Mortal Heart (44 page)

“As I said, she was soft and somewhat flighty. At first, she loved being queen, but soon it no longer entertained her—it wasn’t the pageant and festivity she had been longing for, and the pain of loving the damned became too much for her. Slowly, over the centuries, she simply faded away, as the first flush of easy love often does.”

“And you were left alone, with neither sister.”

He looks at me, and I feel the force of his gaze like a blow as he takes a step closer. “Until you opened your heart to me.” I fear I will drown in that gaze, but I cannot look away. Giving me time to pull back or turn my head or do any number of things to let him know he is no longer wanted, he slowly lowers his lips to mine.

They are cool. Cooler than I remember. But the shape of them is the same, and the taste of him. But even more importantly—the need and longing his lips awaken in me has not changed. Slowly, we draw apart. “If you loved Arduinna, then why have you slept with so many women throughout the centuries?” I did not intend to ask such an artless question, but now it hangs in the air between us.

It is hard to tell in the dark, but I think his lips twitch with a hint of amusement. However, that is quickly chased away by the bleakness that is all too familiar. “It was the only way left for me to partake of life. All the other ways that I, that Death, had been a part of life were absorbed by the new church or forgotten and no longer celebrated.”

“Oh.” I do not know what to say to that, but it goes a long way toward relieving me of any jealousy that I had been harboring.

“Come.” He holds out his hand, and for a moment I panic, thinking he is going to ask me to lie with him again. I can’t. Not now. Or at least, not
yet,
for it is all still too new and strange and . . . overwhelming. “Sit with me,” he says, then lowers himself gracefully onto the ground.

I hesitate only a moment before allowing myself to be coaxed into joining him. We sit, stiffly, side by side. “You are one of her line, you know.”

“Whose?”

“Arduinna’s.”

I pull away from his shoulder and stare at him. “What do you mean?”

“You even bear her mark.” He slowly reaches out and places his finger just below my ear, then runs it along the sensitive skin at my throat to the back of my neck, making me shiver. “Here,” he says. “A small red starburst, Arduinna’s bite, they call it, although I do not know why, for she has never bitten anyone as far as I know.”

“How can that be? They told me that Arduinnites were made, not born.” I reach up to feel it, but my fingers discern nothing. This does, however, awaken the memory of Tola asking about a mark I had there. She
knew.

He settles back against the wall. “Just because she marks you does not mean she has given you special skills or talents. But those who are conceived under the cloud of jealousy or through deceitful means are hers, for hers is the domain of those who feel love’s sharp bite and the pain of rejection. Whether or not they choose to act upon it is up to them.”

My mind goes immediately to the story the abbess—my mother—told me of her desperate attempt to win Crunard’s heart, although it had already been given to another.

“If you decided to wield that arrow, it would strike with love as permanent as if it flew from Arduinna’s own bow.” He reaches up and places his cool fingers against my cheek, turning my face toward him. “If you doubt me or my constancy, you have only to pierce me with it and you can be certain I will be yours for eternity.”

“But what of Arduinna? She pierced you once and you have not remained faithful to her.”

He drops his hand and turns away, but not before I see the old pain in his eyes. “That was because our ties became severed by the twin blades of pride and anger. Each of us had a hand in that. Even her gift can be eroded by those things. Eroded, but not destroyed.” His voice grows soft. “I do still love her, in a way. It is rarely a lack of love that forces two hearts apart, but other obstacles.”

It is all too easy to conjure up all the obstacles that face us, and it is tempting, oh, so tempting, to tie his love to me for all eternity so that I am the final one he will ever love. But it is too close to what the abbess tried to do to me: to bind me so tightly to her that I could not love or live on my own, could not make my own choices. “No,” I say firmly. “I do not want a love if I must bind it to me in such a manner, for does not the very binding of it make it less like love?”

He smiles at me, one of his rare, dazzling smiles, as if I have pleased him beyond measure. He lifts my hand and brings it up to his lips, which graze against it tenderly.

