Revenge of the Rose (25 page)

U
nder
the swollen moon, finally heading south too late to stop disaster, Marcus urged his horse into a gallop, too desperate to care that he was risking both their necks.

M
arcus
rode hard into a late-night summer thunderstorm, almost killing his horse under him, but he knew the messenger was still ahead. He did not even know why he rode— he could not keep the messenger from giving Imogen her father’s edict; his presence would not make it disappear. He had a panicked impulse to
do something,
and to be near her— it was irrational, and no rational thought justified it.
We could elope,
he thought, shuddering at the thought of the spectacularly public upheaval that would cause.

He should have stayed at court. He should have tried to poison Willem. Good God, no, not that, he was not capable of that…although he could almost entertain thoughts of poisoning the Count of Burgundy. But even that would not undo the message being sent. Perhaps find a way to have Willem castrated? Marcus laughed at himself in shock as he galloped, then found the laughter was actually sobbing. Willem was untouchable now— and anyhow, Marcus had no stomach for such things. His bad leg pained him terribly, until it finally went numb from the knee down. He had hardly stopped to sleep; sometimes he felt he slept as he rode, his balance perfect in the high-backed saddle— the former nonpareil of horsemanship from his days of active knighthood. Sometimes he dreamt that the wind-driven raindrops on his chest and face were Imogen’s sweet little hands teasing him with caresses. The only moments of relief he felt were when, in a twilight of consciousness, he half-convinced himself that possibly he had misjudged the count, that the message heading southward was benign.

A
lthough
Erec was hungover, he had an easier time facing the morning than his cousin. They both slept through mass, and Konrad told the pages to let Willem sleep through breakfast too. When the knight surfaced groggily to consciousness, he was alone in a warm, shuttered room. His mind felt as battered as his body was; he lay there a long while, thinking about the day, and the evening, before.

Toward midday, Erec entered, cheerfully shaking off raindrops, and helped his bruised cousin pull his clothes back on. They crossed through Konrad’s suite and down the spiral stairs, past the guards and into the great hall. Konrad stood to greet Willem with open arms, the smirking but ignored Paul to his left.

The hall looked subdued, with all the shutters closed against the rain, but something else was different too, some subtle alteration of the mood. It took Willem a moment to realize what it was: the entire upper half of the room was filled with mostly older men, who had beside them at the trestle tables blandly attractive younger women. As each man rose to acknowledge Willem’s entrance, he took his companion’s hand with an intimate formality.

Konrad had filled his hall with married ladies and their wealthy, aging husbands.

The collected couples, recognizing Willem as soon as he walked through the door, began to applaud and huzzah him. Willem stared in confusion.

He crossed the length of the hall, horribly self-conscious, and once before the throne, he bowed. “Your Majesty,” he said, uncomfortably aware of many ladies’ appraising eyes on his backside. “As ever I am grateful that you have invited me to join you at board.”

Konrad beamed. “I am the one who is grateful, Willem, to have a man of such character in my court. If your loyalty is half as strong as your arm, I could not ask for a better retainer. We are initiating the office of Imperial Knight, and you will be anointed the first, within the month, if you pledge yourself willingly.”

The room fell silent, and Willem’s voice caught in his throat. “I am your man, milord,” he said huskily, bowing again. “You offer me the greatest honor of my life.”

“Excellent,” Konrad said easily and slapped his hands together. “Let us say after the Assembly that convenes August first. The honorable cardinal my brother shall bless the ceremony.” He said this as if Paul were in another room. “And now dinner!”

In the confusion during the hand washing, Willem saw Jouglet eyeing him carefully from the darkness between the hearth and the exit down to the kitchen— literally hiding in the shadows. He sighed uncomfortably, then gestured once with a jerk of his head.

The minstrel delayed a moment before slipping through the overdressed and perfumed congregation. By wordless agreement they stood in line for hand washing, just behind a lady whom poets might have described as homely were she not the daughter of a duke. Willem was behind Jouglet, both looking straight ahead toward the shuttered window where a boy held a washbasin.

“I owe you an apology,” Willem said under his breath. “I deserve a better explanation from you, but my behavior last night was not gracious.”

