Wulfyddia (The Tattersall Trilogy Book 1) (14 page)

Only two
members of the royal family were breakfasting when Anise arrived. “Dim, Dory,”
Anise greeted each of her sisters in turn. Dimity closed her eyes in distaste
as the stench of her sister reached her and Eudora scowled. Neither of them
were particularly thrilled with Anise’s nicknames for them.

Eudora,
second daughter of Delwyn and Frederica, was her sister’s opposite in almost
every way. They were of roughly the same size, both were small women, but while
Anise was muscled and tanned, Eudora was faintly plump and had soft, doughy
skin. She was in the habit of wearing lots of lace, and since her allergies had
her sniffling most of the year, she was most frequently seen dabbing at her
nose or eyes with a voluminous white lace handkerchief while chattering away to
the ladies of the court.

Dimity
was taller than both of her older sisters, though still not a particularly
large woman. She had the stiff grace of her grandmother, and the same round
brown eyes and dark curls that the Queen herself had once sported, back in her
younger days when she was breaking hearts as Tryphena of Wollstonely. She was
the most presentable of the seven daughters of Delwyn, having also inherited
her grandmother’s insistence on formality in all matters, and as such she
frequently represented Tryphena at events when the Queen herself could not make
it.

“Have
you looked at the schedule I had sent to your room?” Dimity inquired as Anise
sat down.

Anise
popped a few grapes into her mouth. “I haven’t time for such frivolities,” 

“There
are some who would say that hunting and fishing are frivolities when there’s a
kingdom to run,” Dimity responded in her usual faintly disapproving tone.

“Don’t
be stuffy, Dim,” Anise dismissed her younger sister. She selected a red apple
from the fruit platter and sank her white teeth into almost savagely. Dimity
wrinkled her nose and Anise grinned through a mouthful of apple. One of the
servants set down a platter of sausages and Anise immediately helped herself to
the largest one.

A
resentful silence had settled over the dining table by the time Daphne and
Lorna arrived, with the Royal Prophet on their heels. He was the only member of
court who was permitted to breakfast with the royal family. The prophet was a
difficult man to read. Daphne had never really trusted him, and not just
because he was her grandmother’s hastily recruited replacement for Cicely.
Tryphena had needed someone to turn to for prophecy after her middle
granddaughter’s fall from grace, and neither Felunhala nor Melisande’s talents
lay in that direction. The prophet had been a low-ranking courtier when his
talent was discovered and he found himself ushered into the Queen’s inner
sanctum. He had changed greatly in the intervening years, and now was widely
considered to be one of the Queen’s closest confidants, second only to Dimity.

Daphne
wondered sometimes whether the man’s gifted had not been greatly exaggerated
and largely fabricated. He was said to see the future, but somehow Daphne
suspected that it was by virtue of telling the Queen what she wanted to hear,
and not the future, that he had stayed in her favor this long. Every morning he
visited the Queen’s chambers with a scroll of prophecy in his hand, and every
morning he was ushered past a long line of citizens waiting for an audience
with Her Majesty.

At
Daphne’s side, Lorna took one look at the sour expressions on either side of
the table, and began to spoon food into her mouth as quickly as possible. Rare
was the family meal that didn’t end with everyone eager to escape. Daphne ate
more slowly, knowing that they had no hope of leaving the table until they were
excused by Dimity, and hoping that her sister would tire of this forced
interaction soon and let them all go their separate ways. 

The
Prophet ate in silence. He rarely said anything at breakfast; he just appeared
at the designated time and filled himself to bursting with their food. Eudora
was the one who liked to talk, and it wasn’t long before she set her spoon down
and leaned forward to whisper sensationally, “what do you think of this beast
that is said to live in the dungeons?”

Daphne
nearly choked on her scone, and Lorna put down her spoon, suddenly looking
quite ill. None of their older sisters noticed, but the Prophet gazed from one
girl to the other curiously.

“Nonsense,”
Dimity announced, “commoner folklore, and hardly conversation worthy of us.”

“I think
it’s thrilling,” Anise said, her eyes dark. “What a hunt that could be, if
grandmother would let me investigate the matter.”

