Chapter Three:
The Chapel
Chapter Three:
The Chapel
Ravenelle Archambeault sat alone in the Chapel of the Dark Angel. She reclined on a padded pew reading a dark romance from a scroll. The scroll was thin, but long. Its parchment draped down over her red and black dress and almost touched the floor. The tale she was reading was in verse, and when she finished a stanza, she rolled the scroll up with one hand and with the other kept her spot. The truth was this particular romance, The Red Rose Dies, was one of her favorites, and she’d read it so often she practically had it memorized.
Ravenelle sat partly sideways on the pew, with one foot up on a prayer bench so that her dress and the scroll made a pretty curve flowing over her hip and leg down to the chapel’s stone floor.
She took her mind from the poem and moved into the eyes of her bloodservant Madgel, who was also her lady’s maid. Madgel had been sitting quietly nearby finishing up some sewing repairs, but Ravenelle had her stand up and walk in front of her so she could get the best view of herself through Madgel’s eyes. The maid quickly set the sewing aside and did as her mistress commanded.
Ravenelle looked at herself through Madgel’s eyes, then had the maid arrange her dress a bit more pleasingly to show just the toe of the silk shoe on the leg she’d crossed. The idea was to appear nonchalant but elegantly reading when Gunnar entered the chapel for his visit. Like Elania, the heroine of another favorite romance of Ravenelle’s, The Tower Falls, always advised: it never hurts to make a pleasing impression when meeting a guest, especially if that guest is a prince. She had Madgel step to one side, and she looked at herself at the angle he would probably approach from the door.
Her hair was springing loose from its pins again. It was a raven-black tangle of tight curls and looked like a briar bush sitting on her head when she didn’t brush it, and sometimes when she did. Her skin was brown from her Aegyptian ancestry, lightened by a Kalte grandmother thrown into the mix. This wouldn’t have been unusual in her real country but stood out in Raukenrose, where everyone who wasn’t a Tier or a tree was some variation on pale.
She tucked a curl behind a hairclip then moved back to Madgel’s awareness and took another look at herself through her maid’s eyes.
Yes, there, that will do. Thank you, Madgel, Ravenelle said. She didn’t speak aloud but in the mind-speak of communion, so that Madgel heard her words as a voice within. Take your things and go to my chambers. I’d like to be by myself when he comes.
Yes, mistress, the maid replied. She gathered her sewing and left.
Ravenelle did care what her bloodservants thought, but she did not dip into Madgel’s concerns over what her mistress was doing. She was afraid Madgel wouldn’t be able to hide her worry that Ravenelle was making far too much of this appointment with Prince Gunnar, and feel sorry for her.
Ravenelle couldn’t abide anybody, even a bloodservant, feeling sorry for her. She was a princess. She was going to be queen. She considered herself the last person someone should pity. But it was kind of ridiculous to be worried about the impression you might make on some barbarian princeling.
The train of thought made her uncomfortable, and she returned to The Red Rose Dies. She was near the end, where Zara, a noble maiden locked inside a cold, dark keep by her jealous father, loses all hope of rescue. She dies young, and her father buries her in a graveyard inside the keep, so that even dead, she can never leave.
This was the kind of bittersweet ending Ravenelle preferred in a romance. The final stanza always made her shudder.
Her knight is gone these hundred years.
Alone and pale she lies.
And where it reaches for her grave
The red rose dies.
The chapel—her chapel—was a pretty place. At least she thought so. And it was peaceful, usually. It was the one spot Ravenelle could go in Raukenrose Castle where she didn’t feel constantly irritated.
She’d had the chapel decked out to look just like a mini version of the Chantry of the Dark Angel in the great cathedral of Montserrat. Well, as much like it as she could, given that she’d never actually been to the Chantry of the Dark Angel. She’d had to rely on taking secondhand recollections during communion when her mother made her yearly visit.
