The Emerald Swan (19 page)

Miranda sniffed hungrily. A group of men and women were crowded around a stewpot at the top of the table. “I smell venison. I’m ravenous.”

“But you’ve just had dinner.”

“I didn’t really feel like eating,” she confessed with a grimace. “I’m not criticizing your table, milord, But …”

He nodded. “You’ll become accustomed to our ways.” He gestured to the potboy. “Bring a bowl of that stew and some bread, lad.”

There were no implements, just a bread trencher. Miranda used her fingers in the pot, sopping up the liquid with the bread. But she was careful to eat as daintily as possible, and to avoid spilling gravy on anything but the bread. It was, however, the most delicious meal she thought she’d tasted since she’d left Dover quay. And she was under no illusions that it was the familiar surroundings that made it so.

With a comfortably full belly and the spreading relaxation from her own tankard of malmsey, she found herself asking the question that had been dogging her for hours. “Do you have strong feelings for Lady Mary, milord? For your betrothed?”

Gareth’s expression changed and she regretted the question immediately. But she still waited for his answer.

“Lady Mary is to be my wife,” he said after a minute. “She will be an admirable wife and, God willing, will give me heirs.”

“Your first wife—”

“What do you know of her?” he interrupted, his voice both soft and very cold.

“Nothing.” Miranda took a sip of her wine. “Maude said that there had been an accident … I didn’t mean to pry.” She didn’t like the look on his face at all.

An accident. As far as the world knew, it had been an accident. That shadowy figure behind Charlotte, the instant before she fell, could have been a figment of his overstretched imagination. He’d been standing on the gravel, three stories below. He could easily have been mistaken. But Charlotte had been up there with her lover—that poor besotted youngster whose torments of jealousy Gareth had watched with something akin to sympathy as Charlotte tortured him with her indifference, her sudden wild passions, and then the casual dismissal when she cast him aside for someone fresher, better able to satisfy her. John de Vere had been with Charlotte on that fateful afternoon. Gareth had heard his desperation, seen it in the white face and wild eyes as the young man had pushed past the husband of his mistress as blindly as if Gareth didn’t exist. Had pushed past him and raced up the stairs. The door had slammed. Gareth had left the house, unable, despite the many times it had occurred, to stay under the same roof while his wife made the beast with two backs with another man. He’d stood beneath the window. And he’d seen Charlotte fall. And he’d seen the shadow behind her the minute before. A shadow that had stayed, watching, until Charlotte’s body had crashed
to the gravel, and the blood had clotted beneath her head. And then it had gone, and he, Charlotte’s husband, had checked her pulse, closed her eyes, and his heart had sung with joy. A crime of passion, it was not his place to judge such an act. And if that shadow had not been de Vere … then Charlotte’s death had still been a crime of passion, but passion of a different breed.

“Milord … milord?”

He became aware of Miranda’s voice, her hand on his sleeve, and her face swam into focus. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

“What is it, milord?”

“Nothing. Come, let us go. It’s near dawn.” He swung himself off the bench, threw a handful of coins onto the warped planking of the table, and headed for the river.

Miranda got up more slowly. Just so had he looked in his nightmare. She clicked her fingers at Chip and followed the earl back to the river. There were things here a wise woman would leave well alone. But Miranda wasn’t sure how wise she was.

A jagged fork of summer lightning split the black sky, illuminating the dark mass of the walls of Paris looming above the Seine’s high banks. The almost simultaneous crash of thunder set the still air reverberating and the heavens opened to let loose a torrent of stinging rain, slashing down onto the parched earth, great drops bursting against the greasy steel-gray surface of the river.

Pickets huddled into their cloaks as they marched the line at the foot of the walls, and within the besiegers’ camp Henry of Navarre stood outside his tent,
raising his face to the rain, greedily catching the drops in his open mouth. His hair and beard were drenched and his soaked linen shirt clung to his sinewy chest.

Within the shelter of the tent his advisors watched him as he grew increasingly bedraggled and the ground beneath his boots turned into a mud-thick swamp. To a man, they were bemused by this strange behavior. Henry was a hard campaigner and a little water wouldn’t trouble him, but to put himself in the way of a drenching was most unlike their pragmatic and deliberate commander.

It was too much finally for the king’s physician. “My liege … my liege … this is madness. You’ll be sick of an ague.” The old man ventured into the rain, drawing his thick cloak tightly around him, stepping gingerly through the mud. Water dripped from his long beard as he came beside his king. “Come into shelter, sire. I beg you.”

Henry looked down at him and laughed, clapping the old man boisterously on a frail shoulder. “Roland, you’re an old woman. It’ll take more than a few drops of rain in a summer storm to bring me to my knees.” He flung his arms wide as if he would embrace the tempest.

An arrow of lightning, vivid white, hurled itself at the ground behind the king. It touched with a dazzling flash of bright light. A poplar tree split, opening slowly like a peeled fruit before it crashed to the ground, the sound lost in the violent bellow of thunder immediately overhead. The air was filled with the stench of scorched earth and burning wood.

“My liege!” Men ran from the tent, seizing the king by his arms, dragging him under the rough protection of canvas.

“Indeed,
sieur
, it is madness to expose yourself in such fashion,” the duke of Roissy chided. King Henry encouraged free speech from his close companions and it never occurred to the duke not to speak his mind.

“One bolt of lightning could bring an end to everything.” He gestured toward the city walls beyond the tent, speaking with an edge of anger. “You are king of France, my liege. No longer mere Henry of Navarre. We are your subjects and our fortunes rise and fall with yours.”

The king looked rueful. “Aye, Roissy, you do well to take me to task. That strike came a little too close for comfort. But in truth the heat has tried us all sorely these last days and there’s something irresistible about defying such a spectacular display of the elements … Ah, my thanks, Roland.”

