The War of Queens

Chapter 3

Sybil

 Sybil followed her two older sisters down the hallways, keeping as quiet as possible. They were all in there nightgowns, they hair braided back for the night, shivering beneath the thick furs they had had wrapped around themselves when they braved the cold. The cold easily penetrated Sybil’s thin silk slippers.

 “Be quiet,” Anne hissed and Sybil tried to stop her teeth from chattering.

 They finally reached the end of the hallway and Anne knelt down before the door. She pressed her ear to the keyhole and closed her eyes concentration. Behind the wooden planks of the doors, a meeting was unfolding, a meeting from which the three girls were excluded.

 “Lisa is so lucky she gets to be in there with them,” Isabella muttered as she hunched together, bracing herself against the cold. Caterina of Wolfsbane had arrived that same day with urgent news for their lady mother and since then, the two women as well as their father had sat in meeting. Their only brother, Robert, had also been called in and towards nightfall, their sister, Lisa, had arrived with her husband and slipped in.

 “Be quiet, Izzy,” Anne chastised. “I can’t hear what they’re saying.”

 “Oh, for god’s sake, Annie.” Isabella pushed aside her sister and sat down in her place. “They’re all quiet,” she whispered then, turning to look through the keyhole. Then she stood up quickly. “Run,” she said, and then she was already gone down some corridor or another.

 Sybil and Anne sped after their sister, faintly hearing the door behind them open up. Through the web of hallways, they finally found their way to their chamber. Anne locked the door behind them and they quickly pulled off their furs and jumped into their shared bed. Sybil felt cold all over and found herself relieved that they were back in the soft bed with the warm, thick furs over them. She snuggled deeper into the bed.

 “Do you think the saw us?” whispered Isabella. Anne had blown out their candle and they lay in complete darkness.

 “I certainly hope not,” Anne replied, just as a knock could be heard. It was soft, almost hesitant. Still, Sybil’s heart stopped from the fear she felt and she clenched her eyes shut.

 The mattress shifted to her right as Anne sat up. “Mama?” her voice said and Sybil opened an eye. “What is it?”

 “Is Sybil awake?” her mother’s voice sounded.

 Sybil opened her eyes and saw her mother standing like a shadow bathed in the light that was spilling in from the hallway. “What is it?” she asked.

 “Come with me. Quiet as you can, we wouldn’t want to wake Isabella.”

 Sybil slipped out of the bed on Anne’s side and tiptoed over to where she had thrown her robe and slipped it on. Then she found some furs again and hung it over her shoulders before leaving the room with her mother.

 “Caterina wants to see you,” her mother explained.

 “Why?”

 “You’ll see.”

 They walked in quiet, the sound of their footsteps the only thing breaking the silence. Around them, flickering torches lined the walls that led to the door where Sybil had been spying just some minutes earlier with her sister.

 The room she entered was small and very warm in comparison to the chilly hallway. A fire burned in the hearth and all of the visitors sat around the table; Robert Renell, her lord father, seated beside his son and heir; Lisa, who had married Gregor, the heir to the Travis fortune; and, standing beside the fire, half her face covered in shadows, was Caterina Tingley. Her auburn hair was a shade darker than Sybil’s and fell in thick curls around her shoulders.