But she’d done everything in her power to get it right. There was the same white marble from the Sylacauga pits, the same ebony altar fixtures carved out of the hardest wood. It came from the true south beyond the equator. The wall hangings were thick and gorgeous drapes sewn from the deep red cotton-velvet and delicate black cotton lace that Vall l’Obac was famous for. Her communion cups were pure silver from Tenochtitlan, and the storage box where the celestis was kept was made of beaten gold.
Above the altar was the Dark Angel, chiseled out of a huge block of black obsidian from Mount Aetna, and completely life-size. Saint Ravenelle was the namesake saint of Ravenelle Archambeault. Her wings were extended in the V-shaped symbol of the Empty Hands of Talaia. Ravenelle loved reading here.
She was still reading when Prince Gunnar von Krehennest of Sandhaven entered from the transept. He closed—and latched—the door behind him. Ravenelle pretended to continue reading her book, but she watched him from the corner of her eyes as he walked toward her. His hard leather boot soles echoed on the flagstone floor.
“Princess, I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day,” Gunnar said.
“That’s funny, I’ve been looking forward to you,” Ravenelle replied.
“What are you reading?” Gunnar stood so he could gaze over her shoulder at the illumination on the page. It showed a red rose withering on a gravestone. “It appears sad.”
“It’s a story about a woman who was kept in prison by her father.”
“Why do you read things like that, Princess? You should only fill yourself with happy thoughts.”
“But it does make me happy,” Ravenelle answered. “I may be a prisoner, but at least I am not her.” She closed the book. “I’m allowed to love men other than my father, for instance.” She gave him a sly smile. “Which is good, since I haven’t seen him in five years.”
“It has to be hard living here when your kingdom waits for you in the south.”
“Oh, I manage,” Ravenelle replied. “There are…benefits, even in dire situations. Not that I am in a particularly dire situation, since I am well treated, even if I am in most ways a captive. Anyway, you and I would’ve never met otherwise, and that’s a benefit.”
Gunnar smiled and put a hand gently on Ravenelle’s shoulder.
“Put away your words, Princess,” he said.
Ravenelle let the scroll drop gently to the floor of the chapel. “Would you like to commune, Prince Gunnar?”
“Very much,” he replied. “I brought you something.”
“Oh?”
The prince reached behind his neck and pulled a silver chain from beneath his black silk shirt. There was a small leather pouch attached to it by a jewelry bale. He took the chain off and held it out to show Ravenelle.
“I thought you might like your own supply of the new celestis,” he said. “This will let us be together whenever we are nearby.” He found the chain’s clasp and undid its latch. He offered his other hand to help her stand up. “May I?”
Ravenelle stood and turned her back to Gunnar. He placed the chain around her neck. Then he brushed aside her hair and reattached the ends. The silver was still warm from his skin. Ravenelle opened the drawstring of the leather bag and reached a finger inside. She took a single black wafer from it. Ater-cake. She pulled the bag closed again. She pushed it under the neckline of her dress and between her breasts.
“Come to the altar,” she said.
They took the two steps to the altar table. There Father Calceatus had obeyed Ravenelle’s instructions and laid out the implements of her Talaia faith. There were silver pricking needles. There was a hemp string tourniquet with a steel twisting stick. Next to this was a silver bleeding chalice. And there were linen napkins to daub the wounds and clean up the implements afterwards.
Gunnar smiled and took her left hand in his. “May I, Princess?” he asked.
“Yes, you may,” she answered. She pulled back the sleeve of her dress to reveal her arm up to the elbow. It wasn’t really improper, but baring her skin to him like this sent a little thrill through her. He took the tourniquet and wrapped it around her arm just below the elbow. He gave it a couple of twists, compressing her veins tightly but not squeezing them shut. He was very good at this.
Then he took one of the needles and with a finger traced the vein in her arm from her wrist toward her elbow until he found where the blood was nearest her skin. With another smile, he pricked the needle in.
As always, there was the sudden coldness of the metal underneath her skin, but Ravenelle had long known how to control her shudders. Blood welled, then flowed freely.
