"A partial slander sought I to avoid,
And in the sentence my own life destroyed.
Alas, I looked when some of you should say
I was too strict to make mine own away."
--Richard II; I.iii

"They call me an unnatural mother," Alanna the Lioness said. She tried to keep her voice neutral, as if it was just an offhand comment or an observation about someone else -- and someone else's son. She could almost see her breath even now at late morning. "A monster, even, I heard Si-- someone -- say. Because I wouldn't plead for him, or argue for him, or --" Damn it all, her voice was getting shriller and more quavering.

Raoul patted her shoulder in more of a nervous tapping than a comforting gesture. "You did the only thing that could be done." He shrugged. "Unnatural? Perhaps so. But "natural" is no better than one of the Wildmage's clever animals. We can rise above our natures; maybe we should be 'unnatural'."

She knew where he had heard that. The archpriest had given a public sermon the day before: on the anniversary of General haMinch's return from the last Scanran wars. It surprised Alanna, that Raoul had heard it. "I didn't think you were so given to religious observance."

"Some things are true even if a priest says them."

"It was a good sermon," Alanna said. Oh very well, my old friend: talk on about a sermon and pretend that none of this is happening. But another part of her was glad Raoul had brought it up: better to talk about this than about what was to come. But Raoul only nodded his agreement. So much for that. "He spoke to Thom, you know," Alanna said suddenly. Why had she let that out? That was the last thing she wanted to talk about. She had found over the years that enforced numbness was the best cure for the vagaries of grief, and this time -- this day -- she was in especial need of that emotional passivity.

Raoul looked up, obviously unsure of what to say. And what could he say? What could she say?

"He is repentant," Master Abelard had told her last night. "He realizes full well that he cannot live, and that he should not live." At least so much of honor remained to him.

She had been resigned even before Thom had; she had been resolved from the beginning. The Goddess help her, her love for her king and her duty as a warrior and a vassal were greater than her love for her child. It was as the archpriest has preached: passions, particularly when they ran contrary to sure knowledge, were often opposed to rightness and virtue. Mithros and her Goddess were gods of reason and nobility. She was a soldier and a noble: dispassionate, not compassionate, and while woman might plead for her child's life, a vassal served the life of his lord. If a woman would prove herself a vassal, she had to give up the weaknesses commonly ascribed to women.

"I know my duty," Alanna said aloud. She did know. Her mind was clear; it was much clearer than she had thought it would be. Her thoughts were not clouded, nor her vision dulled with grief, although Thom's incrementally approaching death beat at her more than the sudden shock of the king's murder had. Indeed, she thought slowly and precisely. The needs of the kingdom before her happiness; the duties of a knight before her family; the freedom of her sex before the inclinations of her heart. It was as though she saw herself from the outside. She had lost her temper with Jonathan's politic diplomizing. When he had urged some compromise to appease an arch-conservative, she had not stood for it. Had she spent her indignation on matters of policy and have now none left for her son? She shuddered. This was it. This was what she was desperately trying to repress.

"Alanna?" She had forgotten that she sat with Raoul in this alcove. She tried to force it again below the surface of her conscience, but once up, it would not go back. She was a mother; Thom was her son. Thom was her son. Thom… "Your duty is an example to us all," Raoul said. Her duty? But ah, she had said something about duty, hadn't she? Alanna shook her head. If only she could scream, or could have hysterics, or could cry. But she had never been hysterical. Enraged and even irrational, but never hysterical. The clarity of thought was suddenly gone. She was muddled, and no single idea or image would hold. The Bazhir lining the streets on her and Jonathan's triumphant return from the Black City; Little Thom running to her arms at Pirate's Swoop; the way the words tumbled out when he talked about magic; Jonathan taking up a sword in the surprise Scanran raid and the awesome image of a Conte king who was still a warrior. She had chosen, but to what good end? Jonathan was dead. Thom was… alive. Had been alive. Irrationally, the chanted conjugations of some long-ago lesson in old Thak rolled through her mind. Pluperfect future active periphrastic: Had been going to be alive…

"I can't… I don't know what you're talking about," she said, turning away.

