V.

i want your horror

i want your design

‘cause you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine

i want your love

love love love

i want your love 

Birgit does not know how she ended up spending the day in the castle nursery—with her lover’s wife, no less, for company. But here she is, perching on the windowsill watching Katrina embroider a handkerchief in her rocking chair, while Andrin and Ismira play with a set of painted blocks nearby.

“Mira, don’t boss Andrin around,” the queen orders without even looking up.

“But Mama,” Ismira protests in a high-pitched lisp, “he doethn’t know how to build right.”

“Then teach him,” Katrina says absently.

Birgit remembers her Ismira, the best friend with copper hair and a merry temperament. The woman who married to make her parents happy, and found that her husband was the sort of man who hit his wife no matter how sweet and servile she was. The woman who, having taken enough torment, went swimming right above the rocky dropoff of Igualda Falls, and let the current tug her just a little too far—did it on purpose, taking herself forever out of the reach of her husband’s fists.

This bratty little girl seems a poor choice to carry on the name of Birgit’s one-time best friend.

Katrina interrupts her thoughts: “Birgit, dear, could you get the pale green thread out of my workbasket?”

Birgit rolls her eyes, but gets up and sorts through the basket until she finds the right shade of green.

As she returns to the window, she happens to look down, and notices Roran strolling through the hedge maze with Palencara on his arm. The girl is laughing at something he’s saying, and is standing tall and proud as if honored to have her arm linked through her father’s. She looks a far cry from the shy and dim girl Roran painted her to be. Perhaps all it took was the pair of them getting to know each other a little better.

So I was right. I knew it!

“What are you smiling at?” Katrina wants to know.

Birgit points out the window. “Palencara and Roran. Looks like they finally made friends—you got your wish, Katrina.”

Katrina puts her embroidery hoop down and comes to stand by Birgit. “About time,” she murmurs. “I thought that man would never listen to me.”

He didn’t, Birgit thinks smugly.

Then Katrina looks up, a line of confusion appearing in her forehead. “How did you know that was my wish?”

Birgit curses her careless tongue. As far as Katrina knows, she and Roran only speak once in awhile at mealtimes.

“I, ah, heard you say something once, and I guessed,” she says, hoping the fib won’t be too obvious.

“Oh.” Katrina turns her gaze back down to her husband and daughter. “You’re very perceptive,” she says quietly. “Roran doesn’t spend enough time with our children. Sometimes I think it will ruin this family, like all royal families in history—next they’ll all be plotting to kill each other and him, like in the old tales.”

“Nonsense,” Birgit says. “Those tales are all highly embellished. Being King is a lot of work, and if your children have a scrap of sense, they’ll want to keep their pa on the throne as long as possible so it doesn’t become their responsibility.”

This keeps Katrina quiet for awhile. That is, until Cadoc comes in clutching something furry in his hands.

“Mama, look! I found a rat outside in the gutter!”

In a shrieking second, Katrina and all the maidservants are standing on the chairs, clutching their skirts.

“Cade,” Katrina says shakily, “g-get that out of here this instant.”

Unfortunately, the rat has other ideas. It chooses that moment to nip Cadoc’s finger, and the boy flings it from him with an angry exclamation. It lands right in Katrina’s bosom. Her piercing squeal is almost amusing to Birgit’s eyes—the queen topples backward and lands with a sick thud on the floor. Clawing red streaks in her pale skin, the creature leaps away from her batting hands. It darts across the room and takes refuge behind a chest of drawers.

Birgit does not like rats either, but she feels it’s her duty to keep her head when all the other women are screeching. “Please tell me you keep a cat here,” she says, more or less in the direction of the children.

Garron, the serious six-year-old, speaks up. “Yeah, miss, we have a cat. His name is Arrow.”

“Good. Will you please fetch him?”

The cat is duly fetched, but it turns out to be fat from table scraps and isn’t interested in chasing after some skinny old rat. Sighing, Birgit resigns herself to having to catch it herself. She puts the boys to work rigging up a trap using their various toy bins and some old blankets, and then, wincing with distaste, begins to push the chest of drawers away from the wall.

As predicted, the rat shoots out from its hiding place, and straight into Cadoc’s waiting bin. Righting the box immediately, Cadoc drops a blanket over the rat and bundles the squirming critter up.

“Now put it outside immediately,” Birgit orders him. “And you had best not bring it back. Vermin like that always have a dozen diseases on them.”

Cadoc looks at the squirming bundle with new disgust. “Diseases?”

“Oh yes. Diseases that make you die a slow, horrible death coughing up your own blood.”

Suddenly, he can’t get out of there fast enough, carrying it at arm’s length.

Birgit goes to Katrina, who’s surrounded by a posse of fluttering nursemaids just as distraught as she is. “Up you get,” she says gruffly. “Come on, now, Katrina.”

“I feel dizzy,” the queen slurs, before fainting back onto one of a nursemaid’s lap.

Sighing, Birgit goes to call a healer. At least she won’t be obliged to spend the day with Katrina when she is prostrate in bed.

***

The healer diagnoses Katrina’s illness as a combination of nerves, head trauma, and the bloody marks left by the rat. She is left to sleep the rest of the day, and Birgit thinks nothing of it.

But in the following days, the queen does not improve. Roran grows more and more preoccupied during their nighttime trysts, and though during the day he spends more time with his children than with Katrina, Birgit can tell he’s worried. He won’t say a word to her, so Birgit finally inquires of the healer himself about the queen’s condition.

“The rat that scratched her poisoned her blood,” the healer murmurs. “The wounds have gone bad and she has a fever. We’re hoping for the best, but hitting her head weakened her—she may not be strong enough to fight it off.”

Birgit displays all the proper concern, and then goes straight to Angela. They’re keeping this illness quiet, so the herbalist hasn’t heard of it yet, but Birgit knows that Angela’s the only one with any chance of saving Katrina.

So she invites Angela to come back home with her for a visit, and informs the witch she’s leaving tomorrow.

And Angela, surprised but evidently pleased, says she’ll come.

 (control your poison babe

roses have thorns they say)