To Serve a King (14 page)

“
Merci,
Geneviève.” Anne took the goblet from her hand, but took no sip. “You may leave us.”

Geneviève bobbed and turned to leave.

Chabot leaned in closer to the king and whispered something in his ear. François’s expression turned sour.

“I have no money for war. If pushed, we cannot afford to respond.”

Her instinct was to stop, to plant herself firmly at the royals’ feet and hear every word they next spoke. But she had received her dismissal, and, by force, must leave, or else incur Anne’s ire. Pulled in two directions, one foot turned one way, and one another. She tumbled with the grace of a crippled ox, toppling into the deft hands of Admiral Chabot himself.

“Are you all right, mademoiselle?”

“Yes,
merci.
My apologies, monsieur.” She braced herself against his strong arms and recovered her balance.
“Pardonnez-moi.”

The aging soldier released her without another moment’s thought, and Geneviève rushed away, certain Anne’s sinister glare
punctured her back. She retreated to the anonymity of the far corner and her chair beside Lodovico.

“You did well, my dear, very well indeed. Right up until the part where you almost fell onto the king,” Lodovico teased her, brandishing his lopsided smile and rubbing the back of her hand. Her head hung in her other hand and she peered at him through splayed fingers, embarrassment burning her cheeks.

“Do not be dismayed, Geneviève,” Lodovico begged her. “You have been forgotten already. Look.”

Steeling herself, Geneviève peeked about the room. Her friend spoke nothing but the truth. The courtiers once more chatted boisterously, straining to hear their chatter above the growing din of people and music and clanging salvers as a wave of servants served a late supper. Not a one looked at her, not in interest or jest. Her gaze stopped at the door and held, captured with perplexed curiosity.

Two men she recognized—the musician Giuseppe and the haut-bois player—and a delicate, dark-haired beauty beside them, leaned over the threshold, their bodiless heads peeking around the door’s frame. The men laughed with unrestrained glee; the young girl alone had the decency to hide her mouth behind a long, graceful hand. Geneviève felt a moment’s ire, thinking they laughed at her, until she followed their gaze and saw the true target of their mirth.

Giuseppe’s brother conducted the small group of musicians in the corner, one hand marking the rhythm upon his tambour, the other leading the instruments through the song. With no hand left to keep them in place, his oversized hose slipped farther and farther down his legs. At the moment his genitals were about to be exposed to the room, he missed a beat, bending to retrieve his wayward garment, cheeks burning redder than his brother’s blood, which he longed to shed.

Geneviève felt the giggle in her throat and the gratitude in her heart. Her anxiety had tried to get the better of her, but at its passing, she knew she had much cause for celebration.

She offered her companion her brightest smile. “Would you get more wine, Lodovico? I believe my goblet stands empty.”

The delighted painter clapped his hands together. “That’s my girl.” He jumped to his feet. “Let us enjoy all the abundance the king is willing to share.”

“We would like the windows opened,” the king announced, as the air grew thick with the heat and odor of bodies at play. His desire became instant reality with a whoosh of balmy, fragrant air as the pages thrust open the heavy-framed casements.

The ohs and ahs of the refreshed revelers joined the song of the nightingale.

“I believe we are ready to progress.” François slapped his large hands on his knees and a thunderous cheer shook the tapestries upon the wall.

Lodovico jumped up with his own shouts and applause, and Geneviève joined in hastily, confusion stiff upon her forced pleasant expression.

“The court is to move, Geneviève. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“It is,” she agreed, comprehension dawning upon her as the last day of the condemned man sees the first rays of sun. “More wine. We must have more wine to celebrate.”

Lodovico laughed as he filled their goblets for a third time.

Many a goblet they shared, as the gathering lasted long into the night. Anne stayed until the latest possible hour, always by the king’s side, always his first and most cherished confidant. Arabelle and Geneviève stayed with her, until only the
gentilshommes de la chambre
remained, many of whom would bed down within the same large room as the king, his most intimate companions.

