The Evidence of Things Not Seen
What did a certain Telmarine Lady-in-Waiting think during the War of Deliverance?
An alternative PoV from "Prince Caspian" and a sequel for To An Unknown God.
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"A little nearer … and then a cushion … no, not that high. A softer cushion … ooh, ooh … well, I suppose that will do. You can go … send Lady Berenice with a cup of chamomile in a few minutes, won't you?"
Queen Prunaprismia leaned back in her padded armchair, with her feet propped up on the footstool and closed her eyes with a plaintive little sigh. The Lady-in-Waiting before her dropped a brief curtsey, turned and went out of the door without saying anything. Only when she had shut the door, crossed the ante-chamber and shut the next door with a rather more vigorous bang did the Lady Gwen let out her breath from behind clenched teeth. "Eeeessshhh!"
It was not a lady-like noise. She knew that. But when you have spent an entire afternoon attending a fat and foolish queen whose feet are aching – well! Gwen considered it quite restrained on her part not to have resorted to something far less lady-like.
Gwen rested one hand against the wall and stood still for a moment. It wasn't that she meant to be hard-hearted or unsympathetic. Anyone could have sore, aching feet – quite often the ladies-in-waiting had them – and it wasn't pleasant and couldn't be helped. But it was the fuss! They way the Queen sighed every other minute and the way nothing, nothing would do! It was always just a little too near or too high or too hard or too-!
"Fat," said Gwen to the wall. "Some people have ankles which are just a little too fat." She shook her head. It was funny, really, the way Queen Prunaprismia had grown so fat, when she had been so slight and pretty as a girl. Foolish, always vacantly foolish, but the littlest, prettiest whisp of a thing. The sort of girl who had always had a string of devoted admirers hovering about her and made Gwen feel permanently tall and big and leggy and bone-y.
Gwen smiled. She'd told that string of bothersome adjectives to Lord Rhoop, once. They must have been about sixteen or seventeen, just when it was becoming obvious that Prince Miraz, despite being a little older, had joined the crowd of Lady Prunaprismia's admirers with a definite purpose.
"But Gwen!" Rhoop had exclaimed. "If you were like that – like, like a china doll – it would be awful! We boys would be afraid to come anywhere near you, lest you get chipped or broken! No," he'd finished firmly. "Give me my Gwen. Just as you are."
She couldn't remember, now. It hadn't been the first time he'd kissed her – of course, the very first time Rhoop had kissed her had been an embarrassed and chivalrous seven year old page boy's peck on the cheek the day she'd fallen out of the apple tree on his head – but it had been one of the early times. Well...
This time Gwen combined the smile with a sigh. Just as you are – and what a long time ago that was. She spread out her hands and looked at them critically. They were still big and bone-y, which was, perhaps, something, when Prunaprismia had got all fat and red and puffy, but they were undeniably older. Time had passed inexorably. Rhoop was long gone. For all his promise, not he nor any of the other 'boys' – Bern, Mavramorn, Argoz, Octesian, Restimar, Revilian – had come back from that adventure to the end of the world. Just as Miraz had intended. And who remembered them now?
Herself, that was about all. And sometimes it seemed so very long ago that even her fancied whisper of a phrase which sprang to mind when she thought of Rhoop was dim. Courage, dear heart... What good was courage?
Rhoop was gone. The king was gone. Her cousins were gone. Even the Queen was gone. Miraz was king, and few remembered he had once been only Lord Protector. Lady Prunaprismia was now the queen, fat, and as foolish as ever. And herself?
Gwen shrugged. She was still here, the exception which proved the rule that the queen's ladies-in-waiting were as fat and foolish as herself. She had just stayed on, changed from one queen to the next, from Maid Attendant to Lady-in-Waiting. There hadn't been anything else to do. Her vague fears that Miraz might have wanted her to marry had proved unfounded. She was just – forgotten, a habit, a face who is always there in the court. And in a dull way, she'd chosen to be like that. Waiting. Waiting for something that was probably never going to happen.
Once, and only once, had she been tempted to draw attention to herself, and in the end she had not done so. There had been a huge, almost terrifying fuss made when it had been discovered that Prince Caspian's old nurse had been telling him the old folk legends of Narnia, those innocent children's tales of a mythical golden age and the four kings and queens of Cair Paravel. The queen's crowd of ladies-in-waiting had whispered to each other like a flock of anxious sparrows of how angry the king was, how he would have the old woman beheaded.
At that Gwen had thought, for a while, she must do something, must go to the king and beg of him to spare the nurse's life. She had been old, a little deaf, a little simple – not worth executing for foolish old stories. But even as Gwen had screwed her courage up for such heroics, Miraz seemed to reach the same conclusion, for he had simply sent the nurse away, and got Prince Caspian a tutor instead.
Gwen's face brightened a little at the thought of the Prince. He was still there, at least, bright and bonny and blonde. If – if all had been as it should have been, her son by Rhoop would have been only a little younger than him. A young friend and companion, maybe, as Rhoop himself had been to Caspian the Ninth. And – well, Gwen knew her imagination was biased. Her son would have been as fair and frank and good as Rhoop, and in better company, for what she knew of Prince Caspian, at the distance of a Queen's Lady-in-Waiting from the separate entourage of the Crown Prince, was better than his father.
Caspian the Ninth had been justly king – but there were things you did not remember about him.
Still, what mattered was that his son was here, and would one day be king. That, at least, would happen, and then the world would be right again, like a carpet pulled straight to show the proper pattern. No-one remembers the wrinkles; no-one troubles about those whose lives get lost and squashed among them.
Aye, but she was in a gloomy mood! Gwen straightened herself like her metaphorical carpet, and clapped her hands smartly behind and in front of herself. So, life was as it was. There was herself, and Prince Caspian, and that was about all that was left of the wreck of the old world. Gone, done, dusted by the endless duties of a Lady-in-Waiting.
Even as she started down the stairs to take a rest herself, if the queen was having one, a tiny, fierce core of Gwen was glad that it was that combination. For Prince Caspian was still there because Miraz had no son. And if she, Gwen, could have no sons, she was bitterly glad Prunaprismia had none either.
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A/N: With many thanks to Laura Andrews whose post-VotDT fic 'Sure As the Tide' really set me thinking about Gwen during PC. Ah, and as it's being posted in the run up to Christmas, the plot bunnies have mince pies for those who can place the title :)