The Rose Bride (15 page)

“Bien sŭr,”
the priest replied. “Of course. I have cast the runes and victory is foretold.”

“That is well,” Monsieur Sabot said, stepping in. He gestured to the women. “His Majesty commends to you Madame Marchand and her stepdaughter, Mademoiselle Rose Marchand. They require safe harbor.”

“We are at your command, Your Majesty,” the priest said to Jean-Marc. “We’ll provide food and rooms here in the temple.”

“Merci,”
the king said. Though he was loathe to go, he had a battle to win and a stepsister to rescue. “Sabot, you’re with me:”

Monsieur Sabot bowed. ‘As you wish, Your Majesty:

Jean-Marc regarded the lovely woman, tearstained and distraught. Then a breeze whispered against his ear, “Marry her.”

Startled, he frowned at the chief priest and said, “Did you speak?”

“Non
, Your Majesty,” the man replied with a bow. He looked a trifle confused. “I only said that we are yours to command.”

“Marry
her.
Immediately.”

The king blinked. He looked left and right. Then up at the statue of Zeus, his god. Zeus’s features remained impassive. Serene and wise. And yet . . . had the lips moved? Was the god directing this? Artemis had promised him that he would love again. And
then, in the most amazing of coincidences, Reginer Marchand’s own half sister was the twin of Lucienne, and she and her brother had met without realizing who each other was. Surely, the divine was at work. Surely, he should listen and obey.

And yet it was so sudden and so strange . . . he wondered at such haste.

“It is the next step in my Best Beloved’s journey,”
the voice insisted. “You
must play your part.”

And who could say if the breeze spoke of Desirée or the missing daughter of Laurent and Celestine? Who could know if it was the messenger of Artemis who urged Jean-Marc to marry the imposter? Or was it an ally of the shadows who spoke for Desirée?

Could it possibly have been both? Do journeys sometimes weave between the darkness and the light?

Listening in either case, Jean-Marc turned to her and said, “Madame, you know me not at all. But I feel that I know you. And I have just heard my god’s voice telling me that we are to marry at once:”

The three priests caught their breath. It was not in the nature of Father Zeus to speak directly to anyone save those who had dedicated their lives to his service. It was unheard of that He would speak to anyone else, not even a king.

“Sire, we’re in battle,” the chief priest protested hesitantly. “A wedding at such a time would be unseemly:”

“It must be now,” Jean-Marc insisted. “Unless the Rose Bride objects,”

Despite her anguish, the lady’s face glowed with
light, like the luminous spirit he had met in the forest.

With a tremulous smile, she cupped her unsteady hand against his cheek. “I must confess Your Majesty, that when you kissed me, I felt in my heart that we are married already or that we had been before:’ Her voice caught. “I know not how. It makes no sense. . . .”

His chest swelled. His eyes teared. He cupped her hand with his own.

“But Your Majesty, you have been in battle and you are tainted with death,” the priest objected.

“Then purify me. You are my priest, but I am your king.”

“Do as he says:” Monsieur Sabot interjected. He gazed at the pair, pleased and astonished, and over at the stepmother, whose face betrayed a hundred emotions—joy for her stepdaughter, terror for Desiree.

The priests slid disapproving glances at each other. Then the chief priest said, “As you wish, sire. You are our liege:”

Jean-Marc was taken away. His shoulder was stitched up and he was given a ritual bath, perfumed, and dressed in the only fresh clothing they had, which was a white toga bordered in gold. They wrapped his feet in leather sandals. The two lesser priests lit candles and incense, and chanted the same hymn that the boys’ choir had sung for Lucienne, bidding her come to her bridegroom.

As the moon beamed down and the sounds of dying men and horses rattled the temple, the rite was performed according to the older ways. The pair’s hands were bound together, their wrists slashed so that their blood mingled into a large golden cup.

Jean-Marc gazed at the Rose Bride as she clenched her teeth and made her hand into a fist so that she would bleed harder, whispering, “I want my blood in your veins. I want to carry your son.”

For a moment, he was thrown back to the moment of his wife’s death, and along with her, the death of his son. He thought, What am
I doing? What have I done?

