Revenge13 min read
The Mimosa Painting and the Jade Bracelet
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I remember the rain that day like a clean split in two: before and after. My mother knelt on the cold stone by the outer gate until dawn, calling for mercy for the man who had been her livelihood. The courtyard guards looked down, the courtiers whispered, and I felt a strange heat of satisfaction.
"Do you want him spared?" Emperor Henry Carlier asked later, counting his prayer beads.
I leaned against his side, the thin moonlight veil over my shoulders, and pulled his hand so it rested against my belly. "Your Majesty," I said softly, "I am still afraid of that day. If not for your kindness, I would not be here."
Henry put down his beads and smiled like a secret. "What I like best about you," he said, "is that you do not pretend."
I let him think I was simple and grateful. I learned long ago to sell what I had to a good buyer. I learned to bend and be pleasant. I learned to take my shame and make it a soft thing to be presented.
"Holly," I told my maid, "bring some tea."
Holly Peterson always had a seed of curiosity in her eyes. She sat on the window bench, shelling sunflower seeds and talking like the street she came from. "Mistress," she said, "the empress's smile is an act. Watch it crack and you'll see teeth."
"Don't say such things aloud," I whispered back, "or you'll make her teeth work on us."
"Still," Holly said dull and sweet, "I think the empress hates you."
"Let her," I said. "It does not matter if she hates me. He loves me enough."
That was the first lie I told myself and the easiest. The second came when I had to learn to read and write.
"Today you will practice names," Henry said, taking my hand. He held my brush and guided my fingers. "Write this," he murmured. He wrote his name with such care. Henry Carlier. I traced each stroke as if it were a path.
"Haven't you told me before," he teased, "that you only have two ambitions: a warm house and a good bowl of rice?"
"I did say that once," I said. "But now I want to be worthy of being near you."
"That's not the way to win a man's heart," he chuckled. "But it's something."
I practiced the strokes until the lines smoothed beneath my fingers. I let the ink dry on the page and sent the sheets to him to read, to hold. It pleased him to guide me. It pleased him to see me try.
"Justine," Daniella Hartmann said to me one night in the pale lantern light, "you change. You are not just the girl who dances."
"Are you scolding me?" I laughed.
"No," she said, pinching my cheek. "You are someone who chooses. Remember that."
Daniella was clever in the way a cat is clever. She had influence and youth and a father's name that opened doors. The empress, Jacqueline Saleh, had children and form and a crown that never left her forehead. I needed Daniella's friendship because she knew how to tilt the court's view without starting a war.
"Which side?" Holly asked, leafing through a book I had received from the empress. "Who will you choose? The empress or Daniella?"
"I choose what protects my child," I answered. "Not people."
When the empress began to send books to the women of the court, I accepted them with a soft smile. When Daniella sent me a painting, I stayed awake for hours tracing its folds. I painted a mimosa — a slope of pink and green that reminded me of the hills at home. I added a small table with two cups. I pinned the table right beside the flowers.
"A hint," I told Daniella. "A little memory for the emperor."
Daniella looked at it and laughed. "You think of everything."
"You see that seam?" I asked her the day she came to study it.
She touched the edge and frowned. "Who would hide a seam?"
"A seam hides truth," I said. "Sometimes truth is folded inside prettiness."
She nodded. "Enough. I'll ask my father to look."
Months passed. I walked the palace like a figure in a play, smiling, learning, sewing my softness together with every face that watched. The emperor's favor came to me in quiet things: a song hummed while he read by my pillow, a robe slipped across my shoulders when the wind bit, a hand that found mine beneath the table. He was not the kind to show off—he preferred to keep his warmth like a private heating stone. But when he touched me, the palace walls seemed thinner.
One evening at the imperial garden, Daniella suggested a game.
"Let everyone speak a verse," she said with a grin. "You recite, and they will be jealous."
I chose a line the emperor had once written at his own accession. When I read it, the emperor smiled in that private way and Daniella clapped like a child.
"Who taught you to write like that?" the empress asked later, her tone honey with a bite.
"The emperor," I said, bowing. "He has been most generous."
"You have been clever," she said, and I felt her contempt like cold glass.
