Revenge of the Rose (4 page)

His victim, still collapsed, slowly reached out both hands, and then abruptly poked Erec hard behind each knee. Erec’s legs buckled under him— and as he fell, Jouglet scrambled up and snatched the youth’s knife from his belt. By the time Erec hit the ground, Jouglet was standing over him, his own blade at his throat. Willem did not intervene because, frankly, the fellow had it coming.

“What does milady wish me to do with the offender?” Jouglet asked, nodding toward Lienor on her dun.

Lienor grinned mischievously. “Let me ponder the possibilities.”

“If you hurt me, you’ll have to answer to my liege Alphonse, Count of Burgundy,” Erec huffed nervously.

“Mm,” Jouglet responded, unimpressed. “If you’d hurt me, you’d be answering to someone
far
scarier than that, so let’s say I’ve done you a favor.” Letting the knife fall point-down into the ground, a hand’s span from Erec’s head, the minstrel reached out to retrieve the chestnut’s reins.

“Jouglet takes the honors for that round,” Lienor announced playfully, to help dispel the tension. She pulled the rose garland from off her head and offered it out to Jouglet, who led the chestnut closer to accept it. Lienor turned to her cousin as he dusted off his fancy tunic. “Thank you for giving him the opportunity to be so clever, Erec.”

Erec sighed. “Will you accept my gift, cousin?” he asked gruffly, the pleasure of giving it extinguished.

“Certainly, I shall feed some of it to Jouglet at supper,” she said sweetly, and called out to the house steward to fetch the honey vat.

“Lienor,” Willem said in a low growl.

“Yes, brother dear?”

He gave her a parental frown. “Erec has brought you a very fine gift to express his familial regard for you. Please show him the graciousness for which you are so widely— and I’d like to think accurately— admired.”

Lienor gave him a vexed look, but he was firm. She dismounted gracefully but with a drawn-out sigh and offered her palfrey back to the groom. “Cousin, forgive my rudeness,” she said with dutiful resignation. “It is a remarkably generous gift and shall sweeten all the days of the year. Please come inside with me and I shall have the cook offer you refreshment. I would enjoy that so much more than going hawking.” Her brother nodded slightly, regretful but approving, as she led Erec up the steps and into the cool shadows of the hall, followed by her ever-silent mother.

Willem and Jouglet watched them go. Willem handed down the falcon to the groom. He wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or sorry that the trip had been delayed. “And
that,
” he said conclusively, gesturing after Erec, “is why I dread the thought of giving her over to someone just because he happens to have riches.”

“I think you simply dread the thought of losing her company,” Jouglet said flatly.

“Well, that too. Wouldn’t anyone?” Willem said with a shrug. He glanced over at his friend, who was fidgeting with Lienor’s rosebud garland, wilting now in the heat. He smiled. “I’m not blind, Jouglet, I know why you’ve been tarrying here with us so long this visit.”

Jouglet gave him a strange and almost melancholic smile. “My friend, you do not know the half of it.”

T
wo
weeks later outside Basel, in silver alpine mist that muffled even birdsong, Marcus efficiently directed the dismantling of the summer camp. A trumpet bleated a warning, slightly muted in the damp air, and horsemen approached through the as-yet-gateless gateway of the courtyard.

The emperor heard the hooves, the voices calling out with polite familiarity across the broad courtyard, but he paid them no attention. This was his last hour to be free of the burdens of state, and he did not want to be interrupted. So he slouched in his squeaking leather camp chair at the unwalled end of the yard, under a fir, and munched on a spring pear. He toyed with the gold thread embroidered into his beard and pretended for one final morning he had no need of bodyguards.

The women were back in their usual prostitutes’ garb, which was fashioned less to display finery and more to display flesh. They were ignored once they had ceased to be creatures of fantasy, and now the men congregated at the far end of the clearing, doing the clever things young lords do to entertain themselves, some engrossed in a spitting contest, others arguing politics quietly and simplistically. All of them were noticeably more placid than they’d been two weeks earlier. In the permanent game of allegiances between pope and emperor, Konrad always gained a temporary upper hand after each summer’s camp.

