It was raining, just barely; nothing more than a simple sun shower, mostly drizzle. But Lucy's ladies-in-waiting all refused to take her out into the garden or the courtyard on account of the so-called 'bad weather' all the same. Instead, they more or less made her sit by the window with a piece of cloth and a selection of many-coloured threads to work on embroidering a sampler.
Lucy couldn't help thinking that it was perfectly beastly of them to boss her around as if they were her elder sisters rather than her servants, like she wasn't even their queen. Just because she was accused of being with one of her knights did not give them the right to act as if she was an errant toddler who needed a slap on the wrist and firm direction. Of course they never physically hit her-that would have been treason-but they could be unreasonable in a way that-Lucy felt-was quite on purpose more often than not.
There was absolutely nothing the matter with the weather-it was a few lousy water droplets, not a thunderstorm. And since they wouldn't tell her anything useful, or say anything of real comfort, it seemed the least they could do would be to let her go outside for her hour out-of-doors. All the same, she knew she daren't ask them to let her go on her own. The one time she'd tried it they'd given her such an intense unanimous glower that she hadn't much choice but to crumble under its weight. It was almost as if they simply assumed that the moment she was on her own she would be flying into another knight's arms, betraying her husband again.
Placing her needle down (weary of sewing, never having liked it all that much to begin with), Lucy reached up and touched the seed-pearls she still wore around her neck, lightly dragging her thumb long the little dagger pendant. No one knew it was from Edmund, so it was safe for her to wear it still.
Then there was a knock at the chamber doors, and the badger manservant-who Lucy had learned was called Trufflehunter-waddled in. "A visitor, your Majesty," he announced meekly.
Confused, Lucy removed the unfinished sampler from her lap and stood up, peering curiously towards the door as a tall, familiar-looking young man walked in.
Her lips parted and a cry of joy ran out of her throat, filling the whole previously-dreary room with momentary happiness. "Peter!"
"Lu!" As her elder brother he chose to forgo formalities and rush to her with his arms open.
"Oh, Peter!" screamed the poor little queen, more of a frightened, lost child found at long last than anything else at the moment; throwing herself into her brother's arms and clinging to him for dear-life. She then promptly began sobbing into his lower chest, unable to help herself, or make herself stop once she had started.
"Shh...it's all right..." whispered Peter, placing a hand tenderly on her hairline and bending down to kiss the very top of her forehead.
"I've missed you so much," Lucy told him, mumbling in so low a voice that if he hadn't known her so well, hadn't been able to guess at what she meant to say, he wouldn't have understood a word of it.
"Who's this one?" a snippy lady-in-waiting's voice demanded.
"It's Sir Peter," someone answered airily in an off-hand manner; "the queen's brother."
"What's he doing here?"
"His Majesty, King Caspian, granted him passage." said Trufflehunter.
"We will talk alone, Lu." Peter decided, taking one of his little sister's hands in his own and leading her towards the doors.
"His Majesty has put the queen in our charge," a middle-aged chambermaid told him rather gruffly.
"She is a queen, not a scullery-child, and if she is in anyone's charge, it's mine." Peter snapped back, his blue eyes fixing coldly, not only upon the maid who had spoken up, but also on all the other ladies-in-waiting as well-a solid warning for them not to stand in his way. He had not come so far, nor fought so hard to see her, simply to have her snatched away so quickly by a bunch of know-it-all women. "I am her brother; I have been watching after Lucy since she was a baby. Besides, it isn't as if we are going far, just out to the garden."
"The rain's cleared up," Lucy pointed out; "and I've not had my hour yet."
"You will be back in time for tea, Your Grace?"
Lucy nodded. "Yes, I believe so. Come along, Peter."
The air in the garden was fresh and cool, the way it only is after a partially wet morning, and the sun peered through the dark-edged clouds in a gentle, golden manner. But it wasn't the weather that held Queen Lucy's attention at the moment-it was her brother. She had so much she wanted to ask him; and once she was sure they were out of ear-shot of everyone except for the possibility of a talking mole or two, busy trimming the rose bushes and digging in the mulch, she dared to voice them.