Then the poisoning happened—first minor, then a plan that would have taken my child. A plate of yam cakes; a cup of wine. I nearly died twice. The court called for investigations that lasted a week and ended with nothing but whispers. The empress blamed others, the empress looked injured, as if anyone would wish her harm. "Who would hurt such a mother of the realm?" she asked those who would listen.
"Not I, Your Majesty," Daniella told the emperor when she saw his face close.
"You are good," he said to her. "You are honest." He looked at me then with something that unspooled like relief.
Holly wept because she believed in clear stories. "They put musk in the books," she said between her sobs. "They put it in the books they gave you."
Jacqueline's face went white industry smoke. She leaned back, pretending to feel wronged. "Who told such a tale?" she asked.
Holly's tears were loud; Henry's patience was tested. "Tell me everything," he ordered. Holly told the tale with a child's bluntness, pointing her finger at a seam in the books and at the empress's attendants. The palace tried to look impartial, but power is a language of its own.
"Enough," Henry said. "If this is true, there will be consequence."
We set a trap. Daniella had learned about the supply chain of the books. Ezra Nunes, the chancellor, kept records and moved with cold precision. "Leave him to me," Ezra said. "I'll find the trail."
We waited until the emperor's birthday feast. I suggested the theme of mimosa and offered wine. Everyone drank—some bowed, some smiled. The emperor praised the poems and asked for a game.
"Let the new scholar recite," Daniella said lightly.
Pax Bowen stood in the crowd like someone who had never set foot in my village yet had once kept a promise to me. Pax had been the lover of my earlier life—warm hands in the cold kitchen, whispers of leaving together. He had broken me once. I let him remain a ghost until the day when a place at the table would reveal him to all.
Pax turned pale when he recognized my handwriting on the mimosa painting I had asked to be displayed. His face was a map of fear and regret. "Justine," he said quietly, "I—"
"You returned," I said. "You came with a name. You came with an office."
He bowed and recited a poem. His voice was skillful. When the emperor praised him, Pax looked at me as if hoping for mercy.
Mercy does strange things. I kept mine for the child.
The proof that broke the case came when Ezra traced the musk-laced powders back to a supplier who sold to one man in particular—Clay Brandt, the governor we had suspected of plundering my father's land. Ezra laid the paper scrolls before Henry.
"These indicate collusion," Ezra said. "Documents that show shipments and payments with several officials: the governor of the western prefecture and two of his contacts."
Clay Brandt's name made the court still. He had a face like a ledger—hard, unreadable. "Arrest him now," Henry said, and his voice was an instrument struck.
They brought Clay into the great hall. He stood before the throne in bound silk. The empress sat like a statue with eyes that darted like a trapped animal.
"Clay Brandt," Henry said. "You are accused of corruption, theft, and the attempted harm of the imperial child. How do you plead?"
Clay's jaw worked. "I—" he began, then found his voice like a chisel. "I am loyal—"
"Silence." The emperor's command dropped like a curtain. "We will hear evidence."
Ezra laid out the ledger scrolls. He named dates, numbers, shipments, the names of merchants who paid with folded notes. He read the names of those who took bribes. Pax Bowen, who had once been my foolish promise, stood pale as a wax figure as the ledger named a set of payments that matched his family ties.
I rose to speak. "My father," I said, "was a flower man. He tilled land and loved a certain type of plum tree. He could not pay the taxes Clay Brandt demanded. He died."
"Hear that!" a court official called.
Clay's face went from smug to pinched surprise. "I did what the law required," he said.
"Then explain these notes," Ezra said. "Explain these shipments of musk and the names of the purchasers."
Clay could not. He began to sweat. His arrogance peeled off like old paint.
"Bring them forward," Henry ordered. Guards dragged in merchants and attendants who had been hidden until that hour.
They testified. "He paid us a coin to deliver powder," one man said. "He told us it would dislodge a rival's influence."
"Who was the rival?" Henry asked.
"The girl whom the emperor favored," the merchant said. "He wanted her put back in her place."
At that, the room hissed. The empress's hand flew to her mouth.
Clay's face changed from colorless to furious. "You lie!" he shouted. "You lie all!"
"Who else benefited?" Ezra asked.
"You," someone whispered. "You had motive," another murmured.
Jacqueline Saleh sat rigid. The court had to decide what to do with a woman of her rank. The law was a slow animal when it came to the powerful. But Henry's anger was not the slow kind.
"Summon her attendants," he said quietly.
