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Fenella attends King Alasdair's wedding mostly because her parents want to introduce her to a few of his lords. They have enough lands, enough power, enough men at their command, that they'd hoped he might approach them to ask her to marry him, but a king is the best prize, not the only one. They buy Fenella a lovely new kirtle and parade her around in front of all the men.
All the men, though, are looking at the king's new bride. They call her Gold-tree, and Fenella is never sure if it's a name from her own country or if it's a nickname, because she's not close enough to hear the priest marry them with her true name.
Fenella meets them both at once, making a brief curtsy and smiling her best. Gold-tree will need women to serve her and keep her company, and she knows her parents have ambitions for her that would be served well by that, so she makes sure to congratulate Gold-tree on the marriage.
Gold-tree smiles at her, and Fenella can see why every man in the room is trying not to watch her. She's beautiful, yes, but many women are beautiful. There's something in her smile, though, and her eyes, that makes her hard to look away from. There's the hitch of an accent in her voice that makes Fenella want to lean in closer to listen to what she's saying. “I'm so glad to be here, with Alasdair,” she says, and it's fervent and past it, but Fenella can't blame her for being happy on her wedding day.
King Alasdair is handsome too, the pair of them nearly painful to look at, blindingly lovely and blindingly happy, but he holds Gold-tree's hand like he's afraid she might be taken away from him, and there's a shade of worry in his eyes that Fenella doesn't think anyone has noticed. Perhaps it's only the worry of any man with a young, lovely wife. Perhaps it isn't. Either way, it's none of Fenella's business. “Is your family planning to stay long away from your lands?” he asks, unfailingly polite.
“We hope to stay at least a little longer,” says Fenella.
Gold-tree reaches forward to clasp her hand gently. “Well, I will hope to see you again.”
*
Fenella's mother takes a fever only a few weeks later, when Fenella has spoken a few times with the new Queen but not as much as her parents would like. In days, she's dead, and Fenella is left reeling at the very thought of it.
Her father needs to return to his lands and to Fenella's little brothers, and she can't stay alone, without the protection of her mother, so she packs to return with him.
The king and queen do them the honor of coming to meet them to see them off when they go, and Gold-tree steps forward without ceremony and takes Fenella's hands in hers. “I'm sorry for what happened, and that you must go. I'd hoped we might be friends, but I've been so busy.”
Fenella musters up a smile. “Of course you're busy. You're a queen.”
“I'd still like to be a friend. Perhaps if I wrote to you, you would have the time to write back?”
No one would be foolish enough to leave a letter from royalty unanswered, but to her surprise, Fenella finds that she'd like to do it for Gold-tree's own sake, for the way she looks anxious and hopeful. “If I don't have the time, I'll make it,” she promises, and gets another squeeze of her hands for it.
The king smiles when he finishes speaking to Fenella's father and sees them. Gold-tree lets Fenella go in time for her to sink into a curtsy as he comes over to greet her. “I was sorry to hear about your mother,” he offers.
“You're very kind.”
“If there's anything we can do to make this easier on you, don't hesitate to ask it.”
Fenella smiles over at Gold-tree. “Her Majesty has already told me she'll write to me. I can't think of anything better than that to ease my mind.”
King Alasdair still looks at his wife like he can't quite believe she's there, but Fenella is surprised when he turns a true, crinkle-eyed smile on her only a second later. “You are, then, in the best of hands.” To her even further surprise, his next smile at Gold-tree includes her. “And you, as well. I hear the Lady Fenella is clever and kind, and she must be a good correspondent.”
“I will try to be,” she promises, and it's not a courtesy to a king and queen, but a hope for a friend and her husband.
Even her father seems a little lighter as King Alasdair and Queen Gold-tree say their goodbyes and watch them ride away.
*
Gold-tree is Fenella's most faithful correspondent, over the next few months. She writes, indiscreetly, about state business and learning the politics of Fenella's country rather than her own. She writes about King Alasdair not as a king but as a husband, who falls asleep in his chair by the fire unless she pulls him to bed and tries to tease her into riding out to hunt. She never writes about the country of her birth, even when Fenella asks, and Fenella learns to stop asking.
Instead, she asks Fenella question upon question about her father's lands and those of his neighbors. She asks about how Fenella is doing at caring for her little brothers, all of them bewildered and sad without a mother to watch over them. She asks frank, smart questions about alliances between her husband's lords and how to foster the ones she wishes to foster and stop the ones she wishes to stop.
Sometimes, to Fenella's surprise, she passes on messages from King Alasdair himself, not business for her father, but questions about things she's told Gold-tree interest her: the flowers she tries to grow despite the cold winds on her father's lands, the riding lessons she's giving her youngest brother. Questions that Gold-tree could just as easily ask herself, but that she always makes a point of saying come from him.
Fenella has never had a friend quite like the queen before, but the letters are a bright spot in a series of miserable months, as she forgets all about marriage and tries to usher her family through the worst of the loss.
*
The news of the queen's death comes by messenger, a courier riding hard between the lands of the lords who deserve to hear the news. By the time he gets to them, Gold-tree has already been dead a week, and is no doubt already buried.
“What happened?” asks Fenella when the courier tells them, and knows it's her father's question to ask but can't care.
“Her mother came to visit her, and it seems she wanted her dead. The king was out hunting, so the servants didn't know to keep her out, and she poisoned Queen Gold-tree.”
Gold-tree is the daughter of a king and a queen herself, which means a queen of one country has poisoned the queen of another, even aside from the horror of a mother doing that to her child. Fenella swallows, and thinks of her brothers. “Will there be war, then?”
“The king has no appetite for war. Queen Silver-tree didn't do what she did as an act of state or of war.”
A monstrous act, with no reason that Fenella can discern, if it wasn't an act of state. And an act that has taken her dearest friend away from her without warning. Gold-tree has brought cheer to her father's cold halls and to days that seem joyless without her mother around, and now she's gone too.
*
Nearly a month passes, and Fenella still has a letter to Gold-tree half finished, sitting out under the other papers she has to deal with. If she puts it away, or burns it, then she'll stop half-expecting another letter. Her father and brothers all look on her in worry, with the way she watches for the mail to come, hoping it will all have been a trick, but she doesn't know how to stop.
When a courier comes and says he has a letter for her, she almost freezes, but it could be a letter from one of her aunts or uncles, asking after the family, so she takes it, and finds herself looking at unfamiliar handwriting. It's sealed with the king's signet, and she takes it away from her family before she unfolds it to see what he has to say.
Lady Fenella, he writes in careful script, You were my wife's dearest friend, and I beg your forgiveness for not writing you sooner. There have been matters of state to consider, and matters of my own grief as well. I wish I had been able to send you a note with the courier I knew would travel to your father's lands, but it was too new, then. I think you and I knew her better than anyone else in this country, and it comforts me, even if it hurts you, to know there is someone else grieving her too, as she truly was. She would hate to be remembered for her beauty alone, when her beauty is what made her mother begin to hate her. She would prefer to be remembered the way you and I will remember her, and I wanted to honor her by writing to you as she would have. I don't have her ease, or the time that she had, but I hope you'll write to me, and perhaps confide in me as you might in her.
And then, near the bottom of the page: Your flowers must be blooming, now that it's truly summer. Are they as beautiful as you'd hoped?
*
It takes Fenella three days to formulate her answer, though in the end she sends just a few words: If you wish to see my flowers, and if you wish to leave behind or at least share your grief, you could come for a visit.
*
The next courier tells her father to expect a royal visit, but doesn't bring a letter for Fenella. She goes about preparing the keep anyway, and her garden as well. She's neglected the flowers, in her grief, but if he wants to see them, then flowers there will be.
