Lady Eilean

Chapter 17

No responses came from my letters. There was no sharing of condolences or offering of advice. As time passed, my feeling of foolishness increased to the point of shame. It had been outrageous to think they would answer me. When had anyone considered me? In particular, I was the most embarrassed by my letter to Alex. If I thought about it for too long, my cheeks would burn with humiliation.

Though it was strange. Prior to my plea, we had been communicating regularly. Twice-a-month, letters had passed between us without fault. After my last desperate missive, months passed without a reply. As my humiliation ceded, worry crept in. Had I offended him? Was it too risky to help the daughter of the instigator of this war? Was my note intercepted? Was he now locked up for treason? Had he entered the war after years of neutrality and been injured? Killed?

In my most desperate hours, near mad from hunger and shivering from cold, I prayed. Hidden under the cover of moonlight, I begged any spirit or ghost or god that would listen. Tears streamed down my face and over hands clasped under my chin. I prayed Alex was alive, that some scrap of friendship still existed between us. Demanded signs I would hear from him if only to be told we could no longer be friends. Pleaded to know if he still thought of me. My cries soaked the front of my ragged nightgown and froze beside my cheeks on my pillows. It was easier to pray for Alex; I had long since abandoned hope of my survival.

~

On a brutally frigid afternoon in January I was sitting in the office — my office, no longer my father's — trying to make sense of a ledger of rents and taxes. My father's cribbed handwriting smudged across the page and was difficult to read in the dull winter light. The near-constant state of hunger did little to help my concentration. My eyes kept wandering to a plate placed just out of reach, pushed there to avoid temptation. It only held a few chunks of hard, dry cheese and a shriveled apple, but the food preoccupied me. Was it wiser to eat now or set aside the meager ration for later? Either way, an empty stomach would be my bedfellow come nightfall.

There was no longer enough food to support labor. Around the castle, the women and children hunched and huddled together in tight groups. They tried to conserve their strength and their warmth by sharing blankets and shawls. They looked like strange wraiths placed across the castle in disturbing decoration. For simplicity and to preserve resources, I had converted the great hall into a makeshift dormitory. It was more economical to heat one room instead of many. The body heat helped stave off death by exposure — or so I hoped. It was a miracle that sickness had not ravaged the castle. Thinking that, and spooked, I knocked three times on the wooden desk to ward off further misery.

As I tried to review the figures again, a low, far-off rumbling sound prickled on the edge of my hearing.

"Another storm, no doubt," I grumbled, pulling my shawl tighter around my shoulders. I wiggled my toes in my boots to keep them from freezing.

"The last thing we need is more snow," I fumed, flipping a page in the ledger. More smears. More blotted out numbers. To my hunger-addled mind, the obscurification looked intentional. The rest of my father's records had been immaculate.

The approaching storm became a low buzz in my ears. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the sound, which only helped me fixate on it further. Starvation and math had combined to make me irritable. Only... it didn't sound like a storm at all. There were sounds of metal clanking, and wheels turning; horses huffing mingled with lofty, far-away laughter. I stood and opened the window, leaning out over the ledge to peer down at the road. To my surprise, there was a smattering of horses and wagons approaching the main gate.

"What the hell?" I said, squinting against the gray, frosted landscape.

Shuffling footsteps behind me heralded Bess's arrival. She stood very close to me, her warm body pressed against my own. It was an unconscious habit we had all picked up to share heat. Wallis sat perched on her hip chewing on a doll's nose. I had found the toy in my old nursery and given it to her for the winter holidays.