Chapter 23: The Table Burns

We burned the Bride's Table on the first warm night of spring.

Six men carried it out into the courtyard of Hollin Hall.

It was forty feet of black walnut, with a hundred years of candle wax on it.

Merrick poured the lamp oil himself.

"I have wanted to do this since the day I was hired," he said.

"You could have said so," Bastian told him.

"You were not asking, Sire."

Eileen stood by with a jug of hot cider and a bag of marshmallows.

She said a fire should have a purpose.

I sat on a blanket on the stones with my daughters in a double sling and my son asleep on Bastian's shoulder.

They were six weeks old, and loud, and perfect.

"Do you want to light it?" Bastian asked.

"Give me the match."

I struck it.

I stood in front of the long table where I had eaten alone every night for a year, and I remembered every chair.

I remembered Gerard's glass raised on the left, and Honoria's hand patting mine.

I dropped the match.

The oil caught with a soft roar, and the whole table went up in yellow flame.

The lords and ladies of the Court had come to watch, in coats and furs, with their own husbands and wives beside them.

Nobody said a word.

Then the young woman in the green dress laughed and put her hand on her belly.

All of them started to laugh.

"Majesty," said the Archivist, from his chair by the fire, with a blanket across his knees. "It is warm. I had forgotten that fire could be warm."

"You can sit out here every night, Archivist."

"I may take you at your word."

I leaned my head on Bastian's arm.

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