The Queen Who Remembered

At that hour of the morning, the great Map Hall smelled of warm wax, wet leather, and the fennel servants tucked beneath the flagstones to drive out the previous day’s odors. The tall windows had been opened despite the September cold. Wind lifted sections of the long map of Aurenne, and four secretaries held it down with felt-wrapped lead weights as though keeping an underweight patient in bed.

On the eve of her state marriage, a princess remembers being a queen whose same marriage drenched the kingdom in blood.