Late spring of 1566
Twice a week, Francis hid amid the juniper bush that flourished by the library window. Sometimes I liked to make him wait; he was long-legged and impatient, and imagining him crouched in a bush was cordial to my mind. But summer was a week away, and that provoked me to hurry. It was also time to tell him. The thought made my pulse tumble as I entered the quiet afternoon shadows of the library.
Tell him this will be the last time.
I lifted the window with a gentle push, catching the sweet fragrance of the gardens as Francis emerged from his gargoyle-inspired position.
“You like to make a man wait,” he grumbled, but he always greeted me this way. His face was sunburned, his sable hair escaping from its plait. The brown courier uniform was damp with sweat, and the sun glinted off the small accrual of achievement badges hanging from the fabric over his heart. He boasted he was the fastest courier in all of Valenia despite his rumored twenty-one years.
“This is the last time, Francis,” I warned, before I could change my mind.
“Last time?” he echoed, but he was already grinning at me. I knew such a smile. It was what he used to get what he wanted. “Why?”
“Why!” I exclaimed, swatting a curious bumblebee. “Do you really need to ask?”
“If anything, this is the time I need you the most, mademoiselle,” he responded, retrieving two small envelopes from the inner pocket of his shirt. “In eight days comes the summer solstice of fate.”
“Exactly, Francis,” I retorted, knowing he was only thinking of my arden-sister Sibylle. “Eight days and I still have much to master.” My gaze rested on those envelopes he held; one was addressed to Sibylle, but the other was addressed to me. I recognized the handwriting as Grandpapa’s; he had finally written. My heart fluttered to imagine what that letter might hold within its creases. . . .
“You are worried?”
My eyes snapped back up to Francis’s face. “Of course I’m worried.”
“You shouldn’t be. I think you will do splendidly.” For a change, he wasn’t teasing me. I heard the honesty in his voice, bright and sweet. I wanted to believe as he did, that in eight days, when my seventeenth summer marked my body, I would passion. I would be chosen.
“I don’t think Master Cartier—”
“Who cares what your master thinks?” Francis interrupted with a nonchalant shrug. “You should only care about what you think.”
I frowned as I pondered that, imagining how Master Cartier would respond to such a statement.
I had known Cartier for seven years. I had known Francis for seven months.
We had met last November; I had been sitting before the open window, waiting for Cartier to arrive for my afternoon lesson, when Francis passed by on the gravel path. I knew who he was, as did all of my arden-sisters; we often saw him delivering and receiving the mail to and from Magnalia House. But it was that first personal encounter when he asked if I would give a secret letter to Sibylle. Which I had, and so I had become entangled in their letter exchanges.
“I care about what Master Cartier thinks, because he is the one to claim me impassioned,” I argued.
“Saints, Brienna,” Francis replied as a butterfly flirted with his broad shoulder. “You should be the one to claim yourself impassioned, don’t you think?”
That gave me a reason to pause. And Francis took advantage of it.
“By the way, I know the patrons the Dowager has invited to the solstice.”
“What! How?”
But of course I knew how. He had delivered all the letters, seen the names and addresses. I narrowed my eyes at him just as his dimples crested his cheeks. Again, that smile. I could see perfectly well why Sibylle fancied him, but he was far too playful for me.
“Oh, just give me your blasted letters,” I cried, reaching out to pluck them from his fingers.
He evaded me, expecting such a response.
“Don’t you care to know who the patrons are?” he prodded. “For one of them is to be yours in eight days . . .”
I stared at him, but I saw beyond his boyish face and tall gangly frame. The garden was dry, yearning for rain, trembling in a slight breeze. “Just give me the letters.”
“But if this is to be my last one to Sibylle, I need to rewrite some things.”
“By Saint LeGrand, Francis, I do not have time for your games.”
“Just grant me one more letter,” he pleaded. “I don’t know where Sibylle will be in a week’s time.”
I should have felt sympathy for him—oh, the heartache of loving a passion when you are not one. But I should have remained firm in my decision too. Let him mail her a letter, as he should have been doing all this time. Eventually I sighed and agreed, mostly because I wanted my grandfather’s letter.
