To Serve a King (45 page)

François stared down at the fire as if he ruminated upon all the regrets of his life in the orange and blue flames. A log popped, and it seemed to break the hypnotic hold of the blaze. With a slump of
his shoulders, he turned to the west end of the room, toward the door to his privy chamber and the two guards flanking it.

With fists balled in frustration, Geneviève lingered no longer, and made for the door, stamping her feet as if in a tantrum. Time was running out; the emperor would be in residence for another few days at most; if she did not make her move, all would be lost. She had t—

“I would take a turn about the castle before I retire.”

Geneviève skidded to a halt at the king’s words.

She changed direction, scurrying to her chair, picking up her abandoned tankard and tossing back a gulp as though she couldn’t continue without one last drink.

“As you wish, Your Highness.” The large halberdier gave a clipped bow of his head and took a step forward.

The king strolled away, turning back to the guard with a raised hand. “Your companionship is not required. I’m sure I am safe within the corridors outside my room.”

“But, Your Hi—”

“I would accompany you,
Majesté
.” Geneviève’s voice squeaked with audacity and fear, but she could not let this moment pass. A sign could not be more apparent had it been chiseled in stone and laid at her feet. She cleared her throat and dropped into a deep curtsy. “Though I cannot offer protection, I can offer companionship. If I may be so honored.”

The king smiled with pleased paternal charm. “Nothing would please me more.” François beamed. “But are you not as fatigued as all my other courtiers?”

“No, Your Highness. I believe I took to bed much earlier than most.”

François narrowed his eyes, but the squint did not fail to conceal the keen, amused gleam.

“Then if you will not be bored by such older company”—the king bowed to her as he would to his queen, and held out his
hand—“I would be honored to take a turn with you, mademoiselle.”

Geneviève smiled despite them both; it was hard to deny his charm, though there was nothing licentious about it. He had played the lothario long after his body could keep up with his lust, but with her, his intentions had always been chaste. She had been foolish to think it could ever be otherwise.

“I find your company quite inspiring, Your Highness,” she said with blatant candor. “You are as well-read a man as I have ever met and I would discuss great works with you whenever able.”

With her hand upon his, the king of France led Geneviève out into the corridor and turned her toward the gallery, no doubt an oft-trod path.

“I have recently finished
The Tales of Priam and Hector,
in the
Iliad,
and would ask your opinion of it,” Geneviève said, her voice slithering up to the top of the vaulted stone-and-beam ceiling of the silent castle, the vibrato growing as the words echoed away from her. Geneviève took her hand from his; she could not let him feel the quaking that shook it, nor the dagger that lay up her sleeve.

She had him alone.

“You read Homer?” François asked with pleasant astonishment as they turned onto the
galerie
. The long golden arcade stretched out before them like the never-ending road to hell; it glittered with beauty and elegance, silent and abandoned by any other living soul.

He shook his head as he sniffed. “I am most impressed, young lady. Did your father teach you this love of literature?”

Geneviève stumbled upon her skirt. The king’s quick arm movement saved her from sprawling upon the parquet floor. She gathered her composure, reclaiming her arm from his grasp. He could not have asked a more virulent question.

“My parents died when I was very young.” Geneviève spewed the venomous words with a jagged whisper.

François stopped and turned. “I am so very sorry, Geneviève.” His wide mouth drooped; his large Adam’s apple bobbed a swallow. His sentiment was no polite obligation, but undeniable compassion.

Geneviève turned from it.

“I, too, lost my father when I was very young, but I had my mother for many, many years. She was a blessing in my life.” He reached out a large hand and took Geneviève gently by the shoulder, giving it a benevolent squeeze. “No child should be without a parent.”

Geneviève avoided his gaze, unable to respond. His words mocked her, this man who wore the stain of her parents’ blood, and yet his empathy touched her.

She took herself from his grasp and recommenced their stroll down the vacant hall, forcing her thoughts to the task at hand. In the large, barren passageway, her deed would go unnoticed for many long minutes, more than enough to make her escape via the far pavilion’s stairway, and out into the night.

“How did they die?” he asked.

Her gaze burned holes onto his face, and she longed to cry out
You! You killed them!
but she could not, not without revealing the monster trapped within her, a fiend about to pounce.

The king pulled back, stung by her rancorous glower. “Perhaps I have overstepped my bounds. Pray forgive me.”

But Geneviève would not allow his umbrage to pass without counter. He would know the truth, in a sense, if for a short time.

“They died upon the great golden field, when you met with the English king. There was a terrible fire and in it they perished.”

François’s eyes bulged and his steps faltered.

Geneviève thought what a great thespian he was. She gave her right arm a discreet shimmy and the tip of the dagger inched lower
down her arm, slipping into her waiting cupped fingers, edge sharp against the soft skin.

“
Sacrebleu,
you astound me, mam’selle.” He stood below the large center chandelier, one hand to his head, as if pained. “I remember that night so well. We saw the blaze far across the valley from our camp. It was as if the fi—”

Geneviève’s hand flashed out like the stinging venomous tongue of a snake, and her fingers dug sharply into the king’s velvet-covered bicep. So abrupt, so intent was the clutch, that the king looked indignantly down at the white-knuckled fingers biting him.

“Across the valley? You … you
saw
the … the fire from
across
the valley?” Geneviève stumbled on her words, unable to process her thoughts fast enough.

François’s gaze flashed from her hand to her face, brows knitted thunderously across his wide forehead. “
Oui
. It was so near King Henry’s structure, we feared for his safety.”

She didn’t release her unpardonable breach of propriety on his royal person; she could not. “King Henry’s encampment? You say the fire was at the English camp? Are you sure?”