Under Louis XII, such men had been called
valets de chambre
, but the term had become synonymous with servant, and François would have better for his dearest cohorts, elevating them to the same lofty heights he himself inhabited. Commoners now held the posts of valet, but they served him as such, caring for his possessions, fetching for him whenever bid.

The ladies attended the king’s
coucher
—the nightly bedding ritual, as convoluted as the morning’s
lever
—before bidding Lodo-vico good night and attending the duchesse at her own preparations.

As the ladies of Anne’s chamber watched her servants remove the many layers of her clothing, Geneviève gathered her strength, fortified by the flagon or more of wine she had imbibed through the night.

“I know we are to leave in a day, madame.” Her voice croaked like an insulted frog. She cleared it and continued. “And I fear I have been remiss in my obligations.”

Anne didn’t open her eyes, as if already asleep, having little to do with her own preparations for bed. “You have done nothing untoward, Geneviève, fear not.”

“No, madame, I meant my duties to my aunt.” Geneviève felt the curious gaze of Arabelle and the probing stare of Jecelyn as they extracted a nightgown of pristine linen and lace from the garderobe and moved about the room, dousing most of the candles in the privy chamber. “I promised her I would visit the monastery and write her all about it, but I did not realize my stay here at the château would be so fleeting.”

“Indeed, we are beginning the season’s journey earlier than normal,” Arabelle offered kindly. “It has been such a fair and warm spring. We’ve had no more than specks of rain. The roads are passable much sooner this year.”

“It is incumbent upon us to do as our king bids.” Jecelyn directed her bitter rejoinder to Anne’s other attendants as she smiled with charm at her mistress. The two young servants paid little heed to the conversation as they finished their chores.

“Of course, I meant no disrespect.” Geneviève forged onward, abrogating any offensive inference. “I wonder if perhaps I could visit the monastery tomorrow.”

“There will be much to do in preparation,” Anne replied, and Jecelyn smiled as if claiming victory.

“I understand, madame. I need no more than a half hour’s time to see enough to describe it to my aunt.” Geneviève refused to surrender, more determined than ever. “Little time to spare to fulfill a dying woman’s wish.”

Anne sighed, dismissing the servants with a flick of her delicate, lace-rimmed wrist. “Very well, but no more.”

Geneviève curtsied quickly, a smile for Anne and Jecelyn as well. “
Merci beaucoup,
madame. You have my promise.”

They tucked their mistress in bed with the tender attention of a mother to her child and crept from the room, each woman taking the last of the burning candles with her.

In the presence chamber, they bid good night to one another and to the sisters, whose evening it was to sleep with their mistress.

“Do you need me to show you the way to the monastery?” Ara-belle yawned behind a hand.

“Or perhaps I may ask the duchesse if she would like me to accompany you,” Jecelyn offered, though not as well-intentioned.

“I thank you,” Geneviève replied, with a nod for Arabelle. “But I am sure I will find the path. We mustn’t let our duties suffer any more than they should.”

Arabelle grinned with a circumspect, sidelong look at Jecelyn, who had nothing further to say on the matter.

Geneviève slammed the door behind her, dismissing Carine with few words of explanation. The king’s plans had sent her into a panic. She had to get a message to her sovereign, had to let him know all she had gleaned this day, but there was so little time. She had chased away Baron Pitou with her monstrous rage, the one man who could have helped her. She knew of but one outlet for messages and it was here, at this château. Geneviève felt as if the hemp connecting her to England was fraying one thin, ragged strip at a time; if she did not get a message out, the tenuous bond might well be severed.

From her notions box she retrieved her ink pot and quill, gathering
her book and a small sheaf of parchment from her bedside table, her mind whirling with her message and how she would transmit it. She would use an alphanumeric code, not willing or able to spend the time on a polyalphabetic substitution and its key. She threw herself onto the rushes before the hearth and added two sturdy logs to the low-burning embers. She would swelter in the added warmth, but she needed the light. She stripped herself down to her shift, discarding the satin saffron gown, and set to work.

