Feast

Caswell arrived with twenty three men and two wagons of provisions and Ser Harren. Harren was big. Not fat. Big in the way a draft horse is big. He stood a head taller than Aldric and his shoulders were twice as broad and he wore his armor like he had been born in it. He had a square jaw and small eyes and a laugh that came from deep in his chest and filled whatever room he was in.

Caswell was all bluster and handshakes and loud compliments about the keep. He clapped Aldric on the shoulder and said "So you are the new one. How long do you think you will last" and he laughed like it was a joke but it was not a joke.

The feast was held in the main hall. Elara wore the red dress and Aldric saw her in it for the first time as she descended the stairs and the room went quiet. The dress changed her. The simplicity of her daily clothes had hidden her. The red dress did not hide anything. It followed the lines of her body and it caught the firelight and it turned her from a woman managing a struggling hold into something else entirely. She looked like she belonged in a larger hall. A richer hall. She looked like she was slumming and she knew it and she did not care.

Aldric stood at his post by the wall. He had eaten earlier with the men. His job now was to watch and to be present and to be still. He stood with his hand on his sword and he watched.

Harren seated himself next to Elara. Caswell sat across from them and talked loudly about grain prices and did not seem to notice or care that Harren leaned close to Elara and spoke to her in a voice too low for Aldric to hear. She did not pull away. She did not flinch. She turned her head toward Harren and listened and once she laughed at something he said and the laugh was soft and genuine sounding and Aldric felt something twist in his gut.

He watched Harren's hand move under the table. He could not see exactly what it did but he saw Elara's posture shift. A small straightening. A small tension in her shoulders. She did not look at Aldric. She did not look at anyone. She kept her face composed and she kept talking to Caswell about timber and her hands stayed on the table where they could be seen and her voice did not change.

But Aldric saw her shoulders and he saw the tension and he knew what was happening and his hand tightened on his sword until his knuckles ached inside the gauntlet.

He did not move. He had said he would not move and he did not move.

The feast went on. Caswell drank deeply and his men drank deeper and the noise in the hall grew. Harren stayed close to Elara all night. He whispered to her and she listened. At one point he reached up and touched her hair and she let him. She let him touch her hair in front of everyone. She turned her face toward his hand and for a moment she closed her eyes and Aldric felt something break inside his chest. Not his heart. Something near it. Something that held his heart in place.

Caswell did not notice. Caswell's men did not notice. The servants did not notice. Only Aldric saw and only Aldric stood there with his hand on his sword and his jaw locked and his oath sitting on him like a stone.

When the feast ended Caswell was half carried to his quarters by two of his men. Harren stood and stretched and looked down at Elara and said something and she nodded and he walked out of the hall with a swagger that said he knew exactly what he was and what he could get away with.

Elara sat at the table alone. The hall was empty. The servants had cleared most of the dishes. The fire was burning low. She sat very still and her hands were flat on the table and she stared at nothing.

Aldric stood at his post.

"Come here," she said.

He walked to the table and stood before her. She did not look up. Her face was pale and her eyes were hard and her mouth was a thin line.

"What did you see," she said.

"I saw Ser Harren touch you. I saw you let him."

"What else."

"I saw you close your eyes when he touched your hair."

Her hand moved. Fast. She slapped the table hard enough that the cup jumped and the sound echoed in the empty hall. She did not slap him. She slapped the table. But the violence of it was aimed at him and they both knew it.

"Do not tell me what you saw me do. I know what I did. I did it on purpose. I let him touch me because that is what it takes to keep men like Caswell cooperative. Harren wanted me and Caswell wanted Harren happy and so I let Harren have pieces of me because pieces are cheaper than the whole and I can afford pieces."

Her voice was shaking. Not with weakness. With rage. The control she wore during the day was cracking and what was underneath it was not soft. It was fury.

"Tomorrow night Caswell and I will sign the agreement and there will be another feast and Harren will do the same things and you will stand there again and you will watch and you will not move and you will not say anything."

"Yes my lady."

"And when they leave the next day you will come to this hall and you will stand where you are standing now and you will listen to me and you will take what I give you. Is that understood."

"Yes my lady."

She looked up at him finally. Her eyes were wet but no tears fell. She held them the way you hold a blade. By the edge. Bleeding but not letting go.

"Go," she said.

He went. He climbed the stairs and went to his room and locked the door and sat on the bed and took off his gauntlets and looked at his hands. They were shaking. Not from fear. From the effort of holding still. From the cost of his oath. From the image of Harren's hand in her hair and her eyes closing and the sound of her laugh that she had given to a man who did not deserve a single syllable from her mouth.

He sat in the dark and he did not sleep and the shaking did not stop and outside the keep the Ashwood was silent and the men of Caswell's retinue drank and laughed in the guest quarters and somewhere below him in a hall that smelled of old fire and spilled wine Lady Elara sat alone and raged and planned and waited.

He did not know what she was planning. He did not know what she would give him when the men left. He did not know if it would be pain or silence or something worse. But he knew he would take it. He knew that the way he knew how to breathe. It was not a decision. It was a fact. It was what he was.

And somewhere in the dark part of himself that he did not look at too closely he knew something else. He knew that he would take it not just because of his oath. He would take it because it was hers. Whatever she gave him. Pain or kindness or nothing at all. It was hers to give and that made it enough. That made it everything.

He sat in the dark and the shaking slowed and then stopped and he waited for morning.