Raoul took her hands in his. "You have been so strong, so steadfast." He didn't understand at all. Alanna envied her long-time friend for the sharpness of his moral vision --here were no horrible shadows haunting him -- but she could not share it. "I have no idea how you are bearing it, Alanna," Raoul said. "If it were my son, I could not have done what you have; I could not watch."

And so. She had spent her life being better than men. She could outfight, out ride, and out-curse any other knight of the realm, even now. It had been the only way to prove that she was not less capable. And so. Now, to prove that she was as strong of mind, she had to be stronger. Better that they accuse her of being cold and unfeeling than that they should say that the Lioness was womanish and sentimental. And so.

"My lord, my lady." Alanna had not noticed the servant enter. He raised a glance to meet her eyes, but looked down quickly. Evidently, he did not enjoy this task. "It's nearly time, an' it please y'r honors."

"Go," Alanna said. "I will come after, in a moment. I will come," she repeated, as Raoul seemed to hesitate.

He bit his lip and briefly closed his eyes as he stood to take his leave. "Gods be with you, Alanna." With the shadow of a bow -- no more than a deeply inclined head -- he preceded the servant out. Alanna let out a breath as she watched him go. Only a few more moments now. A few moments of solitude. He was her closest friend -- the one at court most like herself, and now so unlike. Was this what it meant to be a woman in a man's world?

She could not watch, would not go. It would not be so hard, to walk inside to the chapel rather than out of the garden and to plead to the Mother Goddess for peace of mind. The Mother Goddess. Alanna knelt in sudden prayer, and she trembled at the implication only now understood. 'Oh, Great Lady, have you forsaken me because I forsook my duty as a mother? Forgive me; take what penalty you will, but forgive me, and ease my mind!' In her lifetime, more shrines had appeared to the Goddess as Mother of Mercy than in any other incarnation; and she: not merciful, and by her lack of mercy no true mother. The Goddess had spoken to her when she was yet a squire, and had told her to love.

It was a wintry-cold day, and the wind that blew dead leaves and dirt across the path where she knelt also made her tears feel cold on her cheeks. The Goddess had told her to love. How could she love a traitor to her king and to herself? But how could she not love her own son?

"What would you have me do, Lady?" she shouted at the sky. "What would you have had me do?" She had succeeded for the Goddess, and she had never forgotten her divine patroness. Every day the Great Mother had her thanks and her offerings, and now this turmoil in return. In a fit of anger at the injustice of it all, she tore the Goddess's ember-stone from its chain and threw it hard against the wall.

Alanna did not know what she expected to happen in that instant: for the crystal to shatter, perhaps, and for the Goddess to descend to her; or for a bonfire, a bolt of lightning -- some sign of divine anger, even of divine consciousness, to beat her mortal grief against. But there was nothing. The ember did not even flicker or dull as it snapped off the wall and fell to the dirt, its fire seeming to emanate heat into the cold air.

For a moment she imagined that a great burden would lift, and she would be freed of her doubts and troubles when the stone no longer weighed on her neck. It did not happen, of course. And, she reminded herself, she had never felt the Goddess's gift to be painful or weighty. None of the Goddess's gifts were. She supposed that the gods would not stir themselves to give their worshippers respite from purely human troubles. Of course she knew that. And she had never expected anything else; indeed she had not. But she was strong and she would bear it. This had all been but momentary weakness. Alanna wiped her eyes, stood up, and dusted off her clothes. She picked up her ember-stone and fastened it around her neck, willing its brightness to burn away these so many swirling thoughts of her son.

Alanna the Lioness walked out of the walled garden to stand with her friends and her king. But even a few moments in the cold had served to make the Goddess's charm chilly against her skin.

FINIS