The Queen's Bastard (11 page)

He is the only man she can imagine permitting that refusal.

“She is lonely, my lord.”

Robert turns in astonishment. “That hardly matters.”

Ana tilts her head, eyebrows drawn down. “On the contrary. Almost nothing else does matter. Women will do things to ease loneliness as men will do them to ease the pangs of love.”

“Not Rosa.” Robert makes a sharp gesture, dismissive. “No more than I.” Silence falls before he makes another gesture, still sharp, now demanding. “What might she do?”

“Besides ignore your summonings for hours on end?” Ana’s eyebrows arch with challenge. “Robert, emotion is not a predictable thing that follows step to reasonable step.”

He arches an eyebrow back, and Ana laughs. “All right, maybe for you, my lord, but those of us who are merely human are made of weaker stuff.” She gets to her feet and comes forward to slip her arms around his waist, smiling up at him. “My lord Drake. Do you know that ‘drake’ means ‘dragon,’ Robert?”

He frowns at her with good humour, the lines of his short-cropped beard making the expression all the more dramatic. “Aulunian isn’t your native tongue, Ana. How do you know that?”

“Neither is Reinnish, Robert, and that’s where the word comes from. I do have some education.”

“Yes.” He cups her cheek wonderingly, shaking his head. “The loveliest women, trained for bedding pleasure and stimulating conversation. I will never understand Aria Magli.”

“Aulunian reserve,” Ana says, “will never understand the rest of Echon at all. Do you know there are people who believe you Aulunian are all knitted out of the fog that haunts your island? All so cool and pale and emotionless.”

“And what do you believe?”

Ana smiles. “That you’re unlike most Aulunian men I’ve met.”

“Then I believe I’m flattered.” Robert shakes his head again. “But you’re not here to flatter me. Tell me how Rosa will jump.”

Ana sighs and steps back, brushing her knuckles across her own mouth. It had been easy, in the moment, to believe that the young woman might have forgotten her duties to spend the night in the arms of another who shared similar duties. But then she’d drawn back, repulsed and panicked, and had fallen into a swoon. Ana keeps her eyes lowered until she’s certain her expression won’t betray the hurt she felt at Rosa’s rejection, until the pulse in her throat has slowed a little. It’s only a few seconds before she lifts her gaze to meet Robert’s eyes. “She is bound to you, Robert. She won’t betray you.”

“And I can trust that?”

Ana snorts, all semblance of delicacy left behind as she turns away. “You can trust there’s not a much better judge of character than a whore. What are you afraid of with her?”

Robert holds his tongue so long she finally looks over her shoulder. “It is my experience,” he says with the delicacy she’s abandoned, “that females are far more pragmatic than males. I did not mean to question you quite so…rudely.” The deference in his voice is astonishing, his gaze lowered and shoulders rolled as he tries to make himself smaller. They’ve been lovers on and off for sixteen years; it isn’t the first time Robert has questioned her judgment and abased himself at her snappish replies. It never ceases to amaze her. “It’s unlike her to abandon her duty as she did today. I must be certain of her loyalty.” His voice remains soft, apologetic.

“No wonder your queen is so fond of you.” Ana comes back to him, touching his chin to make him lift his head. “I’d like to meet the mother who trained such deference to women into you.”

Robert smiles, thin. “No,” he says, “you wouldn’t. Now
there
was a dragon.” More humour lights his eyes and he shakes his head. “I need you to do something for me, Ana.”

“Will I get a lot of money for it?” Impishness prompts the question and she’s rewarded by Robert throwing his head back and laughing aloud.

“Expenses. I won’t pay more than that, you know that.”

“I do.” Ana holds her breath a moment before plunging into a question that’s plagued her for years: “Why is that, my lord?”

Robert’s heavy eyebrows lift. “Because in my world, a woman chooses her lovers. A man might woo, but it is an honour to be chosen. To offer coin would be…a killing offense.”

