Cloths of Heaven
(i)
Lady Birman Redgrove looked at the pile of letters that she had received with a disinterested eye and then looked at one a second time. The handwriting looked like Ran’s. She turned it over but didn’t recognise the seal, which she broke open with her thumb. She scanned the contents of the letter and then frowned. She cancelled her appointments for the day and settled down to read it properly.
“My Dearest Birman,
I hope this letter finds you in better circumstances than the last, which I sent. I find I write you a hundred letters but send none. I tell myself daily that I will entrust my journal to you, twice I have even wrapped it, but I will probably never send it, and like the last letters that I have sent I will burn it.
I suppose that I am happy here, that will settle your mind, but I find myself torn, I shall explain in more detail. I have met the author of the Sir Alaric novels, and now I know what must happen next.
To protect Alaric Celabrien sold herself to the Nemesis, but there she found someone who loved her not for her steadfast duty to Alaric. In the Nemesis Seraglio she has found someone, who unlike Alaric who dominates her soul and overpowers her with love, someone who is her equal and her match, but she loves Alaric still, and she does not want to love this new man who serves the Nemesis because it betrays all that she stands for.
She is a woman torn between the duty to her husband, Alaric, and her duty to her fallen palace, but also her love for Alaric who protected her to the best of his ability and her love for this new man.
He would not tell me the ending; I think it would make it too easy for me to not finish the series. I wonder if I could have your opinion on such an ending, for myself I think the only option Celabrien has is death, for she plans to kill the Nemesis but then her new love will be blamed for harbouring her and she would not have him involved in any way. Her own death does not worry her, but she would not have him harmed, she wishes that she could remove them both from the war, that selfishly that maybe both could love her but she knows it is a fantasy, Both men are too possessive to ever share her.
The author uses a strange device, I find myself again and again taken back to his images of piskies, the one Celabrien saw barely a week before she met Alaric who promised her a life of sorrow, the three she saw when her father died, the seven revealed to her before the fall of her palace of Brio, and he will not reveal to me if any others will be shown to her. I find myself wishing that she will see two so that there will be a little joy at the end.
I can’t help but feel that she hurtles towards her death because she cannot choose between the triumvirate she has found herself in, does she choose a love that overwhelms but betrayed her, because we cannot forget that a lie of omission is still a lie, or a love who serves the man who destroyed everything she held dear, even her passion for Alaric. Beyond that how does she fulfil her duty when it will see them both betrayed if not dead? I imagine that sometimes she wishes she had never been born, for her repeated visions of the piskies have meant that she has brought nothing but sorrow to the lives she taints.
Then her new lover smiles at her.
I know you will understand, together we have read those romances as each came out. Perhaps, like many of the ladies of court, I learned a little of life from the stories of Alaric and the fair Celabrien, perhaps that is why I was so eager to learn more of the story. I dislike waiting for answers.
Your musings I would find most interesting.
Despite being so far from such determined confidantes I am not alone here, in my care I have a young boy who too once saw the shadows set over Brio, his name is Yuki and he is as skittish as the rabbits that dart amongst the Eressean snow. He is brave and stubborn, though he hides behind me as once another did.
Please, do not tell him the contents of this letter.
I see Alaric girding himself for battle against the Nemesis if he suspected Celabrien’s fate, if you must share the plans for this manuscript, for I have no doubt that he will have questions, he was ever curious, tell him that Celabrien thinks of him often, that she still aches for love of him.
But Alaric betrayed Celabrien, he kept her closeted away on the shores of the inland seas and then when brio was sacked by the Nemesis he did not trust her to know, he did not trust her to do her duty by him. Perhaps Alaric feared that she would leave him if he told her, for he was ever unsure of himself in her affection, time alone in the Seraglio has taught her that.
I wonder if you still miss Lord Redgrove, for I was assured that once you were close to him even if he was many years your senior. You once told me that you chose him over other suitors, what must it be like to have such choice I wonder, I have felt myself pulled through the undertow of fate and even my heart which should have been my own was dictated by duty, but where I gave my love I gave it utterly.
When I am dead they will say of me that I loved not wisely but too well, and maybe like Celabrien, in too many places. I wonder if one can be betrayed by one’s own heart as easily as by one’s lover.
You would like him I think, he is golden, like the sun, and he shines with an inner light. He makes me laugh and he cares for my opinion, he keeps no secrets between us. He is in love with life and love and me. Where Alaric once offered Celabrien the cloths of heaven, he admits that that is not in his power to give he offered me his dreams instead.
Perhaps I am young and easily swayed by such words as I was once fixed in place by a pair of amber eyes that still haunt my dreams, but they mean the world to me. Yet he is married, he tells me he has no care for his wife, and in truth I have seen that for myself, but still I must worry. It is my nature I think, and it is no different from my own situation. If you can find a way to tell him without letting him now I have been in contact with you please tell him I do love him.
