Revenge of the Rose (51 page)

Tables had been cleared away, hands had been washed in rose water, and now the count and cardinal stood on the edge of the mass of dancing, happy, tipsy, overdressed aristocrats. The two watched the hubbub with indifference. “It smells of sulfur in here,” Paul said in lieu of conversation.

“It is done,” Alphonse said. “Salvage what you can, as I am doing.”

“You are the most opportunistic man alive,” Paul answered in disgust. “I at least adjust to loyally serve the mother church. You look to nothing but your own coffers.”

“I am more honest about my ambition, if that is what you mean,” Alphonse said comfortably. “I see what good I can. It has become necessary for both our sakes to marry Willem to Imogen; at least now he has some semblance of being worthy of it. Let it go at that, nephew. You did not serve your church, but you’ll save your own skin.”

“It’s not consummated,” Paul argued. “There is time yet for Fate to be kind and bar Lienor from her husband’s bed before she even gets there.”

T
he
prison was inside the town’s westernmost gatehouse, watched tonight by a sullen sentry who felt his knightly background warranted a more dignified post. It was cold, dank, and dark in here, and it smelled horrible.

“I did not want to come,” Willem said bluntly, trying to make out the huddled figure of the half-naked, condemned man chained in the corner. “I am only here because my sister begged me to answer your plea. It distresses her greatly that you’re to die for this, even though you tried to ruin her life. That is what a sweet, kind, loving lady it is that you misused.” His voice was harsh with anger.

“You believed me, Willem. So readily and with such little proof. You are horrified at your own behavior as much as you are at mine.” Marcus’s voice was so tired it was calm.

Willem glanced at his sword by the threshold, two paces away but morally beyond reach. Much as Konrad might like to be spared Marcus’s execution, Willem was not the man to do it for him. “Why did you beg a private audience with me?”

Marcus sighed and began to move, then realized he couldn’t, and settled onto the clammy straw-strewn floor again. “Alphonse of Burgundy would marry you to Imogen,” he began. Willem said nothing. “I know Konrad approves such a match.” Willem still said nothing. “I must know if you will have her.”

“Not if she participated in this plot against my sister’s— “

“She knows nothing of it,” Marcus said quickly. “I am the sole villain. Given that, milord, will you have her?”

Willem’s eyes were finally beginning to adjust to the dark. Marcus in his posture of defeated exhaustion looked more at ease than Willem himself was feeling. “There is much sentiment in support of it,” he said at last.

Marcus took a slow, pained breath. There was no escaping destiny; he’d been a fool even to try. “Then I must tell you something. She loves me very deeply, more deeply than I have a right to be loved. Please forgive her for that. Please forgive her the trespass of having loved me. Please do not be harsh with her, if she is not what you believe the wife of Willem of Dole should be.”

Willem said nothing.

“What I am saying— “

“I understand what you’re saying,” Willem said brusquely. “I will value her according to her qualities and character, Marcus, nothing more and nothing less. If she is of good character— “

“A woman in love— “

“Being in love is no excuse for weakness. A woman in love is perfectly capable of choosing to act as though she weren’t,” Willem announced, walking out. “I have seen that firsthand.”

S
tanding
on the floor between the row of guards and the empress’s dais, the jongleur had played three Gace Brulée songs in a row in celebration of the beautiful and chaste young bride. Lienor beamed down at Jouglet as if they were back home in Dole. She was careful not to give the minstrel outright preference, and the minstrel kept a seemly distance from her at all times. But the spontaneous gleam in Lienor’s eye made her winsomeness toward the rest of the court seem almost forced. The two of them risked banter so playful and informal that Konrad finally intervened with warning looks, although he was enjoying the spectacle. “They won’t think me a sodomite after my behavior tonight,” Jouglet retorted quietly, with a wink.

“Yes,” Konrad agreed. “They’ll think you an adulterer and a traitor. Moderation, my friend. Parcel out your affection. Go flirt with someone else— or join the dance.” There was a new circle dance beginning.

