The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1410: Ashlynn’s Gilded Cage (Part One)

"Thank you, everyone, for coming," Jocelynn said. Her voice was rougher than she would have liked, worn thin by a mourning filled with weeping, but it carried well enough in the quiet of the chapel.

"I know this isn’t how we’d do things at home," she said. "Or how things are done in Lothian March, either. None of this is how it should be," she said, her voice catching in her throat. For a moment, she wished she had a cup of wine to drink from, but she forced herself to keep going without one. It wasn’t time for dinking yet. "We’re all a long way from home, and we’ll have to make do."

She paused, resting her hand on the chest beside her.

"Most of you knew my sister," she continued, drawing strength from the collection of treasures in the chest. "Some of you served her before she left Blackwell, and some of you only knew her by reputation. But all of you came here because you’re part of our family, and when we lose someone, when a crew loses a shipmate, we all grieve together."

"I’ve set out a bit of breakfast for everyone," she said as she gestured to the servings of bread, cheese, nuts, and dried fruit arranged along the pews. "It’s not much, but I want you to eat with us this morning." She touched the arrangement on the altar beside the chest. "Ashlynn’s share is already here."

"At home, Master Ivar would cook up anything we wanted for breakfast," Jocelynn continued quietly as tears began to fill her eyes, carrying memories of days gone by. "My favorite was crab, mixed with egg and cheese. Ash always asked for shrimp in corn porridge. But this," she said, tapping lightly beside the simple meal on the altar. "This was her favorite thing to have when she watched the sunrise over Blackwell Bay."

A few soft, knowing laughs rippled through the chapel from those who remembered Master Ivar’s cooking, and a handful of people rubbed their bellies wistfully, dreaming of tastes of home they’d been missing for half a year since following Lady Jocelynn to Lothian March.

"When we were girls," Jocelynn continued, her voice growing steadier as she gained momentum. "Ash and I used to sneak out of the manor before dawn to watch the ships set sail on the morning tide."

"I think I was six or seven the first time she showed me the old gate at the back of the manor, the one where they used to load the storerooms before grandfather added the south tower," she said.

"It was so exciting, doing something we weren’t supposed to," Jocelynn continued wistfully. "She told me to be extra quiet, because the bakers and the kitchen staff would be up soon, and if we woke them early, we’d get in trouble."

"Before we left, we snuck into the kitchen pantry to steal whatever we could find on the way out. Bread, cheese, whatever was lying about," she said as her fingers twitched unconsciously toward the few remaining dried cherries on the altar, as if to demonstrate her willingness to take something that shouldn’t be hers.

"Once, she managed to get her hands on an entire round of Master Ivar’s best cheese," Jocelynn confessed. "We sat on the cliffs above the harbor, eating the whole thing while the fleet sailed out beneath us."

She smiled, and for a moment, the smile was real, and pure, radiant as it had ever been. The brittle mask she’d been wearing all morning fell away, leaving something warm and unguarded that belonged to the girl she’d been before everything went wrong in its place.

"Master Ivar was furious," she said, remembering the cook’s booming voice as he shouted for the guilty party to turn themselves in. "He accused the kitchen boys of eating it, and they spent the whole day scrubbing pots as punishment. When Ash found out that someone else was blamed for it, she felt so guilty that she confessed right away."

"Mother took her to the market the next morning and made her spend her pocket money buying treats to make it up to the poor boys who had to scrub pots as punishment, and a new round of fine cheese too," Jocelynn said, wondering if her sister had considered it a punishment or not. After all, she got a rare trip to the market out of the incident.

"I asked Ash if I should confess too," Jocelynn said, shaking her head gently as she remembered how scared she’d been about getting in real trouble... And how unwilling she’d been to lose what little pocket money she had when she was so young. "But she told me that it was her idea to sneak out and that a big sister had to be responsible when she got her little sister in trouble," she explained.

A few people sitting in the pews laughed, doubtless imagining the trouble they got into with their own siblings, and once they did, others joined in until a faint chuckle spread through the entire chapel, and even the most stoic of Templars found themselves smiling at the antics of the young Blackwell sisters.

"She never told on me," Jocelynn added, more quietly. "Not once."

The laughter faded into a silence that was heavier than before, because everyone in the room understood that the words carried more weight than a stolen cheese could account for. Fresh tears rolled down Jocelynn’s cheeks, and it took her a moment of slow, steady breathing before she could wipe them away, gathering up the strength to tell the part of the story that no one had heard before, or, as much of it as she could.

Jocelynn let the silence hold for a moment before she continued. She could feel the question forming in some of their minds, especially the ones who had only known Ashlynn by reputation and the women in the back rows who hadn’t known her at all.

The question of why the eldest daughter of Count Blackwell had needed to sneak out of her own home just to watch the sunrise when any of the ladies in the back row could easily have commanded half a dozen servants to prepare a morning picnic for them, with knights and a squad of soldiers to act as chaperones if they needed to.

Just what was it about Lady Ashlynn that prompted her to sneak out before dawn with no one to accompany her but a sister who was four years younger than she was?