~ The Bad Heir Day ~

by

Roberta Olsen Major

Four hundred years earlier…

My mother was dead.

I was six when her heart ceased beating; now I was sixteen. I’d lost her too many years ago for tears, though there were days, like this one, when I wished for the power to bring her back. At the very least, had she not died, I’d be without three troublesome half-brothers, with time on my hands to do whatever pleased me. Watching over the three troublesome half-brothers did not please me. I strongly suspected it never would.

It took two hours, but I finally cornered Vexto, the last of the three littles to be scrubbed from dusty head to grubby foot. “I am nine!” he shrieked. “I can wash myself, Wisteria!”

I tweaked his ear and vigorously applied the soaped cloth to the small onion field growing in the dirt behind it. “Can and will are two different stories, Vexto. You could, but didn’t, so now I must.”

I was still a few inches taller than Vexto, though all three littles were growing quickly. I didn’t doubt that they would one day reach King Ardour’s lofty heights. By that time, I hoped they would be in the habit of scrubbing themselves clean for the annual Festival of the Greening.

Vexto sank lower into the wooden tub, sulking. “I don’t see why we have to be clean for the festival. Lux will get a bloody nose and Gustus will just spill food all over himself, so it’s a waste of water.”

“You are a son of the King,” I reminded him. “You have to set a good example.”

He jerked away from my soaping cloth, splashing water all over the front of my robe. “At least you’re getting a bath at the same time,” he jeered.

I pushed his head down—to get his hair wet, or perhaps to drown him, something I had contemplated many times over the course of his nine-year life. He came up sputtering, so I applied soap, paying particular attention to his open mouth.

At last, the task was done for another year.

I jumped back as he surged from the tub, grabbed for a drying cloth and rained curses on my head. I sat back on my heels and watched him stomp away, his face red with temper and scrubbing. Then I rubbed my wet sleeve over my sweating face. The stone floor was awash in gritty water, the tub almost empty.

My own bathwater would be cold by now. But refreshing, I told myself grimly.

The festival would start just before midday, with the binding to begin as the sun reached its zenith.

A noon-high binding was supposed to symbolize bright days ahead, or some such silliness, but all the symbolism in the world hadn’t helped Ardour’s last two attempts to bind himself to a new bride. It was if his good fortune was all spent in pursuit of unifying the kingdom, with none left over to spill onto the heads of his subsequent brides and children.

His last two brides were young. Too young, I’d thought both times, scarcely older than his daughters. Though he chose them for their youth and bloom, each bride died of a mysterious taint just a few moonspans after the bindings. Each bride was with child at the Festival of the Greening, as was Ardour’s tradition, but neither infant survived.

It was selfish, but I couldn’t help but feel relief that there weren’t even more of the king’s spawn for me to tend. Vexto, Lux and Gustus were more than enough to keep my hands full.

After the death of the last bride, Ardour gave up on bindings. He was doomed, he said (with just the slightest hint of noble pathos), to stand alone. Note that he said this while surrounded by his seven children, and with Cleave, his First Sword and constant companion, at his side.

My older half-brother, Pax, shot me a look. Ardour would not see the irony, but more than half of his children were not so short-sighted.

Still, even without another bride of Ardour, there was to be a binding at this year’s Festival of the Greening. This time it was Pax who would face the Oldest Brother of the Spike, Pax who would be bound to a bride, and Pax who would follow that bride home for a season.

At twenty-four, he was past due for binding, but he’d made no attempts to woo, since the disastrous days of Jobena.

Long story short: Jobena was Ardour’s third bride, and mother to the three littles who made my life such torture.

Jobena was sweet and fair-haired, with eyes as gentle and trusting as a moonling calf. Pax adored her, though not in a filial fashion. Jobena never broke her binding to Ardour, except maybe in her heart, but even a spark of infidelity—fanned, as it was, into a roaring inferno by my eldest half-sister, Jenegret—was enough to seal Jobena’s fate.

I remembered it all too well, though it happened four years past.