Her father finds her out there one morning when King Alasdair is supposed to arrive in just a few days, and kneels down with her to help her search for weeds. The silence lasts, and she doesn't break it. For a while, she thinks he won't either, that he'll sit with her and walk away, having reassured himself of whatever it is that he's hoping for or fearing.
“You know why he's coming,” he finally says.
It's direct enough that she can't duck it, but she doesn't want to think about it, either. “I wish he had a chance to rest from his grief. And me too. But if he asks, I won't say no.”
“You can find happiness, and help him do it too. A young king needs a wife, because he needs heirs, and if he's fond of you for her sake, it's a better beginning than some have.”
Impulsively, she puts her arms around her father, who holds on tight in return. “It might cause him more pain, to have me there as a reminder of what he's lost. He may just be here to visit me for her sake.”
“Do you believe that?”
Fenella lets go and stares into her flower beds. No, not really, but she feels sick with betrayal at the thought of marrying Gold-tree's husband. She can't even put away a letter that makes her feel that her friend might still be alive. Still—better her than someone else, in the end. She'll understand if he can never love her, if he spends his life thinking about Gold-tree. “No. I don't.”
Some of her prettiest, brightest flowers will be blooming when he comes. Fenella stares at the buds with her father until he has to leave.
*
King Alasdair arrives with as little fuss and pomp as a king can. The household greets him properly, conscious of the eyes of his guards and ministers, those he couldn't leave behind him. Fenella's father welcomes him, hopes that away from the castle the king will feel his grief less. He introduces her brothers, reminds him of her name.
Fenella curtsies when he looks at her, but she keeps quiet and watches him, assessing. He looks bewildered with grief, as though he's unsure how he can feel all the pain he needs to feel. The few times she met him, she thought he seemed worried even as he was happy, fearing that his happiness would be snatched away from him, and she would think that would prepare him for the loss, but now that it's happened, it seems to have shocked him.
After the courtesies are paid, he turns to her. “Lady Fenella, my wife told me of your gardens. Would you be willing to show them to me?”
It's a poor garden, in the end, compared to what he could have at his own home, where the wind doesn't sweep in quite so strongly from the sea. But she knows it's not really the garden he wants, so she won't be ashamed to show it to him. “Please, follow me, unless you'd like to rest first.”
“I'll rest later,” he says, and Fenella excuses them to all the watching, knowing eyes.
*
King Alasdair walks through her flowerbeds and seems to inspect each bud and each bloom. Fenella lets him, lagging behind to take a few dead leaves and buds off stems, unable to leave it be even when she's giving the king himself a tour.
“You should have gone to war,” she finally says, without quite meaning to say it. She's thought of it often, since the courier said he wouldn't. “No one will believe it wasn't an act of war, and they'll think you simply allowed it.”
To her surprise, he laughs, though it's a cheerless sound. “Gold-tree told me you're a politician. But I have pity on her father, whose wife cared so much for beauty that she killed their daughter, so I don't go to war. And I'm tired, Lady Fenella. I don't have the heart for battle.”
“Beauty? She killed her own daughter for beauty? And you still pity her husband?”
“The first time Silver-tree threatened her, he knew she was mad, but he loved her, so he simply asked me to marry Gold-tree, and we were both ...” He swallows. “We were both more than willing, and she never wished to speak of it, so I took her away, and we thought that was the end of it.”
“And when her father heard that Silver-tree wanted to visit her daughter? When the last time she'd seen her she wanted to kill her?”
Alasdair is silent for a long while. “I don't know. He hasn't replied to the news yet. But I imagine he hoped, like Gold-tree did, that the madness had passed. And now she's been taken from me, and Silver-tree will, I hope, forget all about our land. I won't war against them.”
Perhaps he's foolish, perhaps he's not a strong king, when all of Fenella's brothers have been muttering since Gold-tree's death. But Fenella finds herself glad for his kindness, because Gold-tree wrote of it often, in wonder and joy. “Aren't you angry?” she asks, nonetheless. And then, because he needs to see that she isn't Gold-tree, with her endless kindness: “I am. So much I want to scream, sometimes. If I saw her, queen or no ...”
“I wish I were angrier. I'm hollowed out. It's hard to be a king, to be a man. Anger is still beyond me, I think.”
“Well, I will be angry for both of us.” He's looking at the flowers again, puzzled. If he's hollow, even the flowers might not be giving him much ease. “Come,” she says. “There's more to see.”
*
They stand on the rocky beach for a long time, the two of them, long enough that even in the summer the whipping wind stings Fenella's cheeks. Alasdair paid her flowers careful, courteous attention, but the sea keeps him from politeness. He stares away, still and silent, and when Fenella sees a tear slide down his cheek, she turns away, bends to start gathering seaweed to take down to the kitchen when they return just for something to do with her hands.
“I wish I had more to offer you,” he finally says, and Fenella straightens, keeps hold of her burden. “I wish I had the luxury of waiting, but I'm a king who wouldn't go to war over his wife's poisoning. I need strength. Heirs.”
“You offer me a queenship, and my sons on the throne after you. You offer me prestige for my family.” She looks out to sea. “I hope that you offer me friendship, and respect, and memories of my dearest friend, and the comfort of shared grief. If you can't offer me your heart, well—that's true of many marriages.”
“You even gallantly try to keep me from proposing, but I'd like to do you that honor.” He turns to her, and she turns to him, though she can't extend her hands. Instead, she meets his eyes. They're sparkling, not with happiness but with unshed tears, but there's something calm in his face, something sure. “Would you be my wife, Fenella? I'll try to make you happy. And I think, selfishly, that you'll come closer to making me happy than anyone else would.”
They're going about this all wrong. He should have made a formal offer to her father, first, and only asked Fenella as a matter of courtesy, and she's standing with her hands full of seaweed and the hem of her skirt wet where a wave lapped her. If she says no now, he'll never ask her father, and perhaps they will write a few letters, before he chooses a different queen. “I'll marry you,” she says.
She recognizes relief in his face before he leans toward her. She half-expects a kiss to seal the contract, and she gets one—not on her lips, he doesn't claim that privilege, but on her forehead. She bows her head in response, and when she lifts it, he's smiling. “You've done me great honor. We'll have to wait a while, to plan the wedding and to mourn a little longer, but I wanted to ask early.”
They'll both need time to get used to the situation, and she's grateful for it, even if it means months of anticipation. “I'm happy to wait. It will give my father and brothers time to get used to not having someone around to run the keep any longer. And, as you said—both of us need the time to mourn.” Him more than her, no doubt, but it seems to comfort him to know that she grieves too.
“I'll speak to your father, then, and we'll work out the settlements and the timing, unless you wish to do that yourself.”
“No, we may as well follow tradition.”
He looks back out to sea. “It's a little warmer, there, though there's ocean as well. You might have an easier time of growing your garden.”
“I didn't plan to give it up,” she assures him, and his shoulders drop, like for some reason he needed that particular reassurance.
They watch the ocean in silence for a while longer, and she lets her harvest drop down to the rocks and only gathers it up again when a servant comes to fetch them and tell them a meal will soon be ready.
Alasdair helps her pick the seaweed up, solemn and helpful, and they carry it back to the keep together.
*
Alasdair stays only a few more days. He spends long hours by the sea, with and without Fenella, and hours in the garden as well, always with her. He spends time closeted with her father, working out the shape Fenella's life is going to take, and Fenella's brothers nag her with questions about when she'll leave, what will happen now, why he's come when the grass has barely had time to grow over Gold-tree's grave.
When Alasdair goes, they're granted a few moments of privacy while his companions mount their own horses, and they stand, facing each other, with little to say now that it seems so important. Finally, he reaches up to brush a hank of hair out of her face, where the wind teased it free of her braid. “I'll see you before winter,” he says. “But I hope you'll write to me before then. I'll write to you.”
