Twilight of a Queen (3 page)

“Preferably both. That is why I should be extremely reluctant to allow you to be questioned by His Eminence, but you may leave me no other choice.” Catherine spread her hands in a deprecating gesture.

Xavier’s smile fled. “In other words, if I don’t go to Faire Isle and abduct this girl for you, you are threatening to hand me over to the Inquisition.”

Catherine frowned. If Xavier had one fault, it was that he lacked the finesse of a courtier. He could at times be disconcertingly blunt.

“I would not express myself quite so crudely, but yes. That is the proposal before you.”

Something dark and dangerous flashed over his features. Catherine took an involuntary step back, recalling the vulnerability of her position, alone here with Xavier and his savage companion, her guards at the base of the tower not even within shouting distance.

The native appeared to understand little French, but the tension in Xavier’s stance must have alerted him that something was wrong. The dark-skinned man drew himself up to his full height, his tattoos rendering him even more menacing. One word from Xavier …

But Catherine remained calm. Even if she had angered Xavier with her threat, he would not be foolish enough to harm the Dowager Queen of France. Knowing Xavier, the man would always be aware of his own best interests and act accordingly.

Ah, but then how well did she truly know Xavier? How far could she trust him? He folded his arms across his chest, his countenance inscrutable.

Catherine had once been adept at the ancient wise
woman’s art of reading eyes. She had been able to penetrate beneath the masks that men wore, perusing their thoughts and sifting through their memories as easily as she would have read a book.

That ability had become lost to her as her eyesight had dimmed. But even if she was still possessed of her skill, it would not have helped her with Xavier. She suspected the man was as good at guarding his secrets as she was hers.

She adopted a more conciliatory tone. “I have no wish to see you hanged for a common pirate, monsieur. I believe you are destined for far greater things. Just find Megaera. Bring her to me and then I will outfit you with as many ships as you could desire.”

He said nothing for a long moment, and then he smiled, and took her hand.

“I am as ever Your Grace’s obedient servant.” He kissed her hand, the gesture courtly for such a rough, unpolished man. In that moment, he reminded her of someone. But who?

The memory tugged at Catherine before drifting away, as frustratingly elusive as the mist.

T
HE FOG HAD FINALLY DISPERSED, BUT XAVIER DID NOT
consider it an improvement. He stared out at refuse-filled streets and narrow, close-packed buildings. Not for the first time these past months, he longed for the tang of salt air filling his lungs and the vast swells of the open sea.

His cabin aboard the
Miribelle
was much smaller than this inn chamber, yet he had never felt as confined as he did here with dingy gray walls closing in on him. The room felt heavier this afternoon, burdened with the weight of his companion’s disapproval.

Pietro hunched his tall frame over the washstand, scrubbing the painted tattoos from a face that reflected both the proud bloodline of African warriors and the Indians of Panama. He plucked the last of the feathers from his
braids and scowled at Xavier. He spoke in a deep cultivated voice, his command of the French language as flawless as his Spanish.

“You are playing a dangerous game, Captain.”

“Am I? Well, it does not appear as though I am winning.” Xavier glanced dourly at the object he had tossed upon the bed, the small purse he had received from the queen.

“Besides, you are in no position to lecture me,” he added. “You have been gambling right along with me.”

“Only to make sure that devil woman does not put a curse on you.”

Pietro toweled off his face, his broad forehead knit into worried lines. “Unless you succeed in cursing yourself. The
macumbu
is powerful magic, meant for healing and enlightenment. Not this sort of trickery and deceit. The gods will frown upon this misuse of your powers.”

Xavier plunked down upon a wooden stool and stretched his feet closer to the fire that crackled on the hearth. “Ah, but we both know I have no powers, although my trance was almost a magical performance. I thought the rolling of the eyes was a particularly nice touch.”

“I hope you will not attempt it again. You cannot keep fooling this queen. She may be an old woman, but her mind is keen. She is a witch, that one.”

“So my mother always told me,” Xavier murmured. He stared into the fire, the flames blurring into a red-gold haze, his mind conjuring half-formed recollections from his childhood. The queen coming to visit their house in Paris and Xavier’s mother forcing him to hide in … the aumbry? Her wardrobe chest? Someplace narrow and dark.

