PART II: PLAYERS (1537-1540)
Chapter 21: Mea Culpa
Hevrest, Southern Broceland, January 1537
The sky was the loveliest shade of violet tonight. The days here went from white to pink. Then, finally, from purple to black. Each slipped effortlessly and almost unnoticeably into the other. But Julian's eyes were a rarity. He had a gifted eye, that of an artist, and he felt each shift in the day's lighting as easily as he felt the shift from a warm room to a cold one. He could track the merest slither of colour in any situation and hold that picture with perfect clarity in his mind's eye until he could translate them onto canvas.
Julian's father worried about him. The Duke of Lyn thought his son a fanciful boy and an odd one. Andrew couldn't understand why Julian preferred sketching and music to blades and fast horses. Even now, though he might be balanced on the back of the kindling cart, Julian's mind was elsewhere.
Bemused as he was with the boy's interests, the Duke of Lyn tolerated them. Mainly because Julian had been his mother's pet. The Duchess had always indulged his playing with charcoal and paints. With the poor woman scarce cold in her grave, the Duke could not deprive the child of anything else.
If she were still here, the Duchess would reprimand, "Let him be a child. He will grow up soon enough."
Be that as it may, the Duke worried he would have to arrange a wardship soon. He could not very well pack off a boy with his head in the clouds and not a scrap of life sense to another noble family. Hence the impetus for bringing Julian along on today's expedition.
The counties of his dukedom, curving around Lake Lyn, were famed for their stunning lakes and lush farmland. But for the annual timber haul one had to traipse up over the border with Broceland. There, they'd buy the bulk of their wood from one of the huge forest's lumberjacks. It was an inconvenient and time-consuming stomp northward, but since his wife's passing the Duke was finding any excuses at all to escape their house. The longer he could spend away from the wailing babe she'd left behind, the inescapable proof of the role he had played in her death, the better.
However, as he had never personally made the journey before nothing had prepared the Duke for the cold of the winter further north. Things were by no means warm in his southern counties but compared to the raw, bitter air here, its climate looked practically Mediterranean. The nights fell quicker too. Though it only the fifth hour after noon, already it was fast growing dark.
That captivated the boy hunched over the lantern light in the empty cart. Julian committed to memory how the silhouettes of the trees stood out, their bare branches like fingers clawing against the lavender-grey sky. At least, he had only ever heard them described as such, according to his elder half-brother who fancied himself a poet. But they did not look like fingers, not really. They were too thin. More like cracks of shadow, or even the mad tangle of a maid's hair.
Julain's pondering was interrupted too soon by the return of his father. Having pulled them to a halt to relieve himself the Duke now trudged back loudly, twigs snapping under him while he clapped at his hands to warm them.
"Julian," he barked, causing his son to leap to attention, "Sit up properly, would you? If you don't pitch off the cart, your eyes will give out, straining in this dark."
His son made no reply but straightened up obediently.
"Are we nearly there?" The Duke asked next of their driver, who looked to have dozed off. Slapping unashamedly at his own cheeks to rejuvenate himself, he gave a huffing answer, "The tavern is only a half hour off."
"Are you sure?" Andrew Blackthorn asked drily as he swung himself back into his seat. "You said as much an hour ago." They lurched onwards, the two men wrangling their way through a pointless argument. They were gripped in their squabble fiercely enough that they failed to notice the thinning of the trees and the pinpricks of torchlight that they were fast approaching. Soon voices were detectable too.
"Father," Julian started, scrabbling his way on his hands and knees along the rocking deck of the cart, "Father!"
Eventually, when his son was almost on top of him and he had to pay heed, the Duke turned his head. "What is it?"
"Look!"
Andrew narrowed his eyes and tilted forward, still unable to make out what exactly they were riding into. "We must be at Hevrest at last."
"Not enough light," Julian protested keenly, "It's a line of torches." Sure enough, not a half mile down the road they were forced to stop again, this time by a portly, red-faced man in the uniform of a town magistrate. "Who goes there?"
"Make way at once for His Grace the Duke," Their driver called out immediately from habit.
"Impossible!" The magistrate disputed, sticking out his round chest. Julian frowned, his nose twitching as he tried to detect what the tang on the crisp air was. He had already identified the reek of beer off their stout, self-important barrier, but not the accompanying, more powerful odour.
