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“Get up. I grow tired of your groveling. You did it to serve the queen, not me.”
Once I am on my feet, it is all I can do to keep from giving him a bracing slap to restore his wits. “You loved her enough to turn the tides of war away from her. Why can you not find that love in your heart once more?”
“Because she wishes to take what is mine.”
He is not talking about Brittany, but power. “Sire, you are not a child to have his favorite toy snatched from his hand. You are a king, it is in your blood. No one can take that from you. Not even the queen, if she’d a mind to, but she doesn’t. She has no wish to wear the crown of France. That was only ever your sister’s dream—one she could never have. Bitterness and jealousy clouded her judgment and reason. In her head, she twisted everything the queen did into a power play because that was what she would do.
“The queen never played those games. She has no desire to do anything other than follow through on the promises she made to her people, and serve as your dutiful queen. It is what she was raised from birth to do.”
“Then why does she keep sticking her nose into the crown’s affairs?”
“Only when it is her business as well.” He starts to protest, but I stop him. “Think upon it! Every time she has become involved, it has revolved around Brittany or the safety of those who served her. Would you have your queen be less loyal? Less caring? Less giving of her Christian charity?”
He closes his mouth with a snap.
“She is as different from your mother as you are from your father. She does not have the mind to do nothing but sit and sew with her ladies. She is fiercely intelligent and intensely loyal. She went nose to nose with your sister and held her at bay. She turned a sure defeat into a victory. Why would you not want your children to possess such virtues as she possesses?”
The tightness around his mouth softens.
“My lord, her father is dead. Her mother, too. As well as her younger sister. She has no family but the one you create together. She has so much to give. As do you.”
“But she created this rebellion in order to . . .”
“In order to what? For therein lies the true flaw of your argument. She gains nothing by any of this. It was the general’s and your sister’s doing. Whether they engineered it or simply grasped the opportunity once it presented itself, they used her as a scapegoat to hide their own desire to influence you. All they needed to say was that she wished it, and you did the opposite. It was no more difficult to steer your thoughts and inclinations than it was to steer a cart.”
His nostrils flare in irritation.
“A very royal, magnificent cart, Your Majesty.”
“Do not lob empty flattery at me.”
“It was but a jest. I know how hard it can be to look at our mistakes, made with the best of intentions, but mistakes nonetheless. For me, jesting softens the sting of it.”
“Yes, let’s talk of your mistakes,” he says. “Your note.” His lips curl in a sneer. “I could have protected you. The council would not have listened to her.”
“Are you so very certain, Your Majesty? The Bishop of Albi is her creature, bought and paid for. General Cassel wishes to punish everyone—most brutally—at the slightest provocation. And I am still not convinced that he is not working in close concert with your sister. What if they hadn’t listened to you? It was not a risk I was prepared to take.
“I had to go where she could not find me or else be used against you. I could not live with that possibility and did not want you to have to live with that threat.”
“You think me too weak to stand against her.”
I fear a pitched army of ten thousand is too weak to stand against her, but do not share that with him. “No, but she is cunning and devious enough to weave a web that ensured standing up to her cost you dearly. That is what I wished to spare you.”
He stares at me, unmoved.
I take a step toward him. “She threatened to expose you to the council if I could not convince you to hand Sybella over into her brother’s custody. She gave me the choice of betraying you or betraying my sister. I chose neither.”
“Lady Sybella is as important to you as your king?”
“She is my sister.”
“She is a fellow initiate of the convent!”
He does not believe it was a true choice. He thinks we are nothing but friends. “Which means she is my sister,” I say gently. “We are all of us sired by the patron saint of death. That is how we come to his service.”
“Saints do not lie with women!” For a man who has lain with more than his fair share, he sounds scandalized.
“Saints who once walked the earth as gods do. It is how we are made. Why we are trained in his arts.”
He stares at me a moment—belief warring with doubt. “That is precisely why my advisors wish to have you renounce your faith—it is heretical.”
“It is not, sire. Surely the Church keeps detailed records of its decisions and councils. There was exactly such a council that created the Nine. Your Majesty, it is not my intent to argue theology with you, but to show you that Sybella is, for all intents and purposes, my sister, and I could not betray her in such a way.”
His head snaps up. “And how would putting her in her brother’s custody, where she rightfully belongs, betray her?”
No matter how hard I try to extricate myself, I only get caught further in the net. “He does not have her best interests at heart. Where is she now?”
He angles his body away from me, as if disgusted. “She is being detained for her part in the rebellion.”
“She was not rebelling, she was fighting against it.”
“And so we’re back to that.” He averts his head, unwilling or unable to look at me.
“Why are you so convinced the queen was behind it?”
“Viscount Rohan has come forward and told the entire truth.”
I frown. If that were the case, he and I would not be having this conversation. “And what truth was that?”
He rounds on me, eyes glinting. “That she approached him and he pretended to go along with it only to lull her into a false sense of security until he could get word to me.”
I cannot help it, I laugh. The entire story is so twisted and absurd. “Until he could get word to you? Has he never heard of messengers?”
The king’s reply is stiff. “He could not risk it being intercepted.”
“Come now, Your Majesty. You receive messages every day, from far more important dignitaries, and none of them has ever been intercepted.”
He frowns slightly, considering. I press my advantage. “Furthermore, what could the queen possibly hope to gain by such a move against you?”
“Power.”
“What witnesses could I produce that you would believe? Tell me, and I will find them.”
He turns to stare into the fire. “No one,” he says. “I am surrounded by lies.”
I have done my best to plant the seeds of doubt. Now I can only pray I will be given time to coax those seeds into full-blown misgivings.
Chapter 99
Sybella
The next morning, Pierre himself shows up at my door. At first, I fear he has heard of my visit to his father’s chambers, but he is not angry enough for that. Instead he crosses over to the fire and rubs his hands almost gleefully. A gleeful Pierre is one who is about to spring a trap.
“To what do I owe this most unexpected pleasure?” I ask.
“Now that you have settled in, we will be having a formal welcoming dinner in the great chamber tonight.”
“A welcoming dinner,” I repeat warily. “Was that not what we did last night?”
He waves a hand. “That was but a casual supper.” He rises up on his toes. “You have been gone so very long. When was the last time we were all together in one of our own holdings?”
“Two years and eight months, but I did not know that was something to be celebrated.” Not to mention that we will not “all” be together. A number of us are missing: Julian, Charlotte, Louise.
He grows more somber. “Our family is always more powerful when we are together.”
