NOVEL NEXT Chapter 69: A Reckoning
Mouse lay in her bed, staring up into the darkness. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, and her body felt weak, as though grief had stripped away what strength she had. She had run from the scaffold and pushed her way through the crowd, trying to find her way to Sir Conrad's side, but too late. He had died before even seeing the inside of the surgeon's tent.
The knight had gone quietly from the world, but the world had not gone quiet with his parting. It had continued on, rejoicing in the very thing that had snuffed out his spark. And this, Mouse could not reconcile. She had seen it a hundred times before, men crying out in the agony of broken limbs, their armor crushed, lungs suffocated, choked by the heat and dust of the tourney grounds. But this was different, pain made all the more profound not by Mouse's suffering but because of the suffering that she knew others would endure at his loss.
It coiled around her chest like a snake. She might be tempted by her torment to view the knight's death as some punishment to herself, another proof of life's great cruelty toward her, but instead, she found herself thinking of the little boy who would grow up without his father, even if he did not know him as such. She thought of Lady Margarethe, the woman who would be forced to grieve her lover in silence. Would she cry quietly in her rooms, Mouse wondered, holding close the last thing he had given her? Or was the only thing she had of him memories, a tender farewell on a field of mallows, a kiss on a misty morning in the height of summer?
Mouse pushed the tears from her eyes. She had not slept that night; she could not close her eyes without finding behind them the same grotesque play, a man falling from his horse and landed in the embrace of death.
There was a knock on the door. Mouse pulled the blankets up over her head, willing the sound to stop. But the knock came again and again until at last, she threw off her blankets and climbed from her feathers, taking up a shawl to wrap about her shoulders as she padded to the door. On the other side waited a stout, fair woman who Mouse recognized at once as one of the Empress's maid.
"Her Majesty wants you," the woman said.
Mouse sniffed and wiped her cheeks.
"I am sorry, Greta, but I am grieving," she said. "Might I not have some moments to myself?" Her voice came out dry and hoarse.
But of course Her Majesty had been in insistent. Life did not wait for sorrow to pass. Why should the crown?
When Mouse arrived at the Empress's chambers, she found the woman still in bed, propped up on her pillows. Her eyes went at once to the cup in her hand, her stomach lurching at the remembrance of the poison. The Empress brought the cup to her lips.
"Bring me those letters," she said, waving a hand at the desk in the corner. Mouse obediently went and fetched the stack of parchments, carrying them to the bedside. The Empress took them from her hand, her dark eyes contemplating Mouse. "You look unwell."
Mouse blinked.
"Yes, Your Majesty," she said. "I am in mourning."
"In mourning?" the Empress echoed, picking up one of the letters. "Why?"
Mouse stared at the woman incredulously.
"Sir Conrad," she began, her voice cracking on the man's name.
The Empress carefully set down her cup.
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"Sir Conrad was a traitor."
The words struck Mouse like an arrow. Sir Conrad was no traitor. Despite the Empress's clear dislike of him, he had stayed in her court and followed her every order, even as his lord threatened her from the north. He had sought her favor, sown no dissent, done everything that had been asked of him. How could the woman now wield such an ugly word against him?
Mouse's lips began to tremble.
"No," she protested, her voice little more than a whisper. But the Empress did not seem to hear her. Or perhaps she simply did not care.
"You may sit if you would like some rest."
Mouse brought her sleeve to her eyes, blinking, before turning and shuffling to the cushioned stair that stood by the desk. She sat down and stared into her lap.
"Did you take that writ to the chancery?" the Empress called across the room.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Mouse answered. She had delivered it the day before, after her meeting with the Captain.
"And?"
"And the clerk said that it might be some days before—."
"Some days?" the Empress scoffed indignantly and muttered something beneath her breath, casting aside the letter in her hand and taking up a new one.
Mouse continued her silent ruminations, watching the dark-haired woman sift through her parchments. She tried to think of something, anything else, but try as she might, she could not seem to excise from her mind the horrific scene of the day before. The lance striking Sir Conrad's chest and piercing his armor. The knight's body slumping forward. The man falling from his horse. Every time, it was the same. Over and over and over again.
The Empress yawned, and a thought pricked at Mouse's mind. A traitor, the woman had called him. She thought again of the lance striking Sir Conrad's chest. The knight's body slumping forward. The man falling from his horse. Every time the same.
The revelation came slowly, a dark storm brewing in the corners of Mouse's mind.
A traitor, the lance striking his chest. His body slumping forward. The man falling from his horse. Every time.
Mouse looked at the Empress, strands of dark hair scattered across her face, cup pinched between her fingers, and felt her stomach twist. Every time Axel Himmelbjerg had ridden down the list toward Conrad, he had aimed for the man's chest.
Something began to settle over Mouse now, not sorrow, not grief, but something new, something dark and sharp and poisonous. Whatever veil she had been peering through had fallen away, all the lies burnt up in a singular moment of illumination.
"What will become of Leopold?" she asked, her voice punctuating the silence.
"I do not know." The Empress did not so much as look up from her letter.
"Will you not give him back to his father?"
The Empress turned over the letter.
"I can't see how it's any of your concern."
Mouse squeezed her hands tightly together.
"I should like to have him as my ward," she said.
The Empress glanced up now, her dark eyes fixing Mouse.
"No." She returned to her parchment, leaving Mouse to sit in quiet contemplation. And so Mouse did, for a while, sit in quiet contemplation, until she arrived at a decision.
"May I go to the apothecary?" she said. "I find I am not at all well."
"Yes," the Empress said without looking up. "Go. Perhaps he can sort out what is the matter with you."
In the course of an hour, everything had shifted. Mouse rose and made a small bow, taking her leave.
It was all a game, just as she had told Leopold. And she was not going to lose.
Mouse stepped gingerly inside the door of the apothecary. The robed man, thin and prematurely bald, looked up from his work of examining a jar containing something yellow and putrid. Mouse's nose wrinkled at the wretched smell.
"I beg your pardon," she said as she entered. "I hope I am not disturbing you."
"Come in," the apothecary said. He put down his work and looked up Mouse. "Well, what is it, girl? Are you pregnant?"
Mouse shook her head.
"No," she said. "Nothing of the sort. Only there is something I need to tell you."
The apothecary leaned against his desk, clasping his hands across his stomach.
"It is about Her Majesty." The man raised his thin brows. "She is being poisoned."
The apothecary's eyes widened, his jaw so slack it might fall open.
"Poisoned?" he rasped.
Mouse nodded.
"She has been acting quite strangely. She says things that do not make sense, talks to people who are not there." She shook her head. "I am afraid."
"Yes. Yes, I am sure you are." The apothecary grabbed his chin. His mind was already working, Mouse could tell from the way his eyes darted about.
"And there is something else," she said. "I know who it was. I saw him put something into her drink."
"Who?" the apothecary breathed. "Who was it?"
Mouse looked at him, her gaze firm and unwavering.
"Johannes," she said. "Johannes Havener."