“Besides,” I say, “there is something else I must do with it.”

A
T THIS LATE HOUR
, I find the duchess in her chambers. Duval is sitting with her, which causes me a moment of guilt—she must have sent for him because I was gone for so long. I sink into a deep curtsy. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace. I did not intend my errand to be such a lengthy one.”

She smiles, but it is a pale, watery thing that hurts to look at. “It is no matter. Come in, come in.”

Duval rises to his feet and excuses himself. Once he has left, I turn to the duchess. “I have something I would speak with you about.”

The duchess’s interest is piqued. “Pray continue.”

And so I lay out my plan before her, explaining the old power contained in the arrow and how it could be wielded for the country’s advantage. The duchess’s eyes grow brighter and brighter as I explain my plan, for she has struggled mightily to find some way out of this mess.

When I am finished, hope teeters in her face, then slowly seeps away. “It is a fine idea,” she says at last. “Except that I am already married.”

A situation that is all too easy to forget, with as little help as her lord husband has provided her.

“Only by proxy,” I point out. “And it is not consummated. You agreed to the marriage in the belief that it would help you hold on to Brittany, but instead, it has had precisely the opposite effect, driving France to move more openly against us. It has proved a poor bargain.”

The duchess rises to her feet, her hands clasped tightly together. “That is true, and I am sorry for it. But we are still bound before the eyes of God and the Church. We had a ceremony,” she says. “Presided over by the bishop and feted with a celebration. How can we just put that aside now? Besides”—her voice grows stronger and more laced with pride—“how can I consider marrying the man who has caused my kingdom so much woe?”

“Your Grace, we know that it was his sister the French regent who was behind much of what has transpired, as she held the kingdom for him.” It is so easy to forget that he is just a few years older than the duchess. “We do not know how much he was consulted in her plans and strategies.”

She presses her fingertips against her eyes. “This is all making my head spin.”

I am immediately contrite. “I am sorry, Your Grace. I did not wish to push so hard.”

“No, you are right to push for solutions.” The duchess gives me a grim smile. “Even though I am not certain I can do what you suggest, I thank you for at least bringing me a new option to consider. Odd, is it not, that those who have been the most helpful to me are my bastard brother and the ones who serve the old saints the Church would just as soon deny.

“Every one of my allies has failed to assist in any meaningful way. Especially my lord husband.” Her words are bitter and laced with pain. “Unless God or His saints send me a miracle . . .”

“Could not this ancient magic at the heart of the old gods be a sort of miracle?” I ask softly.

“It could, but I fear breaking my vows. Besides, how can I marry King Charles? His family has been behind every grief that has befallen mine in the past fifteen years.”

“His
family,
Your Grace. Not him.” I think of the abbess and all that she has done in my name. “We cannot be held responsible for what our families do, especially when we have no way to control them.”

She nods, conceding the point, reluctantly. “But it will be delivering Brittany right into the hands of the French—something my father fought all his life to avoid, something I have sworn to prevent at all costs.”

“And yet,” I remind her, “you said yourself the costs might be too high. War is ugly and lives will be lost. Not only that, but in wedding the king of France, you would be setting Brittany’s true heir upon the French throne—you would bear that country’s future kings. Not an altogether bad way to maintain control of your duchy. Besides, I am not sure you are required to sacrifice your life—your chance at happiness—for your father’s goals.”

“No! It is my wish as well. It has been ever since I can remember.”

“But only because you have been raised to wish it,” I say gently. “It was trained into you just as surely as dancing or embroidery. But just as those are not truly you, neither is this desire for independence at any cost.”

She whirls on me. “Why are you so quick to surrender? To give up?” The moment she asks the question, I realize I will have to tell her who my father is, else, when she finds out, she will feel sorely betrayed and will doubt my loyalty.