“That,” Ana says drolly, “is hardly the Aulun I’ve heard of. Perhaps you nobles are more genteel than the fog can bear news of. Maybe I should visit there, or even stay. That sounds much more pleasant than spreading my legs at the drop of a coin.”

“Not all Aulunian men,” Robert murmurs, “dance on the whim of their queen.”

“True. All right.” Ana claps her hands together, curious. “What do you need me to do, Robert?”

“Follow Rosa to Lutetia.”

Ana laughs as loudly as Robert did a moment earlier, her humour fading as Robert’s expression remains serious. “You can’t possibly mean that.”

“Why not?”

“What would I do there? Why would I follow her?”

“You’re a resourceful woman, Ana. Come up with an excuse. An evening of dance and drink awoke an unbearable longing in your loins for the lass. A wealthy patron finally made good his debt and you can retire; whatever it takes.”

“I thought you said you trusted her.”

Robert nods. “I do. But this is…important. If she’s lonely, as you say—she’s used to playing the part of a poor woman, Ana. A worker, not a lady. I cannot risk the feel of silk against her thighs and wealthy men distracting her, and I must know from other sources if she is focused.”

“I’m not going to Lutetia unless I can travel comfortably, Robert. Expenses will be dear, for this.” Ana speaks the Gallic language, but she’s never travelled beyond Aria Magli. This has been her home, her cage, and until a moment ago, she would have never imagined leaving. It surprises her how willing she is to consider it, but then, she has confidence in the financial incentives Robert will agree to. His crooked smile tells her she’s right to be certain of him.

“I wouldn’t imagine anything less. You won’t leave for a week. I don’t want any chance of you meeting on the road.”

“And if we meet in Lutetia?”

Robert lifts her hand to kiss the inside of her wrist. His mouth is warm, making a shiver of desire ripple over her skin. He looks through his lashes, unfairly seductive, and offers a teasing grin. “Improvise.”

B
ELINDA
P
RIMROSE
12 August 1587         
         Lutetia, capital of Gallin

“Ya think God gave ya teats ’cause he wanted ya ta think?” A barrel-chested Gallicman thrust his face into Belinda’s and exhaled breath laden with the stench of beer. She allowed herself the luxury of gagging, turning her head away to cough out the odor she’d inhaled. For a moment she thought of Viktor and his bad breath, and sent an apology to him, wherever he might be.

It was the curse—well, one of many—of being a woman: there was nowhere for women to gather and talk in the way that men did, at least not women above a certain station. Belinda dared not play a part too close to the street, not when she ultimately needed to walk into the palace, but for her first days in Lutetia she saw no other choice.

Chances were good it didn’t matter. She would shed her identity and create a new one within the Lutetian walls as many times as necessary. So long as she moved from one part of the city to another, she remained anonymous: as in all Echonian cities, the classes rarely mixed. This was her third tavern in as many nights, and there would be more before she was satisfied.

Her costume was as much disguise as she needed. The corsets were thick and weighted, giving her the bulk of a larger woman. She went barefoot in the August heat, subtracting inches from the height a noblewoman would stand at, and wore her hair in a rat’s nest that approximated the smooth coifs of the upper class. It would take a week to comb out. Between all that and her breasts being shelved as high as they could be without popping out of her dress, she had reasonable confidence she would go unrecognized between tavern and a rich man’s church.

“All I’m sayin’,” she gave back to the blowhard, in language as base as his own, “is that it seems like the only godly thing to do.”

“You’re mad.” He sat back on his stool so hard it creaked and one leg bowed out dramatically. “Do you know what a crusade is, lovey?”

It would hardly do to show surprise that a base-born Lutetian had any especial grasp of crusading, though interest piqued in Belinda’s breast, flickering her eyebrows upward. “Naw. What is it?”

