Escaping Fate

Kiran dreaded going to the tower. He didn’t know what to say to Fate. Had no idea how to discover the reason for her refusal. But both families, agreeing on nothing else, said he had to go.

His face scrunched with reluctant thought he walked through the wide torchlit stone corridor of the Royce castle. Beneath the scent of flame and ash, a damp mildew odour clung to the thick gray stone walls that stretched high to dark cobwebbed edges. On reaching the corridor end, his thoughts were deafened by the eating and chatting of blue frocked serving folk and silver knights who crowded the dining hall. Among them, Kiran spotted Rolf’s familiar red head looking up with fascination at their house banner. He nodded at the black horse on its gold-coloured cloth, but pursed his ruddy lips at the blue pheasant, red dragon, and silver phoenix banners. When a blue robed woman passed in front of him, his eyes widened and trailed her until seeing Kiran.

“Some banners, en. What sort of clan breeds dragons? Or phoenix?” Kiran asked and waited for Rolf’s questions.

When Rolf answered with the serious, “you speak true,” Kiran knew he must look a wreck and ran a hand over his face as though that would smooth his features. “Let’s breakfast,” he said. Rolf had to be hungry.

They sat and an aproned woman set hot brew and food plates in front of them. Having a vague sense that she smiled, Kiran tried smiling back, but his face felt like a grimace.

As Rolf dug into his eggs and thick buttered bread, Kiran remembered the prior afternoon’s angry shouts. His father hollering Fate was ‘willful and disobedient.’ ‘Non-dutiful.’ Her father had blubbered red-faced.

Even with the brew, Kiran had difficulty swallowing down food, and was relieved to see Rolf’s plate empty. Gathering up his leftovers, Kiran said, “There’s always some beggar looking for bread outside the hall.”

After receiving a sad-eyed beggar’s blessing in exchange for the food, they continued down the stone corridor. Around them bells clanked and then they were in the yard breathing in the peaty scent of the bog and looking at the tower.

The iron studded wood door creaked as though rusting before giving and pushing into darkness. Kiran raised a torch across the threshold until seeing Fate lying in a few inches of straw that was scattered across the stone floor.

“Fate?”

Straw clung and picked at the wool of her dress and poked through her long, tangled hair and when Kiran raised the lantern above her face, she turned away groaning.

Groaning as though it is not by her own hands that she was imprisoned. Judge Fraweir only had her imprisoned because he didn’t know how else to make her see sense. When he threatened hanging, she’d stuck up her neck.

“She can’t have had a restful night.” Kiran looked at Rolf.

“Doesn’t seem to have,” Rolf agreed.

More than anything Kiran hoped, she’d learned from her ordeal and be reasonable. “They sent me to talk sense into you. Convince you I’m not an ogre.”

A sensible woman would have smiled or at least shown she’d heard his jesting words. For while not delicately made, he was fit of body and unscarred of face. Agile and flexible of limb. Though he didn’t spend time studying his face, woman complimented his square jaw and called his green eyes vibrant. Maybe at eighteen, she thought twenty-four was old.

He could have worked with pleas or demands, but Fate only covered her face with her hands. Kiran saw a glint of metal and realized her wrists were shackled. Links clinked about her ankles. “See if you can find keys,” Kiran said, and Rolf went out.

Her mind being addled would explain her peculiarity. Something should have been suspected when she started delaying at sixteen. But Kiran had always been confounded by his intended bride. The first time he was told Fate would be his wife, his grandfather had pointed at a swaddled babe in a cradle. He was six, nearly seven, and couldn’t fantom the chubby, drooling babe being a wife. Over time, she seemed more a person though he was baffled by her imaginary tea parties for dolls.

“Are you injured or can you get up.” Kiran knew she hadn’t been beaten, but her night in the tower must have been like sleeping in a dark hole. The cool air smelled of dampness, the straw looked picky, and her bed was a stone floor. If she moved, her chains clinked like demon chimes, but holding the lantern, Kiran didn’t dare get closer.

“I was sorry to learn you found me so repulsive,” he said. “I was beginning to develop fondness for you.”

It wasn’t a lie. He had seen beauty in the curve of her calf the time she’d taken offence in her family’s dining hall. Her skirts had tossed when she had jumped from her chair. As they’d laughed, she stomped away and huffed up the Pomroy’s elegant curved stairway. It was his first time noticing her budding womanhood and imagining her as a wife. Frowning, he couldn’t remember why she’d been insulted.

She rolled her eyes at him, disbelieving, before blinking at the torchlight. At least she looked. If he could remember the insult, he might be able to connect with her, but it evaded.

Rolf came back.

Giving the lantern, Kiran took the keys and tapped them until Fate glowered at the jangling. She looked indignant and annoyed but not demented. “Are you happy where you lie or would you prefer being let out?”

When Fate’s eyes went to his hand, he knew she had her wits. She stayed still when he crouched at her feet to fell the locks, but scampered at their release.

“Why are you so against marrying me? I can think of nothing I’ve done to frighten you,” Kiran says.

“I never said I was frightened.” For the first time, Fate looked at Kiran. Her eyes seemed to plead for his understanding, which only baffled. The whole of the prior afternoon she said only “no” and “I won’t.”

There had to be someone else. But Kiran hadn’t noticed anyone lurking in the courtroom. Whoever it was had to be too cowardly to claim her. Or too common.

“Not frightened. So why haven’t you run before this. You and your lover could be long gone by now.”

“Is that what you think?” Her tone mocked.

“Why else?” Only her having a lover made sense. “Listen, Fate, as happy as I am to accept you as my bride, if you have a lover, I’ll not stop you. Who could take you from this place?”

“I’ve no desire to marry anyone.” Her gray eyes looked full of unshed tears. “Why do you even want - or should I ask - do you even want to marry me? You don’t love me. You can’t.”

Love.

It was as Uncle Alfred had proclaimed. All her book reading had given her fanciful notions. Kiran remembered Uncle Alfred waging his finger declaring, “Girls ought to be given only needlework. Leave lettering to men.”

Kiran didn’t understand any better. “If not marry, what will you do. Commit yourself to a nunnery?”

“I’d prefer a nunnery to a wedding band.”

It would have been easier if she had a lover. He could have gotten her. But a nunnery. How were they supposed to sneak her to a nunnery. Kiran gestured to Rolf and we left her to stew in the straw.

Kiran had no desire for a reluctant bride. Shuttered, imagining her family dragging her through the chapel to the altar as she kicked trying to escape. And how much worse would be their wedded night.

Beside him, Kiran was glad Rolf seemed to understand his torment and remained silent.

Kin, both Kiran’s and Fate’s gathered round them in the dining hall. His face must have shown his lack of success but he still had to be asked. Everyone hoped for success of the match that would unite the two powerful households.

Kiran never thought of himself as a dutiful son. Or considered whether he wanted to do the tasks set before him. When old enough, he’d bailed hay, read books, drank whiskey. Marrying hadn’t seemed different from those life passages. Looking out at both their family, Fate’s words haunted. Why did he want to marry her? It seemed too much of a commitment for their families to ask.

What was he to tell them? He couldn’t very well say they couldn’t marry because they were not in love.

“Even though Fate and I were promised to each other, Divine Will has other ideas. When I visited Fate, she shared a vision she had of her life in which we were not married and I have no reason not to believe her.”