Lienor sighed. She tossed down the vermillion gown she’d been about to try. “I do not mean to be ungracious, Mother, but I find this a cruel conundrum, that first I was caged because I was a child, then I was caged for being a woman but unattached, and now I must be caged because I am a woman and attached! When am I allowed out of the cage?”
Her mother gave her a patient, knowing smile. “When you are a widow,” she explained.
* * *
Marcus was announced and escorted into what struck him as a humble, dark, plain— and yet very homey— hall. Maria (quite tipsy now) received him with a curtsy and expressed surprise and gratitude when he offered up his sword to her steward. “Another messenger from the emperor,” she said pleasantly. “Is this to do with the wedding?”
He had known, of course, that Konrad’s message was a marriage proposal, but hearing a member of this household refer to it directly gave him a rush of dread. “In a sense, milady,” he said, stammering a little. “His Majesty wanted his betrothed to have the honor of being greeted by more than a mere messenger. He wanted me personally to convey his delight at the prospect of matrimony.” Inspired, he pulled a gold and onyx ring he’d had from Konrad off his right index finger. “And I would be honored if she accepted this as a token of regard from me.”
To Maria the entire world now revolved around this marriage, and his feeble explanation sounded reasonable to her. “Thank you, sir, we are again deeply honored. I shall convey your message to her.” She held out her hand for the ring.
This was a wrinkle Marcus had somehow not anticipated. “May…may I not see her myself?”
“Oh, no.” Maria smiled. “She is naturally sequestered in her brother’s absence, she does not receive gentlemen.” She took the ring politely from Marcus’s distracted grip. “May I offer you refreshment?”
“There is actually a discussion I must have with her,” Marcus said, trying to think of what it was and trying also not to sound desperate. “He…Konrad…His Majesty would, would like to know if there are any questions or concerns she has, or requests of any kind, that I might take back to him regarding what is to follow. Matters of the household, I’m sure you will appreciate— “
Maria mused on this. “No,” she announced comfortably.
Marcus considered her a moment, wondering what to try next. Perhaps his plan could still work. It had to. Perhaps the mother herself would afford an opportunity. “Thank you, I would love some refreshment. Something strong, perhaps. Will you drink with me, milady?”
The request flustered Maria out of her quiet composure. “I?” she stammered.
“Pardon me, is that improper?” he asked mildly. He looked around. “We could have a servant present.”
“It’s not improper,” she said hurriedly. “But it has never happened. Men of the world have no interest in an old woman like me.”
Marcus looked at her in amazement. “You’re not old,” he said, meaning it sincerely. “You are hardly older than I am.”
“But I offer little conversation,” she insisted, blushing. “I have never had my daughter’s wit. I can speak only of domestic matters.”
Marcus smiled and relaxed a little. This was his entry. “But I am myself deeply versed in domestic matters, milady, did you not hear that I am the emperor’s chief steward? I run the court as you run your house. Hence my errand for His Majesty. I am sure the similarities would surprise us both. So again, I ask you, as your humble servant— will you join me for a drink?”
* * *
Three bottles later he finally had her drunk enough, and she did not realize it. Her servants would have, but she had banished them from the room so she could gossip about them, with one who understood the burden of inefficient underlings. She and Marcus had just finished an entire jar of something much more sour and potent than wine, and Maria almost never stopped talking, amazed that a handsome man took such a sincere interest in her little life. She offered him as gestures of gratitude nearly all the jewelry she had on her person; Marcus, with many thanks, accepted only the onyx ring he’d given her before.
She took him up to the roof, squinting into the brilliant setting sun, to point out their humble vineyards and orchards (“We have superior cherries and peaches, milord, because of how we prune our trees”), then down into the cellar to parse the wine together, bringing several jars back up with them so that she might satisfy her guest’s desire to sample what was local. As they rambled physically they also rambled verbally; they discussed their most-and least-liked kinds of servants, exchanged advice on bookkeeping, and Marcus managed, as her tongue loosened, to affect an interest in learning about the preparation of flax. Finally, well after dark, when Marcus had managed to get her back to the trestle table in the small half-timbered hall, he turned the talk to family matters.
