Free From the Indie Side by Indie Side Publishing Page A

exhausted from the day’s
festivities and did not wish to trouble you.”
    He picked up his golden goblet and drank the
hot, mulled wine in one draught. A servant stepped forward and
filled it again, then backed away and out of earshot.
    “I am at your command,” Joanna replied
dutifully, just as she had promised when her uncle threatened her
with violence if she uttered anything but words of seduction and
support. “Shall I expect to see you tonight?”
    King Stephen bit into a turkey leg and
chewed. “No.”
    She was unable to hide her smile.
    She reached out and placed her hand upon his.
He stopped chewing and stared at her offending touch. She leaned
closer to him, careful to project nothing but the image of a
supportive wife, and whispered, “My liege, rest peacefully knowing
that you and I perhaps share much more in common than you
think.”
    She then withdrew her hand and settled into
her own meal, feeling more content than she had in ages.
     
    * *
*
     
    She looked upon his indifference gratefully
as the days passed. Indifference was better than forced
interest.
    Winter crept in with its frozen breath, the
short fall color having left the land. The trees were barren,
skeletal. The ground was brown and dead, killed by the early frost.
Joanna wrapped herself in her thick capes and frequently walked the
grounds, her ill-tempered court trailing behind, wondering who this
queen was that would force them to endure the elements when warmth
and comfort for their gossip could be found inside. The winters
were twice as bitter in the north, and Joanna did not understand
their desire to cloister themselves in hot, smoky rooms when the
final days of freedom still stretched before them.
    So the days passed. Each night, she would see
King Stephen at the evening meal. Still his eyes continued to be
glassy and blank, unseeing, unwanting. It was as if she didn’t
exist. He was impervious to the rumors of their unconsummated
marriage and the kingly duties he would not partake of. His
obsession for his dead wife made him blind and deaf.
    She heard that each night, the king retreated
to a wing of the castle and threatened death to any that followed
him. They said all the portraits of Queen Mary had been removed
from the walls and that King Stephen kept them in a locked room
which only he held the keys for—a chamber to which he retreated
each night, surrounded by her presence so that her face would fill
his dreams.
    Joanna only knew he did not trouble her, and
that was all that she cared about.
    It was several months into their marriage
when a wrinkled advisor stepped before Joanna and begged an
audience. She turned and dismissed the ladies about her.
    “My queen,” he stated, bowing low. “There is
great threat to the kingdom and I am afraid that you alone are the
key to the stability of the throne.”
    “Pray, tell you, what is this great threat?”
Joanna asked.
    “There is no heir…” he replied, awkward and
uncomfortably.
    “Ah,” she replied, folding her hands and
resting them upon the front of her wide, golden skirt. “And so I
promise you that my door has never been barred to the king. These
words of caution and request must fall upon his ears.”
    “Nay, my queen, we have advised him such, and
he still is unable to part with the thought of his past wife. I
know you women have wiles and ways to trick even the most chaste
man to fall to his knees. I pray you, use such tools to sway
him.”
    “You forget, sir, that I, too, had no desire
for this marriage. It was brokered by my uncle, and if a childless
family is what this bond brings, it rests entirely upon your head,”
she replied.
    “Nay,” said the advisor, neatly arranging the
sleeves of his coat before meeting her eyes, “I am afraid it is not
my head that shall pay the price if you do not fulfill your
duties.”
    Her blood turned cold in her veins. “What?”
Joanna asked. “Do you threaten me, sir?”
    He withdrew a folded slip of paper from