Marie's Tale: A Colplatschki Novella Read online

  Marie’s Tale:

  A Colplatschki Novella

  Includes Bonus Short Story

  Alma T.C. Boykin

  © Alma T.C. Boykin 2014

  Cover art © Elena Pahl | Dreamstime

  Marie’s Tale

  It is said that there is always another woman. No, not always.

  I suppose it does not matter, not now. Matthew is settled, as are the other children, and Aquila and Kemal have both gone to Godown. Another family holds Peilovna. Oh, yes, Count Peilov and I share a father, but it’s not my family any more. Not that anyone else would care, not after the deeds of that creature that was once my brother. Godown be praised that Matthew never looked at Roland the way Jan saw Theobald the Younger! Perhaps that part of his father came through. After all, Quill never had a jealous bone in his body.

  That was the problem, I think, may Godown forgive me. A woman wants her husband to value her enough to be jealous, and Quill never was. Oh, he snapped when Count Montoya tried to seduce me, but Montoya tried to seduce every woman, even the ugly foreigner Elizabeth. Perhaps if I’d broken our vows, then Quill might have acted. But I hardly had a chance to do that, shut away in Starheart as I was. Locked up in that cold, empty border fortress, so different from my beautiful, lush Peilovna!

  Ah, Peilovna: the second oldest holding in the Empire after Vindobona, and the oldest in the same family. Crownpoint is the oldest occupied residence in the Empire, if not on all of Colplatschki. Anything grows on Peilovna, and grows well: crops, animals, even people. Until the Plague Year during my great-grandfather’s time, more people lived on Peilovna than on any neighboring holding. As I said, Peilovna grows everything but pfeaches and nuts. Horses and cattle, sheep and shahma, and my family turned blind eyes to a few pigs as long as they remained few. Pigs may be thrifty but their meat is dirty and sours quickly, and pig leather wears poorly, as everyone knows. But father tolerated a few so long as no one tried to pay their duties in pork or pigs. Not that anyone needed to, Peilovna’s land being so rich. We are the richest county. We should be a dukedom.

  Why does Peilovna remain a county? Ah, the problem of precedence and rank. I always wondered if that drove poor mad Jan to do what he did: that he’d never rank with me. Quill’s pet colonel didn’t help, not after Emperor Rudolph, Godown grant him rest, raised her to the upper nobility himself. The Counts of Peilov date to the Landing, or at least to not long after the Great Fires. Once we controlled Peilovna and Donatello Bend, and Kossuthna Secondaire to the south as well. Father never did explain what happened, saying it pained him too much to speak of it. No, I never looked in the family chronicle. Father said not to and so I didn’t. Not that I had time for research and reading, not after mother’s third stillbirth.

  Ten years and four months separated Jan and I. I suspect if I’d not been born live and healthy, father would have set mother aside, giving her a widow’s portion if she’d gone quietly. Instead she suffered six half-births and two stillbirths before Jan came into the world. The next child, also male, died in the womb and only through the mercy of Godown and St. Sabrina did mother survive. Father left her bed after that and if he sought pleasure elsewhere he did so quietly. But mother never regained her strength, so I took over as many of her duties as I could. It was five years before she could do everything she had before, and that only with help from her serving women. Some have whispered that I should have been more patient with Ann because of my experience. Hah! They never had to live under the same roof with Ann-I-Know-Everything Starland. Had I known that Ann came with Quill, I wonder if I’d have married him? I probably would, but the wedding contract would have been very different indeed.

  By the time I reached the age to marry, even I knew of Aquila Starland’s exploits and how he’d kept Starland intact despite the Turkowi raiders. He’d already been injured twice when I met him, with his crooked nose and the lance point in his hip. Even so he was good looking, with beautiful black eyes, a smile that could charm a woman from across the room, and confidence enough to convert anyone to his way of thinking. And he was already ruling duke of a territory twice as large as Peilovna, even though he was only twenty-five. Starheart sounded like Crownpoint, built into Lander walls with colored glass in the hall and a full chapel and other amenities. Being farther south than Peilovna, it would be as fertile and prosperous, or so I thought. Father approved of the match, as did others, and so the spring I turned fifteen I travelled to Vindobona with my parents to meet Aquila Starland.

