"It… it is a thank-you."
"A thanks for what, Country-girl?" The Queen surfaced a long leg, looked at her toes.
"A thanks for sending for Ralph-sergeant."
"Oh… Well, 'kind' soldiers aren't good for anything but standing at my stairs. Another useless mouth to feed at Island. The expense of this manure pile is outrageous – thieves, every damned one of them. Sutlers, fucking cooks and clothiers… Do you know, I don't dare look at the stable bills? You would suppose the Kingdom would receive gift-privilege from these merchant hogs – oh, no. Overprice and thievery!"
"I could visit them, with Master Butter."
The Queen laughed, half-turned in the tub to hit Martha on the shoulder with a soapy fist. "No, no. My people and I play many games, Trade-honey, and your ax would break the rules."
"Then we won't," Martha said, and used a soft cloth to rinse. The Queen's torso had a fierce history, but her nape, revealed under pinned-up hair, was tender as a child's.
Standing with care, then stepping out into wide southern-cotton toweling, the Queen left wet footprints on the carpet, so a woven snow-tiger grew a damp mustache. Martha hugged and gathered her in cloth – felt a sweetness of care and attending as she stroked the Queen dry over softness here, hard muscle there.
Swaddled, the Queen turned and turned as Orrie took wet cloth from Martha, replaced it with dry.
… Burnished, smelling of flowers from the bath, the Queen sat on an ivory stool – the ivory once the teeth of a Boston sea-beast called the walrut, or perhaps sea walnut. She sat slumped while Martha unpinned and brushed out her hair, long, with weaves of gray running through the red.
Martha brushed with slow easy strokes of boar bristle so as not to tug or tangle.
"Now listen," the Queen said, her head moving slightly under the brush. "This sergeant of yours – Orrie, leave us."
"Yes, Majesty." Orrie, very fat and usually a stately walker, always seemed to scuttle away relieved when dismissed.
"Ma'am, he isn't really my sergeant."
"And may never be, Martha, and then never more than a lover. Don't talk to me about men. But this sergeant of yours, if it should come to love, it still cannot come to marriage and children as long as I'm alive – ouch."
"Sorry, ma'am."
"I must and will be first. My life always above his and yours. Not because I'm such an Extraordinary, but because my life is the peoples', and they have no one else… Though it's also true that I enjoy being queen. I don't deny it."
"I understand."
"Perhaps you understand, girl, and perhaps you don't – how many strokes is that?"
"Forty-three, I think."
" 'You think.' Alright, forty more… What I was saying to you about coming first, about the necessity of it? I have one child, a resentful daughter only two years older than you, who misses her father still, and believes me a brute bitch who hasn't even wept to lose him."
"I know better, ma'am."
"Yes, you heard me wake crying for my Newton on End-of-Summer Night, after our Jordan Jesus rafted down. You heard that, and you've heard my dream groaning. And likely heard my grunts playing stink-finger under the covers, rather than have some tall man come up to give me shaking joys – then take advantage for it… You've heard, Martha, and so are closer to me than my daughter ever has been, or ever will be. And who are you? Only a strong child, really, and otherwise no one at all. Rachel will never believe how I love her… wouldn't credit it."
"I know you love her."
"She's all I have of Newton. And more, Rachel was a charming child – easy with that fucking brush – and she was so intelligent that people made the River-sign, hearing her conversation."
"I believe it. And she's pretty."
"How many is that?"
"Seventy… I think."
"Oh, for Weather's sake, Martha, learn how to fucking count." The Queen stood, shook her hair out, put her hands back for the sleeves of her night-robe, then shrugged it comfortable as Martha wrapped the fine green cloth around her, then tied its soft belt bow. "Pretty? Well, if not truly pretty, then Rachel's handsome enough, I suppose." Queen Joan raised her arms high and stretched like a man, joints cracking. Then she stepped a little jigging dance, shook her arms out as wrestlers did to ease their muscles, before she strolled relaxed to the little silver bucket, tucked up the hem of her night-robe, and squatted.
"But. But. This Kingdom is crueler than my mountains ever were, Martha. Crueler than the tribesmen who came down. Well named the River Kingdom, uncaring, cold, and made of killing currents as the river is." There was faint musical drumming as she peed. "And full of men and women who once ate talking meat. Still do, sometimes… This is what my daughter will someday rule, and I don't believe that she can do it."
"She has your blood."
The Queen tucked a tuft of cotton wool to her crotch, wiped herself. "But has not had my life. Hasn't seen what I've seen, hasn't fought as I've fought, hasn't learned what I've had to learn. Let me tell you, when my Newton was killed in Map-Kentucky coming to a fair agreement, I came this close," – the Queen held up her thumb and forefinger, almost touching – "this close to being weighted with iron and thrown into the river… Where's my nail-knife?"
Martha found it in the toilet cabinet's second sliding drawer. "Here, ma'am."
The Queen, quite limber, crossed a leg over a knee and commenced trimming her toenails. "Came very close, then, to going into the river. So, I fucked one man as if I'd secretly loved him always – then had his throat cut. And murdered two more before I felt free of that weight of iron chain." She bent closer, peering to examine a neatened nail. "A woman, a sister to one of those men, was thrown from her window in South Tower as a reassurance to me. Her uncle did it, Martha, for fear I would destroy their family, even the babies."
Those toes finished, the Queen crossed her other leg and began trimming. The little knife-blade twinkled in lamplight as she worked.
"I'm sorry," Martha said.
"Sorry? Sorry for what, girl? For necessity?"
"For you."
"Well, you're a fond fool." Paring with quick turns of her strong wrist, the Queen ended with her little toe… then stood up off the silver bucket and shook down her robe's skirt. "Those who think we're more than beasts, should study their toenails." She handed Martha the little knife. "It goes in the top sliding drawer. Now… what else?"
"Brushing your teeth, ma'am."
"The hell with it… Did you know the Warm-time hell was hot?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I always thought that was strange… Where are my slippers?"
"By the bed."
"Not the woolen slippers – the sheepskins."
"I'll look for them."
"Oh, never mind." The Queen seemed to swim away through gray gauze curtains to her bed-nook. "Between Ulla and that fat Orrie, nothing is ever where it should be. I should have them whipped…" Martha, following, had to brush a drift of fine cloth from the ax handle behind her shoulder.
Queen Joan sat on the edge of her bed and began rearranging her pillows – which she did every night. The maids had found no way to place them to please her.
She plumped a goose-feather one, tossed it to the head of the bed. "You see, Martha, Rachel would not be capable of what I did. She pretends to fierceness, but break a bird's neck before her and she goes pale as cheese." Another pillow tossed after the first; a cushion picked up and tested with a punch. "And I cannot live forever."
"Then she needs a fierce husband, ma'am."
"Oh, yes. Memphis, or Sayre, or Johnson – who's a monster – or Lord Allen, or Eddie Cline. My Newton despised Cline and so do I. Or Giamatti, or one of the Coopers, who have hated me and mine forever."