The Weight of Pewter

The starched raw silk did not bend: it crackled like dry firewood beneath a boot. Every step toward the chancel cost Cecelia three muffled shoves with her knees, fighting against the whalebone frame and that thick veil that smelled of exactly what it was: a trunk closed for four winters and faded lavender, the kind the maids throw by the handfuls over damp velvets so the lords won't suspect that the saltpeter of the lower galleries is eating away at the palace from the foundations.

Beneath the heavy gauze, the air was warm and scarce. It smelled of rancid tallow.

The main chapel of the Valois court had nothing holy about it at that hour of the morning. It was an immense box of gray slate where the frost left a milky slime on the corners of the stained glass, and the ducal banners hung with a vermilion so washed out they looked like dish rags hung out to dry. Cecelia felt in her mouth the harsh aftertaste of the wine they had forced her to swallow before leaving her chambers: wine spiced with too much cinnamon, served in a pewter cup that left a taste of old coins on her gums.

She is twelve years old and her grandmother sets a plate of leek soup in front of her, steaming so much that the kitchen windows fog up entirely. She doesn't tell her to eat, she doesn't tell her to watch out for the grease floating in yellow circles like coins over the broth; she simply puts the pewter spoon in her right hand, pushes the bowl two fingers closer, and sits down to shell beans into a grayish apron. The hearth crackles, the vapor smells of freshly turned earth, and outside sleet falls on the broken tile roof, but in there no one has to promise loyalty to a coat of arms or kneel on freezing flagstones.

She blinked. The memory evaporated against the stiff canvas covering her face.

She was calm. No, not calm. She was fed up, which looked a lot like it but left her shoulders sagging and her jaws clenched.

The priest of Saint Éloi cleared his throat with a wet death rattle that echoed down the empty nave. There was no large court because Roland de Valois—the undisputed heir, the square-jawed man who rode gelded horses and signed decrees without looking at them—hated crowds almost as much as he hated being made to wait. And yet, there was Cecelia, standing at the foot of the three steps of the altar, her ankles swollen inside her Cordovan booties and the groom's two best men yawning to her right with their hands tucked inside sleeves lined with marten fur.

A dry clink sounded near the rood screen. Metal against hardened leather: the short scabbard that the gentlemen of the chamber wore hidden under the lining of their doublets in case some second cousin took it into his head to dispute a barony before the blessing.

Someone climbed the steps with a quick, irregular stride, barely dragging the left heel.

Roland never dragged his feet. Roland marched as if the marble owed him tribute.

A hand gloved in brown suede, with a dark ink stain on the seam of the thumb, rose before her eyes. The fingers were not the short, calloused fingers of the crown prince, accustomed to pulling the reins until the draft horses' mouths bled. They were long. One of them had a white scar crossing its middle knuckle.

The hand pulled the veil away with a sharp jerk.

Cecelia let out her breath all at once.

"You're late," she said in a whisper that wasn't meant to be docile.

"And you're wearing half a bale of Flanders linen," replied Lucian de Valois.

It wasn't Roland. It was his younger brother: the one who inherited nothing, the one who smelled of gall ink and contraband tobacco, the one who had come back from six years on the Genoa docks with a tongue full of foreign words, the one whose shirt collar was slightly crooked to the left.

Cecelia tried to take a step back, but the lower hem of her starched petticoats caught in a crack of the marble, white with saltpeter.

"Where on earth has your brother gotten to?" she muttered through her teeth, glancing sideways at the officiant, who was holding the open missal with two gnarled fingers covered in liver spots.

"Indisposed. An unexpected purge. Or an excess of poorly aged hare stew, depending on who you ask in the kitchens."

"Don't shit me, Lucian."

"Pazienza, madonna. My older brother has a delicate stomach for weddings and a very tough one for sieges. Don't look at the bishop, he's stone deaf and thinks Roland has grown three inches since Easter."

Lucian took his place beside her, shoulder to shoulder. His midnight-blue velvet doublet had the pile flattened from wear at the elbows. As he leaned over to adjust his sword at his waist, the pommel struck the cold iron railing with a metallic snap that startled a sparrow perched on a high beam.

"Did you comb your hair with your fingers?" she asked, without looking at him, fixing her gaze on the tallow candles weeping grayish grease onto the altar's linen cloth.