Gunnar turned her arm over and squeezed a steady trickle into the silver chalice until it held several spoonfuls of Ravenelle’s blood. He took the cleaning cloth and pressed it to the wound, holding it there until she clotted and the blood flow stopped.
“Now myself,” he said. With a tourniquet and the other needle Gunnar repeated the pricking process on his own left arm. He squeezed his blood into the chalice with hers until it was a quarter full.
He held out his right hand and bowed. Ravenelle placed one of the ater wafers into his palm, and kept the other herself.
“You first, prince,” she said, nodding toward the chalice.
Gunnar took the wafer between his thumb and forefinger and dipped it into the blood. He pushed it under so that it could absorb its full portion of the mixed blood, which it soaked up like a sponge.
“Princess,” he said.
Ravenelle opened her mouth and Gunnar carefully placed the wafer on her tongue. She tasted the warm blood and the tang of the ater-cake wafer. The wafer was brittle. She pressed it against the top of her mouth and broke it, then chewed the pieces and swallowed them. She lifted up the chalice and took the ceremonial sip that allowed you to be sure the whole of the wafer went down and wasn’t stuck in the throat.
She took her own wafer, dipped it, and put it in Gunnar’s mouth. He seemed to swallow it whole with one gulp, then raised the chalice and drained the remainder of the blood from it. Ravenelle wiped out the blood cup with its special napkin then set it back on the altar table. Father Calceatus would come later and see that everything was put away correctly in the sacristy.
She and Gunnar went back to the cushioned front pew and sat down side by side. Ravenelle smelled the sandalwood scent he wore. Then the ater-cake began to have its effect. She closed her mind and traveled down the shining, silver-webbed tunnel that led into Gunnar’s thoughts.
They were, for the most part, thoughts of the day. Seeing to a lame horse. Criticizing a silversmith who had done shoddy work when making a brooch he was planning to give to Ulla.
The prongs barely held the turquoise in, Gunnar thought. If Ulla were to jostle the brooch the wrong way—if she was out riding a horse, say—the stone would pop right out. Ulla would be embarrassed, he would be humiliated, and a very expensive stone would be lost in the mud of Shenandoah.
He’d give the man one more chance, and then, if there was no improvement, he’d have his personal secretary notify the Raukenrose Silversmith Guild that they had better reconsider this smith’s master standing. If it came to that, he knew he’d be doing a favor to all the first families of the town.
Ravenelle experienced not only Gunnar’s memory of the scene, but also his senses and feelings. The smoothness of the stone. The burnt-honey odor of the beeswax that the silversmith had used as a metal finish for his work. Gunnar’s iron-willed determination to be and act like a prince in every circumstance.
He had to. His father would make his life miserable if he didn’t. King Siggi had done that before, driving away Gunnar’s unsuitable friends when he was a child, making one of Gunnar’s tutors beat his charge when Gunnar had stolen an apple from a merchant stall. Then making Gunnar watch as the tutor’s hand was chopped off for daring to strike a prince.
Oh dear, Ravenelle thought. She used the blood-bond thought-speech she’d learned years ago. It was almost like saying a word, then holding back at the last possible moment. Thought-speech took practice, and Ravenelle had already noticed that she was much better at it than Gunnar. That was to be expected. Gunnar was a Kalte prince, a barbarian.
He’d come to the castle to ask for Ulla von Dunstig’s hand in marriage as part of an arranged alliance between Shenandoah and Sandhaven. She’d sensed that he was one of the holy host, but doubted herself. It had taken her several weeks to get up the courage to ask him to commune with her.
“You know I’m going to marry Lady Ulla?” he said aloud.
I most certainly do. That is why you are here.
“Yes, yes. But there is something…holding her back. I can’t read her mind. Yet. That will come. But I can sense that something isn’t right. I was hoping you could tell me what this thing might be.”
How flattering that you would think of me for an explanation, she replied tartly.
“You do have a mean streak, Princess,” Gunnar said, sitting up straighter and looking her in the eyes. “You live up to what the castle children call you.”