  I’d never spent much time with men from outside my family before my father introduced me to Aquila. I fell in love, I suppose, if that’s what the feelings I felt were. I wanted to marry him right then and there, and I dreamed of spending days and nights with him, riding with him, caring for him and for our children. The world revolved around Quill Starland. Some women dream of their own household, but I’d been making most decisions for the women’s side at Peilovna for five years already, so that held no special appeal for me. No, I just wanted Quill, to hold his hand, to feel his arms around me.

  I had to wait almost three years. Father and mother agreed that I needed to be older before I married. I think father felt guilty for mother’s first half-births, because they married when she lacked one month of turning fifteen. And he still needed someone to help with Jan. Headstrong and demanding as a baby, he stayed the same as he grew older. But father doted on him and tolerated much. Godown and St. Kiara be merciful, but three years were three too many. I stopped loving Quill. I still looked forward to our wedding, but I no longer dreamed of him, I didn’t sigh over his picture as I once had. Three years allowed me time to gather an excellent bridal portion, however, and Quill helped, giving me gifts of fur, leather, silver, and other useful things as well as pretty little books and sweets. And then the day came, with Archduke Gerald Kazmer attending, standing in for the emperor!

  We had a perfect wedding. I wore the most beautiful dress with green embroidered on pale blue and touched with the finest lace mother and I could find. The sun shone, Quill looked utterly handsome in his finest suit of black silk and velvet, the choir at St. Gerald’s cathedral in Vindobona sang the great wedding hymn the best anyone could remember. Why St. Gerald’s? Because such an important match could only be solemnized at the imperial church, as everyone knew. Father and mother hosted a magnificent feast at our town palace. Father said it was far less than I deserved for having done so well for the family. Mother just kissed me and asked me to be patient with my new relatives. I thought she meant because it took time to learn each other’s ways, and because the borderers could be rough on the edges, as everyone knows. If only that had been the reason.

  Despite our perfect wedding, Quill’s behavior afterward seemed odd, even to a sheltered young woman such as I. I should have suspected something when he came reluctantly to our nuptial bed that first night. He acted as shy as I felt, and he was gentle and slow, patient with me. I assumed that his shyness would fade over time, as mine would, and did. We visited Duke Miles Grantholm and his family, and others, and I enjoyed being the wife of the Duke of Starland. Now I was “your grace,” ranking only below the archbishop and the royal archdukes. People respected Quill despite his lack of years, and everyone spoke of how young and lovely I was, and what a good pair we would be, Godown willing. But Godown did not will.

  Perhaps our very fortune was why Godown saw fit to give me a loveless marriage. Quill was rich, and not unattractive, kind if a little rough in his ways at times and unable to take time to appreciate the finer things in life, like music and cultured company. He gave me rank and title, property, a mighty home, and the respect of the emperor … but not love. I have wondered, now that anger has fade
d to regret and sorrow, if Godown kept us from loving each other so that we could not become satisfied and proud. It did not keep me from envy, although that came later, and has also faded with the years.

  But I did not know any of that when I rode with my handsome husband up the long road into Starheart. The fortress towered over the village below the hill, or so it seemed to me. His people had been waiting and watching, and greeted us with cheers and blessings. Lady Ann and the servants waited in the courtyard while his soldiers, those not out watching the border, stood along the road to welcome us. Captain Kemal Destefani stood with Quill’s sister, Lady Ann, and they both bowed, opening the doors to the keep for Quill and I. Quill spent two days teaching me the keep, from the highest attic where the women dried herbs and stored old fabrics and other things, to the lowest cellar. Only the barracks and armory remained closed to me, and for good reason, although I knew of them of course, and how to reach their contents in a dire emergency. With Ann’s help I settled in as lady of Starland.