The noblemen paused to return a greeting from the small pack of fog-dampened riders. Still Konrad did not bother turning to look, listening instead to a lovely pipe tune coming with the breeze from the beeches outside the yard. Marcus had dismissed all the musicians earlier this morning, but somebody apparently had lingered behind, hoping for another handout.

His Majesty recognized Marcus’s halting footfall and glanced into the yard— then cursed under his breath as he prepared (by deliberately slouching farther) to receive the well-dressed man Marcus was escorting to him. Imogen’s father, Count Alphonse of Burgundy, was as tall as his nephew Konrad and as slender as his son-in-law-to-be Marcus, except for a protruding belly implying he stayed too long at table. Which was true. But then, by Konrad’s measure, Uncle Alphonse stayed too long wherever he went, simply by arriving.

Marcus was limping, a battle wound from the last crusade that plagued him when he suffered agitation.

The count bowed deeper than he needed to as he approached his nephew. “Sire— ” he began, but Konrad, alarmed and trying not to stare at Marcus, interrupted at once.

“Uncle! Come to drag us back to politics so soon? How characteristic. How have you been? How is your lovely daughter?”

“Imogen is very well, Your Majesty.” He bowed again and tried, “I have come here, sire, to speak not of politics but of matrimony— “

“Did you bring your daughter with you?” Konrad asked, a shade too heartily.

Marcus stiffened, and one side of Alphonse’s upper lip twitched involuntarily. “This is hardly an appropriate setting for my daughter, sire. She is visiting the abbess of Mulhausen.”

“Is she now?” Konrad said, his voice but not his eyes drifting toward Marcus. “I am very fond of the abbess and must inquire after their joint devotions.”

“I have removed everything from the site that requires removal, sire,” the steward said smoothly, and Konrad relaxed. “When would you like to ride out?”

“When the village bells ring terce,” the emperor said, then looked again at Alphonse. “Pardon, you were saying?”

“Sire, I am here to tell you that we have found you a bride.”

The music had stopped. Konrad was annoyed that the piper hadn’t bothered to play so well until the festivities were over. He took his annoyance out on Alphonse.
“We?”

Alphonse’s ears reddened. “I meant, sire, those of us entrusted to safeguard your interests— that we are aware of an excellent choice.”

Konrad looked at his uncle narrowly a moment. “I was not aware I had entrusted you with any such thing.” His mouth opened with rueful amusement. “Ah. My darling brother has arrived from Rome and is thoughtfully casting his cardinal shadow for you to shiver in. Am I to guess that your suggestion comes with the church’s seal of approval?”

Alphonse hesitated, which gave Konrad his answer. “Who is it, then?” He sighed.

“We recommend the daughter of the lord of Besançon. As Besançon is Burgundy’s largest city— “

Konrad groaned. “Oh, Christ in heaven, man. She’s full of even more braying opinions than her father is. And she’s ugly. She must be the least engaging creature west of Jerusalem.”

“You are not marrying her for conversation, sire,” Alphonse pointed out carefully.

“I am not marrying her at
all,
” Konrad corrected.

“Sire, Besançon is the best choice. It strengthens your position near the border— “

Konrad laughed sarcastically. “No, it strengthens
Rome’s
position in my
court.
Besançon’s loyalties lie with the pope, not with me. So do Alphonse’s, if I am not mistaken, although I can’t think why. What has this new young pope promised you? Eternal life? Entry to his personal collection of holy sisters? What?”

Alphonse’s ears reddened again. “My loyalties lie with the Empire. It would naturally soothe and flatter my vassals to have your presence in any manner at all in Burgundy.”

“They’re my vassals, not your vassals,” Konrad corrected. This was an arguable point, and he had spent too many years arguing it already. He began to look around for a distraction. “I do wish you would suggest somebody who might be worthy of the office. Please try to remember I will have to be intimate with her more than once. Why did that musician stop? Hey!” he called out into the damp, shifting greenery. “Piper! Where are you? I want more of that! And why the devil didn’t you play so well over these past two weeks?”

“I did, sire, but you were too far away to hear it,” said the husky tenor behind him. He twisted in his chair, to find himself gazing at the familiar young face, nearly the human equivalent of a greyhound. Slightly freckled skin and pronounced hazel eyes suggested northern breeding, but the accent had always been impossible for Konrad to place. “Does my music please you, sire?” Jouglet asked solemnly, with a very formal bow, holding up the ivory pipe.

