The Evidence of things not seen: Chapter 2

Sorry, another dose of Telmarine angst...

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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..."

Two ladies-in-waiting hovered anxiously over the queen, and Gwen stood further back and watched. Clothilde and Berenice were as fat and foolish as Prunaprismia, and it didn't seem to get the queen settled any faster. Perhaps that was why Gwen was still here, a sort of un-favourite favourite, the one who could actually get a cushion under the queen's feet and know when to ignore the plaintive whinings and leave it there so the queen was actually comfortable, whatever she thought or said.

Getting the queen comfortable these days was getting to be extremely difficult. Nobody was saying why. The queen had been like this twice before. Nothing had come of it, either time. This time, it had lasted a lot longer. This time, nobody had said anything for over eight months, while the queen had whined and puffed and complained of swollen feet and sickness every morning. This time, Gwen was afraid.

Not for the queen, though that was terrible, she knew. To have waited on someone for almost twenty years and not care enough about them to be worried at a time like this. Nor for the child, though that was even worse. To wish – no, she didn't wish an unborn baby dead! But Gwen knew she wished it didn't exist. For if it was a boy – if it was a boy...

Rhoop's voice seemed to echo back across the years: "What happened to your cousins? What happened to the king?"

If it was a boy …

Gwen could hardly bear to see Prince Caspian these days.

At least the queen was making such a big fuss these days, she didn't have much time to. And Prince Caspian was always off in his own part of the castle, anyway, well away from the queen. Just a tall, blond figure seen at a distance, with his little round tutor in constant attendance behind him. It shouldn't make her feel as sick as the queen was every morning! Not deep, cold, coiling in the pit of her stomach sick! Life shouldn't be this way!

Gwen steered her thoughts desperately away from such things, hunting for any distraction. Prince Caspian's companion – the tutor – Doctor Cornelius. He was worth a thought. He was such a funny little man. Kind, but slightly strange, with his long beard and affected little high heels, oddities of fashion and dandyism that he showed no other signs of. At least Caspian seemed truly fond of him. It was a good thing, considering how heartbroken he had been when his nurse had been sent away.

Gwen had felt as if her own heart was breaking then, to see the little sad-faced boy wandering the castle and the grounds alone. She had guessed why he spent so much time in the kennels and the stables, talking to the dogs and horses, or just standing in the orchard looking at the trees. There weren't many other trees around the castle at Beaversdam. But – what could she have done? A lady-in-waiting did not speak to the Crown Prince, nor would her having been able to tell him most of the same old stories have helped, even if she had. She would have just ended up getting sent away too. Or more likely, as a member of Telmarine aristocracy, joining her cousins on the block for treason.

So, she had done nothing. But Doctor Cornelius had come, and Prince Caspian had seemed happy again and life had gone on, until now. Gwen no longer saw him near enough to know whether or not that faintly wondering, listening expression still crossed his face, but Caspian seemed to have long since given up talking to dogs or horses or trees. The Doctor spoke well of his studies, the king spoke well of his training on the tilt yard and practise courts – or had, until everyone had stopped speaking of how the queen was.

If only it would be a girl! A girl, a Crown Princess, would be safe for everyone. Miraz would have his own heir, and she would need a husband, and no one of the ever-restless Telmarine lords would do, for the risk of giving one of them ideas and upsetting all the others. If it was a girl, there would be a royal engagement within a year, and a wedding by the time she was fourteen. While Prince Caspian would not get a choice, he would at least not get a knife in the dark. If the princess took after the queen, she would at least be pretty at first.

The Queen's voice, unhappy and whining and fussy all together, broke into Gwen's turmoil of thoughts. "That still won't do..."

Gwen closed her eyes. Maybe, maybe it would be a girl not quite like her mother. Maybe, maybe. Once again, that was all she could do! Stand and watch and hope with vain hope.

Something about Gwen standing and watching on a much shorter time scale seemed to strike the still struggling and cushion-adjusting Lady Clothilde at this moment, for she pulled the cushion out yet again from under the Queen's feet, and turned to Gwen. "Can you do it?" she asked, sounding nearly as upset and plaintive as Prunaprismia.

Gwen swallowed, took the cushion and stuffed it onto the foot stool. "That should do," she said firmly to the Queen. "Now you can rest, and the Lady Berenice can go and make you a nice cup of chamomile, right away."

"Raspberry!" Prunaprismia corrected instantly. "The physician said I was to drink raspberry leaf tea! From now until – well, for the present." She frowned petulantly. "You'd forgotten!" The two other ladies-in-waiting turned matching reproachful gazes on Gwen as well. Fancy forgetting her majesty's raspberry leaf tea …

Gwen dropped an apologetic curtsey. "Raspberry leaf tea, of course, your Majesty."

"You can make it," said the Queen, pointing a plump finger in correction as if Gwen was the youngest of Maid Attendants. "Go!"

Gwen went. It was irritating to be told off like that, but somewhat of a relief as well to the aching jaw muscles which sought to not laugh at how completely the Queen had forgotten her ankles and the cushion on the footstool.