They were brought, trembling. A seam was found: a ribbon with the empress's crest hidden in the supply line. Papers. A carved box with remnants of powder. The evidence completed the outline.
"Your Majesty," Daniella said, voice steady as bone, "the empress signed these shipments for the palace to receive. She arranged for the goods."
Jacqueline's lips trembled. "I meant no harm!" she cried. The high register of her cry cut clean through the hall. "I only wanted the palace to be comfortable! I did not—"
"Did you intend to harm the child?" Henry asked, voice low.
"I—no. I—" The empress faltered. She looked like a woman seeing a cliff for the first time and realizing she had walked the edge.
The court erupted. Servants whispered, noblewomen gasped. Daniella covered her mouth. Holly ran to my side and gripped my sleeve like an anchor.
"Let her explain," a minister cried. "Let her give account."
"No!" Henry snapped. "This is not a private matter."
He stood and walked down from the dais with a step that reminded everyone he was the emperor and not a man given to displays. He stood in the center of the hall. "Because of this woman," he said, "my favored concubine nearly lost her child. Because of these men, a farmer in the distant west suffered and perished. Because of their greed and petty jealousies, a family was ruined. I will not tolerate it."
"Bring Clay Brandt forward."
Clay had been thrown to his knees. Guards bound his hands. His face shifted through the stages of a man losing everything: arrogance, confusion, bargaining, denial, then a hot panic.
"You will pay for what you did," Henry said.
The punishment had to be seen, for the court loved to watch justice done. Ezra had advised restraint but also spectacle. The punishment unfolded in the outer court in a morning that smelled of cold iron and roasted grain.
They made Clay kneel on three crushed grain sacks. His sleeves were cut short to the elbow. They read aloud the charges. He began to shout. "I was doing my duty! I fed my men! I paid rewards!" His voice cracked when he saw the merchants stand and name him. They spat their names and the sums like bitter seeds.
"When you took the people's grain," Henry said, "you left children hungry. When you took a father's money, you took a father's life."
Clay's face crumbled. He dropped into a kind of pleading I had never before seen him do. "Please," he begged, "I beg for mercy. I will return the goods. I will repay—"
"Repayment is not enough," the emperor said. "You will be stripped of title and held until the council decides whether you die. The shires will know your guilt. Their magistrates will bring forward those you paid. Your houses will be seized. Your sons and daughters will be removed from positions."
Clay's eyes went from hot hatred to a slow, sinking cold. "You cannot do this!" he howled. He turned to the crowd as if expecting an army to rise for him. No one did.
A group of merchants, once cowed by him, now spat on his hands. People began to mutter. "He ate our taxes," one woman said. "He took the braids from our daughters." The crowd's murmur grew into a slow chorus of contempt.
"Take him away," Henry said. "The judgment of death is not given lightly. But let the record show his crimes and his fall."
They dragged Clay out. Some in the crowd clapped. Some wept. The public release of Clay Brandt's ledger and the seizure of his lands kept the punishment from being merely violent; it was a full unmaking of his world. He had been a man who trusted his own schemes; his schemes were peeled back very publicly, bone by bone. He shifted from anger to bargaining to collapse.
"Please," he begged again before being led through the gate, eyes wide with a child's fear. "My family—"
A merchant spit at his boots. "You robbed our children," she said. "You do not deserve pity."
The empress's punishment could not be the same as a common governor. She was a mother of heirs, a woman with the crown of the palace. But justice's light had to fall on her too.
Henry called the court back into the hall. He announced a twofold punishment for Jacqueline Saleh.
"First," he said, "the empress will be stripped of public honors for one year. She will be removed from the day-to-day management of the palace. She will be confined within her own quarters and forbidden contact with ministers and outside courtiers. All her attendants implicated in this scheme will be dismissed and publicly denounced."
Jacqueline's face sank. "Your Majesty—"
"Second," Henry continued, "a public reading of the ledger and proof will be held in the marketplace. Every house that suffered wrong and has standing will be allowed to speak. The name Jacqueline Saleh will be associated in the public record with this wrongdoing."
This was a merciless punishment because Jacqueline loved her public. She had always manipulated favor with quiet gestures. To remove her audience was to strip her identity.
"Please," she whispered, then louder, "I did all this to secure peace and comfort for my household. I did not—"
"You did it to keep your power," Daniella said quietly. "You sent poisons and powders. That is not keeping house. That is murder by inches."
