Chapter 13

Over the next six months I tried to do everything right, I tried to be good, starting with that day, that long summer day. The solstice. The longest day of the year. The longest day of my life.

I lay there recovering, silent tears rolling down my cheeks as Leif sat kneeling in the casement in his armour, covered in the gore of war. Time stopped moving and the sun stood still on the horizon. The stars pulled their curtains and the moon sank to the bottom of the sea. Liam came, his expression laced with sorrow and uncertainty. He was clean and dressed but his right arm was bound to his chest and he had cuts on his face. He approached Leif with a pronounced limp and a subdued tone. “You should go clean up. There's a new baby in here and you smell like a battle field.”

Lief nodded, rose silently and strode from the room. Then Liam turned to me, and to Nimue who still sat on the bed next to me. “I don't know if this is the time, but waiting til tomorrow won't make this easier.” He paused, looked down, back up and into my eyes then switched his gaze to Nimue, “Your father . . . He was injured. He didn't make it.”

Nimue put her hand to her mouth, stifling sobs. She sat for a moment but she must have sensed the rain coming because she ran from the room. I looked at my brother and begged him, “Please Liam. Follow her. Make sure she doesn't hurt herself.” He looked at me with so much pain in his eyes, but nodded and turned to follow Nimue.

*

After I'd recovered from Sulamith's birth I did what was expected of me but it was all mechanical. I was going through the motions of being alive. Liam helped me with everything. He'd held the position of monarch since he was very young and he knew the drill. He was very kind to me. Proclamations of peace were sent out and a holiday was declared, but it was summer in a largely agrarian society and fields needed planting and crops tending. Fighters went home to their families and with the exception of a small force to guard the castle much of the military was demobilized. Lief stayed away from me. Not to suggest that he went home. No. He spent his days hunting and eliminating what was left of Seamus' army. He wasn't alone in this pursuit. There were other young angry fighters, too damaged by the war to rest easy.

Morgana had to leave to manage the Fay Human political amalgamation within the strongholds. It should have, by all rights, been Nimue's responsibility, but she refused to leave my side. “No Gran I won't go back,” she'd said. “The world is changing and I won't be bound by old laws. You can try to force me but I'll either run away or loose my mind. Rhiannon needs me more than the strongholds do. I'm staying here.”

And she was right, I did need her. I was facing the final political amalgamation of the Human and Fay kingdoms and the joining of the two councils. It was messy and frustrating. Yuka was my right hand in this and Nimue's presence helped keep Fay members in line, as Liam's did the Humans. But for me it was awful. At least Nimue and Liam were willing to be my public face. I never had to face the people of the city. I didn't have it in me. I've never been that sort of person and after all that had passed . . .? I've never been a political person either. Passionate yes. Political no. None of what was happening held any appeal. I couldn't help it. I felt as if everything around me was too sharp, too abrupt, and when I had to leave Sulamith in Sarah's arms to go sit and listen to people bicker I would loose my patience and force them to stop. I would stand over them until they had worked the problem out like grownups and then I would say, conscious of the tears that never had a chance to dry on my face, “I must go, my daughter needs me,” and I would walk down long grey halls back to my baby so that I could feed her and care for her because I'm her mother and that's what mothers do.

I was constantly being offered a wet nurse but this became a bone of contention. I knew that the ladies of the court saw my insistence on nursing my own child as eccentric and the council thought that I needed to focus more on the tasks at hand. I felt so alone with people's eyes on me at all times and I couldn't do anything about the tears that fell all day down my face. When I looked around at the people I loved I could see the immediacy of their pain, both what they carried for themselves and the reflection of my own. Every time Nimue looked at me it twisted me up inside.

Liam would try to spend time with me but I would always ask him difficult questions like, “Liam, who was your father?”

His face turned to stone.

“I'm sorry I didn't mean to pry.”

“No. It's fine. People don't talk about it, that's all.”

