by Carol Berg
His use of my proper name popped my glance upward. I blinked. His pale hair was cut in an eccentric style, left long on one side and cut short on the other, where it could reveal an ornate dangling earring set with tourmalines. He rolled his merry blue eyes and retreated.
“Welcome, Anne.” When I stepped forward at her soft greeting, the queen, exquisitely regal in midnight blue and diamonds, handed me a rose from the alabaster vase at her side. Her gaze remained lowered, as if she were the demure maiden. Her flawless cheeks bore a faint flush.
“Your Majesty.”
I took my place with the other maids of honor, marveling at the power of good humor. My escort stood behind the other gentlemen of the court, a head taller than any of them. He made no effort at sobriety, winking, making faces, and twiddling his peach-gloved fingers at this person and that. Emboldened by his kindness, I swore to speak to him as soon as the ceremonies were over, rather than escaping at the first instant, as was my wont.
The queen dismissed the assembly and swept out of the hall, dragging a train of courtiers behind her like a comet’s tail. My escort remained behind, speaking with a portly older man. He did most of the talking, waving his hands and making comical faces all the while, only occasionally bending his head low enough to hear the other man’s words. He touched one satin finger to his lips whenever he laughed.
Slowing my steps, I practiced what I might say. Good morning . . . sonjeur . . . or my lord. . . . Guess too low, and I would insult him; too high, and I’d look the fool. They’d not have paired anyone too well regarded with me. Thank you . . . For what? His pity? Why are you so accustomed to tittering gossip at court? That would certainly recommend me! Have you a felon in your family, too? Dementia, perhaps?
He exchanged elaborate bows with the portly gentleman, then strolled toward the doors opposite my own destination, waving and throwing kisses. He seemed to know everyone.
My feet tried to retreat, but I reminded myself that he had made the overture of kindness. Simple politeness permitted a response. Demanded it. Say something. Quickly, before he leaves the chamber.
No sooner had I sped around the crowd and between two slender columns, ready to intercept him, than he pivoted abruptly and headed back into the hall, quickly subsumed in the mob on the far side. Sorely disappointed, I joined the swarm bumping and pushing to exit the doors.
“Damoselle Anne de Vernase!” The loud pronouncement of my name made me flinch. A yellow-gowned stick of a woman wearing a topknot of the most unnaturally red hair stood midstream in the flow of courtiers, pointing at me. “Her Grace commands your attendance.”
I didn’t have to ask which Her Grace. Everyone in the palace knew the red-haired Morgansa, Lady Antonia’s universally reviled waiting woman.
“This moment, please.”
The crowd parted for the red-haired waiting woman. I raced after, lest she disappear before I knew where to go. We returned to the Presence Chamber, where Lady Antonia was engaged in animated conversation with a small group of courtiers. I could have located her with my eyes shut; her abrasive scent filled the air for a hundred metres in any direction. I hoped not to attract more ill favor with a sneezing fit.
After a suitably awkward interval, Antonia waved a jeweled hand. “Ah, dear Anne, come here.”
Most of her little cadre melted into the departing crowd. A favored few adjourned at a short distance, whispering behind fluttering fans and gloved hands. Only one remained at her side—the tall young gentleman in peach-colored satin.
“This is the young woman I spoke of, Ilario. His Majesty’s gooddaughter . . .”
My spirit congealed. She was displaying me, putting me up for bids to one of the few people in this warren I cared to know.
He was not unattractive—a narrow, refined face, unscarred by disease or warfare, of the boyish kind that would leave his age unguessable well into his dotage. If a bit vacuous, the light eyes were certainly nicely proportioned. And if his mouth was a bit too wide, and his nose a bit too prominent to match an artist’s ideal, who could care? A generous humor could make up for far worse blemishes.
He dabbed at his long, straight nose with a lace handkerchief. “Dearest goddess of maternal feeling, as I’ve said before, I do most enthrallingly value His Majesty’s regard. And as you well know, your own desires are as the angels’ wishes to my hand, but these matters are not—”
“You have lost yourself in frivolity for too many years, Ilario. It is time you settled.”
