Ch. 90 Before the Candles

Chapter 90: Before the Candles

Helena found me outside the archive carrying a map, two letters, and a wooden bird.

The bird belonged in the nursery.

I had discovered it in my pocket during council.

“Do you have a moment?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She glanced at the papers.

“A whole moment.”

I handed the map and letters to the clerk beside me.

The bird remained.

Helena looked at it.

“Carol?”

“Yes.”

“Has she noticed it’s missing?”

“Not yet.”

“Then we have time.”

She took my arm and led me toward the little sitting room overlooking the inner garden.

I had faced less uncertainty entering negotiations.

Helena waited until we were seated.

Then she said, “Evelyn will be twenty-two next week.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

There was enough relief in that single word to make me look at her.

“I hadn’t forgotten.”

“I didn’t think you had. I wanted to speak before someone decided her birthday required six visiting delegations and an address about the future of the realm.”

“Has someone suggested that?”

“Someone always does.”

I set the wooden bird on the table.

Outside, frost silvered the edges of the garden beds.

“What did you have in mind?”

“That depends partly on what you have in mind.”

I hesitated.

Helena watched me.

“I’ve been thinking about a gift.”

“And?”

“I keep deciding it isn’t quite right.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“For Evelyn?”

“For your father-in-law. He once spent three weeks choosing something for me, then gave me the first thing he had considered.”

“Was it the right thing?”

“Yes.”

She smiled.

“I had pointed it out to him.”

We talked about supper first.

A small gathering.

Family and the people Evelyn would be pleased to see without feeling she had to receive them.

Some music, if she wanted it.

A cake.

Helena was very firm about the cake.

“She used to eat the sugared peel from the top before anyone had cut it.”

“Used to?”

Her mother’s smile widened.

“I leave that investigation to you.”

I leaned back.

“Would she like to go to Valewood?”

“For a visit, perhaps. But I think she’d like to wake here. With you and the children.”

I nodded.

We had begun calling Greykeep home so naturally that I sometimes forgot Helena had watched her daughter choose it from somewhere else.

“She misses things,” Helena added. “That doesn’t mean she wishes she hadn’t come.”

“What things?”

“The window seat in her old room. A particular walk when the weather is fine. The way the kitchen smells when someone is making orange cake.”

I looked at her.

“Orange cake?”

“With honey. And the peel she steals.”

“I see.”

“You should write that down.”

I reached for a scrap of paper.

Helena watched me finish the note.

Then her expression softened.

“There is one thing I would ask.”

“Anything.”

“Make sure some of the day belongs to Evelyn.”

I looked up.

“Of course.”

“My daughter has become a queen, a wife, a mother, and now someone learning to hold light in her hands. People have a great deal to say about all of it.”

She glanced at the little bird between us.

“She is very happy. I know she is. But ask her what she wants to do. She may surprise us.”

I thought about the last several gifts carried into our rooms.

Blankets.

Tiny garments.

Things for feeding, sleeping, carrying, and keeping warm.

All welcome.

Almost all for the children.

Helena folded her hands.

“When she was ten, she asked for a set of paints. Three relatives gave her sewing supplies because they thought them more suitable.”

“What did you do?”

“Bought the paints.”

“And Garrick?”

“Built her a box.”

I smiled.

Of course he had.

I asked Evelyn that evening.

She was sitting on the rug with Carol beside her while I walked Garrick around the room.

My wife looked up.

“Mother spoke to you.”

“Yes.”

“Was she subtle?”

“She took me into another room.”

“Then she was making an effort.”

I sat carefully in the chair near her.

“What would you like for your birthday?”

She considered it.

I waited.

From my arms, Garrick made a noise suggesting that he had several ideas.

Evelyn smiled at him.

Then she said, “I’d like to wear something pretty.”

I looked at her.

She glanced down at the comfortable gown she had been wearing all afternoon.

“Something I’ve chosen because I like it.”

“We can arrange that.”

“And have supper with everyone.”

“How many is everyone?”

“The people who won’t mind if I leave the table to feed one of these two.”

“That narrows the visiting delegations.”

Her eyebrows rose.

“There were delegations?”

“Your mother has prevented several imaginary ones already.”

“Very efficient of her.”

I shifted Garrick higher against my shoulder.

“Anything else?”

Evelyn looked toward the mantel.

At the painting she had given me for my birthday.

“I’d like to paint.”

I followed her gaze.

“I haven’t seen you do that in weeks.”

“Neither have I.”

There was no accusation in it.

That made the little ache worse.

“What would you paint?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She drew one finger lightly along the edge of Carol’s blanket.

