It was not beyond hers.
But she could not govern Brittany and also keep it free.
If she did not marry Charles of France and accept annexation, then she must marry a man who could defy him. Maximilien of Austria was perhaps the only man in Christendom who could. Maximilien would not annex her realm; his own lands were too far away. ButAnne would still pay dearly for her husband’s protection: with her presence, her body, her womb, the taxes of her territories, the title of Duke of Brittany.
With the Austrian marriage, she would keep her promise to her father. But the necessity was a cruel one.
Anne whispered, “I am not leaving by choice, Isabeau.” The words came wrenching from her, outside all composure. Then she swallowed and added, quieter, trying for reason, “Father told me once that it is the price we pay.”
“What does that mean?”
Anne tried haltingly to explain. “We shall never go hungry, you and I; we have our secret box of sweetmeats and we wear silk and velvet and have horses and hawks and a palace to live in.”
Isabeau said nothing. She had knelt slowly on the wolfskin hearthrug, head bowed, and Anne sank back into her chair. She made herself go on. “But do you think we are owed that for nothing? No. We pay for it with our lives and our fates and our flesh, which must serve the realm. I cannot serve the realm and stay. Believe me, dearest, if there was another way, I would take it.”
Isabeau was still now, her face pressed against Anne’s knee. She whispered, “I will think of another way.”
Anne had no answer for that. There was no other way. Hadn’t she lain awake every night of her reign, trying to think of another way? “Dearest, it is time for bed. We neither of us will do anyone any good if we fall ill.”
Anne and Isabeau had shared a bed since they were small. Naturally, each could have had her own suite, separate retainers. But when Anne had taken her place at court, Isabeau simply left her bed in the nursery and came to Anne’s every night, until Anne told her governess to stop trying to fetch her back.
They had shared ever since, and Anne was glad of it. A duchesslived at the center of everything but also at strange remove, every friendship freighted with the knowledge that she could order the friend killed or make their fortune forever.
But that distance did not apply to Isabeau. They’d held each other through the night their mother died, through the endless nights of the siege of Nantes, when the great stone balls from the French bombards came smashing against the battlements and once, memorably, through their window. They’d held hands while their father lay dying.
And now, when Anne’s hair was replaited, her body sponged, her chemise changed, her orders given to be wakened at Lauds, she went to crawl into the great bed and found Isabeau there but still awake, ready with another question. “Are we going unicorn-hunting?”
Anne sighed. “The court is going unicorn-hunting.”
Isabeau made a muffled sound of delight into her pillow.
“Quiet,” said Anne. “You’ll get a scolding from Hawiz. You know you cannot come with us.”
“But I have to.” Isabeau would have shot upright except that Anne, who knew her sister well, had put out a restraining hand. “You need a virtuous virgin.”
“Hardly virtuous, what with filching sweets and refusing to go to sleep. Dearest, you are not going to be unicorn-bait.” She rolled onto an elbow, deadly serious.
“Why not? I supposeyouare.”
Anne didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “Isabeau, you have not yet been stag-hunting. Your pony could never course a unicorn. People would wonder why you were there.”
“I want to help,” said Isabeau urgently. “I have to—I want to make everything different.”
Anne reached for her sister’s hand under the quilts. Isabeau’s cold fingers closed around hers.
“I wish I could make it so you stay,” said Isabeau, small now. “Will you love him, at least?”
“My husband?” Anne was taken aback. She’d dreamed of love, of course. Sometimes, idly, she imagined a quick-tongued, fair-hairedtroubadour, or a knight with green eyes stealing with her in secret to some solitary bower. Years ago, in the last spring of their peace, Louis, Duke of Orléans, had come to Nantes in full rebellion against the crown of France: a famous knight and as beautiful as lightning over a distant sea. For a while, he’d turned all Anne’s dreams from blond and devoted heroes to dark ones with sunburnt faces. But then came the war, hard on Orléans’s heels. All Anne’s dreaming crumbled in the face of it. Besides, Orléans had hardly noticed her, and then he was captured at Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier and carried off a prisoner to France.
Anne shook away memory. “I will—respect my husband.” Respect was better than love.
Isabeau said nothing, obviously dissatisfied, anxious, afraid of the looming future. Anne could hardly reassure her, so fast were the fears, plans, memories coursing through her own mind. She said, “Shall I tell you a story?”
Her sister gave a pleased wriggle and rolled to face her. “Oh, yes!”
“You must lie down properly. And close your eyes.”
Isabeau rested her head on Anne’s shoulder. Anne stroked her hair.Let us go far from here, at least for a moment.Her voice took on something of Hawiz’s measured cadence; she changed from courtly French to the soft Breton of their earliest childhoods. “I shall tell the story of Keris, the city of cedar and gold, the city in the bay of Douarnenez that conducted its commerce from the backs of sea-dragons, and entertained delegations of the korriganed, the fair-folk, in halls of white marble.”
