She Waits
Reflections on Caspian X from the Women Who Loved Him Most
I. The Telmarine Castle
She waits in the silken sheets of her marriage bed, propped up by plush pillows and surrounded by her dutiful ladies-in-waiting. The searing pain in her belly is becoming stronger and more frequent, and she knows it won't be long now.
She is frightened, just as much as she is filled with excitement. She is about to join that elite group that is as old as the ages – the club of motherhood. It has been nine long months that she has felt this babe growing inside her; she has watched her body change from a slender, graceful form to the rotund, pudgy shape she now sees before her. She has felt the discomfort of an awkwardly placed baby putting pressure on seemingly every bone and organ in her midsection, and she has felt the exhilaration of that first kick, the sharp jab that not only made her wince but proved to her incredulous mind once and for all that there really, truly was another life growing inside her. From that moment in particular, her excitement grew exponentially with every passing day. No longer was she simply proud to be giving her husband a child, but she was anxious to meet and coddle and love the very real baby that was genuinely hers. That small kick, the first of many, began her musings over names, her rapture in cradles and toys and bonnets and tiny, perfect stockings, and her adoration of the ever-swelling belly that heretofore had brought some despair over the loss of her beautiful figure.
She has passed hours debating names for the baby, though she knew that her husband would inevitably have the primary voice on that topic. A boy would be easy – he would be Caspian like his father and the eight other fathers who came before him – but a girl, that would be different situation entirely. She had no ambitions of naming a girl-child after herself, and so was able to delight in the multitude of lovely names that she could bestow upon what could only be the most beautiful little girl in all the kingdom.
In her months of confinement, and when she was well enough, she had embroidered what seemed to be enough baby-clothes to fill ten score large trunks. Every stitch brought a sense of pride in already doing so much to care and provide for her baby. As if he wouldn't already have wealth and land, subjects and a crown imparted to him from the moment of his birth, her baby would also have innumerable clothes constructed by the castle seamstresses and embroidered by a mother who loved him more than anything in this world or any other.
She wonders at how she can already be so completely filled with love and adoration for a person that she has not yet met.
She glances to her left, brushing a sweat-matted lock of dark hair out of her eyes so that she can better glimpse the darling cradle that awaits a newborn occupant. It was a gift from some nobleman or another; she'd quite forgotten who in the flurry of well-wishes and presents that had arrived in the last few months. She did remember how she had practically swooned over it at first sight, how she had since often maneuvered her cumbersome body to the ground so that she might practice rocking it and imagine that she was lulling to sleep the baby that she yet held inside her. Soon, if she could only be patient a short while longer, she would at last be able to rock more than blankets and a tiny pillow.
The room is hot; though her ladies have thrown open a window to the winter air she still feels impossibly warm. Sweat rolls down her lovely face in large beads and plasters tendrils of hair to her forehead, cheeks, and neck. One of her ladies, an older woman, wipes her brow with a cool, wet bit of cloth. This provides only momentary relief, and she wishes that she could fly out into the cold night and feel the wind against her skin.
The pain intensifies again for a moment, and she is reminded of her fears. She already feels so weak, and because this is her first child she doesn't know whether she is in the middle of the natural progression of labor or if something is wrong. One part of her wonders that she is this fatigued; another recalls the pain and the long hours of labor passed and understands. But she had always been a frail thing, slow to heal and prone to illness. Her mother used to tease that she could catch a cold merely from looking out a leaded-glass window on a winter evening, and her father worried when her recoveries from even minor illnesses far outlasted those of her brothers and sisters. Her pregnancy has been plagued by sickness and fatigue, but often she was assured that her fellow mothers had all endured the same annoyances. What her consolers didn't know, however, was that despite her physical weakness she is remarkably intelligent and very perceptive. She has caught the looks that have passed between them that suggested that they were not being entirely truthful in assuaging her fears. Childbearing is a dangerous business, and she is more at risk for mishap than many.
A few moments to breathe, and then another labor pain wracks her frail body. Her hands bunch into white-knuckled fists around clumps of bedsheets, and she tries very hard not to cry out. Her jaws ache from gritting her teeth together so hard, but she barely notices that pain as all of her nerve endings are screaming from the lower half of her body. When her lungs begin to burn she remembers to breathe, and a small noise escapes from her lips as she greedily gulps for air. The pain subsides, and she is vaguely aware of the ladies' soothing words of praise and encouragement.