He took the towel handed him by the old man and vigorously rubbed his head and beard dry, before stripping off his shirt. He rested a hand on Roissy’s shoulder and raised one foot and then the other for a servant to pull off his muddied boots, before peeling off his sodden britches and drawers.

Naked, he strode across the beaten-down grass floor of the tent to where a flagon of wine stood on a table. He raised the flagon to his lips and drank deeply, before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and regarding his assembled court with an air both quizzical and faintly mocking.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, you’re looking at me as if I were a freak in a traveling circus. When have I ever done anything without good reason? Gilles.” He snapped his fingers at his servant, who hurried over, his arms filled with dry garments. Henry shrugged into the proffered shirt, clambered into clean drawers and
britches, his movements swift, clean, economical. He sat on a stool, extending his leg to the servant who eased stockings and boots over the royal feet.

“Let us to table, gentlemen. I intend to leave at dawn.” The king rose as soon as his boots were laced and gestured to the table where bread, cheese, and meat accompanied the flagons of wine.

“You
are
going to England, then? Despite our advice?” Roissy made no attempt to disguise his anger.

“Aye, Roissy, I am.” Henry stabbed at the joint of beef with the point of his dagger, hacking off a substantial chunk. “It’s time to go a-wooing. I would have me a Protestant wife.” He carried the meat to his mouth then gestured with the point of his knife to the other stools at the table.

The invitation was a command and his companions took their places, only Roissy holding back for a second, before sitting down and reaching for the wine flagon. “My liege, I beg you to reconsider. If you leave here morale will suffer. The men will lose heart in the enterprise and the citizens of Paris will gain heart,” the duke said finally.

Henry tore at a quartern loaf of barley bread. “My dear Roissy, as far as the men are concerned I
will
be here. As far as the Parisians are concerned, I will still be at their gates.” He gave the duke a sweet smile that didn’t deceive any of his audience. “You, my friend, will substitute for me. We are much of a height, you will wear my cloak in public, we will put it about that my antics in the rain this evening have made me a trifle hoarse and feverish, so I will in general keep to my tent and any strangeness in my voice will be explained.” He shrugged easily and crammed bread into his mouth.

Roissy took another swig from the flagon. That crazy dance in the rain was thus explained.

“I have absolute faith in you, Roissy,” Henry continued, his voice now grave. “You will know exactly how to conduct the siege just as if you were me. We have it on good authority that the city will not yield before winter and I will be back in plenty of time to receive its surrender.”

Roissy nodded dourly. Their spies in the city had given them ample evidence of the burghers’ steadfast refusal to yield up the keys while there remained an edible rat alive in the city sewers. The city still had some grain supplies, but when those could not be replenished by the new harvest, then matters would grow grim indeed.

“If you wait overlong in England, my liege, you may find the return crossing impossible to make before spring,” he demurred.

“I’ll not protract my wooing of this maid,” Henry stated. “If she be as comely as her portrait and not doltish … and if she be willing …” Here he chuckled and even Roissy couldn’t disguise a grim smile at the absurd idea that any girl would refuse such a match.

“Then,” Henry continued, “I will conclude my business with Lord Harcourt with all speed and return by the end of October to put in train my divorce from Marguerite, which should, I think, take place before my coronation?” He raised a questioning eyebrow in the direction of his chancellor.

“Undoubtedly, my liege,” the man agreed, taking out a scrap of lace from his pocket and dabbing at his mouth with a fastidious gesture that seemed out of keeping with the rough surroundings, the coarse fare, the uninhibited manners of his fellow diners who, like
their king, were soldiers before they were courtiers and sported wine-red mouths, grease-spattered jerkins, dirt-encrusted fingernails.

“Who will accompany you,
sieurì”
Roissy made no further attempt to dissuade his king; he’d do better to save his breath to cool his porridge.

“Déroule, Vancair, and Magret.” Henry pointed at the three men in turn. “I shall take your identity, Roissy. Since you will be taking mine.” He frowned and all traces of lightheartedness had vanished, he was once more the implacable commander.

“We shall change clothes and I shall wear your colors and bear your standard. It’s imperative that no one but the girl’s family know the true identity of her suitor. The duke of Roissy will be visiting Elizabeth’s court, while his sovereign continues to lay siege to Paris. The queen herself must not suspect for a second the true identity of the French visitor. She professes to support my cause, but Elizabeth is as tricky as a bag of vipers.”

He leaned back, his thumbs hooked into the wide belt at his waist as he surveyed his companions. “I doubt even her right hand knows what her left is doing, and if she thought that Henry was not besieging Paris, there’s no telling what she might decide to do with the knowledge.”

“Exactly so, my liege.” Roissy leaned over the table, his tone urgent. “Consider the risks,
sieur.
Just supposing you were discovered.”

“I will not be, Roissy, if you play your part.” The king reached for the flagon of wine and raised it to his lips again. “Let us drink to the pursuit of love, gentlemen.”

Chapter Eleven

M
IRANDA WAS AWAKENED
the next morning by the sound of her door opening. “I give you good morning, Miranda.” Maude came over to the bed, her face pale in the gloom.

Miranda hitched herself up in the bed and yawned. “What time is it?”

“Just after seven.” Maude hugged herself in her shawls. “It’s so cold in here.”

“It’s certainly cheerless,” Miranda agreed with a shiver of her own, glancing toward the window. It was gray and overcast outside. The clouds must have rolled in over the river soon after she’d gone to sleep. “It looks like it’s going to rain.”

Maude examined her with undisguised interest. “I’m sorry if I woke you, but I had the strangest feeling that perhaps I’d dreamed you, and you wouldn’t look in the least like me when I saw you again.”