“Don’t make a sound, petit, or the Dark Queen will get you.”

“But what about you, Maman?” Xavier had clapped his hand to the hilt of the wooden sword his father had given him. “Let me stay with you. I can protect you even if she is a witch.”

“No, no you can’t,” his mother had replied frantically. “She must never see you, never know that you exist. Bad enough the use that evil woman makes of me. Do you want her to turn you into a pawn as well?”

That threat had served to quiet him. At the age of five, he had taken his mother’s words quite literally. He had shivered and imagined the sorceress finding him. Casting a spell to make his arms melt into his sides, his legs shrivel and disappear, until he became no bigger than a carved wooden pawn trapped forever on the witch’s chessboard.

He’d often wondered since then if it had been his imagination spinning out of control or his mother’s. Had the Dark Queen really posed any danger or had his mother merely been desperate to find some way to induce a wild hellion of a boy to behave?

His mother’s fear of the queen had seemed genuine and yet there were times when Maman demonstrated a tendency to become a bit… overwrought.

Overwrought? Don’t you mean a bit mad?

Xavier’s fingers strayed to the scar at his throat. He was roused from his thoughts by a rap at the chamber door.

Xavier leaped to his feet, springing for his sword. Pietro did likewise, the queen’s warning about the Spanish ambassador still fresh in both their minds.

“Captain?” a gruff voice called out.

Pietro released a long breath and Xavier felt the taut set of his own shoulders relax. He sheathed his sword before unlatching the door to admit his first mate.

The little man waiting on the threshold could not have presented a more disreputable appearance, his beard grizzled, his skin leathered from salt and sun, his eyes cast in a permanent squint beneath thick gray brows.

Tough and sinewy, his movements were little hampered by the wooden leg that had earned him the sobriquet of Jambe du Bois. The motley assemblage of his garb was complimented by a colorful parrot that perched on his shoulder.

The bird emitted a loud squawk as Jambe stumped into the room and Xavier bolted the door behind him. As Pietro put up his own sword, he frowned and shook his head.

“Never say you have been marching all about the city with that thing on your shoulder. Are you mad, mon ami? You know how valuable those birds are over here. Do you want to end up bashed over the head and the creature stolen?”

Jambe snorted. “I’d just like to see any varlet try to take the Sea Beggar.”

“So would I. We would be well rid of the cursed nuisance.” Xavier swore and ducked as the parrot flapped past his head and settled on the window ledge.

Beggar cocked his head. Eyeing Xavier with his usual malevolence, he screeched at him,
“Merde! Merde!”

Jambe beamed. “Just listen to the brilliant boy. I have been teaching him to swear in French. I plan to work on Spanish next.”

As if the blasted bird wasn’t obnoxious enough, without being tutored by Jambe’s awkward accent. The old man’s flat vowels betrayed his English origins every time he opened his mouth.

Pietro, more tolerant of Sea Beggar than Xavier, coaxed the parrot onto his arm while Jambe faced Xavier with a bright hopeful expression.

“So how’d it go today? Was the information I gave you useful?”

Despite his disappointment over his session with the queen, Xavier could not repress a slight smile. Jambe was like a magpie, gathering up gems of gossip in every port. Over tankards of ale in Plymouth, Jambe had encountered a seaman who had recently been imprisoned in the Marshalsea. One of his cellmates had been a man badly burned from a fire, feverish, ranting about dark queens and silver roses. From this source had come the extraordinary story of Queen Catherine’s search for the grimoire and the girl with the strange name.

When Jambe had related the tale to Xavier, he had been inclined to dismiss it as nonsense but had stowed the story away in his memory nonetheless. One never knew when even the ravings of a madman might prove useful.

“The information you gleaned helped convince the queen of my prophetic abilities,” Xavier said. “The story worked powerfully upon her, but not the way we had hoped. It blew up in my face like a badly loaded cannon.”

“What do you mean? Didn’t it convince the old witch to open her purse strings?”