Francis finally relinquished the envelopes to me. The one from Grandpapa went straight to my pocket, but Francis’s remained in my fingers.
“Why did you write in Dairine?” I asked, noting his sprawling script of address. He had written in the language of Maevana, the queen’s realm of the north. To Sibylle, my sun and my moon, my life and my light. I almost burst into laughter, but caught it just in time.
“Don’t read it!” he exclaimed, a blush mottling his already sunburned cheeks.
“It’s on the face of the envelope, you fool. Of course I’m going to read it.”
“Brienna . . .”
He reached toward me and I relished the chance to finally taunt him when I heard the library door open. I knew it was Cartier without having to look. For three years, I had spent nearly every day with him, and my soul had grown accustomed to how his presence quietly commanded a room.
Shoving Francis’s letter into my pocket with Grandpapa’s, I widened my eyes at him and began to close the window. He understood a moment too late; I caught his fingers on the sill. I clearly heard his yelp of pain, but I hoped the hasty shutting of the window concealed it from Cartier.
“Master Cartier,” I greeted, breathless, and turned on my heel.
He was not looking at me. I watched as he set his leather satchel in a chair and pulled several volumes from it, laying the lesson books on the table.
“No open window today?” he asked. Still, he had not met my gaze. It might have been in my best interest, for I felt the way my face warmed, and it was not from the sunlight.
“The bumblebees are pesky today,” I said, discreetly glancing over my shoulder to watch Francis hurry down the gravel path to the stables. I knew Magnalia’s rules; I knew that we were not to create romantic entanglements while we were ardens. Or, more realistically, be caught doing such. I was foolish to transport Sibylle’s and Francis’s letters.
I looked forward to find Cartier was watching me.
“How are your Valenian Houses coming?” He motioned for me to come to the table.
“Very well, Master,” I said, taking my usual seat.
“Let us begin by reciting the lineage of the House of Renaud, following the firstborn son,” Cartier requested, sitting in the chair across from mine.
“The House of Renaud?” Saint’s mercy, of course he would request the expansive royal lineage. The one I struggled to remember.
“It is the lineage of our king,” he reminded with that unflinching gaze of his. I had seen that look of his many times. And so had my arden-sisters, who all complained about Cartier behind closed doors. He was the most handsome of Magnalia’s arials, the instructor of knowledge, but he was also the strictest. My arden-sister Oriana claimed that a rock dwelled in his chest. And she had drawn a caricature of him, depicting him as a man emerging from stone.
“Brienna.” My name rolled off his tongue as his fingers snapped impatiently.
“Forgive me, Master.” I tried to summon the beginning of the royal line, but all I could think of was my grandfather’s letter, waiting in my pocket. What had taken him so long to write?
“You understand that knowledge is the most demanding of the passions,” Cartier spoke when my silence had extended far too long.
I met his gaze and wondered if he was trying to tactfully imply that I did not have the fortitude for this. Some mornings, I thought the same myself.
My first year at Magnalia, I had studied the passion of art. And since I had no artistic inclinations, the next year I squandered in music. But my singing was beyond redeeming and my fingers made instruments sound like caterwauling felines. My third year I had attempted dramatics until I discovered my stage fright could not be overcome. So my fourth year was given to wit, a very fretful year that I tried not to remember. Then, when I was fourteen, I had come to stand before Cartier and asked him to accept me as his arden, to make me into a mistress of knowledge in the three years I had remaining at Magnalia.
Yet I knew—and I suspected the other arials who instructed me knew this as well—that I was here because of something my grandfather had said those seven years ago. I was not here because I deserved it; I was not here because I was brimming with talent and capacity as were the other five ardens, who I loved as my true sisters. But perhaps that made me want it even more, to prove that passion was not just inherently gifted as some people believed, but that passion could be earned by anyone, commoner or noble, even if they did not have intrinsic skill.
“Maybe I should go back to our first lesson,” Cartier said, breaking my reverie. “What is passion, Brienna?”
The passion catechism. It echoed in my thoughts, one of the first passages I had ever memorized, the one all the ardens knew by heart.
