Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
Shining humbly and loyally.
—MARGUERITE’S MOTTO
Full-bellied and drunk, Marguerite and her ladies announced they would rest in the hours before nightfall.
“It is the way of their court,” Roland explained. We were being escorted to our respective apartments, and Bess kept glancing over her shoulder at us as we whispered together. “After supper, they sleep so they can dance and fuck and play all night long.”
“Marguerite’s mind is shallow,” I told him. “She was only amused when you were angry with her. She doesn’t consider you a real threat.”
“Well, when she met me, I wasn’t. I was only a fraction of what I am now.
” He ducked his head. “You must understand something about Marguerite: She’s both cruel and impulsive, a terrible combination for someone in power.
There is no reason behind most of her decisions.
To bind you, a magician far more powerful than her, in your first moments of meeting?
She wanted to rattle us—me. Nothing more.
” He scanned my face. “We’ll have to play along with her if we want her to tell us the truth about Philippe.
We can’t afford to anger her. Or—” His mouth twitched. “Humble her.”
The page leading us halted by a heavy set of doors. “Here you are, Your Grace. Mistress Mortlake.”
Roland and I exchanged a glance.
“Pardon?” I said.
“These are your rooms for your stay,” the page said. Bess stiffened with excitement.
Roland only laughed bitterly under his breath. “Marguerite is trying to torture me.”
“Yes, he’s very particular. If there is even a hair out of place…” I trailed off.
Roland explained to the page, in elegant Lionessian, that we were not married. The page apologized, said he was so very sorry, but these were the only chambers set aside for us by Marguerite.
“I don’t need rooms of my own,” I explained, a little desperately. “I hardly sleep. I’ll only disturb him.”
The page’s face twisted in confusion. After another exchange, too rapid for me to parse—my written Lionessian being far stronger than my spoken—Roland caught my eye. “He says we are Marguerite’s guests, and refusing might offend her.”
The members of Roland’s household, lugged from Alvion, carried our trunks in.
He trusted them to know how he liked his rooms kept.
Inside the chambers was a writing desk, a long dining table, a small fireplace.
Stained glass windows depicting lovers clasped together in clamshells or with entwined fish tails looked out to the churning sea.
I could see the wrinkle of whitecaps from here.
Roland inspected the various items left on the writing desk.
He spun a globe, dragged a finger down the armillary sphere to catch dust and scowled at the amount he collected.
We haggled, then, over the bedchamber, both of us insisting the other take it.
Roland, with a drawn-out sigh, finally relented after I swore on every Planet that I had no need for it.
We’d take turns dressing and washing. I’d rest as a cat on the sill, if necessary.
Bess ordered my trunk brought into the bedchamber. On the way, she slipped a piece of parchment from the desk into her sleeve—to write a report to Cecily, no doubt.
Once she was out of earshot, tucked into a chair by the window, I turned back to Roland. “You say the court will sleep for several hours. That’s enough time, I think, for us to visit that gallery again and take a careful look at the king’s portraits.”
“Why?”
“The portraitist may have dated them. I’d like to confront Marguerite with as much evidence as possible. Dates, records. Whatever we can find. In the meantime, we’ll do whatever she likes, even if we’re gritting our teeth through it.”
He hummed his agreement, leaned his shoulder against the wood frame. “You won’t enjoy her games, her revels. The chatter. The flirtation. I know you. You’re shy and suspicious with everyone but me.”
“I won’t let her think she’s frightened me.”
After he shut the door, I pressed my ear against it to hear him walk away, but he still stood there, breathing.
Seconds passed. A minute. I laid my palm against the wood.
Finally, I heard the clip of his boots, his orders for his men to hang his clothes in the wardrobe and fetch water for his basin so he might wash.
Bess glanced over at me from where she sat, scratching out her detailed report to the queen.
I was no Mercury, but from her arched brow alone, I knew exactly what she described to Cecily.
We began at the end.
In his latest portrait, Philippe stood more formidable than he did in person, wearing pointed slippers, a thick pelt.
