Up Sails and Out Oars

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Surely no brother had ever been as glad to see his sister as was King Edmund when he set eyes on Susan walking through the crowds on the Tashbaan dock. She made her way to the gangplank of the Splendour Hyaline, and by the time she reached the top her brother could not decide whether he most wanted to shake her for worrying him so, or embrace her and never let her go again. He settled for shaking her shortly before pulling her into a crushing embrace that made her cough rather badly, and forced Edmund to step back to offer his apologies for his fervour.

"You're late," he scolded, and in answer Susan made a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and flung her arms about Edmund's neck for a hug of her own.

"I couldn't help it, but I am sorry," she murmured, and cast a quick glance around. "Might we go below deck?" she wondered, and Edmund said certainly. He escorted her down into the room where Corin was settling in, then excused himself to retreat above deck. At the sight of Susan the prince broke into a smile and rushed across the room, stopping just before he reached her to sketch out a shoddy sort of bow and then let her take up his hands in hers.

"Did he try to keep you?" he demanded, and Susan, too wearied from the past three weeks to even attempt something like courtly speech, simply admitted that Rabadash had expressed sentiments along those lines. Corin looked as black as thunder for just a moment, until the light pat of a hand on his recalled him to himself.

"Mr Tumnus intervened at a strategic moment," Susan explained, and smiled in a way that was the closest to her old self that she would ever be again. Corin was satisfied with this explanation, and even consented to seat himself beside the queen and, at her request, describe his own journey to the docks.

"It's really easy once you've got somebody who knows where to go," he marvelled, and Susan said yes, that was the oddity of travel, wasn't it?

"And soon," she sighed, sinking back against the cushions on the bench built into the wall of the small stateroom, "soon we will be home again." And there was a sort of weary hunger in her voice as she said this that made Corin look askance.

"Are you all right?" he asked, and sounded uneasy enough that Susan, as she had done for as long as she could remember, found a cheering smile and a reassurance that yes, of course she was.

"Perhaps a trifle wearied," she murmured, and one restless hand gently brushed a lock of Corin's hair back from his brow, "but quite well, thank you." She looked toward the narrow door and the flight of stairs beyond it. "Wouldn't you like to go watch them make ready to sail?"

Corin did, very much, but there was something so odd about the manner of his "favourite grown-up lady" that he felt an even stronger inclination to stay where he was. He even slipped a hand into Susan's as he sat there beside her, as he had not done in years, ever since he was a toddling little thing without a mama to pull him back from sharp edges, and Susan a girl in need of someone to mother.

"Not this time," he decided, and stayed where he was. As darkness fell around the ship, and the sails were raised, the anchor weighed and the great vessel moved silently through the water to the river mouth, Prince and Queen sat together below deck, each thinking on what they had left behind, where they were headed now, and all that awaited them there.

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On taking his leave of his sister and their young charge, King Edmund returned to the deck where the Northerners were scuttling about in the descending dusk, trying to look as if they were thinking about parties. He had a quiet word with the captain, who had only just been apprised of the true nature of their arrival on board, then went in search of Lord Peridan. Peridan, who was helping the Lords Kerron and Mertin oversee the stowing of their provisions, was willing to give the king a moment of his time when Edmund promised that he would be brief.

"I must thank you," Edmund explained, "for your accompaniment of Her Majesty to her audience with the Prince. I would not for the world have had her face him alone."

"My lord is generous in his gratitude," Peridan said, looking troubled. "I fear my lady queen would not even permit me to accompany her inside the dwelling; it has caused me no little unrest ever since. Was it not my duty to protect her?"

"'Tis indeed the duty of any Narnian to defend his queen," Edmund conceded, "but 'tis also the duty of a subject to trust in the wisdom of his sovereign. If the queen's grace thought it prudent to see you remain out of doors, then I can think nothing else but that 'twere for the better. I ask you to set your mind at ease on the subject."

Peridan looked as if he might doubt his ability to do so, but promised he would try his best, all the same.

"Good man," Edmund nodded, and passed a hand over his brow. "I cannot but think that some small good has come of this voyage . . . we now know, as we have not done before, the full nature of the man who will next rule Calormen."

"We know it, certainly, Sire," Peridan acknowledged, "though I fear I cannot understand it; what manner of man who calls himself noble could ever think to court a lady thusly? Her Majesty has displayed a fortitude beyond her years and indeed beyond my ken in the face of a threat such as this."