The hangman gave the block a tug, at the same time shoving Jobena, weighted down with a belt of iron, forward. She dropped through the opening of the gallows; there was a snapping sound, like a dry twig in the forest.

Jobena’s slight remains were buried in the dirt, no better than a turnip. There would be no cleansing fire to consume this bride of Ardour.

Under cover of darkness, I followed Pax out of the tower that night and helped him unearth Jobena’s broken body. He carried it to the shore of The Lady’s Lake. He had fashioned a crude raft and covered it with flowers for her final bower. I stood back as he set the raft afire and pushed it out onto the lake.

“Ardour will see the fire,” I muttered. “They’ll hang you next, Pax.”

“No one will hang me,” he said, his voice tired. “It’s always the woman’s fault, Wisteria.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Nothing is fair, but I choose to honor her, as Ardour never did.”

“He bound himself to her,” I ventured.

Pax snorted. “And what kind of an honor did that turn out to be? She was younger than Jenagret! She deserved an ordinary man to cherish her, not an indifferent king to beget heirs on her.”

We watched together until the final flicker of flame was swallowed up by The Lady. The Lake stretched before us, as still as a looking glass, the full moon reflecting on its surface.

“I will never love another as I loved Jobena,” Pax said at last.

My heart lurched at his words. “You don’t mean to join the Brothers of the Spike?”

He looked at me like I was a lunatic. “Do you know why they’re called the Brothers of the Spike?” he asked. “To prevent anyone from ever reneging on their vows, the Brothers take the ceremonial Spike and skewer it through a man’s—”

I plugged my ears. I’d heard the story once; once was more than enough.

Pax wiped his nose on his grimy sleeve. “I will never love another as I loved Jobena,” he said, sighing, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t bind with someone one day, and beget some heirs.”

“Then you are no better than Ardour,” I said.

“Shut up,” he replied. Then he slung an arm around my shoulders and headed with me back to the tower.

And now, the time had come for Pax to bind had come.

Ardour had finally had enough of his son’s heel-dragging. Six moonspans ago, he’d said to Pax, “This year,” then, even more firmly, “to that girl.”

That girl was Rue, eldest daughter of Cleave, First Sword. None of us had ever seen any of the First Sword’s people, as Cleave kept his family tucked away in a holding in the north.

Some guessed Rue was deformed, bald, ten years older than Pax, a shrew, a slut, a slattern. Others guessed she was Vexto’s age, short as a stump and fat as a spring piglet. Still others wagered she was toothless and tall and bony, with a laugh like a braying donkey, and crossed eyes. But none of us would know the truth of her, even Pax, until the curtain of greenery at the Festival was parted and the thing accomplished.

It wasn’t fair, but in Ardour’s kingdom, his will be done.

In preparation for the binding, Pax played dirges on his lyre. “I should be allowed to make my own choice,” he muttered to me, plucking a lyre string so hard it snapped.

“You should, but you didn’t, so now you can’t,” I said unsympathetically. “Don’t pout.”

“He’s not making Jenagret bind,” Pax said, “and she is two years older than me.”

I shrugged. “Being First Son is different.”

“If only I’d been in the middle,” Pax mourned, “like you. Overlooked, unimportant, able to do whatever I wanted—”

“Ha,” I said, thinking of four long years of herding the littles around like wayward piglets. I hadn’t been able to do what I wanted in a very long time.

“He’ll bind you to someone next,” Pax prophesied. “Some ancient bully like Cutbeard, and it will serve you right.”

“Can’t,” I said. “Jenagret and Belamue both have to go before me. It’s the law.”

“The law can change,” Pax muttered.

“It won’t.”

Jenagret, though eldest, had even less desire to be bound than Pax. She was too busy insinuating herself into the good graces of King Ardour.

His ambition had bred true in one daughter’s heart, even if the rest of us were a collective disappointment.

I was fairly sure I was safe from a binding, though there were countless other possible dangers, like wild beasts, the bloody taint, and drawing the attention of my oldest half-sister.