  By the next spring I wished Ann had never been born. I already knew why she’d not been at the wedding. Oh, Quill and others gave excuses, saying that she needed to remain at the keep in order to prepare everything for my arrival. But even I, sheltered as I was, knew that she’d been disgraced during her first visit to Vindobona. After all, the entire embarrassing scene happened in Peilovna House! Who didn’t know that she’d attempted to seduce an already-betrothed man and had been shamed, the foolish light skirt? No wonder Quill had ordered her to stay at Starheart. I’d forgiven her, of course, because she was young, and without a mother to guide her. Then, just after harvest, my pregnancy started. After midwinter the complications became so bad that Quill, the herbwife, and my midwife wanted me to stay abed or at least not leave the family quarters. I resisted, trying to be a good wife and mistress of Starheart, but early bleeding put an end to my stubborn pride. Ann took over running the manor, as she had before Quill’s marriage, without so much as a by-your-leave.

  Oh, she pretended to value my wishes and judgment, but I knew better. I wanted to change how the servants were fed and housed, but she insisted that breaking tradition took time and that I should move slowly. I wanted to improve the management of the kitchens by eliminating the separate night-hearth and night-cook, but she blocked me again, insisting that the night hearth didn’t use that much fuel and that it was safer than having the men on watch cooking for themselves in the watch room or barracks. She did agree to move the night-soil pit and manure piles farther from the keep and village, however, but only after the old ones filled. Following Miranda’s birth, I needed almost six months to recover enough to leave the family quarters without help. She came hard, as many first children do, and I blessed my father for insisting that I wait to be married. But she was healthy and not prone to the sniffles and spots so many children suffer from. Quill let me nurse her for two years before returning to the marriage bed.

  I expected him to be eager, but he was not. He remained hesitant and shy, although he did his best to give me pleasure, and he often succeeded. I tried to persuade him to come to me more often, and sometimes he granted my desire. That fall I knew I was pregnant again, and he excused himself from my bed. He swore that it was only because he did not want to risk me or our child, and I believed him. I still believe him, even though I know far more now than I did then. By the fifth month, the boy inside me gave me no rest and I couldn’t have slept with Quill no matter how much I might of wanted to. Instead all I wanted was for this lively, enormous baby to get himself born. He had to be a boy, I knew.

  I don’t remember Matthew’s birth. Neither Quill, nor Ann, nor the midwife would tell me anything. All I recall is the labor pains starting, and then holding a very loud, red, boy. Oh he was fussy as a baby, almost as fussy as Jan. Godown be thanked, that faded with the years and he became a calm, steady young lad. He was not a scholar but he learned well and worshipped the ground Quill, Capt. Destefani, and the other men walked on. He listened to me well enough. Quill showered me with praise for having such a healthy son, holding me when I asked him to, giving me a magnificent Oberland mare to ride or drive and two bolts of silk and a beautiful Turkowi rug for my retiring chamber. But Matthew grew so fast and nursed so hard that I had to give him to a wet nurse after only a year. He weaned not long after that, and Quill returned to my bed.

  Next came another hard pregnancy, and baby Ann. I named her, in hopes of placating Lady Ann. You have no idea how pleased I was when Quill took his sister to the hunting lodge with him, or sent her out to the farms to look at the state of the crops and herds. She used my weakness as an excuse not to step aside for me. And she refused to act like a proper woman. Ann tried to be both man and woman, chatelaine and steward. She rode and when necessary fought alongside the men just like a farmwife or that foreign woman. I tolerated her because I had to, and she pretended to respect me, but I knew better. Especially after I understood that Quill would never love me, because he couldn’t.

  I realized it the spring before that foreign woman appeared and changed everything. I wanted Quill to come with me to the springs of St. Misha in the hills west of Vindobona. After Ann’s birth and weaning I had trouble conceiving, and both Quill and I wanted another son, Godown willing. I’d lost a child only weeks after realizing that I was carrying, and fear filled my heart that I’d never bear another healthy baby. Mother too had just suffered another half-birth. Father felt guilty, as he should have, and he sent Jan to visit later that summer, to get him away so mother could rest, and so that Jan could learn more about managing an estate by watching Quill and me. As it was, that spring Quill refused my request to travel with me. “I need to go south. The Turkowi are moving through the southern pass and may come up through Morloke and Tivolia.”

