Mortal Heart (43 page)

“They offered their help weeks ago, and we have yet to take them up on it. Would they not be put to good use protecting the citizens of Rennes? It is their calling, you know, protecting the innocent.”

“Yes.” The duchess’s voice comes swift and firm, cutting off any possible argument. “Let us accept what generous aid these women offer us. You will arrange it?” she asks me.

“Of course, Your Grace.”

I grab my cloak and hurry from the palace. The French troops’ circle around the city is drawing tighter, but it has not closed yet. It is easy enough to go into the stables, saddle Fortuna, then slip out the postern gate without being noticed. It is harder to avoid the sentries at the Arduinnites’ encampment. Before I have spotted them, I hear a command to halt. I look up into a tree, where an Arduinnite I do not know is straddling the branch, her arrow aimed directly at me. “I have come to see Floris,” I say. “Please tell her that Annith requests an audience.”

She stares at me a moment, then nods her head. Another woman separates herself from her hiding place in the tree and disappears toward the camp. All I can do now is wait. Although it is hard with the sentry’s eyes on me and her arrow at the ready, I ignore her and turn my attention to the sparse woods around me. The night is cool rather than cold, with the breath of late springtime upon us at last. I let my mind flow once more over the words I must say to Floris and think how best to say them, for Arduinna’s followers have proven themselves a prickly bunch and I do not wish to risk raising old angers or feuds when I wish to bring the duchess some solutions.

That is my answer. The duchess, for it is she whom the Arduinnites have agreed to help. I will tell them of Isabeau’s small offering to them on behalf of her sister. Perhaps that will soften their hearts.

Besides, I must know the truth of what lies between Arduinna and Mortain so that I may better understand the man—the god—who has captured my heart. For it comes to me then that beyond all that is reasonable or sensible or even explicable, I am in love with Balthazaar.

It does not come like a thunderbolt from the sky, nor does it clout me alongside my head like a hammer, but seeps slowly into my consciousness, like a tendril of mist or a trickle of water from an underground stream.

But why? He is stubborn and close-mouthed and half drowning in despair.

And yet . . . something about him fits so comfortably against my own heart.

And though I wish I could have scraped together enough common sense to avoid falling in love with a bedamned god, apparently it does not matter to my heart one whit whether he is a hellequin or the god the hellequin serve—for other than a faint sense of awe and incredulity, my feelings for him have not changed.

There is a whisper of movement, then the sentry who was sent with my request appears before me. “Floris will see you,” she says, doing a poor job of keeping the surprise out of her voice. “You are to follow me.”

She leads me, still on Fortuna, from the trees toward the scattering of campfires and the small dark mounds that I recognize as tents. Someone at the nearest fire lifts a hand in a cheerful wave, and I recognize Tola. She rises to her feet and lopes toward me, still holding the joint of meat she was having for supper. “What brings Mortain’s own out of her mighty palace?” she asks, but there is no sting to her words, only a friendly teasing.

“I find I miss the smell of wood smoke and grew tired of eating off plates.”

She grins back at me, quick and easy. “By all means, join us.”

I look down at the haunch she is gnawing on and realize how very long it has been since I have eaten. “I am actually here to see Floris. I bring word from the duchess.”

The woman leading me stops suddenly, and I must rein in Fortuna so she does not trample her. “You may tie your horse up here,” she says, indicating a slender tree.

I dismount, then secure the reins to one of the branches. Tola takes one last bite of her dinner, then tosses the bone into the nearest campfire. “I’ll take her,” she says to the other woman, who shrugs, as if it makes no difference to her, then steps away.

I smile. “I have missed you.”

She grins, then leads the way to the largest of the tents, set up toward the back. When we reach it, she holds up her hand to stop me, then slips inside. Two seconds later she is back, holding the flap aside and motioning me in.

Inside the tent, Floris sits near the fire, flanked by two older women whom I vaguely recognize from my time with them.

“Annith,” she says softly, her face calm and serious.