Then the moment passed and Jean-Marc clenched her bloody fingers with his own. He said, “If the god wills it, your son will be a king:”

“Your Majesty, I beg of you,” the chief priest murmured, “speak no more for the god. Such is not our way:”

Jean-Marc bit off his sharp retort. He knew the priest was right. It was simply that he was filled with such deep wonderment and love that he felt almost as if he had been bewitched.

“You are one,” the chief priest announced.

The woman sank into Jean-Marc’s arms and kissed him full on the lips. His heart sang. Then he felt a deep pain in the center of his heart, perhaps the thorn that came from loving the Rose Bride. He told his soul that this was a miraculous moment, as the
gods returned his true love to him. But grief had been his companion for so long that it clung to him, afraid to leave.

“I must to the battle now,” he told her. He turned to Monsieur Sabot. “Call for my squire to fetch my armor.” He turned to his bride. “Give me a purple rose from your dress for a favor,” he said.

She burst into fresh tears as she tore a rosette from the gown. As she held it out to him, her legs gave way and she would have fallen, if her stepmother hadn’t grabbed her arm.

“Do not die,” she begged him. “Do not:”

“It will be as the gods will,” the chief priest said quickly.

“As you say,” Jean-Marc replied.

As the king strode in full armor into the castle courtyard, the sky lit up with fire and moonlight. The purple rosette on his breastplate looked black. His peacocks and monkeys shrieked in concert with the screams of wounded and dying men. A soldier with a jagged cut across his face bobbed a bow as he ran past the king, and Jean-Marc unceremoniously grabbed his arm.

“How do we fare?” he asked.

The man’s cheeks were coated with blood and grime. The cut was deep, and would leave a large scar. He swallowed hard and shook his head.

“Not well, Your Majesty.”

“The tide will turn now,” Jean-Marc promised the
man. “Go and tell the others that the king says so.”

The exhausted man’s eyes glimmered with hope. Jean-Marc gave him an encouraging nod. The man started to nod back, but his hope had not become as strong as faith. He bowed and ran back toward the courtyard.

Jean-Marc turned his head in the direction of the royal burial vault, thinking of Lucienne and their child in her coffin and of her twin in the temple of Zeus.

Hoofbeats thundered toward him. His warhorse, La Morte, galloped toward him, danced sideways, and chuffed at his master. He was still saddled.

Jean-Marc put his foot in the stirrup and hoisted himself onto the massive stallion’s back. He took up the reins and clicked his teeth. The horse reared high, his front hooves kissing the hem of the moon as it hung in the sky.

He raced past the domes and spires of the castle, beyond the cultivated gardens, along the rectangular reflecting pool to the clearing, where the trio of stone deer grazed at the sopping grass. Behind them, the marble statue of Artemis, protectoress of women, stood with her arrow notched against her bow. Lucienne herself had erected the statue when he had brought the devotion of Artemis to the ladies in the court.

“My lady,” Jean-Marc said. He trembled as he dismounted. “I heard your message and I obeyed. I fear that my own god will punish me for attending to you.
Therefore, I put my trust in you, Artemis, patron of women. My queen died and yet she lives. Protect her now Let me kill my enemy.”

The pipes and drums of the Pretender drew near. The ground shook. Jean-Marc got to his feet and turned around.

There, on the rise beyond the trees, the vast hordes of the Pretender’s army raced for the castle. There were thousands of them, perhaps tens of thousands. The kings soldiers poured out of the castle yard, meeting the Pretender on the field. The enemy moved like snakes, sure and bold; they marched like men who loved their leader and knew their cause was just.

Clouds broke apart and the heavy full moon shone down on the battlefield. Jean-Marc held his breath, waiting for the flocks of blackbirds. But they did not come. Instead, a falling star arched across the sky. Then another and another: Artemis’ arrows, shot from heaven by the goddess’s own hand.

The stars sparkled against the helmet of a single armored warrior on a pure white horse. It held a lance pointed straight up to the heavens. Moonlight surrounded it in a white-blue circle.

For a moment, Jean-Marc thought the warrior was the luminous being he had seen in the forest. Then a pennant attached to the lance flapped in the night breeze. It was emblazoned with a P.

The Pretender himself.

He whistled for La Morte. The horse cantered
over to him. Jean-Marc climbed back on, put his heels to the stallion’s flanks, and rode forward to head up his army. He pushed La Morte to a full gallop. He heard the men screaming their battle cries; the drums pulsing, the pipes shrieking.