Willem reentered the hall, yielding his sword to one of the archbishop’s guards. He smiled at Lienor across the room on the raised dais, and after a moment of searching, saw Jouglet in the swirl of dancers. He was about to step into the circle to join in beside her when he saw Alphonse signal to him from the side of the hall. With resignation he allowed the count to approach, knowing the intention was to sing his daughter Imogen’s praises. For a moment he hoped Jouglet would break out of the dance to intervene, but then he realized the minstrel would only add her voice to Alphonse’s reedy salesmanship.

Jouglet did meet his gaze a moment as she stomped cheerily by, and winked at him, which only soured his stomach. Of course he wanted his land back, and he understood why this marriage was the way to attain it— indeed, to attain far more than that. But as the moment of truth drew near something in him mourned and wanted to rebel against it. He felt like a pawn— a ridiculous feeling, for he alone benefited from the union, but still he felt like a pawn, and Jouglet was the chess master.

Said chess master was eyeing the room even as she danced, to see where all the pieces were at play. She allowed herself a moment to bask in one facet of her victory: Lienor could do this. She could be the consort to the most powerful man on earth, and enjoy it as if it were just another game that she might play to amuse herself. That, at least, was a simple and uncomplicated success.

Paul had attached himself to the edge of the royal dais and was spending the evening with his eyes glued on Lienor, as if he could will her to make a false move and forfeit her position before it was sanctified by physical surrender. As the dance brought Jouglet close, he felt Jouglet’s eyes on him and turned to look. Jouglet indulged in a brief triumphant smirk, and saw Paul’s grudging scowl of concession before the circle whirled her away again.

She looked over her shoulder to see how Alphonse was doing with Willem— and almost stopped dancing from astonishment.

Imogen was standing in the hall doorway, between the two men.

She could have been an apparition she was so pale, and as grey as her riding dress. The count put a hand on her shoulder and guided her to a chest along the wall, looking more like a groom leading an injured horse than a father tending to his daughter. She was travel worn, almost sickly, and for a moment Jouglet was irritated; it was already hard to warm Willem to this arrangement, it would be even harder if she was so pathetically wan and distressed.

The moment looked extremely awkward for all of them. Alphonse seemed to be pretending it was an innocent introduction when all of them knew otherwise. Jouglet craned her neck to watch as she danced, fascinated by the count’s utter gracelessness at playing matchmaker. Imogen was ashen, and Jouglet thought she might faint even resting on the chest. And Willem, bending awkwardly over her, was distinctly pink. How very annoying.
Must I do it all myself,
Jouglet thought. She had hoped at least to be spared from actually introducing her lover to his future wife. But she dropped her neighbors’ hands and slipped through the brocaded silks, spun wools, new cottons, the smells of rose water, wine, cinnamon, and unwashed men, and finally approached the trio.

Alphonse, it turned out, was even more uncouth than she’d assumed: what had looked like an awkward introduction was in fact the establishment of a betrothal. They had both agreed, hesitantly and unhappily, before Jouglet even arrived. She felt a pang of relief, grateful to have been spared that task after all.

“Let me be the first to congratulate you!” the minstrel said heartily, and a little breathless, avoiding Willem. She knelt down ostentatiously and kissed Imogen’s limp, clammy hand. She could feel Willem staring hard at the back of her head.

“I am not well,” Imogen said, so softly that Jouglet wondered if it were meant to be whispered to her ears alone. “I hope I may be excused. My father and my…betrothed will take the happy news to the emperor. And empress,” she added hurriedly, apologetically.

“Milady is overwhelmed,” Jouglet said in an understanding voice, loudly. “If the gentlemen will permit me to escort her to some fresh air and gentle conversation, surely I can put her mind at ease.”

Imogen looked up with eagerness, as if she read some secret promise in this proposal. Jouglet could not imagine what it was— which made her instantly curious to find out what it was supposed to be.

There was a small private chapel, the door of which was tucked into a hall corner by the stairs to the upper apartments. With Alphonse’s permission she steered the girl in this direction, skirting the dancing and the laughing. It was darker here in the thick arched doorway, and marginally quieter. “Willem is an exceptional fellow,” the minstrel promised Imogen. “And I’ve heard the women say he’s tender as a lamb.” This was not quite accurate, but she trusted he would make an exception for this pale terrified child. “If you are frightened of what it means to become a wife, I promise you, you could never choose a gentler partner than Willem of Dole to escort you to womanhood.”

