Revenge of the Rose (2 page)

Once the women had refashioned themselves into great ladies, Marcus signaled the musicians. The little throng of courtesans made its way outside behind him. There was an instant and thunderous response from the collected lords.

Konrad had a mind to find the ersatz Duchess of Austria later that afternoon, but he had given himself the morning to swagger paternally about the dewy yard, assuring himself that everyone was dutifully misbehaving, and that they were grateful to their sovereign for the chance of it. His two bodyguards followed him at enough of a distance that he could pretend they were not there.

Since it was impractical to provide private tents for everyone here in the remote alpine site, there was a very casual ambiance to the copulation. Only Konrad and Marcus had quarters of their own. Both tents, like the pavilion, were swathed in images of the imperial black eagle and Konrad’s family crest, a black lion rampant. Konrad had watched the flap to his seneschal’s tent from the corner of his eye all morning. Nobody had gone in or out, and when Marcus himself retired to it, he had done so alone. Signaling his guard to wait outside, the emperor slipped into the little tent, grinning with smug anticipation.

Even in the secrecy of his own tent, Marcus was being secretive. He had thrown a sheet entirely over himself and his companion, whom he was clearly on top of, although they were both trying to be quiet. Konrad paused a moment to see if they would notice him— he was used to being noticed instantly, and especially by his steward. But they were far too engaged in each other. So he reached down and in a sudden sharp move plucked the sheet from off the couple, whipping it out of reach behind his back.

Like startled rabbits, Marcus and the young woman leapt apart from each other. She buried her head against a bolster, but Konrad snatched that up as well and tossed it to the ground. She cowered, curled up defensively, trying to hide her nakedness and her identity.

But Konrad recognized her.

The emperor, seldom at a loss for words, simply gaped. Marcus hung for a moment in horror, seeing his life at court crumbling to dust before his eyes as he tried to read Konrad’s expression.

The king burst suddenly into bellows of laughter.

“So my little cousin Imogen is marrying a swine!” he roared. “Can’t you even wait until the wedding, man?” Then he saw that the still-traumatized steward was not properly prepared for fornication. “You’re still in your drawers,” he said, accusingly.

Marcus, dark-complexioned, became the color of a radish. “I would never presume to lie so freely with a lady of my Lady Imogen’s virtue,” he stammered, which only made the emperor laugh harder.

“Marcus, for the love of Peter, you’re in bed with her at a bacchanalia, and she’s naked as Eve before the fall!”

The girl, who was dark-haired but attractively pale and considerably younger than both men, had found Marcus’s silk bed-robe and thrown it around her shoulders. Her expression was as troubled as Marcus’s. She huddled behind him now, and he shifted protectively to shield her. “Sire, cousin, I beg you, please don’t tell my father,” she whispered, stricken, looking down.

“One of you tell me why the devil Marcus still has his drawers on and I’ll consider it,” Konrad said agreeably and perched on the silk sheets of the portable bed. “Honestly, the consummate seducer, forgive the pun, spending an entire orgy in bed with his intended bride,
not
naked and
not
ravishing her— it is so perverse it borders on suspicious.”

Marcus lifted the corners of his lips in a feeble attempt to appear amused. Then he grimaced and fell into a confessional tone. “Sire, this will sound inane, but the truth is, we’re in love— “

“So why are your
drawers
on?” Konrad demanded again.

“I…” Marcus was flustered, and Imogen herself spoke up, with grim matter-of-factness.

“Your loyal servant is too much the gentleman to claim me before we are properly wed. He is protecting my virtue should I ultimately be married to another. We are both aware this is a political engagement, which Your Majesty might sever at your expediency,” she said from behind Marcus’s right shoulder, gripping his arm nervously.

The amusement immediately drained from Konrad’s face. “Yes,” he agreed, irritated partly about the situation, but mostly about having to
think
about the situation, even at an orgy. The couple winced in anticipation of the famous royal temper. “In fact…in the name of
Christ,
this was
stupid
of you.”

“I know, sire,” murmured the steward, ashamed. Imogen slid her hand from his arm forward onto his chest protectively, and he blushed.

