JILSEPONIE WAS MOREthan a little surprised, and wary, when a lady-in- waiting came to her with the news that Constance Pemblebury had requested an audience with her, an afternoon tea, no less.
The Queen sat very still for a long while, staring at her.
"My lady?" the lady-in-waiting asked.
"Constance Pemblebury wishes to have tea with me?" Jilseponie asked skeptically.
"Indeed, she does," answered the messenger. "She bade me to come to you quickly and ask your indulgence in this matter. She was quite eager to sit with you, my lady. Quite eager."
"Why?" Jilseponie said it before she even realized that the words were coming out of her mouth, for she didn't really want to drag an outsider into these sordid affairs.
"My lady?" the messenger asked, seeming not to understand.
Jilseponie smiled at the woman, well aware that she understood the implications of the question, that she understood the chaos behind the scenes at court. That realization allowed Jilseponie to press forward. "Why does Lady Constance wish to speak with me?" she asked more directly. "Is there some complaint she wishes to offer? About her children, perhaps?"
"It would not be my place - " the poor, befuddled messenger started to reply, but Jilseponie stopped her with an upraised hand.
"I just made it your place," said the Queen. "Why does Lady Constance wish to speak with me? Tell me of her mood, if her intent you do not know."
The messenger seemed at a loss for a bit, but then smiled widely. "She seemed quite happy about the tea, my lady," she replied. "She bade me to come to you at once. Perhaps it is about Sir Merwick and Squire Torrence, but whether or not that is the case, there is no complaint involved, I am sure. In truth, my lady, I have not seen Lady Pemblebury in such fine spirits for months."
Jilseponie looked at the woman curiously for a long time. Dare she hope that Constance might have finally come through her dark time - her anger and her jealousy? It seemed too much to believe. But still, if Constance was offering peace, shouldn't she grab at that offer? How much would Jilseponie give to quiet some of the gossipers?
"Tell Lady Constance that I will join her for tea tomorrow afternoon in the western sitting room," she said.
"Oh, yes, my lady!" the happy messenger replied, clapping her hands. She turned and started away but stopped, turned back, and curtsied, then spun and sprinted for the door.
Jilseponie rose and started to pace the room, considering this startling turn of events. Warning bells went off in her thoughts, for Constance had shown no indication at all that she was calming about Jilseponie. Quite the opposite! Constance had not even attended the tournament, though her whispers about the young warrior - or supposed lover of the Queen - had certainly reached Jilseponie's ears.
Yes, that was likely it, Jilseponie realized. Constance was probably trying to glean some information that she could later turn against Jilseponie.
Or was she, herself, just being too fretful? she had to wonder.
She thought about going to Danube to tell him of the surprising invitation, but she changed her mind. This was her problem, and she should not burden her already beleaguered husband with it. She could handle Constance Pemblebury, whatever the woman had in mind.
But she'd have to be careful.
Drink it now,the voice in Constance's head said to her right before she entered the western sitting room, where Queen Jilseponie waited.
The woman pulled out a small vial and started to pull out the cork, but paused, staring at it.
No time for hesitation,the voice, Aydrian's telepathic call, commanded, and a wave of images flashed through Constance's mind. She saw Merwick and Torrence hanging in the public square, an execution presided over by Queen Jilseponie.
Before she could even consider her movements, Constance removed the cork and drained the contents in one great, burning swallow.
A wave of dizziness accompanied the flow of the liquid, a burning and disorienting sensation.
Constance steadied herself; it couldn't be that quick.
She rushed to the nearby window, which overlooked a long drop to a ravine of stones and the small moat that surrounded Castle Ursal. It took all of her willpower, but she somehow suppressed the urge to throw up.
She wiped her lips and steadied herself again, then marched to the sitting room door.
The spirit of Aydrian entered beside her, unseen.
Jilseponie sat across the room, at a small table set by the window, basking in the long rays of the setting sun. She wore a rose-colored dress with lines of deeper purple woven in. Her blond hair was secured with a gem-studded pin.
Constance paused. She couldn't deny Jilseponie's beauty or the grace with which she held herself. Jilseponie looked a queen.
But she was no queen, Constance reminded herself, certainly not by breeding. They could dress her up grandly, but she truly belonged in buckskin leggings, carrying a sword. She belonged in the woods, hunting animals and goblins.
The only rouge suitable for Jilseponie's tanned face was the blood of her prey.
Constance's stomach tightened as she approached, and with more than nerves, but she hid the pain well and smiled warmly as she took her seat opposite the Queen.
"Tea?" Jilseponie asked, and she lifted the silver pot.