"I am the Duke of Lyn, you dunderhead!" Andrew thundered.
"I beg pardon Your Grace," The magistrate grumbled, appearing not altogether convinced, "But I have strict orders from the Duke of Broceland that no one is to pass this way. None can interfere with the King's justice."
"All that is being interfered with here is my fireplace," Andrew muttered irritably. Then he added, louder, "How else am I supposed to reach the village? I need a room tonight for myself and my son. It is dark and we are miles from home."
Before he could receive a reply, a shrill, piercing cry pierced the shadows. For the second time, Julian felt every muscle in his body jerk and then tense.
"What the devil is going on here?" The Duke began, only to be interrupted again by a clamour of spiked, angry voices and another wail, petering off into noisy sobs. Another decidedly female voice rose, this one swelling with a flood of curses.
"Get out of the way, man!" Andrew boomed, jumping down from the cart and marching in the direction of the fray, an arm shooting out to latch onto his son. Julian was hauled off the cart and trailed along, confused and disconcerted. "We are gentlemen! Where there are ladies in distress, we needs must lend whatever aid we can," The Duke insisted, easily shoving the magistrate out of his way. The other man crumpled upon the contact, crashing down onto his backside. It might have been funny, but nothing about the situation seemed to warrant laughter.
Upon making their way into ring of damning torchlight, the Blackthorns froze, watching horrified and helplessly as the grotesque tableau before them unfolded. There were armed men forcing back a small gaggle of yammering, distraught women. One, not very old-hardly twenty- was clinging to another, taller girl and weeping hideously.
The woman they had heard from the road was still throatily swearing and calling vengeance, while being thrust bodily backward by two more soldiers while she kicked and screamed.
"Away! Away to your homes!" One of the armoured men bellowed, as if he were shooing a yard full of scavenging cats and not a group of anguished women. Slowly, dizzily now the terrible smell from earlier was at its most overpowering, Julian turned to see the cause of their upset.
Before now, their cook at Bellgate had taken him up to the tower loft, to the pigeon coop. Once, Julian loved it there, in spite of the heady animal stink. He found the low rumbling coos and hoots soothing and liked feeling the sturdy warmth of the birds' plump, feathered little bodies in his cupped palms. Now Julian remembered why he no longer went up there, why he also avoided the chicken pens and duck ponds. It was impossible, one you had seen it, to erase the picture of the limp rows of birds no longer warm and noisy but hanging lifelessly from their necks in the cool store house.
It was the same now, facing a row of unmoving, dangling bodies. Only worse. The women were not protesting the hanging, no, that had taken place some time ago. The real grievance was that the remains of some ten men were still hanging untended from the boughs of the nearby trees. Rotting.
Leaving the women who loved them left unable to do anything but stand here every day, every night too possibly, protesting with their presence. Offering in solidarity whatever they could: their tears, their curses, or far more chillingly- their damning silence.
At last, the hands of the closest guard closed on the shoulders of the stunned boy.
With his cold face warming slowly with tears, Julian Blackthorn struggled with all the strength he had, in vain. For what could he do?
He was dragged with his father out of the torchlight and back into the dark.
-0000000000000-
Princewater Palace, Alicante, January 1537
Isabelle had lost count of how many times she had paced around this little fountain. She was starting to loathe that strumpet of a water nymph, prancing shamelessly in the stream of falling water. Or would have, had the water not been frozen solid.
She stomped around in circles to ward off the worst of the chill, her breath steaming in front of lips and billowing over her shoulder as a ghostly banner. Isabelle's fingers clenched tight inside the sable muff her mother had gifted her for Christmas. It was a hand me down, of course, but Isabelle had accepted without complaint. Though she knew it to be a sobering reminder of how desperate their situation was becoming, it did keep her hands warm.
It was unusual for her to be out of bed at such an early hour, let alone out of doors, but she needed a time and a place no one would stumble upon for this meeting. The dead, icy gardens would not be in use so soon after dawn. And there were no gardeners this time of year. With the frozen paths more like the surface of a bottle than gravel, they were much too treacherous for any lord or lady's early morning stroll.
This slip of ground had been sheltered from the worst of the frost by the rim of the fountain bowl, so it would suffice for Isabelle's pacing. She feared that if she did not move, she would perish in the cold. But think, she tried to cheer herself, what a pretty addition to the fountain you would make.
Reliably, while he might be late, Simon made a grand entrance.
