by Amy Maroney
Artelan Press
Portland, Oregon
Copyright © 2019 by Amy Maroney.
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real places, or real people are used fictitiously. Other characters, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-0-9975213-7-5
ebook ISBN: 978-0-9975213-6-8
Cover design and formatting by Design for Writers.
Map by Tracey Porter.
Find more books in this series at www.amymaroney.com
For my daughters
Contents
Your Free Book Is Waiting
Book I
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Book II
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
Book III
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
More Books in the Series
Author’s Note
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Click here to get started: www.amymaroney.com
“She made so many paintings for the homes of Florentine gentlemen that it would be tedious to list them all here.”
—Giorgio Vasari, on painter Plautilla Nelli,
in his 1550 book The Lives of the Artists
Book I
Astra inclinant sed non obligant.
The stars incline us; they do not bind us.
1
Autumn, 1505
Lourdes, Béarn
Mira
Mira stood in the center of the entry hall, her head throbbing. The clatter of crockery rang out from the kitchens, but the innkeeper was nowhere in sight. Nor were any servants. In fact, the only sign of life was a tawny cat curled on its haunches by the doorway.
She and the cat stared at each other. Its eyes looked remarkably like her own. Gray-green, wide, slanted up at the corners. She took a deep breath, then regretted it. The stale air smelled of tallow and boiled cabbage.
Outside, a rooster crowed.
Mira went to the door and nudged it open, desperate for a distraction from the sour taste in her mouth. The cat slunk past her skirts and padded into the bright morning sunlight. It stopped for a moment, taking the measure of the courtyard, then sauntered toward three chickens pecking at grain near the stables. At its approach, they sidled nervously away.
Wise chickens, Mira thought. You never know what a cat will do.
Two merchants descended the stairs behind her, their boots heavy on the treads. Mira moved into the shadows as they strode through the entry hall and out the door. She had become adept at slipping through the world unnoticed since this journey began. The habit did not come naturally to her. But as a woman traveling alone, her life depended on it.
“Madame?” said a quiet voice at her elbow. “Would you like a bit of breakfast?”
It was the servant girl who had brought her a supper tray the night before. She was young, perhaps not yet twelve. But there was nothing childlike about her guarded, wary expression.
Mira shook her head. “No, thank you. I just need my mule.”
“Sit, madame.” The girl dragged an oak chair near the doorway. “I’ll tell the stable boys.”
Mira perched on the chair, watching the girl dart across the courtyard. The thought of another long day of travel filled her with dread.
It had been nearly a month since she witnessed Arnaud riding off in the company of her brother Pelegrín and his men. Nearly a month since she purchased a mule from the Abbey of Camon and turned its nose due west. Each morning since then, she had found the courage to climb into the mule’s saddle, to fall in with caravans of merchants and farmers traveling the pilgrim’s road. But her strength flagged with every passing night. She barely ate, and some nights she slept not at all. If Arnaud did not soon appear, if he never returned to her—
She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood.
Do not imagine sorrows that may never come to pass, she ordered herself. All that matters is this day. This moment. Now.
In the courtyard, the merchants exchanged words with the stablehands. Mira thought she recognized their voices from last night. In the room next to hers, two men had been engaged in a heated, ale-fueled argument much of the evening. She lay awake staring into the darkness, one hand on her dagger, while their exchange reverberated through the wall. When silence finally descended, she dropped into a fitful slumber until a crowing rooster shattered the quiet.
The dry burn of fatigue was Mira’s constant companion on this journey. It clouded her mind, made her clumsy. Worse, it made her vulnerable. She longed for one good night of sleep. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere safe.
There was one place where Mira would undoubtedly find the peace she craved—the home of Carlo Sacazar in Nay, a few days away. She had hoped to avoid stopping there, but she had no other choice now.
The chickens suddenly cackled in alarm, their wings beating the air. The commotion was accompanied by the clop of hooves on stone. Mira stiffened in her chair at the sound.
“Water my mule, if you would,” a man said, dismounting near the stables. His words were barely audible over the indignant squawking of the hens. “There’s a coin in it for the first among you to do the task.”
Mira rose to her feet, ready to vanish at the man’s approach. All the stable boys rushed toward the mule as one. The tallest boy reached the animal first, and his triumphant grin elicited groans from his two smaller comrades.
