A Cup of Normal

  Written for an anthology of stories exploring the three stages of a woman’s life as maiden, matron and crone, I thought about it for a long time before deciding the matron’s perspective would be the most challenging to define. I didn’t expect to explore all three aspects of being a woman. Readers have asked me if it is part of a novel, and my answer is: not yet.

  BEARING LIFE

  Thera wore four silver and five gold rings on her right hand — two on each finger and her pinky. The silver were for the daughters she had borne and watched die — wasted away by the coughing plague before they had done little more than learn to speak. The five gold were for her sons who were dead — three to infections — and the last, the only ring on her thumb, for Gregory who had bled out all eighteen years of his life on the northen border with Balingsway in one of many unnecessary skirmishes.

  On her head she wore her husband’s crown. She had worn the black and gray of grieving for so many years, some called her the grave queen, and a few, woman of stone.

  Thera tapped her right hand — the ringed hand — against the arm of her husband’s throne and tipped the parchment to better catch the light from the glass sconce that burned over her shoulder.

  “Majesty?”

  She glanced over the yellow edge of the parchment to Johnathon, her husband’s, and now her own, loyal advisor. His walnut-colored hair had gone gray with streaks of brown, and his face carried grim, but not bitter, lines. Johnathon still knew how to laugh.

  “Do you understand what the summons outlines?” he asked gently.

  Thera nodded, the crown on her head heavy. Endure, Johnathon had said when he removed the crown from her husband’s cold brow and placed it upon her own. Endure, her husband had said as they stood above their last child’s grave. Endure, the midwife had yelled at her through the birthing pains. Endure, her mother had whispered when she sent her, thirteen years of age, to be married to the king easily twenty years her elder.

  “The Mother Queen of Harthing is asking for my surrender,” Thera said in a matter-of-fact tone. “And that I supplicate to her and her lands. That I give over the valley, the crops and the shipping route to Balingsway.” Thera tipped her head to one side, only so much as the crown would allow, and felt the sting of metal breaking the blister it had worn upon her temple. “Have I missed anything, Johnathon?”

  His eyes, still warm and brown after all these years, narrowed at the corners.

  “By the Seven, Thera. She wants your lands. Your people. She wants word by dawn tomorrow that you will step down and stroll to the gallows so she can pull the rope. Where is your fire?”

  Thera took in a breath and wanted to yell, to scream, to beat at the walls, the throne, her own body until something broke. To Johnathon, likely her closest friend, she said, “Fire does not solve every ill, Johnathon. Let us see if the Mother Queen has the forces she claims. Are the slave tunnels still open?”

  Johnathon looked shocked, something Thera had seen rarely in their thirty years together.

  “You know of the tunnels?”

  “Johnathon, I am the queen. Of course I know. I was there when Vannel,” her voice caught, and she swallowed quickly. Had this been the first time she had spoken his name since his death? “When he closed the slave trade route eighteen years ago.”

  Johnathon let his breath out in a rush and raised his hands to rub at his face. “You know of the slave trade, too. It wouldn’t have hurt you to have told me so.”

  “Nor would it have hurt for you to tell me about it, if you thought it important. I am your queen.”

  “And I your advisor,” he replied with faint annoyance.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes, yes,” Johnathon said, “point made and taken. I thought since it was done and over, it not worth your worry. You have had too many hardships in your years.”

  Like a blow to the stomach, Thera felt all the blood drain from her face. Her vision closed in at the edges, crowded out by memories. So many last breaths, warm little bodies going cold in her arms. She had thought her heart could break no more. Had sworn she had no tears left. Until the next child died. All of them. All of them gone.

  She gripped the arm of the throne, carved wood inlaid with metal that never warmed to a palm. A reminder of the steel rulers must keep in their decisions, their hearts.

  “Thera,” Johnathon reached out for her, his hand pausing before resting on top of hers.

  “I am your queen,” she said, sharply. Too sharply. “As such, all matters of import to this kingdom’s well-being will be brought to my attention.” She pulled her hand out from beneath his, unable to endure the warmth of his touch any longer. “That, Advisor, is your job. It can be another’s if you are unable to keep your personal feelings separate from your duties.”

  Johnathon stepped back and folded his hands in front of his tunic. His expression was blank, his lips a severe line.

  “I swore duty to the throne,” he said, and it hurt all the more for how softly he spoke. “That duty I will uphold regardless of who sits as ruler upon it.”

  Thera nodded. She wanted to untake her words, to draw the pain out of what she had said. But of all the matters before her, one man’s hurt feelings were surely the least important. “The tunnels are open then?”

  “Yes, Queen Thera Gui.” Flat. Nothing more than duty required.

  “Johnathon,” she began, but could not bring herself to apologize. If she admitted she was wrong, hurt, confused — if she admitted the pain was too much for her to bear and continue breathing — then she would have to admit it all, face it all. Every senseless, painful, death.

  No. She promised her mother she would endure. She promised her husband she would endure. And she had never broken a promise in her life.

  “Take me to the tunnels,” she said.

  Johnathon nodded. “You may want your cloak, Your Majesty.” At her look of annoyance he sighed. They were both too old to hold grudges for long, a happenstance Thera was grateful for.