He tried to stride meaningfully toward her. Almost immediately he lost his footing on a patch of ice and plummeted downwards.
Isabelle might have laughed, had she not been close enough to hear the sickening crunch as he struck the ground face first.
"Saints, have mercy!" she exclaimed, scurrying as cautiously as she could over the sparkling lawns to where he lay.
She reached out to help him, but Simon recoiled. "Unhand me! I am fine!"
Isabelle retracted her hands, but stayed scowling, "Are you quite certain?"
Simon's insistence was decidedly undermined by the fact his nose did not look like it should be that shape and was bleeding profusely. "Yes!" Simon sniffed, pressing his hands, then his sleeve to his face. Feebly, Isabelle added her kerchief into the mix. For a moment, Simon resisted, until the blood began to seep through his fingers. He accepted her offering.
"Christ," Isabelle tutted, "You need that examined. It looks broken."
"It shall have to stay broken a while longer," Simon declared with muffled irritation. "I need to speak with you."
"Simon, it can wait until you are mended."
"No."
Isabelle started. It was the most forcefully he had ever spoken to her.
"Is it an explanation as to why you have not spoken to me since Christmas? An apology mayhap?" She did not have to pretend her umbrage, that came perfectly naturally. God help her, she had missed him. The absence she had felt every bit as keenly as Alec or Jace's. With no diversion beyond a moping Clary and her mother's hectic plotting (Jonathan, thank God, had gone back to Edom after the Yuletide season ended but Mayrse inexplicably lingered) Izzy had found herself longing for his easy companionship.
He paused his frantic mopping to try and make himself look serious. "I have my reasons for giving you a wide berth." He swallowed, allowing his eyes to drift everywhere other than her face.
"Isabelle." Now she truly was on edge. No Izzy, no Iz. Plain, grave Isabelle. He never called her that. Certainly not with so much distance in his voice.
"I stopped by your chambers just before Christmas. I cannot remember why exactly, I think I had found or heard something I wanted to share with you. When I got there, I halted in the doorway. The doors were closed and there were voices within. I should have left, I promise you I meant to. But, as I turned to go, I heard what you were saying."
Impatient, anxious, Isabelle snapped her fingers. "And?"
"Your mother was speaking to you. Well I feel speaking is not the proper word."
Isabelle's breath stoppered in her chest and her back seized up.
"Simon." She began, then realised she couldn't think what else to say.
"I knew you had your secrets. I let you keep them, respected what you did not say as much as what you did. I even conceived that there was something you were running from. But I had no idea it was that."
Isabelle tried and failed to summon words several times. It was now a blessing that half Simon's face was screened. She did not think she could bear the full force of his judgement. She would rather face the full intensity of a Church court in that moment than face the astounded disappointment of the man before her.
"You really would do anything to avoid marriage." He stated with quiet disgust. "I suppose after all that occurred in Paris, encouraging the lute player to court you is hardly a scandal. It is certainly a dalliance that requires decidedly less effort and risk."
To think, such abhorrence from dear, sweet Simon who knew not the half of it. How could she tell him? Isabelle was shaking all over under the layers she had heaped on herself, fighting back the outpouring of an explanation and mayhap even tears. No, Isabelle would choke to death before she released a sob over a man.
Simon didn't want to hear her explanations, and she would not degrade herself with any pleas.
Not when Simon was looking at her as though he saw, at last, the type of girl she was, and he did not like her a bit. The type of girl he thought she was, which, at the end of it all, was much the same thing. It seemed that what the men around her thought of a woman would always hold more weight than what she thought of herself.
"You do not understand," Isabelle clipped out hoarsely at last, "You never will."
"No," Simon agreed, moving his palms to reveal a grimace, not one entirely born of his present physical pain. He shook his head slowly, already beginning to retreat from her, " I do not think I want to."
Therein lay the real blow. She could not be walked away from. So Isabelle whipped away first, gratefully turning her back on him and charging away. She wouldn't stand there and watch him leave her.
Alongside her shame coursed a fierce fury.
Who was he to stand there and judge her? He was only the boy she had suffered as a jest, a distraction. The damned lute player. A nobody, a nothing.
Yet as Izzy scurried back toward the palace, frost bitten grass cracking underfoot, it did not feel like a nobody had hurt her.
