealthy, with any sons already dead in wars or foolish accidents. She allowed Margaret to dress her without awareness of what she wore. Her dagger caught in the folds of her chemise, pressing uncomfortably against her spine. Belinda straightened it before the stiff fabric of her corset was tightened around her. He would be minor nobility; a duke or an earl was beyond her scope.

“Your boots, my lady.”

Belinda startled, looking down. Margaret knelt, waiting patiently for Belinda to respond and be done with the dressing process. “We’ll want to bring makeup,” the woman said as she slipped first one boot, then the other, onto Belinda’s feet. “It’ll run if we apply it so early, my lady, but you can’t be seen at court without it.”

“Yes, of course. I leave the details to you, Margaret. I know you won’t embarrass me.”

Margaret dimpled and ducked her head in a nod. “I won’t, my lady. I’ll have you packed within the hour. Lord Robert will be waiting for you downstairs now, I think.”

“Yes, of course,” Belinda repeated. “Thank you, Margaret.” Skirts and petticoats gathered, she ran to the great hall, then to the kitchen, where Robert sat on a rough wooden table before the fire, gnawing a goose leg to the bone.

“Margaret says my things will be packed within the hour, Papa,” she said from the door. Robert glanced up, gesturing with his meal. Belinda came in, smoothing her skirts as she sat on the table’s bench, facing the fire. Robert twisted, propping a foot on the table.

“An hour. Worse than I’d hoped, better than I’d imagined. Keep that one, Primrose; she’s efficient.”

“Yes, Papa.”

Robert split a grin, toothy in the darkness of his beard. It was longer than when she’d seen him last, coming to a full lengthy point and trimmed shorter along the line of his jaw. He stroked his hand over it, noting Belinda’s critical gaze. “Does it suit, Daughter?”