We Seven

A Narnia & Mirror, Mirror Fanfiction

Part 4

"Wait, where are you going?"

For Jo had sprung up onto her feet – looking stunned, looking rather like someone who had swallowed something bitter, but determined – and begun walking away from the dais.

"To tell Alexis I can't marry him," she said. "To give him back his mum's ring."

Her sister hadn't had to say a word about fancying Alexis herself, about having been nursing a tender hope he wanted to marry her, but she hadn't needed to – her face gave her away.

Susan's mouth parted. For an instant, she couldn't speak, the inside of her throat might as well be coated with dust; she needed to swallow several times before she could rasp, "Jo, no! For mercy's sake, think before you act, just this once, won't you?"

Jo whirled round. If she was peevish, if her face had gone red, she had some excuse. She did not like – not a bit – what she felt honour-bound to do, and for Susan – the cause of distress in this matter, and she for whom the ultimate sacrifice was about to be made – to scold her! To actually scold her. Well! It was too much.

"And what, pray tell, are you planning on saying to him when he asks you why you've changed your mind?" Susan demanded, eyelids lowered halfway giving her – in conjunction with the grim set of her lips – the appearance of a disapproving owl.

"The truth, of course!" she cried. "That you–"

"I swear" – and Susan's face had gone scarlet – "if you tell him that, I'll never speak to you again. Never so long as we both live." It had been one thing to tell him herself – never mind that he hadn't understood – but for her sister to say anything about it, after this...

It was too awful, too mortifying, to contemplate.

"Why–?" Jo stopped. "Oh." She raised the hand not clutching Alexis's ring to her brow. She saw the problem now. "Sorry, Su. Typical Josephine Pevensie tunnel-vision."

"It's my own fault, really... If I'd once – just once – allowed myself to see how he looked at you, all this time, I would never have believed he wanted me."

"But how can I marry him now?"

"Well, you aren't going to marry him now, at any rate," said Susan practically, giving a little sniff. "You're going to marry him when you're older. Peter would kill him if he tried to marry you now."

As her sister Susan had a tendency, more than the rest, to take herself very seriously – often too seriously, in Jo's opinion – she was surprised by this herculean effort at humour. It almost was a proper joke and everything!

"Peter's got no say in it," snorted Jo. "My brothers don't get to decide when I get married." The thought of Peter or Edmund discussing it with Alexis, as if she were just like the lands they were granting him as a lord and they were stating the conditions of their agreement, made her feel more than a bit sick. "But, come on, Su! How'm I supposed to marry somebody you–" She almost couldn't bring herself to say it. "You know, somebody you're in love with, too."

"I... I don't know that I am," she replied, surprising herself. "I thought I was. Really, I did. I can't keep that from you now... Only..." Only if he loves you, if I've misunderstood everything about him, how do I know he's who I thought he was? "No, no." She shook her head. "I'm not in love with Alexis. You are, and so you're going to have to marry him, and that's that, then."

In a rush of impulsive relief, Jo flung her arms around Susan and hugged her. "Thank goodness! The thing is, I didn't mind not being a queen, but I'd mind losing him. Giving Alexis up, I mean. I would have said I didn't, but I–"

"Really would mind," Susan finished for her, patting her back. "I get it."

"I would always have wished we could have been together, but it would have been impossible."

"Well, it's not impossible, so never mind." She sounded a bit gruff, because love – even a love that might not have ever existed to begin with – doesn't die in a minute. "But you have to swear to me, Jo, you'll never tell him... About when I thought I fancied him, all right?"

"No, I promise" – she pulled further back from the hug – "I'll never say another word about it again."

She kept her word, and Susan – as if by exchange – kept any lingering traces of her feelings buried deep. She might have done better to let herself mourn in private, to address the feelings and move on, rather than strictly repress, but she was young and – for all she was convincing herself she'd never actually loved him – Alexis was her first serious fancy.

And he had picked her sister over her.

Perhaps if they'd had their mother with them in Narnia, if Helen could have been there for Susan to confide in, to remind her she would get over the sting of rejection, she would have got through the ordeal with less emotional scarring.

As it was, her mum was in another world, and her clearest memory of her, carried over into Narnia, was the last sad look Helen had given Jo at the train station, her offhand admonishment to "be a big girl".