-0000000000000-
Chapeltoute Hall, Southern Alicante, April 1537
They were sorry times indeed when Luke found he would rather be called to the King's chambers on a matter of business rather than for pleasure. Yet here he was, concealing dismay as Valentine finally swept away the plans for a new palace which had been crowding his table and waved the master builder on his merry way, leaving them alone together. His Majesty was in fine fettle, insisting Luke stay in his seat and take a drink with him.
As it happened, Valentine's dark moods were more and more infrequent these days, something Luke was reluctantly grateful for. Partially because he too heard the reports of slaughter in the shires and so knew all too well what was finally easing the worries that had troubled his monarch since Summer. Secondly, and- though it shamed him to admit it- more so, Luke was aggravated because he also knew that Jocelyn played no small part in keeping her husband in high spirits. That said a great deal about the petty, selfish man Luke truly was, yet he wearied of denying it. The knowledge returned woeful memories of the days when Jocelyn was the only one who could smooth Valentine's frown. After so long, after all that had happened since, it left the King's oldest advisor feeling truly sickened to his core, knowing they were back precisely where they had started.
Well, almost.
Now Jocelyn knew the man she was married to and loathed him for it. And though that may make all the difference to Luke, that was the only impact it had. It would not appear to trouble Valentine at all, that Jocelyn shirked from his touch and grew sullen when she had to speak to him.
The King appeared beyond caring whether his wife loved him. That Jocelyn was here, back in her place, denoted a surrender great enough to placate Valentine. He had won. Even after a decade she had come crawling back. Making every time Valentine had to sit beside an empty throne worth it. His Jocelyn had relented in the end and come home, just as he had always known she would.
Meaning Luke Graymark had lost the woman he loved to Valentine Morgenstern twice. Not even a cup from the King's finest vintage was chasing the bitterness of that off his tongue.
Luke sat still and keep sipping, as though the silence between himself and Valentine was comfortable.
Oddly in tune with the line of sour wistfulness carrying his mind, Valentine curled his finger around the stem of his goblet and surveyed his friend keenly, "Why did you never marry?"
"What?" Luke eventually spluttered out past his wine, clumsily dabbing at his mouth with his sleeve in the aftermath.
Valentine rolled his shoulders back in a shrug, "All these years and you've never married. It is surprising. You have a title and wealth. You are respected at our court. Yet you've never seemed interested in finding a bride to share it with. In making a family to bequeath it to." Valentine smiled, usually indulgent. "It's not too late, you know. You could still find a good woman, my friend. A companion. A wife."
Do you recommend one? Luke wondered mutinously. Aloud, he ventured a nonchalant chuckle and shook his head, "You enjoyed playing matchmaker with Clary that much?"
Valentine's eyes fluttered upwards casually and then back to Luke, tapping out a tune against the arm of his chair. He continued in a blasé way, "It merely strikes me as odd you have not looked for a marriage yet."
Luke's mind flew back to a dim parlour, to the late Lord Fairchild's rattling cough and sympathetic eyes as the young man before him gruffly and awkwardly withdrew his suit for Jocelyn's hand. Grateful, even as his heart broke, that Jocelyn need never know Luke had ever asked. But Luke could not keep pursuing the woman his King wanted. Better, he'd believed, to accept defeat graciously and covertly.
Valentine noted Luke's reluctance to speak and chose to misinterpret it, "Have you yet to meet a worthy woman?"
"Yet to meet a woman deserving to be bound to me," Luke agreed, honestly enough.
Valentine kept smirking, "What of that maid of yours? The one you brought to court, for Clarissa."
Luke almost choked, "Maia? Good God, no."
"No? Was that not why you brought her here? I understood her father was a business associate of yours."
"An old friend of mine." Luke corrected, "He charged me with looking to Maia's welfare after he died."
"A blessing if ever I heard one."
Luke rankled at the prospect. Maia was young enough to be his daughter, as was proven by her serving Valentine's.
"Many a man would interpret that dying wish as such anyway," Valentine commented.
"Maia is a clever girl" Luke shrugged, "In time she will manage her affairs well enough, with or without me. I will guide her, of course, but I would rather she make her own way in the world."
The gentlemen were spared further discussion of the issue by the arrival of the Cardinal.
Luke's fingers curled back in on themselves, into a fist in his lap. The Cardinal's presence never boded well. Enoch was beginning to establish himself in Luke's mind as the crucifix wielding harbinger of doom.