“Oh,” I said quietly.

Liam was silent for a long moment, obviously weighing whether he wanted to tell me himself or if he wanted me to find out from someone else. He sighed long and heavy. “He was one of the Brownridge sons. Foisted on my mother to keep her out of trouble. She hated him. My conception was practically rape. Not like yours. I think Thaylum killed him in the battle just before the Brownridges withdrew their support from Seamus' army.” A long silence followed.

Then on another afternoon as we were walking the ramparts together Liam told me, “When I was a little boy I used to walk up here with my mother and she would make up stories for me. I wish I could remember the stories.”

“How did she die?” I asked.

“Aw Rhiannon. You don't want to know that. Didn't Rowan ever tell you?”

“No. He wouldn't. And it's not something people talk about.”

Liam gave me a funny look. “Rowan wouldn't tell you?”

I nodded into the late autumn wind and adjusted my grip on Sulamith as we strolled along the ramparts.

Liam sighed, “Can't you just be content not knowing?”

“She was my mother too Liam. I have a right to know. And anyway, content doesn't exist anymore.”

“Alright.” Liam paused, “Seamus pushed her out her window after forcing her at knife point to write a suicide letter.”

I looked up at the high tower where her rooms had been. “How come he didn't get away with it.”

“Rowan, of all people, caught him in the act, just as she lost her grip in the casement and fell. He was bringing her a letter from the then captain. Her guard was missing. He thought something was off so he broke down the door to her rooms. He attacked Seamus then and there but Rowan was only eighteen and Seamus was bigger meaner and faster. He almost killed Rowan. He thought he had, but the commotion was enough to bring the other guards running. Seamus ran and was eventually banished. Rowan always had issues about it after.”

“It always comes back to Rowan doesn't it,” I muttered at the stones under foot then looked up at my tall handsome brother, “I hate this place Liam. I hate it.”

Raphael alone seemed to sense that I didn't want sympathy and that I was too close to the edge of an abyss to accept comfort, but as the weeks and months passed I could see that I was hurting him. I felt guilty all the time and though my tears fell, I could not cry. I did not weep. I couldn't cry with all of those curious eyes waiting to see if I would. I couldn't cry without shelter and since Rowan was gone I felt I didn't have any. How could I cry without Rowan there to help me stop? I dreamed of Rowan every night and woke again each day to find him gone. Each day I woke to find that I'd lost just a little more of myself as well.

About a week after my walk up on the ramparts with Liam, after a morning of tedious meetings, I had retreated gratefully to the quiet of my rooms and sat in a comfortable chair in the corner with Sulamith in my arms nursing hungrily. It didn't take long for her to drift off to sleep. She usually napped in the afternoon. It's hard for a baby with a full tummy to stay awake sometimes. I laid her on my bed—she always looked so tiny there—and sat watching her sleep. I felt right when I was with her. Not necessarily happy or even content, but not so jarringly wrong either. Nimue opened the door and entered quietly. At first she did as I was doing and sat baby gazing, but after a time she said my name. “Rhiannon?” Her voice and her expression were so loaded that I thought she was going to try to talk to me, but I saw it in her eyes. I saw her lose her nerve and instead of whatever it was that she was going to say she told me, “I can sit with her if you like, and you could go walk in the gardens or take a bath.”

I didn't give it serious thought, but being outside did bring me a relief of sorts so even though I knew that it meant less time with my baby I decided that twenty minutes in the small private gardens just outside the rooms that Nimue had moved me to after the war had ended wouldn't be a bad thing. While no one else had any other demands, before something came up and I lost my chance. I nodded and said, “Um, I will maybe, go out for a few minutes. I'll stick to the gardens.”