Somewhere in her core, she might have believed Helen would have simply repeated that to her after Alexis chose Jo. She repeated it to herself. Like a little prayer. "Be a big girl," she murmured into her pillow at night. "There are other princes."

Susan said it every night, all throughout Alexis and Jo's engagement, which lasted nearly three years. Peter consented to their marrying when Jo turned seventeen, though he suggested perhaps, after the wedding, his sister had better still live with them, in their apartments, rather than in the wing Alexis occupied, for a while longer yet. Jo wasn't happy about it, though, seeing it as overstepping, as if she needed a man's permission to live with her own husband.

"It's not only that he's our brother, you know – Peter is the high king," Edmund had reminded her, in a low whisper, when tempers were on the point of being lost, but the raspberry she blew in response said more than words could have regarding her stubbornness.

It was Susan who put an end to the argument by quietly pointing out, if they were going to have Jo stay with them longer, then there was no point in having her married in the first place, no point in holding the wedding when she was seventeen, instead of waiting another year, and – of course – postponing it was rather difficult since she'd been planning it so meticulously.

"Our royal sister's wedding isn't the kind of thing that can be called off suddenly, so it's best to simply let the chips fall where they will."

"What chips does she mean?" whispered Royce to Lucy. "The sort we used to eat with vinegar, in that other place?"

"I thought she must mean chips like in porcelain, like when you drop a teacup and there's a piece missing when you pick it up again," Lucy whispered back to her twin. "But that doesn't seem to fit at all, does it?"

(It was, in fact, an allusion to a saying about wood chips falling to the ground after you felled a tree, which Susan had picked up from spending rather a lot of time conversing with Mrs. Beaver, who was sewing Jo's wedding dress.)

The wedding, taking place without any further postponement, was at least as grand as their coronation had been. Nobles from Archenland and Calormen were guests along with the Narnian fauns, dryads, and Talking beasts.

This included King Lune, who brought his small son Corin with him this time.

Susan was enchanted by Corin as she had long ago in another world been enchanted by Royce when he was little. She thought him the most gorgeous, wonderful child to ever live, and spoiled him rotten, sneaking him sweets and small toys – like golden spinning tops and tiny wooden knights – throughout the visit. Even during the main ceremony when a rather damp-looking naiad was linking Alexis and Jo's hands together with a silver cord while a dryad on either side held circlets over their heads and they spoke their vows, Susan was passing Corin a cloth pouch filled with roasted nuts and dried blackberries; for she thought he might be hungry waiting for the feast.

Distracted and genuinely merry Susan indeed was for most of that day. Nonetheless, she felt a pang of unwelcome grief strike as she watched the happy couple take their leave near the end of the evening.

Jo's lace veil was a treasure returned to their land by King Lune a year ago after discovering it among some hidden valuables at Anvard; it had, supposedly, belonged to the last Narnian queen who'd reigned before the witch took over for a hundred years, Queen Swan-white. Swan-white was said to have been so beautiful that her gaze remained behind, like reflected starlight, in any natural pool she stared into. Folk belief, such as had survived, was that a bride wearing her veil would be utterly ravishing to behold on her wedding day. Seeing her sister done up in her wedding finery, Susan found she quite believed in this superstition. You never saw a bride more interested in her groom and in the day itself than in what she was wearing, still the veil did flatter Jo and make her look very fine indeed.

You couldn't even tell her hair was short, not with the veil rippling down her back, the priceless lace much more elegant than any noblewoman's coiffed curls could ever hope to be...

And Alexis hardly ever let go of her hand. Every time Susan looked in their direction, their long fingers, his white and hers tan, seemed to be entwined.

She hated to think she was jealous of her sister, and at least she could admit she wasn't sure it was Alexis himself she was jealous of Jo's getting anymore, so much as seeing Jo in an excess of happiness she found it difficult to imagine ever reaching in her own life. Imagination wasn't Susan's strong suit, and although she knew by this point Alexis was better suited to her as a brother than as a potential suitor, that they likely would not have been very romantically compatible, she couldn't help wondering – a little incredulous – how it was her brash, unfiltered sister, the one who more often dreamed of being the knight slaying a dragon than of being swept away by such a figure, had gotten the perfect fairy-tale.