He listened patiently to a dozen unremarkable tales of Lienor and Willem when they were children, examples of how extremely endearing and bright and honorable they were, of how superior they were to their humble mother in all regards, although Lienor had inherited her mother’s single attraction of bright green eyes. He tried every subtle angle he could think of to get her to tell an anecdote that was not quite so flattering, that was perhaps even a little damning in a winsome way, but she did not follow hints. Finally, frustrated, with a chummy smile plastered on his face, he said, “But surely your angels have had moments of deviltry, haven’t they?”
She thought about it, then gasped with drunken theatricality. “Why, yes, there was one time when they were very willful— or Lienor was, anyhow.” Trying not to look eager, he gestured for her to continue. “They were very young, perhaps on either side of ten.” That was too young; whatever the sin was it could be dismissed as childhood foolishness, but if it was all the material she had to offer, he would take it. “Yes, it was when His Majesty the Emperor— the old one, not my future son-in-law— was dying. Has Willem told you how we came to be so poor in land?”
“Oh, somewhat,” Marcus said vaguely. “But if you would be so kind as to remind me of the details.”
The widow’s wandering attention was distracted to the corner of the room. “Ach,” she muttered. “That dish must be changed, just a moment, milord,” and she rose to call an old manservant in, who fetched from the corner a small dish of a foul-looking syrup littered with dead flies. The man removed it wordlessly, giving Marcus a curious glance, and left the room again. “Excuse me, milord, it’s milk and hare’s gall, absolutely poisonous for the flies, and there are so many of them this time of year. Almost as bad as the mosquitoes.”
Marcus managed to mask his disgust. “At the castle we simply use alder leaves,” he said. “Which are…less odious, I imagine, to prepare.”
Maria’s face lit up. “What an excellent idea! I shall have to try that. Fresh or dried, I wonder? Alder leaves, I rather like that idea.”
“Your Ladyship was telling me about your family estates— “
“Oh, yes,” Maria said, wistfully. “The details are complicated and boring. We were robbed, sir, that is the final truth to it. We held a magnificent estate, several of them, directly from the emperor— the town of Dole was ours, and the fortress there, in fact I was married before the chapel of that fort! and all those salt mines to the south, and two silver mines and one for copper— and besides all that, half the land from here to Besançon was my husband’s by right of birth, not benefice. Well, perhaps a third. My noble husband, who was— if you can imagine it— even more handsome than my son, was cut down in the prime of life defending his emperor’s borders, and in the shock of it I trusted somebody I should not have trusted, and suddenly we were bereft of everything. Somehow it ended up belonging directly to the count— not just what he had by benefice, but all of it. There was a lot of that happening at the time.”
Good God, thought Marcus— “the count” was Alphonse of Burgundy, of course. No wonder Willem had responded to him as he did, his first night at Koenigsbourg.
“Well, as the children
were growing up, sir, of course I did not want them feeling cheated, so I did not speak of what we had lost, I only taught them to appreciate what we had. It was safer that way— have you heard of frontier justice? Things can be a bit rough out here. I wanted them kept safe, and that required their ignorance. But some inferior people cannot keep well enough alone, or do not understand discretion, and one of those people was our former steward Jehan. He had served my husband very faithfully, and he could not reconcile himself to the injustice done us, which was good-hearted but wrongheaded of him. He, or perhaps it was his wife or one of his brats, took it upon himself to approach my children in secret, and tell them the whole truth. The count, Alphonse, had issued deeds to make our land not merely under his regency— as is proper for a liege lord to do of an orphaned heir like Willem— but actually to annex our estates permanently and fully.”