“If we
investigated every peasant myth we’d never have time to run the kingdom.”
Dimity argued, and was ignored.

“Surely
you wouldn’t be the one to hunt it yourself, Anise?” Eudora was a committed
gossip who loved nothing more than a good story. Her favorites were those her
sisters provided for her.

“Surely I would. It’s a beast. Or a man. Or
both.” Anise couldn’t keep the anticipation out of her voice. “I have never
killed a man before.”

Eudora nodded understandingly. “It must be
very shocking to think about.”

Anise shrugged. “Not particularly. I suppose
it’s all the same really. The mechanics of it, I mean.”

“I see.” Eudora looked faintly disturbed,
which was not an uncommon reaction to Anise. Daphne could just imagine what
Eudora would tell her cohort of scandalmongers. Lorna sighed loudly, and Anise
turned to gaze at the two youngest sisters present with a faintly pitying
expression.

“Would you like to go now?” They nodded emphatically.
“You’re dismissed.”

“But they haven’t finished eating yet.”
Dimity protested.

“I don’t care. I say they can go if they
want. And remember,” Anise leaned forward and locked eyes with her sister as
she shoved a particularly large piece of meat in her mouth. “I outrank you.”

In under a minute, Lorna and Daphne had fled
the breakfast room.

***

“So Queen Domitia, her daughter Lavinia and
her daughter Cornelia all died the same year?” Spencer repeated, squinting as
he strained to connect information that was partial at best. “And the youngest
daughter Pomponia was the only survivor?”

Daphne referred to her notes, though it was
unnecessary. She had been studying the women for so many hours that she had
memorized their biographies. “Correct.”

“It was a bad year for Wulfyddia,” Lorna put
in. “Fires, floods, famines, war. Disease. No one was very happy in 7765.”

“Especially not the Lucretius family.”
Spencer observed. “So we have three royal deaths.”

“Most of the ruling family was gone in just
eight months.” Daphne continued, “King Severens, Domitia’s husband, had already
been dead for three years. He was killed in battle. So I think his death is
unrelated. There were only two other members of the royal family who were alive
in 7765. One was Pomponia; she was just a baby. There was also a duke, brother
to the late king. He also survived 7765, and was Pomponia’s guardian until she
was old enough to take the throne. When she came of age, he relinquished power
without incident— that’s highly unusual,” Daphne added, perhaps thinking of how
her grandmother had clung to the throne in the decades since her son came of
age. “So, ignoring the King, who died before, and the duke and the baby who
survived, we have three women who died in 7765.”

“The Queen and the first two in line after
her.” Spencer observed. “And we have three unusual burials, too?”

“Right,” Lorna answered. “Lavinia had an open
air vigil and was buried even though they said she died of a fever. Domitia was
buried in the lake after a death from natural causes, and Cornelia…” she
shrugged. “There’s no record of where Cornelia was buried. We can check the
crypt but I don’t know if she’s down there. The books don’t say much about her
life or her death.”

“Is it just me,” Spencer asked, “or is it
beginning to sound like these aren’t just unusual burials? They sound like
suspicious deaths to me.” Lorna nodded slowly, in thoughtful agreement, and
Daphne stared down at her notes once more. Spencer continued, “we have Lavinia,
supposedly dead of a fever but… now we think that probably wasn’t the case. We
have Cornelia, who died and was buried the same year, but without any records
to say why or where, and then there’s Domitia, dead of natural causes… at
thirty-six.”

“They didn’t live as long then,” Daphne put in.

“Yes, but… thirty-six? And why of all places
would they bury her in the lake?”

“It is said that she asked to be laid to rest
there.” Daphne answered.

“Do we believe that?”

There was a moment of silence. Each of them
stared down at their books, and after a moment Spencer realized that there was
something self-conscious about the silence, almost as though they were all
waiting for one of them to point out the inevitable.

“You said that the only reason they’d lie
about Lavinia’s death was to cover up some kind of scandal,” Spencer said
finally, slowly. “What kind of scandal?”