Jo was being led away while squirrels in the eaves threw white-and-pink petals, holding a handsome prince's – no matter if technically he was a lord now – hand, and she was left sitting between Royce and Corin, who both had cake on their faces, although Royce really should have been much, much too old to miss his own mouth during dessert.

In the morning, Jo would wake in somebody's arms, and she would be by herself until breakfast, if any of her siblings or guests even rose early enough to join her, before going for a long, lonesome ride on her horse.

I'm lonely, Susan realised, amazed at the feeling, because she'd felt it before without knowing what it was. Without having the slightest real idea.

She was so busy discovering how it was she really felt, and watching – before the couple vanished from sight entirely – Alexis move Jo's veil aside, lifting it over one shoulder slightly, so he could kiss her cheek – and then, probably emboldened by the wine he'd been drinking, the side of her neck – unhindered, she didn't notice a diplomat from Calormen looking at her from across the hall. She hadn't the foggiest notion of this man recollecting what a beauty he expected her to grow up to be to his Tisroc when he returned home.

After she'd helped a dryad clear away the leftovers of the feast, seen the last stumbling guest depart the marbled hall, and blown out the final low-burning candle (little more than a wick floating in a wax puddle within its silver holder), Susan made her way up the winding turret stairs to her own bed.

Once there, she pulled a silken coverlet over her rather tousled black curls and coming-loose plaits, ready for her sister's wedding day to finally end.

"Be a big girl," she reprimanded herself between the sweet-smelling linens as she buried her face. "There are other princes."

There were other princes.

And, a day after the moles planted the apple orchard they'd promised, ambassadors from one came.

The first time Prince Rabadash saw Jo, he thought she was a boy. More importantly, he thought she was a servant. She was wearing an undecorated leather tunic and black hose, and she was in the process of brushing Alexis's horse.

"You will cease your present occupation and attend to my horse," the Calormene prince told her haughtily, swinging out of the saddle and jangling the reins. "Or I shall have to become very sharp with you."

Jo didn't even look up. She had no idea who this rude man was, nor did she particularly care.

"Art thou deaf?"

And when, lifting her eyes for just an instant, she made it perfectly clear she wasn't, he lifted his hand to strike her.

This, she hadn't expected. She'd thought him a brat – entitled, certainly – but she hadn't imagined he would be violent. She flinched, knowing all at once it would hurt. But the blow never landed. Alexis had been watching the entire exchange, silently seething, and – seeing his wife about to be hit – came forward and blocked Rabadash's hand.

"You won't touch her!"

It was the her that surprised Rabadash the most. He looked into her face properly, considered how the soft features he had taken for boyish, as belonging to a child tall but not yet in adolescence, might in fact be those of an older female.

"Striking this woman would be a great mistake," Alexis said through his teeth. "I assure you."

The prince blinked at Alexis. He recognised him. They'd met before. His parents had considered him for the eldest of their daughters, years ago, only she hadn't liked him and Rabadash, for his own part, had thought her head overlarge. Alexis had only been a very little boy back then and Rabadash hardly more than a youth himself.

"Pray excuse the impertinence, royal sir, but did you not die?" The prince had heard it said that some northern wolves who talked with demon's voices tore the whole immediate family to pieces. His father the Tisroc hoped, after the death of the witch, to add Anvard – and thus all of Archenland – to his conquests, to his ever-growing empire, but that dratted Lune got in first and the people supported him.

"It did not take," sneered Alexis.

Despite this exchange, Rabadash never guessed Jo was the sister of the high king or Alexis's much-beloved wife. He assumed Alexis was defending a servant. To be fair, his family had been known to be rather liberal in that area; their children's tutors and nurses often dined with them, even if they had company.

So it was an unpleasant shock for him when Jo – wearing a floor-length dress cinched at the waist with a belt of braided gold – entered the great hall with her sisters to greet him and his party. He recovered as quickly as anyone reasonably could have and tried to make amends with a grand show of taking her hand and kissing it, murmuring compliments as if their initial exchange had never occurred and this was the first time they'd seen one another, but Jo just glowered at him with utter disgust in her eyes.

