"Trauma?" Dane looked between the steward and the palace healer before him, unable to believe what they'd just reported after he'd dismissed the council.
"Indeed, sire," said Sir Alan. "By your orders, I asked Lady Cassandra why she was here and offered to send her back to Melina. But... she did not seem herself. So I requested Master Owyn's assistance with my assessment."
Curious. Master Owyn was, to his knowledge, the best healer they had in the palace. "And?"
"We spoke to Lady Cassandra at length, and she seemed incredibly... confused."
'Confused' was not exactly an unusual state for the Cassandra he knew, yet the deep frown between the men's brows said there had to be more. "Explain."
The steward glanced down at his scribbled notes. "She claims she does not know of Melina, or Lyons, or this palace, and insists that she lives somewhere called..." Another glance downwards. "New Zee Land. In the city of... uhh, Orc Land."
Dane rolled his eyes, still undecided as to whether Cassandra was participating in some stupid scheme, or if he'd generously overestimated her level of intelligence when he'd thought her brain was filled with haystacks. At least hay had some use as fodder. Perhaps the inside of Cassandra's head was simply a blob of goo.
"Did you ask her to point to those places on a map?" he asked drily.
"I did, sire. She said our map was fake."
Definitely a blob of goo. "Anything else?"
"She mentioned a Lord Ofterings. And creatures called orcs and..." Alan turned over a page of his notes. "Hobbits."
"And do we have a Lord Ofterings?"
"Nay, sire."
A made-up lord and orcs in Orc Land. What was that mad woman playing at? "I do not much care for her lies."
"That is the problem, sire. We do not believe she is lying, not consciously, at least. If Lady Cassandra was lying for whatever purpose, it would have been easier to play an act of complete memory loss, and claim she remembers absolutely nothing. Instead, she speaks at length of other lands, other people and things we have not heard of."
Dane turned to the healer, who'd remained respectfully quiet all this time. "What do you think, Owyn?"
"I agree, Your Majesty. We asked Lady Cassandra to explain and clarify her statements several times. They made little sense, but she repeated them without any inconsistency."
It was a tactic he oft adopted himself to test for lies: interrogate down to the finest detail, then interrogate again, and again. Unless one had an incredible memory, it was highly unlikely that the person could repeat all the details he'd lied of to precise consistency.
He doubted Cassandra had the requisite intellect to memorise all the details that these two seasoned men fished out of her, which meant she was likely not lying. And yet...
With a stroke of his greying beard, Master Owyn echoed his thoughts, "It is as if she truly believes in the things she claims."
In other words, she'd lost her marbles. "And your conclusion is trauma?" Dane asked.
"Aye, Majesty. I have not seen any evidence of physical injury, and Lady Cassandra herself denies having been injured. I therefore consider it more likely that she has suffered severe... emotional trauma."
The implication was clear in the slight hesitation in the healer's response and his downcast gaze. Could he have been the cause of her trauma? A woman divorced by her husband brought great shame upon herself and her family. It was not something he'd considered when he'd done the deed. He'd wanted her gone, not to succumb to insanity. It was still an assumption at this point, yet he could not stop the seedling of guilt from planting itself within his heart. "Do you think it curable?"
YOU ARE READING
Bride to the Cursed: a Snow White retelling
Fantasy[COMPLETED] When a king makes an order, he expects it to be followed. When King Dane divorced his wife, he expected her to get out of his sight and stay out of his sight. Not reappear three months later in his bed, spouting nonsense about being a 'l...