Constance smiled and pushed out her delicate cup. She knew this tea service so very well, had used it on the many occasions when she had been entertaining guests at Castle Ursal. To see Jilseponie handling it now only furthered her resolve and allowed her to smile away the next wave of pain that gripped her stomach.
Jilseponie finished pouring, then sat back, her own cup and saucer in hand. She looked out the window as much as at Constance, but the woman knew that Jilseponie, was, in fact, staring at her.
"You are surprised that I requested such an audience," Constance remarked.
Jilseponie put down her cup and saucer. "Should I not be? Pardon my forwardness, Lady Pemblebury, but you have not welcomed me to Castle Ursal, not since my return and not in all my months here before I left."
"Fair enough. But can you not understand my concern?"
Jilseponie relaxed visibly, and her expression softened. "I understand it all too well. Which is why I am surprised now by this meeting."
"I seek to protect my children."
"They need no protection - not from me, at least," Jilseponie was quick to reply. "I have never thought to harm Merwick and Torrence, my husband's fine sons in any way."
"Heirs to the throne," Constance added, and her eyes narrowed despite her intentions.
Jilseponie lifted her teacup in toast to that. "So it would seem," she agreed. "Unless Prince Midalis should take the throne after his brother and sire children. Even in that unlikely circumstance, I do not expect that Merwick and Torrence would be removed from the line."
"Or unless Lady Jilseponie should bear Danube a child," Constance remarked.
Jilseponie smiled, chuckled, and shook her head. "Nay, you need not fear that," she said. "I understand why you perceive me as a threat to you, but never have I been one. Never have I desired to be one."
Constance looked at her hard, and for just a moment, she regretted her attitude toward Jilseponie. Just for a moment, she wondered if perhaps things might have been different.
Again came those insidious images of Jilseponie presiding over the execution of Merwick and Torrence, and Constance knew that this was no false daydream but was, in fact, a premonition.
The softness left her expression.
"I know, too, that it upsets you to see me with your former lover," Jilseponie admitted, and Constance knew that the Queen had recognized the change that had come over her. "As I have told you, dear Constance, there is nothing that I can do about those feelings - not Danube's and not yours."
Constance's gut was churning with anger and with the poison. She started to reply, then had to cough, then stood up, her expression incredulous.
"Constance?" Queen Jilseponie asked.
Constance pushed her teacup and saucer off the table, and they shattered on the floor with a loud crash. Immediately the door swung open, the attendants peering in.
"Murderess!" Constance cried at Jilseponie, and she staggered toward the Queen and fell over her.
Jilseponie came up fast out of her chair, catching Constance firmly, though she didn't notice that the woman tucked a small vial into the sash of Jilseponie's dress.
"Constance!" Jilseponie called, trying to help her keep her balance. Evidence planted, Constance shoved Jilseponie away and staggered toward the attendants and the door. "I am murdered!" she cried. "The Queen has slain me! Oh, fie! What will become of my children!"
The attendants caught her as she pitched forward, easing her down to the floor.
"Get me a soul stone," Jilseponie cried to one of the attendants. "Be quick!"
The woman started to turn away, as her companion wiped Constance's brow, but Constance's hand shot out and grabbed her dress roughly. "No!" she shrieked. "Let that witch nowhere near me! The murderess!"
"Constance!" Jilseponie yelled. "I did nothing." She looked at the confused and frightened attendant. "Go!" she commanded. "To my room and fetch my bag of gemstones! At once!"
Constance screamed again, and would not let go. She had to forcefully gulp down air then, but her grip remained one of iron, resisting all efforts by Jilseponie to pry her fingers loose from the handmaiden's dress.
Aydrian's spirit watched it all with amused detachment, as if he was watching a play on a stage. He hardly cared that the poison was coursing through Constance's body now, burning at her, numbing her muscles. In fact, had the handmaiden gotten away, Aydrian would have overwhelmed her to prevent her from retrieving Jilseponie's soul stone.
No, his dear mother wouldn't be a hero this time.
This time, she would be denounced as a murderess.
Aydrian's spirit flew out, then, on a sudden impulse, soared about the castle until he found Duke Kalas.
A simple suggestion had the Duke rushing to the sitting room and the fallen Constance.
" 'tis Lady Constance Pemblebury, me lord!" the page cried, stumbling into the throne room. "She is murdered, or is soon to be! And by the Queen herself, by the dying woman's own words!"
King Danube tried to utter a retort to that, but the words caught in his throat. He stumbled out of his chair and staggered forward, his mind whirling.
Out in the corridor beyond his audience hall, the castle was in tumult, men and women, nobles and peasants, rushing to and fro, all screaming that Lady Pemblebury had been murdered, all screaming that the Queen was a murderess.
