Revenge of the Rose (47 page)

“Cousin, you’re in bad shape,” he said with concern.

W
illem
was awakened from his drugged midday slumber in the willow’s shade by the emperor, who nudged his shoulder with a jeweled fist. “Willem,” Konrad was repeating in a low growl. Somewhere nearby a fly was making a monstrous amount of noise. “Willem, wake up. It was Paul. It was Paul who poisoned you. We must know why he would try to do that. What’s happened between you?”

A wave of nausea rolled over him. He saw Jouglet, with an expression of womanly worry, peering over Konrad’s shoulder at him. “The truth?” he managed to mutter, as if to Konrad, awaiting Jouglet’s answer.

“Of course,” Jouglet said impatiently, frowning to hide her anxiety.

He kept his eyes on the emperor. “He knows I know,” he said weakly, and rolled onto his side with dry heaves.

The involuntary gasp behind Konrad made Konrad reach back, without looking, to grab Jouglet and yank the minstrel before him on the blanket. “You obviously know what he’s talking about. Explain.” As Jouglet opened her mouth he added, firmly, “And don’t say he’s ranting or delirious. No dissembling. You know exactly what he’s talking about. Explain.”

She took a breath, trying to decide how best to dissemble. “Willem’s family land was stolen by the count— “

“You said that was a
rumor,
” he interrupted impatiently. “I’ve invited Willem to speak candidly, and he’s never made the accusation. Besides, what does
Paul
have to do with that?”

She hesitated, and hurled a frown at Willem, who was oblivious to everything but his own gastric issues. “Yes, it was a rumor. There was also a rumor going around that Paul covered Count Alphonse’s tracks for him. Somehow.”

Like anything that might reflect badly on his priestly brother, this news caught Konrad’s full attention. “Detestable ass. What evidence do we have of it?”

“We don’t have any,” she fumbled. “Willem was bluffing. Apparently he’s very good at it.”

Konrad gave her a knowing look. “Willem would not bluff even if his life depended on it, it’s not
knightly.
If poisoning is Paul’s response to Willem’s threat, then Willem’s threat had real weight to it. It was not just the repetition of a
rumor.
” Jouglet shrugged and tried to look busy moving a bucket of water slightly closer to Willem’s head.

Konrad studied the slender form a moment, then, unhappily but with breathtaking speed, he closed his hand around Jouglet’s throat and had the minstrel wriggling faceup nearly on his lap, her fingers clawing desperately at his. “Sire, please,” she managed to gasp.

He slacked his grip but didn’t release it, and pushed her by the throat farther away from him. “What do you have to tell me?” he demanded.

On hands and knees, she coughed harshly, and brought a protective hand to her own throat. “Nothing sire— agh!” He had retightened his grip, and her hands clutched at his again. Again, he loosed the grip and looked at her expectantly. Again, she coughed to clear her windpipe, and met his gaze. After a moment, she repeated, “
Nothing,
sire.”

“Very well, then,” he said testily, and finally released her. “I’ll interrogate Willem when he’s recovered, he’s much less work than you are. And then I’ll ask him why you wouldn’t tell me more yourself.”

She cleared her throat a final time, uncomfortably. “You’ll be disappointed with the answer, sire, there’s really nothing to it.” She took a damp rag from an attendant, rinsed it in the bucket, and dedicated her attention to wringing out the excess wet.

Konrad considered her a moment. “Now I see it all,” he said. “From the very top. You wanted all along for him to marry Imogen so he could get his land back in her dowry.”

Jouglet’s cheeks pinked. She stopped pretending to be busy and gave the rag back to the page boy. “You grasped that very quickly, sire. Willem himself never saw it at all until I told him.”

“That’s part of why we love him, Jouglet,” Konrad said. “We love that there is someone good and useful in the world who does not think like we do.” The minstrel nodded in agreement. Konrad slapped Jouglet’s knee. “It is a good scheme of yours, and he should not suffer for his sister’s fate. I’ll tell Alphonse my wish is to see them married, and quickly. Before Willem is poisoned again.”

Something in Jouglet relaxed, even rejoiced, but— “Your Majesty does not want to accost Paul?”

