Bess blushed. “I always thought it was one of the heaviest burdens for a queen to bear . . . that you are forced to wed so young. So soon. With so little . . . sampling.”
“I didn’t need to sample.” Elsabet smiled. “I found William.”
Someone knocked at the chamber door, and Bess set down her brush. “There he is now,” she whispered into the queen’s ear, and Elsabet’s skin prickled. Even after three years of marriage, the arrival of her king-consort still made her shiver.
But Bess returned only with a tray.
“What’s this?”
“More tonic from Gilbert.” Bess set it on the bedside table and stirred a spoonful of honey into the bitter liquid. Elsabet gestured for another spoonful, and grimacing, another after that.
“Is your cough still so bad?” Bess asked as the queen sipped. “You have been taking the tonic for weeks now and even during the day.”
“It is not bad. The headaches, mainly. The tonic does not do much. What could any tonic do against the stress of the crown? But you know Gilbert. He is always looking after me, always overcautious. So I will drink this bitter stuff until he is satisfied.” Her eyes wandered back toward the hall. “Did you see any sign of my king-consort?”
“No, my queen.”
Elsabet frowned. “Do you remember when he used to run to me every night? How he used to stand outside hopping while you dressed me for bed, complaining about the draughts in this blasted, unfinished castle?”
Bess did not reply, but Elsabet caught her reflection in the mirror. An expression of pity.
“Have you seen him with someone?”
“No, my queen,” Bess said, and went quickly to add logs to the fire.
“But he has been flirting. The whole court has seen him flirting.”
“The king-consort has always been flirtatious. Especially with you, Elsabet.”
Especially with her. But it had been months since he had sought her out during the day so they could secret themselves off somewhere, in an unused room or an empty corridor. And if it was no longer her in the corridors with him, then it would be someone else.
“Has he made . . . advances toward you, Bess?”
Bess turned and stood up straight. The fire blazed behind her. “No. And if he did, I would strike him in the face. I would bruise him black and blue and then I would tell you at once.” Elsabet did not reply right away, and Bess hurried back to the queen’s side. “You do believe me?”
“Of course I do. I just wish you would have said that he would never. That my William would never do such a thing. But that would be a lie. And you will never lie to me.”
Bess stroked the queen’s hair gently and kissed the top of her head. “They say it is normal for a Centran man . . . and it would not be the first time that a king-consort went outside the marriage bed.”
True, though normally he waited for permission first. Or at least for the queen to take a lover.
“Normal,” Elsabet said. “I do not want normal. I want greatness. That’s what I want my reign to be. When, Bess, have I ever been satisfied with normal?”
That night, Elsabet tossed and turned in her bed until she finally gave up and pulled on a robe. She dragged a chair across the rug and onto the stone floor beside her window and pushed it open, letting a cool breeze in to accost the fire. It was high summer, but as near as the capital was to Bardon Harbor, nights could still turn cold, and she drew her feet up to tuck her toes beneath her dressing gown.
William had never come. He was drunk somewhere or busy with some Centran matter. Perhaps caught in a late game of cards or resting for an early hunt he neglected to inform her of. Any of those excuses would be better than the truth she feared.
She rested her elbows on the sill and looked out over the sleeping city, over the calm waters of the harbor and up toward the moon. When she was a girl, it seemed to her that the Goddess was there, in the moon. In that bright, glowing light in the sky. The Goddess was everywhere, of course. In the land and in the crops, in the fish that swam upriver. In the people. And most of all, in Elsabet, her chosen queen.
“There was a time when my gift was so strong I had only to ask you for a vision and you would send one. But then there had been purpose. The Quickening. My Ascension. Do all oracle queens’ gifts abandon them after they are in the crown, or is it only mine?” She waited, but the moon made no reply. It was silly, she supposed, to ask the moon for answers. But there was no one else to ask. The High Priestess was away on pilgrimage, wandering the mountains as she had for many years. And the accounts of the oracle queens who came before related only their grandest visions. Their most important prophecies. There was almost no mention of their daily governance, and certainly no passages offering advice on king-consorts who would not stay put.
“William, my William,” she muttered. “I am strong in everything, except for him. One little weakness. But how it seems to overcome all else.”
Elsabet waited by the window a while longer. She did not truly know what she was waiting for. A vision from the Goddess? William to walk through her door? Her thoughts were clouded, and the moon, lovely as it was, offered no answers. So she returned to bed and, finally, slept.
And when she slept, she dreamed. A bright dream, clear and real, from the sunlight on his hair to the crunch of dirt beneath his shoes. He was a boy, a young man, in common clothes and paint-smudged fingers. He had a broad smile, a little crooked, and the dimple in his right cheek was deeper than in his left. He was not handsome like William was handsome. But his eyes were warm. He did nothing more extraordinary in the dream than smile at her, and when he spoke, it was only her name.
“Elsabet.”
THE QUEEN’S COURT
The next day, Elsabet tried to pay attention to what Gilbert was saying. It was some matter of coin, which normally she was quite involved in, much to the rest of the Black Council’s chagrin. She gathered that the previous queen was rather hands-off when it came to the day-to-day ruling, preferring instead to focus on the grander, broader strokes of war raids and quests. When Elsabet came into the crown, she thought that the Black Council would welcome her interest. But instead they seemed to resent it. Even the young members she appointed herself: Sonia Beaulin and Francesca Arron. Not Catherine Howe, though. Kind, level-headed Catherine Howe could probably not be resentful of anything.
Today, though, the council could have its way. All through the morning session, Elsabet’s answers had been clipped and passionless. Her eyes flitted across papers presented to her without seeing them. She was distracted, and the reason was clear to everyone in the room.
Her king-consort had been seated at a table with a dark-haired beauty for the last hour. Except he was not quite sitting. He was leaning so far across toward her that he was less at the table than he was mounting it.
“Elsie.”
Elsabet blinked. Gilbert called her that only in private. How many times had she ignored him, she wondered, to get him to resort to it before the court?
“Yes, Gilbert.”
“Are you with us?”
“Of course.” She motioned with her hand. “Go on.” She ignored their doubtful expressions and refocused. It was not a complicated matter; she could catch up on what she had missed. Or she could if her ears were not filled with her king-consort’s laughter, a sound made all the louder by the fact that he was clearly trying to muffle it.