  “It is cold beneath the mountain, Thera,” Johnathon said, “and damp. You may also want to bring a guard or two in case the old gates have rusted into place.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “I’ll leave it to your discretion whom to bring. I will meet you at the well house in the apple orchard within the hour.”

  Johnathon bowed, and waited as she walked behind her throne to the door that led to her private hallway. She paused at the doorway.

  “Johnathon,” she said.

  “Yes, Majesty?”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded. She opened the door and entered the hallway lit with the rare blown-glass globes Vannel had spent a small fortune on to line this hallway, their room, and their children’s rooms. The wicks burned brightly over globes of refined oil, the globes themselves doubling the flame’s radiance.

  Beautiful, rare, Thera remembered when she had looked at them with wonder and delight. Now they lined the dark paths of her duty, and her confinement.

  Two turns and a gradual curve brought her to her room. She closed the door behind her. She did not allow serving women to help her dress or bathe, though occasionally someone brought tea, or changed the goose down quilts of her bed. If she was strong enough to rule a kingdom alone, she was strong enough to tie the lacings on her own boots.

  Thera walked behind her dressing screen set close enough to the fire that she gained a bit of its heat as she disrobed. Out of her official black and gray gown and layers of under skirting, Thera wrapped her arms around her rib cage, holding still, holding herself. For a woman who had born nine children, she was thin, the bones of her ribs and hips barely hidden beneath her flesh. Her stomach still carried the lines of pregnancy — ghostly finger-width scars across her empty belly. She never looked at her body in a mirror any more. It was not a queen’s body that a land most needed. It was her spirit and her will.

  She took a breath, steeling herself. She donned Vannel’s fine black wool shirt, and a pair of his breec
hes she had asked the tailor to shorten and sew down to her size. To that, she added her heavy cloak, with a hood that would help ward off early spring’s chill. Lastly, she donned her calf-high, hard-soled boots that were laced with the same sinew the archers used on their bows.

  She stepped out from behind her dressing screen and picked up the gloves from her bedside table. The mirror across the room flashed with her reflection. Black hair gone gray like frost over stone was pulled back in a severe braid to reveal the blue eyes of a younger, laughing woman. Her lips were unpainted and deep lines marked her forehead and around her eyes.

  She looked away from her reflection, and walked out the corner door down a spiraled wooden stair and finally to the rear room where a guard stood his watch.

  She tried to remember the man’s name, but had long ago given up on memorizing the faces of men who so quickly left to battles, borders, and death.

  “I will be going to the apple orchard,” she said. “Come with me.”

  “Majesty.” He crossed the room to the bolted outer door, opened it, and took a lantern from a wall peg before stepping through the doorway. He held the door open as she crossed out into the cold night air.

  The moon flickered behind moody clouds, giving and taking of its light like a beggar flashing sorrowed eyes for coin. Even though the air stung her cheeks and lungs, Thera felt her shoulders relax at the simple act of moving, of doing, of being anywhere but upon the throne.

  It took little time to reach the well house — a squat brick and thatch structure. Johnathon and two guards who were both as gray haired as he stood by the well house.

  “You may go,” Thera told the guard who had accompanied her. The man bowed and offered her the lantern, which she took.

  “This way, Majesty,” Johnathon said. He led the way through trees, following a path Thera could not discern, and finally stopped by a rise in the hill where a fall of rocks was covered by brambles and vines nearly two stories high. The guards made quick work of pushing aside the leaves, uncovering an open space between the stones.

  One guard stepped into the gap between the stones and Thera watched as light from his torch cast yellow against the bellies of leaf and vine, then was swallowed altogether.

  “It’s clear,” the guard called back, his voice muffled in the cold night air.

  “Go ahead, Majesty,” Johnathon said.

  The path was covered with leaves and rotted berries over thick loam, and stretched out longer than she expected. She had the uncomfortable sensation of the stones closing in above her, like a hood pulled over her head, darkness over her eyes, a death cowl cinched to strangling around her throat.

  This is what it is like to be buried, swallowed by earth and all the weight of the world, she thought.

  She tried to keep her breathing calm as she followed the path, squeezing between stones, and finally stopping in front of an iron gate set into the mountainside.

  Her heart hammered. How many people had been dragged this way, to be sold to distant lands, knowing only despair before death? The stones seemed to constrict around her, and she could taste the fear and hatred of the souls who had crossed this way.

  “Open it,” she said.

  Johnathon stepped forward, so close to her she could smell hearth smoke upon him, leather and oil, and the spice of cloves. He placed a key in the fist-sized lock and pulled a vial of oil from his pocket. He poured oil into the lock and worked the key until the lock gave way with a grating clack.

  It took both guards to pull then push the gate back upon its hinges.

  “Tarin and Beir, first,” Johnathon said, “then you, Majesty. I’ll follow. If that is your will,” he added.

  Thera nodded and followed the two guards into the tunnel of dirt and stone braced by timber and iron. The tunnel was damp and cold, the air so still, she thought she would choke on every breath. All the while the ceiling seemed to drop lower and lower, and she struggled not to panic, not to imagine the earth collapsing, crushing. She forced her feet to lift and lift again, her eyes on her own boots or the back of the guard before her.