Another compress is passed across her forehead as she looks down at her right hand. Oh, how she wishes that her husband could be allowed to hold that hand and comfort her! She has always delighted in the feeling of his big, strong hand encasing her small, delicate one. Even before love came, when they were still newlyweds who barely knew one another, she had adored it when he would grasp her hand. It has always felt as if all of her weakness, all her fragility, disappeared and was replaced only by Caspian's self-assured strength.
She cannot believe that two years have passed since they were wed in the enormous Hall in the castle of Caspian's fathers. Good Caspian VIII had only lived a few days more; it was his ill health that had expedited the engagement. She had met Caspian IX only a very few times before she became his wife: once when they were children and later when she was fourteen, both times when her father had brought her entire family from their sprawling northern estate to the Telmarine capital on holiday. The next time she saw her future husband was when he came to her home to meet her a final time before asking for her hand. By then, she was seventeen and had become known throughout the kingdom as a great beauty. He was twenty-two, and needed no more than a glance at her before (as he said) he fell in love. Their engagement was shortened from two years to one when the King became ill, and by her nineteenth birthday she found herself both a wife and a Queen.
Her affection for her new husband took longer than her rise to a position in the monarchy. There was no denying that he was good to her, gentle and kind and not opposed to sentimental words or a stolen kiss or two when no one was looking, but she was a sensible sort of girl who was not given to romantic fantasies. She had accepted her arranged marriage well enough, and counted herself lucky that her betrothed was quite handsome. She didn't fuss or fight or cling desperately to dreams of true love and marriage for it, but went willingly to her husband's side at the altar and, if apprehensively, his bed. She respected him and knew him to be a good and honorable man, and from that esteem eventually came love, tentative at first but now as ardent as that which was returned to her.
She wants him now; she wants his kiss on her lips and his deep voice breathing adoring words in her ear. She debates sending a lady for him. He would be waiting with his brother Miraz, who is altogether a different man than Caspian. Her husband loves his younger brother and trusts him implicitly, but her keen intuition causes her to be slightly nervous around the Prince. His smiles have always seemed strange to her, and his words have often suggested other meanings that she cannot decipher. She does not go so far as to suspect Miraz of traitorous or dangerous thought, for there were times that she observed the two brothers laughing and carrying on as she could only imagine they had as boys, and she saw in Miraz's eyes a respect and admiration for his older brother. Still, there is something about the younger son of Caspian VIII that has always disarmed her.
Once, when they were alone in the same bedchamber she now occupies, she had mentioned her feelings to her husband.
"Miraz?" he had repeated, with one of his great, booming laughs. "You need only get to know him better, my darling. He has been gruff and quiet since we were boys. And besides," here he made her blush as his hand snaked its way up her leg, "you cannot fault him for his strange behavior in your presence. It is not Miraz's fault that his brother is married to a woman who is far lovelier than his betrothed Prunaprismia may ever hope to be."
His kisses had ended the discussion, and she has not broached the subject again. Perhaps she was wrong after all, and she trusts Caspian's judgment unreservedly.
No, she decides, she will not send for him. She attempts to find her own strength, to prove to her husband, his brother, and the kingdom that she is not as fragile and weak as they all believe. Heretofore, she has accepted her own nature; now she will triumph over it. She will not only bring forth a child worthy of a father's love, but will earn his pride for herself as well.
More than anything, she wishes for it to be over, for good or for ill. She cannot wait to hold in her own arms the beautiful little life inside her. She longs to get to know her baby, to learn his face and his temperaments, and to understand that earth-shattering and unconditional love that is unique to mothers. She is excited to watch with pride as the baby grows, to feel her people's adoration of their new Heir Apparent or Princess, to bask in the joy of their joy but know that it will be her that the child will love most of all.
She already wants so much for the tiny little being that does not even have a face or a name, and yet that moment when they will meet at last still seems so very, very far away. She is tired, more tired than she has ever been before, and the pain hurts her so that she can do nothing but allow the silent tears to fall and try her hardest to be brave about it. The moment she longs for has not yet come, but it draws nearer by the moment. She must be strong; she will be strong. The baby will come in his own time. And she will continue to wait.
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