"Where's Susan? I haven't seen her since I've come back...I even tried sending for her once...I thought because she was Edmund's sister she might know..."
"She knows nothing," sighed Peter, walking with his hands behind his back, clicking his tongue sadly; "and-Aslan willing-that is how it will remain. I've left her in the countryside to keep her safe."
"Oh, Peter, it was her arrow...wasn't it?" Lucy whispered shakily, a memory of that night she and Ed had jumped the drawbridge flickering into her mind-flashing briefly like a second of dark lightning.
He glanced both ways, then nodded.
"I see," said Lucy, closing her eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply, and then opening them again. "Do you know where Edmund is? I've tried asking so many times, but ever since that night no one will tell me much of anything."
"I've seen him," said Peter.
"When?" Lucy found herself holding her breath.
"A day or so ago," he replied. "In the dungeon."
She grimaced. "Aren't they going to let him go?"
"I don't know, Lu."
"They could just send him away somewhere," she said softly, biting her lip between words to hold back the tears welling up in her eyes. "Edmund's harmless, they could let him go to the countryside where Susan is, nobody would have to know."
Peter didn't answer; he just looked very grave and seemed to be avoiding her eyes a little bit.
"You sent him to the Lone Islands, don't they have to let him go there?"
"Lucy, the islands will never accept him as an ambassador after what he's been accused of. They are all already aware of his charges-and they've never even met him."
"Oh, Aslan," wept the little queen, placing her face into her hands. "We've done nothing...we only kissed once..."
Peter arched an eyebrow.
Blushing in spite of everything, Lucy opened her fingers, peering at her elder brother through them, realizing that he might not have known that bit of information until she'd volunteered it.
"Lucy," he said, realizing something, "this didn't happen on the night before...before the drawbridge incident?"
Swallowing hard, she nodded. "We went to a hill to see the eclipse and my son-I mean, Prince Rilian, thought we...but we didn't...Ed would never, neither would I."
"That was why he wanted to go away," Peter murmured, speaking more to himself than to Lucy. "That's why he needed my help."
"What's going to happen to him now?"
"I told you, I don't know." he moaned, glancing over his shoulder at the nearby sundial they had just passed. "We'd best go inside before your ladies have a fit."
Turning around and walking back towards the castle walls, her brother still at her side, Lucy asked, "Has Caspian said anything...about me?"
"Some," Peter admitted in a very withholding sort of voice.
"Is he still angry?"
"Oh, I can't say."
Lucy's brow crinkled. "You can't tell whether or not the king is angry?"
"No," chuckled Peter, bitterly. "I literally can't say. The rotten royal counsel made me sign something."
Lucy forced a weak smile. "What about Rilian?"
"Same."
"I wish one of them would send for me...I think about them a lot..." her eyes drifted over towards the open doorway they were coming to. "Especially as the hours go by...I feel so stupid, Peter, waiting here, like I've let everyone down without lifting a finger. It's all slipping away; everything our parents wanted for me, everything the king wanted from me, everything I might have had if someone had given me a choice. It's all drifting. There's no justice here anymore, just loss."
"I know what you would have done if you'd been given a choice." Peter added quietly.
"You do?" asked Lucy, intrigued by his response. "What would I have done?"
"It would be treason to say you wouldn't have married the king," said Peter, diplomatically.
She pursed her lips in confusion for a moment, not understanding what he meant, until she noticed his eyes shifting for the slightest passing second down to the dagger pendant hanging from the seed-pearls around her neck. It figured Peter would be the only one to know who the necklace was from.
"I really miss him." Lucy admitted, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist.
The ladies-in-waiting who had over-heard her saying that all assumed, not knowing about the dagger pendant and not quite involved in the conversation enough to have caught Peter's subtle drift, that Queen Lucy had meant the king. Some thought her repentant, and for the sake of her youth and harmlessness loved her as their queen again, resolving to be less hard on her. Others believed her, without reason, to be a liar. They did not approve of her. The truth, however, was that she had not, just then, meant the king at all.
