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“Do not flatter me,” she said shortly. “I well recall our first meeting. You were dripping in seaweed and laid your sword at my feet, silencing a crowd of nattering courtiers and self-important nobleman and the Spanish ambassador.”
“That it did,” he said, smiling faintly. Smiling hurt, so he stopped.
“Hm.” She made a little sound. “Then your meeting with her must have been quite a thing.”
“Quite.” He paused. “She punched me. Right here.” He ran his fingers along his jaw, then hissed and pulled his hand away. The queen’s eyebrows lifted. “Then she told me she held Rardove for you, and stole my dagger and laid it against my throat.”
The queen stared a moment, then drew up her chair, turned it to face him, and sat down. “Tell me everything.”
She leaned forward, her hands on her knees, and Aodh saw the child she must have been, the young woman, made illegitimate, her mother executed, her father raging mad at times, flailing and powerful. Imprisoned in the Tower when her maniacal sister took the throne, then against all odds, she took it herself, an unwanted pawn who’d somehow outstripped all their ambitions and become, quite simply, magnificent.
But through it all, she was also a woman who’d never been able to be fully a woman, else she’d have lost everything else.
He admired her deeply.
And she did love a good story.
So he, gesturing a silent query toward a flagon on a table, and being graced with a miniature, regal nod of assent, poured a drink, handed it to her, then retook his seat and told her all about how Katarina would have made her very proud, starting at the beginning.
When he was done, the queen was smiling, sitting back in her chair. “I did pick well for Rardove,” she said warmly.
“That you did. You could do so again, my lady.”
Ah, and there they came to it.
The queen eyed him closely, but her body was reclined in the chair more easily now, as it had been in years past, when it was just they two, and he had stories to tell, and treasure to deliver. “I have not seen Mistress Katarina for many a year,” the queen said, and he detected fondness in her words.
“She is a fierce and loyal mistress, Bess, out beyond the Pale. Not many could have done what she has done all these years. Do you know she held Rardove with ten men? Ten men and…” He tipped his head up and reflected a moment. “Approximately twenty-five women.”
Surprise brought the queen tipping forward in her chair.
“Householders, serving maids, even the hen girl. Katarina enlisted and trained them all.”
“Did she?” Elizabeth sat back and peered at the ceiling too, in much the same spot as Aodh had, a smile on her face. “Did she indeed?” For a moment, the room was quiet. The moon, bleached white and scratchy looking, bobbed into the corner of the tall window. Set against blue-black sky, it looked bright and cold.
“You must have made quite an impression on her, then.” The queen’s voice made him look back. “For her to have turned to you so utterly.”
She was no longer looking at the ceiling; she was staring directly at him, and the smile of a moment ago was gone. “She remains yours yet, Bess, I swear it.”
“Does she? Ludthorpe tells me she seemed most enamored of you. Enough to wed you against my will. Enough to stand on the wall with weapons trained on my men.”
“She is loyal to you, my lady.” The message would be repeated however long it took to save her life.
The queen’s gaze drifted over his shoulder, and her voice took on a contemplative tone. “Methinks she is loyal to you, Aodh. For her to have come back to save you…twice.”
He scrambled to his feet and turned to see the door being pushed wide by a soldier. Katarina stood before him.
“I found her lurking, Your Majesty,” the soldier said with a shove.
Aodh surged forward an inch, but when Bess held up her hand, he stopped.
“I was not lurking,” Katy said, composed and indignant, and how she did both, he did not know. “I was coming to see my queen, and you were simply the fastest route.”
The queen waved the hand she’d held up. “Leave her to me.”
The soldier shifted a gimlet eye off Aodh, released Katarina’s arm, and backed out. He shut the door, and the three of them stood in silence.
“You should search her,” Aodh said lazily. “She is fond of weapons. All over.” He waved his hand at his own body, sweeping it up and down, chest to knees.