“Not without hard proof,” Konrad said. “Accost the pope’s representative? That will get me excommunicated all over again.”

“What if he tries again? What if Alphonse does? If the rumor is true, Alphonse is even more compromised by Willem’s claims— “

“That won’t happen,” the king said with a dismissive gesture. “Paul is trying to hide a crime, but if Willem gets his land back in marriage, the crime is effectively undone.” He gave her a meaningful look. “If there were material
proof
of evil by Paul, it would be different. Then we could move against him, denounce him to the pope. Do you see how useful proof would be?”

“There is no proof,” she said stiffly, realizing he was waiting on her answer.

“Whoever offered such proof could expect a very satisfying reward,” he said in the same weighted tone.

“There is no proof,” she repeated, more firmly.

“Then for now Willem marrying Imogen saves everyone— except Marcus of course, but he’ll get a dukedom, so he really has nothing to complain about.” He bent over the knight, lying curled on his side in the shade, a page boy wiping his mouth from the latest round of dry heaves. “Willem, did you hear that? You’re to be married to Imogen my cousin! You’re to become my cousin!”

Twenty paces away, Marcus heard this declaration and almost threw himself into the putrid green waters of the Rhine.

Willem insisted on staying mounted and keeping pace with the rest of the group. At one point he had to strap himself into the saddle with leather thongs, and his pages on their shared hackney kept dousing him with water, but he would not be put aside as an invalid, to take a litter or a river barge behind them. Konrad surreptitiously assigned two knights to watch him, and he told Jouglet to keep an eye on Alphonse and Paul. Between that assignment and concern over Willem, the minstrel had to leave off, temporarily, developing any new machinations toward Marcus. Marcus’s expression, mood, and body language were impossible to read throughout the rest of the trip. He may as well have been stone. In fact, he wished he were.

The convoy arrived in Mainz the following evening, finishing their journey by skirting the eastern town walls, along the Rhine shore. The river workers were the first to greet them as they made their way, with reverberating fanfare, through the main gates of the city. Across the Rhine, audible and visible, was an enormous, elaborate campsite, where the lords of the Assembly had collected from throughout the empire. Every possible form of visual proclamation— banners, pennants, flags, livery— announced who was lord of what land, and where they were bivouacked. Two mornings from now, Konrad would be among them, making official the name of his intended bride and publicly offering Marcus precisely what Marcus was desperate to avoid. The steward had spent almost the whole of the journey picking over the situation in his mind, trying to find some way out of this, preferably some way to exonerate himself. He could discover no variant in which he might be spared his entrails.

Willem, still feeble— in fact, looking much worse— insisted on escorting His Majesty’s train into the middle of town to the gates of the archbishop’s quarters, where Marcus mechanically began to organize the diminished pack train in the stable yard.

The royal party stood on the steps to the small palace, stretched and dusted its collective limbs, and rubbed its collective buttocks after a long day in the saddle. Konrad gestured Jouglet to stand beside him. Willem had not dismounted and did not look well enough to stand on his own if he did. His Majesty cast a worried eye on the knight. “Stay with him,” he said quietly to Jouglet. “Do not leave his side.”

“What about your Galahad?” Jouglet asked. She had deliberately refrained from going near Willem for this very reason.

“I would rather have Willem alive than Galahad dead,” Konrad answered. “And you will be no use to me if you are fretting about him while he’s away from you. Where is he staying?”

Jouglet began to answer— and then stopped. And then began again. “Willem of Dole is staying at the inn off the Cherry Garden,” she said, with a little more projection than she needed to. A few heads glanced in their direction briefly. Including Paul’s.

Konrad gave her a subtle nod of understanding.

She bowed to His Majesty and descended the steps to approach Willem. Without asking permission or offering an explanation, she took Atlas’s reins and led him out of the archbishop’s gate, down the narrow street between the towering church and stony cemetery, through the broad cobbled market called the Cherry Garden, ringed by trees burdened with the darkening fruit. Between two of the biggest trees stood the door to Mainz’s best inn. Openly publicizing her companion’s identity, Jouglet was able to requisition a room for them, a small one but one they need not share with others, because the knight was so ill. The innkeeper saw them settled comfortably in and then brought up Flemish broth of egg yolks and white wine in water for Willem, who was slanting toward delirium. Below, the lodgers could hear the innkeeper trying to cajole the party that had lost its room to Willem of Dole.

