Chapter Seventeen #3
Martin, the treasurer. One of the king’s friends, once young and strapping but now sagging with gout. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
She laughed sharply. “I do not mind,” she said, fixing my pearls so they rested beneath my collarbone. She paired them with lapis earrings, to match the blue of my gown and crescent hood. “I’ve always known I would marry him. We were engaged when I was eight.”
“And when will you marry?”
“When Roland decides. He approves all marriages for the king now. He delays it, for reasons no one will explain to me.”
Mercy, perhaps.
“Thank you, Bess,” I said, trying to smile warmly. She blinked in confusion and curtseyed, murmuring something about honor that she didn’t mean.
Up on deck, Roland was watching the swell with his hands behind his back. He was draped in pearls. One dangling from his ear, more hung around his neck.
“Why do you delay Bess’s marriage?” I asked, sidling up beside him.
He turned his head only slightly. “You wore a gown after all. What a shame.”
I smacked his arm, and he smiled. “Answer my question.”
A shrug. “Because Martin is a toad who hops at Charles Guildford’s heels, and I have no interest in pleasing him anytime soon. Why? Have you come to care for her? After all she whispers about you to Cecily?”
“A little. Yes,” I admitted. The sun pressed against a white sweep of clouds, trying in vain to emerge. The water kicked up against the hull.
Roland wiped spray from his cheek and said, “I was thinking about the other night. About my mother.” There was a beat of hesitation, then he seemed to gather himself.
“I meant it. I’d like to remember what she looked like.
When Prospero came for me, I was forced to acknowledge something I had always known: There were things she wanted far more than raising me.
I was unexpected. She was very young. Unmarried.
I wonder if, when I was taken, she felt she finally had an opportunity to live.
I tried to forget her after I left, to punish her.
But I was up all night. Realizing I missed her. ”
“Tonight, I’ll help you. If you’d like.”
He nodded, looking out to sea again.
“You’ve risen higher than she ever could have hoped, Roland.”
“Oh? I don’t think she had much ambition for me. That all came from myself. It began with wanting to please her.” He turned, appraising me. “Your ambition was the only match for mine. When we were children, I admired it.”
“Admired?” I’d hardly felt a spark of his admiration as a girl. There were only a few times I could recall. The race to the tree, when he’d thrown his arm around me. Once more, when I’d fetched his practice sword from the bottom of a mucky pond. “You didn’t make it known.”
He frowned. “I didn’t?”
“No. I remember every time you or Hal were kind to me,” I said softly.
A shaft of light cut across the deck. He waved his hand through it, back and forth. “Who would you—” He caught his lip in his teeth. “Who would you say was your favorite between us? If you had to choose?” His eyes cut to mine. “If, say, I had a knife to your throat.”
My heart staggered. There were layers to this question he didn’t know. How deep would I cut him, cut us both, if I pressed the sharp edge of my past against him now? “I’m not playing this game.”
“Why not?”
“It’s your very favorite kind. One where only you can win.”
He grinned, flicking the hair from his eyes. “So, have I won?”
“How can you? If one of the choices—” I turned away. “If one of the choices doesn’t exist anymore?”
His playful expression shuttered. I worried I’d hurt him. So much so that I didn’t brush his mind to see if I had. I fingered the white frills of his sleeve, unsure what else to say. “Let’s—let’s forget it. What should I expect?” I gestured to the shoreline. “Tell me of the Lionessian court.”
He leaned his elbows against the ship’s rail. A breeze tussled with his hair. “Have you heard of the tale of Raymondin the Lecherous?”
I shook my head.
“He was a legendary Lionessian knight. Beautiful and deadly on the battlefield. He used his power over desire to create a fervent bloodlust in men, captivating the entire army, holding the minds of nearly two hundred at once. He massacred the king and royal family, then installed his own lover on the throne. Marguerite has a tapestry of him in her rooms. That is the very first thing to know about her. She is not quite a queen, but not quite a mistress either. King Philippe’s true queen and their children, even his heir, are banished up north.
Marguerite does not allow them at court. ”
“Did you know her well?”
He stared at waves breaking against the hull, refusing to look at me. “Well enough.”
