Donna Russo Morin

by To Serve A King

  “Geneviève?” The whispered call was lost in the whistling wind meandering through the courtyard. “Geneviève, s’il vous plaît?”

  Geneviève spun toward the sound of her name and the ill-spoken French, finding a huddled shadow beckoning to her from beyond the corner of the next building. There was something familiar in the small, bent form and she inched toward it. Only when she came within a few steps of the shadowy figure, when the form turned outward and the mangled profile caught the torchlight from the pole above them, did Geneviève recognize it as the old, scarred woman.

  “Are you well, madame?” A sudden chill rippled across her flesh and Geneviève pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders.

  “Well enough.” The woman’s voice warbled with age as she tripped over the unnatural language.

  “I am surprised to hear you speak in my tongue.” Geneviève stepped closer; it was easier to look upon the woman in the dim light, when the gloom concealed the ravaged skin. “Why did you not converse with me this morning?”

  The bent woman shrugged a single shoulder in a lopsided gesture. “I could not find the words, then,” she said portentously, and Geneviève frowned at her.

  “Do you need a doctor? Is that why you call for me, madame …?” Her question hung in the air. Geneviève would know this woman’s name before they spoke any more.

  “Hainaut. I am Millicent de Hainaut.” The woman straightened her shoulders and raised her chin as she offered her name. Her face appeared serene as the light from the fire grazed it from below, and yet somehow horrifying.

  “It is my pleasure to meet you, Madame de Hainaut,” Geneviève said, but no such polite response came her way. Instead, a strange silence rose up between them.

  “Does this name mean nothing to you?” Madame de Hainaut asked finally.

  Geneviève shook her head, brows high. “No, nothing. Well, only that I am surprised to hear it is a French name.”

  The woman stepped back farther into the alleyway, to the fire that kept her company, and her companion followed along.

  “Yes, it was my husband’s name. My French husband.”

  Once more, the thick hush bundled them in a stultifying embrace.

  “Are you sure you do not require a physician’s care?” Geneviève asked. The woman showed no discernable physical ailment, but her strange behavior was beyond reckoning.

  “I know your mother.”

  The words cut the heavy oppression like the hard edge of a cleaver.

  Geneviève stared at the apparition across the wavering light with a dropped jaw. Not since she was a very small child, when she had watched them lay the earth upon her parents, had anyone spoken of her mother. Though Geneviève cherished the small portraits of them, she had never asked her aunt more about them, for it could only bring more pain. It was far easier to pretend such a love had never existed, than to know it had been lost.

  “I fear you are mistaken, madame. I have no mother,” Gene-viève responded with a harsh bitterness. The shield she had brandished all her life rose up to protect her heart once more. “My mother is dead.”

  Madame de Hainaut fell back against the stone wall behind her. Geneviève rushed forward, grabbing her by the arm before the elderly woman fell to the cobbles.

  “Who told you that?”

  Geneviève craned to hear the harsh whisper reaching out for her.

  “Come stand before your fire, madame.” Geneviève felt the scrawny limb trembling beneath her grip, and pulled the woman gently back to the flames.

  “Who told you your mother was dead?” the frail woman repeated, teeth chattering with chill or fear or dire insistence. Geneviève could not tell which.

  “I have always known it. She died in the fire of the great meeting of the kings.” Geneviève did not falter against the piercing stare of the woman’s pale eyes. “I saw her body, saw it buried with my father’s. I saw the stone carved with the name of Gravois, with my own eyes.”

  Madame de Hainaut clamped her hands together, fingers pointed to the sky, pressing them against her lips as if in fervent prayer. The chattering of the old woman’s teeth grew so loud it rose above the crackling of the kindling at their feet. She tottered and swayed on legs Geneviève did not think would support her much longer.

  “Do you have a place to sleep tonight, madame? Do you have a bed?” Geneviève would not relinquish the arm in her grip, though she shivered in aversion at the feel of the bones so fragile beneath the thin flesh.