"Majesty," he accepted the seat Valentine gestured to.
"Welcome, Your Eminence. We were just discussing the benefits of a holy sacrament."
"Which one?" Enoch enquired, taking gladly with the question the proffered wine glass. That indulgence, it would seem, he allowed himself.
"Marriage."
The Cardinal fought a losing battle against a cringe, then tossed back another mouthful of fine Spanish vintage. Enoch's terror of all things feminine or sexual was an ongoing joke between the King's nobles. Enoch saw Eve in every woman he encountered.
Valentine left his third guest wriggling in his seat a little longer before graciously turning the subject, "But enough of that. There is another sacrament I anticipate you will be requested to perform tonight."
The Cardinal would gratefully bestow the Last Rites on himself, just to get off the subject of wedlock. "Certainly, Sire. What would you have me do?"
His question was answered not by Valentine, but when the door to their chamber swung open again.
A wan-faced Duke of Broceland loitered in the entryway. He'd removed his cap and now wrung it between his hands like a dish rag, the corners of his mouth sternly lowered.
Luke had not known the Herondale boy very long, and he had certainly not expected to like him as much he did. Having never known his father had proved no loss; Jace Herondale's bravery more than compensated for Stephen's cowardice. Though he was far from ignorant as to what the land's newest noble had been doing these past weeks, Luke was the last man who would condemn another's terrible deeds for love of Valentine. Or love of Valentine's daughter.
There was nothing Luke wanted to do more than put a hand on his shoulder or drop a word of comfort. To tell Jace that he had once stood before Valentine just like that, fighting self-disgust, desperate for his King to see all that had done for him and be glad.
"Jonathan," Valentine's warm greeting stood at odds with the strain on Jace's face. The King smiled at his son in law as though Jace had just returned from a minor errand, "Welcome home."
Enoch had almost had a seizure at the Duke's unexpected entrance. His hand flew to the ornate rosary beads hanging from his belt as they might protect him. Besides the Crown Prince, the Cardinal was the most perturbed of all the nobles by the resurrection of the old duchy. Not in the least because he had spent a portion of the summer terrorizing the young man who had, in the following months, married into the most powerful family in this country.
Luckily for him, Jace failed to note the room's other occupants at all. He stood frozen, hand clenching the back of the chair Valentine had offered to him and chest rising and falling as though he had run all the way to the capital on foot.
"Is this dreadful matter settled at last?"
Tonelessly, Jace confirmed as much. The sweeping details of all that occurred fell with a precision that spoke of an entirely rehearsed speech.
Valentine's only response was a measured nodding, again, as though Jace was speaking of his abilities to locate all the items on the royal shopping list. When at last all the rebellious counties had a body count, the King offered some words of commendation to his faithful duke and made to rise from his seat.
"Come. Now all has ended favourably we may join this evening's feast." He bound to his feet but paused while Luke and Enoch scrambled after him, finally reading the reluctance on the Duke's face.
"Clary will be there," Valentine offered persuasively, "And be most pleased to have you home."
Jace grew paler still, which Luke had not thought possible, "Majesty" he broke out through chapped lips, "With your permission, I would retire for the evening."
Their sovereign hesitated momentarily, before relenting with a quiet sigh, "Very well." He passed onwards through the doorway while Jace stiffly bowed again, leaving Luke and the Cardinal to tail after him and complete their ragtag Trinity.
Then, with perfect dramatic timing, as ever, Valentine paused on the threshold and raised a finger as though he had just recalled a particularly interesting fact. "Your Eminence. It almost slipped my mind. I summoned you here on the understanding my lord Broceland may want you to hear his confession."
Bewildered, Enoch swivelled to glance back at Jace, as did Luke, whereupon both to find an expression of tentative desperation on Jace's face.
He blamed himself, poor boy. But thus Valentine always played it. Having others sully their hands in the hope his own soul stayed clean.
He ought to say or do something for the boy, but Luke soon hatefully surrendered the prospect of that too. If he could not save himself, Jocelyn or her daughter from Valentine, how could he possibly help Jace?
It would not be much of an absolution for the boy. Enoch looked as though he was prepared to swipe a hasty cross in the air and proclaim all absolved. God love him, it hardly mattered. Luke doubted an absolution from the Pope would ease either Jace's mind or conscience.
