The Pretender's Crown (37 page)

“He was tall,” she said, and felt her own gaze grow distant, as though she looked back through memory. Indeed, she felt as though she did, while Lorraine's concern still spiked at the corners of her mind, and Dmitri's curiosity washed over her. “Tall, at least, to a child,” Belinda added with a brief smile, then passed a hand over her eyes. “No, tall in fact: as a girl I often had to run to keep pace with him, and even when I reached my growth I looked up to him. Sharp-featured, with black hair, and he told me of the monastery where he'd studied.”

Belinda had no doubt that, by the time Branson got a man there, there would be records of her imaginary priest, brothers who remembered him, a story of how he enjoyed gardening, their regret at his passing; all the things that made up a life, real or not. The world seemed a cruel place, that a man who had never been could take on more permanence than many who had been born, lived, and died without regard.

Lorraine, who had in all the brief times Belinda had enjoyed her presence, been a master of control, emotionless to Belinda's witch-breed senses, was now, beneath her painted face, full of disbelief; full of a growing concern that bordered on terror. It rattled Belinda, distracting her from the spell she tried to weave, and in a moment of inquisitiveness, she turned a few degrees back toward the throne.

“He told me of my mother, not of the queen, but of the woman. She who had wed and created life in secret, knowing herself to be the most valuable piece she had to broker, yet knowing she couldn't risk leaving her throne empty after years of playing suitors against one another. He called her bold and clever, and”—Belinda smiled quickly—“and apologised for it, for who was he, a humble priest, to pass such comment on a queen? But he gave me what he could of the mother who had to hide me.”

Belinda reached out, trusting, sweet, hopeful, toward that mother, and wondered if there might have been a time when she would have done so and have it be less than the act of showmanship it was now.

Lorraine, even knotted with fear, was a consummate actress: when the daughter she had long been separated from reached for her, it was instinctive to take her hand, creating a line of compassion, of family, and of new beginnings between them.

Creating the link of touch that had always made stealing thoughts easy for Belinda Primrose, ever since she had awakened to her witchpower under Javier de Castille's guidance.

The girl knows
was the underlying thought in Lorraine's touch, half incoherent with confusion. A flinch ran under Belinda's skin, an unexpected wound opening at how Lorraine thought of her:
the girl
. She had no name in her mother's mind, and that cut unfairly deep. Only in the past few days had Belinda often allowed herself the luxury of thinking of Lorraine as her mother; those were thoughts too dangerous to be reflected, even in her own mind. She was
Lorraine
, or
the queen
, and despite her skill in weaving stories, Belinda could hardly imagine a day might come when she would call the queen
Mother
. It ought not hurt that Lorraine thought of her similarly, rather than by dangerous words like
daughter
, or by her name.

Ought not, and yet it did. Belinda put the hurt away: there would be time to nurse it later, and she had only a few brief seconds in which to steal Lorraine's thoughts and find the source of her consternation.

Words came clear again within the constraints of Lorraine's mind: the queen was disciplined, her mouth curved in a gentle smile as she looked on Belinda, her gaze tender, with no hint of the rushing, bewildered thoughts behind her eyes.
How can she know, but then how could she know that I was her mother, and she knew that as well. Knew herself for the queen's bastard and made nothing of it, so perhaps she'll make nothing of this, either, that the priest who oversaw her birth—

An image came into sharp focus: a hawk-faced man with black hair and deep-set eyes, with a sensual mouth and long hands. The kind of man Lorraine might have considered for a lover when she was young and not yet a queen. By the time she took the throne she knew better than to dally with the church. She was head and heart of her religion, and would allow no churchman above her.

All of that, all of it and more came with the picture of Dmitri
Leontyev in Belinda's mind. For all her control, for all the life she'd spent honing discipline, when Belinda smiled shyly and turned from Lorraine to once more address Branson, her gaze went first to the disguised witchlord in the courtroom.