“The garden, perhaps. Or Mother when she thinks nobody is watching her with the babies.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“So would she. After telling me I’ve made her look too stern.”

Evelyn looked back at me.

“I’d like an afternoon where I don’t have to finish it.”

I nodded.

“I can give you that.”

“And I want you there.”

“With a brush?”

“Let’s not become ambitious.”

I laughed.

Our son objected to the movement.

I apologized to him.

Evelyn watched us, smiling.

“Perhaps you could read to me.”

The next morning, I went to Valewood with Helena.

Garrick met us in the passage outside Evelyn’s old room.

He was carrying a small key.

I looked at him.

“Did you already know?”

“I was married to Helena before you met either of us.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“It explains why I’m prepared.”

The room had been kept clean.

Winter sunlight lay across the window seat. There were books on a shelf, a folded coverlet at the foot of the bed, and a pale mark on the wall where something had once hung.

Her parents paused in the doorway.

I stepped in slowly.

It felt strangely intimate.

I knew Evelyn asleep beside me.

I knew her angry, amused, frightened, determined.

Here were the things that had surrounded her before she knew me at all.

Helena opened a cupboard.

Inside was a wooden paint box.

Garrick handed her the key.

“She still wants this?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

His shoulders eased.

He had tried to hide the question.

I was glad I had heard it.

We opened the box on the window seat.

Some of the paints had dried beyond use.

Others remained carefully wrapped.

There were brushes with worn handles and a small folding rest for them.

A stain marked one corner of the wood.

“Blue,” I said.

“Originally,” Garrick replied.

“What happened?”

“She attempted to mix a better sea.”

Helena lifted out a little stack of paper.

She looked through it, smiling.

Then she showed me a drawing of Garrick asleep in a chair.

His mouth was open.

A book rested upside down on his stomach.

I looked from the picture to him.

“The likeness is excellent.”

“I was resting my eyes.”

“Clearly.”

Helena put the papers back.

There were things in the box I would leave for Evelyn to show me herself.

I closed the lid.

On the inside edge, in small uneven letters, she had painted her name.

Evelyn.

No title.

I ran my thumb along the wood beneath it.

Then carried it home.

The gift took shape more easily after that.

I asked a Stoneford merchant for good paper and fresh paints.

He asked what sort of painting Her Majesty preferred.

I admitted how little I knew.

He showed me the choices anyway.

Different brushes.

Different surfaces.

Colors that looked almost identical until he placed a drop of each on a sample sheet.

I remembered the workshop applicants staring at my first circuit demonstration.

“So this is what that feels like,” I murmured.

The merchant looked at me.

“Your Majesty?”

“Nothing. Please explain the blue again.”

I left with a modest selection, the merchant’s written advice, and a healthy respect for people who understood brushes.

There was still something missing.

I realized what it was while carrying the box upstairs.

Evelyn had given me a picture of us.

I wanted to give her a few words she could keep.

The letter was difficult.

I could write orders.

I could explain why a gate should remain open or a tax should be removed.

I had once told two kingdoms exactly what I thought of their religious advice.

Apparently none of that prepared me to begin a birthday letter to my wife.

The first attempt sounded like a proclamation.

I put it aside.

The second thanked her for so many things that I seemed to be recommending her for a position.

That went beside the first.

On the third, I wrote:

I like the way you look at me when you know I’m about to say something foolish.

I considered it.

Then added:

You usually let me say it.

That sounded more like us.

I kept going.

Helena found me an hour later.

She had come to discuss the supper.

I covered the page.

Her eyes moved to my hand.

“A secret?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

She sat opposite me.

Beatrice had agreed to the orange cake.

A seamstress would visit Evelyn that afternoon with fabric samples.

Two household musicians were available.

There would be enough room for the cradles beside the little dining room, where someone could remain with the children without taking them far away.

I listened.

Then asked, “What was she like at twenty-one?”

Helena’s expression changed.

“On her birthday?”

I nodded.

She looked toward the window.

“We had dinner at home. She wore green. Your father-in-law complained that someone had cut too much from the roast before bringing it in.”

“Had someone?”

“Evelyn and I had been in the kitchen.”

I smiled.

Helena folded the edge of her shawl.

“She was restless that year. She wanted something to do that mattered to her. We talked about visits. About what she might want her life to become.”

She looked back at me.

“I don’t think either of us imagined this.”

“Neither did I.”

“No.”

For a moment, we listened to footsteps in the passage.

Then Helena said, “When she was born, I thought twenty-two sounded impossibly far away.”

I waited.

“I could imagine her as a little girl. Perhaps learning to ride. I couldn’t quite imagine sitting with her husband while her children slept upstairs.”

“Does it feel strange?”