"I combed it in a rush, which combs worse," he said, rubbing the corner of his lip with the back of his stained glove. "Besides, Roland isn't coming. And if there isn't a Valois on his knees before matins sound in the abbey down below, your father sends the wheat carts to the Lorraine border before nightfall."

"Your father is a thief."

"Yours charges ten sous per sack of moldy rye, Cecelia. Let's not get sentimental now."

"Your doublet smells like a wine cellar."

"And yours like a dead man's camphor. We're even."

The priest raised his skeletal hands and released a blessing in Latin so worn out that the words came out stuck together like cold porridge. Neither of them lowered their head completely. The air between the two of them had the consistency of old oil left floating in a skillet when the fire has gone out hours ago.

Cecelia looked at the ring on the pewter tray held by the barefoot acolyte. It was a thick band of low-grade gold, with a red glass stone wedged in by force with four twisted claws. Roland had worn it on his pinky for years, banging it against the table every time he demanded another pitcher of sour beer.

"An exchange of rings in this court is not a promise of love, but a non-aggression pact signed with cheap wax," she murmured, repeating the exact phrase her own uncle had used to send her off when she got into the carriage in Varenne.

Lucian let out a snort that sounded like a muffled laugh.

"Wax is expensive, Cecelia. This is sealed with spit and ditch dirt."

And she felt sick of it. Just like that, without preambles or frills, not of him specifically—Lucian had always been a noisy nuisance, one of those who leave the door open when they leave and steal olives from the bowl before blessing the table—, but of the entire theater, the cracked flagstones, the witnesses who didn't even bother to pretend they weren't calculating how many quarters of oats her dowry represented.

"Take my hand," he said.

"I don't want to."

"Take it or the old man is going to repeat the preface from the beginning, and if I have to listen to the parable of the branch and the vine again I'll slash my wrists with the censer's teaspoon."

Cecelia held out her right hand. The suede of her glove was damp in the palm; Lucian's was rough and warm. As their fingers intertwined, the priest dropped a frayed hemp ribbon over their knuckles.

Hunger.

That was what she suddenly felt: not terror, but an animal emptiness at the pit of her stomach, the physical certainty that she had gone eighteen hours without eating anything solid because the seamstresses said the brocade corset wouldn't close if she ate bread with bacon fat.

"It's heavy," she said through her teeth, feeling Roland ring dancing on her ring finger.

"Pewter is always heavier than silver," Lucian replied, without letting go of her fingers.

The priest turned toward the altarpiece to raise the tarnished pewter chalice, turning his stooped back to them for three long mechanical prayers.

It was at that exact instant. Lucian's left hand was not crossed over his chest as the posture of reverence commanded. It descended with a fluency learned in dark taverns, slipping beneath the heavy damask overskirt, bypassing the farthingale wires with the precision of a butcher who knows the joint of the bones blindfolded.

The coldness of the iron burned her thigh through the thin petticoats.

Cecelia tensed so hard the starched silk crackled again, harshly, as if a cat had crawled into her skirts. She tried to pull away, but he tightened the fingers he still held captive in the bridal ribbon, pulling her half a palm toward his side.

"Still," he whispered, his eyes fixed on the tonsured nape of the friar.

The handle was of polished bone, yellowish from the friction of the palm, topped with a short brass spike. Lucian tucked it into the hidden pocket of her inner petticoat, right where the women of Varenne kept the pantry keys and coarse salt.

"What are you doing?" she hissed.

Lucian didn't blink. The smell of damp iron and rancid tobacco hit Cecelia all at once when he tilted his head just a finger's width toward her ear, pretending to adjust a fold of the veil falling back over her temple.

"Roland isn't purged, Cecelia. Roland is in the east tower with three bottles of plum brandy and a signed paper to hang me at noon and lock you up in the convent of the Clares before nightfall."

The priest began the final blessing, raising his dry arms.

"If he's still breathing when dawn breaks," Lucian added, with a calmness that sounded dirtier than any oath, "neither of us leaves the bridal chamber alive."

"Lucian..."

"Amen, madonna. Say amen to my lord bishop."

The clergyman traced the cross in the air with a dry boxwood aspergillum.

Lucian took a step back, let go of Cecelia's fingers, and rubbed both hands together like someone who has just broken a loaf of hard bread in half and shakes the crumbs onto the board before putting it away in the cupboard.