“I'll write,” Fenella promises, and when he leaves, she watches him until she can see nothing more than little shapes moving in the distance.
*
The next day, Fenella puts away her forever-unfinished letter to Gold-tree and starts a new one. She doesn't yet have much to say to Alasdair, but she'll learn.
*
The letters begin painstaking and courteous. Every word from both sides is chosen carefully. Fenella writes of her garden, and her brothers, and reveals little bits of herself ruthlessly, on purpose, less because she trusts him with them and more because she'd like to.
He writes back, shorter letters than hers but often more frequent ones, and at first they seem like an absent journal. He'll write about what he ate for breakfast or what the crops from the west are looking like. Once, he writes that it's the middle of the night, and he can't sleep, can't close his eyes without seeing Gold-tree and her mother, and the confession feels shockingly intimate.
Fenella doesn't feel equal to the task of telling him something that might help. Instead, she writes a letter about her brothers taking her out in a fishing boat, the way the waves rocked them all, and how they went far enough away from the shore that all of them were yelling, screaming at the sky, scaring the gulls, but couldn't be heard by anyone on the land.
As the months pass, they argue—slowly, a line or a paragraph at a time in between writing of other things, of Fenella's trousseau and Alasdair's hunts. He brings up state business, a little more discreetly than Gold-tree had, and Fenella finds herself disagreeing with him sometimes, and telling him so. It's all too late, after the problems have already been solved one way or another, with how long it takes the letters to travel, but he never dismisses or ignores her opinions, and seems happy to disagree with them in turn.
Her father catches her a few weeks before they're going to leave, before she's going to become a wife and a queen, smiling foolishly over a particularly long letter from Alasdair, the bulk of which length is arguing about the distribution of wheat stores.
“Is he treating you kindly?”
Even when he's disagreeing with her, somewhat hotly, he's courteous about it. It's less kindness and more respect, and in the end, that matters more to Fenella. Gold-tree was the very soul of kindness, but Alasdair and Fenella are a little more reserved. Respect is easier to accept, and to give. “Yes,” she says anyway.
“And he hasn't made you feel as though you're … less, than the queen he had before?”
She is, of course. Not as a queen, she'll do well at that, as well as Gold-tree would. But she remembers seeing the two of them on their wedding day and the happiness everyone could see. Alasdair can't be happy like that now, so soon after her death, and Fenella won't break her own heart by expecting it. “Of course he hasn't. Things will be different for the two of us, but that doesn't matter so much.”
“I only ever want—we only ever wanted, your mother and I, to give you joy and comfort.”
“I'll have comfort. And joy will come, in time.”
*
The first time Fenella went to the king's castle, she was a near-anonymous noblewoman. Her parents had ambitions, to be sure, but nobody greeted them at the gates, or singled them out for attention.
This time, Alasdair meets her on the drawbridge. He greets her father first, properly, a clasp of hands, and then turns to Fenella. It's been months now, and she can see where the grief has worn paths in him and where some of it has started to fade. “My lady,” he says, the edge of a smile on his face. “Welcome to your new home, and I hope you'll be happy here. If you aren't too tired, I would show where you'll be living.”
She is tired, sore from days of riding and worn down by the questions her father doesn't ask and the questions her brothers do ask. But she won't begin this with retreat. “Please, show me everything.”
Her family excuses itself, all of them scattering, guided by a housekeeper who smiles approvingly at Fenella's choice, and Alasdair offers his arm so he can guide her.
Everyone in the palace, guards and servants and nobles alike, seems to find an excuse to be in the halls as they pass through. Alasdair takes her through the whole keep, from stables to cellars to towers, and beckons over a man who presents her, with a bow, a ring of iron keys that make her the mistress of the household before she's even said her vows. She thanks him with a few words, not daring a speech that would only sound stilted, but he doesn't seem to mind, and his smile is warm when he leaves them.
In the middle of all the keys is a little golden one, more delicate and finely made than the others. Fenella fingers it. “What will this open?”
Alasdair sighs, and Fenella already knows that Gold-tree will be part of his answer. “You and I have the only keys—not even the servants enter that room. There's a study she used, because she liked the way the light came in, and the view as well. I gave you the key because you have a right to it, but ...”
He doesn't want her to enter what must be his monument to his first wife, and she can't blame him for that. “We can't be everything to each other,” she says quietly, knowing that someone will always be listening when they aren't in the privacy of their chambers. “I keep feeling I should offer to show you her letters, but I can't make myself do it. I'll pick a different study, and stay clear of that door.”
“You're more than I deserve.” His voice is low, pained, and she doesn't know what she can say to that. They emerge into the chilly autumn air, a wall where they can view the lands surrounding the castle. “Look,” he says, a little louder, shaking off his mood and pointing out to sea, to a distance she can just barely see when she squints. “The boats are coming in.”
*
Their wedding is a more solemn occasion than his to Gold-tree. Everyone is still mourning her, after all, and Fenella finds herself expecting hostility, or at least disappointment. Instead, everyone is kind and polite and speaks in hushed tones like it's a funeral instead of a wedding. Their vows are grave instead of joyous, but Alasdair holds tight to her hands like he fears she'll float away, and after, when they're receiving congratulations, she holds his arm just as firmly.
Alasdair doesn't look lit from within by joy, but there's something like ease in his eyes, and that's a good beginning.
Later that night, he takes her to his room—theirs, now, because he offered her one of her own next to his, but she refused it and he seemed glad of the refusal—and truly makes her his wife, gently and thoroughly. This, her mother never spoke of and Gold-tree never wrote of, but it's a mystery of marriage she's glad to know, and she sleeps content in his arms.
When she wakes, light is spilling into the room and he's still there next to her, awake and watching the ceiling. When she taps his arm, he turns to look at her, all sweet concern. “You're well?”
Fenella can't help arching an eyebrow. “You think so little of your own prowess that that is the question you ask your bride the morning after your wedding?”
To both of their surprise, he laughs, a quick crack of it. “I apologize, then, that was unworthy of both of us. What should I ask instead?”
It's late in the morning, and she's a queen, now. There will be a hundred things to do, outside their chamber door, now that she's the mistress of castle and kingdom, and he'll have even more to do. She's here to help him, to give him ease, to do her duty by her country and by a friend who died too soon, not to make him laugh and tempt him into bed. But there's something unguarded about him, and if there isn't love between them, there's fondness, and they deserve a day for them, to see what this marriage could be. “You might ask,” she says, “if I'd like to do it again.”
She can see the duty tug at Alasdair the way it tugged at her. But it only takes a second for him to bend and kiss her, smiling with more warmth than wistfulness. “Well then, my wife. Would you like to do it again?”
As it turns out, she would.
*
Alasdair becomes dear to her very quickly. She was already inclined to be fond of him, just from what she knew of him from Gold-tree's letters and what she saw when they were both new to their grief and reached out for each other. Now that she's sharing his bed and his life, there are a hundred small things she notices that make her smile: the way he offers to brush her hair one night and does it every night thereafter, the ink he gets on his face when he forgets about his quill while he's thinking, his love of riding and hunting and the freedom both give him.
Their letters were one kind of courtship, and this, living with him, is another. The intimacy is strange and lovely, and Fenella wonders if this is what marriage is like for everyone, even without love, if the companionship is always so welcome and easy.
Perhaps not, but marriage, for her, is arguing in bed with the blankets pulled up to her shoulders to ward off the cold about the latest requests from Alasdair's vassals. It's seeing him briefly for breakfast and longer at night, and sometimes catching him for a brief smile in between.