As soon as he released her hand, she wiped the back of it very vigorously on her dress.

"Jo," Susan hissed, seeing this; "that is exceedingly rude!"

"But he–" began Jo.

Unfortunately, Alexis hadn't told Peter what happened – he'd had time, before going to dress, to relay the story only to Edmund – and it was the high king's greatest priory, for the moment, not to offend their guest.

Wars had been started over lesser insults, after all.

Peter took Rabadash's part and informed Jo if she couldn't behave, he would ask her to leave the great hall to those of the family who could comport themselves without shaming their positions.

"You're unbelievable." She treated some creep the way he deserved, and Peter was picking on her? "You don't even want to hear my side of things, do you?" Jo fumed, lifted her skirts, and turned on the heel of her slipper, fleeing to her own apartments.

Alexis went after her – and Lucy, even though Susan told her in a sharp whisper she should stay – while the others continued their visit.

By the closing of the hour, Susan was smitten. Rabadash showed her a completely different face to that he'd shown Jo and Alexis. Edmund mistrusted him, even if he had the good sense to keep this to himself, but Peter didn't seem to. Royce didn't care one way or the other. He was the epitome of being politically neutral, in spite of his siblings' royal titles. He thought it a bit rough on Jo, however – Peter had behaved rather harsh where she was concerned – and was secretly glad his twin had gone after her.

To Susan, though, every sweet word which passed Rabadash's lips seemed courteous and genuine.

That he had – very evidently – not cared much for Jo, well, it could be counted to his credit, rather than otherwise, if looked at in the right light. She loved her sister, but an early aversion to her on Rabadash's part gave her no cause to fear a repeat of what happened with Alexis. She did not wish Rabadash to hate Jo, certainly, and she convinced herself – over the seven days he spent with them – he could learn to like her as a sister, once the shock of her hoyden manners wore off, but would never come to care for her beyond that.

So, she in turn could fancy him freely, without fear of rejection.

Throughout the feasts and the tournament they held in his honour, Rabadash showed not only pretty manners, but what Susan took for humility and grace.

There was one incident, which might have been a scandal, during the tournament, when Jo took it into her head to borrow a set of Edmund's out-grown armour and Alexis's horse and challenge Rabadash herself.

Susan blanched, from her place in the stands, the moment she saw Alexis's horse on the field, since she knew his condition prevented him from participating and so it could not be he...

She knew it must be...

Peter, seated beside her, clenched his hands and muttered a curse.

Despite her smaller size, the luck of the plucky beginner was with Jo, and she actually managed to unseat Rabadash before Peter disqualified her and Susan – running to her suitor with her arms out – apologised profusely.

Rabadash laughed it off, as it if were a mere trifle.

Susan sighed and helped him to his feet, never thinking the reason he presented so outwardly merry was because of her beauty, which was everything his ambassadors had promised; she would have been horrified to know what he was really thinking of doing to Lady Josephine in relation for the slight.

Alexis saw the danger, and – asking Susan to take a walk with him in the garden alone – tried to warn her off declaring a fondness for Rabadash too soon.

Unfortunately, she was in no frame of mind to listen. They were near the hyacinths again, and the proximity to these flowers opened an old wound Susan had thought healed. What right had he to reject her – regardless of whether he'd truly understood what she'd offered him that day – and then tell her she couldn't love another?

"You must have seen," Alexis tried, seeing her face closing off, her expression hardening against him, "how he treats Jo."

"I have seen how Jo treats him," Susan sniffed. "And I am a little ashamed of her, I think."

"I am more than a little ashamed of you, since the prince arrived," said Alexis, shaking his head. "This does not stop me from caring if you are mistreated."

"You should mind your own business," she snapped. "Anyway, I'm tired – I shall retire indoors presently."

Before he left Cair Paravel, Rabadash told Susan it had been the happiest week of his life, meeting her and spending time with her family. He had never imagined such joy as this.

"I'm sorry if my eldest sister was discourteous toward you – she isn't really ill-tempered, you know. It's simply that she doesn't like to defer to anybody. You saw how cross she became when our brother reprimanded her in front of you."

"I confess," he purred, lifting a hand and stroking Susan's cheek, "I initially I found her a prickly companion, but I came to understand she is simply not like you are. She has not your deportment and way of putting one wholly at ease.

