“Do you think I can’t manage myself in this sea of vipers? We were whelped the same, you and I.”
That was true. But— “Don’t get killed, or locked up again.”
“When you become Holy Roman Empress, the queen of the world, you can spring me free forthwith.”
She managed a smile.
Then he kissed her and kissed her again, and for three breaths they really did abandon all sense. His tongue was in her mouth, his body hard against hers, her hands tangled in his hair.
But her common sense was still there, as inconvenient as ever. She let go and took a step back. She thought that she’d remember him always like this, with his hair a mess and a flush over his cheekbones and his eyes on her. He bowed, then pressed his lips to the palm of her hand. “My lady,” he said. Then he slipped out the door and away.
Chapter
28
That day at dawn, beforethe gates of Rennes, a lone knight came riding.
This knight was a Frenchman called Gaston, known as the Bastard of Foix. He was dressed as Saint George, with a pennon of silver drakes rippling on the end of his long scarlet lance and the names of saints embroidered on the green barding of his charger. He galloped to the gates of Rennes to a burst of trumpets, and at the gate, with galleries of interested heads peering over like owls at dawn, he roweled his horse into a plunging rear. As the iron-shod hooves tore at the soft morning air, he roared out gallantly, “Let any knight of courage come out and break a lance with me now, in honor of the ladies!”
A shout of affirmation came from all within earshot. Anne and Isabeau were watching from the walls, hemmed in by attendants; when the Bastard of Foix had said his piece, she called for the drawbridge to be let open. Henri galloped out, bearing his ermine shield quartered with lilies and sea-drakes, his destrier already darkening with sweat, and the two men saluted, plumes flying, wheeled their horses, and rode a mock-pass at each other, pulling their lances at the last moment and saluting again. “Let all men come forth,” cried Henri. “For the honor of the duchess and the ladies of Brittany.”
The Breton knights came spilling out from the city, throwing thesun into everyone’s dazzled eyes from the perfection of their armor. Their pennons snapped in a freshening breeze.
So the day of the tourney began.
Rennes was ringed with a series of defensible ditches, and between them lay a wide and smooth grassy space dotted with flowers that was called the Champs de Lys. It had seen many tests of skill, mounted and afoot, lethal and joyous, in its day.
Seating had been built on both sides of that great field for the rich and high-born, hammered together by the engineers of the mercenary companies of France, painted and gilded and draped as finely as any noble hall, though Anne’s ermines were—annoyingly—displayed beside Charles’s lilies over and over.
Behind the stands and stretching far to both sides of the lists were small silk pavilions for the knights, studding the grass like jewels amid the tough, sweating crowds of squires and farriers and armorers and servants. Everywhere marvelous horses grazed or stood or backed half-rearing. Overhead, a forest of banners rippled together, dazzling men’s eyes with hints of gold and silver thread.
After the knights, the ladies of Rennes rode out, on safe-conduct from the king himself, Anne at their head on a very fine chestnut palfrey, wearing a scarlet gown. Her own Jonquil was in Nantes, and the horse had been a gift from the citizens of Rennes. She was smiling.
What the smile cost her, only a few knew.
Isabeau rode a black pony, and had contrived to keep herself tidy. Once she would have exclaimed in open delight at the color and movement, the smell of rare perfume, of spiced wine and hand-pies roasting. But now she took it in silently.
The king and his royal sister Marguerite were waiting to greet them. Anne could not see Julien Moreau. Henri and Louis would be watching for him, and Elesbed had gone out quite anonymously with the commons of Rennes to search for him. “Easier for me,” she had said cheerfully. “No one will look twice.”
Anne had caught a fleeting envy on Isabeau’s face; her sister would never know that freedom even once in her life. But Isabeau did notspeak of it. Anne had not thought it would pain her so much to see Isabeau growing up.
For the first time, outside the gates of Rennes, Anne met Charles of France, called by some the Affable. He was hardly older than she and exquisitely dressed, with a good-natured face, long-chinned and button-nosed, a missing incisor when he smiled, brown marks running up his teeth. His pockmarks were pits of darker color in his flushed face.
His gaze lingered on the fillet in her hair. He said, “I have heard of this talisman, Madame, and have greatly desired to see it. Is it true you embroidered it with your own hands, from the hair of a unicorn’s mane?”
Anne said, “It is true, Sire.”
“Then,” said Charles happily, “you shall soon have more hairs for your working. Perhaps you will embroider my hat with it, so everyone will marvel at us.”
She could not pretend to misunderstand, but she said, delicately, “If the hairs are sent me and I can do anything to please you, kinsman, I shall, as a mark of friendship between our realms.”
Another man might have returned a sharp riposte to her delicate verbal parry; he merely waved a dismissive arm and wished her knights luck in the joust. He was cheerful, untroubled, indulgent. Affable, in fact.
The two parties separated and were escorted to their raised seats, heavily cushioned, with awnings for shade, the French on one side of the lists and the Bretons on the other, their backs to the city wall. The gates of Rennes were open now and a steady stream of ordinary folk spilled out, already glazed and greasy with hand-pies, dipping their cups into the great vats of chilled hypocras, everyone chattering. Agreeing to this tourney had bought her and Maximilien time, bought her the complaisance of the people of Rennes, who were beside themselves with delight. She had every eye she could muster on the lookout for treachery, for signs of sorcery. And if there was treachery, her men on the walls would fight the harder in their fury.
But still she wondered if she’d chosen rightly, agreeing to this. She did not know all that a sorcerer was capable of.
And she still did not see Julien Moreau.