  Madame de Hainaut answered with a shallow nod and eyes pleading for something unfathomable. Her hands moved not an inch from her lips, but the fingers folded together into two clasped fists. She began to walk, allowing Geneviève to keep her hand upon her arm, not telling her where to go but leading her on with her wrathlike silence.

  Together the women entered the courtyard, the older woman leading the younger in a diagonal direction, toward a small but well-kept establishment in the corner, near the large stately manor in which the king stayed.

  “Have you eaten dinner tonight?” Geneviève asked, receiving nothing more than another silent nod in response. “Are you sure you do not require the attention of a physician?” She grew more concerned with the woman’s unrelenting silence. Geneviève felt her weakness growing with every step they took.

  The hinges of the door squeaked as they entered the small building, already veiled in darkness and the somnolence of sleeping inhabitants. The stairs groaned as they tread upon them; so slowly did they ascend, each creak fairly announced a minute as it passed.

  Madame de Hainaut led Geneviève to the top landing, stumbling as she breached the last stair and entered the angle-ceilinged room opposite. Without word or sound, the old woman, seeming far older than she had been when the night began, floundered in the pale light of the small window, found the tattered ticking in the corner of the closet-sized chamber, and threw herself down upon it. In the shadows, Geneviève found a rough blanket and laid it gently upon the small frail form, tucking in the ends.

  Geneviève knelt down beside her, unable to leave this strange woman, touched somehow by the depth of emotion emanating off her in waves. Without consideration, Geneviève followed the urging of her own feelings and reached out a hand, smoothing the wiry gray hair upon the pillow, stroking this unknown troubled soul, until the woman’s breathing grew slow and her trembling ceased.

  “I will visit you on the morrow, madame,” Geneviève whispered, coaxing her to peaceful slumber. “We will talk more then.”

  With one last caress and another tuck of the blanket, Geneviève rose and crept from the room.

  Madame de Hainaut said not a word. She turned to watch the young woman as she left her side, as she vanished beneath the stairs, reaching out a hand, trembling with her silent tears.

  The scream pierced the pallid, slumberous dawn like a screeching banshee wailing in pain. Geneviève fell as she jumped from her bed, stumbling on feet not yet awake, legs tangling in her white cotton nightdress. Arabelle yelped as she flung herself up and the two women spoke at once, their words falling one on top of the other.

  “Mon Dieu, what was that?”

  “Heaven help us.”

  They stared at each other, faces swollen with sleep, contorted in fright—eyes bulging, mouths gaping.

  More screams, more yelling rose up from below.

  “The duchesse,” Arabelle hissed, and the women launched into movement, shedding their nightclothes, throwing themselves into gowns, lacing them as they rushed from the room.

  They clattered swiftly down the stairs, unsure footing slipping on worn runners. They pushed against the door to Anne’s rooms, shoving it open with a bang and a crash.

  Anne stood by her raised bed, clad in her nightgown, sheet clutched to her chest as if it would ward off the evil knocking at the door. “It is not I,” she assured them.

  Footsteps banged on the stairs behind them as people rushed from the inn; voices rose in alarm in the courtyard beyond the windows. Anne ju
mped to the leaded glass.

  “Something is out there.” Her eyes cast furtively about. “Everyone is running toward the center of the courtyard, but I cannot see what draws them.”

  Arabelle and Geneviève needed to share no more than a half second’s glance and they rushed for the door.

  “Help me get dressed, and I will—” Anne began.

  “You will stay here, madame.” Geneviève whipped around, one finger pointed sternly at her mistress, like a general directing his troops into battle. Threat brought out her soldierly training, and she instinctively applied it to one for whom she felt responsible. Anne parted her lips as if to argue, but Geneviève did not move, pinning her mistress in place with her finger and a squinty-eyed stare; her powerful command brooked no argument.

  Anne frowned at her, for an instant unable to recognize her maid, seeing something—someone—unknown to her, antithetical to the stoic and devoted servant she had come to know. The duchesse offered a quick nod of agreement; she would acquiesce no further to one lower in rank, but it was enough.