He was not patronizing me by asking this now, eight days from the summer solstice, but all the same, I felt a twinge of embarrassment until I bravely met his gaze and saw there was more to this question.
What do you want, Brienna? His eyes quietly asked as they held mine. Why do you want to passion?
And so I gave him the answer I had been taught to say, because I felt it would be safest.
“Passion is divided into five hearts,” I began. “Passion is art, music, dramatics, wit, and knowledge. Passion is wholehearted devotion; it is fervor and agony; it is temper and zeal. It knows no bounds and marks a man or woman no matter their class or status, no matter their heritage. The passion becomes the man or woman, as the man or woman becomes the passion. It is a consummation of skill and flesh, a marker of devotion, dedication, and deed.”
I couldn’t tell if Cartier was disappointed with my learned answer. His face was always so carefully guarded—not once had I ever seen him smile; not once had I ever heard him laugh. Sometimes, I imagined he was not much older than me, but then I always reminded myself that my soul was young and Cartier’s was not. He was far more experienced and educated, most likely the product of a childhood cured too soon. Whatever his age, he held a vast amount of knowledge in his mind.
“I was your last choice, Brienna,” he finally said, disregarding my catechism. “You came to me three years ago and asked me to prepare you for your seventeenth summer solstice. Yet instead of having seven years to make you into a mistress of knowledge, I only had three.”
I could hardly bear his reminders. It made me think of Ciri, his other arden of knowledge. Ciri soaked in knowledge with envious depth, but she had also had seven years of instruction. Of course I would feel inadequate when I compared myself to her.
“Forgive me for not being as Ciri,” I said before I could swallow the sarcasm.
“Ciri began her training when she was ten,” he reminded me calmly, preoccupied with a book on the table. He picked it up and passed through several pages that were dog-eared—something he fervently detested—and I watched him gently straighten the bends from the old paper.
“Do you regret my choice, Master?” What I really wanted to ask him was, Why didn’t you refuse me when I asked you to become my master three years ago? If three years was not enough time for me to passion, why didn’t you tell me no? But maybe my gaze expressed this, because he looked at me and then glanced languidly away, back to the books.
“I only have a few regrets, Brienna,” he answered.
“What happens if I am not chosen by a patron at the solstice?” I asked, although I knew what became of young men and women who failed to reach impassionment. They were often broken and inadequate, neither here nor there, belonging to no group, shunned by passion and common folk alike. To dedicate years, time, and mind to passion and not accomplish it . . . one became marked as inept. No longer an arden, never quite a passion, and suddenly forced to merge back into society to become useful.
And as I waited for his answer, I thought of the simple metaphor Mistress Solene had taught me that first year in art (when she realized I was in no way artistic). Passion moved in phases. One began as an arden, which was like a caterpillar. This was the time to devour and master as much of the passion as one could manage. It could happen as short as two years if one was a prodigy, and as long as ten if one was a slower learner. Magnalia House was a seven year program and fairly rigorous compared to other Valenian passion Houses, which often went to eight or nine years of study. And then came impassionment—marked by a cloak and a title—and the phase of the patron, which was like the cocoon, a place to hold and mature the passion, to support her as she readied for the final phase. Which was the butterfly, when the passion could emerge out in the world on her own.
So I was thinking of butterflies when Cartier replied, “I suppose you will be the first of your kind, little arden.”
I did not like his response, and my body sank deeper into the brocade of the chair, which smelled of old books and loneliness.
“If you believe you will fail, then you most likely will,” he continued, his blue eyes sparking against my brown ones. Dust motes crossed the chasm between us, little swirling eddies in the air. “Do you agree?”
“Of course, Master.”
“Your eyes never lie to me, Brienna. You should learn better composure when you fib.”
“I shall take your advice to heart.”
He tilted his head to the side, but his eyes still rested on mine. “Do you want to tell me what is truly on your mind?”
“The solstice is on my mind,” I answered, a bit too quickly. It was a half-truth, but I could not imagine telling Cartier about my grandfather’s letter, because then he might ask me to read it aloud.
“Well, this lesson has been futile,” he said and rose to his feet.
