Polhaim forced his mind to work faster. “Of course a legal proxy could be designated.” Proxy-weddings were not unknown. “But even then I do not see how this can be concealed if the French emissary is actually in the hunting-party?”
The duchess said, “There is no difficulty. I shall seclude myself in a convent the night before the hunt; France will only applaud my piety. There is a chapel there. It will serve.”
Polhaim could hardly believe this was the same girl he’d met flushed and laughing and frivolous in the castle. She was coiled, intent. Slowly, he said, “I think I must go back to Flanders, Highness, and so learn my lord’s mind. This is too complex for the exchanges of diviners and I do not think you want to trust a letter alone.”
She thought, then nodded. “Go tomorrow. We shall wait for you.” Polhaim found her lifted chin and straight back strangely moving. A determined girl looking out of the duchess’s face. “But I beg you will hurry.”
“I will ride at dawn, Highness.”
When she smiled at him, his blood seemed to slow and thicken. She leaned forward and said, “My thanks forever, and you must forgive my brother. I never once told him to get you drunk. He got a little mixed up.”
Chapter
3
Later that night, on thethreshold of her chambers, De Rieux said, “Anne—Highness—if this goes wrong…”
“It will not go wrong.” They faced each other. Her guard had dropped out of earshot on the stairs below; Anne’s maids-of-honor waited within.
“If it does go wrong,” he persisted, “have you considered the risk to Isabeau?”
“I have,” said Anne. More than he knew. If Anne were killed or deposed, Isabeau would become duchess. But Isabeau was too young. She could not hold Brittany, and she would be taken away, raised in the French court, and then married to Charles. Sometimes princes didn’t even wait when their fiancées were too young. Margaret Beaufort had been married at twelve, had borne her son, the present king of England, at the age of thirteen. The thought haunted Anne’s dark hours, made all her warm courage go cold. “What can I do if not this?” she asked De Rieux, sharp with old fear. “Submit tamely to a marriage that I promised my father I wouldneverundertake? I am not going to be deposed. I won’t let anything happen to Isabeau.”
“Anne,” said her guardian. “Only think—”
“I won’t submit,” she said. “And I won’t be deposed either. Good night, Jean.”
She left him on the threshold before he could say anything else. His fear was contagious.
That doorway opened onto her garderobe. A crowd lingered in this outer room still, but it was all people she trusted: maids-of-honor and attendants, and Hawiz, who had been Anne’s wet-nurse and taught her Breton before she’d learned to speak courtly French.
Skilled hands untied her sleeves, helped her take off her overdress. When they had borne all her finery away, Anne sank at last into her chair, the one already warm from its nearness to the fire. Mostly she contrived to ignore her bad hip, but she’d been on her feet since sunup and the muscle along the ill-formed joint was hard as stone.
Hawiz’s capable hands unclasped the gold and pearls from around her brow and began unraveling the tight plaits. Masses of brown hair slithered down her back, and Anne made a small sound of relief. “When I am an empress, I shall wear diadems every day just for the joy of taking them off.” Maximilien of Austria was heir to the Holy Roman Empire.
Hawiz didn’t answer. Instead she said, “Isabeau, did I not tell you that you’d see her in the morning?” Anne opened her eyes. Isabeau had got filthy in puddles that afternoon and then stuffed herself at the feast; now she stood at the threshold of the bedchamber, the open doors of the paneled bed gaping beyond. Her hair, lighter than Anne’s, massed over her robe and shoulders.
Isabeau’s eyes were rimmed with red. Anne came to her feet in instinctive alarm, staggering a bit as her hip took her weight. Hawiz steadied her. Anne said, “Isabeau, what is wrong? Are you ill, love?”
Isabeau shook her head, seemed to hesitate, and then darted across the room, clinging to Anne like a child much younger. She didn’t say anything.
Anne stroked back the tangles of hair. “Isabeau?”
Isabeau still didn’t look up. “At the feasting tonight—some ladies said—that you will never come back after you have married the king of France. And I told them that you would but they said your husbandwould not allow you. That I should never see you again, for I must stay in Brittany. I said it was not true. But—is it?”
Anne was silent a breath too long. Very softly she said, “I am not going to marry France. I cannot, for I promised Father.” A mad, impossible promise for a dying man to extract from his half-grown daughter, but Anne had never regretted her oath. “Because if I am married to the French king, then we are conquered. I must marry someone else, someone who can protect us. But that is a great secret. Can you keep the secret?”
Isabeau drew herself up proudly. Her face had lightened. “I can keep a secret. You will live here then? When France is gone and you have married this other king?”
“Isabeau, I must go and live with my husband when we are married.”
Isabeau pulled away a little. In a small voice, she said, “And I?”
Anne realized she was biting blood from the inside of her cheek. “The ladies are right that you must stay in Brittany. But it will not be forever. Only until I have given my lord his heir. Two heirs. Then I am sure he will let me return.” She did not say that it would be years…or never, if she died in childbed.
Isabeau scrambled back, woe turned to wrath. “Letyou return? But you belong here!”
Anne did not want to leave Brittany. Her whole heart lay in its earth and gray sea, belonged to its people in their wool and lace, in the language she had learned from Hawiz. If years on her wobbling throne had taught her one thing, it was that the power of good governance was beyond most men’s gifts, however high their birth.
