Page 8 of Ironling
The day was bright and clear, the heat of late summer ebbing into the pleasant temperance of early autumn. A few kitchen staff were out tending the garden or picking crops for the evening meal, and a handful of guards clanked in their mail as they made their rounds. Her blue skirts swished pleasantly against her ankles as she stole for a hideaway she knew no one would disturb.
Her mother’s rose garden had sat fallow for over a decade. The plants had gone feral, the thorns and brambles overtaking most of the blooms. Aislinn had to fight to push the key into the lock of the little gate, pricking several fingers in her struggle.
The gate creaked vociferously as she opened it just enough to slide inside and wailed as it closed behind her.
Blowing a lock of blonde hair out of her face, Aislinn assessed the garden.
It was just as overgrown as she’d thought, the grass of the once neat lawn standing nearly knee-height, hiding the flagstone walkways and marble benches. Gopher holes dotted the space, forcing Aislinn to pick her steps carefully as she delved deeper inside. Her mother’s prized roses, vivid red and satiny yellow and peachy orange, bloomed in a chaotic spattering, nearly choked by the foliage.
The air was thick inside the walls of the garden, and as Aislinn settled onto a weather-beaten stone bench, she breathed in the verdant green of it. Although warm and a bit hard tobreathe, the air nevertheless carried a hint of roses and lush greenness that she always associated with her mother.
The memory tickled that old wound inside her, the grief of losing her mother so young an ever-present hollowness that nothing filled. She liked to pretend that her reading and learning and projects would somehow ease the ache, but they never did. At most, they distracted her.
Losing their mother so young had forever altered Aislinn and Jerrod. She’d been twelve, Jerrod nine. Before then, the siblings had gotten on, and the castle was full of bustle, the whole demesne gravitating to the beautiful young noble family and their lively court. It was a love match between her parents, their natures and minds complementing in a way that Aislinn still marveled over.
Lady Róisín had been the kind of noblewoman all aspired to be. Graceful, gracious, and beatific, she was a patron of the arts, a fierce negotiator, and funded schools throughout the Darrowlands. Aislinn remembered holding onto her mother’s skirts as she dealt with their vassals and yeomen, in awe of how easily she handled others, meeting their questions and requests and demands with the patience, charity, or firmness they required.
From a young age, Aislinn realized that she wasn’t like her mother and indeed, didn’t think like most others at all. The social graces and nuances effortlessly practiced by her mother and other nobles often eluded her, especially when she was younger, and she rarely understood or played along with games or politics. She didn’t see the point in not just saying what she meant and couldn’t comprehend why so many spoke in half-truths or even lies. Sometimes it felt as though she tried to work the delicate weave of social interactions with a hammer. Her mind much preferred to turn over how things worked, the mechanics and intricacies of parts that made a whole function.
Her mother and father had always been patient with her. Lord Merrick indulged her learning and ideas. Lady Róisín had taught her etiquette and diction, manners and negotiation. When one method didn’t work, her mother tried another tack until she was sure Aislinn knew how to read someone or a situation—even if she didn’t understand them.
“You don’t always have to understand them or agree,”her mother told her,“what’s important is learning enough to act appropriately in accordance.”
With her mother, Aislinn hadn’t felt so different, or at least that what differences she did have weren’t to be hidden or ashamed of.“Your mind is different, it’s true. But that’s what makes it so beautiful.”
Her mother’s words imprinted upon Aislinn’s heart, a small thing to hold onto in the dark days after her passing.
Aislinn hadn’t remembered much about her mother’s confinement and delivery of Jerrod, she’d been too young herself. Just that there had been long stretches of days when she wasn’t allowed to see her mother, and when she was, she found a diminished woman, her skin wan and her eyes dull. It’d taken a long while for the mother she knew to rekindle inside.
All the physicians had warned Lady Róisín that she mustn’t risk becoming pregnant again. And so, with two children already, the Darrows had been content.
Until Róisín fell pregnant once more. It’d surprised everyone—Aislinn’s parents hadn’t been trying for another, and Róisín was already in the later years for women to bear. All but Róisín had met the news with dread; they remembered the physicians’ dire warnings. A determined woman, though, Róisín soothed their worries. She delegated her duties. She followed all the physicians’ instructions. Her pregnancy was normal, eventless.
Until it wasn’t. Two months too soon, she had her labor pains. They lost the baby first, and in that first tumultuous night,Aislinn sat huddled outside her mother’s chamber with the ugly thought that she was glad it was the baby and not her mother, at least. That of the two, she wanted her mother more.
But by the following night, Róisín hadn’t improved. And by the next, she’d worsened.
By the third night, there was no strength in her.
Her father had taken her by the hand and Jerrod with the other and led them to see their mother one last time.
Jerrod had cried and refused to look.
Aislinn bent to kiss her mother’s clammy cheek, hearing for herself how reedy her breath had gone. Róisín’s eyes flickered behind her lids, but otherwise she lay motionless, a corpse with a little breath left inside it.
For a long time after, Aislinn hated everyone. She hated the baby for trying to grow inside Róisín. She resented her father for getting Róisín with child in the first place. She despised Jerrod for his incessant wailing. And she hated Róisín for not intervening in the early days when she could have.
Their family had shattered that night, and they buried their heart with Róisín.
It’d taken a long while to find happiness again. At first, Aislinn was ashamed of any small joy she experienced, thinking how Róisín would never feel anything again. As she grew from a youth to a woman, though, she began to understand that her mother would never want her to dwell in grief. And so Aislinn persevered, and she tried to help her father and Jerrod do the same.
Her father found a channel for his grief in the form of attacking the insidious slave trade that had grown in the chaotic years of the Eirean wars of succession. Although the fighting had ceased with the betrothal of the half-Pyrrossi, half-Eirean Prince Marius to the Eirean Crown Princess Ygraine thirty years before, the slavers had only grown bolder.
His crusade meant Merrick Darrow was often away from Dundúran and the Darrowlands. Aislinn contented herself that at least he was doing something good with his grief.
The same couldn’t be said for Jerrod.
She could admit, in hindsight, that Jerrod’s fate might have been avoided. Her love for him had never been a deep well—he was the type of boy who teased to make himself feel superior, and she was often the target of such teasing. This only worsened when their mother perished and their father sought solace far from home. He became a braggart, a drunkard, a womanizer. He strained Aislinn’s patience, yet she’d always held hope that someday, he would come around. He was young—soon he’d learn the way of the world and accept his place as a Darrow and heir.
