It was gray and cold when she rode into the courtyard of the castle at Bourges, as though her own ill-will could hold summer in abeyance. One of her equerries dismounted to hand her out of the saddle, and she crossed the courtyard, passed the hall, came to the stair, noted the very proper number of guards and not a single servant who was loyal to the duke. She changed them every few months in order to be sure.
Bourges was not comfortless, exactly. She knew better than to make Orléans a figure of pity. He had his own clothes, and they were clean. He had a book or two, and a chessboard, and his guards were allowed to play cards with him. To gamble, if he liked; perhaps he’d get bored enough to gamble away the rest of his fortune. His chimney had plenty of wood and did not smoke. He got reasonably good food and quite good wine.
But when he rose to greet her, his smile dazzling, she was pleased to see the fine pleating of strain and sleeplessness round his eyes, and the tight-wound thinness of him, like a hound kept tied up in a kennel. There was nothing more galling, she thought with some satisfaction, than a comfortable prison.
“Dazzling Margot, to what do I owe the honor?” His eyes weresmoky and guileless, dark hair cut straight just above the shoulder. He conducted her punctiliously to a chair by the fire and stood before her, leaning on the fireplace hood.
She sat and said, “Do I need a reason to wait upon you?” He might play-act if he liked, but he was caged and raging and they both knew it.
“Hardly. I take all comers. Warm hearts and doors wide open. Have you come for dalliance, Margot?” He was trying to get a rise out of her, for all his gaze lay pensively on the fire.
She only laughed at him. “You must be bored. Are you missing Jeanne?” Husband and wife despised each other.
“Always,” he said courteously. “But how could I be bored when the fair Madame la Grande has come to my door?” That was what they called Marguerite, and she liked the name. The most powerful woman in Christendom, and everyone knew it.
She said, “But isn’t there something more you might like? One of your dogs? A hunting-pack, even? A diviner to speak to you of the world outside these walls?”
“Come all this way to offer me indulgences?” returned Orléans. A cutting edge came into his voice. “You are too good to your subjects, Margot.”
“Provided that those who benefit are kind to me in return.” She leaned back in her chair and raised her eyes pointedly to his.
Graceful as a cat, he knelt by her chair. “All you have to do is ask.” His voice made an insult of every word. She almost struck him. Instead, she rose and shoved past him, stalking across the room with a fine sweep of cut-velvet. Her tone was businesslike: “I have come for information.”
“Only that? How dull.” But he’d lost some of his studied languor.
“You were on the wall during the siege of Nantes.” She knew this was not what he’d expected her to ask. The siege of Nantes had been the first and the least successful maneuver in the French invasion of Brittany. They’d placed their guns and their siege-equipment and set to bombarding the great castle, but before they could get very far, ashocking party of peasants armed with scythes had appeared and driven them back. French reprisals had been swift and the Bretons defeated anyway. But when Marguerite first heard the tale of the duchess and the unicorn, she had recalled the momentary stumble.
“I was. Not your finest hour there, was it?” He’d taken the chair himself now, stretching his long legs to the fire. He did not look at her.
“Not yours either,” she retorted. “I recall you were leading the Breton defenders, butyouhad nothing to do with the breaking of the siege.”
“Would I had done,” said Orléans equably. “But I can’t rally the peasantry.Idon’t speak Breton. A great morass of villeins shot out of the ground like May dandelions, all on their own, and hacked at your poor mercenaries until they ran.”
Marguerite resolved to get him a sickle-hocked horse. One that liked to bolt. Maybe he’d break his beautiful neck. “Why did the peasants rise?”
She’d heard rumors but had discounted them at the time.
“How should I know?”
Marguerite was tired of his games. She made for the door. “Do tell me if anything in your rooms is not to your liking. I fear you will be seeing a good deal of them.”
She was at the door when Orléans said, “The peasants rose because one of the stone-shots fell into the chamber of the duke’s daughters.”
Marguerite stopped. “Go on.”
Louis added evenly, “The elder girl was bloodied, I believe. A scratch. Some fallen masonry, no more. She was holding on to the younger, pushed her down when she heard the shot come through the window. After it happened, she collected her sister and her guard and left the château that same hour, went into the city proper with dust on her skirts and blood on her arm. They said she went to see her sister housed out of reach of the artillery, that her father’s faith in his new castle was misplaced. But half of Nantes saw her blood and told the rest.” His voice was meditative. “Any one of us in the castle wouldhave put a stop to her going out so. A featherbrained thing to do. But none of the men had a moment to spare from the walls. And perhaps it was not so foolish. The Bretons were angry, seeing her blood.”
“She was just a girl, and not even their sovereign.”
“Well,” said Orléans. His tone was judicious. “They like her. She speaks Breton. Learnt it from her wet-nurse. Most of the great lords don’t. And she’s just a little thing, like a wren. Likable. I suppose that’s why.”
In Marguerite’s experience, a ruler had to be a nonpareil of virtue or be sunk in a stew of vice before the commons took notice of him at all. Otherwise, sovereigns were like weather, a fact of life. Notpeopleto be liked or not.Who is this girl who inspires peasants and touches unicorns? Who controls her, whom rumor has painted so uniformly as a nonentity?
“Describe her,” said Marguerite abruptly.
Louis hesitated. She wondered ifhehad liked Anne of Brittany.
“She is very small,” Louis said after a short pause. “Round eyes and round face. Brown hair. Limps; her hip was twisted somewhat at birth.”