Every word of her message would become a set of three numbers, indicating the page in the book, the paragraph on the page, and the word in the paragraph. She had so much to tell—the cracked condition of the French court, François’s fiscal inability to make war—she had to fill both sides of the small square of parchment with the squiggle of numbers. And as she painted the paper with her communication, her smile grew. Not the restrained, half gesture she offered to those of the court, but a true smile that dimpled and plumped her cheeks.

In her mind, each set of numbers and the word it represented was a gift she offered her king. She imagined him as he read it, his blue eyes sparkling beneath his red hair. She saw him smile; she felt his approbation—that which she so desperately craved—as if he were in the room with her.

Untold hours passed as she constructed her message with the slow translation into cipher. She rolled her head on her neck, squeezing the taunt shoulder muscles with one ink-stained hand. Her body ached with exhaustion as the candle shrank and the quivering light cast lengthening shadows upon the stone walls, but never had she felt more purposeful.

9

Rich in hope and poor in earthly gold …

Leave me my hope; without it I am cold.

—Alain Chartier (1385–1433)

T
he cacophony began before the sun flung itself over the horizon. Rugged men barked orders, silver plate clanged against copper pot, females fussed over folded linens. The palace was a beehive of frenetic activity as hundreds of people prepared to move the king and his court.

Geneviève made her way past the stables, where the grooms trained the horses to carry women, watching as they taught the stately beasts to lower themselves on their front legs as though they knelt in prayer. She sprinted through the symmetrical gardens with their well-manicured lawns, the grass turning from light spring bud to deep myrtle, and the blossoming shrubs and hedges with their plump, moist buds. Beauty in hand, soon to be abandoned for that which lay upon the horizon.

She shivered as she stepped into the looming shadow of the monastery. Built hundreds of years before the château proper, there was nothing grand or opulent in its architecture. The slate square spoke of the somber, pious existence lurking behind the cold, anodyne façade.

The shrieking hinges of the two-story wooden door announced
her arrival far better than any bell. She bent forward and then leaned back as she put the weight of her body into the effort to open it and the sound echoed into the empty, vaulted-ceiling foyer, returning back to her—a faded wail—as though in warning.

Her contracted pupils were useless in the dim recess. She jumped back from the ominous beings welcoming her: crouching gargoyles and floating specters with ravaged faces. Geneviève closed her eyes, forcing her breathing to slow. When she opened them again, she distinguished the statues standing guard at the inner door and the saintly tapestries adorning the walls.

She skulked forward through air thick with cloying incense and melting wax. Crossing into the inner sanctum, she stopped, unsure which of the three passageways before her to choose.

“How may I help you?”

The hushed, benevolent greeting struck her with the force of a pummeling ax and Geneviève jumped, hands balling into fists, heart slamming against her chest. The cassock-cloaked man had materialized out of thin air. Her fearful gaze found him in the shadowed corners of the vestibule.

Geneviève swallowed back the rush of fear. Focused observation returned as her panic abated, and she glimpsed the smooth-skinned face of a young man within the gloom of his hood, pale hands clasped together at his hemp-bound waist.

“If I may, I would care to make my confession,” Geneviève whispered, afraid to shatter the unearthly silence holding sway over the monastery.

“I can hear your confession, my child,” the man replied, though Geneviève thought him younger than she.

She curtsied with great pious humility. “If it would not be too great an imposition, I would choose Father Bernard to hear my sins.”

Geneviève bit her tongue as she realized her blunder. For all she knew, this man was Father Bernard; that she did
not
know him could reveal her subterfuge.

The young monk bowed. “I will call him. Please wait in the confessional.” His long, pale-skinned hand and scrawny wrist escaped the bell sleeve of his cassock as he gestured through the door before her. With the same stealth with which he had appeared, the man evaporated through a side door, leaving Geneviève to wonder if she had imagined him all along.