-0000000000000000-
After so long being left alone at the high table, Clary had taken to latching her eyes onto whatever untoward movement might occur elsewhere in the hall. Without Jace to make her laugh or Jonathan to taunt her, there was no chance of her missing a tipsy maiden spilling red wine on her new gown, or an opportunistic hound snapping a chicken leg from a lax lordly hand. These were her sole sources of entertainment.
She still hated eating her meals in the great hall. Clary despised the crowd, the smell and the calamity. Not to mention the knowledge that she was one of the main attractions in the grand performance, planted right at her father's right hand. The majority of her dinners could be taken in her private apartments, but Valentine still liked to host regular public feasts, emphasising each time that appearance was everything. Idris needed to showcase its royal family's prosperity and good health. Each carefully selected course was designed to exhibit their wealth and eager appetites.
This was one of those nights, and though feeling a multitude of eyes on her rather whittled away her hunger, the Duchess of Broceland reminded herself she had endured much worse and set about chewing on her Friday carp industriously.
Clary welcomed her first diversion from needless small talk with the lucky nobles invited to dine at the King's table. With keen eyes she espied the steward making his way toward the doors with the platter immediately, confirming the suspicions she had begun to harbour an hour or so ago.
She caught the nearby Marques of Edgehunt's eye. Aline's father could usually be trusted for a kind word or to humour Clary's inquisitiveness. He obliged her with an oblique smile, adding a glance laden with meaning, "Serving the Duke I expect."
"He has returned?"
"Some hour hence, Madam," Penhallow confirmed.
Clary nodded and took another small sip from her goblet. Then she let her gaze dart to her father's seat. Valentine had to know Jace was home. And yet. No matter how big or small, Valentine hated to relinquish any information he had that she did not.
Feeling the weight of her judgment, the King turned his head to her, "Clarissa?" he softly invited from question in her eyes.
"I thought I glimpsed Wayfarer in the courtyard earlier," she stated, keeping her tone deliberately as light as possible. Her father raised a single white eyebrow in enquiry. "Jace's horse" she clarified briskly, with another affectedly nonchalant bite.
"Ah," Valentine dropped his eyes and began to wipe his hands on the cloth provided, pulling it off his shoulder and unto the table. The King only returned his attention to Clary when he was sure his fingers were thoroughly clean, "You did. I heard from him at the start of the week, when he told me he was only a few days from the capital." Clary experienced a momentary pang of discomfort. Jace had written to her around the same time, making no mention of being so close to home. She rapidly swallowed back any misgivings. If her husband had neglected to tell her he was coming it would have been deliberate, he only sought to surprise her. Well that he had.
"Then surely he has been back at least an hour." Then the epiphany dawned, "Which is why you were delayed in arriving here."
Her father's cheek twitched, either from a restrained smile or annoyance, Clary was not sure. "He has," he informed her in a low voice, pointedly looking over her shoulder and smiling at whoever she saw there.
Clary would not let him brush her off tonight so easily. "It did not occur to you to inform me?"
Valentine sighed, reluctantly focusing on her again. "I do not see the need to dispatch a page each time someone passes through the palace gates, Clarissa."
"My husband is not just anyone," Clary shot back, temper crackling.
Valentine raised his eyes to heaven, as though her questions sorely tested his patience, "Lower your voice. There is no need for a great exhibition."
Clary struggled to quell a retort. His Majesty marginally declined his head in approval and rewarded her peace with an elaboration, "Your Jonathan declined an invitation to eat with us."
The young Duchess shot Isabelle a reassuring smile. Her lady had noted the high colour in her cheeks with concern and slid her eyes meaningfully from Clary to the King and back again, subtly tilting her head. Conveying a willingness to intervene. Clary gave her head the smallest of shakes. No one else seemed to have noticed the disharmony between the two royals.
Valentine waved away the servant pouring more wine and spoke again, "If you must know, I withheld news of his return because I needed to speak with him first. I needed his report first hand, before you distracted him and the two of you hurried off together." He laughed as if she had just told him some mighty jest and gestured so only she could see at the stout ambassador from Lorraine peering up at them from one of the lower tables, "And I need you to be seen sitting with me without the merest hint of discord between us. Which I knew you would not, had you discovered who was in your chamber."
Clary could not very well argue with that, though it did not remove the sting.