I was disappointed that he was cutting it short—I needed every lesson he was willing to give me—yet I was relieved—I couldn’t focus on anything with Grandpapa’s letter resting in my pocket as a coal.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon to study independently,” he suggested, waving his hands to the books on the table. “Take these, if you want.”
“Yes, thank you, Master Cartier.” I stood as well, to grant him a curtsy. Without looking at him, I gathered the books and strode from the library, anxious.
I made my way out into the gardens, walking into the hedges so Cartier would not be able to see me from the library windows. The sky above was rippled and gray, warning of a storm, so I sat on the first bench I came across and set his books carefully to the side.
I retrieved my grandfather’s letter and held it before me, his crooked penmanship making my name look like a grimace over the parchment. And then I broke his red wax seal, my hands trembling as I unfolded the letter.
June 7, 1566
My Dearest Brienna,
Forgive me for taking so long to respond. I fear the pain in my hands has worsened, and the physician has instructed me to keep my writings brief, or else procure a scribe. I must say that I am very proud of you, that your mother—my sweet Rosalie—would be proud as well to know you are mere days away from becoming impassioned. Please write to me after the solstice and tell me the patron you choose.
To answer your question . . . I fear you will be familiar with my response. Your father’s name is not worthy to note. Your mother was swayed by his handsome face and saccharine words, and I fear it would only harm you to learn his name. Yes, you have dual citizenship, which means you are part Maevan. But I do not want you to seek him out. Rest assured that you would find the same faults in him as I do. And no, my dear, he has not inquired after you. Not once has he sought for you. You must remember that you are illegitimate, and most men flee when they hear that word.
Remember that you are indeed loved, and that I stand in place of your father.
Love, Grandpapa
I crumpled the letter in my hand, my fingers as white as the paper, my eyes swarming with tears. It was folly to cry over such a letter, to once more be denied the name of the man who was my father. And it had taken me weeks to muster the courage to write that letter and ask again.
I decided that it would be the final time I asked. The name did not matter.
If my mother had lived, what would she say about him? Would she have married him? Or perhaps he was already married, and that was why my grandfather was so mortified by the mere thought of my father. A shameful extramarital affair between a Valenian woman and a Maevan man.
Ah, my mother. Sometimes, I thought I could remember the musical cadence of her voice, that I could remember how it felt to be held in her arms, the scent of her. Lavender and clover, sunshine and roses. She died from the sweating sickness when I was three, and Cartier had once told me that it was rare for one to remember memories that early. So perhaps it was all in my mind, what I wanted to remember of her?
Why did it hurt, then, to think of one I didn’t truly know?
Shoving the letter into my pocket, I leaned back and felt the scalloped leaves of the hedge stroke my hair, as if the plant were trying to comfort me. I should not be dwelling on fragments of my past, pieces that did not matter. I needed to think of what was to come in eight days, when the solstice arrived, when I should master my passion and finally receive my cloak.
I needed to be reading Cartier’s books, pressing the words into my memory.
But before I could so much as twitch my fingers toward the pages, I heard a soft tread on the grass, and Oriana appeared on the path.
“Brienna!” she greeted, her black hair captured in a tangled braid to her waist. Her brown skin and arden dress were speckled with paint from the endless hours she spent in the art studio. And while her dress told of enchanting creations of color, mine was boringly clean and wrinkled. All six of Magnalia’s ardens wore those drab gray dresses, and we unanimously loathed them, with their high collars and long plain sleeves and chaste fit. To shed them soon would feel passionate, indeed.
“What are you up to?” my arden-sister asked, closing the gap between us. “Has Master Cartier driven you to frustration yet?”
“No, I think it’s the other way around this time.” I stood and took the books in one hand and looped my other arm with Oriana’s. We walked beside each other, Oriana petite and slender compared to my height and long legs. I had to slow down to remain in stride with her. “How are your final paintings coming?”
She snorted and gave me a wry smile as she plucked a rose from a bush. “They are coming along, I suppose.”
“Have you picked which ones to display at the solstice?”
“Yes, actually.” She began to tell me which paintings she had chosen to display for the patrons, and I watched as she nervously twirled the rose.