Ilario . . . maternal feeling . . . Was it possible the kind, handsome, loquacious gentleman was Queen Eugenie’s half brother? I knew him only by reputation. If Castelle Escalon had a court fool, it was Ilario de Sylvae.
The poor man was squirming. “Your Grace, you need not trouble your ever-lovely head. While exhilarated to make Damoselle Anne de Vernase’s acquaintance”—he bowed gracefully in my direction—“and superiorly delighted at the prospect of a deeper friendship, which would allow speaking with her at length on the topic of foreign travel, which I understand is her singular specialty”—he slapped his hand on his lace-ruffled breast and tilted his body in my direction—“because, Damoselle Anne, you must understand that the idea of foreign travel simply petrifies me. Giant reptiles . . . ferocious birds . . . secret languages . . . Saints Awaiting, such a multiplicity of dangers!” He swiveled toward Lady Antonia yet again. “Yet, dearest, most honored goodmater, your excessive wisdom must tell you I could not possibly enter into any manner of serious negotiation that could wrench me from Geni’s side. Whoever would see to her ladies’ comforts and entertainment? I’ve neglected them terribly this tenday I’ve spent in the country—so tedious to deal with roof repairs and vine pests and mural painters, who are, perhaps, the god’s most sensitive creatures—”
“Fires of Heaven, boy, quench your babbling!”
Cheeks scorching, unable to look at the man, I scoured my head for something to say that might alleviate the excruciating moment. Lianelle had always teased me for rehearsing conversations in my head. Speak up, Ani! You never realize how very little you say, and when you do actually engage in a conversation, it comes out as stiff as a bone corset.
“I—I am presently mentoring a young lady in Hematian customs, my lord . . . and would . . . be pleased to address your travel . . . concerns . . . at any time.”
“Sancte angeli, damoselle, I shall anticipate such prospect of enlightenment with supreme elevation! Perhaps one day in my sister’s inestimably hospitable afternoon salons.” His fair complexion glowed as scarlet as a stormy sunrise. “Now, if you will please excuse me, sacre mater”—he bowed deeply—“and Damoselle Anne.”
As he hurried away, the dowager queen threw her hands up in exasperation. Her elegant lady and gentleman followers snorted or rolled their eyes and drew in close around her.
This most extraordinary encounter had left me as worn-out as if I’d just played a game of chase and hide with my brother and sister. Only as I recovered could I parse the single important bit of information from the verbosity: The gossip naming Lord Ilario as the most ridiculous, empty-headed dandy in the court must certainly fall short of the truth.
The ducessa patted my arm. “Well, it was only a whim, caeri. Ilario does have some decent property and a fine income, thanks to an overindulgent and entirely inappropriate father. But perhaps even a bastard imbecile knows to beware a misalliance. Never fear, dear Anne, we shall find a man to provide you a comfortable establishment. A man . . . perhaps that’s the problem here.”
With a limp wave of dismissal at me, she gathered her friends, who burst into laughter as they drifted out of the hall.
I ground my teeth. To be publicly portrayed as a grasping conniver rankled sorely enough. But for the gentleman . . . Lady Antonia was his foster mother. No matter his vanity or less than stellar wit, I had felt the pulse of a generous heart. He deserved better of his own parent, even an adoptive one.
As I escaped in the opposite direction, I passed the physician R
oussel in the shadow of a column. He inclined his back with a sober familiarity, as in our frequent encounters in the east-wing corridors. My cheeks blazed hotter than ever as I dipped my head to acknowledge his courtesy. From his position he would have heard everything. Stupid to care what a stranger thought of me. But in the case of this gentleman, a polite man new to court and uninvolved in my family’s history, I did care.
I could not return to my own chamber fast enough. Churning with all the direction of beans in a boiling pot, I passed through the galleries into the queen’s household. The other maids of honor were gathered at the top of the queen’s stair, all talking at once. Though curious at their choice of meeting place, I’d no desire to join them. I’d had enough of court society for one day.