He grasped a golden scepter hammered with the badge of Venus.
“Dated the year before last, by a famed portraitist named … Sebastián, I think?” Roland straightened, hand falling to his side.
“The signature is hard to make out. Let’s go this way. ”
In every frame, Philippe was regal, mighty—until we came to the end of the gallery, to a portrait painted twenty-five years ago.
He stood with his hand on Queen Charlotte’s shoulder.
This younger Philippe had a goatee, silver rings in his ears, and he held no object other than a sword.
The deep etchings in his forehead, and around his mouth, were absent in every painting but this one.
Roland stood before it for a long while.
“This must have been before Marguerite became his mistress.” He circled the room, retracing his steps.
“In all the more recent portraits, he has some ode to Venus, whether in the sky or the instruments he holds in his hands. Some are more subtle. This quadrant points toward Venus rising on the horizon. And there she is, shining above his shoulder. And here, the glyph on his scepter.”
“I’m not sure this is strong enough evidence,” I said.
“He looks the same, or perhaps even younger, than he did twenty-five years ago, but any portraitist would skim years and flaws off their subject. No king wants to be remembered as an old man. We need to find records. You lived here. Where would they be?”
“The library. But I assure you, the Lionesse are not very meticulous recordkeepers.”
“What are they doing instead?”
A grin spread slowly across his face. “I’ve been a rather bad influence on you, I think.”
“In Prospero’s letter, he said the king’s birth date had been altered.
I’d like to cross-check others to be sure.
The library would have documents of Queen Charlotte’s birth year, and their wedding year, and the birth years of their children, wouldn’t it?
Why are they hidden up north, as you said?
Is it truly because of Marguerite’s wrath—or are they visibly aging, while Philippe isn’t? ”
“No one has laid eyes on them in many years.” He hummed to himself, considering.
“I shall have to accompany you to the library. The boundaries in this palace are particular. Whichever Saturn designed them had a twisted mind. They are not like Redhall’s, with their petty requirements of coin or rank. ”
“Tell me how to get through, then. You should rest.” I sensed he was exhausted from the journey, could barely keep his eyes open, but I was wide awake.
His grin turned feral. “Oh, no. I’m far too curious to let you go by yourself.”
The library was on the third floor of the palace, tucked far from the royal apartments. All the braziers in the corridor were cold, so we could only see by tapered candle.
Roland caressed the door. It was a rich mahogany, towering above our heads. “The Great Library of Lionesse is a very beloved spot for courting. Let me tell you a story.”
I rolled my eyes and leaned my hip against the wall.
With dramatic flair, Roland began. “When Montmarre was built—” A wave of his hand.
“—however many hundreds of years ago, the Lionessian king had an unfaithful queen. She loved the king’s own Venusborn magician, Fabian, desperately.
So the king had a Saturn design this door with Fabian in mind.
Fabian was a scholar, you see, who spent long hours in the stacks here.
The door would open only when the person named something or someone they lusted for.
The door must feel it within them, too. And so each day, the king would test his queen.
They stood before this door, and each day, she said, ‘My husband,’ and the door would still open, obedient as ever.
Until one day, the door did not open. She did not desire the king anymore—she was thinking only of her Venus lover. ”
“What happened?”
“To the queen? She was executed.” He flashed a smile. “So go on. Offer it your pleasure.”
I muttered how I detested Lionesse.
“We can always turn back,” he offered.
I bit my lip. Breathed in and out, trying to remember the last time I felt any kind of pleasure. It had been years since sun-kissed warmth, our eyes meeting through swaying blades of grass. A lifetime. I wouldn’t step inside such precious memories, not now.
There had been a handsome groom in the Stafford household, Peter, but that was nothing.
Only to feel something other than grief.
I wanted to feel nothing when our bodies met, because then I was shielded.
Love could send a dagger clean through the thickest, most plated armor, and I had lost so much, all of my blood.
No more. So, I’d let Peter have me in a stall behind the Stafford manor, and the entire time I’d stared at the trough where the pigs were fed and watched the water sway inside of it.