Purpleland: Chapter 23

John woke me. Shook me out of what I had thought was death. Death comes quickly though, probably tonight, and this visit from John is the last one. I end my confession here. This has been the story of a lover not a hero, of a foolish man, not a king. Do not think this is all I was, but know that I told this only to you. The rest of my story you can read about in any record book. How I ended the Westeroth rebellion, how I avoided war on more than on occasion. But I give this part of me to you because it is the only thing I can give only to you. Do with it what you will. It is the last an only thing I have been able to give you.

The End                

Purpleland: Chapter 22

She comes in; the shadows cling to her like dead leaves.

“Do you honor me now? Now that I have taken your kingdom from you? Now that everything that was yours is mine?” She stands triumphantly, like a warrior after a long campaign.

I look at her through my hollow eyes. There is nothing to say, nothing even to beg for.

“I have made you pay for preferring Alena, haven’t I? You and Marcus both, shells of what you could have been. Alena’s daughter a virtual prisoner and her son… Oh I have plans for her son.”

There is still nothing to do or to say.

She smiles now. “It is so funny to remember that you thought I would be content to play second fiddle to a dead woman.”

Still I do not move or speak.

She seems annoyed by my lack of reaction. “I killed her you know. It was easy, like blowing out a candle.”

I still do not respond. This something I had guessed long ago when the terrors of the night first began to show their faces as that of my wife.

“You are not surprised by that.” She says. “You knew I hated her. But this will surprise you. I killed your first wife.”

This does shock me. I had never connected Aria’s death with Shay.

She smiles again. “I’ve waited so long to tell you. You see it was quite clever really. When she visited Marcus and Alena I knew right away who she was. I knew that if I wanted to be your queen I would have to get rid of her somehow or other. So I gave her a bottle of wine. I knew you wouldn’t touch anything from Marcus but I thought that she perhaps would. The Wench took her sweet time about tasting it but when she did it worked like a charm.”

I remember the wine and pray that she truly does not know why Aria waited so many months to take it.

She is getting ready to leave. “Die then, knowing what I have done to you, knowing everything you have worked for is meaningless, knowing that your line ends.” That sentence gives me more hope than anything. “Know that I played you from the beginning. That no matter how beautiful or kind Alena was, no matter how strong and good you and Marcus were.” She leans forward until her face is inches away from mine. For some reason I think of that night we spend together so many ages ago. “I have won. I convinced Marcus not to tell you that he and Alena were engaged. I ripped up the letter telling them you were coming. I convinced you to continue your feud with Marcus after Alena’s death. I killed my husband so I would be free to be queen. I killed Alena because she outshone me from childhood and because it was the only way I could get you to marry me. I convinced you I was pregnant by you when the child I later killed was mine by one of my servants.  I killed every child you planted in me because I do not share power. I killed your wife because she was in my way and I am killing you for the very same reason. I have won and you and Marcus and Alena have lost.” She smiles again. “I could not send you to your grave without you ever knowing that Shay, who you avoided, disregarded and finally took as a consolation prize is better than any of you.” She moves her hand to cover my eyes almost gently. “Sleep now Kail. Die childless and heirless and utterly defeated.”

I close my eyes and feel myself slipping away.

Purpleland: Chapter 21

It was during one of my rest bits that I saw you. You will doubtless remember your family’s visit to court in midsummer. Probably you remember seeing me as well. What you could not have realized was that of the hundreds of great men and women present I cared only to see you.

I could not let your family leave the court without speaking to you. Fortunately Shay was away at the time and I invited your family to a private dinner, ostensibly to thank your father for his service in the Westeroth rebellion.  You know what I saw at that dinner. A scene, which, I am sure, was only a small taste of what you suffered at the hands of your aunt. When I gave you away I thought it was for the best. I thought… I imagined… Well, none of that matters now. What I saw of your aunt that night shattered all my illusions about the situation I had left you in.

At the same time I was proud of you. You never argued or repaid your aunt’s treatment in kind but I saw the fire in your eyes and knew that she had not broken you. The little you were allowed to say was full of good sense and I was certain that you were a son I would never need to be ashamed of.

I called for your Uncle the next day, furious that he had allowed his wife to treat you with such contempt. I met with a guilt-ridden and overwhelmed man, who, despite his kindness and battle-field valor, was no match for his overbearing wife. From the very beginning she had resented you and, having never liked Aria and assuming that you were illegitimate, she let all of her anger and frustrations out on you. Your uncle begged me to take you, but at that point it was impossible. Shay had gained so much power already and my health was failing fast.