That, Birman, is my tragedy, I love them both, like Celabrien, but unlike her I am only torn by the duty to my husband and this man who has become my lord. Please don’t’ tell him there is another. You have never lied to me or kept secrets on his behalf, and I doubt that you would keep such secrets if asked straight out and perhaps, like I have written to you I should write to him, that I should let him know that I am well, but I know him, he is possessive and he will raise an army to see me at his side again. The pain of his betrayal runs deep, Birman, he lied to me when there was no reason to, I perhaps would only have mourned in his arms, perhaps I would have incited him to another course of action but instead I found myself at a loss, Hurting I chose what might have been the wrong decision, my duty to home overwhelmed me, perhaps it was a mistake. I know that if I act on it there will be repercussions although I am yet to see the crux of the matter personally.
You often gave me counsel when I warred with him, even over petty things, and you revealed to me the truth of your heart when it must have pained you to do so because you sought to give me knowledge that being a veritable prisoner in his home prevented me.
I am scared, Birman, Celabrien has found herself in a situation well beyond her ability to understand, and the writer gave no idea of where such strife came from, and now I see parallels.
I will understand if you cannot respond, like the hundreds of letters I have sent you before I have found peace in the writing of it, and if you hear, by way of my golden Taiyo-sama that I have fallen please tell him everything, even those things that would hurt him, please comfort him as you once comforted me. I do not know if I can bear to write to you again because it hurts to bare my soul so explicitly.
Know that I have love for all in your household, as one school friend to another.
Your Aya.”
Birman knew the writing and the code was simple enough for her to decipher, she paused for a moment batting the letter against her cheek. Ran obviously put a lot of trust in her, perhaps more than she deserved. She looked at the portrait of her husband over the fireplace. She had loved him; it was one of the ways that meant that she could understand Ran so well, because she knew how it felt.
She went to the door, “I will need paper and a pen for writing correspondence, and could you please send Miss Manx to me,” she told the servant, “and,” the servant turned back, “bring me the latest of the Sir Alaric novels.” The boy, and almost all her servants were boys that she had stolen from other households for their prettiness rather than their talent, scampered off to fulfil her request.
She read the letter a second and then a third time, part of her wanted to cry but Ran deserved better than that.
“You silly boy,” she said leaning up against the window frame, “what have you gotten yourself into.”
Crawford never knocked when he came in. He just opened the door. “Are you keeping secrets from me, Birman?” He asked, his voice was icy and there was little give in it. She had to admire his intelligence network, often he knew about her daily life before she did. Perhaps he suspected that Ran would try to contact her.
“Isn’t it a lady’s prerogative to keep secrets?” She asked archly, sweeping her brown hair from her eyes with a diligent hand. “And a gentleman who is the soul of discretion to not press her on such matters?”
“One of your,” he paused looking for the word, “catamites told me you received a letter from him.”
She would have to find out which one and have him disciplined, this was well beyond the usual snooping that went on in the court of Eressea. “I received a letter today from an old school friend who had taken in the author of the Sir Alaric books, she revealed to me what is going to happen in the upcoming novels, that is all.” Ran had said that he wouldn’t ask her to out and out lie and yet she was doing that for him. “Would you like to see it?” She offered him the folded piece of paper knowing that he wouldn’t know the books through which Ran had told her so much.
Crawford read the note greedily, then he crushed it in his hands. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Birman?”
“Isn’t there honour amongst thieves, Crawford? We have a history you and I, I have played my revenge out on you by educating your blushing bride because it amused me to do so, after all doesn’t every man want a virgin who is a whore.” Crawford slapped her across the face, splitting her lip, she licked at the blood angrily. “I have all of Ran’s letters,” she said, “I have kept nothing from you, I did not then and I do not now. Perhaps he is dead.” Her eyes met his fiercely, “and making Omi’s claim to Inabayama only serves to anger the Nemesis. Would war bring him back to you?”
Crawford for a moment looked like a chess champion that had lost his queen, but then his expression became stony and hard. “Once we were lovers as well as rivals, Birman,” he said, “and we have played our games amongst nations, neither of us left those negotiations with our reputations intact.” He paused for a moment, staring at her, “but yet he saw through that, to you for the kindness you never showed another once your husband died, and me for the love I thought I’d never give to anyone but Naoe.” He pushed an errant lock of hair from his forehead. “He took two jaded seducers and turned us into sentimental fools.”
He went to the door, “if you do receive word from him,” he said and his voice was sad, “you will let me know.”
Birman went to call out to him, to reveal everything because after all she had known Crawford since she was a child. Ran had asked her not to. He went to close the door behind him, “Crawford,” she called out, “he really did love you, you know.” Crawford offered her a rather dead smile, “He might have stayed where you could protect him if you’d ever told him that.”
Crawford’s laugh was rueful. “I did,” he said to her, and then so quietly she was almost sure she had misheard him. “Once.”
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