The rider stood with his back to her, watching the stable boy lead his mule to the
fountain. He wore a patched and mud-stained cloak, though his fine black leather boots marked him as wealthy. Surely a man who can pay for such boots can afford a better cloak, Mira thought in surprise.
He turned then, the sun behind him, and made for the inn’s door.
There was something familiar in his confident stride.
Mira put a hand to her mouth. When he was a few paces away, she gasped.
“Arnaud?” She could hardly breathe.
“Mira!” He leapt over the threshold and gripped her by the shoulders. “It’s truly you?”
“You live,” she whispered, fighting off a sob. “You found me.”
Arnaud cupped her face in his hands. “Thank the sun and stars you’re safe. But you’re so pale, Mira.” His eyes came to rest on the curve of her belly, framed by the edges of her cloak. He looked up in surprise. “Are you—”
Before he could finish his question, one of the merchants in the courtyard began shouting.
“I have two daggers under my cloak,” he roared. “And I won’t hesitate to use either one of them!”
“I’ve but the one,” the other merchant retorted. “It’s all I’ve ever needed, for my skill with a blade is unmatched.”
“I do not like this place,” Mira said wearily. “Nor do I like those men.”
The innkeeper, roused by the commotion, sauntered down the stairs.
“Can’t a man have a few moments’ peace at daybreak?” he groused to no one in particular, his voice gravelly with sleep as he buttoned his vest.
Yawning, he ventured into the courtyard to mediate the dispute.
Arnaud retrieved Mira’s satchels. “Let’s leave,” he said. “I’ve found what I came for.”
He took her hand and they followed the innkeeper out the door.
Arnaud tossed coins to the stable boys and helped Mira into her saddle, then swung into his own. As they rode off, the merchants’ voices were overcut by the shriek of a baby from somewhere inside the inn.
Mira glanced back and saw the servant girl outlined in the doorway. For a moment, she wanted to stop, to give the girl a few coins.
But impulsive acts of help did not always result in happy outcomes. She knew this all too well.
Resolutely, Mira turned her head and fixed her gaze on the road.
For a long time they rode in silence. Mira was vaguely aware of songbirds trilling in the hawthorns lining the roadside, the morning sun warming her face, a single blue dragonfly careening past her mule’s ears.
Though she made a habit of noticing such details to take her mind off the discomfort of travel, nothing made a lasting impression today. Every sight, every sound, every scent was diminished and muted. All that mattered was her husband’s presence. The relief she felt at the sight of him made her almost giddy.
“I stopped at each inn and farmhouse between the Abbey of Camon and here, searching for you,” he said abruptly. There was reproach in his voice. “I worried about you on these roads alone. If I had known you were with child—”
Mira’s happiness began to evaporate. A feeling of defensiveness took its place.
“I did what I could to travel in safety,” she said. “I rode with merchants. And farmers, and a group of pilgrims. Despite my condition, I was ready to defend myself. I am capable, as you well know.” She noticed a welt in the flesh just above the line of his beard. “What happened to your face?”
He looked away, shrugging. “It’s nothing. Healing nicely.”
“Does it have to do with my brother?”
“That’s a story for another time,” he said.
“Surely you can tell me if Pelegrín lives or not,” Mira insisted.
“He lives.”
“But where did he take you? What did you do—”
Arnaud grew quiet again. He fiddled with his saddle, making a tiny adjustment to a buckle.
Mira seethed. Did he truly expect her to be content with silence, with no explanation of where he had gone after she watched him ride away from her so long ago?
“What about those boots?” she asked suspiciously. “They look like the boots of a knight.”
“They are. One of Pelegrín’s men gave them to me.”
“So you are my brother’s friend now?”
He shrugged.
“You tantalize me with scraps,” she complained.
Arnaud tipped his head back and watched a crow glide into the high branches of an oak.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “About the baby?”
“Perhaps I’ll save the story for another time,” Mira replied.
He shot her a hard look.
“The nuns advised me to rest apart from you when they discovered I was with child,” she confessed after a moment. “I—I thought it was a good idea, that I should wait a bit to tell you, to regain my strength first. It was difficult to imagine another baby so soon after Rose died. I did not know what to feel. How to feel.” She wavered, the words stuck in her throat.
“I understand.” Arnaud’s expression was sober, but his tone was full of sympathy.
