Chapter Text
It was a day of fire at Nevermore Keep. Tapestries burned. The armory was a shambles. Merchants and farmers bearing the red armband of the rebel movement, the knights of St Barbara, stormed the stronghold of the city. Guards and soldiers lay askew in every corner of the courtyard: beaten, bruised, and disarmed.
The forces were led by one Theodore Vandernacht, but it was his sister Lenore who took the throne room first. They had gotten as far as they had by having people on the inside: courtiers, servants, even one of the Lords’ own advisors.
Lords Merry and Morne Bonnes-Mares stood armed like the knights they were. Despite having been caught off guard without time to don any armor, their spears shone in the orange glow of the fires raging outside.
“Well well, baby Vandernacht,” Merry sneered, “Do you really think that farmer’s axe will be enough to take us down?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Lenore replied. Behind her came several affirmative grunts from the people who had willingly followed the young miller. She gripped her axe and buckler, the meagre weapons of a tenant farmer, with the pride of a king. “Surrender or retreat, Lords Bonnes-Mares. I’ve managed to keep casualties to a minimum, and I’d hate to send you gentlemen to an early grave.”
“I’m afraid, my dear, that it will be you meeting your maker this night.” Mourn scowled, and with that he charged the ragtag band.
The fighting was fierce. Lenore had the lords outnumbered 5 to 2, but they had chosen their weapons well and wielded them with a training that the rebels lacked. It seemed an even match. Sweat rolled down faces. The smell of smoke and blood filled their nostrils.
It seemed a fair fight, until an arrow landed squarely in Merry’s neck. He fell, clasping the arrow into place to try and stop the bleeding. His spear clanged on the ground.
All 6 remaining fighters turned to see where the arrow had come from. There, in courtier’s dress, wielding a bow, was Annabel Lee Whitlock, the daughter of the wealthiest merchant in the province.
“You!” Mourn hissed. “I should have known. You must have paid off these wretches.”
“They came cheap,” Annabel replied coldly. “Your tribute policy was daft. Why build an army on the backs of the farmers when you can simply convince them your cause is just for free? And to have the men slaughter each other to make sure you had the strongest warriors? You were practically begging for someone to take your title.”
“The King’s forces will come swiftly! You can’t possibly hope to hold the province!” Mourn was unsure who to face his back to, and began to back into the only wall in the throne room that wasn’t rapidly warming from the fires outside.
“They will, and they will find the farmers happy, the tribute fully paid, and my father a loyal servant who is also backed by the papacy.” Anabell smiled like a weasel over a defenseless hen. “Bad move sentencing the priest under civil law.”
“That was your idea, you traitor.” Mourn threw down his spear and put his hands up. “Have it your way. At least if I live I can testi-”
He would never finish the sentence. Annabel put an arrow in his windpipe.
Lenore screamed. “No! He surrendered!” Her axe hit the floor and she ran to her friend, shaking her by the shoulders, “Have you lost your senses?”
Whitlock had calculated a lot of things. She had shaken the faith of the wealthy in their local lords, alienated the lords from the church, intercepted letters to the capital, and had convinced her father it was all his idea.
She had apparently not counted on one of her most key players seeing her for the monster she was. The mastermind looked surprised, then afraid, her body tensing up under Lenore’s firm hand.
“I-if he testifies, we will all ha-hang.” Annabel struggled to explain herself.
“You two can argue about that later.” Duke, son of a local craftsman, stepped forward. “For now we have to report back to Theo and get these fires put out.”
Lenore grit her teeth before relaxing. “I’ll take Annabel into custody and find a gag. We don’t need a backstabber with no value for human life causing any more death today. Can you inform my brother that we’ve taken the throne room and start putting out the fires while I deal with this woman?”
Eulalie cleared her throat, “Are you sure you can handle her alone? She seems really good at arguing her way out of things.”
“I don’t have any idea what she could say that is more damning than the two dying men in this room.” Lenore couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Her grip appeared to be bruising Annabel’s arm.