Marriage is loneliness too, especially when Fenella's family returns home for the winter. Sometimes Alasdair disappears, and she knows he's in the study that the little gold key will unlock. Sometimes he leaves for a hunt and she has enough free moments to open the box of Gold-tree's letters and wonder if she's betraying her friend or doing exactly as she would have wanted. She has no one, really, to write to the way Gold-tree wrote to her. She picks a few ladies in waiting as time goes on because it's expected, but there's little friendship between them.
Her affection for Alasdair cuts, too, as snow cages them all in the castle and slows the business of the kingdom to a crawl, putting them in each other's company more than ever before. The sting of her grief for Gold-tree has faded over time, folded into her grief for her mother, soothed by her new marriage and duties. His still seems to take him by surprise sometimes, leaving him wan and sad for days at a time, though he never makes her feel that she's something less to him than Gold-tree was.
Fenella doesn't mind that he still loves Gold-tree, that he always will no matter how warm and kind he is to her. Instead, she minds that nothing she does can make him happy, though she knows it isn't his fault. Something will always send him back to the room with the golden lock, or leach the happiness from his eyes after she's won a rare laugh from him.
Sometimes, at her worst, she wants to shout at him for letting the room and the preservation of his grief tempt him back over and over again. Even a man who loves his wife can learn to live with her absence, as her father has proved.
But, while she may not be Gold-tree, she knows it would be cruel to tell him to leave the room alone, to let it be aired out, so she'll always have to live with knowing that she can't make him completely happy. Something will always be calling him away.
Alasdair is kind, a good husband and a good king, but he'll never be happy, and Fenella finds, as the winter grows warmer, that his unhappiness hurts her, and that she's made a mistake, somewhere along the line.
*
When it starts feeling like spring in truth and Fenella starts idly thinking about her garden, Alasdair goes to spend a few days out hunting, a rare pleasure that she doesn't grudge him. The business of the kingdom is quiet, his nobles settling down now that he's married to Fenella and they're going about getting him an heir or two, so he can indulge, and Fenella can keep the castle warm for him.
She spends the days quietly, overseeing the castle's preparations for the warm season, the changing of linens and the airing of empty rooms, and when one of the housekeepers finds her on the day Alasdair is supposed to come home, she greets her cheerfully, ready to hear what the next task awaiting her is. The housekeeper, though, is sober, her hands clasped in front of her. “My lady, one of the maids was passing Queen Gold-tree's study, and it sounds like a bird may have got in somehow, perhaps through the chimney, and like it's making a mess in there.”
“Oh,” says Fenella, and stands there dumb for a moment before she realizes what it means. She has the only key, Alasdair's tucked into his clothing while he's away from the palace, and the servants aren't allowed in. He might come back to find his sanctuary, Gold-tree's sanctuary, ruined and disordered by a scared creature who doesn't know any better. “Well, then, I'd best fix it.”
The housekeeper curtsies. “That seems best, my lady. I know the king doesn't like anyone else going in, but he must trust you.” With that, she bustles away, looking much happier.
Fenella feels worse, though. Alasdair trusts her, and she all but promised never to enter the room with the golden lock. If he comes home, though, to a panicked bird having knocked things off desks, ruined papers left out or a robe carelessly left on a chair, he'll be devastated. She goes to the door, and stands in front of it for a long minute before she tries the lock, wincing at the sounds of thumping from beyond.
The first thing she sees when the door opens is a flutter of panicked movement, a bird beating itself against a window, and she doesn't take in the rest of the room, just darts to the latch and ducks the swirl of wings and beak to open the window and let it free. The window lets in a blast of cold air, but more importantly, it lets out the bird, and after a few deep breaths, she carefully shuts the window and turns to the rest of the room to right whatever was put askew.
There are papers on the floor, as she'd feared, and a few things knocked off a shelf, but she stops on her way over to pick up a vase that she hopes hasn't broken, full of dried flowers. Against one wall, there's a long couch, a sort of day bed, and on it is Gold-tree.
Fenella bites her hand to stifle the scream that tries to escape.
For a moment, she tries to convince herself that something else is happening. She only met Gold-tree a few times, and she could be misremembering, after most of a year. Maybe a maid has a talent with locks and has sneaked into a forbidden room for a nap.
Maybe her kind husband has his first wife's body locked away in her old study as though she's merely sleeping.
But it can't be Gold-tree. Gold-tree has been dead for months on end, and the woman on the couch looks as fresh as life, if pale. She doesn't look like something dead. Fenella takes a breath, and then another, and then one after that, before she can force herself to move.
It's Gold-tree herself, not some model or construction, not some piece of strange magic, but she only seems to be in the space between breaths, between heartbeats. Fenella can hear or see neither, but still, there's Gold-tree, no sign of withering, no sign of death on her at all. She's only frozen, and her mother killed her but somehow preserved her beauty, and Fenella wants to be sick.
She wants, she finds after a few seconds, to scream at Alasdair. Gold-tree's memory deserves better than this. She was murdered for beauty, and it's all there is left of her, so he celebrates it. Clings to it. No wonder he can't be happy, when he's holding on to this and can't let go.
“What has he done?” she asks, and knows Gold-tree can't answer.
There's a chair near the couch—the bier—and it makes Fenella feel even sicker to think of sitting in it. It must be where Alasdair spends his brief visits. (She hopes they're brief, but she'd never thought to pay attention to the pattern, because she'd never imagined this.) She sits on the floor instead. It's badly-swept, as the rest of the room is poorly-dusted, and she has a moment's dim and distant amusement at her husband's idea of keeping the room tidy.
Can she forgive him this?
Gold-tree is silent and serene, the center of a tableau from a tale, and Fenella looks her fill. She looks bruised and tired around her eyes, and there's unhappiness in the pull of her mouth, legacies of the horror of her death. Fenella dares to touch her hand, clenched on the edge of the couch, and finds that her skin is still smooth and warm. She's an impossible thing, and it hurts to look at her, and it hurts to look away, so Fenella focuses on that one hand, a single part of her she may, someday, be able to understand.
There's a barb stuck in her littlest finger, she realizes with some surprise after only a few moments. It's an ugly brown thing, wickedly sharp to be stuck in so deep, and Alasdair must have left it on purpose. Gold-tree was poisoned, she knows. This must be his reminder to himself of exactly how he failed his first queen.
Fenella thought she was angry at Silver-tree for killing her own daughter, but that anger was tempered by fresh grief. This anger is hot in her veins and it's all directed at Alasdair, because it's all coming clear now. He's not desperately holding on to memory, not making a memorial and a shrine from his wife's too-beautiful body. He's reminding himself of his failures, using Gold-tree and her bright, warm presence to torture himself. He must look at the barb just the way Fenella is now and wonder why he went out hunting, wonder why he didn't write to his father-in-law more often to remind him to control his queen.
Enraged, she grasps the barb, adamant that at least he won't have that excuse to hate himself, and pulls it roughly out of Gold-tree's finger, to wrap it in a handkerchief until she can safely burn it. It's a small, dangerous thing. It's changed so many things.
She sits there for minutes upon minutes, knowing she has to get up, has to go out and be a queen, has to prepare for Alasdair's return. She doesn't know what she'll say. It's one thing to enter a marriage knowing her husband will never love her the way he loved his first wife. It's another to see this and expect things to be the same.
When Gold-tree moves, she thinks she imagines it. Surely it's her own trembling making it look like Gold-tree's hand has twitched. Surely it's her racing thoughts that make her hear an inhale.
Surely, it's her own wishes that make her hear, in Gold-tree's voice, rasping but still lovely: “Oh, my darling, I must have been ill indeed if they sent for you.”
Fenella hurries to look up, knowing she'll see only stillness, and finds herself meeting Gold-tree's eyes. There's a smile in them, and pain, and she struggles to lift her arm, but she does it, to reach out for Fenella. She reaches back, automatic, and Gold-tree clasps her hand. She feels warm and real. She feels as though she's breathing. “It can't be so easy as that.”