Moonlight bathed him as he broke from the trees. His attention was fixed on the Pretender. His enemy lowered his lance and pointed it directly at Jean-Marc. Heads turned—a hundred, a thousand.

“Vive le Rai Jean-Marc!”
the army bellowed.
“Jean-Marc
là
bas!”
the other side shouted.

The Pretender rode straight for him. Arrows flew from Jean-Marc’s archers, and missed. Then his foot soldiers jabbed at the Pretender’s horse with spears and pikes, and missed.

The knights came at him with swords, maces, and lances . . . and missed.

The Pretender barreled through the lines as if they were phantoms unable to touch him.

He made for Jean-Marc. The king stood his ground.

Then the moon shifted and the two adversaries glowed like gods. The Pretender shimmered like one of Artemis’s celestial messengers, and Jean-Marc did, as well.

Awestruck, the drummers left off first, followed by the pipers. As the fighters saw their two leaders transformed by light, their battle broke of One of the king’s men, brandishing an ax, stepped away from his fallen foe and allowed him to get to his feet.
Across the muddy field of battle, weapons clanked as they were lowered. Horses whinnied and pawed the ground, confused and eager to get back into the fray.

King and usurper faced each other alone on the field of honor.

No one spoke. No one moved.

As the two regarded each other, an arrow whizzed past Jean-Marc’s ear and slammed into the neck piece of the Pretender’s helmet. The force shattered it. Blood spurted from his neck like a fountain.

The Pretender dropped from his horse with a crash.

A collective gasp of dismay rose from the Pretender’s men.

No one moved on the entire field of battle as shock rippled through the attack forces. This was the Pretender’s cause, his battle. Now he would never be king.

Jean-Marc galloped to the fallen knight. La Morte’s mighty hoofbeats were the heartbeats of every man who watched. Aware of the excruciating tension, which could revert to chaos at any moment, the king dismounted. Goose bumps rippled over his flesh as he knelt over the Pretender and took off his helmet.

Jean-Marc had heard the rumor that the Pretender looked exactly like his father, Henri III. But the man didn’t look a thing like Jean-Marc’s father or his first queen, Isabelle. His eyes were blue, his mouth thin and scarred. He had pockmarks on
his cheeks and forehead. Jean-Marc wondered if he’d arranged for someone who more closely resembled his father to show himself to the people in his name.

And the arrow in his neck was the stone arrow of the statue of Artemis.

The Pretender blinked once. His life’s blood gushed from the hole like a fountain, and Jean-Marc started to press his fingertips against it to staunch the flow.

The Pretender’s blue eyes turned toward him. Jean-Marc kept his hand at his side. This man was his enemy. He had challenged the legitimate line of the kings of the Land Beyond. He deserved to die. The goddess herself had decreed it.

And who are you mortal man, to interpret the words of the gods?

Jean-Marc staunched the flow, his gauntlet warming with the man’s blood. He felt the pulse of the Pretender’s heart, wondered who he had really been and if he had had a claim.

But it was too late to save him. The man gasped once and then he died.

Jean-Marc stood.

His warriors cheered and raised their spears, clashed their swords against their shields. Wave upon wave of sound undulated across the battlefield. Horses reared and whinnied; knights pranced them in circles.

The Pretender’s men broke into a rage. Faces contorted with fury and anger, they charged the king’s own. Cheated by a woman’s god! They owed Artemis no
loyalty, no love! And her favorite would not have any.

The two sides roared together, clashed, engaged. A phalanx of knights surrounded Jean-Marc in a protective circle as he hoisted his vanquished enemy from the ground and carried him toward his horse. Two of the knights dismounted and helped him, draping the Pretender’s body facedown over La Morte’s saddle. Jean-Marc mounted La Morte and took the reins of the other horse, leading him toward the castle courtyard.

He was a warrior, but this night he would turn his back on the battlefield. The Pretender’s cause was lost. Perhaps it was the fate of his followers to lose their lives in battle, which was why they resumed their fight. The Pretender’s men would fight in vain and die in vain. Jean-Marc knew that his men would carry the day. The goddess had spoken.

And now, to his bride and her family. To rescue her sister and feast the events of this night.