Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [59]
I remember how she would kiss me for luck, her lips burning my cheek before our descents. How she would throw back the cape from her face and laugh when one of our croppers landed us, splay-legged rag dolls, in the snow. How afterward, she would sip my chamomile tea, weaving our damp adventures into stories for my brothers. And how she would stay up with me long into the night, talking about such foolish, inconsequential things that I will never love anyone so much.
Not that she wasn't fond of us all. Not that she didn't take pains to memorize each of our likes and dislikes, our moods, just as she had our names. But—and I know my dwarfish dreams do not deceive me here—there was a special look, a way of smiling, a tone of voice, she saved for me. The others noticed it, too. Sometimes they teased, but more often they acknowledged the distinction, the primacy that Diamonda's silent preference bestowed. "What should I shoot for dinner?" Rowan would ask me, the huge quiver slung over his shoulder. "Does she like squirrel?" Or, after we had eaten and she was turning the spindle by the fire, Corywn would steal to my side. "How can I tell her without hurting her pride?" he'd whisper, his hands hidden in the dangling, overoptimistic sleeves of a jacket she had made for him. "You know how to put things to her."
It became a nightly ritual, the others climbing to the loft for bed while Diamonda and I stayed by the hearth to talk. And so, if she had something hard to tell, it was only natural that I was the one she chose to share it with first. But I would rather any of my brothers had taken my place that night, had sat beside her sipping tea, and heard her speak of leaving.
"I didn't tell you before," she said, watching the orange village at the bottom of the fire tumble into ruin, "because I couldn't bear to worry you." The light from the fire caught a swelling, a shine at the edges of her eyes. "But surely you see now that I endanger you all by staying. We must say goodbye, dear friend."
I was the first, then, to hear how the queen had driven away her lovely stepchild. Long before wetnurses whispered it to children at bedtime and courtiers banished it, with a wave of their ringed fingers, to the exile of stale gossip, the fairest woman I have ever seen told me her story. It did not surprise me at all to learn that Diamonda was of royal blood—for me, she shone as brightly in our thatched cottage as she does in the palace that is now her home. What did astound me, though, was the idea that anyone anywhere could wish her harm.
"How could your mother put a price on your head?" I asked. "How could flesh turn against flesh?"
"She is not my mother, Erin. My father used to tell me he dreamed my mother." The firelight found her frown, kissed it with honey. "When I was little, it made Father sad to speak of her. Each time I asked what she looked like, he would only lean on my arm and make me take him to the huge mirror in my stepmother's bedchamber. He would stand me in front of it and stare over my head into the glass. 'There,' he would say, 'That is what your mother looked like.'"
I cannot remember my own mother, but I know she was not a dwarf. I know because of the wine pitcher that Timias bought at Genfall. As Diamonda spoke, I glanced up to where it rested above the hearth. The comely woman holding grapevines on the handle might have been our mother's twin; all my brothers said so. When I was a child, something stubborn, some unschooled weed of pride, sprouted in me each time they told the story of my birth. Too weak to lift her head or open her eyes, my mother had smiled at them as she held me tight. "This one," she'd said, "is fine as a prince. He's a dear, normal little lad, isn't he, boys? I told your father it would be different this time. I wish he could see what a