It turns out he’d just come from the bedside of a boy who’d been stabbed in multiple places on his body, in a brawl. They were mortal wounds, and there was nothing the holy priest could do but speak his prayers and watch the blood pour out despite the bandages set by the old local doctor.
Except that, when the blood was all out of him, and the heart fluttered and stopped, the boy still lived. He lay, pale and cold, watching the priest and the doctor and his family gathered all around him—watching them with frightened, occasionally blinking eyes.
So now, Father Dibue, having said the Last Rites, and then having said all the prayers in his arsenal, with the family kneeling at his side, had to admit there was nothing more that he or anyone could do. It was in the Lord’s hands now.
When he got to the Doneil’s house, he was tired. Soul-sick and weary and, possibly for the first time in his life, frightened. The face of that boy just wouldn’t leave him—those pain-darkened eyes, the anemic skin, completely bloodless, the silence of a stopped heart! The boy lay there, surrounded by sobbing kinfolk, and when he’d turned to go, the boy was getting ready to sit up. . . .
This had to be deviltry. Something terrible was in the air.
Father Dibue stared at the sizeable crowd of village folk that had gathered in front of the Doneils’ place in the thickening twilight, and it did not bode well, not at all. The muttering and the hushed talk, and the signing of the cross going on, and several women and children crying.
Just as he approached the small picket gate, there was a loud commotion sound from behind him. And as Father Dibue turned to stare, there were torches and riders in the distance, coming down the bend of the road from the east and south.
“Father Dibue! May the Lord be praised, you are here! There’s unholy goings-on!” someone cried from the crowd in front of the house, noticing him, but then everyone was staring at the approaching lights and sound.
Down the road came five riders. Four of them carried torches, and by their flickering orange illumination that dispelled the twilight, it could be seen they were wearing the Royal livery of Lethe. The fifth one wore the livery and the additional cape of a Royal Herald.
What in the world was a Herald doing, riding out in the cold dark, so late in the evening? Usually the Royal Proclamations were made on the morrow, and hardly ever past noon, so that the Heralds had time to make the rounds of the countryside and return before dark. This must have been something urgent indeed.
And why so many guards for one Herald? These were difficult times, true, with the ever-present threat of a major foreign war and many smaller internal skirmishes going on, such as the Goraque and Chidair matter, all of which made the roads generally unsafe—but four guards?
The riders came to a hard stop seeing the smallish crowd in front of the Doneils’ place. Both horses and men were panting from exertion. “What village or town? Is this Oarclaven?” the Herald cried in a ringing voice, gathering his powerful breath.
“Aye, it is,” the crowd answered with many voices.
“Hear Ye, O People of Oarclaven in the Kingdom of Lethe!” he began reciting the usual preamble to the news. “It is a Matter most Serious and Grave, directly from His Royal Highness, Roland Osenni, the Crown Prince of Lethe, speaking on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen Andrelise Osenni of Lethe.
“A Royal Order and Decree is as follows.” He unrolled a parchment scroll and the Royal Guards closest to him drew their torches nearer for better illumination. The Herald cleared his throat and began to read. “Death has stopped! There is no more death! No more dying! No relief from pain for us mortals—woe to us! Death refuses to do his work until he is given his Cobweb Bride. If you know of such a Bride, or if you are She in the Flesh, you are ordered to comply immediately with Death’s wishes and attend him in his Keep in the Northern Forests—do so for your Queen and Country!
“As for you, People of Lethe, if you have daughters of marriageable age, you have the chance to be greatly rewarded and honored. At least one of your daughters must choose, on behalf of Queen and Country to give herself up as a possible Cobweb Bride of Death, and must travel immediately to the Northern Forests in search of Death’s Keep. Daughters of Lethe, heed this Decree! If you are chosen by Death, your family will be honored and rewarded with a thousand Lirae, a Noble Title, and a fair parcel of land. You, Cobweb Bride, will be remembered as a Heroine of Lethe! This is effective immediately, bearing the Royal Seal of the Kingdom of Lethe in the Greater Imperial Realm.”
The Herald went silent and began rolling the parchment back together.
As he completed his task, the gathered crowd murmured and whispered in half-voices. The Decree was insane. It raised more questions than provided answers. But before any of their voices became louder and more belligerent, the Herald signaled to his guard, and two men drove on forward, then his own horse, followed by the two guards to bring up the rear. Without another word they thundered north and then again eastward along the curving road, on their way to the next nearest town of Tussecan, still in Goraque lands.
For one long moment Father Dibue stood petrified. He then pulled at the heavy chain hanging on his chest and the great cross, straightening it. And then he lowered himself, kneeling in the snow. Head inclined, he recited the Lord’s Prayer out-loud, and one by one those of the villagers who noticed him, also knelt, until the street was filled with folk in prayer.
