you're too young & eager to love

In her dreams he is always smoke. A figure she cannot hold on to no matter how tightly her fingers grasp. He eludes her. Even two years later she awakes with a sense of frustration that melts into shame. A rock of resentment and bitterness in the pit of her stomach.
 


His name was Julian He was tall and burly, more soldier or blacksmith than courtier. His arms were as wide as tree trunks, the veins beneath them coiled vines.

“My lady,” he would say with his gravel voice, kissing her knuckles hard enough to make his beard scratch her skin.

Julian gifted her with jewels and dresses, books of poetry, letters of love. He took his time until he was neither knife nor sword but poison – so subtle and delayed that she could not feel the damage he had done until he was already gone.

She remembers it still, the burn and sting and suffocating pain, but she remembers him more. The man himself. He smelled like oranges, and he kissed her the way all girls wanted to be kissed, with a claiming and a promise of the future. He told her she was beautiful, that her mind was as precious as the body he wanted, and still she remembered Sarah’s advice, to prolong the inevitable, to have him in a bed in the proper way, to not let him press her to a dark wall or the thick hay of the stables. She would be no stable girl, no common whore.

She was a lady, Abigail would remind him, when his mouth strayed further down her neck, when he would pluck at the tight bindings of her bodice.

He would always laugh then tip her small chin back, take her mouth for his, and the taste of his laughter simmered on her tongue like charcoal.


 
“He reminds me of Mephistopheles,” Old Anne said over their needlework one night, listening to the younger ladies in waiting gossip beside the fire while the Queen Mother slept. The Queen rarely called for assistance after retiring, and only Old Anne was trusted enough to maintain the vigil after the crown barred her doors. She kept her wrinkled fingers working, smoothly and carefully adding to her embroidery, her watery eyes deceivingly focused. “And any modest young woman would treat him as such.”

“Oh, hush. All men look like the devil to you.” Sarah, with her bright hair twisted into her characteristic braid, flapped her hand at Old Anne. She had a way of expressing herself with her body that was simultaneously endearing and sensual. “Keep with your stitching and we’ll keep with our fun.”

“Too much fun is a woman’s downfall,” Old Anne quipped, her leathery mouth frequently spilling such adages.

Abigail laughed, unoffended, her hair bright in the light of the fire, her eyes soft. “He has promised me a house in Hever with enough lands for an herb garden, and plots for summer and winter vegetables. I would so love to have horses. My father bought me a gelding of the richest black when I was little … I could take him with.”

Old Anne huffed, reminding Abigail of her mother. “Words from the mouth of sinners are as good as dust. You ought to have taken an oath and a ring instead, Lord knows what you young women will give up for feeble words.”

The girls had the grace to blush, but Abigail shook her head in protest. “Lord Vanderhart comes from a good name.”

“We all come from good names in Ciassa, dear, until someone else tarnishes them.”

“You sound like a hen clucking over her chickens,” Sarah laughed and squeezed Abigail’s arm in camaraderie.

Like all young things, Abigail felt too invincible to hear the foreshadowing in the old woman’s words.

She thought herself metal when she was only wax to be melted.