“Dearest Anne, did you hear the awful news?” Belinda de Mercier’s flutelike voice, half choked with sobs, called down to me. “Lady Cecile is dead.”
CHAPTER 11
17 OCET, NIGHT
Her heart had given out. The tale flew about the east wing like a trapped bird. By the time I’d changed out of my court gown, Lady Patrice summoned the household to the outer salon to await news of funeral arrangements and our related duties. Once we were gathered, she bustled off to the queen’s apartments, bidding us remain close though the hour was late.
The ladies were quieter than usual. Frivolous occupations like cards and games were eschewed in favor of needlework and whispered gossip.
“Who would have dreamed Cecile was so ill?” murmured one after another.
Ill? I didn’t believe it. Cecile de Blasencourt had been a healthy woman of middle age. She had walked energetically on our excursions, eaten well, and tried to reform those younger women who constantly complained of faintness or vapors, insisting that modern men no longer found cultivated frailty attractive.
Gravely worried? Certainly. Our last conversation nagged at me like an insect bite: the puzzle she was trying to put together that had something to do with my father, her warnings of danger, her concern that I not expose her connection to my mother.
The more thinking I did, the more difficult it was to sit still. I needed to learn what she had discovered. The book, back in my pocket, might have been ablaze.
Scarce three hours since, Duplais, a man who was a great deal more than the ambitious dullwit he projected in the household, had claimed that these events—which I took to mean this five-year chain of vanishings, murder, and betrayal, plus my sister’s death and the attack in the wood—were all about sorcery. At Papa’s trial, he had called their aim chaos, implying something more than the upheaval of a royal assassination or a traitorous queen. But corrupting the laws of nature? If the laws of nature had been set in place by a divine creator, then challenging them was a matter far beyond political upheaval. Magic of a kind not seen in ages of the world. Was such knowledge enough to seduce a man of science like my father? It was certainly enough to frighten a man of reason like Duplais.
“Damoselle Anne, your attention!”
The sharp remonstrance right over my head yanked me back to the present. Marquesa Patrice stood tapping her foot.
“Forgive me, my lady.”
“Her Majesty wishes to send personal notices of Cecile’s funeral to a number of her acquaintances in Hematia and Thanitar. She requires someone with language skills and a sensitivity to protocol to accomplish this task.” Her lips pruned, as if acknowledging my competence might cause her own heart to fail.
“I’ll be pleased to do whatever I can.”
“Come to the Rose Room tomorrow afternoon at first hour.”
I used the settled meeting as an excuse to leave, taking one of the candle lamps set out on a table beside the door. When sent on an errand a few days before, a wrong turn had taken me into a dusty little corridor that paralleled the outer wall. Evidently someone had miscalculated when the east wing’s interior walls were rearranged for such amenities as stool closets and ventilation. The sole doorway off the corridor opened onto a small balcony cluttered with scraps of stone and broken plaster. I had sought out the balcony several times to get a private breath and allow birdsong or raindrops to muffle the incessant buzzing in my ears.
Unwilling to be interrupted as I read Cecile’s book, I sped down a servant’s passage that appeared to end in a blank wall, around the corner into the odd little stub of a corridor, and through the door onto the balcony. The night was sultry, the stars obscured by haze as I settled down to read.
The book purported to be a history of Delourre and Grenville, two northern demesnes major. The Grande Demesne Gautier the book called the two together, named for a blood family that had once claimed huge swaths of the mountains and heaths for its own.
Dated some twenty years previous, the book contained facts about the geography of the region, the ancient peoples who had settled it, the villages, towns, and holy sites. It detailed myths that had their origins in the area. The Gautieri had built their collegia magica in Delourre in the year 356—more than five hundred years ago. It had been the largest school of any kind in Sabria for more than three centuries.
The author proposed that rivalry between the Gautieri and another blood family, named Mondragon, was the root of the Blood Wars. Neither family nor the collegia bearing the Gautier name had survived the savagery. Papa had always said that whatever truth and nobility might once have existed in magic had surely been squandered in the Blood Wars. My mother’s family, the Cazars, had foresworn magic entirely in repentance for their deeds during the wars.
