VISCOUNTESS SARAH BOLINGBROKE TO H.R.H. JARETH, GOBLIN KING

Your Highness,

I write this to you on my wedding night. Given that I am engaged in putting pen to paper and not breathless in the arms of my husband, I can already imagine the smug satisfaction on your face at what surely must have been a disappointing first encounter. And you would be right that there was disappointment.

But there was also, as you might have guessed, discovery. And now, at this late hour, alone with my own thoughts, I find myself strangely contented.

I am not unaware that writing this letter as a married woman now places the act somewhere beyond questionable and into the realm of dangerous. Or perhaps I choose to believe it so, because my emotions have been so volatile of late that I feel the desire to simply wade unprotected into danger.

The wedding, if you wish to know, was a brief affair. I wore a light beige dress with white ribbons and lace and fresh flowers in my hair, twisted and tied in a fashion that took Abigail over an hour to complete. My mother seemed to be on the verge of shedding a tear when she saw me, though my father, not surprisingly, only nodded in what I surmise was a show of satisfaction.

(I find that I can no longer look him in the eye.)

There were so few people present at the ceremony—only our parents, servants, and some other members of the Bolingbroke family who I have already forgotten but who I suppose I will be required to remember later. Roger looked pleasant enough. Everything happened in a very small church, and I remember little of the Latin benediction.

I do remember that Roger kissed me on the mouth when the moment arrived, which was a bit of a shock—I had been prepared for him to not kiss me at all, or kiss me on the forehead or cheek. He seemed rather proud of himself that he had done it.

The wedding breakfast was a grand meal: ham, eggs, rice pudding, buttered rolls, cold beef tongue, and drinking chocolate, with a dense cake so drenched in spirits that I was certain it might have clouded my judgment. I admit that I ate heartily, having been afflicted with a nervous stomach in the days leading up to the wedding.

I had assumed that we would take a carriage to Petworth after the ceremony, or perhaps to the smaller estate at Blunham that was to be our home. But no, shortly after breakfast I learned that we were to take a short honeymoon in Cheltenham and the Cotswolds. Apparently Lady Bolingbroke had chosen the location for the reparative quality of its waters.

I was not averse to the idea of a cleansing. I still saw this as a beginning, as an opportunity to start anew.

The carriage ride took half a day. Just as my first meeting with Roger had been my first time to be alone with a man who was not my father, so this carriage ride was the longest I had ever spent in another man's presence. I tried to engage Roger in conversation, and we did manage to converse about the landscape and his childhood, though at some point he seemed to prefer silence. Knowing that a nattering woman is anathema to most men, I turned demure for the remainder of the trip.

We arrived at our lodgings with a few hours of light still remaining in the sky, and as I had never traveled anywhere other than London and the convent I was excited by this strange new world with its mushroom-shaped yew trees and rolling green hills. Much of it reminded me of your labyrinth, actually, with its otherworldliness. I must have looked quite the silly girl as I frolicked between those trees. Roger smiled a bit as he watched me, though his smile, as always, seemed tinged with sadness.

There was a pleasant enough dinner at the lodging, and further talk of the weather and the landscape, but we both knew what awaited us, and while I looked to our wedding night with a mixture of nervousness and anticipation, I felt that Roger only looked toward it with fear.

My heart fluttered a bit at the thought of having to use very blunt language with him, but I remembered your words. Surely talking plainly with my own husband would not be an insurmountable challenge?

After much dallying over dessert and a glass of port (I admit I had a bit and it went straight to my head, but a small amount of wine seemed a good idea), we finally found ourselves alone in a small bedroom, the silence stretching between us. Roger sat on the edge of the bed, stood, and then sat again, and finally I sat next to him.

"May we…speak plainly?" I finally said to him.

He looked at me, looked away, and nodded. I screwed up my courage and continued.

"Is it unpleasant for you to be touched?" I asked.

He nodded quickly and my heart sank a little, for I could not well imagine how one consummates a marriage without physical contact. But, as you are fond of saying, I am not without imagination.

"Is there something I could do, or not do, that would please you?"

He looked me full in the face then, and I saw so much pain there that I wanted to reach out and comfort him, but I remembered his violent reaction to that sort of gesture before and kept my hands at my sides.

When he finally spoke, his voice seemed full of wonder. "You are kind," he said.

"I would…be devoted to you, if you would have me," I told him.

He reached out to me, but then he winced as if in pain and stood up, pacing the room.

And then he told me everything. How he had been months under siege with his regiment, and every hour, every day was only the smell, the sight of carnage. How whenever he was touched he felt only the memory of cold flesh or hot viscera spilling into his hands. How after some time he could not see a whole human body anymore without also seeing it in pieces.

I must have blanched at his words, for he said, "I will stop, if you wish."

I told him no, it was best that I know everything, painful though it may be to hear. So he continued, and told me that some companions who were perhaps less affected by the day-to-day realities of life on the battlefield got him drunk and took him to a whore in an attempt to cure him of his malady, but when she opened her legs for him he ran screaming from the room, because…I find it hard to write the words, but because…her female parts reminded him too much of an open wound.

(Though I have admittedly never seen that part of a woman's body up close, I could imagine how he saw it in that moment, and it was indeed horrifying.)

After that night Roger's truly base companions had a laugh with others at his expense, and rumors spread, and a pall hung over his family, and possible prospects for engagement dwindled.

"But then there was your family, that had shame of its own," he said. "So we were an ideal pair."