Even though it is not their way, I curtsy before her, wanting to demonstrate the respect I have for her. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice and at such a late hour.

“The duchess has sent me to accept your offer of help. Inside the city, we are much beset by the very mercenaries she needs to defend us against the French. They grow bored and restless with the waiting. Even worse, with the French troops encircling the city, the mercenaries are demanding their pay, but her coffers are empty. They have taken to terrorizing the citizens of Rennes as their pastime, and I told her that protecting the innocent was the nature of your service to the goddess. Will you help?”

“But of course we will help.” Floris looks out toward the twinkling campfires of the French. “They will have the city fully surrounded in another day or two.”

“I know. There has been a steady flood of refugees ever since their banners were first spotted.”

“They’d best hurry, for once the French are in position, no one will be able to get in or out of the city.”

In the silence that follows, I wish to ask her if she will tell me her story of Arduinna and Mortain, to see if it is the same as the one Father Effram and Mortain have told me. But as closely as they hold their secrets, I dare not ask. Especially not in front of so many.

The following day, Duval, Dunois, and Beast spend their time poring over maps, trying to mark the French encampments. The duchess excuses herself and retires to her solar. Or tries to. She is exhausted but too ill at ease to be able to rest. In the end, she takes herself and her ladies off to the cathedral to pray beside Isabeau’s tomb.

I have little enough to do except worry about Ismae and miss Sybella, who awoke late while we were in the council meeting and has now taken herself to the convent of Brigantia to spend time with her sisters. Isabeau’s passing has made them all the more precious to her.

As I pace in front of the fireplace, my eyes fall on the black box, now splintered and broken, and I remember the arrow. I hurry over and dig through the wreckage. The moment my fingers touch the slim, dark wood, a deep knowing runs through my fingers. I pull the arrow out and carry it over to study it in the light from the window.

I think of the story both Father Effram and Mortain told me, how Death’s capturing Amourna was naught but a mistake, a wretched, human mistake, and how it was Arduinna whom he had loved all those centuries.

I think of the Arduinnites, who have refused to share their story with anyone and let us all assume it was because they did not wish to contradict either Dea Matrona or Amourna and prove either of them wrong. But of a certainty, pride goes hand in hand with ferocity. What if they simply could not bear for the world to know that Arduinna had been rejected for her younger, fairer sister? Floris as much as admitted that Mortain had played her goddess false.

The fragment of the arrow I hold is older than anything I have ever seen except for the standing stones and cromlechs that litter the countryside like discarded playthings of the gods. The wood is so hard as to almost be stone, and the arrowhead is of some metal—bronze, I think—gone black with age.

The implications send me reeling, for they are almost too incredible to believe. And yet . . .

And yet, why else would an ancient arrow be kept in the heart of the convent, concealed in a box with no means of opening it, as if Mortain himself were hoarding some small keepsake of his lost love?

What if I am holding the last of Arduinna’s arrows in the palm of my hand, a true relic of the gods?

My mind gallops over everything I have ever heard said of Arduinna and her arrows. That they fly straight and sure, that they never miss, and that they bring the pain of true love to those that they strike.

My pulse starts to race. What if we could take this relic, the ancient weapon, and find a way to use it to the duchess’s advantage?

As I turn the arrow over and over in my hand, an idea of how to not only avert war but turn this defeat into a triumph for our duchess begins to form. A triumph of not just politics, but the heart.

“W
ELL?
” I
ASK IMPATIENTLY
. “Do you think it could work?”

Father Effram studies the arrow, his hands tucked into his sleeves as if he is afraid to touch it. “It is
possible
. . .” He looks up at me, his eyes alight with excitement. “Probable, even, for as you say, why else would the convent of Mortain have held on to such a thing for so long?” He reaches out, his fingers hovering just above the arrow. “How very old it must be,” he muses.

“But what if I am wrong?” I clasp my hands together and begin to pace. “I do not wish to kill the king of France.”

“Don’t you?” He cocks his head, truly curious.

“No.”

He nods. “Well, then, I suppose there is one way to be certain. You will need to ask your abbess—”

“She does not know.”