Sometime that evening, four or five members of the royal guard-one of them a faun, the others human-sat on duty in the dungeon area, playing cards in the pus-coloured light of a poorly maintained oil lamp. At least one of them was convinced that somebody in the group had to be cheating, but since no one appeared to be winning steadily enough, and what with the rum light and all that, it was hard to say for sure who the culprit was.
"Are you cheating?" the most squinty-eyed of the group demanded of the faun at last, noticing that he had won the last round, though not the eight before it.
"I am," one guard mumbled to himself, "and I'm still losing. I haven't won a round yet! I hate rummy!"
"We're playing poker!"
"We are?"
"I thought this was crazy eights!" cried the faun in dismay.
"Does this mean I win?"
"Go fish!"
"Huh?"
"Wrong game!"
"Oh, sorry."
"Your cards are facing the wrong way, you dolt, I can see them all!"
"Dreadfully sorry,"
"Perhaps we should look into taking up chess again."
"And have sixteen prisoners leering at me through the bars, plotting to steal the gold and silver and marble chessmen? I think not!"
"This is boring, I hate dungeon duty, when's supper?"
"Nothing ever happens!"
Suddenly their whining was interrupted by a loud scream from one of the prisoners, making them all jump in their seats, glancing at each other as if to say, "Who just willed that to happen?"
Nevertheless, they all stood up and went over to the cell the cry had come from. They were probably all wondering if it was a trick, yet they figured that they were match enough for one prisoner if he attempted an escape. And the scream had sounded genuine, not put-on.
"It's that blasted nobody, Edmund Philippe, I think." said the guard who had thought they were playing rummy. "This is his cell, is it not?"
"Is he hurt?"
"Someone open the door and find out."
"Get behind me, all of you, in case the traitor tries anything when we open the door." The one who was under the impression that they'd been in a game of go fish ordered.
When they opened the door, they peered anxiously around the dark cell and called, "Hi! You in there! What's amiss?"
The face that glanced up at them from the bunk was very, very white-the sort of discolouring that comes only from serious ailments, but they told themselves it might just be a trick of light. It wasn't too unusual for a prisoner to look like he'd been to the underworld and back, living in the dark day after day.
"I'm all right," the former knight's weak voice answered them, sounding dazed and uncertain, panting wearily. "It was just a bad dream. I'm sorry to have bothered you."
"He sounds unwell," the faun whispered to the guard nearest him. "Do you suppose he's taken sick?"
"Get him an extra blanket and a hot-water bottle, he'll be fine. He's only had a nightmare, nothing worse."
"Look at the way he's lying in his bunk...he looks unbalanced...he might fall right off."
"That's not our problem if he does."
An hour later, they heard a loud thump coming from Edmund Philippe's cell. At first they did nothing, waiting absently for the expected sound of the former knight pulling himself up with a light grunt, the faint echo of his boots scraping against the hard floor. But they heard nothing. And as three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes slipped by without a single noise, they became worried.
"Edmund Philippe?" The cell door opened for the second time that night.
No answer.
"Edmund Philippe?"
Nothing.
"There he is!" said the one guard who had been bright enough to carry a lantern in there with him, pointing to the corner near the inscription about Aslan's mercy.
Edmund was lying perfectly still on the floor, one side of his face pressed to the ground, sweat dripping down his pale forehead.
The faun wandered over to him and touched his cheek lightly. "Oh, by the Lion!"
"What is it?"
"He's burning with fever! He is ill."
"I wouldn't be surprised if this place had the bloody plague," muttered the guard who had admitted to cheating earlier.
"What do we do?"
"Call King Caspian-he'll tell us what to do with him."
"We can't leave him here," said the faun. "If he were any other prisoner..."
"He's a traitor, we're not at liberty to take him out of his cell without consent from either the king or his son."
"We don't have time to wait for the king; he could be in a meeting and the prisoner could die before he gets here."
"Would make the king's life easier, he wouldn't have to execute him."