She sighed and lapsed into frowning silence. Marcus said nothing, waiting to hear the resolution. He respected Willem, despite the trouble the knight had unwittingly brought him, and for a moment let himself care about the story.
“Well. Something got into Lienor’s head, I don’t know what, she had been such a docile lass. Do you remember about a decade ago, when the old Emperor Konrad was doing us in Burgundy the great honor of dying here? He took sick and wasted away at Oricourt, the home of his brother the count. Lienor took it into her head to march up to Oricourt and demand to speak to His Majesty about Alphonse taking our lands. I told her no, and she, the silly child, she ran away from home! I’m sure one of Jehan’s brats was behind it, Lienor would never’ve done it on her own. Willem was being raised in my sainted brother’s house, and I was quite hysterical, so I sent for his help although he was just a boy himself— Willem I mean, not my brother, who was fully grown with two young sons himself and moreover had granted us this estate to keep ourselves on, God pour blessing down upon his departed soul, his goodness lives on in his son Erec but not quite so brightly, I think.” She paused a moment, having lost the thread of her own narrative in her labyrinthine tangential comment. “Anyhow, Willem went after her, but by the time he found her she was already near Oricourt— the count’s castle— and the children were caught trespassing and taken to the count. The count thought it was very amusing and put them in prison overnight to teach them a lesson. I suppose he isn’t such a bad character, the count, except for being greedy, which is a fault common to all men. Except my son. Anyhow, I tell you, sir, I was beside myself twice over, I thought I had lost everything. It’s because of my distress back then that Willem is so protective of his sister now, he blames himself for what happened, but he would never admit that of course, that is a mother speaking, sir, a mother understands her children better than they themselves do sometimes, would you not agree? Do you think the alder leaves work for horses?”
“Pardon?” Marcus asked with a blink.
“We have a devil of a time with flies bothering the horses, I always fret when Lienor goes out with her brother in the summer months, that some fly will bite the horse and the horse will throw her and snap that lovely little neck of hers— I make the groom put salted grease on the horses to ward off flies, but my daughter complains about the smell something awful, her senses are so keen, you know. Is there some other strategy you know of at the king’s court?”
“I’m afraid not,” Marcus said with forced patience and then offered, “I shall ask the chief groom if you like, and convey the information to Willem.”
She looked pleased. “He would like that very much, I don’t suppose a horse smelling of lard makes such a good impression at the royal stables.”
“I would be happy to inquire for you. But perhaps you will continue with your story? What happened to the children?”
“Oh, yes, the children! My children.” She pulled at the stopper from the first flagon. “I went the next day to beg their release from the count Alphonse, and of course he was already planning to release them— he was very preoccupied, what with his brother the emperor dying there and all, and we all knew he and young Konrad his nephew would vie to be voted new emperor, so they were all concerned with bigger matters, my children were a silly distraction. But when we went to retrieve them, they had— imagine this, little children— had escaped somehow! Well that made it worse, of course, because now once again the count thought he had to teach them a lesson, so— “
“— so he caught them again and incarcerated them a second time?” Marcus ventured, getting bored.
“Oh, no, he did something far more extreme.” Her hands paused their working at the beechwood stopper, and she suddenly looked grave. “But I don’t like to talk about that bit, it isn’t very nice, and anyhow it has nothing to do with Willem and Lienor, only that little bastard of Jehan’s, and I use the term in the worst possible way, as an expression of character, not legitimacy. All right then, I’ll tell you if you insist”— Marcus had done no such thing— “he killed Jehan’s brat— with his own hands!— just to teach Willem and Lienor a lesson, and he publicized it, and sent the child’s guts in a sack to our gate; Willem and Lienor behaved themselves after that, and it is them you were interested in, was it not?”
“Mm, yes,” Marcus said with a tight, polite smile, appalled. He hadn’t known until that moment that his opinion of Alphonse could dip any lower. He held out his hand to offer help, annoyed that he had been gulled into sitting through yet another useless anecdote. “I’d particularly enjoyed the stories of their being naughty. Those are entertaining. I would think the older they were, the more entertaining tales of their mischief would sound.” He opened the container and poured her some wine.
