or sailed too far south during a storm. The people lost heart. The Inland duchies bridled at taxes to protect a coastline they didn’t share; the Coastal duchies were laboured under taxes that seemed to make no difference. So if the enthusiasm for Verity’s warships was a fickle thing, rising and falling with the folk’s current assessment of him, we cannot really blame the people. It seemed the longest winter of my life.
I went from Verity’s study to Queen Kettricken’s apartments. I knocked and was admitted by the same little page girl as previously. With her merry little face and dark curly hair, Rosemary reminded me of some pool sprite. Within, the atmosphere of the room seemed subdued. Several of Kettricken’s women were there, and they all sat on stools around a frame holding a white linen cloth. They were doing edge-work on it, flowers and greenery done in bright threads. I had witnessed similar projects in Mistress Hasty’s apartments. Usually these activities seemed merry, with tongues wagging and friendly banter, needles flashing as they dragged their tails of bright thread through the heavy cloth. But here, it was near silent. The women worked with their heads bent, diligently, skilfully, but without gay talk. Scented candles, pink and green, burned in each corner of the room. Their subtle fragrances mingled scents over the frame.
Kettricken presided over the work, her own hands as busy as any. She seemed the source of the stillness. Her face was composed, even peaceful. Her self-containment was so evident I could almost see the walls around her. Her look was pleasant, her eyes kind, but I did not sense she was really there at all. She was like a container of cool, still water. She was dressed in a long simple robe of green, more of the Mountain style than of Buckkeep. She had set her jewellery aside. She looked up at me and smiled questioningly. I felt like an intruder, an interruption to a group of studying pupils and their master. So instead of simply greeting her, I tried to justify my presence. I spoke formally, mindful of all the watching women.
‘Queen Kettricken. King-in-Waiting Verity has asked me to bring a message to you.’
Something seemed to flicker behind her eyes, and then was still again. ‘Yes,’ she said neutrally. None of the needles paused in their jumping dance, but I was sure that every ear waited for whatever tidings I might be bringing.
‘Upon a tower there was once a garden, called the Queen’s Garden. Once, King Verity said, it had pots of greenery, and ponds of water. It was a place of flowering plants, and fish, and wind chimes. It was his mother’s. My queen, he wishes you to have it.’
The stillness at the table grew profound. Kettricken’s eyes grew very wide. Carefully, she asked, ‘Are you certain of this message?’
‘Of course, my lady.’ I was puzzled by her reaction. ‘He said it would give him a great deal of pleasure to see it restored. He spoke of it with great fondness, especially recalling the beds of flowering thyme.’
The joy in Kettricken’s face unfurled like the petals of a flower. She lifted a hand to her mouth, took a shivering breath through her fingers. Blood flushed through her pale face, rosing her cheeks. Her eyes shone. ‘I must see it,’ she exclaimed. ‘I must see it now!’ She stood abruptly. ‘Rosemary? My cloak and gloves, please.’ She beamed about at her ladies. ‘Will not you fetch your cloaks and gloves also, and accompany me?’
‘My queen, the storm is most fierce today …’ one began hesitantly.
But another, an older woman with a motherly cast to her features, Lady Modesty, stood slowly. ‘I shall join you on the tower top. Pluck!’ A small boy who had been drowsing in the corner leaped to his feet. ‘Dash off and fetch my cloak and gloves. And my hood.’ She turned back to Kettricken. ‘I recall that garden well, from Queen Constance’s days. Many a pleasant hour I spent there in her company. I will take joy in its restoration.’
There was a heartbeat’s pause, and then the other ladies were taking similar action. By the time I had returned with my own cloak, they were all ready to go. I felt distinctly peculiar as I led this procession of ladies through the keep, and then up the long climb to the Queen’s Garden. By then, counting the pages and the curious, there were nearly a score of people following Kettricken and me. As I led the way up the steep stone steps, Kettricken was right on my heels. The others trailed out in a long tail behind us. As I pushed on the heavy door, forcing it open against the layer of snow outside, Kettricken asked softly, ‘He’s forgiven me, hasn’t he?’
I paused to catch my breath. Shouldering the door open was doing the injury on my neck no good at all. My forearm throbbed dully. ‘My queen?’ I asked in reply.
‘My lord Verity has forgiven me. And this is his way of showing it. Oh, I shall make a garden for us to share. I shall never shame him again.’ As I stared at her rapt smile, she casually put her own shoulder to the door and shoved it open. While I stood blinking in the chill and the light of the winter day, she walked out onto the tower top. She waded through crusted snow calf-high, and paid it no mind at all. I looked around the barren tower top and wondered if I had lost my mind. There was nothing here, only the blown and frozen snow under the leaden sky. It had drifted up over the discarded statuary and pots along one wall. I braced myself for Kettricken’s disappointment. Instead, in the centre of the tower top, as the wind swirled the falling flakes around her, she stretched out her arms and spun in a circle, laughing like a child. ‘It’s so beautiful!’ she exclaimed.
I ventured out after her. Others came behind me. In a moment Kettricken was by the tumbled piles of statuary and vases and basins that were heaped along one wall. She brushed snow from a cherub’s cheek as tenderly as if she were its mother. She swept a load of snow from a stone bench, and then picked up the cherub and set it upon it. It was not a small statue, but Kettricken used her size and strength energetically as she extricated several other pieces from the drifted snow. She exclaimed over them, insisting that her women come and admire them.
I stood a little apart from them. The cold wind blew past me, awakening the pain in my injuries and bringing me hard memories. Here I had stood once, near naked to the cold, while Galen had tried to hammer the Skill ability into me. Here I had stood, in this very spot, while he beat me as if I were a dog. And here I had struggled with him and, in the struggle, burned and scarred over whatever Skill I had once had. This was a bitter place to me still. I wondered if any garden, no matter how green and peaceful, could charm me if it stood upon this stone. One low wall beckoned me. Had I gone to it and looked over the edge, I knew I would look down on rocky cliffs below. I did not. The quick end that fall had once offered me would never tempt me again. I pushed Galen’s old Skill-suggestion aside. I turned back to watch the Queen.
Against the white backdrop of snow and stone, her colours came alive. There is a flower called a snowdrop, that sometimes blooms even as the banked snows of winter are retreating. She reminded me of one. Her pale hair was suddenly gold against the green cloak she wore, her lips red, her cheeks pink as the roses that would bloom here again. Her eyes were darting blue jewels as she excavated and exclaimed over each treasure. In contrast, her dark-tressed ladies with eyes of black or brown were cloaked and hooded against the winter chill. They stood quietly, agreeing with their queen and enjoying her enjoyment, but also rubbing chilled fingers together, or holding cloaks tightly closed against the wind. This, I thought, this is how Verity should see her, glowing with enthusiasm and life. Then he could not help but love her. Her vitality burned, even as his did when he hunted or rode. Or had once.
‘It is, of course, quite lovely,’ one Lady Hope ventured to say. ‘But very cold. And there is little that can be done here until the snow melts and the wind grows kinder.’
‘Oh, but you are wrong!’ Queen Kettricken exclaimed. She laughed aloud as she straightened up from her treasures, walked again to the centre of the tower top. ‘A garden begins in the heart. I must sweep the snow and ice from the tower top tomorrow. And then, all these benches and statues and pots must be set out. But how? Like the spokes of a wheel?