I was angry to hear my family described in such a way and thought to defend myself, but there was no venom in his words, only resignation. And he was right, as I now knew from your story—my family was shrouded in shame, even if the doing was all my father's.

We were silent for a long time. Roger let me turn his words over in my head for as long as I needed. Finally I asked him, "What is to become of us, then?"

He looked at me, and there was some warmth in his face, though it was faint. "They keep saying I will recover—the men in my regiment, my parents, doctors. And perhaps I will. But I do not know when. Until then…I cannot be fully a husband to you. I cannot…perform the duties of a husband. I cannot give you a child."

My heart did break a bit at those words. I felt an iron door closing in front of me, imagining long years ahead of me with not even children to keep me company, my bed eternally cold.

"But I would not deprive you of happiness," he continued. "You could seek your pleasure elsewhere."

My mouth must have fallen open with shock. "Elsewhere?"

Roger nodded as if this were entirely normal. "It is done, I hear tell from others. No one need know, your reputation need not suffer. You could even…have a child, if you wanted."

I felt the very ground giving way beneath my feet at his words. Only a few months before I had lived an orderly life in a convent. Now I found myself married but told that my marriage might never be consummated and that I was free to seek physical pleasure with others, even to have a child with others. What madness was this life that my parents had chosen for me?

Roger stood and told me that he would have another drink in the drawing room of our lodgings—nightmares made it impossible for him to sleep, and he did not wish to wake me with his screaming. He left without so much as a kiss on my cheek.

It seemed I was to suffer one final humiliation—sleeping alone on my own wedding night.

I do not hate Roger, or blame him. The horrors he has seen, and will continue to see…I do not know whether I could live through such things and remain untouched in spirit. But I cannot help but be angry at the world—the world that destroyed any chance of a truly happy and complete union between the two of us.

I do not know how long I remained awake. Surely I sat for some time feeling nothing but emptiness. Then I believe I wept, softly at first and then louder, until I could not catch my breath and all but ripped my stays in my desire to be free of everything that confined me. When I finally stopped weeping I realized that I was wearing only my shift, my hair hanging wild around my face.

And then my mind turned to ownership. And choices.

You were right, I think, to tell me that I have never been granted true ownership of anything, not even my own body. When I gaze at the days and years ahead of me, I see that almost nothing in them—nothing at all—will be of my own choosing.

I did not choose the convent. I did not choose Roger. I did not choose the dark cloud that hangs over my family. In a way I will not even choose to have children or be childless—they will never be born, or they will be placed within me like linens in a drawer.

I never chose what was to be done with my body, either. For years it belonged to the nuns, made to rise and sleep and pray at their whim, and now I suppose it belongs to Roger until I die, even if he has no desire for it. It has never truly belonged to me.

But in that moment, brought low as low could be and with all artifice stripped away, I wondered if I could perhaps finally take ownership of it.

I looked at myself in the bedroom mirror and was struck by what I saw—my hair hanging wild around my face, my cheeks flushed, the angles of my body faintly visible under my shift, my skin glowing slightly in the light of the candelabra. I realized that I had never even seen my own body fully revealed in a mirror. How could I own it if I did not know it?

I stood and pulled my shift over my head.

I had never seen myself revealed in this way, and my first instinct, honestly, was to cover my eyes in horror, for the body in front of me seemed an alien thing, a thing that belonged to someone else (which, as I have made clear, it always has). But I was determined, and I remembered the bravery that got me through your labyrinth, and I forced my eyes to look at myself.

I noted my tousled hair, its dark waves falling over my bare and lightly freckled shoulders. In the glow of the candles I could see the curve of my breasts and their dark tips, the pale slope of my stomach. I lifted my hands to my nipples and felt a rush of electricity that seemed to travel all through me. I watched my hands move lower, over the dark hair between my legs, until they touched something soft and delicate and shockingly warm…

I watched my mouth in the mirror fall open in a gasp, teeth biting my lower lip as I moved fingers over myself, fumbling and uncertain, but learning quickly.

And then, as you suggested, I closed my eyes and imagined other hands on me, perhaps one gripping the side of my neck and holding my body in place as it trembled, the other one moving lower and slipping within that soft, hot place, perhaps more expertly than my own inexperienced fingers. And when I gasped again the first hand would cover my mouth and a voice would whisper in my ear to be quiet, the house is abed, you must not wake them, all the while moving fast and deliberate between my legs, while the the first hand pushed a finger between my lips and then, wet, slid over my breast to circle the nipple…

Mine, I whispered to myself. Mine. This is all mine.

And when I opened my eyes my face was flushed pink, and the hand that I removed from between my legs was glistening.

(Can you see all of this? Can you see my eyes with their piercing stare, my lips full and flushed, a faint sheen of sweat on my forehead, my body uncovered and unafraid, and utterly, entirely mine?)

I once told you that you had no power over me. But I also had very little power over you…or only the power of rejection.

Now, though, I think I have found a new power.

For I can imagine the words in this letter slipping beneath your clothes and effecting changes in your body like the changes I effected in mine. My words, my words, have the power to make your breath quicken, to make your heart beat faster, to make you feel heat in all manner of places.

I could get drunk on power like this, fleeting though it might be.

I wonder what you would do to me, should you find me ready and willing in front of a mirror.

Could you truly leave me as "soft-limbed and spent" as those wished-away brides you claim to have satisfied so thoroughly? And could you do it only with words written on a page?

I somehow doubt that you could improve upon the ecstasy I was able to bring upon myself, but surely you enjoy a challenge.

I promise not to thank you again until you are truly deserving of it.

Yours,

Sarah