Revenge of the Rose Page 7

  “Actually, sire, that particular site belongs to the church,” Marcus corrected dutifully.

  “Near the land where we were crowned,” Konrad said with offhand impatience. “I can give him more than that, little count, and I probably will, to suit my needs. Plus he holds one of the most prestigious offices in Christendom. Do you think I would marry my own child to a serf?”

  “A bastard you’ve never met, sire, not your cherished heir,” Alphonse said quietly, eyes averted.

  “My seed is always cherished,” Konrad snapped. “Yes, Marcus has the lineage of a peasant, a bondsman, but he is my bondsman and I have exalted him as my father exalted his father. I can give him a dukedom. I can invent a dukedom to give to him. God knows he deserves such elevation more than others around here who have only their blessed pedigree to back them up. It’s still your turn.” This was not how he had intended to reveal his intentions to Marcus, but the steward’s astonished face was still a very satisfying sight.

  So was Alphonse’s. “Sire,” he said in a low voice, trying to contain himself. “Are you serious? Are you telling us that you shall make Marcus— Marcus— a duke?”

  “I did not say I shall, I merely noted that it is my prerogative,” Konrad said, pretending to be absorbed in the chess game. “And that it would not be undeserved.”

  Marcus was staring at him with his jaw hanging open.

  For a moment, Alphonse seemed to be contemplating the private mysteries of his own digestion. Then he stood abruptly and bowed. “With your permission, sire, may I be excused to dictate a letter to my daughter regarding her imminent nuptials?”

  “Certainly, you obviously can’t keep your mind on chess. Here’s a present for being such a good sport.” He pulled off one of his many rings without bothering to notice which one it was, and tossed it. Alphonse looked insulted but caught it anyhow. Konrad dismissed him with a wave, and he went out.

  The emperor and the minstrel turned in unison toward Marcus. He shook his head, stunned.

  “You owe your gratitude to Jouglet, it was his idea.” Konrad smiled.

  “Actually, sire, that’s not quite accurate, as I have always genuinely advocated Your Majesty’s child as Marcus’s perfect match,” Jouglet pointed out. “Especially since it would make him a duke. A duke, Marcus! A count is a pullet next to the rooster of a duke! And you’d get even more from her than from Burgundy’s Imogen— “

  “Thank you, Jouglet, I don’t require your further assistance in statecraft,” Konrad said, yawning. “From the way you have been carrying on, I’m half inclined to offer this Willem fellow my daughter.”

  “Sire,” Marcus stammered. “I want— I don’t— I should not believe, should I, th— “

  “I meant everything I said,” Konrad said. “But there will be no more discussion of it until it becomes timely.” There was a noise outside the window, which looked down from a great height onto the only entrance to the fortress. “That must be our papal spy’s return from his official tour of the town,” said Konrad, sighing. “My brother always did like people to make a fuss about him, jealous little whoreson.” He gestured toward the window.

  Jouglet peered down, then looked back into the room, beaming. “It’s not the cardinal, sire. It’s Nicholas the messenger, returned from Dole.”

  * * *

  Once he was satisfied that Willem and his minuscule entourage had settled comfortably into their lodgings, Nicholas rode through the town and the sunny fields, up to the castle. There was a cool breeze on the slope, but this was always a difficult climb for the horses; even with the switchback road, it was a steep ascent up what was virtually a cliff. He was grateful Konrad never came here in winter.

  Just inside the main gate of the lower courtyard, a groom took the heavy-breathing mount from him. Nicholas sighed with satisfaction at being within the sheltering arms of a castle, any castle— he had gone to Dole straight from the damp and dewy summer camp and had not slept near a royal hearth in at least a month. He turned to face the final ascent up to the palace proper— narrow steps cut crookedly into the living red sandstone— when he became aware that he was being, literally, shadowed: somebody walked directly behind him, step for step, only a hand’s breadth from his back. He stopped and spun around, automatically raising a hand in self-defense. The minstrel ducked and leapt back, almost colliding with two laundresses at the well.

  “What do you want?” Nicholas asked, lowering his fist.