I flipped through the pages, hunting a notation, a marker, anything that would explain why Cecile had given me the book. She couldn’t know about Lianelle and the Gautieri books, unless someone from Seravain had told her. Some relevance to our discussion of a few days ago, she had said. Yes, my father had been born in the demesne of Delourre, but had never lived there since going off to war at eighteen. He had never mentioned the Gautieri or their collegia magica or the rival Mondragons.
Half an hour’s pondering left me no closer to the answer. Convinced I had seen what was to be seen in the book, I headed for my bedchamber. Restless feet drove me past my proper turning. My head felt like an overstuffed partridge.
The storm had broken at last, and a warm, steady rain confined my walk to interior rooms and sheltered promenades. It had been raining the last time I had visited my mother in Nivanne. She had huddled in the corner of her locked room as a steady drizzle splattered on her brother’s courtyards. Her dark hair, once as glossy as silk, straggled dull and limp. The eyes my father had compared to midnight oceans lit by stars stared wild and senseless from the smudged hollows of her face. For three days my once-beautiful mother had wheedled and begged me to take her away. But she could not remember my name or the violence she had done that caused me to beg her brothers to confine her. Three times she had come near leaving Montclaire in ash by setting fire to my father’s bed, his clothes, or his study.
From the palace towers, from the temple, and from the town clock tower in Merona, bells pealed the middle-night shift from evening to the night watch—twelve strikes—their varied timbres making a somber conversation tonight instead of their usual peaceful changes. Even so late, the palace hummed with activity. An army of footmen flitted through corridors and stairs, tending the lamps. Chambermaids, messengers, seamstresses, hairdressers, and visitors crowded the passageways and galleries leading to the ladies’ chambers. The passersby carried ewers, trays, or shoes, and information to be delivered with their services. Lady Eleanor had breakfast with Dame Catrin. . . . Someone sent flowers to Lady Patrice. . . . They were arguing when I took Lady Collumet her tea. . . . The Baroness of Winternitz had three new gowns delivered. . . .
As of their own mind, my feet took me past the Presence Chamber and ballroom, and around one of the giant mechanical clocks the king had placed in the heart of every wing, its shining cogs and gear wheels a reminder of the rational world. Soon I strolled the Kings’ Portrait Gallery, spending a good while in front of my
goodfather’s likeness, trying to read the familiar features for some clue that would explain my father’s long-buried resentments.
Before I knew it, I stood in the quiet passage that led to Lady Cecile’s apartments. A footman wearing the ducessa’s yellow badge stood at honors outside her door. He glanced my way. Curious.
My skin broke into a sweat. What was I doing here? I fled.
Back in my own room, I threw the red leather book on my bed. To solve a mystery, one needed clues. Cecile de Blasencourt had hinted she possessed more than just the book. But now she was dead, and I’d never know what she might have told me.
As distant thunder rumbled outside my window and a nearby drainpipe gurgled, conviction settled about me like a net about a fish: I needed to examine the ducessa’s room before it was stripped of her belongings. Yet I dared not be seen where I didn’t belong. What would I say to the guard, or to the lamplighters or servants or deadhouse attendants who might discover me there?
Anne the Upright, my sister and brother had called me—the elder sister who couldn’t tell a lie without instantly confessing it, who chastised them for picking locks or pilfering sweets or keys or wine. Lianelle or Ambrose, either one, could have managed this better than Anne the Recluse. Anne the Coward, who refused to sneak out after bedtime on Midsummer’s Eve, because she was terrified she might actually see faeries. That was in the days before science and reason had relieved me of my nighttime fears.
Perhaps my little gifts will make you bold enough to venture out . . .
I fingered the key hung round my neck and envisioned my mother in her filthy shift, chewing her fingernails to the quick, staring into nothing. Your mother’s condition precipitated . . . your sister dead . . .
Lianelle’s ivory case glared at me from the dressing table. I didn’t need to run naked through Vernase, but I did need to walk unseen through the unsleeping west wing of Castelle Escalon. Was it possible?