Daphne must have followed his line of
reasoning. “Anything that would have unsettled the public and made the line of
succession look shaky. Anything that might have made the crown appear
endangered.”

“So?”

“So, an illegitimate child. Suicide.
Murder
.”

“Is this what we think, then?” Lorna asked,
glancing from Spencer to her sister. “We think that the ghost is one of our
ancestors, and she was assassinated.”

“It still doesn’t explain what she has to do
with the book.” Spencer said, “or why the Fool wanted it.”

“Well, I think Lavinia is a dead end,” Daphne
said with frustration. “I’ve read everything I can about her. It seems like she
lived a quiet life.”

“What do we know about Cornelia?” Spencer
asked. “Besides that she was mad.”

“Cornelia is a mystery,” Lorna said. “I could
hardly find anything about her besides the dates of her birth and death. What
little I did find had nothing to do with how she died.”

“What was it about?” Spencer asked.

“Her art.”

Daphne frowned. “What do you mean?”

“That old story about Lucretius artists,”
Lorna answered. “They say she had the gift.”

Whatever the sisters were talking about,
Spencer found himself entirely lost. “What gift? What are you talking about?”

“I’ll show you,” Lorna said. “One of her
paintings hangs in the portrait gallery. Come.”

***

Spencer had never visited the royal portrait
gallery before. In fact, he suspected that it was closed to commoners under
most circumstances. There was something that felt private, almost sacred about
the gallery. Even though it was quite a large hall, the way the walls were
crowded with portraits made it feel much smaller and more intimate, as though
it were a gathering of acquaintances.

The painting Lorna led them to was quite
different from the others, for it was not merely a portrait, but rather an
entire scene. The backdrop was a small hamlet somewhere in the countryside. The
artist had filled the scene with a number of small, grimy peasants, all of whom
stared in shock and awe at the woman who stood amongst them in robes of royal
purple.

“This is Domitia,” Lorna said, indicating the
woman.

“She was a good queen,” Daphne said quietly.
“Not very well known. Not famous, but she ruled during a hard time, and people
seemed to like her.”

Spencer had certainly never heard of her,
which meant she had likely been at least a halfway decent ruler. To be famous,
a queen had to either be an excellent ruler, like Domitia’s daughter Pomponia,
or a bad one. Over the centuries, many royals had earned the latter
distinction, but few had achieved the former.

“This is depicting a well-known moment from
her early days as queen. She visited a town that had been laid low by famine
and found a young girl there who lost both her parents to starvation. She took
the child in and word of her good deed spread for miles. In her day she was
known as Domitia the tenderhearted.”

The artist had certainly done a marvelous job
of depicting her that way. Domitia’s face was the very image of maternal
compassion. With one hand she reached out to the child before her, and with the
other she was releasing a dove, in a gesture reminiscent of her daughter’s
portrait.

“Was that something they did a lot?” Spencer
asked. “Releasing doves?”

Daphne shrugged. “Not that I know of.”

The detail of the portrait was striking, from
the delicately shaded wings of the dove to the piercing green eyes of the
emaciated child who extended sticklike arms to the queen.

There were two more girls in the picture,
standing behind Domitia in regal robes, with their eyes cast dutifully
downwards.

“Lavinia,” Daphne said, a single finger
hovering over the figure of the older girl. “Cornelia.” She pointed to the
younger. The younger sister didn’t feature particularly prominently in the
painting, it fact most of her face was obscured by the fall of her hair. What
little Spencer could see of her face looked unremarkable.

“And this is her painting?” Spencer asked.

“So they say.”

Spencer took a step back and stared at it, at
the easy flow of the lines and the richness of the color. “It’s quite good for
a mad woman. What’s the story you read about her?”

“She’s said to have had a magic gift, to have
some talent for witchery that gave her power over those she painted. The
Lucretius gift.”

Daphne sighed. “The Lucretius gift is just a
story.”

“I’ve never heard it,” Spencer said.

“It’s a myth. There’s an old storybook tale
about the first Lucretius, some sort of bard who could capture the will of any
who listened to his song. It is said that’s how he took the throne, by
bewitching all who heard him.”