From Darkness Won - Jill Williamson [208]
“King Axel liked to watch the sunsets from here.”
Achan could only imagine. An image of Esek on the balcony in Sitna ran through his memory. He shuddered and went back inside. “Where do these other doors lead?”
“The one in the corner is a privy. The one in the center leads to the queen’s quarters.”
Why would the queen have her own chamber? Achan walked through the door. The walls were whitestone. No tapestries, no linen drapes, no furniture save an oak canopy bed stripped of even its mattress. “Why is this room not preserved like the king’s chambers?”
“The queen did not sleep here,” Prince Oren said.
“Who did?” When no answer came, Achan turned and caught Prince Oren exchanging a glance with Sir Gavin.
“Me?” Achan asked, recalling how Sir Gavin said King Axel carried his son everywhere.
“Nay,” Sir Gavin said. “King Axel used this chamber for his mistress.”
A chill flashed over Achan. “What was her name?”
“There were many, Your Highness,” Sir Caleb said, “as we discussed before.”
Achan’s stomach twisted. “Did my mother ever sleep here?”
“She did,” Prince Oren said. “In the beginning.”
“And she slept where at the end?”
“The northern arc, Your Highness,” Prince Oren said.
“Way over there?” Unbelievable! For the northern arc was across the castle. “Show me.”
Prince Oren took them another way, twisting through a labyrinth of corridors. Achan’s anger grew with every step that carried him further from the king’s chamber.
Why so very far away?
They finally entered a room preserved as the king’s chambers had been. Achan fell into a chair draped in linen, sending a poof of dust around him. “Where did I sleep?”
Prince Oren pointed to a narrow door gilded in gold. “Through that door, with your nurse.”
“A nurse.” So formal. So cold. So… depressing. After having waited so long for a child, could his mother not handle him on her own? “Was I a difficult child?”
“Oh, no, Your Highness,” Prince Oren said. “You were a very pleasant babe.”
Yet his mother clearly hadn’t been preoccupied with his father’s attentions, either. “What did she do all day?”
“Busy being queen,” Prince Oren said.
“Too busy to mother her own child?”
“Course not,” Sir Gavin said. “You were Dara’s joy.”
“You are forgetting, I fear, that royalty, even nobles, do not live as peasants,” Sir Eagan said. “A nurse is a common thing amongst the upper class. And that does not mean your mother did not care for you herself. Simply that she had help.”
“But my father? Sir Gavin, you said that they were more in love than ever at the end. You told me—”
“Aye, but it was a long road back to repair all the hurt that had been done,” Sir Gavin said.
Achan took this information as a lesson from the father he would never know. He would not make that mistake for himself. “Take me back to my chambers.”
When they reached the king’s chambers again, Achan pulled down the sheet that covered the bed, then the one that covered the balcony doors. Dust clouded the room. He opened the balcony doors and waved in fresh air. He looked to Prince Oren. “Am I permitted to make some changes?”
“Of course,” Prince Oren said. “Change anything you like. We could remove the tapestries, repaint the room. All the furniture needs reupholstering anyway. I’ll have some swatches brought up and call the carpenters.”
Achan held up a hand. “All that can wait.”
“What, then, do you have in mind?” Prince Oren asked.
Achan peeked through the door into the queen’s chamber. “Put this bed elsewhere. Make this into a solar.”
Silence filled the room. Achan turned to see the men watching him. “Can I do that?”
“You could,” Prince Oren said.
“I beg your pardon, Your Highness,” Sir Caleb said. “But do you plan to marry Lady Averella soon?”
Achan felt for the coin in his pocket. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Perhaps we should wait on such a major change until we know for certain,” Sir Caleb said.
“I don’t see why,” Achan said. “If I don’t marry