Read Online A Cup of Normal by Devon Monk - Free Book Online

matron and crone, I thought about it for a long time before deciding the matron’s perspective would be the most challenging to define. I didn’t expect to explore all three aspects of being a woman. Readers have asked me if it is part of a novel, and my answer is: not yet.

    BEARING LIFE

    Thera wore four silver and five gold rings on her right hand — two on each finger and her pinky. The silver were for the daughters she had borne and watched die — wasted away by the coughing plague before they had done little more than learn to speak. The five gold were for her sons who were dead — three to infections — and the last, the only ring on her thumb, for Gregory who had bled out all eighteen years of his life on the northen border with Balingsway in one of many unnecessary skirmishes.
    On her head she wore her husband’s crown. She had worn the black and gray of grieving for so many years, some called her the grave queen, and a few, woman of stone.
    Thera tapped her right hand — the ringed hand — against the arm of her husband’s throne and tipped the parchment to better catch the light from the glass sconce that burned over her shoulder.
    “Majesty?”
    She glanced over the yellow edge of the parchment to Johnathon, her husband’s, and now her own, loyal advisor. His walnut-colored hair had gone gray with streaks of brown, and his face carried grim, but not bitter, lines. Johnathon still knew how to laugh.
    “Do you understand what the summons outlines?” he asked gently.
    Thera nodded, the crown on her head heavy. Endure , Johnathon had said when he removed the crown from her husband’s cold brow and placed it upon her own. Endure , her husband had said as they stood above their last child’s grave. Endure , the midwife had yelled at her through the birthing pains. Endure , her mother had whispered when she sent her, thirteen years of age, to be married to the king easily twenty years her elder.
    “The Mother Queen of Harthing is asking for my surrender,” Thera said in a matter-of-fact tone. “And that I supplicate to her and her lands. That I give over the valley, the crops and the shipping route to Balingsway.” Thera tipped her head to one side, only so much as the crown would allow, and felt the sting of metal breaking the blister it had worn upon her temple. “Have I missed anything, Johnathon?”
    His eyes, still warm and brown after all these years, narrowed at the corners.
    “By the Seven, Thera. She wants your lands. Your people. She wants word by dawn tomorrow that you will step down and stroll to the gallows so she can pull the rope. Where is your fire?”
    Thera took in a breath and wanted to yell, to scream, to beat at the walls, the throne, her own body until something broke. To Johnathon, likely her closest friend, she said, “Fire does not solve every ill, Johnathon. Let us see if the Mother Queen has the forces she claims. Are the slave tunnels still open?”
    Johnathon looked shocked, something Thera had seen rarely in their thirty years together.
    “You know of the tunnels?”
    “Johnathon, I am the queen. Of course I know. I was there when Vannel,” her voice caught, and she swallowed quickly. Had this been the first time she had spoken his name since his death? “When he closed the slave trade route eighteen years ago.”
    Johnathon let his breath out in a rush and raised his hands to rub at his face. “You know of the slave trade, too. It wouldn’t have hurt you to have told me so.”
    “Nor would it have hurt for you to tell me about it, if you thought it important. I am your queen.”
    “And I your advisor,” he replied with faint annoyance.
    She raised an eyebrow.
    “Yes, yes,” Johnathon said, “point made and taken. I thought since it was done and over, it not worth your worry. You have had too many hardships in your years.”
    Like a blow to the stomach, Thera felt all the blood drain from her face. Her vision closed in at the edges, crowded out by memories.