“Yes I could,” Imogen said in her murmuring voice, almost under her breath. “And I did.” She bit her lip and looked down abruptly. Her hands, briefly, almost imperceptibly, moved to her abdomen before she forced them back to her sides.

It hit Jouglet so hard she almost lost her balance. She grabbed Imogen by the shoulders. “You stupid girl!” she hissed. “You stupid,
stupid
girl!”

Imogen finally broke down sobbing, relieved to have been confronted. “Please,” she managed to say coherently, through her tears. She grabbed the hands that were still grabbing her shoulders. “Please, Jouglet, if you have an ounce of sympathy in you, help me away to a nunnery. For the love of the saints, spare all of us the humiliation this would bring.” Jouglet did not speak, and so Imogen added, with defiance and a sniffle, “And I am not stupid, I knew what I was doing. When somebody genuinely deserves the one thing you have to give, the one thing everybody else is trying to control— you give it gladly.” She turned away, trying to compose herself.

Jouglet studied her, attempting to scowl but already feeling herself capitulating to the fates. “I understand that more than you know. But still— foolish child!”

“Will you help me?” Imogen studied the minstrel’s face, hopeful and afraid.

Finally Jouglet nodded grimly. “What choice do I have?” she said, irritably. “Wretch. Do you have any money with you?”

“I have nothing,” Imogen said, with an uncomplaining sob. “I rode out from Oricourt in a panic when I realized. I used post horses, but the last one is exhausted. I have two servants with me— they’ll say nothing.”

“They can’t come with us,” Jouglet said. “And I’ll have to get you money somehow. And apparently a horse.” She made a sound of profound aggravation. “Listen then. When the bells ring compline, go to the southern gate of town. Do not be seen by anyone. I’ll borrow a hackney from the archbishop’s stable, somehow. Be ready to jump up behind me. There is a cloister half a day’s ride south of here— you should have just gone there and not come here making things more complicated than they already are.”

“I did not know the father of my child was condemned to hang at dawn,” Imogen said in a soft, choked voice. “I thought I would arrive here and you, his friend Jouglet, would mend this. He wrote to me saying that you would be our witness and our help.”

“By the time the bells ring compline,” Jouglet said irritably.

Compline. Hardly enough time. She hurried at once out through the palace gates, through the dancing peasants and merchants in the torchlit market square, through narrow streets bustling with unprecedented nightlife and celebratory gossiping, to the southern gate. She had with her the largest flagon of wine that she could spirit away under the garish violet-opalescent-and-metallic robe Konrad had given his minstrel to celebrate the day. She cursed quietly almost the entire way because she knew that despite herself she was doing the right thing.

Her errand at the southern gate was accomplished in no time at all. The next step briefly stymied her, until she remembered that Marcus, like his master, brought his coffers with him when he traveled. She informed the knight guarding the royal train that His Majesty was donating Marcus’s treasury to a nunnery some ten miles south, and even coaxed the man’s assistance to carry two bulging saddlebags full of coins down to the archbishop’s stable. The archbishop’s night groom was easily convinced that she was the ecstatic new owner of the doomed steward’s prized Arabian mare and was taking immediate possession of it. Trying to keep her breathing calm, she led the horse out the gates, through the drunken revelers, and down the street to the alley behind the western gatehouse in which the prisoner sat.

This part would be so much harder than any scheming.

She entered the porthouse with a nod to the guard, and then signaled toward the door to the cell, officiously proclaiming, “Here on king’s business.” In the darkness, Marcus recognized the voice and groaned.

“How’s the festivities?” The guard resented being on the outside of court activity, and Jouglet could read it in his voice. She brightened— this might be easier than she’d anticipated.

“Quite lively. Would you like to go over for a few moments, have a dance or two? I can stand deputy for you awhile, if you’ll just leave me a dagger in case I need to defend myself.”

He was tempted. “I’m not supposed to do that,” he began, sounding unconvinced.