A few feet away, Alann came down on the cold snow, on his knees, making a grunt of pain, because his right foot and knee were bothering him as they had been since last year when he took a hard fall in the slippery muck of their barn. The thickly bundled smaller shape of Percy huddled at his side.
Percy shivered as she knelt next to her father. She appeared to be in prayer as everyone else, head lowered, arms folded, but inside there was silence and strange glimmerings of thoughts.
. . .
Father Dibue finished leading the prayer, then rose heavily, everyone else following.
“What is to be done, Father? What does this mean?” everyone was asking, crowding around the priest.
“Who is this Cobweb Bride?”
“What does it mean that Death has
stopped?
”
“Well, it’s just as that Doneil pig wouldn’t die!” a man exclaimed suddenly. “Well, that explains it!”
“But what is it? Is it a curse?” several women asked.
Father Dibue raised his arms for silence. “The Lord only knows what is happening, in truth, my children,” he said. “But in my great sorrow I must admit I’m not surprised by the Royal Decree of Lethe. What I’ve seen today with my own eyes was impossible. As I walked here, I was even then unsure how to think of it, how to explain it to myself. But now things are somewhat clearer. Take my word that I have seen men who
should
be dead and are
not
. Men with deadly wounds and broken bodies. It is unholy and terrifying and we must do all that we can to obey the Order.
“Do not try to spare your daughters, or to conceal them, for in doing so you will only be prolonging this hell on earth for all of us, indeed, for our immortal souls! If Death will not take us, then neither will the Lord! Our souls are doomed to remain here instead of finding solace in the Heavenly Realm in His bosom and under His wing!”
There was much commotion in response. Several women and not a few men began to weep, and children were sniffling.
“No!” one young girl suddenly cried out—almost a woman, and obviously of an age to marry. “Oh, father, mother, I beg you, I cannot go, no, I cannot! I don’t want to die, oh, I beg you!”
“No! Oh, please, no!” another young woman exclaimed, and Percy recognized Bettie, a pretty girl from several houses down, only a year older than her, as she was consoled and held back by her two burly brothers.
The street erupted into chaos. In the twilight, screaming young women were seen scattering around the street, some held or pulled along by their mothers, and others being embraced.
A torch or two came to life, and in the flickering light the terrified faces of all were revealed, familiar faces blue with cold, smeared by weeping—men, women and children.
“Percy!” her father exclaimed, pulling her by the hand. In the flash of torchlight, Percy noticed, from what could be seen of his bundled face, his expression was grim and tragic, his eyes dark and bottomless, and she did not know what it meant.
In silence they quickly ran down the street toward home.
T
he Infanta, Claere Liguon, sat motionless before a great window in her Imperial bedchamber. She was straight-backed and her shallow chest did not rise with breath. She still wore the magnificent birthday crinoline dress of white and the crowned wig of silver thread and pearl and diamond, though the front of her dress was stained deep crimson that was slowly drying and turning black—she would not allow them to remove it—and her skin was the color of the grey sky outside.
Indeed, after the initial mad scuffle by the doctors to get her to a bedchamber, she resisted all help. She had allowed no one to touch her and instead stayed for several interminable horrifying hours in the Silver Hall, pacing before the table laden with Gifts from the Court. As she moved back and forth, occasionally putting her cold sticky fingers—what was it that made them so sticky?—on the shining objects, a slick trail of her own coagulating blood formed on the shining parquet floor, and her delicate slippers were soaked. She had trailed the blood here from the place near the center of the hall where the silver chair still stood, the spot where she had been stabbed. In that spot on the floor was a large thickening crimson-black puddle that no one dared to clean up.
After about an hour of watching her, watching the impossible spectacle before them, the petrified courtiers slowly regained a measure of something, if not sanity, and started to slip away one by one. The Emperor and Empress sat on their Thrones like two sacks—boneless, powerless, devoid of will and ability to think—from the shock. As the Hall emptied, except for the most essential attendants, they continued to sit, long past midnight, while the candles in the hall smoked, sputtered, and burned down. In only an hour or two, it was to be dawn. . . .
Eventually, as the nature of the dark in the windows started to change and the Silver Hall took on a hue befitting its name, the Infanta stopped pacing and pronounced that she wanted to be taken back to her quarters.
As she passed the Imperial Thrones, she curtsied before her devastated parents and then continued, as though this was but another ordinary audience. The grand doors were opened before her; she was gone. And yet they sat, Emperor and Empress, as the sky outside bloomed and the light filled the windows. They could not move—not yet, not ever. . . .