“Yes.”

She smiled.

“Very good. Very strange.”

That afternoon, Mary brought news from the archive.

She and Maelin had found a possible match for the northern healing house.

A ruined property appeared on a Stoneford boundary survey under a later name.

The route would need checking before anyone traveled.

I listened, looked at the copied map, and asked them to speak with the local surveyor.

Then Mary opened her calendar.

“Her Majesty’s birthday.”

I nodded.

“The morning correspondence will go to Lord and Lady Valewood. Ordinary council business can wait until the following day.”

“Thank you.”

“Any unavoidable matter will come to me first.”

“Thank you again.”

She closed the calendar.

Then glanced at the parcel beside my desk.

“Paints?”

“How does everyone know?”

“You asked a merchant to deliver them to the royal apartments.”

“I see.”

“Wrapped in paper labeled painting supplies.”

I looked at the parcel.

The lettering was extremely clear.

Mary’s mouth curved.

“I had it brought here before Her Majesty saw it.”

The seamstress stayed with Evelyn longer than expected.

When I returned to our rooms, lengths of fabric lay across the chairs.

Helena held Carol.

Evelyn stood near the mirror while the seamstress adjusted a loose fold at her shoulder.

The color was a deep blue-green.

It changed when she moved.

My wife saw me in the glass.

“Well?”

I stopped in the doorway.

The seamstress looked at me.

Helena looked at me.

Even Carol appeared briefly interested.

“You look beautiful.”

Evelyn smiled.

“You haven’t seen the gown yet.”

“I’ve seen enough.”

Helena looked down at the baby.

“Your father has managed that very well.”

The seamstress laughed and returned to her pins.

Evelyn kept watching me in the mirror.

I stayed where I was for another moment.

Then remembered that I was still wearing my muddy boots.

Two evenings before her birthday, I found Garrick in the nursery with his namesake asleep against him.

He had one hand supporting the little head.

The other rested along the blanket.

“I hear you retrieved the paint box,” he said.

“You were there.”

“I enjoy hearing that my intelligence is accurate.”

I sat beside him.

For a while, we watched the baby sleep.

Then Garrick said, “Did she tell you about the window?”

“What window?”

“The one she painted on her wall when she was eleven.”

I looked at him.

“She wanted a sea view.”

“From Valewood?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

“Asked whether the ships could be smaller. They were rather alarming.”

I laughed softly.

The baby stirred.

We both became still.

After a moment, he settled again.

Garrick looked down at him.

“Twenty-two,” he said quietly.

I nodded.

He smiled without looking up.

“She used to fit here.”

His hand shifted beneath our son’s head.

I had no answer for that.

I was beginning to understand it too well.

The night before Evelyn’s birthday, I put the finished letter inside the paint box.

Fresh paper lay beneath the brushes.

The old sketches remained where Helena had placed them.

I had added a small book of stories from the archive, chosen with Mary’s help, so I would have something to read while Evelyn worked.

I tied the box with a ribbon.

The bow took three attempts.

When I carried it into the sitting room, Helena was arranging the last of the supper things with Beatrice.

She examined the parcel.

“Ready?”

“I think so.”

“And you?”

“That depends on whether the cake survives until tomorrow.”

Beatrice gave me a look.

“I’m more concerned about your wife.”

“Apparently that also runs in the family.”

Helena smiled.

Then she touched my sleeve.

“Thank you.”

I looked at her.

“For helping?”

“For listening.”

I held the box a little closer.

“She makes that fairly easy.”

Helena shook her head gently.

“Sometimes. Do it when she doesn’t, too.”

Evelyn was already in bed when I returned.

She had left the lamp turned low.

Carol slept.

Garrick seemed to be considering it.

I sat beside my wife and brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek.

“Your mother has gone to bed.”

“Has she?”

“She said she had.”

“Then she is moving something elsewhere.”

I smiled.

Evelyn reached for my hand.

“I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

“So am I.”

She watched me for a moment.

“Have you been worrying?”

“A little.”

“About my birthday?”

“Yes.”

She drew me closer.

“Uriah. I have you. I have them. My parents are here.”

“I know.”

“And I’m told there will be cake.”

“Your mother has guarded that information poorly.”

Evelyn laughed.

Then her expression softened.

“I still want the fuss, though.”

I kissed her.

“Good.”

She rested her forehead against mine.

“Just a little.”

I thought of the paint box, the blue-green gown, the musicians, and the cake currently under Beatrice’s protection.

Then I thought of everyone who had found some reason to ask what time supper would begin.

I smiled against her mouth.

“We may have slightly exceeded a little.”

She kissed me again.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to enjoy it.”