The other 4 looked at the two lords. Merry had passed out from blood loss and would surely perish before dawn. Mourn was gasping for air and finding no reprieve. It was too late to call for a medic, but the Church prohibited mercy killing of the dying save by church officials.
Duke scowled. “All right. We can leave this woman to you. I’ll try to find a priest for these two”
With that, the 4 left. Lenore turned to Annabel Lee, furious. The once ice-cold smile was gone from the pale face. Tears were running down red cheeks.
Lenore sighed. “The smoke seems to be dying down. My brother must have started organizing a firefighting effort. Let’s get you out of here and then you have a murder to explain.”
Annabel Lee was unceremoniously hefted over Lenore’s shoulder like a kidnapped damsel, then carried out the back entrance to the former Lords’ private study. From there, they took the servant’s stairs down to the kitchens, where there was enough commotion that nobody noticed the two walk out toward the stables. Lenore found a quiet place behind the grainery and set down her captive, making use of her various belts to secure the white-haired woman’s arms.
The captive made no move to escape. She only tried to deepen her breathing. It was no use. A vice gripped her chest. Her head rang with Lenore’s words.
Once they were sat and settled, with the din of the post-fighting cleanup in the distance, Lenore looked at Annabel. Her dress was stained with soot and dirt. Her hair, usually meticulously covered as all ladies’ were, was starting to peek out from her wimple.
Lenore herself looked quite the sight in her brother’s tunic and hose, ankles out for the world to see, splattered with blood. Her eye was rapidly blackening. Her hair was rapidly escaping the coif she had donned to protect it.
“You shot and killed an unarmed man on the suspicion that he would get us all tried for treason.”
“I did. And I would do it again.” Whitlock had gotten enough of her mind back to meet Lenore’s blue eyes with her own. Her confidence was returning in response to the soft hand of her friend and co-conspirator.
Vandernacht was not pleased, her eyes going red with incoming tears. “Why? He had given up. He was a toothless dog making empty threats. He wasn’t a good man, but Lord Mourn was still a man. A life.”
“How are you so sure?”
The black-haired woman spat, disgusted. “They bled red just as we do.”
“No, that he wasn’t planning revenge. How do you know?”
“I’m sure he was. It’s only right. We killed his brother and usurped them.” Lenore wiped her eyes. “God above, if I wasn’t going to hell before, I am now.”
“God abandoned both of us long ago.” Annabel sighed, wiggling to test her restraints. She was stuck. “The thought of you hanging, I- I couldn’t think of anything else. I don’t want this peace if it means you aren’t here.”
“That’s no reason to kill a man who has surrendered. It was bad enough that you had Duke arrested to throw them off our trail. We freed him and he is well. But you can’t free the dead from their fate. And now I have to find a way to keep Theo from having you hanged for murder or sent to a convent for penance.”
“The convent might not be so bad,” Annabel mused, half joking, “If you came with me.”
Lenore pulled the captive into an awkward embrace, her eyes clamped tight. Tears spilled over and further soiled Annabel’s wimple. “Don’t make me choose between you and my brother.” Her plea was a whisper.
In that moment, the one detail the cloth merchant had missed hit her like an arrow to the heart. “Lenore,” she asked quietly, “Did you think we were going to be together after all this was over?”
The reply was a sob, a plea for mercy buried in Annabel’s shoulder. They had won the day but lost each other, and Lenore could no longer hold her spine straight.
When the miller’s daughter could finally calm herself enough to speak, she looked at Anabel with a rare distress, a hopelessness Whitlock had not seen before. “God let the devil take me for something deeply unnatural. The least that bastard could give me is your companionship.”
The self-sung accusation of unnatural desires rang in Annabel’s head as a minor offense, an inconvenience much like food theft or brawling. Still, Lenore’s meaning was clear. How was she to become a miller, a part of the town, when every inch of her flesh called her to perversions? Rebelled against God’s order? Against secular law?
“As long as we are both alive, we can come up with something.” Annabel would have given a tooth to be able to free herself and wipe the tears off of her friend’s face. She settled for nuzzling Lenore’s cheek with her own. “I won’t give you up so easily.”