“Her father will demand your hide if he learns, and
then
where will I be? You know he hates my ministerials, Marcus— he’ll use this as an excuse to demean your entire class! How could you be so
selfish,
dammit?”

Marcus, cheeks burning, was looking down. “Forgive me, milord,” he whispered.

“This is so unlike you! You haven’t a foolhardy bone in your body! This is on a par with those idiot knights in Jouglet’s troubadour songs.”

“I would hardly rank myself among the romantic heroes, sire.”

Konrad gawked. “Did you just speak of
romantic heroes
?” he demanded. “Are you possessed? My friend Marcus does
not
say such things.” Marcus said nothing in protest, just sat very straight and looked down at the ground. Konrad made a contemptuous, dismissive sound. “I’ll see you are left alone,” he said gruffly. “But she will not leave this tent, even in disguise, do you understand? Nobody—
nobody
— is to know she’s here. Ever. They’d never believe her chaste if she was caught in your tent like this. That would reflect poorly on us both and render her
worthless
if I require her to marry somebody else.”

“She won’t be caught, sire,” Marcus promised.

“And you will
never
put me in such a compromising position again,” Konrad went on. “Or this will be a whip next time.” He struck Marcus across the cheek once, hard. Imogen bit her lip; Marcus did not even flinch.

His outrage somewhat abated, Konrad took a deep breath and demanded, “Do you have a way to spirit her out of here?”

“Yes, sire— “

“If Jouglet assisted in this, which I assume he must have, he’ll pay for it too. Where is he, anyhow?”

“Jouglet?” Marcus shook his head nervously. “Good God, sire, he’s a dreadful gossip, he knows nothing about it. I’ve seen to all of it myself. But I promise you she will not be compromised.”

“Good,” said Konrad in a harsh tone. “Because I do not want problems from her father. He plagues me enough as it is. This would play right into his hands, you moon-drunk idiot.” He groaned. “Never mind what
Cardinal Paul
would make of it!”

“Her father thinks she’s visiting a nunnery,” Marcus said hurriedly.

Konrad stood to leave. “If he learns of this, Marcus, I know nothing. If he informs me, I shall be shocked and outraged and I will punish you severely and in public. You know I mean it.”

“As long as you don’t punish her, Konrad,” said Marcus, daring in private to plead upon decades of familiarity. Konrad only frowned at him.

“I’ll punish whomever the wronged father demands I punish; the last thing I need is more problems with the Count of Burgundy while I’m trying to find a bride among his vassals.
Christ
in
Heaven.
” He started to let himself out of the tent, then turned to deliver a final warning. “Keep your drawers on, Marcus.”

Alone, the two lovers looked at each other with both relief and distress.

J
ouglet
the minstrel and Lienor were flirting again as they waited for Willem on the steps in the small courtyard. Lienor’s green linen tunic was laced tighter in the back than her mother would have liked, but Jouglet and Lienor each seemed quite pleased with the effect.

“I’m astonished Willem said yes to this,” said Lienor, who was possibly the most beautiful woman in the county of Burgundy, and knew it, but was not much bothered by it. With a grateful smile, she added, “It’s only for your sake, Jouglet. My brother never lets me do
anything
.”

“He is concerned only for your safety, milady,” the minstrel answered neutrally. “Think of all the scrawny itinerant musicians who would prick your honor, given the chance.”

Lienor fidgeted with her wreath of rosebuds. “He’s overcautious. I would have more freedom in the cellar of an abbey.”

“Come now, milady,” Jouglet cooed. “He is a man of great indulgence. I offer my own friendship with him as proof.”

Lienor rolled her eyes and sighed dismissively. “It’s different for you, you’re a
man.
” Her eyes ran over the lean young body and she added, giggling, “Well…very nearly.”

Boyish Jouglet, although used to such jabs, looked affronted nonetheless. “What does milady mean,
very nearly
? Must I prove myself yet again? I beg the lady to assign me a task only a great hero could achieve, and I’ll demonstrate that I am worthy of your feminine regard.” But they smiled at each other; this was an old game between them.

