Chapter 313: I miss Her So Much

I frightened you. I saw it in your face. I have seen it in your face a hundred times since, every time you hold your breath when your hands go warm and look quickly at the door.

I am sorry for that.

I was more afraid than you were, love. I was so afraid that I taught you to be afraid of yourself. I have never forgiven myself for it.

But I cannot take it back. Not in a letter. Not now. The reason for it is long and ugly and I will not put it where a stranger’s hands might find it. You must keep your promise. You must go on keeping it, wherever you are, whoever is looking, until I can tell you why.

I have written it all down. Every word. Where it came from, and what it means, and what I did, and what I could not. It is in the house. You will know where to look when you come.

Do not come home to save me. I mean that. If you are in trouble, stay where you are and be careful and be brave. I will be here.

But if you ever come home, and I am not here to open the door, Look for the letter. Read it. Then you will know everything, and you may hate me, or you may not, and either way you will know.

I love you. I have always loved you. You are the best thing I ever did.

Eat properly. Wear a shawl. And don’t let the girls in the laundry talk you out of your dinner.

Your Ma.

***

The room was very quiet.

Morgana sat holding the letter.

She did not weep again. She had nothing left to weep with. She sat with the page in both hands and read the last two lines over and over, your Ma, and the foolish, wonderful postscript about the goat, and felt something warm and aching spread slowly through the hollow where all the grief had been.

A tiny bubble of laughter rose in her throat.

It came out as a hiccup. She pressed her lips together, and it came again, and then Rowan, beside her, made a strangled snorting sound.

"She told you not to come...." said Rowan.

"I know."

"She’s....she wrote you a letter about her dying, and she put in—"

"I know." Morgana was laughing now, helplessly, with tears running down her face. "She said eat properly."

"She also mentioned that you should always wear a shawl." Rowan added.

***

They fell against each other, shaking. Rowan’s laugh rose, high and cracked, and Morgana buried her face in her friend’s shoulder and gasped. It was ridiculous. It was shameful. It was the best thing she had felt in weeks.

"I miss her," Morgana said, when she could.

"I know."

"I miss her so much."

"I know, love."

"She’s still herself." She wiped her eyes. "In all that. Even when she was frightened. She was still.....Ma."

"She sounds wonderful."

"She is." Morgana’s voice caught. "She’s the bravest person I know. And I let her go and I didn’t write and I didn’t...."

"Stop that."

"But I should have...."

"You were arrested." Rowan’s eyes were fierce. "You were in a cell with your hands in irons. You were a bit busy."

"She dreamed it."

"She did."

"She saw me. In the stone room. With my...." Morgana held out her wrists and looked at them, bare and pale in the lamplight. "She saw it, Rowan."

"I know." Rowan’s voice was gentle. "I think she’s the kind of person who would."

Morgana lowered her hands.

She folded the letter, along its old soft creases, and held it against her heart. Her mind was strangely clear. The hollowness had gone, and in its place was something steady and cool, like a stone at the bottom of a river.

"I have to go to Ashford," she said.

"I know."

"Not to save her. She told me not to. Not for that." She drew a long breath. "I have to know. What’s in that letter. What he did. What she’s been carrying all these years." Her fingers tightened. "She says I may hate her. I don’t think I will. But I need to know."

Rowan was quiet.

"The kings said three days," she said.

"Yes."

"Four."

"Yes."

"Can you wait?"

Morgana considered it. then eventually. "I’ll try," she said.

***

She met Calla in the lower gallery.

It was an accident, the kind that is never quite an accident in a palace. Morgana had come down the back stair at first light with Corin three paces behind her, her plain brown skirts swinging, her face scrubbed and her hair in a simple plait. The gallery was long and cold and lit by pale windows. At the far end, a line of maids in grey was filing toward the kitchens with their eyes lowered, and at the head of the line, upright and stiff as a poker, walked the woman who ruled them.

Mistress Calla.

She had not changed. She was tall and spare and sharp-boned, with iron-grey hair scraped back under a starched cap and a bunch of keys at her belt that chimed with every step. Her mouth was a thin line. Her eyes, small and hard and pale, swept the gallery as they had swept it for thirty years, looking for a dirty sill or a dropped thread or a girl who had forgotten how to be afraid.

They landed on Morgana.

The keys stopped chiming.

Morgana did not slow. She walked on down the middle of the gallery, as steady as she had walked down the aisle of the great hall, and watched the older woman’s face change. It was not quick. It was a slow, grinding change, like a heavy door being forced against a draft. The pale eyes narrowed. The jaw set. And then, with a visible effort, the whole rigid body folded.

Calla curtsied.

It was a deep one. It was correct to the inch, the skirts spread, the head bowed, the keys pressed flat against her hip. Behind her, the line of maids stopped, and every grey head dipped as one. Not a girl dared look up.