"You are a most proper lady, my queen, while your sister's manners are rough. She is, if you'll pardon my saying so, more like a boy. I view her no differently than I do your brother, Sir Royce, in truth."

Susan smiled. That was what she wished to hear. "Indeed, your highness. Just so."

"You will come and visit me, in my own kingdom, soon." He stopped stroking her cheek and took up both her hands in his. "Will you not? For my heart will surely break into a thousand pieces if you tell me we will not see one another again."

"And you said no, of course," Jo blurted, when Susan recounted the conversation to her without thinking it through, later that evening. "No way. You told him to get–"

"I told him nothing of the kind!" she cried. "Really, Jo! Sometimes I think you're trying to spoil this for me."

"Spoil what? He's a horrible creep."

"He isn't – he's a very handsome prince."

Jo blew out her cheeks in exasperation. "Ask Alexis what your handsome prince is really like, if you don't believe me."

"Oh, I think I've heard quite enough about him from Alexis," said Susan, bitter. "Alexis made his feelings toward Rabadash quite clear."

"And?" Jo pressed.

"And I think you're both being perfectly horrid," she told her, pouting rather unbecomingly and folding her arms across her chest. "I think you and Alexis are nothing but dogs in the manger."

"Cair Paravel has a manger?" She raised one eyebrow. "Where?"

"I mean, you want nobody to have love besides yourselves!"

It was no good talking to her, but – even at her most exasperated – Jo couldn't conscientiously leave her sister to someone so unremittingly awful. She'd bitten her fingernails to the quick – her cuticles were bleeding – when she told Alexis she'd have to go to Calormen with Susan, to look after her.

He tried to talk her out of it, even as the fauns – under the watchful eye of Mr. Tumnus – were readying the royal galleon, The Splendour Hyaline, for departure. They stood on the grassy slope overlooking the sandy harbour, arms wrapped around each other.

"Please do not go, Jo," he murmured into her ear. "I am frightened you will not return. Rabadash intends you some mischief – I know he does."

"He won't hurt me," Jo assured her husband, burying her face in the side of his neck and inhaling deeply. "He doesn't have the courage. He's nothing but a coward. Anyway, he can't. Not as long as he has hope Susan will agree to marry him."

"There's only more to fear from him before this matter is ended if she does," he said gloomily, pulling back but still grasping her arms.

"She's my sister, Lex."

"She'll have Edmund." Alexis had absolute faith in Edmund.

"Yeah, I know, and Peridan" – he was a friend of theirs – "and Tumnus as well. And that's great. But the Tisroc has an army. And the home advantage." And there were other, less obvious ways someone like Rabadash could wound someone as open-hearted and high-strung as Susan.

"I cannot permit it. Not with only Edmund, Susan, Peridan, and Tumnus for protection. I will come with you," he decided, and let go of her in his rising excitement. "Just let me fetch my things and–"

Jo grabbed his wrist. "Alexis, no. Wait. You promised Peter to join him on his campaign to keep the giants advancing from the north. He's still upset because I knocked Rabadash from his horse, you know. There's no reason to make him cross with both of us." Giving him a gentle poke near the ribs, she added how she would have far more to worry about – him potentially getting crushed by a giant, or having his condition triggered without Lucy's cordial or Aslan to cure him – than he would in regard to her safety in Tashbaan. "It'll be fine. Really."

Below them, someone was calling for her repeatedly. "Lady Josephine! Lady Josephine! We are putting out to sea!" (Susan was pacing the deck and muttering.)

He kissed her. "Goodbye."

She squeezed his wrist in parting. Her fingernails beaded afresh with blood from the small amount of pressure she'd applied. "Goodbye." Leaning over the cliff-face she shouted, "I'm coming!"

Alexis felt a light pressure settle on his shoulder. It was Sallowpad, the raven. He craned his neck to look at the Talking bird. "Go with her," he said. "Make certain she comes back. No matter what, make certain she comes back home to me."

Obediently, the raven spread out his massive black wings and – with a great flap – flew towards the galleon as it was unmooring.

Alexis stood on the very edge of the cliff, watching until Sallowpad was nothing but a shrinking black dot in the blue sky.