“Don’t worry,” I said and eased her to a stop so we could look upon each other face-to-face. In the distance, thunder rumbled, the air swelling with the scent of rain. “Your paintings are exquisite. And I can already see it.”
“See what?” Oriana gently tucked the rose behind my ear.
“That the patrons will fight over you. You will bring the highest price.”
“Poppies, no! I do not have the charm of Abree, or the beauty of Sibylle, or the sweetness of Merei, or the brains of you and Ciri.”
“But your art creates a window into another world,” I said, smiling at her. “That is a true gift, to help others see the world in a different way.”
“Since when did you become a poet, my friend?”
I laughed, but a clap of thunder swallowed the sound. As soon as the storm’s complaint quieted, Oriana said, “So, I have a confession.” She pulled me back along the path as the first drops of rain began to fall, and I followed, mystified, because Oriana was the one arden who never broke the rules.
“And . . .” I prompted.
“I knew you were here in the gardens, and I came to ask you something. You remember how I drew portraits of the other girls? So I can have ways to remember each of you after we part ways next week?” Oriana glanced at me, her amber eyes gleaming in anticipation.
I tried not to groan. “Ori, I cannot sit still that long.”
“Abree managed it. And you know she is constantly in motion. And what do you even mean, you cannot sit still that long? You sit all day long with Ciri and Master Cartier, reading book after book!”
I pressed a smile to my lips. For an entire year, she had asked to draw me, and I had simply been too overcome with my studies to have the leisure time for something like a portrait. I had lessons with Cartier and Ciri in the mornings, but then come the afternoon, I typically had a private lesson with Cartier, because I was still struggling to master everything I should. And while I sat through grueling lessons and watched the sunlight melt across the floor, my arden-sisters had the afternoons to themselves; many days I had listened to their laughter and gaiety fill the house while I flogged my memory beneath Cartier’s scrutiny.
“I don’t know.” I hesitated, shifting the books in my arms. “I am supposed to be studying.”
We rounded the hedge’s corner only to plow into Abree.
“Did you convince her?” Abree asked Oriana, and I realized that this was an ambush. “And don’t look at us like that, Brienna.”
“Like what?” I countered. “You both know that if I want to receive my cloak and leave with a patron in eight days, I need to spend every minute—”
“Memorizing boring lineages, yes, we know,” Abree interrupted. Her thick auburn hair sat free upon her shoulders, a few stray leaves caught within the curls as if she had been crawling through the bushes and brambles. She was known to practice her lines outside with Master Xavier, and several times I had watched her through the library windows as she tossed and turned on the grass and crushed berries to her bodice as fake blood, projecting her lines to the clouds. I saw evidence of mud on her arden skirts now, the stain of berries, and knew she had been in the throes of rehearsal.
“Please, Brienna,” Oriana pleaded. “I have drawn everyone else’s but yours. . . .”
“And you will want her to draw it, especially after you see the props I found for you,” Abree said, wickedly smiling down at me. She was the tallest of us, taller than me by an entire handbreadth.
“Props!” I cried. “Now, listen, I do not—” But the thunder came again, drowning out my weak protests, and before I could stop her, Oriana stole the books from my hands.
“I’ll go ahead and get things set up,” Oriana said, taking three eager steps away from me, as if my mind could not be changed once she got out of earshot. “Abree, bring her to the studio.”
“Yes, Milady,” Abree returned with a playful bow.
I watched as Oriana dashed across the lawn, in through the back doors.
“Oh, come now, Brienna,” Abree said, the rain fully breaking through the clouds, dappling our dresses. “You need to enjoy these final days.”
“I cannot enjoy them if I worry that I will become inept.” I began to walk toward the house, yanking the ribbon from my braid to let my long hair unwind about me, running my fingers anxiously through it.
“You are not going to become inept!” But there was a pause, which was followed by, “Does Master Cartier think you will?”
I was halfway through the lawn, drenched and overwhelmed with the impending expectations when Abree caught up to me, grabbed my arm, and spun me about. “Please, Brienna. Do the portrait for me, for Oriana.”
