Revenge of the Rose (42 page)

“I shall at least make amends by being honest— from this moment forward,” the steward insisted.

Paul laughed. “You can try that, but I doubt it will get you very far.” He rose and headed for the door with a lazy assurance that reminded Marcus of the emperor. “We’ll speak again when circumstances have made your choices a little clearer.”

“Jouglet,” said Marcus gravely in the shadows outside Konrad’s receiving chamber very soon after. “I want to show you something. Come with me to my chamber.” He followed the minstrel down the stairs.

“He expects me back in a moment with a fresh flagon,” Jouglet protested.

“That’s a lie. If you were going down to get wine you’d have taken the other stairway.”

“He wants it mulled from the kitchen,” Jouglet insisted as they arrived on the pavement.

“This will only take a moment.”

Jouglet warily followed up the internal spiral stairs to Marcus’s rooms. A fire was already burning in the large anteroom, tended by a page boy, and a torch was lit; without pausing in his stride Marcus went straight to one of the ornate wooden chests lining his walls, and pulled open the top. He gestured for Jouglet to close the door, as he himself took out a battered-looking piece of parchment, an inkwell, and a reed pen.

“What’s that for?” Jouglet asked, taken with his mysteriousness despite herself. He was a bastard, but at least he was more intriguing in despondency than Willem was.

“Jouglet, I know you may be suspicious of me still, but you must believe one thing. I am in love with Alphonse’s daughter.”

“Of course you are,” Jouglet said, hoping very much he wasn’t, and then realizing by the look on his face that in fact he was.

Which was calamitous, because there wasn’t a thing Jouglet could do to change it.

“I am. If you are serious in your desire to look out for my best interests, I beg you, work on Konrad and the count to go ahead with my marriage to Imogen.”

So that was what he wanted after all. She blinked a few times quickly, trying to decide if Marcus, of all people, would let his personal desires ruin his emperor’s future.

Marcus had misread her blank expression. “You don’t believe me that my only desire is Imogen. Witness me write to her so you can see firsthand how I feel about her.”

“That really isn’t necessary,” Jouglet said, pretending to stifle a yawn. “I would like nothing more, Marcus, than to curl up before the fire now, and get some sleep. It has been a trying day.” She needed time alone, immediately, to sort this out.

“I am going to write anyhow,” Marcus insisted. “Can you read? I want you to witness it. If you are sincere in your friendship to me, be my witness in case someday I’m called to account for what’s happened.”

“Very well,” the minstrel said at last, resigned. The pseudo-stifled yawn had made her realize how tired she actually was, and sore from resisting Paul’s attack in the cellar. And sore at Willem too. In fact, the whole day had been a quiet series of disasters. She bowed with a weary sort of archness. “Your witness.”

He dipped the reed pen into the inkwell, and in his quick, efficient hand he wrote: “Imogen, my dear, my heart is full of you tonight. I see you in the face of every lady at court, and your image over theirs makes their faces seem that much lovelier, although none— “

“Yes, all right, we do not need the poetry this evening,” Jouglet interrupted, reading along over his shoulder. “Just get to the point, I beg you, Marcus.”

She tapped her foot while he continued his flowery language, and finally he wrote: “I am so distraught at this separation, my beloved, I do not know how to turn your father’s heart, or Konrad’s either anymore, to be kind to us. Please, if your able mind can think of anything, write to me at once. I will do your bidding without hesitation. My friend Jouglet, His Majesty’s musician, has promised to help us in any way he can, and is a witness to this letter. I send you as always my unending love, to be yours until death and beyond.” He signed it “M” with a very dramatic-looking flourish beneath it. “A love knot,” he explained, sounding so sheepishly sincere that Jouglet almost felt a twinge of pity for him. He sealed the note with wax and string, and then offered it to Jouglet. “You may see it messengered yourself,” he announced. Jouglet was impressed.

“I will,” she warned, intrigued.

Marcus gestured, pushed it more in Jouglet’s direction. “Please,” he offered.

Jouglet opted merely to witness a page’s taking the note for dispatch, mostly because she did not want to be bothered with the task. The intent was what mattered, and what puzzled her. Even if Marcus loved the girl, he hardly knew her, and so Imogen, upon reading the note, would surely think the sender was insane. This was a risk Marcus was apparently prepared take. Why?

