In the time I’d been gone, a cottage industry had sprung up around the queen and her crime. Two books had been rushed through scribing, and there was talk of a major theatrical production. A singer named Stephanie something was packing them in with her song about Rhiannon. An enterprising artist had produced a line-drawing parody of the queen’s official portrait, modified to show a tiny foot hanging from her mouth. He sold this image on flags, tunics and ale mugs.
Folks working the early shift had made the queen’s morning humiliation part of their breakfast routine. A hundred people had already gathered around the cage by the time I reached it. Some sipped tea and nibbled on toast, others exchanged gossip or greeted old friends. It felt more like a temple social than a public shaming.
Then a hush spread through the crowd. The metal door inside the cage opened, and Rhiannon emerged from her cell. She was now gaunt and pale, with dark circles under her eyes and hair frayed and ragged with neglect. She wore a dress made entirely of old muslin rags haphazardly sewn together. Her bare feet and legs were dirty. She shuffled to the stool without looking up at the crowd.
I stayed far enough back that I doubted she’d either spot me, or recognize me if she did. I saw an awful lot of sympathy on the faces of the folks watching, who’d witnessed the gradual breakdown of the once-proud beauty. As far as they knew, she’d committed one of the worst crimes imaginable, but that had happened out of sight, in the great castle that looked down on them. Her slow decay in the cage was front and center every morning, and I doubted anyone could see it day after day and not feel something.
Rhiannon settled onto the stool. The frayed dress revealed generous amounts of skin, but there was nothing erotic about it. She was too drained and insubstantial. Finally she looked around at the faces, some of which must have grown familiar. Her eyes shone with either fever or tears. She lowered her head and her posture collapsed as she prepared for the day’s abuse.
No one spoke at first. Some folks muttered “bitch” and “murderer,” but not loudly enough to be identified. A few walked away in disgust. Had the novelty of tormenting the queen worn off so quickly?
Then four teenagers, two well-dressed rich boys and their adoring, giggly girlfriends, wormed their way to the front of the crowd and pressed their faces against the bars. They hooted and laughed at the despondent queen. Rhiannon glanced at them for a moment, then cast her eyes back down.
“Hey, do you know how a baby is like a grape?” one of the boys loudly asked.
“They both give a little whiiiiine when you stomp them!” the other boy cackled.
The girls laughed as well. A few onlookers tittered or glared at the kids, but most of them simply looked elsewhere. No one spoke up for the queen.
“Hey, you know what’s pink and spits?” one of the girls asked. “A baby in a frying pan!”
Again they laughed. And still no one chastised them or defended Rhiannon. She sat, head down, hands limp in her lap. My own temper raged at these amoral punks, but I reminded myself that, for them, Rhiannon was guilty of a truly ghastly crime. This was part of her legal punishment. Still, the cruel enjoyment they got from it turned my stomach, and I saw from other faces in the crowd that they felt the same way. But no one stepped forward to do anything. Including me.
“Come on, this is booooring,” one of the girls said, and pulled at her boyfriend’s arm.
“No, wait, I got one more,” he said. “Why do you stick a baby in a boiling cauldron feet first? So you can see the look on its face!”
Satisfied that they’d asserted their moral superiority, they pushed their way through the crowd to the main road and disappeared in the traffic. A ripple of relief passed through the spectators. “Goddam spoiled brats,” one man muttered. “Assholes,” snarled another.
Rhiannon hadn’t moved. She remained hunched over, small and weak and broken, a shadow of the glamorous prisoner I’d seen only weeks earlier. Her filthy hair hung stringy and loose, where previously it had shimmered like gold.
Murmuring conversation resumed around her, and the watchers drifted away to their respective jobs. Finally there were too few people for me to hide very well, and I turned to depart. Although we’d only met once, I couldn’t count on her not recognizing me. I couldn’t count on anything about her.
Movement caught my eye. A tiny bird dropped from its perch on the bars across the top of the cage and hovered for just a moment beside Rhiannon’s slumped form. I couldn’t see if it touched her or not. Then it skittered away back into the sky.
Rhiannon took a deep breath, and suddenly sat upright. She tossed her unkempt, dirty hair from her face and looked out at the watchers. It was as if somehow the bird had given her a shot of energy, or as the one in my dream had done, taken away a big chunk of her anguish.
I recalled the birds on her windowsill in the prison tower the day I met her. Had they been the same kind? The same birds that lurked around Epona Gray’s cottage?
I discreetly hung around the area for the rest of the morning and watched the other watchers. Most people simply ignored Rhiannon, and she paid them no mind. She occasionally looked around or changed position, but most of the time she just sat, head down, immobile.
The resemblance to Epona Gray had been strong before, but now it was uncanny. Rhiannon had lost so much weight that her once-show-stopping curves had straightened into angular lines, and the occasional ragged cough spoke of potential illness. Like Epona, she was dying. Unlike Epona, I might be in time to help.
When a summer storm hit shortly after lunch she sought no shelter, but remained on her stool as the rain beat down. I gathered it was the closest thing to a bath she got. As I watched from beneath a shop awning, she cupped her hands and drank the collected water. She raised her face to the sky, eyes closed, and let the rain pummel her. In the gray light she looked blood-drained and colorless.
My thoughts turned to Phil, ensconced in his luxurious castle. I didn’t have to see him to know his condition. He was in agony as well, knowing his wife and child were suffering and unable to do anything to help them, except trust me. Trust the guy who’d caused his sister’s death.
I had a theory that explained how the woman in the cage could be both Epona Gray and Rhiannon. If I was right, I was a goddamned genius. If not, then it was a cold, heartless universe and I didn’t want to live in it anymore.
Thunder boomed overhead. Rhiannon flinched.
I would know soon.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Fifteen minutes,” Anders said.
“We talked about twenty.”
“Yeah, well, it’s an imperfect world.”
He pressed the key to Rhiannon’s cell into my hand. Then he went to wait at the guard station where, moments earlier, he’d dismissed the two men on duty. They had not been happy about it, and left with promises to go straight to their division commander. Those lost five minutes were probably a measure of how upset they were.
The room inside the wall had originally been a siege armory, and the old weapon racks remained, rusted and empty. A bunk allowed one guard to sleep while the other remained on duty. A table bore evidence of a recent card game. And at one end of the room, a new wall closed off what was now the queen’s chamber.
Except for the narrow meal slot, the inner cell door had not been opened since Rhiannon was first incarcerated. The key took some real effort to turn in the lock, and the bolt mechanism scraped like a frying cat. The lamp from the antechamber threw a shaft of yellow light through the opening.
Awakened by the noise, Rhiannon sat on the edge of her bed and clutched the blanket around her. Her ragged clothes, still damp from the rain, lay neatly across the table. “Who are you?” she gasped, fear in her voice. “Please, no one’s supposed to be in here.”