"Fear not. Once this meal is over you may have Jonathan all to yourself once more." The not-so-hidden meaning behind the words had the colour rising in Clary's cheeks again and set her squirming on the bench at her father's blunt suggestiveness. Now that her husband was back, Valentine would return to eagerly anticipating the baby he already had such great expectations of.
After waiting over a month to see Jace, she could wait she supposed she could make herself wait a little longer.
She smiled and chatted as best she could, and soon after the plates were cleared away Valentine consented to Clary's retirement for the evening. He even rose from his seat to kiss her goodnight.
To all onlookers, including those who would report to the Archduke of Lorraine, Valentine was in no way doubting his newly raised Duke and Duchess of Broceland. Clary did not care about any of that. Let Valentine worry about her scorned former suitor, she had waited long enough for this reunion.
Clary hurried up the stairs with her ladies behind. She pulled Izzy to her shoulder long enough to inform her of recent developments, then summarily dismissed them all in her presence chamber.
The news of the Duke's return had spread like wildfire. The early dismissal was all the confirmation required.
"But surely Your Grace needs some assistance-" an uncomprehending younger maid began before Isabelle snickered, "Her Grace will have enough assistance getting undressed this evening." On any other occasion Clary would have scolded her, but tonight she just wanted rid of all of these women. Besides, she was harbouring hopes to that effect herself.
In the few short weeks they had been together following their wedding, she had only been with Jace a handful of times.
Pressing her palms to the sleek wood she shoved the doors open and hastened into her bedchamber expectantly.
Her empty bedchamber. Frowning, Clary slowly pivoted, scanning her surroundings for any evidence of Jace or an explanation for his absence. She found no sign of him at all. Everything was precisely as she had left it earlier, right down to the undisturbed book laying by her pillow.
Despite the prickling uneasiness in her bones, Clary dragged her feet back across the room and out into the narrow corridor that connected her chamber to Jace's. The one that had been assigned to him but always left vacant.
Until tonight.
Letting herself in, Clary found every candle in the room lit and the fire blazing. She took stock of the abandoned pair of riding boots tucked under a chair and an untouched plate of food; the same she had seen leaving the hall what already felt like years ago. The accompanying jug of ale had not been dealt the same neglect, there was only a dribble of liquid left in it.
Through the half-open door to his outer chamber, Clary could hear voices. One familiar and commanding, the other a meekly assenting. There came the sound of a shuffled retreat and a closed door.
Clary counted ten heartbeats in the subsequent silence before deciding to announce her presence, "Jace?" she called out uncertainly.
A moment later he came into view, looking little different to how she remembered him; blond hair damp from a recent wash and a few days of fair stubble along his jaw. It wasn't until he crossed the threshold to abruptly stop and stare at her that Clary allowed herself to concede aught was amiss.
On the many occasions she had allowed herself to imagine their reunion she had always expected that he would rush to embrace her. She'd at least expected him to smile. The Jace she found herself facing now did not move a muscle. He kept staring her down with that blank gold gaze. The only kind of emotion she could discern from his face was a tension that betokened, if anything, dread.
"You are home," Clary floundered to the obvious, desperate to end the fraught silence between them.
"Yes." Jace agreed faintly. He wrapped his arms around each other instead of her and held them tight to his chest.
Clary swallowed past her dry mouth. "I did not know. I would have come sooner but my father failed to tell me you were back." She trailed off at his unresponsiveness, frantically gripping her fingers together until they went numb, "How was your journey?" She tried again.
"Long," Jace responded in a clipped voice that closed off any conversation.
Clary took an instinctive step back. After all the tenderness they had shared before he left, after all they had endured in the past few months, to see him so remote now was almost physically painful.
Despite the roaring red flames in the grate mere feet away from her, Clary felt the chill in the room. She was the wife Jace adored, rescued and fought for, but he was lingering in the doorway, looking as though he longed for nothing more than to bolt from her.
"What are you doing here?" She blurted out, discomforted enough to voice the question she really wanted to ask.
"Is it not my home now?" he asked distantly, "You just said so. The royal family tends to reside in Alicante."
"No. I meant in these rooms."
"They are my rooms."
"Yes, I know, but you don't usually avail of them." She took a step forward.
"Clary," The way he spoke her name, flatly and completely devoid of the usual affection, halted her. "I am tired. I just want to sleep."
To another woman, to another couple, it all might have sounded reasonable enough. But Jace pushing her away thus was unbearable.