"Aye," Edmund said, and something strange passed across his face at that moment, as he reflected on what the courtier had said. "Aye, she has shown her valour, certainly . . . but I keep you from your task," he smiled in apology, and nodded to the endeavour from which he had distracted the man. "Your forgiveness, Peridan." And he turned to summon Drinian and Jardin, the two highest-ranking Narnian courtiers aboard, to council. "For there is much yet to be considered," he observed grimly, "and 'twere well we began now."

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Susan didn't even realise she had fallen asleep until she awoke, with a nervous start, to find herself tucked safely in her own bed aboard the Splendour Hyaline. The dress she had worn in Calormen, a light garment exquisitely fashioned of creamy silk and cotton, darkened several shades by the dust of the city streets, had been removed. She wore instead a clean sleeping-shift, and her hair had been taken down and plaited as she slept.

Rather than lifting her voice to call for her ladies, who held a small berth beside her own, Susan slid out of bed herself and felt beside her for the lamp. Her fingers closed over the smooth, cool surface of the clay reservoir, and beside the little lamp she found the sulphur-tipped splinters that would light it. Striking one against the grain of the wood on the underside of the table, she was rewarded by a spark and a small, guttering burst of flame, which she touched to the wick of the lamp. Then Susan watched as the small flame sucked greedily at the oil-damped wick, casting a soft glow on the underside of her face.

"Almost home," she whispered, for the heave and creak of the ship around her, and the gentle rush of a sea breeze in at the window, told her what her eyes did not need to; they were still well underway, and making good time as they cut through the waters of the Eastern Sea.

Susan had no idea what the hour might be, but she felt sufficiently rested to remove a dressing-gown from her cupboard and shrug into it. Then she took the little clay lamp in the palm of her hand and started for the door.

The narrow passageway beyond was lit with wall sconces, so she left her lamp in the little niche beside her own door, to be collected when she returned. Moving quietly in slippered feet, the Narnian queen walked the length of the passage and climbed the narrow steps to the deck. There, a cool breeze lifted the tendrils of hair that had escaped the single, heavy plait down her back, and a diamond-studded sky sparkled above her, bathing the decks in silvery light. Susan sighed.

"Majesty?" the voice startled her, and she spun around with a small shriek. The deckhand leaped back as well, alarmed at having alarmed her.

"Begging your pardon, Your Majesty," he said hastily, "I wasn't after frightening you, and I'm sure I don't mean to offend, only, are you well? Bein' as it's so late, and all, I only wondered . . ."

"Oh, yes," Susan nodded, every coiled nerve within her relaxing just a bit, "I'm sorry, too; I don't mean to be so . . . twitchy."

"Oh, no, Ma'am," the deckhand said with aimless fervour. "No, indeed, Ma'am."

Susan smiled. "I only came up to take the air . . . it's a lovely night, isn't it?"

"Indeed, Ma'am," the man agreed, and both looked out over the water, where the moon-road lay glittering off the port side. "Indeed, it is. Night watches is my favourite, really, on account of it's so peaceful-like, and things is just all lying still."

"Yes, that's exactly it," Susan agreed, drawing her robe a trifle closer about her as the first Northern night breeze caught the hem of her shift, and played about her ankles. "It's so very peaceful . . . one can pretend one is perfectly alone."

"Oh," said the deckhand, with some alarm, "did you want me to–"

"No!" Susan laughed, feeling alarmed and amused all at once, "no, I'm sorry, that wasn't anything like a suggestion. I only mean, it's so very quiet, one could think that one was the only person awake in the world. I didn't mean I wished you to leave."

"Well, then," the deckhand nodded respectfully, "I'll be on my way, as I've got to make a round of the place, but if you should be wanting anything, Ma'am, you just be giving me a shout, then, won't you?"

Susan promised she would, and waited until the man had moved from sight before crossing to the rail, and looking out over the water. It should have been peaceful, she thought, to see the sea look so calm around them. The winds that whipped around her now, filling the sails and bearing them home, should have spoken of the land she had thought, for one dreadful moment, she would never see again. Instead she found it was still tricky to breathe right, and couldn't quite keep her hands from tightening reflexively about every object they touched, as if it were still possible that she might at any moment be torn from it all, and carried back to Tashbaan.

She had already formally apologised to both Edmund and the envoy for her folly, making a very nice speech over their lunch the day before (Susan excelled at nice speeches). Yet she could not help but feel she ought to apologise again; if not to the entire envoy, then at least to Edmund, who had really been far better-mannered about this than he might have been.

