Sweet Romance11 min read
The Red Plum I Kept for Him
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I never wanted a court that sang praises and whispered doubts about my private life. I wanted a quiet bowl of porridge, a warm corner, a single promise kept. "When I married you," he had said once, "I will keep only you." I kept that in my chest like a small plum seed, and I tended it.
"Wolfgang, we are not as we used to be," Edgar Olson said one afternoon as he folded the morning reports.
I had been lying against the cushions, a book half open in my hands, the inked characters blurring into a safe, plain comfort. I looked at him. "I feel the same as before," I said, and my voice sounded like a small bell in the room.
His brows tightened. "You will not let me hold you any more. Have you taken another?" His jest landed thinly, more accusation than joke.
I laughed, but did not answer. I let my fingers close over the book instead, feeling the heat of the paper. Later, at the New Year banquet when we walked out into the cold to greet the ministers, Wolfgang drew my sleeve to straighten my robe. "Do not let the wind in," he said, fussing like a man who had not been born to fuss.
When he finished, satisfied, I reached up and brushed my lips to his. For a long moment he looked stunned, then joy broke like light on ice. "You are the only one," he said softly.
That night, I told him I was tired and wanted to go rest. He barked a small order and sent a servant with me. He fussed over the maidservants who would take care of me, listing names and tasks. "You are foolish to say you can bear cold," he scolded, and I said, smiling, "Yes, Your Majesty," only because the old play of us felt like home.
I had gone out to the plum garden that winter because red plum blossoms in snow are proof that beauty can be stubborn. I reached for a branch, the lamplight gentle on my palm, when a large warm hand covered mine. It was rough with work, but it was mine. "Lauryn," he said.
I tried to pull away, but found I liked being held. "Your hand is cold," he told me, and I said, "No, not cold enough." He broke a blossom and laid it into my palm like a promise. I kept that blossom pressed into a bottle for years.
He had been a plain soldier when our marriage was arranged by family. My grandfather, George Ford, had praised Wolfgang in such steady terms that I could only agree. "He is strong. He is gentle. He will do well," Grandfather had said, his eyes bright. I married into his choosing and found that sometimes people chosen for you are the ones you come to love most easily.
On the night of his first leaving, he did not lift my veil. He stood before me with a stern face and spoke of duty. "If I go, I may bring danger to you," he said. "If you marry me, I may not be able to keep you safe." He resolved to sleep on a blanket on the floor and left me a pillow. I untied my veil and peered at his face—fierce and young—and teased, "If you are fighting for the people and I am one of the people, is that not the same?" He softened and said very little.
When he left, I walked to the temple and they handed me a small fee for care of the child of a soldier—another child they called mine by the rules of kindness. I loved that little one as I might love any child. Olivia Buckner was small and fearless; she called me "sister" and clapped like a small bell. When soldiers returned, when the news came that Wolfgang had won a minor field and sent back a single clipped branch of plum blossoms, I pressed it into a bottle and kept it like a relic.
The years were poor. Taxes ate at land and time. My grandfather fell ill and passed, and for a while I thought there would be no roof above our heads. We fled one night when soldiers came to collect names. I thought we would stop moving when the world sang the song of peace again.
"Where are we going now?" Olivia asked me in the dark when I packed the last of the linen.
"To find Wolfgang," I lied, because "I don't know" would have been worse.
We walked among others who carried only what they could. A child asked his mother how long until they reached safety, and she said, "Soon." The answer was as honest as she had left it.
We came to the city that called itself safe: South Harbor. There was soup to eat, a salt thin as a memory, and for a moment I believed. I went to stand in line, clutching the small clay bowl like a treasure. When I returned with the bowl, Olivia was gone.
"Olivia!" I shouted until my voice broke. I fell to my knees in the street and the bowl shattered beside me. For a long time I was gone to myself.
Then a hand lifted me and a voice I knew said, "Lauryn." It was him. He had armored on his chest dried blood crusted like old stories. "You have been foolish," he said, though his voice was a blessing.
"Where did you go?" I asked.
"I ride where I must," he said. "Forgive me for leaving you." He carried us back to a place that could be called safety, and I cried for all the nights we had lost.
Years of winter and then a slow melt. Wolfgang rose like a man who had decided he would make better laws than endure worse lives. He worked until his shoulders bent with papers and petitions, yet he would still drag me out to see the new life in the farm villages. "I will not let my city be one more thing that leaves people hungry," he said, and I believed him.
We found each other in small acts. "You never used to laugh like this," the clerk at court said, and I realized it: he laughed because I had brought him a plate of pastries. "You are laughing at me," I told him.
"At you," he said. "Only you."
We tried for a child. Once, I had carried a baby and lost it alone. We mourned without words. Later, when it was clear I was again with child, he came to my bed with a fox fur and a stack of state papers, and said, "We will teach the child to see the world as it is." I thought of all the promises folding into one another.
"I promised when I took the throne," he told the court once, and his voice cracked like thin ice. "I promised my queen that I would have no other. If I cannot keep her, how can I keep the world?" The council fell silent. No one argued after that.