I slipped out through the french doors and into the early December rain. It was misty and cool but not cold. The grey fog made me feel sheltered and took away all of the sharp edges. The dead plants didn't jar me. It was a reflection of my inner landscape. Muted. Dull. It made no demands. It was dormant with no expectation of life or action. No growth. Nothing. I let my face relax and let down the walls that I kept erected around me. I was so, so tired. My feet carried me along the paths and I paid them no heed. I thought about Sulamith's little seal toy. She was old enough by then to grasp it and shake it and realize cause and effect. She shook, and it jingled. Rowan had carved it a year ago from a dying tree. Dying. The word played over in my head and my feet carried me on through that grey world. I lost all sense of life, of space, of time. Dying. I wasn't looking where I was going and my head was filled with one reverberating word. Dying. So it was no wonder that I walked right into Raphael. Without my walls erected the brightness of him seared me and I gave a cry that implied real pain. Raphael took my shoulders to keep me from falling.

I don't want to know what he saw in my face to make him look at me the way he did that afternoon, and in my unguarded state I couldn't handle his expression, but I couldn't look away either. I think he could see me for what I had become. A fresh river of tears spilled down my not quite dry face as I looked into Raphael's eyes and hated myself for hurting him, for the tears that were spilling down his face. We stood there for an amorphous expanding and contracting length of meaningless time, Raphael gripping my arms so hard I knew it would leave bruises. When he spoke he cried my name. “Rhiannon . . . What are you doing to yourself?” His voice was raw. “You can't keep this up . . . Look at you. I can't find you when I look in your eyes anymore. If Rowan could see you like this it would break his heart. You're breaking my heart.”

He shook me, not hard, just hard enough to provoke a response, “What the hell do you want me to do Raphael? I haven't got any fight left in me!” I almost shouted at him, and he kissed me.

He hadn't meant to kiss me as he gripped my arms even harder and lifted me to my toes. I hadn't meant to react. I hadn't meant to kiss him back, but I did. It was the only thing I'd reacted to other than Sulamith in months. It was crazy and furious. He was lifting me up to hold me against him and we were kissing each other brutally. I don't even remember anymore how we got to his room only that his bed was rumpled and unmade. I remember his skin and the way he looked at me. I'll never forget our one afternoon when we let that strange love of ours spread its wings. It was a freedom of sorts. A release that obliterated everything except for love and I loved Raphael too much to want to hurt him. I didn't want to break his heart. I couldn't stand the idea that I was breaking his heart and I would offer him the only comfort I could just as he was doing for me. Not that I'm saying that one hour-and-a-half with Raphael could, in and of itself, have solved anything. It couldn't. Raphael and I would never be happy together like that, not that happiness with him could have chased away my demons. Ours is a strange friendship. I'm not even sure that you could call it friendship. It's too painful in some ways. But in that hour-and-a-half he gave me space. Respite. A temporary release from my demons that brought me back to myself and as I lay there watching him rest, lying in the soft warm shelter of his brilliant wing, I was in the eye of the storm. My face was dry and, for the first time in months, I could see that Raphael was right. I was slowly dying and I had to make a decision. I lay there quietly and ran a finger down his cheek. He turned and opened his eyes, smiled softly at me. He took my hand and held it in his gently, looking at how much smaller than his it was, then brought his gaze back to my face.

“This . . . us . . .” he swallowed. “It's a one time deal. I know it is, but not being with you, like this, at least once in my life, would have been a regret. If Rowan were still here I would never have crossed that line and it makes me feel conflicted that I did, but I can't help the way I feel.”

I smiled a little and realized how seldom I did that for anyone other than Sulamith anymore, but it was classic Raphael. Always so open about how he felt. “We can't change the past,” I told him. “Let's not feel guilty about the present. If this is a one time deal let's make the most of it because Sulamith never naps for more than two hours.”

I watched as his beautiful wings arched above me one more time. I felt the kisses he rained down on my face and when we were finished, and he slept in earnest this time, I slid out from under his heavy arm and, shivering outside the warmth of his wings, I dressed hurriedly and crept surreptitiously back to my rooms.