Chapter 26
Chapter
Julien Moreau came to Marguerite in her pavilion, pitched amid the tents of her protective household, with the king and his attendants snoring not so far off and the entirety of a French army dreaming and grunting and murmuring all around.
Grooms were stirring already, to feed the horses, and in the distance came the clang of an armorer’s bench, a shower of golden sparks in that grayness before dawn.
But despite them all, no one saw Moreau pass between the horse-lines, over the dew-starred grass, and to the tent of Madame the king’s sister.
As ever, Marguerite herself had no warning of his coming.
She merely looked up from her bed, her maid snoring outside, and saw him watching her from the shadows.
The only light was the brazier keeping off the night’s chill.
Startled, a little displeased, she said, “Why are you here?”
Something had changed about him. His eye was wild, and all the edges of him stood out wrongly against the light of the ordinary world. He took a silent step toward her cot and she saw that he was limping.
“I have been a traveler in the Lost Lands this night,” he said.
“I do not know what that means. Why have you wakened me?”
He smiled and the outline of his body seemed suddenly to accord better with the room. But his eyes still flickered brilliant and then dark. He said only, “I need your help.”
“What help?”
He didn’t answer. He came closer and she saw an uncontrollable excitement in his wild eyes.
Anger? Fear? Delight? She didn’t know. He was smiling down at her, tenderly.
But it was as though something—something other—that he’d ably concealed was breaking its way out anyway, through his eyes and the gaps in his teeth.
When he walked toward her, the shadows on his face writhed, as though he stepped beneath trees that were not there.
She scrambled instinctively to her feet.
He put out his hand to her, and his shadows crawled over her body too.
Then the whole world seemed to be slinking away, dissolving, except for his hand straying up her back.
Suddenly they weren’t standing in her pavilion anymore. Instead they were in a chapel with a worn stone floor and oxblood walls and a line of graves in the floor.
She had begun to shake despite herself. She turned in a circle. “What is this? Where are we?”
He whispered, “They think to rule me, but they are only ghosts. I am the king of the korriganed.”
“What is this place?” demanded Marguerite. The chapel was hideously cold.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You will help me, won’t you? They must know I am not afraid.” He pulled her near and kissed her. “I am not afraid. I will come here if I like and do what I wish, and what can they do? They are only ghosts. You are only ghosts!” he screamed.
She wrenched her head away. Her breath came shallowly. “What are you doing? How have we come here?”
He hitched an impatient shoulder. “The shadows, of course. But do not ask questions. Not tonight.” He touched her cheek, dug his fingers in beneath her jaw, cut off her air. “I cannot bear it tonight.” He let her go just before the darkness came.
Use your brain, child, said her father’s precise voice, somewhere in the depths of her memory. Her lip had split against his teeth. She said, trying to make him reasonable, “We have a plan. The tourney. You promised me a victory.” He bit her ear and she jerked away.
He said, “But I need you. Would it were you with the favor of the unicorn and the power of sorcery instead of the little Breton.” He was worrying her shoulder with his mouth. “We must indeed have the tourney,” he said. “Then she will know.”
“What will she know?”
“That she is beaten. They will all know. Then she will yield.”
“Julien,” she said at last. “Julien, I’m cold.”
He pulled away. Marguerite could not slow her panicked breaths. His eyes were gold and hardly human. “I will keep you warm,” he said, and licked her tears away.