So he did love her. Perhaps she loved him too. But Marcus was not self-serving enough to sacrifice his master’s marriage for his own. So he did love her. That alone could not justify this scheme. So he did love her. Well, too bad. It would not change anything now.

Unless Jouglet could turn that knowledge to her own advantage.

But she could not think how.

She returned to Konrad’s room, finally, with the hot mulled wine for His Majesty and a pilfered sausage for the door guard. Konrad had summoned a woman in the minstrel’s absence and was unceremoniously disrobing her on his bed as Jouglet entered. The woman was blond, unfamiliar, and because her tunic was already tossed out of sight behind the bed, Jouglet could not readily tell what her status might have been. She seemed dully content to being here, and smiled, somewhat tiredly, when Konrad told her to.

“Oh, Jouglet, you returned after all,” Konrad said companionably, as if he were peeling an apple, not a human being. “Put the wine by my bed. All this talk of women made me want to remind myself that they’re actually good for something. But please make yourself at home, you can sleep in the dayroom with the dogs, they’re very warm.”

“I am not in need of warmth, but thank you, sire.”

As Jouglet spoke, Konrad pressed the blonde onto the bed and pushed her knees apart, running an appraising hand over her crotch and smiling with satisfaction at the warmth.

Jouglet slipped into the dayroom and curled up near the dozing page boys, trying to ignore the emperor’s grunting pleasure as he mounted the woman, pleasure audible even through the closed door. She thought of going back down to the hall to sleep, but there it was even worse— there she might encounter actual lovers who engaged each other with genuine affection, making the quiet, happy noises she and Willem had become used to making. Despite her frantic need to solve the mystery of dealing with Marcus, despite her irritable intention to dismiss plans and people that were obviously doomed to fail, her body ached for Willem with an acuteness she was unused to. She was painfully aware of her own femaleness, of wanting to be filled with him, of wanting to feel his bearded chin against her cheek, her neck, her breasts, her thighs. It was very hard to sleep that night.

T
his,
their second day on the road, had not been as easy as their first, but they did reach Mulhausen, so they were on schedule: they would arrive at Koenigsbourg before the royal retinue left for Mainz, and that made all the suffering worth it.

The mosquitoes were getting worse as they approached the entrance to the Rhine valley, and although the roads remained shaded, they were in bad condition here and getting crowded. The weather was still lovely, but as they descended to the flood plain, the crisp mountain breezes tapered off to be replaced by slower, denser, wetter crawls of air.

Lienor had awoken hardly able to stand up but insisted they get an early start right after mass. They’d brought salted meat with them, but her calculations reckoned this a fast day: the feast of St. Christopher would be tomorrow, and this was hardly the time to disrespect the saint of travelers. So when the sun was high overhead, they’d bought some fresh trout in a tiny fishing hamlet, fish being allowed on fast days. They cooked it at a riverside campfire made of alder branches and then (at Lienor’s insistence) eaten it as they rode, which gave her indigestion.

Her worst silent complaint, however, was boredom. Any excitement she’d had about what might be out here in the world had proven far too optimistic. She was leery of speaking to any of the people they shared the broken road with, irrationally certain they would know her story and recognize her. Occasionally there was a musician or a storyteller to eavesdrop on; the pilgrims, perhaps in the interest of baring their souls before God, had by far the most engrossing tales.

But in between the groups of travelers, there was no distraction; few villages lay along their path. It was nothing but birch trees, oak trees, beech trees, chestnut trees, some maples, apples, pears, blackberry bushes, yew trees, bush-roses with dying flowers, elderberry bushes, walnut trees, and lindens. Even the lovely floral smells became monotonous after a day. The birdsong was riotous; swallows were the main sound of the sun-baked hours, and they were piercing, relentless, hardly melodious; in the evening they would be replaced by the cuckoos and mourning doves she loved so well, but by then she would be too sound asleep to hear. At least, she
hoped
St. Christopher would let her fall asleep.