“It’s a lot of people thinkin’ like you do getting together and riding off to some foreign land to correct their religious beliefs.” The bulky man raked a hand through sandy hair, signaling for another tankard. Half a dozen people reached to pay for it. Satisfaction glinted in his eyes as he lifted it to them all in thanks.

“So I don’t see what’s so wrong with that,” Belinda snapped. “Someone’s gotta save the heathens, don’t they now?”

“Mebbe, mebbe. But it’s the noble houses leading ’em, lovey, and it’s the likes of you and me who die for ’em.”

Belinda put all her suspicion into a squint. “How d’you know so much?”

“My granfa three hundred years back went to the Holy Lands.”

Belinda snorted. “And my grandmother was the Aulunian consort. You’re full of shit.”

“She coulda been, with the way that bastard went through women.” Raucous laughter split the air. Belinda leaned forward to pound on the table.

“That’s what I’m sayin’! All them wives and divorces and what have you, and leavin’ the Church behind! It ain’t right! Don’t the regent have a
right
to Aulun, better’n that red-headed harlot they got on the throne? How long’s the Reformation bitch sat on the throne, anyways?”

“What’s the point in changin’ out one woman for another?” the man demanded. “God didn’ give any of them teats so they could think, neither.”

“But the regent is a godly woman,” Belinda protested. “The son’s been raised in the true church. I’ve got no call against you, mister, women don’t belong on thrones but for holdin’ ’em for their sons. But that woman, Lorrene?”

“Lorraine,” someone said. Belinda waved a hand at the man in thanks before hitting the table again.

“Lorraine. She’s got no get and no chance of it now, as long in the tooth as she is. Does she think she’ll live forever? We got a
duty
! Think of all them souls being damned to hell because the regent won’t act!”

A rumble of discontent swept through the men and women gathered around her. Her debate partner snorted and drank from his tankard, watching her with hazel eyes less bleary from drink than she expected. Others refused to meet her gaze, letting theirs slide uncomfortably away from her even as they exchanged little nods to one another. “It ain’t right,” someone agreed.

“Mebbe not,” someone else said, “but I’m not lookin’ to die for it.”

Belinda’s drinking partner leaned forward, crooking a finger at her. She folded her arms under her breasts and leaned on the table, watching his gaze drop to her bosom before he lifted it to her face. “You’re trouble, lass,” he told her in a smelly growl. “There’s them that agrees with you, but it ain’t good for your health to be spouting off like you’re doin’, you understand me?”

“No one cares what I say,” Belinda said, infusing it with all the bitterness she could. “A woman without two coins to rub together. No one cares.”

The man smiled, lecherous and foul with beer. “Can’t do a damned thing about the womanhood, but the coin, now. Might have a few to spare for a woman as eager in bed as she is about politics.”

He was, Belinda thought later, considerably less coarse than she’d expected.

B
ELINDA
P
RIMROSE
23 August 1587         
         Lutetia, Gallin

The priest’s fingertips touched her tongue. For a gleeful instant Belinda let herself wonder what he would do if she caught his finger in her mouth and suckled it as she gazed up at him through long eyelashes. Then again, what she’d heard of Ecumenic priests suggested it would be a gesture wasted, as she had a woman’s curves and not a boy’s narrow hips. She swallowed the sweetened bread, sipped the wine—better wine than she expected—and kept her eyes lowered. A fit of giggles in the magnificently silent cathedral would not do at all.

The grey flagstones beneath her knees were worn in smooth hollows from centuries of parishioners taking the blood and body of the Lord as she had just done for the first time. Belinda had more faith in her queen than in the God she’d never seen, but worshipping in an Ecumenical church made the hairs on her arms rise in discomfort. She had never played a role so close to her own and at the same time so diametrically different.

A queen’s life depended on hers; that was as it had always been. But now, for the first time, it was not Lorraine’s length of days, but Sandalia de Costa’s, that she held in her hands. Sandalia had a viable claim to Aulun’s throne and a lifetime of preparation behind her: if the rumours Robert had heard were true, the time for waiting was over. Sandalia intended to make a play for Lorraine’s country, to take her throne and restore Aulun to Ecumenic rule.