We had peace, but peace breeds the kind of enemies that smile while they sharpen knives. Salvador Turner was the officer everyone trusted—clever, loud-handed, a man with oily manners. He smiled at me when we first met and bowed like dew. "Your Majesty," he said that afternoon. I had thought nothing of him.
Later I learned of secrets. There were men who preferred coin to country. They chose the safety of their bellies over the safety of their people. There was a betrayal on a field named Stoneford, the very hand that waved the signal that day had been Salvador's. His choice turned a clear morning into flames and left brave men like Geddes, like Dieter Castro's company, dying where they had stood.
When I heard it, I knew I had to do something more than tremble. I would not let a man like Salvador sit at my husband's board as if nothing had happened.
"I will not make this personal," Wolfgang said when I told him I would speak in the hall. "Do not make it a spectacle."
"I will make it honest," I said.
The Hall of Audience was full that morning. Ministers stood like pale pillars, the courtiers like careful birds. Peasants' voices had been carried on ropes to the balcony—men and women who had lost sons. Wolfgang sat on the high seat, his face a mask of calm. I had a red plum in my sleeve—a token I had kept since the winter we met—and it felt as heavy as a heart.
When I walked down the center aisle, the room watched my footsteps like a clock. "Salvador Turner," I called, loud enough that the tapestries shivered. "Stand."
He rose slowly, a man who smiled when accused. "My lady," he began. "You know nothing of war."
"Do you know nothing of men?" I returned. "You wrote the sign that sent soldiers into the valley at Stoneford. They died by your calculation. Their mothers caught the flames of rumor and burned in their grief." I put my palm on the plum in my sleeve. The ministers leaned.
Salvador laughed, an ugly sound. "This is slander. Those men died because of tactics. War is cruel. Are you accusing a minister of murder because you lost your friends?"
"It is no slander," I said. "It is the truth. Forty-eight soldiers left camp that dawn. Only nineteen returned. The signal to retreat was changed with your seal."
He stepped forward. "Who told you this?"
"The watchman of Stoneford, the surgeon who stitched my husband's armor, the widow who sold me porridge for my child." My voice did not shake. "You signed the signal. You sold your loyalty to coin."
Salvador's eyes narrowed. "You have no proof," he spat. "You have stories."
"I have witnesses," I said. "Bring them." Wolfgang's hand rose—slow, stern—he did not stop me. "Bring the housemaids, the surgeons, the farmers. Let them speak."
A murmur moved the hall. Then a woman came forward, a plain-faced washerwoman who had the courage of hunger. "He passed me a gold coin and told me to say I saw nothing," she said. "I kept my silence, but I could not let the deaths continue."
One by one, they came. The surgeon whose hands had knotted wool by men who would never again clap, the boy who had been saved by a father's blood. Each voice pulled away a layer Salvador had hidden behind. The crowd grew. The courtiers whispered. The ministers turned pale as if a frost had run through their bones.
Salvador's face took on the sheen of someone watching himself drown. "You set this up," he said at last. "You have stirred the crowd."
I stepped forward. "I have not stirred anything," I said. "You did the stirring when you put coin before country. Look at their faces, Salvador. Look at the mothers. You sold their sons."
He tried to laugh, to deny, then his laugh broke. "You cannot prove—"
A man in the back, a tall farmer whose son had been lost, pushed himself into the light. "I saw your men take my boy," he cried. "They dragged him from the line." The hall erupted. People leaned forward, hands clapping for truth like the first rain on parched earth.
Salvador's expression cracked. He staggered as if struck. For the first time he was not the smooth man who gave orders. He was a man losing his audience, losing his mask. "You're fools," he said. "You would believe a woman's tale?"
The hall hissed. Wolfgang stood. "Silence," he said, and his voice bent the air. "Bring him to the plaza. Let the people decide."
They marched Salvador to the public square, a place where the market's breath could bear witness. The sky was thin with winter light. People gathered, their cheeks pinched red, their collars wrapped tight. Women who had lost children stood shoulder to shoulder with soldiers whose hands shook. "Look at him," someone shouted. "He calls us fools."
I took my place on the raised dais. Wolfgang stood beside me, his face stone. Salvador was brought forward in chains—an image of arrogance now stripped. His mouth still moved in protests, small and brittle. I had learned that men like him loved to make scenes, to deflect, to point fingers that were softer than daggers.
"Salvador Turner," I said to the crowd, and the sound of my voice was like a bell. "You sold the signal at Stoneford. How many men died because you chose coin?" I waited. He glared.
"Not me—" He spat. "They were killed in battle."
"Who profited?" I asked. "Tell me who profited and why your hands were not stained with what you took."
For a stretch of breath he had a small advantage—he could still lie. He lied. "I acted for the good of the realm."
A voice from the front row answered, small and steady. "The realm does not feed on the bones of our sons." The phrase moved like a flame.
He tried to shout and be heard. "You have no proof," he said again, and the words were going out with less warmth than sound.
