All The Queen's Ladies [NaNoWriMo Project]

The Air Crackles

You know that feeling when there's a storm in the distance? The air seems heavier, as if you're moving through a fog, or perhaps too sparse, so that you feel light-headed; either way, it is ever so subtly wrong. Rain pricks the windows. Thunder grumbles, long and low, on the very cusp of hearing. It sounds like a building collapsing far away, perhaps, or an innkeeper dropping his barrels in the street, or maybe even a low hunting horn. The flashes of lightning are little more than odd glimmers in the corner of your eye, impossible to fix on. The air is expectant. Tense. Dogs howl and cats hiss and people snap at each other for no reason and apologise immediately, rubbing their temples, saying, I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me, it's this air, it's this weather. When a storm is overhead you can batten down the hatches and hunker down, waiting it out, but when it only lingers in the distance there is no choice but to try and carry on as normal, though that is impossible. You try to concentrate on something else, but you can't, because you keep thinking: is it coming this way? Your gaze keeps straying to the window. Your ears stretch, listening hard for any change. The effort is quietly exhausting. Even when it stops you remain on edge, unable to say for certain whether that last low growl of thunder really was the last, trying to sense any changes in the air. After all, it may have retreated. Or it may have moved closer. It may be right over your head, readying a bolt of lightning, preparing thunder that will shake the rooftops, and you wouldn't know until the flash.

That is what Friday feels like, listening to the rest of the High Palace from her room. Something has broken but she doesn't know what, yet. The thunder is the sound of doors slamming and distant shouting; just when she thinks it might have stopped, it starts again. Most of the voices are female. Ears straining, she can make out Lady Eliyne, though not what she is actually saying. The lightning is flashes of colour out of her window, ladies scurrying around the palace with their eyes lowered and their faces locked up, deliberately expressionless. She can tell, somehow, with that uncanny sense that hits sometimes, that it is coming for her, to swallow her through the chaos and into the eye of it all. She just doesn't know when.

To distract herself, she has letters. A letter from her mother, suggesting she relocate to Rooksrest, to deflect the worst of the scandal and give people no further reason to doubt her loyalty to Ranulph. Dear mother, so sensible. She senses real concern within the lines, though the tone is quite matter-of-fact. Gweon is at least partially right; she has used up most of her usefulness to her mother by befriending the queen and marrying well, but he seems to think this makes her a discarded toy, used and abandoned. Actually the truth is that her and her mother are perfect friends, happy to lead their own separate lives, but bound by blood and kin to care for each other, which, in their own ways, they do. Trying and failing to block out the distant rumble of disagreement, she pens a letter in return: though I thank you for your motherly advice, which you know is always welcome even if not regarded, I have long since made up my mind to stay at court, should the queen require my presence. Lady Cara and Mariam Roser are the queen's guests, and in my absence would surely spin their rumours much faster...

Following that she attends to a dispatch from her father. The paper is stained, though thankfully not with blood, and in some places the writing has run, so she guesses it was scratched out in a hurry. It is no more than a few lines: he and the Harwood men are acting as outriders for her husband, who seems to bear her no ill-will; they are in no danger; Dewi asks after her; he hopes all is well; he is ready to receive Gweon, should she change her mind and decide to send him north. For a moment she considers not replying. Cerys gets messages from the north at least twice a week but replies only with orders, so there is no guarantee that anybody would even be able to send the message. Then the content may be irrelevant by the time it reaches him. So it feels like a waste of time...but no, she must do it, because it is that or strain to try to hear the latest argument rolling away in the queen's chambers, trying to imagine the tempest of skirts and the thunderous faces. She takes more time over it than it should and has it sent to Gweon; he will be able to find a way to get it into the queen's dispatches. Then she sits back, waiting for the storm to come and find her.