               Perhaps I should have brought you to court as a squire or arranged for some family in the capital to foster you. We could have had at least had some kind of relationship. But I feared even that proximity to Shay and, in the end, I paid for you to attend school far away from both your Aunt and my wife. At Elgaboth I hoped you would find safety, happiness, and training worthy of a king. And, from what John tells me, I believe you did.   

It was not long after that, not long at all, when I became bedridden. I finally opened my eyes, far too late, to what my wife was, and what she was doing to me. I tried, far too late, to exert my authority so that she would never rule. I called, far too late, on every alliance, in the hope that someone could stop her. No one could even get through to talk to me.

Finally when I felt death approaching, when desperation seized hold of me, when there was nothing else left, I had Roland take a secret message to Marcus. And Marcus, who I had not spoken to in almost twenty years, sent his only son. I hear him pacing as I write this. He says he can visit only once more. It will not be long now. Shay has enough support to be queen in her own right. She does not need me and whatever poison she has been using for all these years has left very little of me to kill. 

Purpleland: Chapter 20

Shay miscarried around the sixth month. Had it been earlier I might have wondered if she had played me, but it was clear that she had truly been with child. There was little said between us about the matter. Shay had made is clear from the first that she wanted no emotional closeness in our marriage.

About a year after Shay and I were married my father died quietly in his sleep. After so many years of agony his last few months were oddly peaceful; a quiet slipping away. I ordered a funeral that was as stately as that of any who came before. My father’s death disturbed me only a little. I could not grieve much for a man who had ignored me for most of my childhood and sent me away for the rest of it, but I gave him in death what honor I could for he had been a better king than father. I was crowned and took up his duties.

At first everything seemed to go well. Shay and I did not have a typically happy marriage. We rarely spoke except when required by public occasions. Of course I had never witnessed first-hand a really happy marriage. Lord Stephen and my father had both been widowers and my marriage to Aria had been so short and so marred by my guilt that I could not look on it as a model. I felt somehow that Shay pulled away from me as soon as we were wed. Like a glass wall sprung up the moment the vows were said. There were no more talks about our sorrows or anything besides the most necessary topics. She dutifully shared my bed once every month in the hope of producing an heir, but she never again bore a live child. I found our partnership worked. She could be a charming and engaging queen. My barons liked her even if the people did not. From the beginning they called her the spider. I thought it was because she had not produced a healthy heir and at first was angry for her sake. She simply laughed and said they could not hurt her.

She would stay in the capital to take care of things while I was away and I always found no fault in her management. We lived like this for ten years. I king and she queen and it became hard for me to believe it had ever been otherwise. Oh I still loved Alena, still dreamed of her, still longed for her, but I found my life as a king, serving my people, fulfilling in a way I had never known as an aimless young man. And I found Shay to be quite satisfactory as a queen.

I could at any time gone to claim you, but two things held me back. First the stranger’s warning had stuck in my mind in a way I can’t explain and second something about Shay’s eyes whenever I brought up the subject of an heir scared me. At first I attributed this reluctance to not wanting to hurt Shay by implying that she was deficient for not giving me an heir, but as the years went on I realized that I feared my wife and most of all I feared what she would do if she knew there was a legitimate heir to my throne. I closed my eyes to the future imagining that I had many more years on the throne and that I had not been raise in the palace and it had not done me any harm.

The periods of sickness began around the eleventh year of my reign. The doctors were completely baffled by my array of symptoms. They prescribed and consulted and I would get better for a time before the sickness would return, stronger than before. By this time Shay held great sway in the court and even I feared her political power.

Purpleland: Chapter 19

I want to recount one odd thing that happened during that time as it may have saved your life. The night after I introduced Shay at court I was walking, alone, in the royal gardens. The stillness felt good after all of the bustle at court and I was still grieving over Alena. I had just reached the royal orchards when a beggar approached me. This was odd since the castle is surrounded by a fifteen foot wall, which guards patrolled constantly. I was about to summon my guards to throw him out when suddenly he collapsed and fell soundlessly to the ground. Perhaps I should have been more wary, assassins come in many forms, but I hurried over to him so see if he lived. As I knelt by his side he jerked upright and looked into my eyes. I cannot remember anything about his face or even the color of his eyes but I will never forget the power in that gaze.

“I have come to give you a warning.”

I was shaken by his eyes, but not cowed. “Sir, you seem ill. Let me take you to the guard house. They will have food and wine to revive you.”

I began to help him up but he arrested my wrist. “You have a son in his second year.”

That caught and held my attention. “What poisonous gossip told you that?”

               He shook his head. “You have hid your first marriage well, perhaps too well. But never mind what I know and do not know. I am here to give you a warning.”

               “Speak, then.” I said savagely, expecting some exorbitant blackmail request.

