The Sister Apothecary poured out two small measures of cordial and handed Marra one. “Drink with me,” she said, “and I’ll tell you about the first boy I ever loved.”
It took three more measures of cordial and two more tales of woe, but Marra uncurled and told the Sister Apothecary everything. The Sister gave her a tea to bring her courses on, just in case, and went to the abbess, and the young man was reassigned to another monastery a week later. Marra was left feeling raw and hollow, and brooding over the fact that somehow “unknown noblewoman” had translated into “king’s bastard daughter” in the minds of the monks.
Well. It was safer than being a princess. She was outside the hierarchy and so she had been assigned a story that made sense of her position. Marra felt embarrassed for her mother, because now everyone thought that the king had been unfaithful, and then suddenly it occurred to her that maybe he had been unfaithful and she did have half sisters out in the world and that was too large and staggering a thought, so she buried it immediately.
But her heart healed, as hearts almost always do. She brooded for a little time and then she stopped brooding. She had a powerful and thoroughly unrequited love for a visiting scholar with fiery red hair and soulful eyes, which left her in pleasant agonies. Rather than ghosts or minstrels, this time she fantasized about growing old in the convent and telling young novices about the great lost love of her life.
And time went on, and even that great passion became a fond memory, and the letters from the queen arrived, month after month, to tell her that her sister Kania was well.
* * *
When she was twenty and had spent five years in the little room with whitewashed walls and baskets of yarn and thread, she was summoned to the Northern Kingdom. Her sister Kania was about to bear a child at last.
It was strange to travel in the queen’s carriage again. Marra was not confined to the convent and traveled often enough to the nearby village, but she walked or rode on the donkey cart with one of the sisters. To be in a well-sprung carriage with velvet seats, drawn by swift gray horses, was a forgotten luxury.
She stared out the window and thought how odd it all was, how very odd.
“You look very well,” said the queen.
“Thank you,” said Marra. She ran an appraising eye over her mother. It was like looking in a mirror, twenty-odd years into the future. The queen’s hair was still black, though henna played a part, and her clothing was as carefully layered as armor, creating a shape with which enemy eyes could find no fault.
“Mostly corsets,” said the queen, amused, watching Marra’s gaze. “There’s a trick to it, at my age. You must have a good figure for having born two children, but not so girlish that people suspect artifice and not so ripe that people think you are trying to be seductive.”
“It matters that much?” asked Marra, looking down at her own plain robes. The material was very fine and there were grackles embroidered around the sleeves, but no one would mistake her as being from anywhere but a convent.
“For a queen? Yes.”
Marra sighed. It seemed absurd. The abbess was stout as a barrel, and the Sister Apothecary had narrow shoulders and wide hips, like a pear, and both of them wore layered robes like Marra, except that the abbess also had vestments and the Sister Apothecary tied her sleeves back to keep from trailing them in the herbs.
“Clothing can be arranged for you,” said the queen. “If you would like dresses instead of robes for the week.” Her voice was carefully neutral, as if she did not wish to prejudice Marra’s decision.
Marra looked at the queen’s clothing and remembered how long it had taken her in the mornings to get ready, even at age fifteen. At the time it had seemed exciting. Now it seemed like so much work, and the eyes on her would be far less indulgent than the ones when she had been a teenage princess in her own family’s castle.
I have forgotten whatever I knew. There would be maids and ladies-in-waiting to tend me and do my hair and powder my face, but I would have to sit for hours while they dressed me like a doll, and then for the rest of the day I would be afraid to eat or drink for fear of ruining all their handiwork.
“I would rather appear as a nun,” she said.
Her mother nodded. “More robes, then,” she said. “It is easily done. But you will be treated as a nun, not as a princess, you know.”
“I think,” said Marra, folding her hands to hide the calluses from shoveling manure, “that I would prefer it.”
* * *
The Northern Kingdom’s capitol was set on a hill above a cold, flat plain. There were few trees. The mountains in the background loomed like swords, but the city loomed higher, as if it had been made to stand against the mountains.