Clary felt her throat begin to thicken at his brusqueness. When she spoke her voice wavered detestably, "And you cannot do that in my bed?"
Jace did not volunteer a response, which was answer enough. Another night, she might have quipped about him fearing her inability to keep her hands to herself. Here it felt inappropriate. Things between them felt so strained. Suddenly fragile.
Much as she hated this taciturnity, Clary was afraid of breaking it. She feared pushing him to speak to her now would shatter more than the silence.
"I am tired," Jace repeated dully. The words struck her like a blow to the chest. Clary was no fool, she knew she was being sent away.
They had quarrelled before of course, but even in their worst clashes there had been feeling. She'd have thought that after experiencing all he had Jace should be glad to throw himself into her arms and forget the whole thing.
That was why Valentine had sent her up here, after all. So she could kiss it better. Remind Jace she could make doing her father's bidding worthwhile.
In the very least, he should want to talk about it. "Jace, please speak to me. You cannot carry all of it around alone."
Jace finally cracked, "How much clearer need I be? Leave, Clary!"
Moments ago, Clary thought she would be glad of any force of emotion from him, even anger. When he did snap it wounded her.
She took another reeling step, not backwards but forwards. She found herself reaching for him, clutching at him in the vain hope she could pull him back to her. "Why should I?"
Jace caught at her wrists before she could reach him, then released her and leaped back like her touch had scalded him. "Because I am telling you to!" He shouted in earnest this time, "Why can you not, just once in your life, do as you are bid?"
Clary recoiled quicker than she would have done had he slapped her, fingers curling around her left wrist just as his had. The reddened skin there hurt. Jace had hurt her.
Because she had hurt him. He blamed her for all of it. And had he not reason to? Were it not for her he would never have had to return to Idris. Were it not for her, for loving her, Valentine would not be able to wield the influence over Jace he did.
Once that epiphany struck, she could not bear it any longer. Clary turned and fled.
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Every night it was the same. The unremarkable grey sky and frosty grass. The pool of churned, bland, blackened earth by the roots. The echoing, brazen cawing of the crows, flapping impatiently in the branches of nearby trees.
The only varying factor was the face at the foot of the tree. Sometimes it was the Crown Prince leering, or else the King, shaking his head with unsurprised disappointment. Behind him, Isabelle screams helplessly. There's never any Alec. Proof that this time no one is coming to save him.
It makes Jace almost glad when the rope tightens and his body swings forward.
Instead of his blood cutting off to numbness, it flares under his skin like fire, until he can feel every muscle in his body, bunched in pain and contracting breathlessly. It was agony, it was never going to end.
The worst is yet to come. As his body convulses, his watering eyes inevitably roll back in his head. Until Jace can see the prone body hanging beside him. The cracked, broken and bloody hands dangling at her sides, smearing the skirt of a tattered gold wedding gown.
With a strangled, incoherent cry, Jace shot upwards, left-hand shooting instantly to his neck. After several gulping, painful breaths he forced himself to run his fingers along his untouched throat.
His right arm flew across the rumpled sheets to the cool, blessedly empty other side of the bed. Reassurance: Clary was not here. She was safe.
More gasping, then Jace made himself move. Scrabbling his way out from under the sheets and to the foot of the bed, fumbling with shaking fingers until he could free the empty chamber pot from under it. Just in time for then retching to start.
When that finally abated, Jace felt more ill than ever.
Shivering, he pried the sweat damp nightshirt off his skin and then shucked it off. Not bothering to seek out another in the dark, he clambered back into bed naked.
He was no stranger to nightmares. He should not have expected to emerge from his time being the King's butcher unscathed. Nor had he. The first batch of these night horrors had been born right out of those he had to create during the day.
Rows after rows of mercilessly hung men and boys, since anyone older than sixteen was liable for punishment according to the royal edict still folded up in Jace's saddlebag.
The women, their anger, betrayal, grief, disgust- they haunted him most.
But this new nightly hell was worse still, Jace thought hollowly, drawing his hands over his cold, clammy face. God, this was so much worse.
"What am I? What have I done?" His broken, dry lips mouthed soundlessly. What I had to the timidly answering whisper piped up in his mind on queue.
I had to I had to I had to I had to I had to.
On and on it went. Just like that, like every night, unrelenting and unconvincing.
Until dawn.
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