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“I am not asking, I am ordering you. If that is too difficult for you to manage, there is one other option.”
I wait, knowing I will not like what she is about to say.
“If you cannot convince the king to hand Sybella over to Pierre, then you may kill her yourself. Either way, I wish her removed for good.”
Why? Why does she harbor such hatred for Sybella? It is one thing that they cross political swords, but to arrange her murder? “Madame, you must understand it takes time to arrange to kill someone.”
“I do. That is why you have a week. No more talk. Simply nod if you understand me.”
It feels as if this woman has just grabbed a spoon and scooped out my heart. She has taken one of the most selfless things I have ever done and turned it into a weapon to be used against the king. With no other choice before me, I nod. She sends me one last scornful glance and disappears through the door.
I force my body to breathe. My head grows light, and I stumble over to sit on the bed. My carefully crafted and painstakingly built progress toward fixing this catastrophe has been hacked from under my feet.
Of course, there is no decision to be made. I will not hurt Sybella, not for any price, and certainly not for the king’s power struggle. But, oh, the innocents who will be caught up in this wake!
The queen, who has so graciously opened her doors to me, in spite of everything. The king’s budding confidence, which could allow him to grow into a decent ruler. All for want of the regent’s rutting schemes. I want to explode into action to begin escaping this carefully laid trap, yet I remain motionless, fearing what I may step into next.
If I choose to stay or warn the king, he will likely think he can simply overcome the regent’s claims, bargain it out, no matter that the Bishop of Albi is already in her pocket, his confessor is likely shocked, and General Cassel will sneer at his weaknesses.
What little remnants of his decency that remain will shrivel before that onslaught.
And his advisors? The majority of them will not trust his judgment again, allowing the regent to create a power vacuum into which she can readily slip once more. She will have robbed him of the one thing that mattered most to him—their respect. As well as robbing me of any chance I had of righting the scales.
A new horror occurs to me. If I stay, if the king resists, the regent could easily claim that I was working for her, gaining his trust in service of her ambitions rather than for my own reasons. And he will, of course, believe her.
The thought has me leaping to my feet and rushing over to the basin, where I retch into it, trying not to make a sound. Even worse, Sybella might feel as if she needs to come forward and confess to Fremin’s murder in order to neutralize this weapon the regent now holds. It will all come crumbling down on her undeserving shoulders. I retch again.
As I rest my head on the small table, waiting for my stomach to stop roiling, my eyes fall on the pitcher of fresh water. I’d almost been able to fix things—but the glue was too thin.
But, I slowly realize, even thin glue requires a hammer in order to break it. And the regent can only make use of a weapon if she holds it. Without me, there is no leverage over the king. No one Sybella or the queen will feel they need to protect.
Chapter 54
Your Majesty,
If you are reading this, then I have had to make a most difficult decision, and you will not like the news I am about to share with you.
Back in Plessis, the night of Monsieur Fremin’s death, Madame Regent overheard our conversation. She has recently confronted me with what she learned that night and is planning to use it to force you to bend to her political will. I cannot allow that to happen. As I have always told you, my first duty is to serve, and I cannot do that if I am to be used as a weapon against you.
The only way forward is for me to leave and, after I am gone, for you to announce that you have discovered my role in the matter and have banished me as punishment. That way, the information she holds cannot be used against you in any way.
Your Most Humble Servant,
G
I carefully place the letter on my pillow. Either the maidservant or one of the guards will take it directly to the king. I leave a second letter for Sybella, but this one under my mattress, knowing she will search to see if there are any signs of why I have left.
I fetch the maid’s gown that I carried all the way from Plessis, and begin to undress. When I have stripped down to naught but my shift, I reach around to the back of my neck and fumble with the clasp of the necklace until it releases. As I remove it, I marvel at the heaviness of the silver links that spill though my fingers.
Setting it on the foot of the bed, I am reminded of the tales my mother told of the followers of Saint Mer. How they could slip out of the skin that allowed them to move so freely in the ocean in order to walk among men unremarked. But woe to the one whose skin was found by humans, for once it was taken from her, she would never have the same freedom of movement in the sea again. With luck, everyone who has seen me has noticed only the necklace and will not recognize me without it.
The king will never forgive me. In spite of my note and my careful explanation, he will never forget that I did not trust him to protect us against the regent’s schemes. He will believe I thought him too weak. But this is not about me, it’s about his standing with his advisors, and his continued ability to rule. The more that is undermined, the greater the threat to the queen, the convent—and Sybella.
How does one even shield oneself against a creature like the regent? I wonder as I step into the humble servant’s gown. Mayhap I will find answers to that question out there. Something is going on in Brittany, according to the Beast of Waroch. Surely Maraud and his crew—including me—could help there. We could even send reports back to Sybella and the queen.
If I can convince Maraud that is where we should go next. And, oh, how Andry and Tassin will like that—the woman who poisoned their friend returning to tell them what to do and where to go. Oddly, I relish the prospect of arguing with them about it.
I have little enough left to call my own—I take even less. My few weapons, the poisoned needles, my handful of possessions I’ve carried with me since Cognac. They hardly fill a small sack, but still, they are the pieces of my life that I have not—yet—had to leave behind.
Fortunately, no one looks at servants, especially not those hurrying by with chamber pots or pails of dirty water. It is easy enough to find the scullery, then slip through the servants’ door into the palace yard. Once outside, I keep walking, half afraid someone will call me back, but no one does.
I hurry from the main area of the courtyard toward the outbuildings, where I will not be so visible from the palace windows. Once I am well hidden among the scores of other bodies going about their palace business, I begin making my way to the fletcher’s hut.
With hindsight, I can only wond
er why his original offer of help terrified me so very much.
No, not his offer, my reaction to it. That was what scared me so.
My mind—my pride—wants to shy away from this truth. Pretend I have not seen it, but pride is how I ended up on this path, and I do not wish to learn the same lesson twice.
So I take out that moment between us, that memory of when he looked at me with those laughing brown eyes of his, so solemn and sincere. “Let us help you.”
That he would set aside his plans for vengeance to help still stuns me.
Before that, no one in all my life had offered to stand by my side. Not Margot, not Angoulême, not the convent. Not even my mother, who left me to face the convent alone. He was the first, and it was so foreign to me, I did not know what to do with it.
And in that moment, his offer made me realize how hungry I was for that. How starved, just as he was starving when we first met. Only I was starving for . . . what? I cannot even put a name to it. Companionship is too weak. Support does not do it justice.
That deep hunger that terrified me. Like a starving man who will do anything to fill his belly, I feared what I would do to fill that hole in my heart. I feared I would turn my back on the convent, on everything I’d worked toward. On those I’d sworn to help.
I feared that I was weaker than I had ever imagined. And since I could not pull that weakness from me, could not yank it from my breast and cast it aside like the weed it was, I struck out at him instead.
* * *
The fletcher’s hut sits nestled between the armory and the artillery buildings. No one lingers outside. Inside is a lone fletcher seated at a table, carefully attaching gray feathers to an arrow shaft.
When I reach the far side of the hut, I pause. My pulse, already erratic, grows even more so. Was his invitation to join him sincere? He could easily have made it in the heat of the moment, with our kisses still warm upon our lips and the unexpected discovery of the chain.
