The Rugged Edge

Chapter 2: Her Life's Thief

I stare into my china plate.
His icy glare, from such a height
has always torn my spine apart
in thousands of shivers of fright.
Who left me in this sad despair?
Who robbed her of her time?
I long to know who broke her heart,
And who, therefore, broke mine.

. . . . .

At one time, as soon as the maid put out the torches throughout the castle, at a very late hour every night, a secret was unfolded. If you looked closely at the long shadows around the corners and along the walls, you may have seen something that made you catch your breath. You may have seen a fourteen year old girl, dressed all in black, with her hair braided in one long braid, slipping stealthily down the steps, through the halls, and out the door. And if you looked very closely, you could see that it was someone you'd never have guessed it to be.

. . .

It was my seventh birthday and I was dressed in an extravagant ocean-blue dress in the dining hall, eating my special birthday dinner with Collum. I sat at the table, my back regally straight and my napkin on my lap. The stained silver clinked against the china plate as I ate.

Collum was instructing me on how someday soon I would be a "very important monarch" and all that. But as he talked, I began questioning his motives in my head; his words made me small and powerless, he blamed my mother for everything, and he obviously didn't want me to be queen when I came of age - yet he was the one who had brought the subject up.

"Eloise," he said. "You, such a delicate and fragile princess, will be queen when you are of a certain age. But of course it's a silly law, you'll be much too young to rule this kingdom that your mother sent into despair. Besides, you have no knowledge whatsoever about trade and commerce, battle, politics, or anything at all. Therefore-"

"I can read," I interrupted, angry. Reading a poem out loud had been a recent accomplishment that I had performed for my tutor, Professor Alastair. And reading certainly counted as anything at all.

"Anyone can read," said Collum, irritated. Then he had to stop for a second to collect his thoughts again. When he did, he said, "Therefore you'll need someone to rule in your place... for a while."

He smiled.

It was years later that I reflected on what exactly this smile meant.

But I was only half listening. I was thinking about my mother. She hadn't sent this country into despair, had she? I'd never thought about it; I was seven, you see. And my mother's death was very mysterious. Some thought she had grown suddenly ill in the night, although this was unlikely to have killed her so suddenly, and some thought she had hit her head on the bedpost and died like that. The most common belief was that she had died of misery; of a broken heart because she was lost of her beloved husband and she was caught in a distanced matrimony with a stranger. But nobody really knew at all.

So it wasn't her fault she couldn't rule anymore. She was dead.

I had a sudden thought and carelessly voiced it. "What if my mother was murdered?"

"What?" said Collum, jerking his head up. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well," I said. "She wasn't sick or anything when she died, was she?"

"She must have been very sick," said Collum, and he smiled a very odd smile, as if he couldn't decide whether my mother's death was good or bad.

I sat there, unconvinced and thinking for a while. "I wonder who it could have been."

"More meat?" asked Collum, coldly.

"Yes, please." But because I was such a fool at that tender age of seven, I said out of pure curiosity, "Did you kill her?"

Collum stood up very abruptly. "How dare you?" The table shook and the dinnerware made soft jingling noises as he stared down at me. His brown eyes suddenly looked like a hawk's beady ones, keen on its prey. He clenched his left fist very tight, so that each vein was visible as it beat softly and steadily. But what startled seven-year-old me was this: his right hand went steadily and swiftly to the sword hilt that hung on his belt.

I'm sure my face was white as a snowy owl's, my eyes suddenly wide with fear. I quickly looked down at the napkin on my lap and left my eyes fixed there. It was much better to look at the white cloth than to look at that cruel face. I could feel the tears swelling up on my eyelids.

Maybe I felt scared or awkward, but I must say I wasn't sorry, and though I shook with that evil glare on me, I was still curious to know whether he had killed my mother. Or why he had, since now I was quite sure it was him who had killed her.

Luckily I was just wise enough to shut my mouth.