Am I being quick to surrender? Is there some weakness, some traitor blood that flows in my veins? I consider a moment. “It is not that I am so very quick to give up,” I finally say, “but rather that I do not wish to spend my life pursuing goals that others have chosen for me. If I must perish, if I must stumble and fail, then let it be in pursuit of the ideals and dreams that I hold in my own heart.”

She stares at me a long moment. “I do not want all those deaths on my conscience,” she whispers. “Indeed, it haunts my dreams, and I fear that I will not be able to live with myself.”

“I would have a hard time with that decision as well, Your Grace.” I take a deep breath. “In truth, killing holds little appeal for me.”

Her head jerks up in surprise.

“Oh, have no fear, I can fight better than most, for I am well trained, but I have never enjoyed taking life. And that was something I thought was a weakness of mine, something to be ashamed of and do penance for. I have spent my entire life praying for the strength to embrace killing.”

“And have you received it?”

“No. But I have learned something that I must share with you, something I have shared with few others.” I take a deep breath. “As it turns out, I was not sired by Mortain after all. I am not his daughter. My entire life has been a lie.” A bemused laugh escapes my throat. It still stuns me to say those words. “I have spent my life pursuing dreams and goals that were never mine to pursue. And one of the reasons I tell you this is that before you make a decision on the option that I have given you, you need to know the truth about not only me, but my true father.”

“Who is he?”

“Crunard, Your Grace. My father is Chancellor Crunard.” It is the first time I have ever spoken those words, and the sound of them echoing in the room is like a death knell for the person I have been all my life. Saying them, and to my duchess, no less, is akin to stepping out of an old skin and standing naked before the world. “There must be truth between us so you can make the best, most informed decision available to you. If I had hid my identity from you now, when you found out, you would always question my loyalty, and that would wound me greatly, for serving you has been an unexpected grace.”

She stares at me a long moment, her eyes wide and deep with thoughts. She shakes her head with a rueful smile. “I thank you for your honesty, Lady Annith, but be assured, I trust the counsel you have given me. As you say, I understand well how we can serve in spite of our parentage.”

Now it is my turn to give her a bemused look.

She smiles tightly and folds her arms across her chest. “Do you know how much Breton blood I possess?”

“No, Your Grace.”

“None. Not one drop. My father was a French noble who inherited Brittany from his wife.”

“Your mother.”

“No.” She gives a quick, firm shake of her head. “Not my mother. His first wife, the heir to Brittany, died years before I was born. My mother was also named Marguerite, but she was Marguerite of Foix, not Brittany. So you see, the whole of my life has been a lie as well.

“But,” she continues, “the cause of Breton independence has defined my entire life, and in that I am more Breton that most of the Breton nobles, who have been receiving bribes and payments from the French regent for years.

“So instead, I will think of Brittany’s true people, those who have lived here since time out of mind and who have worked the land and built the castles and cathedrals and roads. Those are the lives I must weigh.”

And just like that, I know that it is time for me to meet with the abbess once more, for we still have much that lies unspoken and unsettled between us. But it is not her, or even the convent, that I must worry about. Like the duchess, my true concern is those whose lives will be most affected—all the girls that I have loved as sisters.

T
HE NEXT DAY, THE ABBESS
forces me to wait for a full hour before she will see me. It is a rank display of power, and all the more pitiful for it. Luckily, it serves me well, for it allows me to run through a number of different ways the conversation can go. By the time I am finally admitted to her office, I am calm and sure of what I wish to say to her.

“Annith.”

She gives no greeting, but merely says my name, so I do the same. “Reverend Mother.”

I add a shallow curtsy to maintain the pretense of respect, but it is shallow enough that she knows that’s all it is—a mere formality and devoid of the former esteem and admiration I once felt for her.

“I am hoping you are here to tell me that you have come to your senses and will be returning to the convent immediately.”

“On the contrary, I am here to tell you that this cannot go on. You cannot keep serving as reverend mother. It corrupts the very nature of what we do and whom we serve.”

Her nostrils flare with irritation. “We have no choice, don’t you understand? Besides, no one except you knows or even suspects.”