And now, here she was, in her bedchamber. Despite the early hour, an army of Ladies-in-Attendance, surgeons, priests, and other Imperial serving staff hovered around her in futility.
The Infanta’s great smoky eyes were trained outside the window, looking somewhere beyond the delicate curtain of snowflakes that obscured the morning world with winter lace. Her hands were folded delicately in her lap, and for the first time ever she looked at peace, like a subject of a grand painting, stilled in an evocative pose for the ages, to be viewed and admired by future generations.
Now, of course, there would be no future generations stemming directly from her. In the unlikely event that the Emperor and Empress produced more children, there might be cousins who would one day in the distant future find a yellowing portrait of the Infanta dressed in splendid white, with a crown upon a silver powdered wig, archaic in its splendor, and eyes of dark receptivity in a pinched grey face. She would be frozen thus for eternity, for as things were now, Claere Liguon was never again to grow or age, or indeed
change.
. . .
It is possible that these and other thoughts tumbled through everyone’s mind in those long excruciating hours of early dawn and morning. Lady Milagra Rinon, bearing the honor of First Lady-in-Attendance to the Grand Princess, stood trembling in her fulfillment of the task of Attendance, only a few steps away from the chair in which the Infanta now sat.
Lady Milagra’s long-fingered hands were clutched together in a bloodless grip of terror, so as not to fidget upon the front of her plum-colored brocade dress or, God forbid, to call any attention upon herself now. And yet, oh, how she needed to be called upon to do something! Soft-spoken, with lovely unblemished skin of a deep olive hue and rich black hair underneath the platinum wig, Lady Milagra was a daughter of a fine noble house from the southern regions of the Realm, in Morphaea, where her family held lands very close to the border with Balmue. When the Emperor decided to honor her father the Marquis Rinon, one of the privileges granted was the acceptance of Lady Milagra into Attendance at the Silver Court. It might have seemed an odd choice considering how exquisitely beautiful and stately she was, and how much of a chance existed for her to outshine the bland Infanta. But Lady Milagra proved herself to be very loyal, self-effacing, and the perfect companion for her Imperial charge.
When the Infanta was attacked by the villain the night before, Lady Milagra was in the crowd of guests, and she had seen it all, screamed and wept along with most of those present and recognized the reality of the mortal blow. That her Princess walked and lived now, was a terrifying and incomprehensible thing. Lady Milagra had not been to bed that night, and the slow cold and shaking and shivering had overtaken her long before dawn when she finally followed the Infanta and her retinue into her chambers. And now, still wearing her ball dress, having had not a drop of food or drink or a moment to relieve herself, her face smudged and exhausted, she stood on her last reserves. Nothing was to be done while she was in Attendance—she could neither be excused nor ask to be excused, nor be noticed without the Infanta’s initiative.
And the Infanta was
dead
. Though she occupied a chair and looked out the window, it appeared more and more that she would never make another request of her again. Thus, Lady Milagra prayed in silence for strength, for something, anything to happen, to deliver her and the rest of the Ladies-in-Attendance.
The other four Ladies Attending were also present—the red-headed and tiny Lady Floricca Grati of Styx, the blonde Lady Selene Jenevais of Lethe, the voluptuous and dark Lady Liana Crusait of Morphaea, and the youngest, Lady Alis Denear, also of Lethe. They all huddled together as a group, agonized and more frightened than they had ever been in their lives, only making desperate eye contact with each other and the others present in the chamber. Their usual tasks and duty would have been completed for the night many hours ago, and they would all have been in their beds asleep.
“Your Royal Highness,” Doctor Belquar, the Imperial head physician was saying to the Infanta. “If I might only inquire as to how Your Highness is feeling? Is there . . . pain, by any chance?”
The balding middle-aged physician’s voice was pitched in a peculiar high register, deferential and far softer than it had been with any of his other fine patients, even the Emperor himself. Indeed, how did one speak to a patient who was not supposed to be alive? A patient who was drained of the blood humour and stabbed in the heart—which was now stilled and probably as cold as the air in room.
. . .
The Infanta’s head did not turn, and she continued to stare out of the window, unblinking. However, she replied politely, first making a peculiar effort to expand her chest, so as to inflate her motionless lungs in order to exhale air upon which words would be formed.
“No pain.”
The doctor watched in horror coupled with professional curiosity the physics, nay, mechanics of her speech-making. For it was as though a mechanism was engaged, like that of an artfully created doll, for her to recreate the living act of breathing and speaking.
She had been thus for hours. All questions were answered in short easy phrases after some noticeable delay. And she never looked away from the window.
“It is wonderful that your Highness is not in discomfort, but maybe a glass of water or some hot tea would be helpful for the physique—”
Again that mechanical ballooning of the chest, the intake of breath, and she replied, “No, thank you. I am not thirsty.”