Then the surgeon stepped forward, his bandaged hands raw. "Your seal changed the retreat," he said. "I signed the ledger for the medicines that did not arrive. Your men took them away." He held up a scrap of cloth stained dark. "My ledger is proof."
A murmur of disbelief turned into a roar. Salvador went pale. He turned to the crowd and saw not ministers but faces—faces of those whose sleep had been stolen. His bravado folded into something jagged. "I—" He could not find the lie.
The crowd began to shout for justice. A woman called for banishment; a man for the governor to strip him of rank. Wolfgang raised his hand, quieting the square. "This is not about revenge," he said. "This is about law."
"Then let the law be seen," I said. "Strip him of rank. Send his coin to the widows. Let him stand in the market, and let every farmer whose child he stole name what was taken."
The magistrates, who had trembled in the hall, found a voice under the people's glare. Salvador Turner was stripped of rank. His sword was taken and broken in the public square. They ordered his fortune measured and divided, the gold given to the families who had borne his betrayal. He was forbidden to enter the palace, to wear any uniform, to ever sit where a man must make decisions for other men.
As the sentence was read, Salvador's expression moved from surprise to anger, to denial. He screamed. "You cannot do this! I served the crown!" His voice, once polished, now cracked. He tried to speak directly to Wolfgang, to the ministers, to me—anyone who could save his skin.
Then a child from the crowd stepped forward, a boy no older than seventeen, who had once been a messenger at Stoneford and had lost his brother. He spat the words out: "You never served anyone but yourself."
Salvador's face collapsed then. He dropped to his knees in the snow, not in prayer but in naked breaking. He begged for mercy. "I had debts," he cried. "I had no choice."
Around him, the crowd's faces were hard and bright. Some spat, some turned away, some recorded the scene on the few metal cylinders merchants used to keep records. A woman who had once been a soldier spat at his knees. "You had choices," she said. "You chose wrong."
He reached for Wolfgang, hands trembling, then to me, in a last act of hope. "Forgive me," he stammered.
"Forgiveness," I said softly, "is earned." I looked at the farmers, at the widows, at the mothers whose sons had walked into the valley and not returned. They were not interested in a man's begging. "You will live with knowing you chose coin before children," I said. "That is punishment enough in a heart. But the realm must also be healed." The magistrates carried out the sentence.
Salvador's humiliation was complete. He had his title taken, his sword broken, his wealth parceled out, and he was paraded past the market so that those who had no coin could see that rank does not shield sin. He begged and pleaded. He attempted to blame others. He tried to smile like a man who had been taught to smile always. But the crowd's faces were hard and patient, not for show. He left the square a man who had nothing but a name and a shame.
When it was done, some people cried, some clapped. "Justice," a farmer said. "At last." Wolfgang and I stood together, hands tight. He did not look at me with the same softness as when we first kissed in the plum garden; he looked at me as a partner looks when a great thing has been done and another task hangs on the horizon.
Later, I would hear other stories of Salvador trying to rebuild with other men, of small outrages where he sought to buy back respect and found no vendor who would sell it. Some nights the market shouted at him whenever he passed and the children made games of naming the number of lives he had cost. He grew hollow where he had once been fat with greed. In a way, he had been punished exactly as the world knows how: by being made small.
In the quiet hours after the trial, Wolfgang took my hand. "You were brave," he said. "You did on the dais what I could not while I sat in counsel."
"I did it because I could not watch mothers be robbed of their names," I said.
His eyes were quiet. "You have kept me honest," he said. "Keep my heart. Keep our home."
We lived with the plum in a bottle, the red token dry but fragrant in memory. Our son, Alec Graham, was named for the light he brought into our room—the bright, stubborn hope a name like that holds.
Years later, when the court laughed too loudly, I would stand in the garden and look at the plum tree Wolfgang had planted for me. "Do you remember the day you gave me a plum?" I would ask.
"I remember everything," he would say, and kiss my forehead.
Now and then a whisper would pass through the city: a former officer stumbled into poverty, a merchant turned his back on certain goods, a house of ill repute closed on account of shame. The world did not forget easily, but it forgave on terms that made sense for those who had suffered. Savannah of pride turned to ash; it is a small mercy.
And in the evening light, when the plum blossoms took the lamp's warmth like tiny, stubborn stars, Wolfgang would lean over the table and feed me a piece of pastry as if the world lengthened only for those small acts of tenderness. He was not perfect, but he kept his promise most days.
When I tell this tale, I think of the red plum in my hand and how it held a winter and the certainty that promises can be kept. I think of the square where Salvador was brought low under the sky. I think of Wolfgang's voice in the hall when he told ministers what he would not do.
"Promises have edges," I once told him in the hush of winter. "They cut. You must tend them."
He smiled, and I saw the same boy I had married and the same man who could sign laws in the night. "Then let me be cut," he said, "if it will keep you whole."
We grew old in a world that had been remade slowly, with seeds of law and with stubborn plums on winter branches. I kept my promise, and so did he.
The End
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