“I must have lost weeks,” Gold-tree says, slowly sitting up, frowning down at the beautiful gown she must have been in for the funeral, the one everyone must think she was buried in. “If you're here, that is. I'm so glad you came.”
“I can't just take away the barb and bring you back to life, it can't work like that,” Fenella insists, and her voice is going higher and faster as she sits up on her knees to keep Gold-tree steady. Gold-tree, who is moving and frowning down at her.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
Fenella opens her mouth, but she has no way to explain that it's been most of a year, that—oh, that Fenella is married to Gold-tree's own husband, a marriage that's possibly annulled now, a marriage that should never have happened if the only thing keeping Gold-tree from life was a simple barb in her finger. “There's a lot to explain to you, and you may hate me by the end,” she warns.
Gold-tree reaches out and touches Fenella's cheek, and Fenella realizes she's crying. She's not sure if she started before or after this miraculous resurrection, but it's an embarrassment either way. “I couldn't hate you,” she says, sounding bewildered and sad.
“Let me tell you everything before you decide that.”
*
When everything is told, the whole story as Fenella knows it, Gold-tree is silent for a long time. “I still don't hate you,” she says. “Of all that's happened, none of it has been your fault, and you've done nothing to upset me. Alasdair … we'll have to talk.”
“He loves you more than life,” Fenella says. It feels strange to defend him when only an hour ago she could almost have convinced herself that she hated him. “And you were alive. He may not have known it, but what if he'd buried you, and I'd never found that barb? You would have been living and dead forever, in a coffin, and I can't bear that thought.”
“There are still things to say, about you and about me and about how ill he used us both.” Gold-tree stands, and her legs are only a little shaky under her. “I'm going to speak to him.”
Fenella scrambles to her feet. “No. He'll be coming back from hunting soon, and you'll terrify the servants. Let me bring him to you. I'll give you privacy, so you can talk as long as you please, but let me bring him to you, so you can decide together how to tell everyone you're alive.”
Gold-tree looks like she wants to object, but she only nods, and to save Fenella from further arguments, the castle outside the door starts bustling all at once, and when she looks out the window, she can see Alasdair and his group of men riding back triumphant, with meat to feed the keep for days to come. Of course that's why Gold-tree chose this study, so she could see him coming home whenever he left, and Fenella's heart hurts more just thinking of that.
“I'll fetch him for you,” says Fenella, and makes sure to lock the door firmly behind herself when she leaves.
Alasdair looks pleased when he comes in, and Fenella meets him in the hall. She doesn't know what she looks like, but he immediately stiffens, reaching out for her. “Is something the matter?” There are servants watching, so she shakes her head and takes him aside, pulling him away from his men and his business until they reach their chambers. He's half-laughing by the time they get there. “You certainly seem to have some news to share.”
Fenella takes a shaky breath. “What would you give me if I could make you completely happy?” His eyes flicker to her belly, and she hadn't even thought of that, that she might be carrying his child when she's about to be cast aside in favor of his first wife. “How could I make you completely happy?” she amends.
“I wish I could be so for you,” he says, looking away. “You deserve a happy husband, for all the good you do for me. But I can't manage it yet.”
“I can,” she says, and her voice shakes. “I can make you completely happy. All you have to do is go to the chamber with the golden lock, and see what's inside.”
All the color drains from his face, any good done by a few days carefree with his men immediately erased. “Fenella, did you see—”
“I can't and won't talk about that now. All I ask is that you go to that room. There will be more to say after that, no doubt, but first, you have to see.” She swallows and sits down in one of their chairs. “I'll be waiting here.” Alasdair stands there, his face a picture of worry, of pain. He'll be so happy, in a few minutes. Gold-tree will forgive him, and they'll be happy, and Fenella will … well, Fenella will have to think. And she can't do that with him standing there trying to find the words he needs. “Go,” she says, because she doesn't want to wait for them, and he obeys.
*
Fenella falls asleep. It's a long, long time: she waits through dinner, through a tentative question from one of her ladies in waiting about where the king disappeared to after his hunt, through another tentative question from a maid about voices behind a locked door, through a long evening. She stays in their chamber, away from the public, and goes about what she needs to do mechanically, and she falls asleep on the couch even though she'd wondered if she would ever be able to sleep again.
She wakes to someone brushing the hair away from her face. She expects it to be her mother. She expects it to be Alasdair, who will sometimes press a kiss to her face and be gone before she truly wakes.
It's Gold-tree, as golden as her name in the scant candle-light. She looks exhausted, but there's a smile on her face. “My husband's wife,” she says quietly, a little wry.
Fenella flinches like the words are little poisoned barbs, like she'll fall into an endless sleep of her own. “Where is he?”
“I told him that you'll speak to him in the morning and that he can find somewhere else to spend the night.”
Fenella sits up. “No, of course he should come back here with you. I'll find an empty chamber, we have plenty prepared for guests—”
“You and I are staying here, and he'll come to us tomorrow.”
“We're expected at meetings tomorrow, about what we can expect from the spring floods,” Fenella says, a little dazed. “We shouldn't miss them.”
Gold-tree watches her, solemn, until Fenella realizes that of course they won't be having those meetings. The spring floods will have to wait a few days, because they can't hide Gold-tree, and there will be questions about what happened to her, about which of them is queen. The floods will come either way, of course, but maybe they'll wait. Maybe the cold will last. “Come to bed. I may have been dead for months, but it seems I still need rest, and as I recall, the bed is big enough for both of us.”
“I'm sorry,” Fenella says, miserable.
Gold-tree pulls her to her feet, holding her hands tight. “Of all of us, you have nothing to be sorry for.”
That's kind, and wrong, but Fenella is tired and there's a sting in her throat and her nose that makes her think that if she starts speaking she'll cry, so she follows where Gold-tree leads, the two of them climbing into the bed that Alasdair shared with them both, and will share with Gold-tree again.
Now that she's awake, Fenella doesn't think she can sleep again, but it's dark and late and Gold-tree's breathing goes soft so soon, and the sound of it soothes her to sleep sooner than she would have imagined.
*
Fenella wakes in the morning and has a moment of blissful forgetfulness, thinking only about the coming spring, floods and plantings and everything it will bring. Her second breath brings memory of Gold-tree and Alasdair and everything that's changed, and when she opens her eyes, there Gold-tree is, still sleeping peacefully.
Somewhere in the palace, Alasdair is no doubt awake, longing for Gold-tree and sick with guilt for her sake and for Fenella's. The servants will be waking, wondering what happened yesterday. Fenella can't take care of the former problem, but she can deal with the latter, so she creeps out of bed and dresses so she can walk into the kitchen just a few minutes after dawn.
The head of the household and the cook are meeting, planning the day, both of them looking a little worried, and they both leap to their feet when they see her. “Queen Fenella,” says the cook, and the title makes her flinch, because it won't be hers much longer. “Is all well?”
“Yes. Yesterday was a strange day, and a miraculous one, and we'll all need to be on our mettle. To begin, I'd like a hearty breakfast that could feed three, when you have the time to begin it.”
Her careful request, of course, is taken as an order, and the kitchen descends into a bustle in no time at all, filling with the smell of frying eggs and warm bread. Fenella takes shelter in it, and the cook seems to realize that something is wrong, because she brings her warm, strong tea and fusses that she shouldn't be up so early and spending time in the kitchen.
Fenella fends off the kindness as soon as the food is ready, and promises that she'll tell them what's happening as soon as she's sure of it. Both of them, like Alasdair, look to her belly, and she blushes and tells them that as far as she knows, that won't be the news. There's disappointment, the murmuring of the scullery maids as they creep in for the day, but they send her back to her husband and tell her everyone will be looking forward to the announcement.