The court watched her change. She went from elegant scorn to disbelief, to denial, to sobbing pleas. "I am the empress," she cried. "I am the mother of this realm."
"And you nearly harmed a child of that realm," Henry said.
The women and men of the court reacted in a dozen ways. Some gasped. Some whispered fierce satisfaction. Some stared at the empress as if she had become a stranger. Daniella's eyes were wet but steady. Holly covered her mouth and whispered, "Look at them, mistress. They cannot pretend now."
It was not a violent punishment like the governor's public disgrace and arrest, but it was the slow removal of what Jacqueline cherished most—her public face. The humiliation was public, procedural, and irreversible. The palace saw a woman who had used influence and who would now be watched and constrained.
Jacqueline's protests melted into a small, thin voice: "No. This cannot be."
"You will be watched," Henry said. "For the good of the palace."
That day the crowd's reaction ranged across the full palette: shocked silence, then rumbling approval, then a small chorus of cheers when Clay Brandt's estates were read out and his arrests announced. Faces that had once whispered to be protected by him now turned their back on his name. Those who supported the empress withdrew like banked embers.
Clay's reaction had moved enough from fury to a crumpled pleading that he would promise anything. His pleadings met silence at the gate. Jacqueline's reaction had moved from haughty astonishment to desperate begging, then an almost immediate, hollow acceptance when she realized her world had shrunk. The onlookers' faces were a map: merchants shocked, concubines relieved, guards officious, ministers calculating.
"Let it be recorded," Henry said softly as he returned to the dais. "Let it be known that those in power are not above justice."
That public reckoning became my rope and my shield. It was messy and needed, and the court would never be the same.
Afterwards, when the hall emptied and the candles guttered, Daniella came and sat beside me.
"You did well," she said, pressing my hand.
"Did I?" I asked. "I felt nothing but cold while they were dragged out."
"You will feel it later," she said. "Grief, or relief. But you did what needed to be done."
Holly brought in tea and my small carved bracelet—my father's silver ring that had been kept safe. I put it on my son’s tiny wrist later, when he finally came into the world. He had my nose and Henry's stubborn mouth.
The empress was restricted, and the governor was judged. Pax Bowen kept his head low. Ezra Nunes kept his ledger at the ready. Daniella smiled like a general who had lost and found a friend.
Months later, I walked in the chambers where I had first learned to write. The mimosa painting hung by the window, the seam I had hidden now visible to me like a map of where I had been stitched together. I touched the brush strokes and thought of the court's roar.
"Holly," I said, "bring the baby."
She set the small prince in my lap. He gurgled and batted at the mimosa petals painted on the paper. The jade bracelet—my father's silver now altered by Daniella into a tiny band of green—tinked as he moved.
"He's ours," Daniella said softly, leaning on the sill.
Henry, who had been busy with state matters, came in and watched us. He placed his hand lightly on the child's head.
"You kept him safe," he said to me.
"I kept him for myself," I replied.
He laughed then, a quiet sound. "You kept him for both of us."
I looked at the mimosa painting, at the seam and the table and the two empty cups I had painted for the future. The palace had its shadows. People had their plots. There had been poison and there had been greed. But there had also been a painting and a bracelet and a baby who laughed at his own tiny hands.
"Promise me one thing," Holly said blunt as ever, "that you will not bring your mother here to beg at our gate again."
I looked at the slant of Henry's mouth. He shook his head minutely.
"No," he said. "We will not be shown that way again."
I tucked the baby into my arms and felt the steady thud of his life. Outside, the court murmured and the palace turned. Inside, the mimosa painting looked on, like a secret that had grown up and become a story told in a small, bright room.
Months later, when the painting looked at me each morning, I would touch the seam and remember how we had unstitched corruption. In the nursery, the jade bracelet on my son's wrist caught light and made a small green star on the floor. I would remind myself of the man who once promised me the world and then left it—Pax Bowen—and that he learned to bow.
"Mother," Holly said once as she smoothed the child's blanket, "you look like someone who has kept a dangerous secret and turned it into a small peace."
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe peace is a painting and a bracelet and a child who does not yet know what the world may ask of him."
"Then keep him safe," Henry murmured.
I pressed the child's forehead to mine and whispered, "I will."
The End
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