"Someone fetch Prince Rilian at once," said the faun, ignoring that last comment.
As luck would have it, King Caspian was not in a meeting; he was in the courtyard for a late night stroll, his son at his side, when a messenger came running over, announcing that Edmund Philippe had taken ill in prison.
Rilian suggested they do nothing, but his father shook his head, putting a slightly reproving hand on his son's shoulder, and told the guards to bring the boy to a guest chamber. "Give him as much water as he'll drink, if he can keep it down, and then send for the physician. I myself will be along shortly."
"Your Majesty, what are the guards in panic about?" Sir Peter, walking along with a few other courtiers (the ones who didn't dislike him) when he heard some loud whispering between the king and the guards' messenger.
King Caspian swallowed hard. "Sir Peter, I will tell you something, as you are one of my most loyal knights, but you will not breathe a word of this to your sister, lest you fall out of my favor for ever, do you understand?"
Peter nodded, a tightening feeling in his chest beginning-as if it knew before he did that it was something horrid.
"Edmund Philippe is very ill...he's gotten some sort of fever...we don't want to frighten the court, nor the other prisoners, so we are going to keep this as quiet as possible. In the meantime, I will see to it that he is nursed back to health."
Shutting his eyes, Peter muttered, "Oh, Aslan."
"Remember, not a word of this to the queen."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"Good man," Caspian sighed, walking away, signaling for Rilian to follow.
"You heard the King, Pevensie." said a fellow knight, one who was none too fond of Peter-always having been a little jealous of him and his rank-after over-hearing Caspian. "If you tell Queen Lucy, you go down."
"Shut up, what do you take me for?" Peter scowled at him.
"I daresay, even telling that wife of yours, Lady Susan, in a letter would almost amount to...hmm, treason?"
"He's her brother, and she is away in the countryside, who would know? Besides, you speak as if treason was anything the king decided it to be, on a whim." Glowering hard, Peter put his hand on his sword hilt protectively.
"It could be," he replied coolly.
"No, it really couldn't."
"You love your wife, don't you?"
Peter furrowed his brows. "What kind of stupid question is that?"
"Would be a pity if a little bird chirruped in his Majesty's ear about the fact that she hasn't been called in for questioning...and that...arrow..."
The blood drained slowly from Peter's face. "How do you know about that?"
"My uncle was the man who's arm she injured that night," said the wicked knight smugly, knowing he had Peter right where he wanted him. "But I don't want to say anything; I don't want to see that pretty woman's neck on the block."
Peter let go of his sword hilt and grabbed onto the front of the knight's tunic. "If you say anything..."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, remember you want to be on my good side."
"What do you want from me?" demanded Peter, speaking through gritted teeth.
"Because I'm so wonderfully generous and understanding, I give you two options." he said slowly, in a slimy-sounding tone.
"One, you leave court without telling anyone, your sister and her pathetic little traitor of a lover included, sending a letter of resignation and retirement from knighthood and the army to King Caspian in the post. And you never show your face in court again. Ever. Or your lovely wife's treason comes to light."
Ever so slowly, feeling like he was drowning, Peter loosened his grip on his enemy's tunic. "What's the other option?"
"You testify against your sister and your brother-in-law, and you join in the rebellion against the queen, with those of us meaning to replace her."
At this, Peter very nearly threw up. "What rebellion?"
"Caspian wants to keep Lucy as queen, but some of us are working against that. Join us or leave court for ever, the choice is yours. Oh, but make it tonight, your current presence is irritating me greatly, makes me think of my poor injured uncle...perhaps I will bring it up to the king in a few hours."
That night, left with no choice, feeling torn in half between saving his sister and saving his wife, Peter quietly loaded a carriage, got two horses ready, and went back to his manor in the countryside. As the journey progressed, he wept for sheer hatred. Hatred of the rebellion, hatred of the notion of treason, and hatred of himself for abandoning his sister who he had loved above all others. Alone and soon to be without title, soon to return to his wife having to confess his failure to rescue their siblings, he shed bitter tears.
AN: That's all for now...Please review.