Danube fixed every offender with an icy stare as he passed, one that reminded the gossiper that speaking such words amounted to treason.
But in truth, Danube was overwhelmed, stumbling, wondering what might be happening. But one thing he knew for certain, his wife was no murderess!
Or was she?
An image flashed through Danube's mind then, a scene of Jilseponie pouring something evil into a goblet, then presenting it to Constance. It touched him below the conscious level, somewhere deep in his thoughts.
Aydrian's spirit made sure that he didn't make things too obvious to this love-struck fool.
Duke Kalas caught Jilseponie leaving the room even as he was trying to enter.
"What is it?" he yelled in her face. "What have you done?"
"Speak not the words of a fool, Kalas," the Queen replied. "And let me go! Constance is ill, though from what, I do not know."
"You poisoned her!" another nobleman, who had come on the scene before Kalas, yelled. "By her own words!"
"She does not know what she is speaking about!" Jilseponie yelled right back at him, then she turned to Kalas. "A soul stone, and I will have her up and well in a few moments."
She tried to pull away, but Kalas held her tightly.
Jilseponie fixed him with a perfectly awful stare.
"Go with her," the Duke instructed the nobleman, and he shoved into the room past Jilseponie and ran to stricken Constance's side.
"Murderess!" Constance was saying, whispering and coughing. "The Queen has slain me."
"Be easy," Duke Kalas said to his dear friend. He dropped to his knees and took Constance away from the attendant, cradling her head in his hands. "Be at ease," he said quietly. "Help will arrive. Jilseponie has gone for a soul - "
"No!" shrieked the dying woman, and she found the strength to sit up and grab Kalas by the front of his tunic. "No. She will devour my soul as she has destroyed my body. No! No. Promise me."
King Danube entered the room then and rushed to Constance's side.
"She says that your wife murdered her," Kalas remarked.
"Poison . . . in the tea," Constance breathed. "Oh, I am slain." She found another burst of energy then, and grabbed Kalas hard. "Merwick and Torrence," she begged. "The witch will take them!"
"This is foolishness!" King Danube cried.
Aydrian knew that Jilseponie was fast returning with a soul stone that she could use to defeat the poison. He went to Constance, then, speaking to her again. He showed her the Queen hanging from a gallows and showed her Merwick ascending the throne as king of Honce-the-Bear.
He put her at ease so that she would not fight the poison.
Constance lay back and died.
Jilseponie rushed into the room, bag of gemstones in hand. She skidded to an abrupt halt, seeing Kalas gently lay Constance's head back and close her unseeing eyes.
Shaking her head, stunned and not quite knowing what to make of any of this, Jilseponie felt the weight of a dozen accusing stares fixed upon her.
"I did nothing," she said to her husband, as he rose and turned to her.
King Danube started to say, "Of course, my love," but the words caught in his throat, as Aydrian again whispered into his mind the suggestion that Jilseponie had murdered Constance.
His hesitation struck Jilseponie as profoundly as if he had walked over and slugged her.
"Search her!" Duke Kalas insisted, rising and motioning for two nearby guards.
"Back!" Jilseponie roared at the tentative pair, and they stopped and looked confusedly at Duke Kalas, then at King Danube.
The King, overwhelmed, looked down.
"Search her!" Kalas growled, and he put his hand to his sword, as if he meant to draw it and run Jilseponie through then and there. He reached down and grabbed the sobbing attendant, pulling her roughly to her feet. "You go and do it," he instructed. He shoved her forward toward Jilseponie, then motioned for the guards to go to the Queen.
They did, grabbing her by the arms; and she offered no resistance, just stood there, staring at her husband, dumbstruck.
She expected them to find nothing, of course, for she had done nothing; but when the handmaiden fiddled about her sash, gasped, and produced the vial, Jilseponie was hardly surprised.
How had Constance done this to her? she wondered, for certainly this whole thing had been set up. But it made no sense, none at all!
For there lay Constance, dead on the floor, and there stood Danube, seeming broken.
As if in a dream, she felt them take the gemstones and tie her hands behind her back. She heard their words as if from afar, as one after another, the attendants insisted that the Queen had ordered the tea.
She heard the echoes down the corridor, cries that the Queen, that she, was a murderess, that she had killed the Lady Pemblebury.
Still staring at the body of Constance, she heard the sharp bark of Duke Kalas. "Away with her to the dungeons!" and felt the tug of the guards.
But then King Danube intervened, redirecting the guards to Jilseponie's private quarters, but ordering her locked within and watched.
She looked over at her husband then, and could say nothing, for the look of sheer despair upon his face wounded her profoundly.
It was all too insane.