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Authors: Robin LaFevers

Mortal Heart (53 page)

BOOK: Mortal Heart
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“Merely a former god. And you will only have to bow to me a little.” His smile is as quick and welcome as a glimpse of sun in the dead of winter.

“Ah, you may be a former god, but you are only a newly made mortal, and I have had far more experience at being mortal than you.”

He blinks in surprise. That I have had more experience than him in
anything
had not occurred to him. I cannot help it. I laugh as the wonder of the moment fills me. Our lives. They will—finally—be
ours
to live as we choose. Filled with our hopes and dreams and, yes, our heartaches as well. But they will be ours.

We will love freely. Laughter shall echo down the halls of the convent. And we will fight our enemies—fiercely—when needed, for as surely as winter follows summer, it will be needed.

But for now, I cannot wait to share with those whom I once called sisters all that I have learned. I will teach them how to think for themselves and not simply reflect back to the world what it wishes from them. They will be strong not only of body, but of mind and heart. And most important, I will teach them how to love, for in the end, that has been the greatest weapon of all. It has proven stronger even than Death.

Author’s Note

O
VER THE CENTURIES
, as the Church struggled to convert an entire population to Christianity, as a matter of policy they adopted pagan deities as saints, painting over the original myths with their own Christianized narrative. They also built churches on pagan holy sites and organized their own festivals and celebrations to coincide with earlier pagan celebrations to make them more palatable for the local populace. It has been said that Brittany in particular fought harder than other kingdoms against the loss of their own deities and form of worship.

Though the nine old gods of Brittany did not exist in the exact form in which they were portrayed in the His Fair Assassin books, they have been constructed from earlier Celtic gods and goddesses, about whom we know very little. I have added a few embellishments of my own.

As in the previous two books, many of the characters in
Mortal Heart
are actual historical figures, and I drew from the broad political events of the time for my story. As the second phase of the War of Breton Succession drew to a head, France did invade Brittany and held most of the duchy’s cities and towns in its possession. The duchess was besieged at Rennes, surrounded by fifteen thousand French troops, trapped inside the city with thousands of mercenary soldiers who were better suited to fighting than waiting out a siege. The mercenaries roaming the city quickly became almost as much of a threat as the French troops, especially when the money to pay them ran out. That in turn created a weak link, which the French exploited by bribing the mercenaries to abandon the duchess. Even her supposed allies offered only minimal support—either holding her towns as surety to pay for the use of their troops or offering to escort her out of Brittany rather than helping her hold on to it. Maximilian, the Holy Roman emperor and her husband by proxy marriage, had his own wars with Hungary and France. France used that to their political advantage, effectively tying his hands and preventing him from being able to offer meaningful support to his wife. The situation was somewhat complicated by Maximilian’s own daughter’s betrothal to King Charles of France, which further bound him to that country and its ruling family.

As in
Dark Triumph,
one of the greatest liberties I have taken is compressing the timeline of the events in this book. In reality, these major events occurred over the course of two and a half years, with lots of fallow waiting periods in between. I pulled most of the major events of 1490 and 1491 into 1489, the year in which the story takes place. In reality, the betrothal that occurs at the end of
Mortal Heart
did not happen until the end of 1491.

Ultimately, the battle that had been brewing between France and Brittany did not culminate in full-scale war. Instead, Anne was convinced to abandon her proxy marriage to Maximilian and marry King Charles VIII of France. This marriage not only saved her beloved country and people from the horrors of yet another war, but gave her some political power with which to influence France’s future policies toward Brittany. By many historical accounts, she and Charles held great fondness and affection for each other. After they had been together for seven years, Charles VIII died, leaving Anne once more in possession of an independent Brittany. She did go on to marry Louis d’Orleans and become Queen of France a second time, the only woman in history to do so.

But
that
is a story for another day . . .

 

 

Visit
www.hmhco.com
to find all of the books in the His Fair Assassin trilogy.

About the Author

R
OBIN
L
A
F
EVERS
, who was was raised on a steady diet of fairy tales,
Bulfinch’s Mythology,
and nineteenth-century poetry, is the author of two additional series: Theodosia Throckmorton and Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist. It is not surprising that she grew up to be a hopeless romantic. She was lucky enough to find her one true love, and is living happily ever after with him in the foothills of Southern California. Visit her website at
www.robinlafevers.com
.

BOOK: Mortal Heart
9.33Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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