  At a jut of Jouglet’s pointed chin they began to climb, slowly. With the high sheltering curtain wall to the left and the enormous keep towering above them to the right, the long narrow steps nearly felt enclosed. “What will you tell Konrad?” asked Jouglet as they went.

  “Willem is a goodly man— charming, decent, modest. Very easy on the eye, the ladies will like that.”

  “Not just the ladies, I suspect,” Jouglet said wryly.

  “I prefer them smaller, actually. But he’s also an excellent rider and hunter, I learned along the way; he killed a boar that was about to rush my hackney. A little innocent, perhaps— you should have seen his reaction when he first saw the castle as we approached town. He…reveals his humble origins. But he’s an impressive specimen.”

  “Yes, obviously. And she?”

  Nicholas smiled a little. “A beautiful girl, that, and very winsome. But I must say she is shockingly headstrong— “

  Jouglet had anticipated this and was already untying a quadruple-knotted belt pouch. “No, she isn’t.” Stopping at an arrow loop that looked out over the green slopes, the minstrel pulled from the pouch a silver coin with something that passed as Konrad’s likeness stamped upon it. Nicholas stopped beside the fiddler and raised an eyebrow with interest.

  “This is a bribe? You wish me to lie to His Majesty?”

  “No, simply forget to tell the truth. I’ve got another one of these if you require it.”

  Nicholas looked at Jouglet, puzzled. “You are not the sort to stoop to this,” he said. “I know you for a schemer, Jouglet, but usually your work is seamless.”

  They stepped out of the way of a knight who was descending from the armory. “If that is a compliment, I decline it. But I propose a wager, Nicholas. Give me one chance to guess precisely why she was, as you say, shockingly headstrong. If I’m right, you will not mention her lapse from graciousness to Konrad. If she’s imperfect in any other way than how I guess it, tell him the whole truth.”

  Nicholas smiled a little despite himself. “I will tell him what I deem important, but I have not entirely decided what that is. Very well, then.” He nodded. “What’s your guess?”

  “Lienor did not want to be sequestered while her brother was away. She hates being shut up in the house. Willem is…” Jouglet considered it. “Willem is more solicitous to her chastity than to her happiness. Although it genuinely pains him to be so.”

  Nicholas arched one brow. “Well. I’m impressed.”

  “And?” Jouglet prompted, holding up the coin.

  “And I shall certainly tell His Majesty about her unadulterated graciousness.”

  Jouglet held out the coin, but Nicholas declined to accept it. The minstrel frowned. “It was a wager, Nicholas.”

  “Of course it was,” the messenger said, with a superior smile. “But I’m not for sale.” He took the mark from Jouglet’s hand and chucked it spinning out of the arrow loop. “I’ll abide by my word out of honor, not bribery. His Majesty need only know that Lienor is…spirited.”

  Jouglet retied the belt-pouch, four times over, watching the coin disappear into the weeds dozens of yards below. “That was a waste, but I thank you.” Then in a brighter voice, “So Willem is arrived, I take it? Where is he staying?”

  * * *

  They had retired to prepare for bathing when there was a ruckus from the small yard below. “Dole!” a voice sang out.

  This inn, just past the merchants’ square near the southeastern gate, was mercifully removed from much of the noisy, noisome urban sti
mulation. There was a small garden behind them and a horse market to one side, which gave way to the green market. It was late afternoon, and the markets were closing up; healthy horseflesh and sun-wilted cabbage were the heaviest aromas, despite the horror stories both youths had heard about the smells of life in town.

  Erec and Willem hunched over while being undressed in their low-ceilinged room. Their pages slowly peeled the exhausted men out of their armor— chain mail from the knight, waxed leather from the squire— but all of them paused and looked toward the open door. Willem, still in his hauberk, went to the door, smiling, as Jouglet’s voice rose up again: “Willem of Dole, knight of the realm! Where is Konrad’s new delight?” Footsteps were heard lightly running up the wooden stairs, and then Jouglet’s lanky frame appeared in the doorway dressed in a neat tan tunic and burdened with the ubiquitous fiddle case. “Well upon my life, everyone, look who’s arrived, the most talked-of man in the Empire! Willem of Dole himself!” The minstrel bowed very elaborately and deeply, setting the case by the door.