I sighed, but a small smile was beginning to touch the corners of my lips. “Very well. But it cannot take all day.”
“You really will be excited to see the props I found!” Abree insisted breathlessly, dragging me across the remaining strip of lawn.
“How long do you think it will take?” I panted as we opened the doors and stepped into the shadows of the back hall, soaked and shivering.
“Not long,” Abree replied. “Oh! Remember how you were helping me plot the second half of my play? The one where Lady Pumpernickel gets thrown in the dungeon for stealing the diadem?”
“Mm-hmm.” Even though I was no longer studying dramatics, Abree continued to solicit my help when it came to plotting her plays. “You don’t know how to get her out of the dungeon, do you?”
She sheepishly blushed. “No. And before you say it . . . I don’t want to kill her off.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “That was years ago, Abree.”
She was referring to the time when I had been an arden of dramatics and we had both written a skit for Master Xavier. While Abree had authored a comical scene of two sisters fighting over the same beau, I had penned a bloody tragedy of a daughter stealing her father’s throne. I killed off all the characters save for one by the end, and Master Xavier had obviously been shocked by my dark plotting.
“If you do not wish to kill her,” I said as we began to walk down the hall, “then make her find a secret door behind a skeleton, or have a guard shift his allegiance and help her out, but only at a twisted, unexpected cost.”
“Ah, a secret door!” Abree cried, linking her arm with mine. “You plot like a fiend, Bri! I wish I schemed like you.” When she smiled down at me, I felt a drop of remorse, that I had been too frightened of the stage to become a mistress of dramatics.
Abree must have felt the same, for she tightened her hold on me and murmured, “You know, it’s not too late. You can write a two act play in eight days, and impress Master Xavier, and—”
“Abree.” I playfully hushed her.
“Is this how two of Magnalia’s ardens behave a week before their solstice of fate?” The voice startled us. Abree and I stopped in the hall, surprised to see Mistress Therese, the arial of wit, standing with her arms crossed in blunt disapproval. She looked down her thin, pointed nose at us with eyebrows raised, disgusted by our drenched appearance. “You act as if you are children, not women about to gain their cloaks.”
“Much apologies, Mistress Therese,” I murmured, giving her a deep curtsy of respect. Abree mimicked me, although her curtsy was quite careless.
“Tidy up right away, before Madame sees you.”
Abree and I tripped over each other in our haste to get away from her. We stumbled down the corridor into the foyer, to the mouth of the stairs.
“Now, that is a demon in the flesh,” Abree whispered, far too loudly, as she flew up the stairs.
“Abree!” I chided, slipping on my hem just as I heard Cartier behind me.
“Brienna?”
I caught my fall on the balustrade. My balance restored, I whirled on the stair to look down at him. He stood in the foyer, his stark white tunic belted at his waist, his gray breeches nearly the same shade as my dress. He was fastening his passion cloak about his neck, preparing to depart in the rain.
“Master?”
“I assume you will want another private lesson Monday after our morning lecture with Ciri?” He stared up at me, waiting for the answer he knew I would give.
I felt my hand slide on the railing. My hair was uncommonly loose, falling about me in wild, brown tangles, my dress was drenched, my hem dripped a quiet song over the marble. I knew I must look completely undone to him, that I looked nothing like a Valenian woman on the verge of passioning, that I looked nothing like the scholar he was trying to mold. And yet I raised my chin and replied, “Yes, thank you, Master Cartier.”
“Perhaps there will be no letter to distract you next time?” he asked, and my eyes widened as I continued to stare down at him, trying to read beyond the steady composure of his face.
He could punish me for exchanging Francis’s and Sibylle’s letters. He could impart discipline, because I had broken a rule. And so I waited, waited to see what he would require of me.
But then the left corner of his lips moved, too subtle to be a genuine smile—although I liked to imagine it might have been—as he bestowed a curt bow of farewell. I watched him pass through the doors and melt into the storm, wondering if he was being merciful or playful, desiring that he would stay, relieved that he had departed.
I continued my way up the stairs, leaving a trail of rain, and wondered . . . wondered how Cartier always seemed to make me want two conflicting things at once.