I cannot describe
to you what I felt. I recognized that I had loved her, not as I loved Alena,
but she was my friend, my partner, the mother of my son. I felt intense grief
and pain at her loss but that was not all. In the early days of our marriage I
had recognized that I had been wrong to marry her, to use her, to violate in
every way the trust she had in me. I had comforted myself that at least she had
not been unduly harmed and would enjoy the benefits of marriage to a King’s son.
Perhaps I had prevented her from finding another husband who would love her
better, but who knew if such a husband existed. Her death brought all the
ugliness of my crime to the open. I had drawn her away from friends and family,
brought her to a remote section off the country, and planted in her a child for
which she had died. All of this I had done for petty spite. Whenever Grief let
go guilt would surge up and submerge me again in despair.
When
I knew that she was gone I felt that I could not be in that place where we had
lived together, where I had lied to her again and again, where she had died. I
wandered aimlessly. My thoughts were wild; I cried out for death and wondered
if Alena would grieve my passing. I do not know how long I wandered, it could
have been one day perhaps it was longer. When I returned the servants, under
the instruction of a very industrious housekeeper, had constructed a coffin and
laid your mother in it. The customary wailing was going on at full force with
various servants taking turns so that the full twenty hours would be fulfilled.
The sound grated on me like a thousand accusations. The housekeeper informed me
that she had sent word to Aria’s family what had happened and I contemplated
running again. To face the people I had so wronged would be like drowning
myself in boiling oil. However, as the housekeeper pointed out, something had
to be done about you.
I
did not want to be parted from you; it tore at my soul to think of you gone
from me. But I also felt that in my state of grief I could not face the anger
of my father, the gossip of the court, and most of all Alena knowing what I had
done. So when Aria’s brother, a tall kind man with red hair like his sister,
obviously grief-stricken by her death, appeared, I approached the subject of
you with him. He seemed to understand my situation and said that since his wife
had lost a baby several weeks ago it would be easy to pass this child off as
his own. He already had a son so if he were to die suddenly the problem of
inheritance would not arise.
I
should have gone back with him. I should have met his wife. I should have faced
anything rather than let you go. The should-haves pound in my head daily, but
do not change what I did. I said my goodbyes when you were one month old and
handed you, small, helpless, my son, to a wet-nurse and sent you on your way. I
sent my body-guard to ensure your journey was a safe one, but did not even
think to do anything to ensure that your childhood was a happy one. I now know
it was not. For that I beg on my knees, if I could still kneel, for your
forgiveness.
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