26th of Edrinios, light time
We are, to quote Teleria, all in uproar. Rhun is home.
He returned yesterday afternoon. It was expected, and scouts had seen the entourage coming miles off, so the pomp and fanfare were elaborate. Trumpets and banners and cheering courtiers, and little girls throwing flowers; all quite lovely and gay and I couldn't help enjoying it – except the bit where the Queen drafted me into making some wordy welcoming speech and hanging a wreath of posies around his neck.
It was good to see him, though. He has changed a bit while he was away – his face has lost some of that round puppyish quality, there are angles in his chin and cheeks, and his bearing is straight and confident and less clumsy. He is even – yes, I'll say it – handsome now, where he wasn't before. His fair hair is bleached almost white, and his eyes are clear and merry and joyful in a way only Rhun's eyes could be. They positively twinkled at me during that silly speech, as though he knew exactly how I felt about it and it tickled him. And he looked so ridiculous with flowers around his neck I couldn't help laughing – but it was a good kind of laughter, all light and bells and silver, with no sour notes, and I haven't laughed that way in weeks.
There was feasting, naturally, and in three days there is to be a real ball, such as I have heard about but never experienced, a test of my new dancing abilities. I fear I am to be expected to lead out the first dance with Rhun, and I want to crawl into a hole somewhere. Not out of self-consciousness over my lack of dancing skill, though that is prodigious – but because of the significance of the gesture. However, I do have hopes that it may present me with an opportunity to speak with Rhun privately about the whole business, and perhaps…stealthily…steer him toward the pining Mae.
Because she is pining. His newfound maturity has undone her completely. She could barely talk to him at the feast last night, though we were all sitting near one another; every time he made a comment to her she went scarlet and muttered at her plate. I wanted to pinch her for being so impossible and…and insufferably girlish, but she was too distant for my teasing. My being chosen for Rhun's welcoming ceremony hurt her, even though we both expected it, and I couldn't bear making it worse – and yet that was what happened, because of course since she wouldn't talk to Rhun he talked to me instead, and I couldn't not respond. I kept trying to herd her into the conversation, but she wouldn't be herded…just sat there trying not to look at him.
I know why she's doing it. She knows her face gives her away when she's around him. Anyone with one good eye in his head could see it, except somehow Rhun himself, and she is mortified at the thought that the king and queen, or indeed anyone else in court, should suspect her of being in love with someone universally known to being imminently betrothed to someone else. Oh, it makes me want to eat nails. I know she still thinks, in spite of my reassurances, that my marriage to Rhun is all but inevitable. Mae isn't used to flouting authority. Fortunately I have plenty of experience in that area.
Rhun was full of stories of his travels, relating eagerly how he had spent time on a fishing boat helping haul the nets, talking to the harbor merchants and looking over their stock, time with the shepherds in the highlands, trying his hand at shearing. In true honest Rhun-fashion he told the bad with the good, laughing over his own mishaps, which included, among other things, being run up a rock face by an overly-protective sheepdog and toppling backwards into a fishwife's rubbish pile, which made him reek for days and drew every cat for twenty miles. "Not very forgiving creatures, cats," he grinned, holding up a wrist scrawled with the white scars of claw-marks. "When they found out I wasn't some enormous dead thing, they wouldn't put up with my peacemaking efforts at all."
I confess the idea of Rhun struggling with a sheep was amusing. But it makes sense, now that I think of it, that a king (or future one) should go out among his people and see how they really live. To get his hands dirty with the sort of work that seems below him. I was proud of him.
There was a moment he grew sober and quiet, and picked at his meat thoughtfully. When pressed, he sighed, and told of one family whose young daughter had died of a fever the very day they arrived. The family was carrying her out just as he came near the house.
"All I could see of her," he said quietly, "were her little feet, hanging out of the crook of her father's arm. They were so small…"he stopped for a moment, and I had to lean forward to hear him. "And I felt, somehow, like it was my fault. Like I could have done something."
I sat back, dismayed. "Rhun. Children…all people…get ill and die. You can't save them all, no matter what you do."
He glanced up quickly, his eyes brilliant and troubled, and back down. "I know. But it seems like I should. You should have seen how the mother looked at me. As though she hated me for it."
"She was grieving," I said, pained to see such sadness on his face – so out of place, like a corpse in a field of flowers. "People say and think all kinds of irrational things when they are mourning."
"Perhaps," he acknowledged, and the conversation turned to other things.
He didn't say whether the family couldn't afford a healer, or had no access to medicine, or if they were poor and malnourished to begin with. But I could see him thinking grand, desperate, impossible thoughts that all began with "when I am king…" It's a terrible responsibility, really. Why anyone fights over the right to rule is beyond me. Magg was a fool. Not that I believe he would have troubled himself over the death of anyone's child.
It was a lovely time, though, overall. Rhuddlum and Teleria were so visibly proud of him, and everyone was so joyful and lively. I do hope the ball will be more of the same. I've the most heavenly gown to wear – all blue velvet and silver embroidery, with tiny crystal jewels. It looks just like a star-strewn sky. I wish Taran could see me in it. Though he'd probably not notice at all, or just say I looked terribly uncomfortable!
Humph.
I just read over what I wrote, and laughed at myself. First that I even thought to mention what I was wearing, and then that I managed to get irritated with Taran for disappointing me when he's not even here! The truth is I spent several moments, after writing that I wished he could see me, daydreaming about exactly that. And in my dream, his reaction was…well, never mind. Just by the end of it I felt so fluttery and warm that I had to pull myself back by imagining a more realistic scenario. Which then made me annoyed with him! I have clearly gone mad.
Well, anyway, I will admit that there is a distinct pleasure in wearing beautiful things and knowing you look nice in them. I've always been scornful of the way the girls here twitter over their clothes and spend hours primping, and I shouldn't want to stoop to that sort of vanity. And it's certainly true that the more beautiful something is, the more likely it is to be uncomfortable and impractical. Yards of skirts that you trip over. Shoes that pinch and make you walk as though your toes have been cut off. Bodices laced so tightly you can hardly breathe. Crowns that fall off unless you hold your head just the right way. Give me a good pair of leggings and a linen shirt any day over the idiotic frumpery that pervades these courts.
But…for special occasions, I can resign myself to the sacrifice. One doesn't expect to be doing practical things in formal attire, anyway. Fancy chopping wood in a ball gown, or…or cooking with a crown on! Perhaps that is the secret reason for such clothing. Nobody can accuse nobility of being useless if the reason they can't do any honest work is because they aren't dressed for it.
Belin, I'm full of nonsense today. All the merriment last night and excitement over the ball is making me silly. It won't do; I'm supposed to be thinking up strategies about Rhun and Mae, and that may take all the mental acuity I possess.
.
Over a year since my last update. I KNOW.
I'm sorry y'all. It's just...my mind is this haze of coupons and diapers and preschool workbooks and runny noses and that weird smell in the garage. I am domesticity personified and I am totally happy with that, but it doesn't leave a lot of time for writing frivolity. It was looking at my last publish date and realizing how long it had been that prompted me to sit down during naptime and force something out; it did not flow effortlessly and I feel like I have lost a lot of "voice", but I will do my best to push through the dry spell. I will never abandon this story - it just might take me the rest of my life to write it.