  Geneviève whirled away, sprinting to catch up to Arabelle, hot on her heels as they raced down the stairs.

  Hazy light spilled in the doorway left open by the last person to run across the threshold, and they aimed for the rectangle of suffused illumination. Arabelle stepped out and hugged herself fast, her breath streaming from her mouth as she turned to the woman behind her.

  Like their own, every door on the square hung open as people streamed from the dark interiors, creatures escaping from out of the blackness, their mouths gaping maws in pale faces, their eyes wide in fright. Arabelle and Geneviève joined the rush as the pack around them surged forward, many still in their nightclothes, heading toward the center of the square where a large, noisy horde gathered. The rumble of distressed voices grew louder as they approached, and the newcomers searched among the rabble for the source of the ruckus. Only Geneviève thought to look up.

  She tripped at the sight, a choked, garbled scream caught in her throat. Arabelle reached out and grabbed her a second before she tumbled to the hard stones at her feet.

  “What is it? Are you all right?” Arabelle’s fingers dug into the soft flesh of her upper arm, golden, untethered hair spilling into her eyes.

  Geneviève spoke not a word; she could not. She raised her hand, one tremulous finger pointing up ahead. Arabelle’s eyes followed, though she pulled back and away, shoulders curling round as if to guard against what lay in the distance.

  The body hung from the lowest thick branch; small and frail, it looked like no more than a rag doll spinning on the end of a thick, grimy string. Long, wiry gray hair hung over the face, splotched black from the coagulating blood behind the diaphanous skin.

  With a whimper of repugnance, Arabelle jerked her head from the sight, thin hands rushing to her face to guard against the vision. “Who is it? Do you know who it is?”

  “I … don’t … think …” Geneviève began. “Oh God, no …”

  She ran, lifting her skirts, heedless of the leg she revealed. She ran, leaving Arabelle calling out behind her, struggling to catch up. She ran, until she could see the face for herself.

  In death, the old woman’s purple scars were no longer visible; her putrid skin was nothing more than an ill-begotten memory. The wind pitched and the body spun on its tether, the rope creaking as it twisted back and forth. The breeze brushed Geneviève’s face, and only then did she feel the moist tracks upon her cheeks. One shoddy slipper had fallen to the ground below the body, the exposed foot petite, the toes perfect and bluish white. The crate she had used as a weapon against herself, lay overturned and cracked, perhaps kicked as the woman’s last thoughts railed against her own assault.

  “We must cut her down,” one man called to the paralyzed crowd huddled around the woman’s feet.

  “Does anyone know her?” a woman sobbed from the cradle of a strong man’s arms.

  “I do,” Geneviève said, but it was an incredulous whisper, and no one heard it. She felt as if she had known this woman, not as one person passes a stranger along the divergent path that is the road of life, but as though a connection existed with her, albeit one too intangible to comprehend. She meant to make her way forward, felt compelled to speak for the woman, but her grief shackled her to the spot.

  Arabelle tumbled into her from behind, breath ragged, gaze frozen on the lifeless body as she grabbed onto Geneviève. “Is that …”

  Geneviève nodded before she finished. “I must tell them who—”

  A cry rang out. “The king comes!”

  The crowd parted, all eyes turned from the appalling sight to the powerful ruler, as King Henry barreled into the square.

  In a simple black suede jerkin and trunk hose, he looked no less imperious as he took in every facet of the grisly scene with one sweep of his intent gaze. He circled around the tree until he stood beneath the hanged woman, an arm’s reach away from Geneviève.

  “Who is she?” he barked, his indignation sweeping the crowd with a hard bristle.

  Arabelle nudged Geneviève’s back, hissing in her ear. With a stern, tight shake of her head, Geneviève pushed against it; she could not speak to him, not now, not of this.

  “She is one of your staff, my lord.” A pudgy bald man stepped forward; his fine dress and distinctively accented English revealed him as man of Calais, and one of some import. “A scullion, I am told, with the name of Hainaut.”