“Yes, quite sure,” he sniped. “I may be old, my dear, but I have not yet become completely senile. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Monty and I, Chabot as well, as I recall, dressed in haste, and with a large contingent of guards set off to assure Henry’s safety. What we found …” All malice evaporated. François’s large head fell upon his chest; his gaze fell away and filled with sadness. “The smells, the chaos …”

Geneviève dropped her hold upon him, tumbling backward, crashing against the wall behind her. He spoke the truth; it lay bare upon his naked expression, resounded in the grief of his words. He would have no cause to lie to her, not to Geneviève Gravois. But how could it be? She had been told, time and time again, that the fire had been in the French camp, that she and her family were there, that her French father had been a member of
the king’s envoy, that the fire had been set by this man’s orders. Yet two truths of the same event could not exist.

“Oh,
mon Dieu
.” The king rushed forward, grabbed her by the arms, and kept her from falling. “What have I done? How callous I have been to speak of it thus. I did not think. I am sorry. I became lost in the horrific memories, but they can be nothing compared to your own.”

But Geneviève did not hear him, did not care one whit for his apology. His words had torn her world asunder, had thrown the truth of her life—of her very existence—upon a blazing fire.

The words of her aunt screamed in her head and she threw her hands upon her ears, but she could not block the sound out.

He’s a liar and a murderer. Never forget what he has done to you. Never forget who he is
. And yet Geneviève could not deny all she had learned for herself about this man, how open his broken heart had become. Did a fissure await the sharp, cold tip of her dagger?

“Henry did all he could for his people. He tended to the wounded himself. I saw it with my own eyes.”

Henry, King Henry, her Henry. He had done so much for her, but had it really been for her? The bud of suspicion broke ground, the voices screamed, but she knew not which to listen to. The time had come to listen to her voice alone.

“You must not think of it anymore.” François whispered to her as he would a frightened child. With great tenderness, the powerful man pulled her into his embrace.

It was the perfect opportunity, his nearness the perfect opening. Before her jumbled thoughts could delay her any longer, Gene-viève slipped the hard, cold handle of the dagger down into her palm, the glinting blade protruding and ready to strike as she lay her head against the wide, welcoming chest, as his arms held her tight, as his hands rubbed her back with slow, soothing gestures. He mumbled words of sympathetic consolation in her ear.

She half listened as she took a step backward and created space between them, as she raised her hand and the dagger. She would
do this; she could do this. The darkness that had always lived within, urged her on, as if its own existence depended on it.

And it did. Geneviève knew it did. Knew that if she killed this man now, it would not rid her of her hate, but bind her to it eternally. It would devour her whole.

“I know your sorrow for my own. You have lost your parents and I my dear children,” he crooned in her ear, raw emotion in his voice, soothing them both. “But God has seen to bring us together, perhaps for that very reason. He would give me back a child, and … and you a parent.”

He grew shy and timid, craning his neck to look down at her. This man who had conquered kingdoms lay vulnerable to her in a way no one had ever been.

“Perhaps, if you would let me, if your heart could allow … I could be your father? Mayhap you will let me love you, as a father?”

The words thrust a sword up into the darkness, and the sharp foil cut the soft underbelly of the dragon, slaying it once and for all.

In her mind’s eye, two kings stood side by side; each wore only the clothes she herself had seen them don. In that instant, she knew which was true.

Geneviève gripped the weapon in her cold hand, blood rushing from her fingers, limb shaking with the fierce grip … and shoved the blade back up into her sleeve.

Relief flooded her like a crashing wave. She sagged against the king, tears allowed at last to fall, shoulders quivering.

The king’s jaw fell; he did not expect such a reaction, especially from her. He held her tighter, with not a word, rocking her in his arms until the silent sobbing passed into sniffling.

“I can only hope those are tears of joy,” he said as the emotion ebbed, “or I would throw myself upon my sword in mortification.”

She laughed through her tears then, laughed at the irony of his words and the comical, embarrassed expression upon his face. She
could not tell him of the long journey that had brought her to this place, but she would tell him of what lay in her heart—the truth of it.

Geneviève stepped back so he could see her as she spoke.

“All my life I have longed for a father, lived each day as if I could create one. I have longed for nothing as I have longed for a place to belong.” Geneviève listened to her revelation, hearing it as he did. “And here I find both, where I least expected. I am most grateful to God and to you. Your love is the greatest gift I have ever received.” She dropped herself into the deepest curtsy, her quivering legs bent until her knees touched the ground.

King François’s sharp chin quivered and his eyes shined bright. He held his hand out without a word, for there was none worthy of this moment. Both so intent within the moment, neither saw or heard the man as he slipped from the edge of the corridor. Gene-viève took the king’s hand, gladly, eagerly, accepting the fate it offered. In this fulfilled, exhausted silence, they returned together to the end of the gallery, to the threshold of his door.

François faced her. “I feel as if I shall sleep deeper and sweeter than I have in a very long while.”

Geneviève sniffed a laugh. “None of nightmare’s ghouls will bother either of us this night, Your Majesty.”

He looked old and worn, and yet there was a light in his eyes that had not been there an hour ago, a light she herself had lit.

He reached up with a large, clumsy hand and wiped one last tear from her cheek. “Sleep well,
ma
Geneviève.
Ma fille
.”

33

Men are always wicked at bottom

unless they are made good by some compulsion.

—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)

H
ow often had she walked these corridors late at night, shadows as her sole companions? No more light illuminated the passageway than on any other night, and yet the umber was not so deep and the only shadow was her own. Geneviève had made her choice,
her
choice, and she recognized this moment as the one where her life began. She turned a corner, making her way to her chamber with a craving for her pillow and a sense of belonging she had never felt, her smile a sweet kiss upon her tear-swollen face.