“I took you by surprise,” Jouglet said in a clipped voice over her shoulder. “I had no right to expect any other response. Is that all? May I go?”

Willem leaned over to whisper against the dense mop of the minstrel’s hair. “Much of what is good in my life I owe to you. Not to your sex, just to you. I’m ashamed at myself for forgetting that for even half an instant.” Fumbling, he reached out very subtly between them and clasped one of Jouglet’s long-fingered hands in one of his own. “You are the truest friend I have.”

He felt Jouglet in front of him give a shudder of relief. “Even though I deceived you?” It was asked with a hint of sarcasm.

“You were not deceiving
me,
” Willem murmured. He released the hand, aware that half the hall was craning for a look at the great champion. “You were deceiving
everyone,
but that is between you and God, it is nothing particular between the two of us.” He could not see Jouglet’s face directly, but by studying a spot near her left ear, thought she might be smirking. “I must say,” he went on quietly, “that although I never would have married my sister to a jongleur, it saddens me that your flirtation was nothing but an affectation. It would hurt her pride to hear it told.”

“Then don’t tell it,” Jouglet whispered back, tensing again. “Not to her, nor to
anyone.
”

“I won’t.”

“Will you swear to that?” Jouglet demanded, still looking forward.

Willem frowned. “Is it so dreadful if you’re discovered?”

Jouglet made an impatient, agitated sound and began to pull out of the hand-washing line. “So you will not swear it.”

“I swear on my sister’s chastity,” Willem whispered quickly, which stopped her. “And I swear on my own life that our friendship will be unaffected by what I know.”

“That’s impossible, but I appreciate your intention,” Jouglet said, almost too quietly for him to hear. The bony-buttocked young lady before them finished with the basin and stepped away. Jouglet moved to one side so that Willem could wash his hands beside her. Finally she looked at him, grinning a smooth Jouglet grin, instantly transformed into the cheery court entertainer who was, if not especially masculine, still wholly male in demeanor. “Let’s get you to your seat so the grand game can begin.”

“What game?”

The minstrel winked. “Come now, you haven’t figured it out? He knows you want a lady, so he’s given you a herd to choose from. To carry in your heart, to be made pure and ennobled by chaste love of. To lose your appetite over and be tormented by jealousy about. Like the poor idiot knights I sing about. Pick a rich one.”

Willem looked appalled. “This is not a seemly way to find one’s lady.”

Jouglet, tickled, reached for the rosemary-scented linen towel a girl held out. “Come now, Willem, it’s your fantasy he’s indulging here, don’t be ungracious about piddling details.”

“
My
fantasy?” Willem countered as he took the towel. “You’ve been on about it more than I have; I would simply like a wife.”

Jouglet made an amused gesture of dismissal. “Yes, yes, of course, in time— but first every knight needs an unattainable
lady.
So that when his friend the
musician
writes
songs
about him, to
immortalize
him, he seems properly
poignant
and
romantic.
Here is your chance to find the lady.” Ignoring the appalled expression on Willem’s face, she slipped away to the lower end of the room, chuckling with anticipation.

That meal, and that day, were among the most peculiar of Willem’s life. He saw two people when he looked across the hall at Jouglet. Sometimes he could not believe there was a woman there, but just as often he could not believe others did not see through the disguise, especially when the fiddler took to flirting with the ladies or acting cocky with the men.

And the mealtime was ridiculous: on various feeble pretexts, each wife was given her turn to rise from her place and travel around the edge of the tables to bow before the king and by extension, to Willem— before returning to her wordlessly masticating spouse. They were literally on display for him, and the husbands seemed to have no argument with it. The conceit of courtly love was usually adulterous and doomed never to be consummated, but all the same—
arranging
it by collusion this way embarrassed him. Fate, or God, was supposed to cast one’s lady into one’s life.

As the trestles were being cleared, after a final course of figs and dates, Konrad winked at Willem. “What do you think of the ladies of the court?”

Willem smiled politely. “I think there is a sudden influx of them.”