“Well, someone should have the answers you seek. I admit, it is a most appealing idea.”

“I know the duchess does not wish all those deaths on her conscience,” I tell him. “And I know she is worried sick for all the countrymen who must die if we go to war. It is the only way I can think of to avert bloodshed.”

“Perhaps it is even worth the king’s life,” he suggests.

“No,” I say sharply. “It is not. Besides, the French regent would only seek retaliation, which would be swift and far more brutal than a simple war.”

“If a war can ever be called simple,” he murmurs. We stare at the arrow a moment longer.

“How do I ensure that if the king is struck with it, he will fall in love with the duchess rather than the one who has shot the arrow?”

His answer is swift and sure. “By putting the duchess’s blood on it.”

I look up at him in surprise, and he gives a sheepish shrug. “It is the only option that makes sense.”

I gently pick up the arrow, lay it on the length of velvet, and roll the fabric back up, my movements slow and reluctant. “I suppose it is time for me to have a talk with someone who knows.”

Because of my duties for the duchess, I am unable to slip away to the battlements for three days. The entire city is preparing for both a war and a siege, and the duchess’s presence and authority are in much demand, as she is forced to make hard decision after hard decision. How many of the hundreds of people fleeing the threat of war can she allow into the city before our resources and supplies are stretched so thin that we assure only our own deaths by starvation or our quick surrender? Which of the many foreign troops that are garrisoned in the city can be trusted not to abandon their posts? Or worse, switch sides, given that they have been paid only a small portion of their fees and have little hope of receiving anything more than sad little coins made of leather, essentially worthless? It is one long endless heartbreak for her, and I do not envy her the task.

“You returned.”

Balthazaar’s voice unfurls from the darkness in the corner, and I whirl around to face him. “I did not mean to stay away so long,” I say. “The duchess is beset by problems and we are busier than I would have imagined. She also misses Isabeau and hates being alone, and so she keeps me nearly constantly at her side.”

“And you, Annith? Have you been eager to see me? Or are you still discomfited by my presence?” He says the words lightly, but something in his voice draws my gaze up to meet his. That is when I see him—Balthazaar is there in the bleakness and sorrow that lurks in Death’s eyes, and I realize that whatever skin or body he wears, his heart spoke the truth to me, and my own heart responded. Even more telling, when I was most in pain, most in need of comfort, it was him I went to. Not Ismae, not Sybella, but him.

“I am growing accustomed to it all.” I will him to see that I am telling the truth. Something in my face must convince him, because the pain in his expression eases somewhat. He glances down at the parcel I carry.

“What is that?”

“It is something I must ask you about. I . . . I found it at the convent, before I left, and took it not understanding what it was.” I place the parcel on the flat surface of the crenellation and carefully unroll the velvet to reveal the arrow. I feel him stiffen beside me.

He stares at the arrow a long time, saying nothing. After a while, he reaches out and—almost tenderly—runs his finger along its surface. “It is mine, yes.”

“And is it also Arduinna’s?”

He looks at me. “Yes. It is the arrow she used to pierce my heart.”

“So that part of the tale is true, then?”

“That she pierced my heart? Yes. But it is also true that it was pierced with love for her, not her sister. Nor do the tales mention that my ­hellequin—my damned hellequin—went out and captured the wrong sister, believing they were doing me a great service, for they thought her lovelier than Arduinna, and more biddable besides. They did not realize it was her ferocity and defiance that drew me to her. I knew she was one of the few who might be strong enough to survive in my kingdom.”

“Those that follow Salonius always claimed it was a mistake.” Balthazaar snorts. “They should know, as I believe he had a hand in it.” He shakes his head as if still unable to believe it. “How could I reject Amourna and tell her it was not she I desired, but her sister? She was soft and lovely and she was much taken with the idea of being queen of the Underworld.”

“But you loved Arduinna.”

“Yes. And she thought I had played her false.”

“What happened to Amourna? For she seems to have faded from the world even more than the other gods.”