The l’Obac Terror, and I’m not a bit sorry for it, she thought. So there.
“Well, my terror, what can you tell me about Ulla?”
A lot, Ravenelle thought. More than I’d ever let on to you.
I really don’t know her all that well.
“But she is your foster sister,” said Gunnar. “I think you sell yourself short.”
She and I aren’t that close.
“Come on, Princess. I’ve seen that the von Dunstigs have made you part of their family.”
Ravenelle took a deep breath. This wasn’t going as planned. She would have to give him something, if only to get past him to unbolt the door.
Ulla and I like clothes and makeup. We like to pay attention to what we wear, for different reasons.
“Or the same reason,” Gunnar replied. He smiled.
Might as well be pointing at himself, Ravenelle thought. But this thought she did not allow to be pre-verbalized and shared with Gunnar. She and Gunnar did connect. She couldn’t deny her attraction.
But he’s Ulla’s.
Ulla won’t care. She doesn’t like him anyway.
But it could mess up a match, a carefully arranged alliance.
There was part of her that really liked the fact that the Prince of Sandhaven, the most popular man in Raukenrose, the man every girl in the castle was ready to faint over, liked to spend time with her, Ravenelle Archambeault.
She opened her eyes—she usually kept them closed during communion—and glanced at the prince.
His sea-green eyes were open, and he was gazing at her.
“I would like to kiss you, Princess.”
Ravenelle almost guffawed. Good grief. It was like being in a romance.
“You are engaged to my sister.”
“Foster sister.”
“Yes, but I love…she’s very important to me, all the same.”
“I know,” Gunnar said. He put a hand under her chin and tilted her lips toward his. He kissed her.
She knew it was wrong the moment their lips touched.
He’s trying to get inside my head! He’s trying to find out Ulla’s secrets!
Ravenelle jerked away. Gunnar pulled her back to his embrace.
“Let me go!”
“Don’t be a terror, little Princess.”
“I mean it,” Ravenelle said.
She called out to her bloodservants in thought-speech.
Help! Get in here, all of you!
We are coming, mistress!
She could hear them beating on the chapel door.
The door is locked, mistress!
Right. Gunnar had latched it behind himself when he’d come in.
Donato will break it in. Hold the man off until we can get there. This was the voice of Raphael, her faithful eldest bloodservant. He and Ravenelle shared thoughts like waves overlapping in the same pond.
All right, but hurry.
Ravenelle gathered her hand and slapped Gunnar across the face as hard as she could. He jolted back, holding his cheek. She had striped it bloody with her nails.
You’re going to regret that, little Princess, Gunnar thought. Now I want inside, and you’re going to let me come in.
With a mental thrust harder than any she’d ever experienced in all her years of taking communion, Gunnar forced himself inside her mind and forced her to think the thoughts he wanted her to think.
Thoughts about Ulla von Dunstig.
He is sifting through my memories! No. Nobody does that to me!
I am Ravenelle Archambeault.
I will be a queen of a nation much stronger than your petty kingdom. I am Roman. You do not mess with me!
Gunnar let out a grunt of surprise. And pain. His hands went to his temples.
“Princess, that hurt. How can you be that strong? He didn’t warn me about—”
Then the door burst open and her bloodservants rushed in.
The tie with Gunnar was broken.
Gunnar stood. “We could have had something, Princess,” he said. “We are both very alike, you know.”
“I didn’t want to have sex with you.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Ravenelle Archambeault, that’s all you wanted.” He turned toward her servants. “I’m leaving,” he told them. “Your precious mistress is safe, you poor slaves.”
He stalked past them and out the chapel door, leaving behind the lingering scent of sandalwood cologne and fresh blood.
Ravenelle wiped her face, and the palm of her hand came away red. She’d been crying and hadn’t realized it. Here was another way she was not like anyone else in the castle. Another reason she would never fit in.
Like all true Roman aristocrats, Ravenelle cried blood tears.