  “But my lord husband, it is early yet. Please, come to the springs with me. We can seek St. Misha’s help. You’ve been fighting every year,” I reminded him. “Why can’t you let Kemal take part of the burden for a few weeks? Count Albinez is taking his wife there and renewing their love.”

  He froze. The blood drained from his face and I wondered if I’d angered him. For the first time ever he raised his hand, as if to strike me, then lowered it. “My lady, I cannot go with you. Kemal already bears more than his share of the burdens of Starland.”

  Then I asked. I shouldn’t have, Godown knows. But the words slid past my lips before I could stop them. It is said that when the heart speaks, the head has no say in the matter, and I heard my voice asking, “Don’t you love me?”

  “My lady, I do not love you.”

  I fainted. When I woke, Quill had lifted me into a sitting position and held me, fanning my face. He and my maid had unlaced my bodice to help me breathe. “I’m sorry, Marie,” he said, and he was. “I did not mean to hurt you. I care for you, and respect you, and you are all that I could want in a wife. You’ve brought joy and beauty to Starheart, and I am very grateful.” He waited until I’d recovered my breath and wits both before asking, in an apologetic voice, “Do you love me?”

  It was a week before I could answer him. And then I waited until just before he left for the hunting lodge on the border. “Quill, you asked if I loved you. I do not.”

  He looked relieved. And it was true. I respected him, I trusted him. He’d never raised his voice or lifted his hand to me in anger. He’d never hurt my body, and always deferred to me in bed. He listened to me, he asked my opinion and listened to it, often doing what I suggested when it came to domestic matters. And I enjoyed spending time with him when he was at home. But I did not love him. We were friends who shared a bed.

  And so he left for the southern edge of Starland and the Empire, more to watch than in anticipation of battle.

  The summer, wet and cool, passed quietly, although rumors of Turkowi on the eastern side of the empire, not far from the mountains, worried me. Captain Kemal Destefani, staying at Starheart as he recovered from a broken leg, agreed with my concerns. He argued with Matthew, restrain
ing the eager young man. My brother Jan came to visit. Father had sent him on a circuit of the Empire, to meet other nobles and (father no doubt hoped) to find a possible wife. And then the foreigner arrived along with the horse herd and summer tithe.

  They rode in, muddy and wet, late one afternoon at the tail-end of summer. Kemal and I met them in the courtyard. “Turkowi within three days hard ride of Starheart, my lady,” Master George, the chief horseman, warned. “They ambushed us in the Hunter Hills. Your lord is unharmed and he and Lady Ann are following us with the rest of the men and supplies. Lady Elizabeth here broke up the ambush and saved the horses.”

  I stared at the strange woman. She looked away, blushing under the dirt on her face, and apologized, saying, “I only startled some of the attackers, your grace, Captain. Lady Ann and the men saved the herd.” And then the ugly foreign girl gave me Quill’s messenger badge, holding it by the edge so she didn’t have to touch my hand. I thought it rude, but defending Starheart and the inner lands took precedence over everything else. Master George told me that the girl, Elizabeth, claimed descent from a noble family so I assigned a maid to see to her basic needs.

  The servants told strange stories indeed about the newcomer, who they found trying to rinse off at the watering trough! She’d brought no proper clothes, but carried arms and rode a foul-tempered mule. Had Frankonia descended into barbarity? My women and I truly wondered.

  “Marie, Elizabeth is, well, she was very sheltered but not the way most of us are,” Ann tried to explain later. “She has a soldier’s calling, Quill’s sure of it, but she’s also a vowed postulant of Godown.” Well, I’d heard of other daughters of nobility who took half-vows, and so I took Elizabeth for one of those. And Quill’s words in the messages he sent with her and George suggested that she’d violated those vows and now carried a soldier’s by-blow. But the maid reported that she’d requested lint for her woman’s time, so perhaps Quill had misheard. It would not have been the first time. So I treated her with the politeness due any guest, granting her the honor of calling her “Miss” and inviting her to dine with the family.