W
hen
it was warm and sunny again, Konrad sent his minstrel into Sudaustat to check in on Willem. He gave Jouglet the assignment with a look that informed her this was a test of some sort, so she headed out of the castle gate with an uncomfortable mix of feelings. But as she moved through the bustling town streets, the sensory heat of the day, the quick glimpse of a couple enjoying each other behind the baking ovens, another pair groping near the silversmiths’ alley…she knew what would happen if they had a sanctioned excuse to be closed in together for a while. With growing good humor and even quiet glee, the fiddler arrived at the inn, exchanged boyish flirtations with the mistress and her younger daughter, hearty greetings with Willem’s servant and pages, then ran up the stairs to the room. She wondered briefly why there was nobody seated before his door, then opened the door and skipped into the room.

“Lazy man!” she called out before her eyes had quite adjusted to the darkened space— the shutters were all closed against the sun, and yet strangely the room itself was warm. “What could possibly compel you to stay in on such a beautiful day?” And then she realized there was a naked woman in his bed.

Jouglet’s eyes and Willem’s met briefly and he almost cringed. She glanced aside to examine his companion. Jouglet knew this woman— it was Konrad’s most regular bedmate, someone who would have sold her own mother to earn points with the men of the court. She was not among the few who knew a thing about Jouglet, and Jouglet wanted to keep it that way. Like Jouglet, she had little use for the femininity of the weak ladies of the aristocratic circles; unlike Jouglet, she relied entirely on her own kind of femininity to get what she wanted. Konrad, who saw women merely as bodies to possess or virgins to arrange political alliances around, thought she was marvelous and kept her well fed and well supplied with jewelry.

Something on the minstrel’s face had given Willem the message. The knight managed to push aside his own mortification and say, with forced heartiness, “Jouglet, can’t a fellow enjoy a little privacy?”

“The emperor sent me,” Jouglet said evenly, recovering. “My apologies, Lady Ever-open, but I’m afraid that trumps mere— “

“The emperor sent me too,” she retorted lazily.

Jouglet was— almost imperceptibly— soothed by the revelation, although obviously Konrad had sent his minstrel here to encounter them together. Affecting offhandedness, Jouglet opened a shutter to let in the bright late-afternoon sun. “Ah. How attentive our Konrad is to keep the distractions rolling into your room in such rapid succession.”

There was a pause, then: “Actually, the emperor sent me yesterday, and I’ve been here ever since.” The brunette giggled throatily, pleased with herself, and gave Willem a darting, intimate grin, which instantly made the moment more unpleasant for Jouglet. Especially when Willem returned a smile, on reflex, before reddening and looking away from both of them, deliberately causing the sheet to drape over his face.

“Ah,” Jouglet said again after a beat. Then, heartily, “You greedy girl, sucking up everything he has to offer and leaving nothing for anyone else who might want a bite of him. All the others will resent you.”

“I can live with that,” she purred. “I’m already resented for being Konrad’s favorite.”

Seeing Willem briefly freeze under the sheet at that was more satisfying than Jouglet wanted to admit to herself.

“Yes, we’re aware of your status as His Majesty’s favorite concubine,” she told the girl brightly, to make sure Willem was in fact aware of it. “But he seemed
very
taken with a pretty blonde last night in your absence, so if you want to keep your position, so to speak, you might pull your legs together enough to hie yourself back to His Majesty’s bedchamber. Speaking on behalf of His Majesty, I thank you heartily for distracting Willem from the wretched fact of his sister’s lechery and whoring.”

The irony was lost on the woman, but Jouglet could see Willem grimace, even under the sheet, and took satisfaction in seeing it.

When she was gone, there was a loud silence. Finally, with an impatience that implied he had been goaded into it, Willem snatched the sheet from off his face and sat up a little into a defiant slouch. He took one look at Jouglet— who was expressionless— and then was instantly contrite.

“I can’t express how— “

“Then don’t bother trying,” Jouglet interrupted, apparently fascinated with the design of Willem’s beaded belt, lying discarded on a stool. “Thank the saints Konrad did that— and especially with such a gossip as she is. I hope you gave her plenty to gossip about. Paul is champing at the bit to call you a…Bulgarian, I hear is the newest term for it. For what they think we are.”