Maria sighed happily. “I have such good children, they are never naughty.” She took a sip and made an awful face. “Oh, this is a bad batch! It’s far too sour, I’ll have to strain the lot through sand.”
“I believe at the castle they use boiled wheat for the same task,” Marcus said in a companionable voice, his mind racing to return the conversation to useful material. He set the jar aside and reached for another one.
“We can’t afford to waste our wheat that way.” Maria sighed tragically. Then, brightening with effort, she suggested, “Let’s not despair of that flagon, milord, there is hippocras to sweeten it in the kitchen, I’ll just call the steward.” With wobbly steps she rose and crossed back to the unadorned kitchen screens, and gestured until the manservant came to her. “We would like some hippocras for this awful wine,” she announced, gesturing to the table where it still sat. “And bring the gentleman something to eat.”
“I’m fine, milady,” Marcus demurred.
“Bring us some gingered bread and pears,” she insisted. She sat across from Marcus and grinned mischievously while the old man fetched the bottle from the table; he was the servant she had most complained about, although she was actually quite fond of him. She almost began to tell another mocking story about him then remembered that her guest was more interested, as indeed he should be, in her beguiling children.
“Willem once told me a very mischievous story about Lienor from that time, although I will never know if it was true; Lienor swears it isn’t.”
Something she was ashamed of. That sounded promising. “Tell me?”
“Well. I don’t know how they escaped from Oricourt, but they had made it all the way to the outer gate of the count’s demesne, and there was a fellow watching the gate who hadn’t heard about any of the fuss. Lienor went up to him as if she owned the place, according to her brother, and said, as if she belonged there— to this big strong youth she said, ‘You there, boy, open the gates for us.’ And he said, ‘What’ll you give me if I do?’— he didn’t realize they were gentle, of course, he thought they were peasants, they were filthy after their ordeal— our servants in these parts are never normally impertinent to us that way ordinarily, sir, it’s nothing like it is in Bavaria— and where was I? Oh, yes, and she said, ‘Why, I’ll show you a very pretty flower,’ and she started to pull up her tunic to show him her birthmark.�
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“Her birthmark?” Marcus said with forced attentiveness, wishing he had not encouraged the resumption of this blathering.
“Oh, yes.” Marie laughed and lowered her voice “Oh, did I not mention it? She has the most exquisite birthmark, the shape of a perfect little rose and just as red— without the stem of course, without the thorns, just the flower.”
“And it is indecorously high up her shin, is that it?” He tried not to sound sarcastic.
She chuckled with amusement. “No, sir, that’s not worth an anecdote, we are not such prudes in Burgundy, whatever they say about us. No, it is…well, I’ll show you.” She stood up and gestured him around the trestle to join her. Oh, God, Marcus thought miserably, he had heard about widows. The last thing he wanted to have to do was extract himself from a would-be seduction. “It is this high up,” she said, smiling, and pulled up the skirt of her tunic almost to her waist. She pointed to a spot on her upper, inner left thigh that was very close to things he did not want to see. “Right there,” she whispered, giggling drunkenly. Marcus glanced obediently, surprised to see her skin was actually smooth and pale, not repulsive as he’d feared. Still, he braced himself for something horribly embarrassing, but Maria, having finished the demonstration, casually tossed down her skirt and gestured him to sit again. Thrown, but relieved, he did so. “Willem stopped her, of course. It’s our little family secret, that birthmark, only the three of us know it, since the nurse and midwife died.”
He stared at her and almost kissed her. “The four of us, you must say now,” he said after a beat, with affected camaraderie.
“Oh, yes.” She giggled. “But you won’t tell a soul about that, will you?”
“I swear to you, my lady, the secret is as safe with me as it has been with you.”
And that was the truth.
Revenge of the Rose Page 24