  Henry gave the man a hard stare in reply, jaw muscles convulsing on a hard cast face.

  An adolescent page ran up to the chubby man, thrust a torn and ragged piece of parchment into his hand, and melted back into the crowd.

  Before the man looked upon it, Henry snatched it from his hand and lifted the parchment closer to his eyes, squinting at the scrag-gly writing in the dim light. Geneviève inched closer, pushed against an obstructing shoulder, and rose on tiptoes to see over the king’s shoulder. A few English words sprawled across the page:

  I cannot live, if I am already dead.

  The bizarre inscription was no less troubling than the self-destructive act itself.

  King Henry dropped his hand, the note clasped within it, his piercing gaze scanning the expectant crowd around him. His head swiveled on his short, thick neck, and he scrutinized those behind him. For a fleeting instant, his glare snagged on Geneviève’s face and she gasped at the hard touch of it. It moved on in a flash and she wondered upon it; so much of this moment stank of delusion.

  The king turned back to the paper in his hand, and without a glimmer of remorse, tore it in half, and in half again, tore it until it was no more than shredded scraps of nothing.

  “Cut her down,” he barked rancorously. “Cut her down and bury her.”

  Geneviève shivered from the cold radiating from this harsh man. This woman was nothing to King Henry, a nameless, faceless kitchen servant—he could have no animosity for her, and yet he showed nothing but rancor toward her, though death be her master. How starkly his actions compared to those of King François, whose heart had been torn asunder by the execution of someone convicted of betrayal against him. There was no resolving the divergent behavior and Geneviève’s mind screamed with the disparity.

  As cold and immobile as stone, Geneviève stood and watched as men cut down the body of Millicent de Hainaut and carried her away. Like a stalwart boulder in the midst of a rushing stream, she moved not a step as the crowd dispersed around her. As the square emptied, she moved, stepping forward to pick up the discarded, forgotten slipper. She would take it with her. Whenever she looked upon it, someone, somewhere would remember this woman.

  29

  My lord, if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm,

  I would not do what I must do this day for none earthly thing.

  —Henry VIII (1491–1547)

  “You pester me, Master Crom well.” Henry turned h is back on his drably clad minister and lim ped aw ay. The jou rney had done much to aggravate his ill
ness-plagued body and his fiery disposition; he looked eagerly to his familiar throne and its promise of relief.

  “And for that I do humbly apologize.” The dour-faced adviser bowed deeply, but dared to shuffle forward nonetheless, raising his eyes to his ruler, who glared thunderously down at him from the dais. “But the situation grows dire with every passing moment, Your Highness. The evidence of collusion between the emperor, the pope, and the French king has become more resolute and powerfully incriminating.”

  “They have taken no firm action against us.” The hard-edged pronouncement came from Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, the diamond-patterned lead windows at his back, arms folded across his hard chest, silhouette enlarged by the fur mantle set about his powerful shoulders.

  Cromwell spun to his adversary with his lip curled in an expression of distaste. The tension between them grew as thick as a bear’s fur as winter’s hibernation drew near. “They have withdrawn their ambassador for a second time, and the emperor travels to France in a fortnight. Your own spies confirm it.”

  “A visit means nothing. Our king’s recent travel confirms it.” Suffolk scoffed at the minister’s argument. “The entire visit was a sham, intending to obfuscate any hint of our own agenda. For all we know, François does the same, a magician’s sleight of hand.”

  “We know the French king will do anything for the Italian territory. Who knows how far his longing will take him. And we know that Cardinal Pole has paid King François another visit. There can be no greater condemnation.”

  “England has nothing to fear,” Suffolk barked. “The queen of Navarre and the duchesse d’Étampes made it very clear.”

  “And a marriage to Cleves would bring with it the financial and military support of the Schmalkaldic League. They have made it very clear. A triumvirate such as the one that forms across the channel would be extraordinarily powerful,” Cromwell argued. “England would be powerless against such an alliance, on its own.”