               “Your second wife, do not tell her of the child. No matter what she says, no matter how things seem do not give her the shadow of a reason to suspect the existence of the child.” If I had thought his gaze was powerful before it was nothing compared to the raw intensity his eyes as he spoke these words.

               Finally I broke his gaze and looked away. He stood, surprisingly nimble, and began to walk away. I had half a mind to go after him and demand how he knew about my son, but my legs felt shaky as I stood and I did not know if I could face that gaze again. Also I could hear a group of people coming out to the gardens and did not want any chance of their overhearing anything the man said.

I asked the next day but no one had seen the man enter or leave. Perhaps he was a dream, but his warning stayed with me and I never told Shay that I had a son.

Purpleland: Chapter 18

               It is hard for me to write what comes next. I will not pretend that the choices I made in the thrall of that all-consuming grief where my worst sins, but had I the power to rewrite one second of my past I would choose this one. I would shed this frail body and reach into the past with phantom hands. I would take that moment, uproot it and squeeze all life from root and branch. But it is not given to man to change the paths he has taken, no matter how he may wish it.

               The night after the funeral Shay came to me. And instead of sympathetic words she offered me love making and I took it. I suppose that somehow I was trying to make love to Alena through her sister, but you cannot find the dead among the living nor the living among the dead. She left me to my shame and grief twenty minutes after I first heard her soft step at my doorway. There was no farewell.

               I returned to my old life as heir-apparent, broken, listless, and utterly crushed. I let it get about that I was ill and did not leave my room for three weeks. And when I emerged, no better, I found new troubles. Shay was pregnant and she demanded that I marry her or she would invoke Ru-amor. I think you must know this, but perhaps growing up in the south even Ru-amor was not known to you. Our country has an ancient law: when an unmarried woman becomes pregnant she can invoke Ru-amor. Once she does that the man she accuses has three choices. First he can make her an offer of marriage; if she refuses he has still acknowledged the child as his and is expected to send support for the child. Second he can deny the charge and in that case he and the woman are brought before a court of law for the matter to be determined by evidence. Lastly, if the man does not wish to marry, members of both families can negotiate a settlement for both the woman and the child.

               The invoking of Ru-armor is very public spectacle. When a commoner accuses a nobleman no one thinks much of it, there might be a settlement, there might be a trial, no one is much bothered. But when a noble woman makes an accusation people take notice, and for me the stakes were higher. If I acknowledged Shay’s child it would have a very real claim to the throne. I could not bring myself to face my father and the court if Shay followed through with her threat, which I was sure she would, and I felt that all love was over for me now that Alena was dead. So I wrote to Shay and offered to marry her at once.

               We did. And one week later I introduced Shay to my father as my wife. He really was fading then and said little about the matter. People talked, of course, but generally they found the secret elopement thrilling and romantic. 

Purpleland: Chapter 17

When I woke I could only wish it had been death that took me. Body and soul the pain felt bottomless and endless. I grieved for Alena as a friend and as one who I loved for her own sake but at the same time there had been some small remnant of hope that Marcus would leave her a widow. After all his father had not been very old when he died, and that perhaps I could then make Alena my wife. I had even thought of abdicating in favor of you so she would not have to be queen.

I vacillated but finally decided to attend the funeral. I had Roland find peasant’s clothes for me and followed the crush of people going to see their Lady for the last time. It seemed to take an age to reach the gates of the castle square where the public funeral was to take place. As we entered the gates I saw Marcus before anything else. His face was white and his eyes hollow. His mouth had that pinched look I had seen only once before, when he had been thrown from a horse and his leg had been broken in three places. For a moment I wanted to run to him and throw my arms around the only brother I had ever know. I wished to forgive everything, to tell everything, to let our mutual grief bridge the cavern between us. Then I remembered Shay’s words “Marcus would not send you word” and all of the bitterness of the last five year enveloped me again.

Beside Marcus stood his small son, looking lost and valiantly holding back tears. Over the sounds of the crowd I could hear the wail of Alena’s tiny daughter, ensconced in some nursemaid’s arms. It took longer to pick out Shay. She was standing with her Brother’s family and she alone was crying freely. We stood as the words of departure were spoken over her cold, white body, stood as the wooden coffin was closed for the last time, and stood as Marcus placed his hand on the box that held his wife in the traditional gesture of farewell. That gesture was a sign to us that it was our turn. We sang the songs of departure as I have never heard them sung before or since. Perhaps you have not heard the songs, they are rarely sung in the south these days, cold ancient tunes for one purpose, they were made before the founders. I could wish that they be sung for me.

I felt at one with these people grieving their Lady and finally let the tears that had been building like a tidal wave flow. It was at the beginning of the third verse, when the song changes and builds in intensity, that Shay’s eyes met mine. I knew that she recognized me, but she made no sign.