The Warrior and Calissande

Chapter 17: I Was Wrong

After breakfast, Carrick ordered a bath for me, and I gratefully soaked my aching body in the waters fragrant with healing oils and salts. Feeling much refreshed, I spent the morning with my mother and Felicity walking about the grounds, feeling some optimism about my life for the first time in more than a year.

"Your lord husband is much infatuated with you, Cali," my mother said, bouncing Felicity lightly in her arms. "Quite a different man than the one who visited us after you fled from him."

Feeling the blush overtake my cheeks, I nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps he is."

My mother stopped and turned to me. "Your father and I were most distraught when he told us of the camaspoza tradition. I wish you to know that had we known such a tradition existed, we would have spoken to him about it before he married you. We could not go against our kings' wishes, daughter, in making a marital alliance between the kingdoms, but we would have tried to talk to Lord Carrington about it, to sway him from such a deplorable way of life."

"How were we to know, Mother? It is not as if such things are openly discussed. I assumed he shared our way of married life, and he assumed I shared his way. It was a true tragedy of mistaken assumptions since neither of us knew that not everyone shared our way of life."

My mother cocked her head at me, blinking at me like a curious cat. "And how goes it between you two, now, Calissande? I assume from the way you were walking this morning that it goes well?"

"Mother!" I was shocked, not that she would bring up such an intimate, delicate topic, but that she had seen through my ruse.

"I have also used the twisted ankle excuse, so you need not act as if it were brand new," my mother sniffed at me.

Choosing to ignore that line of thought, I turned the conversation to something that I had been wondering about ever since Carrick had told me that he had gone to visit my parents while I had been busily avoiding him on my journeys.

"Tell me about his visit to you and father."

We resumed walking, Felicity's head dropping sleepily onto my mother's chest, as my mother related the visit to me. 

"He was a much different warrior than the one we had known in the month prior to your wedding. Though he was still a bold man, he was...hurting, Calissande, if I had to find a word to describe him. The warrior was a man whose entire approach to married life had been overturned by a mere slip of a girl. He was questioning everything he had always taken for granted. Your husband spoke to both your father and me together and explained his country's tradition and neither your father nor I could hide our abhorrence for such a thing. He held nothing back from us and seemed at quite a loss for what he could do to find you and convince you to come back home. He was also very clear that he would no longer have a camaspoza and had sent her back to the training center." 

My mother gave a slight shudder, and I could understand her reaction. I had known about it much longer and still shuddered when I thought about the tradition.

"Your father was most angry and had several choice sentiments to share with Lord Carrington. I know for several days, they were on the training field together and your father said that Lord Carrington was allowing his guilt to prevent his sword arm from working as well as it could when your father sparred with him on the field."

A smile touched my lips. "Father tried to beat him into the dirt."

"Lord Carrington allowed it as his punishment for having offended you and hurting you so badly. Your father is a notable warrior still, Calissande, but we both know he is no match for your warrior. Any hurt your father inflicted was by Lord Carrington's unspoken permission."