There are voices inside her chamber when she gets there, and she pauses in the corridor, not quite ashamed to listen.
“—if she never wanted to speak to you again,” Gold-tree is saying, low and vicious, and it's strange to hear her angry. Fenella doesn't know Gold-tree's anger the way she knows how Alasdair's brows draw together when he's annoyed or verging past it. “But no, I don't know where she's gone. She was gone when I woke. And it would serve you right if she'd left on a horse—”
Fenella can't bear to listen to that, listen to Gold-tree defending her when she doesn't need defense, when Gold-tree is the wronged one here. She lets herself into the room, and both of them look at her at once. It takes Fenella a moment to catalogue what's so strange about them, and after a moment she realizes it's that there isn't anything strange at all. She only met them together twice, but it seems right that they're standing there, both of them caught in the middle of the room arguing but together. She knew them longer apart, but her first memories of them will always be together.
Neither of them seems able to speak. Gold-tree's color is high and her chin set, mulish, her arms crossed across her chest. Alasdair looks tired and dazed and his hand is up like he was reaching for Gold-tree and stopped when the door opened. “I brought breakfast,” Fenella says, and shuts the door behind her. “And the two of you ought to be quieter. The servants will be out soon, and they'll carry gossip. I've said we're not to be disturbed, which means they'll all be listening.”
“Fenella,” Alasdair says, and it's the first thing he's said to her since she sent him to see Gold-tree risen from the dead. There's something like wonder, and something like guilt, on his face, and Fenella doesn't want to hear him speak of either. “Of course you thought of breakfast,” he adds instead, perhaps realizing it, and there's warmth now like they've found together as the winter passed. “We would have been hungry, and you thought of it.”
“Today will be no more pleasant on an empty stomach.” She puts the tray down and clasps her hands in front of her. “No matter how it's done, it will be awkward, but I think the miracle will make it all easier. You may have to settle some funds on me, since it's obvious I can't marry again, but I won't ask for much.”
They exchange a look, and that feels right, better than them at odds with each other. It's Gold-tree who speaks first. “What do you think is going to happen today?”
Fenella frowns at them. “You married me second, and it turns out you weren't widowed after all, so that annuls your second marriage. You had each other first, and if you thought I'd stand in the way, or argue that, you don't know me well.”
“See what you did?” says Gold-tree, scowling at Alasdair again. “She ought to spit on you.”
Alasdair looks between the two of them, and even now, with Gold-tree alive again, he doesn't look happy. He doesn't go to Gold-tree, though, to try to apologize. He goes to Fenella, and offers his hands. She can't make herself move, but he keeps his hands reached out, doesn't withdraw the offer. “Do you want to be set free?”
Gold-tree hisses his name, looking even angrier, but Fenella holds up her hand and Gold-tree falls silent. “It's the only solution that makes sense. I have family to welcome me home, and there's no honor lost here, no scandal. I'll have a quiet life, and write letters again, and the two of you will be able to take your lives back up the way you should have been able to all along.” Gold-tree makes a noise, and Fenella turns to her. “Or would you prefer to go back to your family?” She knows it's cruel as she says it, but it's the only thing that might make them see sense.
“And what if you're with child?” Alasdair says, cutting both of them off, perhaps seeing as she does that Gold-tree might have said something similar but much less calmly. “You'd have me send you away to bear my child and call it a bastard? No, there are … I think there's another way. If you want it. I know you married me in grief, with understandings between us that perhaps shouldn't have been there.”
“Perhaps,” says Gold-tree, with some venom, but she's all sweetness when she turns to Fenella. “There can be happiness for all of us, I think.”
“My marriage to Gold-tree is legal—she's not dead after all, and the marriage was never ended legally because we thought she was. And my marriage to you is legal. Doctors said Gold-tree was dead, and I was free to marry who I pleased. And if both marriages were legal in the eyes of my people and the church, why shouldn't it remain so? They can't gainsay a miracle.”
Alasdair isn't given to making speeches, and he isn't given to looking as hopeful as he does now, either. The husband she knows is so different from the husband Gold-tree did, and it's hard to imagine him being both men at once. “People will,” she says, but her willingness to do what's necessary might not stand up in the face of them foolishly telling her it isn't necessary at all. “But they'd understand if we wanted to wait to see whether I'm with child, I imagine.”
They exchange another unhappy look. “We'll discuss that when we know, then,” says Alasdair. “But I think we'd be allowed. I think our people wouldn't grudge us joy.”
Joy seems a strange word to use, when all of them are so worn down and tired. It's strange to use when Gold-tree was dead for the better part of a year, when Alasdair and Fenella made promises that had little to do with love, when there's been so little of it to go around, all this miserable last year. Fenella loves them both, in a quiet way that bears little resemblance to the way she remembers them loving each other, but that love has given her little in the way of happiness.
While Alasdair is speaking of joy, though, she recognizes something else that might matter more, at least in the moment, spread out on his and Gold-tree's faces. It's the look Alasdair wore on their wedding day, and the one Gold-tree did when she asked if Fenella might write to her.
It doesn't answer all her questions and worries, but it's enough that Fenella takes Alasdair's still-raised hands, if only for a moment. “Breakfast will get cold, and there's much to do today. We can make decisions later.”
She can recognize respect as much as hope, and they don't argue. They sit down, and she goes with them, and the three of them eat in strange, anticipatory silence.
*
Alasdair is the king, so it's he who has to tell the people. He stands with Gold-tree to his left and Fenella to his right and says that Fenella made a miracle happen and that he will not cast either queen aside, especially when there are other considerations. He doesn't mention the study with the golden lock, or the body, or what miracle Fenella is said to have done.
Fenella isn't sure what she expected. Perhaps for the people to call for him to set Fenella gently aside, or perhaps for them to call either one of Alasdair's queens a witch or a demon. Instead, there are tears of happiness, cheering and eager questions and no word of him putting aside either one. Alasdair's people love him, and they want him happy the way he was with Gold-tree in the beginning, and it seems they don't mind him having Fenella as well.
She makes sure she smiles the whole time, and holds Gold-tree's hand when Alasdair steps forward so no one will be able to call either of them jealous, so it will be easier on them all whenever it has to end.
“I told you no one would care,” says Gold-tree, smug, when the announcement is over and the gossip has begun.
“You don't have to tell me, your Majesty,” says the housekeeper, in awe, when she timidly asks what kind of dinner would be celebratory enough, “but it was that bird, wasn't it? It was the soul of Queen Gold-tree, and somehow you set it free.”
It's a pretty story. Prettier than the true one. Fenella smiles, and hopes it's the one that carries.
*
That night, Fenella offers again to find a different room, but Alasdair and Gold-tree look so stricken that she leaves it be. They sleep three in a bed, Gold-tree in the middle. She falls asleep first, and Alasdair meets Fenella's eyes over her head with a smile, fond and pleased.
Startled, Fenella finds herself smiling back.
*
Fenella is the queen of her country—a queen of it, now—and she's used to eyes on her. Over the next few weeks, though, the looks change. Spring comes and people flock to the palace to see Queen Gold-tree, to see Queen Fenella who brought her back from the dead. People watch her like they'd like to ask if she'll bring anyone else back from the dead, like she's a saint or a witch, and Fenella ignores it and goes about the business of reigning as best she can.
Somehow, no one, no priests and no politicians and no judges, tell Alasdair that he must choose between them, and Fenella doesn't bleed, so she doesn't force the choice. Her father writes, asking if she's well and if she's coming home, and she writes that she won't yet, but doesn't know if that might change.
She offers, again and again, to find a room of her own until they know whether she's with child or not, but Alasdair and Gold-tree always look unhappy when she offers, so she stays.
