Chapter 23: A Mother's Sentence

They had put my mother in the old wine cellar under the Moonhall, behind a door with a bar across it.

Garrick unbarred it for me and stood back.

"I'll be outside," he said.

"Stay close."

"I will."

I went in alone with the crown still on my head.

She sat on a stool in the middle of the cellar with her hands in her lap.

Her braid had come undone.

She looked smaller without the grey cloak.

"You came," she said.

"Where is the letter?"

"In my boot."

She bent and pulled a square of folded paper out of it.

It was thick and creased, and my father's slanting hand ran across it, the hand of a man who hated writing.

She held it out.

I took it.

Ottoline,

Nine years ago the law of Wilton asked for your life.

I said you were dead, and I put an empty coffin in the crypt, because I would not hang our daughter's mother.

You know I have kept you alive since, with gold and a house in the north. I have asked for nothing.

I am asking now. Come home. Give up the crown.

Live in my house and see your daughter. She is going to be eighteen, and she will need someone who knows her.

Osric

I read it twice.

My hands were very cold.

"You were not exiled," I said. "You were spared."

"He told you it was mercy."

"It says it."

"It was a leash," my mother said.

"He kept me in a house in the north for nine years, and he thought I would be grateful."

"He saved your life."

"He took my daughter."

"You tried to take his throne."

"I was his wife!"

Her voice cracked on it, high and sudden, and she put a fist to her mouth.

"I was queen. I bore him an heir, and he gave me the nursery and the garden.

"I wanted one room in that house where I was the one who decided."

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