There was nothing of concern in Dmitri's eyes, nothing of the amusement she could feel beneath his surface. He knew himself a stranger here, an envoy of Irina Durova's court, there for no other reason than to make polite of the failed attempt to build an alliance between Aulun and Khazar. Lorraine couldn't recognise him; the witchpower saw to that, misdirected both her eyes with the changes it had worked on his countenance and her memory, so that even if a hint of suspicion came into her mind, it would fade away again. As ever, Belinda had no words from Dmitri, only smug satisfaction that allowed her to understand the direction of his thoughts.

He'd been there at her birth, and Lorraine thought him dead.

“I can't speak to his age,” Belinda said to Branson. She trusted the life she'd led to give her voice the right timbre, to show youthful uncertainty and sorrow even when she herself barely attended the words she spoke. “His hair was dark, but not all men lose their colour as they age, and he seemed old to me. That winter a cough took him, and he grew frail.” Tears filled her eyes and she glanced to the side so she might brush them away in a semblance of privacy; a semblance watched by all the court. She would believe her, if she were they; such performance was what she was made for. “When he died I was alone.”

A single thread of her attention was taken up by awareness of rising sympathy: the courtiers were half in love with her, in love with a romantic idea of a lonely girl destined for a throne; in love with the thought that they might now warm her and make her welcome. Mothers with marriageable sons plotted how a convent-raised princess might be best seduced; mothers with daughters considered how a crowned novice might need friends and guidance within the court. Younger women sighed in melodramatic compassion, imagining if only they had been the secret heir, and so it went, all through the court, all making a place for Belinda within their hearts. The romance would fade soon enough, leaving politics and manoeuvrings behind, but now, as she stood on the throne dais beside Lorraine, they warmed to her.

And she all but ignored them, her gaze on Branson but her thoughts on the two witchlords and the Aulunian queen. An energy crackled between them, nearly a quarter century of secrets kept. Belinda had no need to look over her shoulder at Robert to feel that he, too, was remembering the day of her birth, and the priest who had overseen it.

Bloody curls over translucent skin: that was the easiest memory for Belinda herself to draw up. The warmth of Robert's hands enveloping her, and the command:
it cannot be found out
. Robert's voice replying, promising that it would not be found out. And another command:
attend her.
Another response, a man's voice agreeing, and in the present, in the courtroom, hairs rippled on Belinda's arms, bringing a chill.

Dmitri, agreeing. Dmitri, promising to attend the queen who had just birthed Belinda, whose memories stretched all the way back to the moment of her birth. He had, so often in her life, awakened witchpower magic; she wondered now if his presence all those years earlier had helped shape the strength of her recollection, even before she could form coherent thoughts.

Lorraine, outside the weight of memory that burdened Belinda, but carrying her own fears, still performed the show they'd set in motion. Belinda had reached toward her once; now the queen reversed the offer, putting a hand out toward Belinda, and Belinda, as much the actor as her mother, took it.

“Not alone,” Lorraine murmured. “Though it may have seemed you were for all those years after Christopher's death, you remained in our hearts. Our greatest regret is that we have been unable to know you, and we hope that God will grace us with at least a few more years in which we might become family.”

For the second time, she drew Belinda into an embrace, and while courtiers shouted cheers and threw their hats into the air, clear memory, stolen from the queen's touch, thundered into Belinda's mind.

Afterbirth still rippling her belly: that, Belinda remembered herself, in the moments before Robert turned away and took her from the first and last glimpse of her mother for over a decade. But what Lorraine remembered and Belinda did not, that Robert did not, was the unexpected pain of another labour contraction, more violent
than she thought to expect with passing the afterbirth. She had gasped with it, and the priest, rightfully concerned, came to her side.

It was he who delivered the second child almost an hour later. A boy, noisier in his entrance to the world than Belinda had been, and a source of appalled horror to the woman who'd birthed him. Robert was gone with the girl; with the bastard heir upon whom Lorraine had decided to risk everything. Lorraine had been pleased the child was female; she, after all, had done well enough as a woman alone, and fancied the idea of a daughter coming after her.