Things are strange in the first days, but she catches Alasdair and Gold-tree kissing one morning like they might die if they stop, and after that they're still strange, but perhaps easier. Alasdair is husband to both of them, in bed and out of it. Fenella tells him once that he doesn't need to, that they can wait to see whether she's with child, and he stops, stricken, and says “You don't want to?”
Fenella tells the truth, and Gold-tree watches them with her eyes shining and kisses Fenella when it's done, and as the nights go on, they're wives to each other, too.
Gold-tree ministers to the household, and Fenella tends her garden and helps Alasdair deal with the spring flooding. It's a good life, and Fenella had thought that if joy were going to come, it would come all at once, a sudden wave like a river breaking its banks with snowmelt. Maybe, though, it comes bit by bit, night by night.
They might not get all the way there. Gold-tree stares out to sea sometimes with her hands shaking. Alasdair still looks at both of them when he should be at his happiest like he fears it's all going to be ripped away from him. Fenella still wonders if she's enough to them, when they're so much to each other.
They might not find their way to joy, but they'll get close.
*
“I'd hoped this might happen,” Gold-tree tells her when it's just the two of them in bed, Alasdair up late taking care of some kind of business.
“That what might happen?” Fenella asks, feeling lazy and languid with Gold-tree's hands in her hair, brushing out the tangles a day has brought.
“I wanted you to come back when you'd had time to grieve and be my lady-in-waiting. Alasdair already liked you, from what I shared of your letters, and I—oh, I don't know if I can say what it meant to me to have you. At home, I had Mama and Papa and they were all I needed, but I didn't have them anymore. And Alasdair is a good man, but he couldn't be everything to me, nor I to him.”
Fenella rolls to face Gold-tree, and Gold-tree puts her hand on Fenella's cheek, resting it there. “You seem sometimes as though you are everything to each other. The first few times I met you.”
“Well, perhaps we don't want to be. And we shouldn't be. So I thought of making you my lady-in-waiting, if you were willing. And, if you and Alasdair both were willing ...” She taps the bed a few times, smile going softer. “But then you wouldn't have been able to marry him too. I could almost be glad of my death.”
“And I would rather the other way. You didn't know him without you. He'd lost the most precious thing in the world to him, and it was like he was gutted. And I missed you too. His letters were never as good.”
Gold-tree frowns a little, as she always does when she thinks of the months they spent without her, of Alasdair keeping her in her study, which she won't set foot in now, of the calm and companionable marriage Fenella and Alasdair expected to have. “We would have lost some precious things that way too,” she points out, and her hand drifts down to Fenella's belly. It's been more than a month since she's been back, and they're more sure every day, but none of them are saying anything about it yet. “This is the life we're living, and I'm happy. Alasdair is happy. The only question is you.”
“I feel like this could all be taken from me any moment,” Fenella admits.
Gold-tree kisses her gently. “You and Alasdair. I terrify him, because from the beginning he's known that my mother wants me dead and he fears I could be taken from him again. And I scare you because you think I'll supplant your place when it's the last thing I want. It's a good thing you have each other. I think it must have been more restful.”
Her marriage with Alasdair alone was easier, in many ways, than this one that includes Gold-tree too. They were pleasant companions and could have been so for the rest of their lives. Gold-tree, with her brightness and her passion and the fears she brings, makes things sharp and wonderful as much as she makes them terrifying. “Maybe. But lonelier, too,” she says, the best honesty she can give.
There's a noise from the doorway, and Fenella looks up to find Alasdair watching them. For once, he's not pulled tight with worry, just smiling at them, perhaps a little rueful. She doesn't know how long he's been there, but when he climbs in the bed, he makes sure that she's in the middle.
*
It's a fine sunny day, edging into summer, and Fenella is in her garden. The whole country seems to be outside, planting crops or drinking in sunshine and warmth, and with Alasdair out hunting and business adjourned for the day, she wants to join them. She's far enough along in her pregnancy that everyone frets at her when she tries to dig in the dirt on her own, as though women don't do it every day, but she's been left to her own devices and expects an afternoon of peace when one of the maids finds her at a run, eyes wide with terror.
In seconds, Fenella is on her feet, brushing soil off her hands. “What's happened? Did the king have an accident while he was hunting?”
“One of the guards was watching the harbor, and the ship Queen Silver-tree came in last year—it's come again.”
Gold-tree likes walking along the beach, finds it calming the way Fenella finds her garden calming. Fenella offered the sanctuary of her flower beds, but Gold-tree laughed and went down to the sea, and now her mother is coming. “Send for the king. I'm going down there,” says Fenella, and runs before the maid can begin to argue with her.
By the time she gets to the harbor, gasping for air, hem torn where she tripped on it, the ship is docking, and Gold-tree is standing there, with her eyes wide and the rest of her frozen in place, a statue. Fenella slows to a walk and takes her hand, and Gold-tree doesn't move, doesn't even twitch.
Somewhere, she hears men shouting, guards coming to protect the queen. It's an insult, to react so to the coming of a foreign queen they're technically allied with, but none of them wants the return of grief, Fenella least of all. “Go inside,” she says, as quiet as she can, turning to Gold-tree. “I'll turn her back.”
“Do you think she can't find me there?”
They've never talked about the day Gold-tree died. What Fenella knows, she knows because the servants have told her: Gold-tree, shut in her study. Her mother, begging sweetly at the door because the servants didn't know to keep her away. Gold-tree putting her finger out, a test of trust that she should have known wouldn't be met with kindness.
“Don't you trust me to keep her away?”
At last, Gold-tree moves, a sudden flurry to frame Fenella's face with her hands. “I won't see you hurt. Not when you're with child—never, in fact. You live, no matter what happens to me.”
“And who's this?” asks a strange voice before Fenella can find an answer that expresses everything she feels about that.
Fenella turns a second after Gold-tree does, and there's Queen Silver-tree. She looks like Gold-tree. She has Gold-tree's beguiling smile and she may be a matron, but she's as lithe as a girl. She's a woman who values beauty over love, who wouldn't sacrifice her pride for her daughter's sake or even her husband's, and that lets Fenella see what beauty covers over: coldness, and anger, and above all, fear. Silver-tree is terrified of Gold-tree, and that's what makes her most dangerous. “I'm her wife,” Fenella says, the simplest and truest answer she can give.
Silver-tree scoffs and ignores Fenella in Gold-tree's favor, and it's been so long since anyone looked at Fenella as anything but a respected and even beloved queen that it's a little startling. “I'd heard you couldn't even keep your husband from straying when you'd been brought back from the dead.”
“Mama,” says Gold-tree, and she sounds so young, and so frightened, but she takes a step forward anyway, as though she can't help it. Fenella moves with her. “He didn't stray. Or if he did, then we strayed together.”
Silver-tree leaves her ship, and there's a goblet cradled in her hands, full of dark wine. She doesn't spill a drop on her pale gown. “You don't even use what you have. You waste it.”
Gold-tree's chin goes up. “I have more than my face.”
“Oh, my girl,” says Silver-tree, and something softens in Gold-tree's face, like the words are well-worn. “Someday you'll learn the truth of that. But come, now. I've come to make peace, now that I've heard you live after all. Won't you take a sip from the cup your guest brings you?”
Nothing good will come of that, but Gold-tree walks forward again, like she's compelled, by remembered manners or love of the woman who birthed her or by something else. Fenella looks desperately around them. It's all happening too fast. The guards haven't yet come. There are sailors on the deck of Silver-tree's ship, but this is the second time they've brought her to kill her own daughter, so they can't be counted on.
Fenella moves without thinking, closes the distance between herself and Silver-tree faster than Gold-tree can and ignores Silver-tree's noise of affront when her fingers close around the goblet, both of them holding it between them. “It's kind of you to offer a cup,” she says, barely knowing what she's saying, “but we must observe the courtesies. In this country, a guest sips from the cup first. If we'd known you were coming, we'd have had one ready, but you'll have to forgive us and sample your own.”