  Willem beamed. “Jouglet! You were the rascal behind all this. Lienor guessed— I should have too.”

  Jouglet straightened and embraced Willem gruffly around the neck. “Welcome, welcome, welcome! I’m delighted you’ve arrived safely. What a switch this is, eh? You traveling to my world at last!”

  Willem returned the embrace briefly, then pulled away a little so he could see his friend’s face as he spoke. “Jouglet, I am speechless with gratitude— “

  Jouglet clucked happily. “Never mind that, you’re here, that’s what matters. Good God, you’re actually here!” This was delivered more to the heavens than to the knight, but Willem, beaming, wrapped his arms around Jouglet with such a strong hug the minstrel was almost squashed against Willem’s chain-mailed chest. They clutched each other for a moment, both grinning.

  “Have you been rolling around in a rosebush?” Jouglet asked ironically. “You almost smell as good as your sister. And I see you have brought your little nephew along with you.”

  “Cousin,” Erec corrected coldly.

  Jouglet released Willem and for a moment studied Erec, who like a peasant laborer was now in nothing but his drawers. “This look suits you better than the gilded-lord costume you had on when we first met,” Jouglet decided.

  Willem held out a warning hand to Erec. “Your first meeting was not the brightest, but I hope you will both rise to the occasion. Jouglet, my cousin will be with me for the duration of the visit, as my squire. Erec, Jouglet is the very reason we are here. I beg you both, make peace.”

  Jouglet immediately slid to Erec’s side, bowed deeply, and spoke in a swift, quiet, pandering sort of voice. “I apologize for my arch disposition, milord. I fear it sometimes fails to avoid cutting too close to the marrow of the offending victim.”

  Erec wasn’t sure what this meant but liked the self-recriminating tone in which it was delivered. “You are forgiven,” he said with grudging magnanimity, and even bowed a very little.

  Willem, amused, chose not to explain to Erec what he’d just forgiven and continued undressing for his bath. Jouglet leaned back on a cushioned chest beneath the one sizable window in the room. “I was sent here by an already enamored monarch to summon you to sup with His Majesty and the royal vermin at the castle court.”

  Willem and Erec exchanged delighted looks. “Truly?” Erec demanded, stepping out of his drawers so that he stood naked in the middle of the room. Jouglet barely resisted the temptation to accuse him of strutting.

  “Truly. So bathe if you will, but let’s be quick, we don’t want to keep His Imperial Majesty waiting. He’s called for a feast tonight especially for your arrival.”

  Again the cousins exchanged amazed and happy looks. Then Willem turned back to Jouglet. “All right now,” he said as his servant put aside his chain mail hauberk to help him off with his tunic. “How on earth did you cause the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire to desire the company of an impoverished knight from a disaffected corner of his realm?”

  Jouglet shrugged. “I mentioned you in passing, and he was instantly entranced at the idea of your existence. Truly, I deserve no credit; it was a fluke that your name even came to be mentioned.”

  “How astonishing!” Erec cried. Willem gave him a droll look as he pulled off his shirt and handed it to his servant.

  “Erec, he’s lying,” Willem said patiently.

  “Oh,” said Erec, sobering.

  Willem turned his attention back to Jouglet, clearly expecting a better reply. Jouglet shrugged comfortably. “The answer lies in the question, my friend. Because Burgundy is disaffected, and run by an untrustworthy ninny, Konrad needs well-armed and loyal Burgundians in his court, especially impoverished ones whose lots he may best improve. Luckily for him, you happen to be impoverished.”

  Willem smiled gratefully. “The stars were well aligned when you came through my gate three years ago,” he said quietly. “You are better than a brother to me and have been from the day we met.”

  “In this court, that’s not saying much,” Jouglet laughed.

  Erec, exuberant again, announced, “We saw the castle on the hill as we were approaching— and the Emperor’s flag flying from the keep!”

  “The castle is magnificent,” Willem said with sudden excitement, his face lighting up.

  “It’s cold and wet,” Jouglet sniffed, then sat up to exclaim, “Willem! You are what’s magnificent!”