Apologising to Edmund wasn't that bad, really; it was almost nice, and not at all like you might find it when you must apologise to a brother or sister, because Edmund had once been so very in the wrong about something that he couldn't bear to ever deny anybody forgiveness. And really Edmund had been very gracious and sweet and taken her aside after lunch and said it was all right now, they were going home and he quite forgave her, but still Susan felt she ought to say something more. And really, she didn't mind apologising to Edmund a hundred times over; she just minded having to think on everything that it was for which an apology was owed.

Before she could think on it much longer, though, a stumbling step on the deck behind her had her turning about again, half expecting to find the deckhand behind her once more. Instead it was Lord Peridan, blinking rather stupidly in the moonlight, and looking as if it would take a large vessel of exceedingly cold water to shake the sleep from him. Susan was startled.

"My lord! What turmoil sees you abroad at this hour?" she wondered, and Peridan, still looking very confused, rubbed his face and shook his head and said blast if he knew.

"Deckhand . . . dropped a bucket outside my door," he mumbled. "Sounded like he threw it, if you ask me, but why'd he do a thing like that? Asked him . . . he said the ship's cat knocked it over. Didn't even know the ship had a cat. Terribly confusing . . ." Then he pulled himself a little straighter, and fought through his fatigue to offer a bow. "Forgive me, Majesty, I didn't know you were abroad as well."

"In truth I had not planned to be," Susan confessed, and looked back out over the water. Lord Peridan rubbed at his face once more, and tried not to stumble as he made his way over to the rail as well. "But I am somewhat uneasy . . . think you the Prince a man content to see his . . . goals as lost?"

Peridan, who hadn't been making much a habit of thinking of Rabadash at all, what with the harvest of his estate's crops and the fall's hunt closing in upon them, squinted doubtfully and said he was certain he couldn't say. Susan, as is the habit of those who favour tact over honesty, mistook the verity of his reply and shook her head impatiently.

"Please, do not be guarded in my presence just now. I would have your opinion, if you would honour me with the sharing of it; my brother is still abed, and I would not wake him for the world. I have," in a rare bit of candour, "caused him worry enough these past weeks."

"Is he angered, then?" Peridan queried, then wondered at his own boldness. What place of his was it to ask after the moods of the king? Susan, though, seemed entranced by the silvery dance of the moon on the water, and simply said she did not know.

"But surely, if any man has cause to be, 'tis he."

"Well," Peridan was finding it tricky to think through his weariness, but the cool salt breeze on his face was doing its best to shake from him the last of his slumber, "well, perhaps." He hesitated, and risked one very doubtful glance at his queen. She was dressed embarrassingly informal, clad in a heavy embroidered robe draped over what he could only assume was a sleeping garment of some kind, and her rich black hair hung in a single plait down her back. It would all have been alarmingly inappropriate, if the whole place hadn't been crawling with invisible bucket-wielding deckhands (and, presumably, invisible cats, as well).

His hesitation drew Susan to look up at him, and her face in that moment lacked hauteur or contrived merriment or indeed anything but simple curiosity. "Milord?" she prompted. "I would know what you thought to say."

"Well," said Peridan again, and thought that surely there were at least ten others on board far better suited to counselling the sovereign than he, "leaving aside the Prince for the moment, if your Majesty will permit me, has His Majesty . . . . pardoned you already?"

"He has offered me his forgiveness, yes," Susan nodded, "and though I have made an apology, as you yourself must know, I cannot help but feel I ought to make another. I have so alarmed him, after all . . . can one plea for pardon be quite sufficient? I feel I must make any number more."

"Then I cannot counsel you otherwise," Peridan decided, and felt that it was a very proper thing to say, which was why he couldn't understand why it didn't seem to soothe the queen. She didn't say anything, of course; she simply nodded and murmured her thanks and looked again out over the water, and Peridan thought, quite suddenly, that it was how his mother had looked when he was a small boy, and his father had followed every pardon granted them with endless reminders of where they had fallen short. It hadn't felt the least bit like a pardon at all, and now, remembering the awful knots he had always felt in his stomach, he found he couldn't, after all, leave it at that.

"If," he swallowed, "if your Majesty would pardon me–"

He more than half hoped she wouldn't, but Susan looked over again, and said "yes of course" so he could hardly stop there.