Doctor Belquar looked behind him with frustration and made eye contact with a colleague, Doctor Hartel, a young brown-haired assistant and, in a manner of speaking, his professional rival.
“A hot bath with salts . . .” whispered Doctor Hartel.
But Doctor Belquar shook his head negatively.
“Perhaps, a light application of leeches. . . .”
“Are you out of your mind?” Doctor Belquar hissed. “The royal patient
. . . has
no blood
, would you bleed her more. . . ?”
A few steps away, a breakfast service had been brought in, and it lay untouched upon the small table. The servants stood at attention, most of them looking directly ahead of themselves, so as not to be found staring at Her Royal Highness.
The great canopied bed of the Infanta was also untouched. The feather pillows had been plumped and stacked, and velvet coverlets had been turned down for the night. But when she was offered a chance to lie down, the Infanta refused, most vehemently of all—if shaking her head back and forth and saying “no” over and over in a monotone could be considered passion.
In the opposite far corner of the grand bedchamber stood two bishops and a host of priestly attendants. There was a non-stop soft hum of spoken prayer and wafting incense, but because the physicians had been given supreme authority in the matter, the on-going Mass was relegated to the back, so as not to disturb the unpredictable and precarious condition of the Infanta.
At about eleven o’clock in the morning, the Empress Justinia was announced, at the same time as she unceremoniously walked into the room, forgetting or discounting all Imperial protocol. The Empress had changed out of her eye-blinding splendor of the night before and wore a simpler gown of warm cream and pearl, and a plain powdered platinum wig. Her face was drawn with exhaustion and, lacking the usual artifice of makeup, revealed wrinkles and an unhealthy color, while her dark brown eyes were sunken and reddened around the lids.
Empress Justinia walked past the priests and the breakfast service and the Ladies-in-Attendance and the doctors. She stopped in silence before her seated daughter.
“Claere . . .” the Empress said. “Claere, my child, can you hear me? It is your mother. Look at me.”
A pause. Even the whispering of prayers ceased.
The Infanta made that familiar-by-now effort of breathing. And then, slowly and stiffly she turned her head away from the window and toward the Empress.
“Your Majesty,” she said. Her face was serene and blank.
The Empress suddenly burst into weeping. Her face contorted and she immediately covered it with her hands in a last vestige of protocol, for it was said nowhere that the Empress can be seen to weep in public.
“Mother
. . .” Claere said. And she reached forward with her right hand, just barely touching the arm of the Empress with her fingertips.
Her touch was cold as the winter outside.
The Empress could not suppress a shudder and then was immediately horrified at her own reaction. She exclaimed hoarsely, “Leave us, all of you! Begone from this chamber and give us privacy.”
The servants and attendants did not need to be told twice. The Ladies-in-Attendance fled in gratitude. Even the priests shuffled out in a measure of relief, and the two attendant doctors bowed their way out, casting pointed glances at their patient before the doors were shut behind them all.
Mother and daughter alone remained in the room.
The Empress still felt the aftereffects of that shudder of continued terror and revulsion, mixed with tenderness and anguish. But now at least she could allow herself normal human emotion without a facade of decorum. Justinia Liguon forced herself at first, forced her body to make that initial motion, and then her loving instinct broke through and she took the steps and closed the distance between her child, taking the frail Infanta in her arms, holding her with a force that she may never have allowed herself before, but now—none of it mattered, did it? Nothing could hurt her daughter again—now she squeezed and rocked and held on tight to the cold wooden thing in her arms.
. . . And there was no more doubt.
She embraced a corpse.
And as the full realization came to her in that instant, the Empress broke down completely, became a thing of liquid pain without bone and muscle, and sobbed and sobbed, her face red and contorted, her tears and imperial snot running down and staining her cheeks and the cheeks and hair of the dead thing in her arms. At the same time, the drying red stain on the front of the Infanta’s gown, crushed against her chest, was now smeared all over the Empress’s cream dress, and it did not matter. . . .
None of it mattered.
“Mother. . . .”
The corpse was speaking to her.
No, no, her daughter was speaking to her!
In the same instant her fury at herself broke through the tumble of horror that was the dislocated contents of her mind. The Empress felt a strange expansion of the wooden chest against her own, and an intake of air, and then, the words came again, rattling softly against her own chest, like a sympathetic drum, flesh to flesh, living to dead.
“Please don’t cry on my behalf, mother.”
“Oh God in Heaven and Blessed Mother of God! You’re all right, child, yes you are, you are!” the Empress said, her own breath coming in gasps, lips against her daughter’s cold forehead and soft hair—her hair at least was still the same, soft, delicate, sweet cobwebs. . . .