She was surely the Venusborn magician who had instructed him, the one who crossed moral boundaries he would not. “How will I know if she’s in my mind?”
“You’ll want to please her above all else. Consumed by her entirely. But I’ll be with you. She won’t dare try it.”
“You don’t sound certain.”
“Well, she may require some—” His fingers strumming against the rail again. “Finesse.”
He murmured something else about a singer entertaining in his cabin for the rest of the hour. Would I like to join him? I shook my head. And once he was gone, I cast my gaze out to sea. There, in the bone-crushing waves and in the swift dives of seabirds, I saw Fulke Roet’s promise:
He will drown you.
King Philippe sent an envoy to meet us on the beach and escort us up the cliffs to his favorite summer castle, Montmarre. Once our rowboat skidded gently against the shore, Roland helped me out onto the sand.
Battered shells were scattered all over the beach. Roland brushed sand off one, his magic pouring over it, filling the chips in its surface and brightening its color. When the shell was whole again, he returned it to the surf.
The loose wisps of my hair and my veil were whipped about by the briny wind. A page led Roland to a skinny palfrey, and to my dismay, I was hoisted onto the same saddle. He reached around me to grip the reins. Snapped them, pressing his hips against mine to beckon the horse on.
“They don’t trust I can ride on my own?” I said through gritted teeth.
“You’ll find this court to be progressive in some ways and rather backward in others.”
The page boys escorting us averted their eyes from Roland. I wondered if his legend persisted here. It must. Just as Cecily’s ladies had gossiped about the tennis court, they must have Roland myths here, too. Stories of his expert hands and taunting mouth, of—
Behind me, he stiffened.
Our horse responded to his sudden kick, bracing itself against the dunes.
Up the winding cliffs was a rough trail to the palace gates.
I leaned away from him in the saddle, but as our mount tensed for the sharp incline, Roland’s arms tightened around me.
We began the steep climb, and I rested my head against his shoulder as we swayed back and forth.
His warm breath raised the hairs on my nape.
After we passed under the iron portcullis, the sandstone palace opened up before us.
While our keeps were stony and dim, this one attracted light.
Delicate columns were chiseled with angels, planets, armillary spheres.
Fornicating couples in every position carved into the palace like a declaration: This was a kingdom of pleasure.
In an oval courtyard, carts of fish and fruit were unloaded by servants and dragged into the kitchens. A groom took our palfrey’s reins from us. Roland leapt off gracefully, then opened his arms to catch me. We both spun around: him in recollection, and me in wonder.
As we were led up a back stairwell and into a hall, Roland’s fingers skimmed along the walls of the gallery.
The gossamer curtains, the pastel frescoes.
Several times he skidded to a halt and laced a hand through his hair, struck by something beautiful.
He softly told me about each artist, their technique, what had to be crushed together to make such color.
As he spoke, I couldn’t imagine why he left this kingdom.
He seemed born of it: the sea, the art, the easy light.
Could I be so airy here, if we were only the places we inhabited?
Perhaps I was cold and windswept inside, perhaps I denied and restrained myself, because it was the only scenery I’d ever known.
He halted again as we were led through another gallery, rotating beneath a ceiling fresco of angels and cherubs. I followed his gaze to a pink-haired angel of staggering beauty. Tall and broad-shouldered, he carried a harp. Wore only a white loincloth.
“It took days to sit for it.” Roland smiled, almost shyly. “While we’re here, you should sit for the artist, too. I suppose I could deign to be painted again,” he added, finally allowing a page to lead him from the gallery. “But I’d like to be naked this time.”
As I gaped at him, the doors to the king’s audience chamber swung open, the usher announcing us to the Lionessian court. Roland sank into a deep, effortless bow and tugged on my sleeve.
The walls were inlaid with mirrors. Courtiers rested on sapphire cushions, and above was another ceiling fresco of sea gods and merfolk and women lazing in clamshells, pearls clutched between their legs.
And on the central dais sat King Philippe of Lionesse.
His heavy jewels would sink him. He was a small man, sharply handsome for his age, with intelligent eyes and dark, luminous skin.
His gray curls were tied together with a ribbon.
He appeared in his early eighties at most—certainly not over a hundred.
Not beaten by time in the way I had expected.