Silver-tree's eyes are all ice. “Of course.” Fenella releases the goblet, and Silver-tree raises it to her lips, barely opening them, barely tipping the cup, pretending. Fenella brings her hand up and tips the goblet's stem as Gold-tree cries out behind her, and Silver-tree's shocked inhale brings the wine in with it, a swallow she chokes on but can't seem to spit out.
The goblet falls, splashing wine on both of their dresses, a red-purple stain spreading fast, and Silver-tree falls a moment later, still gasping for air.
Fenella catches Gold-tree before she can go to her mother, holding on as tight as she can. “She never would have stopped,” she says, and her voice is shaking. “You may never forgive me, but I'm not sorry.”
Too late, the guards arrive, and there's shouting, the sailors on the ship and the men on the shore trying to ascertain what happened. Fenella holds Gold-tree while she weeps, and after a while, Gold-tree stops trying to pull away.
*
Gold-tree chooses to go to her old shut-up study to wait for Alasdair, and since she's clinging to Fenella's arm, Fenella goes too. On the shore, there's still chaos. Silver-tree's body was put back on her boat, and the whole cask of wine she brought heaved into the sea, but they won't be leaving to take her back to Gold-tree's father until there's a letter to go with her, an explanation.
The study has been ruthlessly cleaned since Fenella last entered it. She doesn't know if Gold-tree or Alasdair or the maids did it, and hasn't asked, but now it's an airy, anonymous room, unused. Gold-tree goes to the desk and gets out what she needs to write a letter, but she doesn't start doing it. “My father,” she finally says, and it's the last thing Fenella would have expected.
“He's let her come to you twice now, knowing what she did.”
“He always loved her past all reason. This will break his heart.” Fenella doesn't care much for his broken heart, when the only action he's ever taken to save his daughter has been to marry her to Alasdair, but she's not cruel enough to say that. “And I know Alasdair loves me just as much. That's what scares me.”
“He isn't the only one,” Fenella admits.
Gold-tree looks at her, and it seems like she sees her for the first time since the horrible scene down on the beach, since Fenella could coax her to come back up to the palace. “I know. You killed her for me, and thought I might need to forgive you for it.”
“You loved her. Of course it hurt you, to watch that.”
“It hurt, yes, but you saved me. Twice, now. I know you love me.” Gold-tree turns to look at the blank page in front of her. “I need to write this.”
Fenella is still caught on how easy it is for Gold-tree to say those words when Fenella can't ever quite believe the reverse, but she breathes a little easier. “Should I leave?” she asks, because it's easiest to discuss one small thing at a time.
“No,” says Gold-tree, fast and sharp. “No, please stay. I don't know what I'm feeling, but none of it is anger at you. I'd always rather have you with me.”
That may be true, but it doesn't make the next few minutes any easier. Fenella stays where she is, and stays silent, while Gold-tree slowly writes, letter by letter, a message to her father explaining that her wife has killed his queen. Outside the room, the palace is chaos, and Fenella should be out dealing with it, talking to any of Silver-tree's guards and sailors who are willing to grovel, but she won't leave Gold-tree alone with this.
Fenella sees Alasdair coming, sees the party of riders coming from the far hills at a gallop, and stands before she knows what she's doing. Gold-tree looks up at her, and Fenella gestures to the window. “He's here.”
“I can't go down to meet him,” says Gold-tree, suddenly frozen.
“Of course not. He'll come to us, he'll know where to find us, and he'll know we're safe by the time he gets here,” Fenella assures her without thinking, already turning away from the window. Alasdair's here, and he'll come to them as soon as he can. “You keep writing, I imagine we'll be busy once he arrives.”
Gold-tree redoubles her efforts, and Fenella watches words appear on the page, though she doesn't look close enough to see what they are.
When the lock rattles, long minutes later, Fenella steps to the side to give Gold-tree a clear path. She needs Alasdair's comfort, the comfort of her husband, who didn't kill her mother, no matter how deserved the death was.
Alasdair, though, goes to Fenella right away, wrapping his arms around her. His breathing is shaky, and he rocks her back and forth a little like she's a child. “I knew you'd protect her,” he whispers, and presses a few messy kisses to her cheeks. “I knew you'd keep her safe, but when I heard, I was so afraid that she'd hurt you instead.”
“She didn't care about me.” Fenella manages to half-remove herself from his arms and turn to Gold-tree, who's standing now as well, and weeping again. Fenella is almost relieved to see it, because the silence that had followed the crying had been worse than the crying itself. “Don't worry about me. Gold-tree, you—”
“It's been a long day for us both,” says Gold-tree. “And there's more of it to come. The two of you don't need to be here for this, though. I'll speak to my mother's men, and send them home.”
“You shouldn't be alone,” says Fenella.
Gold-tree walks up to them, a hand on each of their shoulders, and then kisses them both on the lips, strangely solemn. “I'm not. I know I'm not. But I let her kill me once. I almost let her kill me a second time. But I can put this part of our lives to rest. And the two of you can wait for me when it's done, and we'll have the next part together.”
Alasdair reaches for her. “You'll come back?”
“I don't think Fenella would stand for it if I didn't,” says Gold-tree, and there are still tears on her cheeks and in her eyes, but there's something warm there too, something like forgiveness.
*
“I killed her,” Fenella says to Alasdair, sitting on the edge of the bed in their bedroom. Her hands, she finds, are shaking. “I won't ever regret it.”
“You've saved me so many times,” he says, and takes her hand.
“Saving her life. I know.”
Alasdair shakes his head. “If she'd never come back at all, I would still love you. You would still have saved me. It just might have taken longer. I only hope that I've meant as much to you as you have to me. If there's a burden, after this day's work, I want to share it with you.”
Fenella isn't sure if she has a right to weep, but she does anyway, and Alasdair puts his arm around her shoulders and stays with her.
Together, they wait. This time, they know she's coming back.
*
Gold-tree comes to them long after dark, by the light of a candle, and climbs into the space they create between themselves. They've been dozing, but her presence wakes them both fully.
Fenella watches Alasdair reach out for Gold-tree, offering her a courtly arm to help her into place, and she recognizes the joy she saw on their first wedding day, with something lacking this time. When he kisses her, she places it—even then, even before Silver-tree killed Gold-tree, he was frightened she'd be taken from him. Gold-tree was right that she terrifies them, or that her loss does, but that danger is over now. She's in no more danger than Fenella, or Alasdair.
“Is it done?” she asks when they part, and Gold-tree rolls to face her. She's red-eyed, her lovely face pale and drawn, but there's something settled in her that wasn't before, like she's decided she's alive after all. “Has the boat left?”
“They will with the morning tide. There will be politics, in the morning. They'll want war again, but Father … Father has lost enough today, and doesn't even know it yet. I'd rather not send a declaration of war with the news.”
“There won't be a war,” says Alasdair. “Before, I had no heart for it. Now, I think perhaps too much heart. My wives are safe and well, and an heir is on the way. And, my love, your father is the one who asked me to care for you and keep you alive. I know none of this was his doing.”
It's almost embarrassing, to look at them and see how much love there is between them. But then again, she wonders what Queen Silver-tree saw in her last moments, when Fenella was protecting her daughter. Wonders what Alasdair saw when he walked into the study, and wonders what Gold-tree saw when she walked in just now. Wonders what someone would see if they walked in right now, when all of them are tired and heartsore and somehow, beyond it all, something approaching happy simply because it's the three of them in a bed.
Love might always bring a little fear, but more joy, in the end. Fenella thinks that perhaps, for them, the joy is just at its beginning.