Belinda had spent a decade slipping through the lower ranks, taking lives and ruining reputations to protect the Aulunian queen. Robert’s whisper came back to her:
This is how it must be.
She would insinuate herself in court, make herself as close to Sandalia as she could, and seek out any hint of perfidy that might condemn Sandalia as an active, physical threat to Lorraine’s person. She sought written confirmation in the form of treaties or ambitious letters if it was to be found, or to become embroiled in a plot to set Sandalia on Aulun’s throne herself, if pen could not be pursuaded to parchment. For a rarity, she was not commanded to do murder, though Robert had left that dangling, neither condoning nor condemning it as a possibility. A queen might die at Belinda’s hands, that another might live.

The priest bade her rise, and she did, murmuring thanks and crossing herself as easily as if she’d done it every night of her life. She stepped back, then turned, retreating to her seat, closer to the back of the cathedral than the front. Merchants and bankers sat here, the wealthy working class caught between nobility and poor. Belinda allowed herself a seat toward the front of that class, in keeping with the small wealth her persona commanded. More than one mother examined her critically, judging her clothes and bearing. More than one son caught her eye, judging her breasts and hips. Belinda took note of them without watching, her eyes fixed piously toward the front of the cathedral and the magnificently dressed priest who lectured there. Around her, women whispered the words of worship they had learned by rote; Belinda instead listened to his speech, delivered with passion. His voice carried up the cathedral walls, rolling to the back without effort.

Ancient Parnan was not her strongest tongue, but she could do more than translate a sermon with it. The priest never faltered, his voice rising and falling until the lecture sounded almost like a song. Belinda drifted on it, listening less to the speaker than to the cathedral itself. Morning light slashed down through stained-glass windows, sending a multitude of colours over the congregation. It looked, Belinda thought, as if God had stretched out His hand and graced the believers with the light of faith. She turned her head and discovered bright patches of yellow speckling her shoulders, and thought perhaps He graced the less faithful as well. She smiled, turning her face back to the sermonizing priest, but not before meeting the gaze of a young man a few pews away. He offered a brief, hopeful smile that lit brown eyes, making him even more youthful than an unruly cascade of brown curls suggested. Belinda quelled the impulse to curl her fingers, as if snagging the man with her gaze put him in the palm of her hand. Marius Poulin, whose sturdy loyalty lent him friends of higher rank than the son of a merchant family might aspire to. She had studied him and half a dozen others from her gutter-rat station, hiding at the back of the cathedral to hear worship and watch the young men who might fall to her traps. Marius, handsome and good-hearted, was her first choice. Belinda let her eyes flicker back to his after a moment, and his smile brightened.

It was simple to let him catch her after the service. She dawdled, adjusting her shoe, and when she straightened he was there, offering a hand in support. “Marius Poulin. Forgive me my forwardness, but I haven’t seen you here before.”

Belinda smiled. “Do you know all the congregation by sight, Marius Poulin?” If they were well-dressed, certainly, though he’d passed her by a dozen times in the past two weeks without ever seeing her as she crouched with the poor on the steps or inside, near the cathedral’s doors.

“Close enough. For a large cathedral, it’s a very small church. May I be so bold as to escort you a little way, lady? And perhaps to beg your name? And to ask from whence you came?”

“Too many questions.” Belinda laughed and slipped her arm through Marius’s. “You may escort me a little ways, but the rest I fear I must be judicious with. Lutetia,” she confided, “is such a very large city, and a woman cannot be sure of whom she may trust.” Her Gallic was more than flat; she endowed it with the burr of Lanyarch, the contentious, Ecumenic holdings in Aulun’s north.

“From Northern Aulun, then,” Marius said. Belinda’s expression went cool and she pulled away very slightly.

“Lanyarch.”