In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“I hate you, you evil creature! I’ll pinch your ears if you don’t stop whining.”

Blessing clapped hands over ears and huddled under the blankets until, sometime later, after the others had gone down to the lower floor to entertain themselves with chess and reading, Anna was able to coax her out.

“I don’t feel good,” whimpered the girl. “I got a cut on my leg.”

“How could have you gotten—” But it was no cut, of course. “Princess Blessing. Your Highness. Oh, dear.”

“Is anything amiss, Anna?” asked the servingwoman, Julia, from the window, where she sat and sewed.

“Sit down,” Anna said sternly, and Blessing sat cross-legged. A few drops of blood stained the bedding, but it wasn’t too bad. “I pray you, Julia, Princess Blessing is feeling poorly. Might you go down and ask the sergeant if we can have a posset, something to settle her stomach? It must be what she ate last night.”

Julia glanced sharply at her. Perhaps she suspected. Perhaps she had overheard, although Blessing had whispered. But she went, leaving Anna and the child alone.

“Now, Your Highness, listen closely and listen well.”

“My tummy hurts.”

“I know it does. And so it will do, about once every month, for a good long while now.”

“Why?”

“You know a woman’s courses.”

“That you get?”

“Yes, as you’ve seen, the Lady favored women by giving them the power of life, while men have only the power of death. That is why we can bleed every month and survive it. Now you have started bleeding.”

“What does that mean?”

She bit her lip, worried it, then plunged on. “It means you must be secret, Blessing.” How difficult a thing this was to get across to a child who had the understanding of a five or six year old but the body of a budding adolescent! “Among my people, a girl isn’t likely to be wed until she’s older and she and her betrothed have the wherewithal to set up a household. But among noble families sometimes girls are married as soon as they begin bleeding.”

“Why?”

“Why marry? To form alliances. To make treaties. To consolidate an inheritance.”

“Why not when they’re little, like me?”

“Girls are betrothed all the time when they’re children. But no man will bed a wife until that girl is a woman and can grow a baby inside her.”

“Is Lady Elene old enough? Why can’t she get married and leave us? I hate her!”

“We are all prisoners, Your Highness. Our captors may do with us as they wish, even kill us. That’s why you must be silent and secret.”

For as long a while as Anna had ever seen Blessing sit and think, the child frowned and considered. She was a lovely girl, with a complexion neither light nor dark and with shining thick dark hair falling halfway down her back that must be combed and braided and pinned up. Her eyes seemed sometimes green and sometimes blue and sometimes a hazel shading toward brown, a blend of her father and mother. Like both father and mother, she drew the eye; folk watched her; even the soldiers did, sneaking a look while pretending not to. Beauty is dangerous among the innocent, who might be ravaged when they least expect it.

“If I were Queen Adelheid,” Anna said at last, “I would use you, Your Highness, as a pawn in a game of chess.”

“I am the great granddaughter of the Emperor Taillefer! She can’t do anything without my permission!”

“She can do anything she wants, Your Highness! How will you stop her? If Queen Adelheid knows you are bleeding, she may think it worth her while to marry you off and be rid of you that way. Right now she thinks you’re still a child.”

Blessing stared at her hands, then drew a finger along her inner thigh and stared at the blood painting her nail.

“Think what a prize you are, Your Highness. Many men might desire to take you for a wife only because of who your parents are. Some may hope to reward themselves. Others might hope to punish your father or mother.”

Tears slipped down the girl’s face. “Why does my father never come, Anna?”

“He does not know where you are. We haven’t any way to let him know. If any of us escape, Holy Mother Antonia will hear of it and send horrible demons after us to eat us alive. That’s what Lady Elene says.”