Chapter 10
It was five days’ ride to Dashfort and the house where Eleanor had hidden Donna away from prying eyes. The man who usually lived there was a half-retired member of the Association who had the unenviable task of resetting the puzzle chamber every time an academy postulant attempted the challenge. He’d been delighted when Eleanor had arrived at his doorstep and told him to take a holiday before the new set of students started to filter through, and he’d hurried off to enjoy springtime on the island where he’d grown up, leaving her with an empty house where she could hide her princess until the summer solstice.
For her part, Donna had protested at almost every aspect of the plan, but she hadn’t been able to find an argument strong enough to sway Eleanor’s resolve. Although the whole house could easily have fitted into a the throne room of the Imperial palace, it was clean and comfortable, and sat conveniently in the middle of Dashfort. They’d had extensive discussions on that front, too, with Eleanor prepared to allow Donna the freedom to wander the city only if she agreed not to engage in any unnecessary chatter.
So it was that when Eleanor arrived back in Dashfort a few days before the solstice, she found a heavily pregnant and very irritable princess waiting for her.
“So what now?” Donna asked. “Since we need to give this house back, and my baby hasn’t yet shown any signs of wanting to come out.”
“I might be able to help you with that.”
Once it had stopped involving trips to the Imperial harem, Daniel had become a lot more supportive of her plan. So while she’d sneaked away from the Association without telling anyone else where she was going, she’d explained everything to him – including the way that the timings didn’t quite work out – and he’d given her an experimental potion that he thought might bring on an early labour. She reached into her bag and brought out the bottle.
“Drink this. You’ve given birth before, so just tell me when it starts working and we’ll get you to a local midwife.”
“Can we trust them?”
“You’re an anonymous woman about to give birth. If you don’t say anything stupid, we’ll be fine.”
It was almost sunset when Donna’s waters broke, and Eleanor helped her to walk through the narrow streets to the house of the nearest midwife. Eleanor had dropped in earlier in the day to warn her that her services would be needed, and had primed her with the idea that the child was bound for Venncastle. She didn’t want it to come as a surprise when she took the baby away instead of leaving it to the midwife to find a nursery place.
Eleanor tried to keep out of the way while the midwife and her assistant fussed around with various herbal preparations, and Donna screamed and cursed and cried until the child was finally born.
“You’ll be taking him away while the young lady recuperates, will you?” the midwife asked Eleanor once she’d cleaned the child and wrapped him in a clean linen sheet.
Eleanor agreed and took the small wriggling bundle, which promptly started to wail. She held him at arm’s length. “This,” she said, once she was sure the midwife had moved out of hearing range, “is not a very princely way to behave.”
Once Donna was ready to walk again, they went back to the house for one final night. In the morning Eleanor would take the child and Donna would find a cart to carry her back to Almont.
By morning, however, Donna had been holding her baby for a whole nearly-sleepless night.
“I don’t think I want to let him go,” she said, hugging him close to her chest. “Can we change the plan?”
“No.”
“I want to take him home.”
“You can’t. You know it’s not safe.”
Eleanor held out her arms for the boy and Donna passed him across, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
“We haven’t come this far to have you give in to sentimentality,” Eleanor said. “This is only what every other woman in the Empire goes through.”
“Where will you take him?”
Eleanor strapped the baby tightly into a sling across her back, and swung herself up onto her horse. “You’ll tell me when the time is right for him to come home,” she said. “And I’ll fetch him. For now, it’s safer that you don’t know where I’m going.”
Donna nodded, swallowing back her tears.
“Go home now,” Eleanor said, “and put your grief to good use. Let them see you cry.”
“Someone will ask me what’s wrong.”
“We’re counting on it. You’ll tell them that you had a baby son, and you lost him to a tragedy of nature. You’ll be very clear with everyone – especially your husband, within his mother’s hearing – that your heart’s broken, and you could never put yourself through that again. He’ll be disappointed, but he’ll understand.”
“And you’ll make sure my son is hidden until it’s time for him to claim his birthright?”
“Until the Empress is dead and Leon established in her place,” Eleanor said. “Or whenever it makes sense that he’s safe. We’ll see how things go.”
The princess nodded, and watched in silence as Eleanor carried her child away. For her part, Eleanor was sure the immediate danger had passed. If anyone saw her now she was just another woman with another child, on her way to lodge him safely in an appropriate school. That she’d picked Venncastle only served to give her a better excuse for making a journey with the child; in that respect, she was lucky the princess had produced a son.
She caught the regular supply boat from Dashfort to Flying Rock Island, crewed mostly by the same sailors as the last time she’d made this trip. She wasn’t sure whether they recognised her, but none of them said anything and she was more than happy to remain anonymous. One mother and child was much like the next, to their eyes, and if they noticed she was feeding him from a bottle then they didn’t comment on it.
At the gate she was met by curious stares from the guards, but no-one challenged her, and Venncastle’s head of admissions came down to talk with her in the gatehouse. She claimed a military background for herself and an invented Association father for the child, and he was accepted easily, with only a few cursory questions. And if she seemed more than a little interested in how he would be named, well, it was only natural that a mother would find parting difficult. A name to hold in her heart was the least they could do in exchange for the right to raise her son.
It was a speedy process, and Eleanor rejoined the supply boat before it went on to complete its circuit of the neighbouring islands, satisfied in the knowledge that the youngest heir to the Imperial throne would grow up to become a Venncastle man by the name of Damien. She didn’t even need to send word to Leon. Donna would be home by now, weeping with a genuine sense of bereavement, and the least said beyond that the better.