"With your Majesty's pardon, then . . . if my lady Queen sees fit to apologise twice to my lord King, then it is nobody's place but her own to commend her. But if you would forgive me, Madam, I find . . . I've found that one does well to remember that, once forgiven, it is no longer one's place to atone."

Susan stayed still a moment, and though she looked at him, Peridan felt she was not seeing him at all. Instead, although Peridan could not have known it, she was thinking very hard, both on what he said and on what things she had seen since she had been a small girl who found herself both queen of a land and sister to a brother who had been freed forever from the burden of having to atone. It was only when Peridan saw her smile –that smile that made it feel as though all his May mornings had come at once– that he knew even in his weariness and through his longing for home he had somehow managed to say the right thing.

"Of course you're quite right," she said, and there was such simple conviction in her words that it did not occur to Peridan that he could be otherwise. "And of course Edmund would know it better than any . . . how foolish of me." And the light on her face as she looked out over the water again buoyed Peridan most gratifyingly.

"I still won't wake him, though," she decided. "Not to ask about Prince Rabadash, anyhow . . . are you quite certain, milord, you cannot answer me? What think you of his . . . mindset when first he sees his plans come to naught?"

Peridan found that even Susan's smile could not help his feeling exceedingly uncomfortable at being asked to predict the actions of a tyrant, and he told her as much.

"I beg my lady's pardon," he said helplessly, "but I truly feel I do not know the man's nature well enough to say. I have seen of him nothing but that you yourself have seen– his flattery and fine manners in the court of King Peter, and his tyranny and oppression of his own people once he was again in his home."

"Then with this account of him in mind," Susan said quietly, "I charge you now to tell me: think you that such a man will tolerate the rejection of the woman he sought to win? Think you," and two very small spots of colour touched her face as she said this, "that he will forgive a refusal to his suit when such a refusal was scarcely couched in anything resembling diplomacy, or indeed courtesy?"

Peridan, now wondering what on earth such a refusal could have entailed, looked at Susan in frank curiosity and found that the answer to a question put like that wasn't so tricky after all.

"No tyrant," he decided, "could look kindly on any who escape the trap he has laid for them. Nor indeed do I believe it is within the nature of a tyrant to look forgivingly on those who may have . . . wounded his pride."

"Yes," Susan sighed, "yes, this is what I feared."

But stealing a look at his queen's face, Peridan found there was no fear there. Instead she seemed simply, quietly resolved about something. She watched the water a moment more, then seemed to recall that he was standing there. Looking over to him she smiled, and asked his pardon for keeping him so long.

"For surely," she smiled, "'tis one thing to wake and walk about of one's own accord, but 'tis quite another to be woken by a bucket and a deckhand, and possibly a cat, and kept talking by a person whose conversation you cannot refuse."

This was true, of course, since once can hardly tell one's queen that one is too tired to converse, but Peridan said no, that was quite all right, and he didn't mind in the least. Unfortunately the effect was somewhat spoilt by a very large yawn that interrupted him before he was quite done saying he wasn't tired in the least. Susan could not help but laugh at the sight, then begged his pardon for laughing, and kept one hand covering her smile even as her eyes danced, and she ordered him back to bed.

"And if I see any cats about," she concluded, "I shall warn them well away from your door."

Peridan said this was most gracious of her and bowed, walking backwards for half a dozen steps before Susan turned back to the railing and he was able to turn around again and start below, to his berth and the lovely bunk that awaited him there.

Susan, for her part, remained on deck some hours longer, watching as the moon descended behind the western shore and the sun burst upon the eastern horizon, scattering gold over the sea. It was, as every sunrise is, entirely new and different from all that have come before it, and Susan felt her heart warm at being able to watch it.

"If one thing can be made new each morning," she decided, "then it can surely be no great feat to think that I might be made new on one return home . . . oh, please," and her hands flexed nervously on the rail that ran about the side of the ship, "let it be so. For I do not think I could face what I fear I must, if I knew I was still what I was when I left."

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A.N.: This chapter was particularly for Francienyc who wanted to see more of Peridan! I only trust he will forgive me for waking him to oblige her. Now, the next chapter it all gets very overlapping and tricky, and to write it I have to find the writing I did last summer, which means digging through boxes and stacks on stacks of papers, so I don't look forward to it in the least but thanks are owed to everyone who's told me that they do.

Up next: A Disrupted Reunion, wherein a restful arrival at home isn't, really, but everybody gets to meet up again anyway.