“Oh, you noticed that, did you?” Konrad grinned. “So did our little friend there— ” He pointed to Jouglet, who had sidled up to the Duchess of Swabia and was crooning things to her in a low voice that made her blush.

Konrad turned suddenly to Paul with friendly offhandedness, as if he had not just spent all of dinner with his back to him. “Jouglet certainly likes the ladies, eh?”

Paul looked, characteristically, like he was seeking an excuse to sneer. “The minstrel is entirely too forward in his attentions.”

Willem sat up a little straighter to see around Konrad. “He has never been improper to any female in my ken,” he assured the cardinal.

Konrad laughed expansively, and pushed Willem by the breastbone back into his seat. “Of course he has!” he countered. “Jouglet is a demon with his appetites— there’s never any doubt of his predatory tendencies, despite his being a scrawny youth.”

Willem realized Konrad’s ulterior motive and wisely refrained from further comment.

“Predatory like Nicholas?” Paul asked blandly, a comment his brother pointedly ignored.

“Willem is quite the demon too,” Konrad went on. “The chivalrous demeanor is an act to fool the husbands. Isn’t it, Willem? You know what they say about men with noses like that! How many of these ladies send you aflame?”

Willem looked out over the pleasant-looking collection of women in the hall. Nobody stood out. “They all have…promise,” he said obediently in the most lecherous voice he could muster, which wasn’t very lecherous.

“Yes they do.” Konrad smiled. “Let us watch them fulfill that promise.”

He clapped his hands and the chamberlain entered from the upper corridor, playing a falsetto march on a small, but very loud, pipe of horn. He led a trail of squires, walking in twos with carved and gilded chests between them. The chests were placed squarely in the center of the hall below the largest iron chandelier. “In honor of the great Willem of Dole’s generosity to me yesterday on the tourney field,” Konrad announced to the room, “I have been inspired to mete out indulgences to the honorable ladies of the court. Boys, remove the lids to those chests.” In unison, the squires did so. The honorable ladies of the court squealed.

The chests were full of sensational robes and kirtles: sumptuous brocade silks and fancy, exotic weavings; sleeves edged with gold; silk and leather girdles; fabrics that troubadours could drone on about for hours. Some of the younger husbands looked startled to recognize the contents— they were the chests of “costumes” the common women had worn at Konrad’s summer bacchanal. Since the clothes were donned so momentarily in the summer camp, they were not the least worn and passed as new.

“Today I am King Arthur in my generosity,” Konrad bellowed out over the oohing and ahhing as the ladies flocked around to grab at dresses. “Take as much as pleases you. Gentlemen, you may assist them.”

Willem, watching from the emperor’s side, saw Jouglet wander over to the chests and run a critical eye over all that was inside. The fiddler’s hand darted into the farthest chest and out again, extracting a tunic of red silk. The sleeves and collar were heavily embroidered with gold and silver, and the whole trimmed with ermine. With a very feminine gesture, the minstrel held it up. It was extremely large, and hardly the most decorated or daintiest thing in the chests, but it sufficed to make a woman of its wearer. “I’ll be the best-dressed lady here today!” the minstrel called out playfully over the hubbub, and most eyes flickered briefly toward the voice. Willem almost leapt up in alarm.

Jouglet batted pale lashes and blew kisses to all the men nearby. The Duke of Lorraine, kneeling by a chest helping his pregnant wife to untangle a green robe, received an actual kiss on the brow. “Do I not make a
lovely
lady?” Jouglet demanded. “Shall I put this on?” In response to a mild round of laughter, she pulled it over her head, over her clothing, and looked extremely lumpy. She grabbed the tunic with her fingertips approximately where nipples would be found, and called to the usher, “Milord, a pair of apples would be well placed here! Who wants to be my wooer?” And as Willem nearly yelped in disbelief, the minstrel ordered, “Willem of Dole, good sir, come try to woo me to your bower.” She struck a highly unoriginal pose of one who is coy yet lovesick: one hand supine at her forehead, the other stretched behind her. Willem felt spellbound; her convincing pantomime of a young man doing an unconvincing pantomime of a young woman bordered on the diabolical.