Cloths of Heaven
(i)
The wedding of Aya Fujimiya to the Lady Miyu(1) had been the social event of the year. A myriad of wives had been presented to him and each had been judged and found unworthy but he persisted in his search for a bride. Beautiful girls, rich girls, handsome boys, clever boys, all were turned away.
The Lady Miyu had come to the newly rebuilt palace as a concession, the girl had been born blind and although fair there were those, including her father, who thought the girl had no more worth than as a servant to the king.
Lord Fujimiya had been a quiet lord that refused the kindnesses that the king offered him, he sat in his room as the towers were rebuilt and did nto read the books they gave him, he ignored the paintings with which they decorated his rooms and turned away the whores that the guard, Ken, procured for them, sometimes even simply sharing tea with them.
As the days turned into weeks he became more and more reclusive, he barely ate and sat at his window looking out to sea.
Weeks turned into months and he let his appearance slide despite Free’s best attempts otherwise.
Months slowly turned into years. And still he cared little.
Then one day, maybe three years later, he just got up, he removed the black livery he had worn all day and pulled on a white sweater, he complimented the maid on the set of her head and took pride in his appearance, cutting his hair and shaving away the beard he had let grow, he left the room and walked along the battlements of the great and proud palace, with a courtesy on his lips for everyone he passed. But still his gaze stared past them, out to the choppy waters of the bay.
His guards walked alongside him, chattering gaily but everyone in Inabayama knew he didn't listen and that they were forbidden from letting him to the docks and it became a source of great rumours that the Lord Fujimiya was really dead and it was really a monster born of the sea that walked among them. Women still gazed at him longingly for he was handsome and rich and a prince, but he might as well be a monster for all the attention he paid them.
About the truth there was great supposition but the rumours grew as he sat in the room looking out to sea and then doubled when he wandered the palace and then the city.
When he visited the opera house it was said he was claiming a mistress who he would drown in the roiling waters of the bay. He went to see the performance.
If he stopped to smile at a child it was said the child would die of colic. They never did.
That he was a prisoner of his duty was the only truth they bandied about.
So when the king decided he should marry, to continue the line of Fujimiya he agreed without comment, but still found fault in all the wives he was presented with. He had no interest in beauty or wit, in knowledge or art. So when the Lady Miyu arrived, her hair in two brown braids about a face obscured by a thick bandage about her eyes, no one expected the Lord Fujimiya to give her more than the time of day.
They were mistaken. He became her guide, walking alongside her with his arm for her to rest her hand on so he could take her down the corridors, past the buildings and in a low voice he told her what he saw. If she knew anything of his past she gave no sign of it.
She was a quiet girl whose blindness had instilled in her a great shyness, having spent the best part of her life being reassured of her worthlessness, so having the attentions of any man, when she had been told that she was not worthy of even a common sailor’s grabbing, flattered the girl and gave the skin she showed under the bandage a rosy glow.
The guards that waited on him, guards that were his alone, two knights of the heaven guard, the boisterous Ken and Free who was kind and tall, doted on her, and in many ways she was revered amongst them in higher esteem than the queen.
When Naoe came to visit the king, which he did several times a year, he would have some comment for the Lord Fujimiya but to Miyu he only had kindnesses. The past that lingered between them, with the enmity that was there, was never shown to Miyu.
If he loved her he gave no sign of it, but he was kind and to Miyu that meant more than the passions of Heaven, for happiness in marriage was entirely a matter of chance, but Lord Fujimiya protected and cared for her.
When she heard the rumours of him and the great love that tore them apart she thought of her lord, cold and lovely and assumed that they spoke of his father, or the mysterious Ran who was sometimes mentioned. She didn’t believe it of her Aya.
Every day he brought her flowers and described their beauty to her in a warm voice, but it was a voice without passion.
That he was older than her she decided was irrelevant and he did not petition her father for marriage, as was common, he asked her. With a warm and gentle smile she accepted.
If she wanted him to love her, she gave no sign of it.
The wedding was a state affair, for the young king insisted that he owed her husband his kingdom and more, and all the way from Atzara the Nemesis travelled with his bride. He was a kind man, Miyu thought, and patient to her disability, who took her arm just as her husband did and described the world to her. When Free came to take her something silent passed between them and she knew that there were secrets that she was not privy to but decided that it didn’t matter.
She was led through the streets by Free, the common people of Inabayama pressing knitted baby clothes into her hands and bottles of perfume and their kindness after the coldness of her childhood in Brio, astounded her. Even if she was worshipped as the Lady Fujimiya they were kind to her.
For Miyu may have been naive but she was not a fool.
On her wedding night, as she waited for her husband she brushed out her hair, having removed the bandage from about her eyes, “you love him, don’t you?” She said, “if you wish to go to him I will not gainsay you. I will even say that you spent the night with me.”
“Miyu,” he said quietly, his voice a deep and loving rumble, “I will tell you a story,” he said sitting in the chair across the room, “of a man who loved not wisely, but too well, who tore his heart in many directions and in the end had only duty to rely on.”
Miyu raised her head to him and offered him a smile. “You are mine now,” she said, “and soon he will return to Atzara, I did not marry you for love, for such as I has no business with that, but because you were kind and you wished it.” He remained silent, “go to him, I can let you because I know you will return to me.”
He kissed her hand, “when all is dust,” he said, “they will not remember your blindness,” he said, “but that your heart was so great.”
Lord Fujimiya and his wife had two children, both with the dark hair of their mother and large blue eyes, but only their father’s skin to recommend them.
They were well beloved, even if their father seemed cold, and their mother sometimes distant, and their daughter they called Hitan but their son they called Kitai and they were well respected amongst the countries of the world and when it was their time for marriage Kitai married the daughter of the Nemesis herself, and Hitan was given the lordship of Herensea on the death of Lady Birman Redgrove who had no children of her own but had always doted on them.
After twenty years of marriage Lady Miyu Fujimiya turned to her husband and said, “go to him,” her voice was fond, “you have no duty here now, we have raised our children, we have rebuilt our kingdom.” He said nothing, “and you more than repaid your duty to me.”
“Miyu,” he started, “I would just know what you looked like, what was the face that brought an empire to war, that drove men mad.”
“I was funny looking,” Aya told her quietly, “and my hair was like the smell of fresh blood, my eyes were like the of feel dark hearts of pansies and my lips, I was told, was like the scent of fresh new rosebuds. My skin was as white and cool as porcelain, I was striking, but I was not beautiful.” He said.
“And what do I look like.”
There was a smile in Aya’s voice as he answered her, “you burn like the sun.” He said quietly and then kissed her on the cheek. “I do love you.” He said.
“But you will always love them more, I know you love me,” she said and stroked his face, expecting to find tears but there were none, “but there is only so much room in the heart for love and I came last, go to him.”
So Aya did.
In Eressea there is a great tomb and in it lie three men, to the left is Lord Crawford who gathered an army for a wronged king, in the centre is Ran Fujimiya, who loved not wisely but too well, and to the right is Chloe, the Nemesis who defeated Estet.
It is said that lovers meeting at their grave were blessed and that their love would be everlasting and some still told the tale of Ran who loved not wisely but too well and who shattered kingdoms and whose beauty drove men mad before he killed himself for duty.
It wasn’t true but it made a good story nonetheless.
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