A son threatened everything, on every level. One bastard child was risk enough; a bastard son, should he learn his parentage, would consider himself rightful heir to a throne Lorraine intended on being Belinda's, if it should come to that. And the people would support him: no matter how fond they were of their virgin queen, a woman on the throne sat badly with many of them, and they would raise a banner to her son.

It was maternal instinct, oh yes, but not the instinct so lauded by men, which made Lorraine Walter thrust the squalling babe into her priest's arms and say, flatly, “Drown him, stone him, leave him to die in the forest, but do not let him see the dawn, priest. It cannot be found out. More than the girl, this cannot be found out.”

In memory, Dmitri took the child and silenced his cries with a rag dribbled in water so the boy had something to suckle, and left the queen of Aulun to attend to herself.

Minutes later, pale, regal, trembling, she came barefoot to her guardsmen's door, and from there commanded them ride after the priest in secret until the ninth hour, and then to put him to death. They, without question, saluted agreement and left Lorraine alone again for the second time.

Alone, exhausted, but confident it would not be found out, she returned to her chambers, and with the ninth bell of the morning murmured a prayer for the priest's soul and for that of the dead boy then emerged from the shadow of her father's death to take up her crown and sceptre again as an uncontested queen.

Lorraine released Belinda from their embrace and smiled; Belinda returned the expression without hesitation, and heard nothing
of what Lorraine said next. The queen was wise to be afraid: should it be known she sent a son to his death, her people would never forgive her.

A curious spot of emptiness grew in Belinda's belly at the thought of a brother she hadn't known, chilling her in a way the stillness never had. She knew regret well enough to recognise it, but this was something else, a calmer and steadier aspect to that emotion, if such a thing was to be had. Not sorrow that needed regret, and she had too little attachment to a befuddling idea to regret it as of yet. Disbelief, maybe; a simple thing, that she might not have been so alone as she'd always been, had the world been just a little different. Yes: there, she knew it now. The coolness inside her was that same thick wavering glass through which she'd always seen the other side of her life, the one where she'd been born legitimate heir to the Aulunian throne. It was a curiosity, barely worth considering in one part for its unattainability and in the other, for the rage she might have felt if she permitted herself to dwell on it. That was the shape of her dead brother inside her, and all wisdom said it should be left that way, impossible to touch.

Instead she sent an unfelt smile over the courtiers, catching gazes for an instant here and a moment there, until with witchpowered precision, her eyes met Dmitri's.

She had stolen only snatches of emotion from him, no clear thoughts or memories the way she could from one who wasn't witchbred himself. But the satisfaction beneath his changed demeanour lay in parallel to Lorraine's thoughts: they shared a source, one that inspired fear in the titian queen and smugness in Dmitri. His mind was guarded against hers, too familiar already with Belinda's ability to subsume his will and demand his power be used to her satisfaction. But she'd changed yet again, not only in holding the power of the storm, but in riding the high emotion that now lashed the court. If it could affect her, she could draw it in and make a needle point of it.

Suddenly impatient with half-answers and untruths, Belinda gathered her will, gathered the overwhelming support of the courtiers, and slammed through the feeble walls of darkness that Dmitri threw in her path.

15 March 1565
†
Brittany, north of Gallin

Dmitri Leontyev does not want to be here.

Oh, in the day that it happened, he was happy enough to be there. More than happy: delighted, smug, crafty. But it's not his will that makes him linger in memory now, and so his thoughts are tainted: he does not want to be here. This is anathema to his people: one does not rape the memories of another, and rage boils in him below Belinda's inexorable examination. She has no right, and he'll teach her the lesson of that when he's broken free. A creature vicious enough to tear apart his thoughts and invade old and quiet memories is not one worthy of veneration or of teaching, but should only be ruthlessly destroyed.

Belinda dismisses his rising fury with casual strength, holding him apart from the power that would allow him to fight back. He acquiesces suddenly: this is not the time or place for challenges. Struggle abated, his thoughts splash down a rarely-travelled path, and Belinda's satisfaction rises with Dmitri's clear and vivid recollection.