  The knight looked down at his own well-muscled physique and shrugged indifferently. He untied his drawers and let them fall to the floor. Somehow his nudity did not resemble strutting the way Erec’s did. “I’m still bruised from my last tournament, and I lost my helmet,” he said, almost as if apologizing.

  “The innkeeper has a pretty daughter, perhaps we should call her up here to heal the wounds,” Jouglet hummed suggestively, chuckling when Willem blushed. “For God’s sake, my friend, how can one man be so comfortable in the raw and yet so uncomfortable at the thought of a woman?”

  “My cousin is uninitiated in the ways of women,” Erec taunted.

  “I am not,” Willem rebutted unconvincingly, looking out the smaller window.

  “Well, excepting the Widow Sunia,” Erec said. Willem swung around to stare at him.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Everyone in the county knows about that.”

  Jouglet, looking startled but delighted, clapped and made obscene hooting noises. “This is marvelous fodder for some new tale, a fabliau I think. I must admit I’m relieved to hear the fellow has an appetite, he feigns saintliness in my company.”

  Willem ignored this. “Erec, tell me how you know that.”

  Erec’s pimpled face grinned wickedly. “You’re hardly the only one she gives her favors to, you know, cousin.” Willem blinked at him, frowning. “Except with you she knows you would never take advantage of a lady, so she invents frivolous tasks for you to complete so that you feel you’ve earned it. Although I must tell you, she was relieved when she talked you out of that nonsense about trying to woo her according to the rules of courtly love. The poetry you insist upon reciting for her? She’d rather you not bother. Why you’d waste your time begging for anything but fornication, when fornication is really all you’re after, is beyond her. She asked me to mention it.”

  Willem stared at him as if he were speaking Russian. This tickled both of his companions even more. “I must memorize this!” the minstrel whispered very loudly to Erec. “I’ll earn a year’s wages in a week for singing this one.” And then to the dumbstruck knight: “Oh, really, Willem, don’t be such an innocent. Take a bath and clothe your most magnificent body in your most magnificent clothes. I’m here to take you to the start of your new life tonight. Don’t stand there flabbergasted because some old lady is kind enough to indulge your peculiar form of chivalry.”

  “She’s…not an old lady,” Willem said in a tone of embarrassed yet paternal defensiveness.

  “Is she rich? Wh
y don’t you marry her?”

  Willem hurriedly shook his head, a blush starting on his cheeks. “I am not worthy of that.”

  Jouglet examined him, then grinned at Erec. “I thought only women developed a fond attachment to their first partner in carnality.”

  Erec grinned back. “My cousin is an unusual gentleman in almost all regards.”

  “Where is the bath?” Willem demanded, bright pink. He threw a linen robe around himself and went out on the balcony to call for it.

  “He’s not actually attached to her,” Erec continued in a low conspiratorial voice to Jouglet. “He simply feels that he ought to be, because he believes that would be proper. It amuses her no end. But she really could do without the serenading.”

  “Our dear Willem,” Jouglet said with affection, glancing after him down the steps. “He’ll be in for a shock at court.”

  “She won’t even accept trifles from him anymore, she knows how poor he is,” Erec went on, with a certain satisfaction. “That mortifies him, and he tries to stay away, but then he burns and eventually on some very feeble pretext ends up at her gates— “

  “And she lets him come straight in,” Jouglet concluded in a low, lecherous tone, with illustrative gestures.

  Erec howled. “Always. His sister’s got a perfectly pretty serving girl, which would be much more convenient, but she’s a bit of a prude, and he believes the knightly code should extend even to peasants.”

  “Actually, it does,” Jouglet corrected, sobering, then sat back and affected nonchalance as Willem reentered.

  “Actually, it does in theory,” Erec corrected, doing the same.

  “The bath is ready, in the courtyard,” Willem told his cousin, and the two of them, disrobed, went out. Jouglet followed.

  They settled into the tubs by the stairs. The page boys scrubbed their backs and the innkeeper’s daughter made eyes at them across the small cobblestoned yard as she helped her mother pound moth eggs from the linens. Jouglet perched at the edge of Willem’s tub and quietly coached him in preparation for the evening.