Xavier gestured toward the bed. Spying the silken purse, Jambe rubbed his hands and pounced upon it gleefully.
But as he shook the small cache of coins onto the mattress, his gap-toothed grin changed to a scowl.

“What the devil is this? There is barely enough coin here to patch up the
Miribelle
and purchase enough supplies to sail the channel.”

“Unfortunately that is all that the queen wishes us to do.” Tersely Xavier related what had happened in the tower that afternoon.

“So the old witch wants you to go to Faire Isle in search of this girl.” Jambe let out a low whistle and glanced toward Pietro.

The tall black man stroked the parrot’s feathered head, ignoring Beggar’s playful nips at his finger. The two sailors exchanged a significant look that irritated Xavier although neither man spoke a word.

That was the trouble with men one had voyaged with for so long. They ended up knowing far too much of one’s past. Both Jambe and Pietro were well aware that the Faire Isle was the last place on earth Xavier wished to go.

Jambe cleared his throat and asked, “Er—so will you carry out the queen’s request?”

“No, I’ll be damned first!”

“The witch will not be happy if you defy her. She threatened to hand us over to the Spanish,” Pietro said. Despite the sailor’s imperturbable expression, Xavier saw the shade of fear in his eyes.

“That is never going to happen, my friend.”

“I know,” Pietro said quietly. “Because I will die before I ever allow the Spaniards to take me alive again.”

Xavier nodded. He felt exactly the same way, but Jambe grumbled, “There would not have to be all this noble talk of
dying and we wouldn’t have had to come a-begging of any queen if we had not wasted that last cargo we took. A hold full of African slaves worth their weight in gold and you insisted upon putting them all ashore, just letting them go.”

“I had thought I had made myself clear on that score,” Xavier said. “I won’t make my fortune by trading in human lives.”

“But why not? The entire world does so. The Turks, the English, the Portuguese, the Spanish. Even the Africans themselves.” Jambe drew himself up into a self-righteous stance. “Slavery is even sanctioned in the Bible.”

Under other circumstances, Xavier might have been amused at an old reprobate like Jambe citing holy scripture.

But he sneered, “I wouldn’t know about that, not being a religious man.”

“If you had ever been a slave yourself, Jambe, you would understand,” Pietro put in quietly.

“Whether Monsieur du Bois understands is nothing to the point.” Xavier subjected his first mate to an icy stare. “As long as I captain the
Miribelle
, there will be no trafficking in slavery.”

“All right. All right.” Jambe flung his hands in a gesture of defeat. “So then exactly what the devil are we going to do, Captain?”

A good question, Xavier thought as he gathered up the money Jambe had scattered across the bed. He frowned, cradling the handful of coin in the palm of his hand. Not much to show for all his efforts to charm that old witch, his weeks of being walled up in this crowded, noisy city.

He wondered what mad impulse had ever driven him to return to Paris in the first place. Curiosity to see the
city of his birth after all these years, to finally put to rest the ghosts of his youth? Some wild notion that he might make an effort to turn respectable, find legitimate financing for the kind of voyage he’d always dreamed of, sailing uncharted seas, discovering lands no European had ever clapped eyes upon. Just like his former captain, Sir Francis Drake.

But Drake had the good fortune to serve a queen fore-sighted enough to appreciate all the promise, excitement, and opportunity of the New World. He also had the backing of prosperous London citizens.

There was little prosperity to be found in France these days, a country decayed by civil war and famine, ruled by a half-mad king and an aging sorceress.

Pietro was right. Xavier had been taking a mad risk by playing out his tricks upon Catherine de Medici, not the least of which was she might have recognized him. Xavier had been told he bore an uncanny resemblance to his late father, a fact Xavier hated. He had no desire to resemble the noble chevalier in any particular manner.

Was that really what this had been all about? Xavier wondered. He could not pay back his father for all the misery the chevalier had wrought in his and his mother’s lives, so perhaps he had sought vengeance against the Dark Queen instead.

Xavier shrugged off the notion. Revenge required entirely too much hatred and Xavier considered himself a cold, logical man. Although he had to admit he had enjoyed the thought of making a fool out of the queen.