Child of Flame
“She isn’t anything like what I remember.” Henry’s expression grew pensive. “It’s as if that time was a dream I fashioned in my own mind.” Blessing had fallen asleep on his shoulder.
“Perhaps it was,” observed Rosvita. “Youth is prey to fancy. We are adept at building palaces where none exist.”
“I was very young,” he agreed. “In truth, Sister, I find it disturbing. I recall my passion so clearly, but when I look at her now, I fear I made a mistake.”
A stiff breeze stirred the leaves in the herb bed next to the prince. Laughing, Sanglant stood as Heribert leaped up, startled. The outside air and Heribert’s presence had restored the prince to good spirits, yet now he glanced back toward the open window where his father stood. Had he heard them? Surely they stood too far away for their conversation to be overheard.
“Was it a mistake. Your Majesty?” She nodded toward the prince.
“You were very young, Your Majesty. God grant us all the privilege of change and growth, if we only use it. You are a wiser man now than you were then, or so I have heard.”
He smiled, this time with genuine pleasure. The baby stirred, coming awake. She yawned, looked around, and said, quite clearly: “Da!” After this unequivocal statement, she frowned up at Henry. She had a clever little face, quite charming, and mobile expressions. “Ba!” she exclaimed. She seemed to have no other mode of speech than the imperious.
“Do not doubt your memory on this account. I also believe the child resembles its mother in some ways. Look at the blue of her eyes! But you are right, Your Majesty. Even if she were a seven months’ child, born early, she could therefore be only seven months of age now.”
He was besotted.
Sanglant had wandered to the garden by the wall where he spoke privately to Brother Heribert. What intrigue might he be stirring up? Yet had Sanglant ever been one for intrigue? He had always been the most straightforward of men.
Still, he made no move to interfere with the capture of his father: Blessing worked her will without obstacle. Queen Adelheid had gone into the aviary. Rosvita had to admire the young queen: either she was determined to turn Alia into an ally, or else she intended to divert all suspicion while she concocted a plan to rid herself of her rival. It was hard to tell, and even after months of sharing the most difficult of circumstances in Adelheid’s company, Rosvita didn’t know her well enough to know which was more likely.
But as Rosvita watched Henry dandle the child, her heart grew troubled.
Blessing went to Sanglant at once. She had begun to fuss with hunger. A spirited discussion ensued among the attendants on the efficacy of goat’s milk over cow’s milk to feed a motherless child. He took her outside.
Rosvita went to the window. A cool autumn breeze, woken by dusk, made her shiver. Sanglant avoided his mother and settled down out of her sight on the far side of the old walnut tree.
Adelheid came to stand beside Rosvita. The queen smelled faintly of the mews and more strongly of the rose water she habitually washed in. She had such a wonderful, vividly alive profile that even in the half light of gathering dusk her expressions seemed more potent than anything around them, as bright as the waxing moon now rising over wall and treetops.