  Endure.

  After an hour, they came upon an opening in the tunnel where a natural chimney exposed the glint of star and clouds. Dusty remains of fire pits scattered the small chamber, and though the light breeze did little more than stir the smell of mold and bat guano, Thera inhaled deeply, grateful for even that small reminder of the outside world. They drank from water skins and moved quickly onward, hoping to reach the opening of the slave tunnel above the border of the Harthing lands within the hour.

  “How many?” Thera asked.

  “Majesty?” Johnathon said.

  “How many slaves did we drag through this tunnel?”

  He considered his answer. “The tunnel was built in Vannel’s father’s father’s time.”

  “Hundreds?” Thera asked. “Thousands?”

  “Thousands,” Johnathon said. “Easily that.”

  “All taken from the Harthing lands?”

  “Not all. Many of the slaves were from the lands south and east of Harthing. All came through Harthing, then this passage, and up the Kilscree River to be sold in Balingsway, and from there to distant shores.”

  Thera had known of the tunnels a scarce few months before Vannel shut them down permanently. She had seen the papers he drafted to cancel the long standing contract with Harthing. But only now did she understand the deep and undoubtedly financial rift it had caused between their two kingdoms. Without the river route to the northern ports, all merchandise, even human, would have to be marched over the spine of the Riven Mountains, or sailed around the southern edge of the continent itself. Taking slaves and other goods through these tunnels, or even through the pass and upriver was only a short journey, but sailing the seas could take months.

  Thera paused and turned so that she could watch Jonathan’s expression in the light of her lantern. “Why did Vannel shut the tunnels down?”

  Johnathon’s gaze held steady, but she had known the man for enough years to know when he was telling less than the truth.

  “Vannel thought the slave trade abysmal. He would not continue his father’s trade in flesh, once his own child had been born.” Johnathon held her gaze, and she had the distinct feeling he was waiting for a reaction from her, an admission of knowledge.

  “Majesty,” one of the guards called out. “This is the opening.”

  Thera approached the guard. This door was the exact match to the iron door Johnathon had worked loose, and as before, he stepped forward and placed the same key in the rusted lock and worked it with oil until it gave way. The guards lifted the heavy bolt — a beam of timber reinforced by rods of iron — and put their shoulders to the door.

  It gave way and cool air poured into the tunnel.The guards extinguished their torches in the dirt and Thera put out the wick of her lantern. With no lights to give them away should anyone chance to look up at the mountainside, the guards stepped out, Thera and Johnathon on their heels. The moon was lowering to the west, only a few hours from the horizon line. The tunnel opened onto an outcropping of rocks that looked down over the sloped valley to the expanse of Harthing’s outermost lands, given mostly to wheat crops and sheep. Even in the uncertain light, Thera could make out the distant, glossy black towers of Harthing Keep, banners catching like strands of silver in the moonlight. But in the valley itself, Thera saw the glittering orange jewels of camp fires and the dark hulk of tents. Enough for an army readying to march the Riven Mountains to Gosbeak’s Pass, and then to her kingdom proper.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “Five thousand at least,” one guard, perhaps Tarin, said.

  “Near enough,” the other guard agreed, “with more at the keep, I’d wager.”

  Thera felt the cold of the night sink through her flesh. “Five thousand here, an equal amount at the keep and a likely alliance with the East. How many men do you think Harthing can muster?”

  The guards looked at Johnathon. She too,
glanced at her advisor. His face was grim, pale. “Forty thousand, with the aid of their southern borders, which seems likely since the trade route has been closed to them also.”

  Thera took several deep breaths. “We have twenty thousand soldiers at best, and most of them two week’s ride at our northern borders. The skirmishes have taken too many men, the plague has taken too many babies —” Her voice took on a high, frightened tone and she shut her mouth.

  “I would like your advice, gentlemen,” she said evenly.

  “We could come at them by the river route. They wouldn’t be expecting that,” Tarin said.

  “Meet them at the pass with archers,” Beir mused.

  “And what of the other thirty thousand men who would descend upon us?” Thera asked. “We are already too short on human life. How many can we lose before we no longer have the people to run the kingdom, nor defend it?”

  Johnathon spoke into the silence. “If we are in a position of defeat, let us preempt their attack with negotiation. Perhaps we can come to an agreement for the trade route, placing our own profit upon it. If,” he added, “the trade route is what they want.”

  “Agreed,” Thera said. “I’ll send a request for negotiation to the queen on the morning.” Thera turned back toward the tunnel. The steel rasp of a sword pulling free of a scabbard stopped her.

  “Hold,” an unfamiliar voice called out.

  Behind her, Jonathon paused. Over the edge of her hood she saw Beir shift, his hand going to the weapon on his hip.

  “Hold or you’ll take your last breath,” the voice warned.

  Beir cursed. Thera tipped her head so she could see over her shoulder. Two archers held heavy crossbows aimed at them. The sound of movement told her there were at least two others she could not see.

  “Do not draw your weapons,” the voice said to her guards. “You two, turn around.”