Vandernacht’s face went red from ear to ear. She hadn’t thought it possible for her face to burn more than it was, but it did.
Annabel Lee Whitlock, who masterminded the coup of a fiefdom at the tender age of 18, looked at her friend with wide eyes. “When you say unnatural, you don’t mean me, do y-”
There was no need to finish the sentence. Lenore looked away. Shame was clear on her face. Her blush, the gritted teeth, the fearful countenance: it was all plain now.
“That’s where you were,” Theodore turned a corner and saw the two young women in the heat of their discussion. “Annabel, I’ve been informed you shot and killed an unarmed man. I’m putting you in the hold until things settle down and we can discuss your crime. Being that you are a young woman, I imagine we can make a case for you to have faltered in your weak spirit and avoid hanging. Leno-”
The miller’s eldest son saw his sister and knelt. “I have put too much on your shoulders.”
Lenore wiped her eyes and stood. “I can bear it. For you, for our town, I can bear it and more. I just never expected my own closest friend to commit murder.”
Theodore looked at Annabel and his sister. “ I will take Whitlock to the hold myself so she does not come to harm. Wash your face and go help treat the wounded. You always do better when your hands are busy.”
With that, he picked up Annabel and also unceremoniously tossed her over his shoulder. Lenore ran off without meeting anyone’s eyes. Where the younger Vandernacht had struggled and secreted around with the captive, Theo strutted through the middle of the courtyard in the most direct path, giving orders and taking in information from various rebels as he went.
In short order, Annabel Lee was placed in the hold. Three walls of stone, like the cell of a monk, held her in private. Her last shred of dignity was lost, however, due to the iron wrought gate that would close her in. The belts were removed. She was locked into the cell, and Theo glared down at her.
“What did you do to my sister?”
“Nothing. She is simply worried for me since I broke the laws of engagement.”
“I regret to inform you that you are no longer the most cunning person in the room, Whitlock. You overthrew the lord of this fiefdom so your father could have greater access to the trade roads, and to create a force to protect your shipments from bandits. My sister was a convenient pawn for you to use, weak as she is to your wiles.”
This, Annabel Lee was used to. She looked up at him with the cold fury of a cornered ermine. “And? She is a hero. She is respected enough by the town that her eccentricities will be overlooked. She can live in peace, a free unmarried woman under your care until the end of her days.”
“That is why I permitted you to use her,” Theo growled. “But you will not drag her down with you in your misstep. And there will be no more encouragement of her more dangerous peculiarities. I can’t protect her if she doesn’t have at least some self-control.”
“Let’s strike a deal, then?” Annabel swallowed a lump in her throat, “Let me play the penitent and send me to the convent downriver. I can help my father manage his affairs by letter. I won’t have to marry some gruesome man, and your sister will have to learn to live without me.”
Theo grinned, his brow knit. His eyes burned. “No, Annabel Lee Whitlock. We are going to send you to the capital to be tried by the King himself. If you survive and return on your own wits, I’ll let you do as you please with Lenore. If you die, you die.”
“You’re possessed.”
“I’m quite myself, Annabel. I’m using you as tribute to prove my loyalty to the King. Just as you used my sister. If you can’t get out of this sentence, you don’t have the cunning to keep Lenore safe.”
People often compared Theo to the stags he was known to hunt. He had proud bearing and a good sense to root out snakes from his companions. Looking at him now, having been outplayed, Annabel saw only a hawk. A hunter, yes, but one with farther vision than anyone could have known.
Annabel didn’t know how he managed it, but Theo kept Lenore away from the hold. Night fell. She was given a meal. Outside, the Full Moon shone in through her east-facing window. The stars were outdone by the orb’s silvery beauty, and Annabelle Lee faced the wall. Finally, with only the lady of night as witness, with only her back visible to her guard, the cunning little stoat had her private smile.
Lenore’s blush had, for reasons Annabel could not fathom, filled her with hope.