“To think I was almost to Nay, ready to throw myself on the mercy of Carlo Sacazar once again,” she went on. “But now, praise the saints, we can continue directly on to Bayonne.”
“You can’t ride all that way,” Arnaud said decisively. “We need a wagon.”
“I have been cautious with our silver, but a wagon is not within our reach,” she argued. “I am a strong rider. We will be safely lodged in Bayonne before the first snows of winter fall.”
“No. I’ll not travel farther than Nay without a wagon.” Arnaud’s voice was like flint. “On this I won’t budge.”
Mira remembered the vow she had made after Rose’s death to amend her headstrong ways for Arnaud’s sake.
She dipped her head in defeat. “As you wish.”
2
Autumn, 1505
Oto, Aragón
Elena
A hard rain fell for two days and two nights. Dark seams of water appeared in the cracked stone walls of the castle. A damp chill hung in the air, penetrating Elena’s very bones.
Like a wild thing trapped in a gilded cage, she stalked around dispensing orders to the remaining servants. Certain jobs that had been Lady Marguerite’s pet concerns she saved for herself. The dead baroness’s iron keyring jangled gently at her waist, giving her comfort as she strode down the dim corridors with only flickering torchlight for company.
By the end of the second day of the downpour, Alejandro grew increasingly restless. At supper that evening, he begged Elena to let the knights take him into the valley of Arazas to hunt.
“Hunt for what?” she asked. “Nothing is afield in weather like this. Animals are wise. They hole up in bad weather. As we should.”
“But we need food,” he countered.
“That we do. Still, there’s enough to hold us over for a while.”
The kitchen was stocked with dried meats, with wheels of cheese that had been carried down from mountain villages on the backs of mules, with ceramic vessels full of oil, with enough wheat berries to keep the castle in bread for months. Whatever happened, even if Pelegrín did not return as he had promised, they would survive the winter ahead.
This was no accident. Elena had spent every spare moment since her arrival here rebuilding the strange world within the castle walls, beginning with its larder. She often slipped away to do her own foraging and hunting, and sent a few trustworthy servants into villages high in the mountains, where they exchanged Oto gold for food and goods. She made a child-sized version of the leather armor worn by the knights Pelegrín had sent here all those months ago. Alejandro wore it all the time, indoors or out, like a second skin.
Elena liked the knights, on balance. They seemed loyal to Pelegrín. And they had survived the battlefields in N
aples. That had to mean something. Either they were just lucky, or they were skilled in the ways of war.
She preferred to believe the latter.
On the third day, the rain stopped. The day after that, Elena promised Alejandro they would ride into the valley of Arazas and hunt for the afternoon. All morning he whistled cheerily, sitting down to his lessons without complaint, rubbing his leather armor with oil, organizing the knights, dispatching the stable boys to saddle the horses.
Elena watched them mount their steeds in the sun-drenched courtyard, unable to repress a laugh at the sight of Alejandro in his miniature suit of armor alongside the knights with their longswords and helmets.
“We’re a matched set!” he yelled at Elena, gesturing at the men on either side of him.
“So you are,” she agreed, struck again by a fit of laughter.
“What is funny?” he asked, aggrieved.
“I’m happy, that’s all,” she said.
“Oh.” He waved at her. “We shall be back with supper.”
“I’d like to request a young boar, on the runty side.”
“As you wish, my lady,” Alejandro said solemnly.
He turned his horse’s nose in the direction of the lane, the knights following behind him.
Elena returned inside, unable to stop smiling. Alejandro had certainly burrowed into her heart. Striding across the great hall, she slowed her pace. A thought rankled at her mind, some nagging memory of a task she had meant to do. What was it? Oh, yes. There were parchment scrolls in Ramón’s chambers in the Tower of Blood that contained maps. Alejandro had asked to study them tomorrow. She would fetch them and have them ready for him in the morning.
In the tower, she ascended the steps rapidly, winded by the time she reached Ramón’s door. She selected a key from the chain around her waist and fitted it into the lock. Inside, she gazed around in disbelief. That she, a mountain woman, would carry the key to a baron’s door, was nearly as incredible as the fact that she was the baron’s sister. If not for a quirk of fate, Elena would have known the life of a noblewoman. As quickly as the thought came, she dismissed it.
The quirk of fate was that you survived at all, she reminded herself. If this family had its way, your life would have been snuffed out by a pack of wolves before you were a day old.