T
he
humidity had been getting worse all day; Lienor was a puddle trapped in human skin. She had recovered from the sunstroke of the previous day, but now she could hardly breathe. The butter-based concoction Jeannette had mixed up for her cracked lips was working, but it smelled rancid and was a great delight to flies. They had run out of water and did not dare drink from the foul Rhine— they had heard about the Rhine— and they had long run out of food. For all the fulsome vegetation around them, it was only the occasional feral cherry tree or wild strawberry plant that provided them with edible fruit; the hazelnuts and walnuts were still green, as were the apples. She was aware, through the general haze of malaise, that Jeannette was handling all of this much better than she was, and she envied the common woman for her fortitude. Her shame and jealousy had roused in her the last reserves of physical and mental strength, and somehow she’d managed to continue on a pace with Erec. But now again she was losing her resolve.

They had spent the previous night in another inn, just south of Worms, because Lienor’s appalling state would rouse too much attention in a castle. Here, as at every place they’d stopped for food, German ale was served in place of wine; it made her shudder. She could not get over how
foreign
it tasted, how sour and grainy. And as she looked around the crowded little inn, trapped there by another passing thunderstorm, the travelers from the north and all the local denizens looked foreign too, but for the strangest reason: many of them looked like herself and Erec. The cousins’ fair coloring had made them stand out in Dole; certainly Lienor’s blond hair had been one of her most touted and striking charms. But half the people here, including women who were really very homely, sported paler skin and hair and eyes than she was used to seeing in the general population, especially among the lower classes. Why was she rushing into a venue where even if she were to triumph— unlikely in itself— she would no longer be special?

Then she remembered, with a jolt, what it was to feel prized, beautiful, unique, and safe— and shut up in her room at home. Suddenly every moment of this nightmare trip felt like a privilege.

T
here
had been a brief, tremendous storm that night, and Jouglet had meant to stay awake throughout it. But when Willem at last fell soundly asleep, she also drifted into slumber.

She was awakened by familiar hands gently touching her face and hair. She opened her eyes and took a breath of relief, seeing that Willem’s color was back. He hovered over her with a candle in one hand. “I’m surprised you weren’t groping around beneath my tunic,” she said.

“That would be ungentlemanly,” Willem announced, and kissed her. She returned the kiss, and his hand drifted toward her tunic skirt. He smiled a little. “But of course, you
like
ungentlemanly— “

Sobering, she shook her head, and saw him wilt a little. “Willem, the crisis isn’t over. We have to get you out of here.” He looked confused. “The whole point of letting people know you’re
here
is so they don’t know where you
really
are. Now that you’re alert enough to move on foot, you’re going elsewhere to recover.”

“I am recovered,” he assured her and took her hand to slide it down his still-clothed body. “Shall I prove it to you?”

“No,” she said with some exasperation, and pulled her hand out of his. “You aren’t recovered at all, you’re at death’s gate.”

He sat up, his ardor squelched, and sighed with resignation. “What is the game
this
time?” He held out the candle to place it on a clear spot on the floor. His hand shook; he was still weak, she realized. She rested her cheek on his forehead to test how warm it was.

“You’re still feverish, so nothing but cooked pears for you until tomorrow’s supper.”

“You sound so very womanish,” Willem said, with a weak smile. “I like it.”

She made an aggravated sound and began to fidget with her purse ties. “There are all sorts of things happening at the archbishop’s palace and I am missing all of it,” she informed him. “I’m certain Alphonse and Paul are plotting again— to force the match with Besançon, to finish you off somehow at last, to lure Marcus further into their camp. And if Marcus knows that you’re to have Imogen, Lord knows what he’s planning right now to prevent it.” Willem groaned a little, and she gave him a sour look. “Well, speak then,” she said, in an irritable tone. “Say something infuriating, like,
Go on, I’d hate to keep you from your favorite pastime while I’m busy being sullen.
”