Chapter 311: My Morgana

Her hand shook.

She turned the parchment over. On the outside, in a narrow slanting hand that she had been learning to read since she was four years old, were written two words.

My Morgana.

She pressed it against her chest.

For a moment she could not breathe. She sat on the edge of the bed in the moonlit room with her mother’s letter held against her heart and Rowan’s arm warm around her shoulders. Somewhere beyond the walls the palace was settling into night, the clatter of kitchens, the call of the watch, the long slow toll of a distant bell.

"Do you want me to go?" Rowan whispered.

"No."

"I can wait outside."

"No. Stay." Morgana’s voice was very small. "Please. I don’t think I can....I don’t want to do it alone."

"I’m here."

"I know."

"I’m right here."

Morgana drew a long, shaky breath.

She lifted the letter away from her chest. She held it in both hands. Her thumbs found the bit of wax, and the print of her mother’s thumb pressed into it, small and round and clear.

She took one more breath.

And she broke the seal.

***

The parchment crackled when she unfolded it.

It was a single sheet, written on both sides in a small slanting hand, and it had been folded and refolded so many times that the creases had gone soft as cloth. A line of ink had run at one corner where something wet, a tear or a raindrop, had fallen on it. The writing was uneven. Some of the words ran uphill. Some of the letters had been traced over twice, as though the hand that made them had been shaking and had gone back to make them plain.

Morgana held it to the lamp.

Rowan had lit it after all. It stood on the little table by the bed, a low warm flame in a glass chimney, and by its light she could see the first line, and her heart turned over in her chest.

My Morgana,

She read it aloud.

She did not decide to. Her voice simply came out, small and steady, the way it used to come out in the cottage in the evenings when her mother’s eyes were tired and she read the market bills. Rowan sat beside her with one arm around her shoulders and did not say a word.

My Morgana,

Thomas says this may reach you and may not, and that I should write it as though it will. I have never been good at letters. You know that. You used to laugh at my spelling. I hope you are laughing now, wherever you are, because I am about to make a poor job of this, and I would rather you had a laugh than a fright.

I had a dream.

Don’t be cross. I know you think I put too much in them. But this one was different, love, and I am going to tell you plainly because I have no time to dress it. I saw you in a stone room. There was no window. You were standing against the wall with your hands in iron, and your chin was up, the way it goes when you are frightened and won’t say so. You didn’t cry out. You only looked at the door.

I woke up coughing and I could not stop. When I could, I knew you were in trouble. I knew it the way I know when rain is coming, in the bones. I do not know what has happened. I do not know if I am a foolish old woman frightening herself in the dark. But I could not lie there and do nothing, so I got up and went to Thomas.

Thomas has been very good. He didn’t tell me I was imagining things. He sat me by his fire and gave me bread, and said there is a merchant who sells to the palace kitchens, and he will see this gets into a hand that can carry it. I do not know how many hands. If you are reading this, then I suppose enough of them were honest.

Trust Thomas. And trust Rowan, his girl. She is a good sort, sharp as a tack, and you will find her somewhere in those big halls. She has been your friend since you were small. She will be a friend now.

Morgana stopped.

Her throat had closed. She sat with the page in her lap, staring at one word, friend, and felt the warm solid weight of Rowan’s arm tighten around her.

"She remembered," Rowan whispered.

"Of course she did."

"She’s thinking of me. She’s sick, and she’s writing letters in the dark, and she’s thinking of..." Rowan’s voice broke. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth. "Go on."

Morgana drew a breath.

I am not as well as I told you at the last market. I am sorry for that. I said I was better and I was not, and you looked at me in that way you have, with your eyebrows together, and I turned the talk to the goat. You knew. I know you knew.

I am not dying this week, so you needn’t run. But I cough more, and the apothecary shakes his head, and I eat less than I ought. Thomas makes me eat. He sends his boy round with a loaf every morning and stands over me until I have finished the heel. I tell him he is worse than a husband and he laughs. You see how well looked-after I am. Don’t fret.

Now. Listen, because this is the part I am afraid of.

There is a man.

He has been in Ashford twice. The first time was at the end of harvest, the second a few weeks ago. He wears a good coat and speaks softly and gives everyone a coin. He sits in the inn and asks questions. He is very pleasant about it. He asks whether anyone remembers a woman who came here eighteen years back. A woman alone, he says. With child.