Chapter 22: What She Keeps

My mother held me in the middle of the aisle for so long that the king's clerks began to shuffle.

She said my name into my hair, over and over.

She smelled of the same camphor she had used all my life.

"Mama. I'm sorry. I couldn't tell you."

"I buried you," she said. "I put my hand on that box."

"I know."

"Don't you ever." Her fingers dug into my arms. "Don't you ever do that to me again."

"I won't."

My father stood a step behind her with his hat in both fists.

He was a tall man who had never knelt to anyone.

He knelt on the floor of the great hall in front of four hundred people.

"Rosalind."

"Father, get up."

"I told you to take the match." His voice was rough. "I told you to swallow it for your sister's name.

"I held my hand out to the wrong daughter for thirty years.

"The one I should have held was carrying a silver bullet in her lung for her husband."

I looked at him.

There was a lot I could have said. I found I didn't need it.

"Get up," I said again. "People are watching."

He got up. My mother put her face in her hands.

That evening, in the guest house at the edge of the village, I opened the black case on my father's table.

I took out the seal stamp, and the ledgers, and the paper that gave the northern wagons back.

"Larchmoor's," I said, and put it in his hand.

"Ros, sit on our council. You've earned the chair."

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