“It would have if you’d
been
here.” Konrad frowned. “I gave you one fortnight’s liberty, Jouglet, not three.”

The minstrel, who almost never looked sheepish, looked sheepish now and put down the hard leather case that cradled the fiddle. “I must have misheard you say forty days— I was resisting temptation in the desert. I tarried in your interest, sire, I promise you.”

Konrad wanted a better explanation, but he suspected Jouglet was being deliberately vague because they were in public. “Your desertion is never in my interest. The next time you disappear that way, do not bother coming back, you will not be let in. Do you understand?” Jouglet nodded, still sheepish, and Konrad’s demeanor lightened. He reached out to wrap a brawny arm around the minstrel. Jouglet politely repressed a strangling sound and tried to disengage from the royal limb. “Ladies!” Konrad called out to the wagon of women, his humor instantly restored. “See who has finally presented himself!”

Jouglet waved broadly to the prostitutes across the damp yard. The group immediately sent up a raucous cheer, whistling and making come-hither gestures.

“The lovely light women!” the minstrel called and bowed elaborately. “Now a little less light, I presume? Weighed down with the king’s food and gold and the collective male moisture of the camp, are we? Please forgive me for having missed your favors this time.”

“As long as you spread the word of how captivating His Majesty found all of us,” sweet-faced Jeannette cried out.

“I’ll spread what I should spread as long as you do likewise,” Jouglet shouted back cheerfully— then with instant sobriety turned to make a show of obeisance to Alphonse and Marcus.

“Where have you been?” Konrad demanded.

“On the road as usual, sire,” Jouglet answered, handing the little pipe to one of Konrad’s bodyguards. “I was just on my way to lovely Hagenau to remind you that you simply can’t abide the world without me. How very considerate of you to meet me halfway there, sire— a generous gesture I shan’t soon forget.”

“You’d have missed us in lovely Hagenau, we’re for lovely Koenigsbourg,” Marcus said dryly.

Konrad made a face. “Ach, Koenigsbourg, I’d put that out of my mind.” He returned his full attention to Jouglet. “You’ll be docked your entire summer salary. You missed the whole event, dammit, and the musicians were a disappointment this year, weren’t they?” he asked Alphonse, knowing Alphonse hadn’t been there. At the abashed look on Alphonse’s face, Konrad smirked. “Prude. Well, Uncle, I thank you for your most unwelcome news. Perhaps the August Assembly will make a better suggestion for a marriage. I shall veto yours.” Alphonse’s face did not quite hide his displeasure. “We are very much packed up here, but Marcus, tell the cook to find some refreshment for the count. I have some catching up to do with my little spy here.”

Marcus bowed, respectfully, to his future father-in-law, of whom he was at this moment feeling terrified, although he knew Imogen was safely on her way home. Her scent still lingered on his neat beard; he worried, absurdly, that Alphonse would recognize it. “If you will follow me, sir, there is some Clermont cheese still out.” The two men worked their way back across the yard, leaving Konrad alone with his minstrel and, at a discreet distance, his bodyguards.

“I hope you at least have worthy new gossip and songs to make up for your absence,” Konrad said. “Take my mind off politics.”

“But, sire,” Jouglet said confidingly, crouching beside the leather chair, “the juiciest gossip around is of the impending imperial wedding. There’s talk of it all the way to the Rhone! Wherever I travel, they’re wagering entire estates on who the lucky lady will be.”

Konrad made a face. “Not you as well, Jouglet. I am sick of it.”

Feigning innocence, Jouglet asked, “Why is it suddenly so important?”

“Use your brain,” chastised Konrad. “The Duke of Bourgogne has sworn fealty to that pope-kisser Philip of France. You
know
that— I first heard the rumor from your own mouth.”

Jouglet shrugged. “The duke was never your subject. He was always independent.”

“And now he’s
not
independent,” Konrad said impatiently. “Now he is France’s. And he’s directly between us and France, only now he is an extension of France, and France is an ambitious little whoreson who would love to unburden me of my western counts, several of whom, being shortsighted idiots, would happily conform. Which I’m sure the church would love as well. You
know
all this, Jouglet— have you been carousing so heavily all month that you have forgot your own stock-in-trade? And where have you
been,
dammit?”