The Kingdom of Little Wounds (29 page)

So much of my history, and of History, in one place.

Thinking to rid myself of all memories, all past and feeling, I dig into my waist pocket. I don’t know what I expect to find, but my hand gropes past my mother’s bracelet, kept there for safety (the dorter’s seen a theft or two lately), and comes up with Jacob’s amber needle case. I have held it close out of sentiment, but it is the perfect object to sacrifice. With a prayer, of course. Walking toward the hollow, with the guard’s back to me, I hold the case tight in my fist, letting the dry skin there crack. I pray . . . for a sense of tranquillity, of not-wanting, of health to my soul.

I hurl the case, needles and all, into the witch’s bed.

There is a sudden flit of cloud shadow, so I can’t watch it go down, don’t even see the stars’ reflections tremble on the mud as it sinks.

I forget to pray, and utter a curse instead. I’m suddenly afraid. But in some small way, I’m also pleased, as if I’ve just flung every man I’ve ever known into the muck.

Then I turn and scurry lest the guard come to ask what I’m about.

N
ICOLAS’S lips are soft, softer even than Isabel’s or any other lady’s that Christian has kissed in greeting or in ceremony. And how does Christian know this? Because he and Nicolas are kissing, and it is not in ceremony.

Christian could not say how it began, only that it is pleasant and easeful, occurring somehow between a sip of wine and a daring lick of Nicolas’s finger. He might have been embarrassed by what would have been called flirting if it took place between a man and a woman, but he feels now that he need never be embarrassed again, there will never be anything wrong again, even his pain will vanish if he can only drink deeper of the pleasures of Nicolas’s mouth. His belly quivers.

All of him quivers. Too much. He is the King.

He stands (for he has still been sitting on his stool) and lurches toward the door of the tiny cabinet. But trips and has to catch himself against the wall, breeches down, head spinning.

Nicolas reacts immediately. Christian feels it, with a combination of surprise (new circumstances) and familiarity (old actions). The sponge, the sting of vinegar, the soothing ooze of rose-scented tallow. And nimble fingers tying the breeches loosely over a royal gut that does not know whether to be increasingly excited or — yes, maybe — ashamed.

No, not ashamed. Nicolas is helping him into the bedchamber, the chamber of Inner Presence, and closing the door on the cabinet of the stool. All Christian can think is that he wants Nicolas to turn around and kiss him some more, before they can start to realize what a sin they are committing.

Nicolas’s slender fingers grip Christian’s shoulders, then the sensitive sinews in the back of his neck. He gives the neck a soothing rub, removes Christian’s hat, and sets it on a table.

Christian feels his eyes tickling with tears. Perhaps he has only imagined . . .

More wine? No, he will not ask for it; he cannot speak.

Nicolas touches the pearl dangling from Christian’s ear, and it is astonishing how such a small sensation, a minuscule trembling in an almost invisible hole in the littlest part of the body, can make Christian’s heart soar and fall and hammer so that it might burst through the fragile case of bone to embrace Nicolas entirely.

Apparently unaware of the reaction he has provoked, Nicolas removes the earring, sets it on the table; as he does every night, he reaches up to rub both of Christian’s ears and smooth away any cold or sting there. The ears are in fact flaming hot. Christian is blushing. He’s sure now that he only imagined the kiss; he must be drunk with wine or pain.

Then Nicolas grips Christian by the dangling lobes and guides his head down so their lips can meet again.

Christian holds his breath, lest he miss some sensation.

The delicate point of the Count’s tongue snakes inside to tickle the King’s teeth, then the silky underside of the King’s lip. Christian opens his mouth, as he has never done with his wife, and tastes all the pleasures of this warm, musky, slightly sulfurous place inside another person.

Nicolas’s tongue is velvet. It is both soft and firm, salty and sweet, wide and narrow. It reaches all the way inside Christian and massages his deepest parts, stitching them up safe and free, for once, of pain.

Christian has never experienced such a swell of well-being in his life. His whole body glows with health and good feeling. And yet he knows, somehow, that there is more to feel.

Nicolas knows this too. He guides the King gently toward the bed.

A great bubble swells within Christian — pain, pleasure, anticipation . . . love at last.

The first I know of it, a fellow scrub maid wakes me to say my stepmother is at the gates.

“She’s been clanging at them ever so long,” the girl says. “The guards are warning they’ll arrest her for the noise, but she says she
will
see you first.”

Blinking, exhausted — I fell asleep only an hour ago, after weeping as if to drown my broken heart in brine — I do up my clothes with cracked fingers and stuff messy braids under my cap. This is a cold morning; I actually consider wrapping the blanket around myself as I go out but decide it would be unseemly enough to result in my dismissal.
Which,
I think in that moment of innocent selfishness,
would not be so bad . . . Surely, Father and Sabine would be kind again . . .

My head clears and I realize that I should worry, for if Sabine has come to the palace herself, with her belly, and she demands to see me — well, something very bad must have happened.

The guards let me pass the gates without a token, on condition that I remove the nuisance of my stepmother and return immediately.

“Bless the Virgin!” I cry when I see her.

In one glance, I understand why the guards want her gone. Sabine looks like a madwoman, sobbing wildly with her hair snaking about her face, her skin drenched in sweat despite the weather. I have never seen her so untidy before; it is as if she’s given up the grand-lady pretense and acknowledged that she’s a peasant in the blood.

My
blood turns to jelly, but my bones hold strong beneath. I drag Sabine over to one of the little hollows in the cathedral facade where beggar trolls like to station themselves. It smells of urine and garbage, but no one’s there now; the crowd of simples hawkers and early morning churchgoers is thin today, and the trolls have gone back to their bridges.

“Is Father sick?” This is not the season for plague, but a thousand other maladies could have claimed him, his lungs never strong. “Or has something happened to the house?” I imagine fire, collapse, any number of calamities.

“Klaus!” she wails. “My Klaus is
gone
!” Then Sabine seems to have trouble catching her breath, for her bosom swells and her face turns purple, and I can’t get another word out of her for some time.

Of course I try: “Do you mean
dead
? Or has he left you?” I imagine him, madly, running off with Gerda the maid, to start life over with passion. And I imagine him lying cold in a coffin, with silver coins over his eyes. And I not given enough notice to say good-bye.

“Which is it?” I demand, and when my stepmother still cannot answer, I grab her by the shoulders and shake.

That does the trick. She turns redder than ever but manages a few words.

“This morning — the soldiers — and they knew just where to come, made straight for the house, so we had no warning at all. Klaus and his stone head with the spectacles! Wanting all the fine courtiers to find him!”

“What do you mean?” I ask with gathering dread.

“Ava, you must help. They’ve taken him away — they say he’s
to blame
!”

The dread becomes a lump of callused fact: The worst has happened. Only I still don’t know what the worst might be.

“To blame . . . for what?”

I
N the moments after Christian is stricken, Count Nicolas Bullen works fast. He tugs on his own clothes and wrestles Christian’s nightshirt into order, eases Christian to the floor, and closes the bed curtains, using a corner of one to mop the sweat from his own brow. He is overheated and has lost his doublet among the sheets. No one will notice that. He grips Christian, both of them groaning now, and drags him toward the close-stool cabinet.

Hearing the groans, the King’s grooms burst in. They stop to gape at the scene — Count Bullen supporting the filthy King, who moans and clutches first at Nicolas’s shirt, then at his own.

“It’s a flux.” Nicolas, visibly upset for perhaps the first time in court history, states what appears to be obvious. Christian obliges by soiling himself again.