“Very well, you lowly knight errant,” Lienor recited, feigning disdain. She gestured grandly toward the manor gate. “Travel the earth for ten years and bring me back…” She glanced at her pale hands a moment. “Bring me back a magic ring that will make me queen of all I survey.”

“Your happiness is my Holy Grail, milady,” Jouglet announced, with an absurd level of gravity, and bowed deeply.

“Is it?” Lienor scolded. “I have been waiting three years already, you might at least have slain a dragon for me by now. But I am so gracious and undemanding, I shall be content with a magic ring.”

“It is as good as done, milady. And when I return I hope I shall be granted the honor of resting upon your delicate pink bosom.”

“
My
bosom is
white,
” Lienor said, mock-petulant.

Jouglet grinned wickedly. “Not once I get through with it.”

Lienor giggled; her mother, Maria, standing watchfully a few paces away, clicked her tongue disapprovingly but said nothing. Maria had come, over the course of three years of Jouglet’s unannounced visits, to trust the fiddler with almost unimpeded access to the entire household; even if Jouglet could have claimed the brute masculine strengths that might endanger a young lady’s purity— and Jouglet couldn’t— Lienor would have been impervious.

Willem stepped out of the musty shade of the stable. He squinted in the bright light, a hooded falcon tethered on his wrist. Willem was a handsome man, his gentle demeanor belied by the crooked nose that was evidence of too many fights. He saw his sister and their guest at their usual banter and smiled despite himself. Their behavior was appalling, but he was too fond of each of them to chastise effectively. Although the musician made it this far west infrequently, there was no one outside his family to whom Willem felt so close. In a world where he had learned he could trust almost nobody, he trusted Jouglet, intuitively and entirely.

Willem was followed out of the stable by the groom, who led three saddled horses. Together they passed a wooden tub of soaking walnuts, the rabbit-tortured herb garden, and the little wooden chapel, before stopping in front of the hall steps.

At the top of the steps, Lienor clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, this will be such a treat! And such a change in our domestic philosophy,” she added, pointedly. “Surely you’ve noticed, Willem prefers that I am not the hunter but the prey— of rich men in search of a mate.”

Jouglet loomed over her and crooned suggestively, in a husky tenor voice, “Do you blame the rich men? If I were a rich man, I’d try to mate you.”

Lienor looked delighted by the declaration; Willem said, “Behave yourself, fellow,” but only because he knew he ought to.

“Yes, you’ll
never
be able to marry me off if word gets around that I’ve been cozying up to some migrant musician,” said Lienor, smiling. She and Jouglet descended the steps together, white hand resting on tanned one.

“I’m only trying to help, friend,” Jouglet assured Willem. “I’ve been trained to cozy up at the highest courts in Europe. How do you expect her to learn feminine wiles if she never has a wooer to practice flirting with?”

“Wooers are one thing she needs fear no lack of,” Willem said with a patient smile. “It’s the
sort
of wooers we get that are the problem.”

“Anyhow it surely doesn’t count as flirting when the wooer’s voice has hardly changed,” Lienor teased.

Before Jouglet could protest, Willem said, “Careful, Lienor, I asked him the other week over chess whether he might be a eunuch and he nearly gave me a bloody nose.”

“And then
you
gave
me
a black eye,” Jouglet reminded him, sounding inexplicably delighted.

“And then
you
gave
me
a kneeing I should have hanged you for.”

“Well, at least we know
you’re
not a eunuch,” Jouglet pointed out, slapping Willem on the shoulder.

The falcon made a mewling sound, sensing Jouglet’s nearness; the musician drew away. With a sweetly coquettish attitude, Lienor took her horse’s tasseled reins from the groom. “Jouglet, have you hunted before? You seem to be scared of falcons. How amusing.”

“Lienor, don’t be rude,” said Willem.

“It is my lady’s courtly way of showing affection, so the barbs are as caresses to me,” Jouglet said smoothly, and was rewarded by Lienor’s smile. The groom held out the reins to a second mount, a chubby chestnut, and Jouglet took them with a wary glance at the horse’s enormous head.

“Wait until we have Lienor up and then my groom will help you,” Willem offered kindly, trying not to sound condescending.