In the ante-chamber, Gwen shut the door and poked the fire on the hearth into life. The Queen was drinking herbal infusions so frequently at present the ladies-in-waiting had given up fetching them from the palace kitchens and were brewing them up here instead. A special little kettle hung on the crane, over the fire that was being kept going all the time. It made the room rather hot, in this late spring weather. Gwen pushed the kettle over the centre of the fire and wandered over to the window. She wished the physician had not said raspberry leaf tea from now until –

Not just because it meant not much longer now, though that too. It was just that … mares are fed raspberry leaves when there's not much longer, too. And long ago, Rhoop's first blood mare had been in foal for the first time. The mare herself had been a gift from King Caspian, and the foal she bore had been the product of a very careful mating to produce Rhoop's first trained-from-scratch war horse. Felicia had bloomed, in foal – in a way, Gwen noted wryly, that Queen Prunaprismia had not – bloomed and flourished and waddled about as proud as a peacock of her vast bulging middle and everybody from Gwen to King Caspian himself coming to pat it. She just hadn't seemed to want to part with it.

Felicia had been a few days overdue, a week overdue, ten days, two weeks … Rhoop had begun to look as if his hair would turn white with anxiety. Gwen, a very new Maid Attendant to the Queen, had plucked up her courage and consulted the royal physician. "Raspberry leaves!" she had announced triumphantly to Rhoop.

He'd stared at her. "What?"

"Raspberry leaves," Gwen had repeated. "For ladies who are, er – over – er-" She had stopped in somewhat blushing confusion at this point, because while, at seventeen, you can discuss horses in foal with a boy who's been your friend for years without any trouble, ladies in the same state are a bit more of a delicate subject.

Rhoop hadn't seemed to notice her embarrassment. He had stared at her as if this was the most wonderful piece of information in the world, and then most unexpectedly kissed her heartily on the cheek and torn off in search of raspberry leaves.

The kettle was hissing forth steam. Gwen came back to the present, poured the water over the dry raspberry leaves and carried it back to the window to stir. Ladies take their raspberry leaves infused. Felicia had liked hers neat. Lots of them. Between Rhoop and Gwen and the other six boys, they had practically stripped the castle and gardens at Beaversdam of all raspberry leaves. "We shall have to go out and collect them in the woods," Rhoop had announced finally, when Gwen had come back from a third begging expedition to the physician empty-handed. There had been a minute's difficulty there, for some reason, over whether Gwen could or could not come too. She had assumed she would; Rhoop, Bern and Revilian were quite happy with that; but Octesian had stubbornly opposed.

"The woods aren't for ladies," he'd said, again and again. Argoz and Restimar had backed him and eventually, under Octesian's curiously intense stare, Mavramorn had put his head down and joined the 'no' camp as the deciding vote. It may have been because of this that Rhoop had not called any of the other boys when Felicia chose the next morning to produce a beautiful chestnut foal. He'd sent a stable boy for Gwen. It was probably terribly unromantic to become engaged in a stable, before the limpidly interested gaze of a three hour old foal.

Gwen hadn't minded. She didn't think she minded even now. But, with everything that had happened after, it made raspberry leaves a little … sad. Sad, and somehow terrible. Or maybe that was with this present situation: waiting, waiting, afraid...

I'll wait for you, she had said the day Rhoop had gone away, promising to come back. And she had, and he had not, and – well, here life was. With the Queen drinking raspberry tea. Gwen sighed. If only – if only there was even the comfort she had found the day Rhoop had gone away, for this current tangle of fears and heartache! But 'Courage, dear heart' – whatever that fancied phrase of hers meant – did not apply to Prince Caspian. And she was older and wiser and much more sensible now, and for all she clung to the phrase-

Gwen's thoughts hit a stop. For all she clung to it – what?

Why not? whispered the little, fanciful voice at the back of her mind. And why not again?

"Again?" Gwen realised she had spoken out loud, but for that unthinking moment it had seemed the only way to arbitrate between the firm, dull, sensible voice of reason in her head and the tiny fanciful one. There were so many reasons why not, for all that just like the day Rhoop had departed, the idea of a higher power to beg to seemed extremely tempting. It was stupid, it was impossible, and either there was nothing to it and it was all a pretend, or it was rank treason which was not a wise thing to commit in the queen's ante-chamber. And Aslan was supposed to come from the east, and this window didn't look east. All in all, it was foolish – and Gwen's whirl of thought broke into a chuckle. She was one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting, after all.

A vainly waiting, vainly hoping, one. Then let it be in vain!

Gwen gave the raspberry infusion a last stir, turned the sand glass to run for the two minutes the tea must steep, and pushed the window open wide. The rose garden below, a cloudless blue sky above. Everything in Telmarine Narnia was neat and in order and untroubled and quite, quite un-fanciful.

"Aslan?" Gwen whispered, barely louder than a breath. "Aslan? Whatever you are, wherever you are, if you're still there at all … oh, let it be a girl. Please, please, please. Please let it be a girl. Maybe even pretty? Please..."

There was no fancied voice in answer this time. And the time was up in the sand timer. Gwen sighed, and poured the raspberry tea into the Queen's cup. Perhaps it only worked for children. Perhaps it didn't work at all.

Oh, please, please...

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A/N: Slightly off topic, many thanks to everyone who has reviewed "Memories." I can see there are seven of you. But owing to some hiccup in FFN's system, I cannot find out which seven of you, nor what you had to say!

So, assuming no-one left a flame, thank you all very much! :)