Revenge of the Rose (49 page)

T
here
were ten thousand noblemen in Konrad’s empire. The highest among these were eight dukes, six dozen minor princes, and several hundred counts, landgraves, margraves, and burgraves. None alone within this upper echelon had great power; collectively they had a right to dictate much of Konrad’s political life.

But Konrad had the right to dictate where they did the dictating, and so when he announced that he felt like staying on the west bank of the Rhine, the Assembly was severely delayed as they were all ferried across. It was, of course, a power play. The huge market square between the cathedral and the archbishop’s modest palace was not only large enough to hold them all, but they also would be open to the scrutiny of the citizens of Mainz, who were among Konrad’s most affectionately loyal subjects, since he had been knighted here by his father nearly twenty years ago. If he argued with his Assembly today, he would be cheered for it by the masses, and report of that would make its way handily up and down the Rhine. Not that he had much to do with the masses, but anytime he could publicly show up his lords, he was a happy man.

So he’d had his dais set up in the shadow of the church, facing north over the square, and ascended as the bells rang terce. The lords had been told to bring the camp stools they would have used across the river anyhow, and commoners were officially told to leave the square, but unofficially welcomed to return to it once the nobility was seated.

And now the nobility was nearly seated. Nicholas’s streamlined form slipped nimbly through the rounded throng that was trying to settle in. He met Jouglet at the corner of the church and described how the seneschal was dressed this morning. Jouglet gave him a gold mark and dispatched him on an errand that would last the day.

“I want to hear what this is all about when I’m back,” objected Nicholas.

“Oh, you will,” Jouglet promised. “From everybody.”

Lienor stood in a bustle of merchants who were craning their necks for a better view of His Imperial Majesty. Her head was wrapped in a dark blue wimple and her body covered entirely by a shapeless but expensive blue mantle. She did not stand out as the poor country girl she suddenly felt she was. Jeannette’s cosmetic ministrations had been recently reapplied. She took a deep breath to calm her trembling; there were possibly more people here in this wide, open square than she had ever seen, cumulatively, in the whole of her life. Her heart was pounding, and her throat was dry. She crossed herself repeatedly.

“Marcus is wearing black and gold, with chevrons,” Erec whispered from behind her. “And Jouglet will be standing beside him in a moment. You must make your move as soon as you see them. I will never be more than a few paces away from you if something goes wrong, but people know me here, you must not look at me.”

She nodded once, feeling faint, and crossed herself again with a shaking hand.

“Cousin, you can do this,” he said softly, then moved out of her hearing.

Her eyes searched the crowd for Jouglet. The merchants and artisans and farmers whose stalls had been removed for the occasion were milling about and muttering in clusters along the edges of the square, as the aristocrats settled onto their unaristocratic seating. There were some preposterously overwrought outfits in the crowd; Lienor could not focus on them but saw a surfeit of red, gold, silver, and violet. Heralds holding up the various coats of arms only added to the visual cacophony. Almost everyone but Konrad and his guards, in the sliver of the cathedral’s midday shadow, had to squint; there was no other shade. The light wind carried with it the smell of cooling bread from the bakers’ street. It was a comforting smell, but she was not comforted by it.

As the lurking groups of commoners moved in to stand around behind the seated lords, creating a multitextured sea of heads and head coverings, she heard her name once, whispered to her left with sheepish relish. It almost made her start sobbing; then again it was sounded ahead of her, and then here and there throughout the crowd. The whispered word
rose
percolated around the marketplace, and
thigh.
And other things somewhat less circumspect. Everyone knew that His Imperial Majesty had meant to marry the sister of the great Willem of Dole, and would have announced the betrothal here today. Marcus’s name was mentioned rarely, and then usually in a nervous giggle by young ladies; twice or thrice a man’s voice said it with a kind of guilty envy. His reputation was inflated by the now-legendary event that had demolished hers.

Erec, behind her somewhere, heard it as well, and said through clenched teeth, “They’ll all be eating their words soon.”

At last she saw the minstrel in the sliver of shade by the dais, in a bright golden tunic with black dagging all along the skirt— looking like a garish courtier who hated looking like a garish courtier. Jouglet was speaking to a tallish, slender man with dark hair who was dressed in a black tunic with a gold belt and gold decorations. She shuddered. He was not bad-looking, in fact was attractive, which disturbed her; here was a man a girl might very well fall for, to her ruin. With his narrow well-formed face and sad dark eyes, the steward looked not only too benign but too conventional to have schemed her undoing— he looked to be an honest man. A tense man, at least today, but an honest one.

“Quite a morning,” Jouglet said, looking around.

Marcus nodded, scouring the throng for hints of Imogen’s proximity. The hissed words
Lienor
and
sister
and
Dole
and
birthmark
rose up from the crowd like darts. It horrified him that the slander had leaked out and spread, that he had so misjudged Willem’s popularity not to realize how hungry every servant girl and village tailor would be to learn and share whatever sundry detail could be known about the knight. He tried to tell himself he would not have done this if he’d realized the public damage it would cause, relieved that he could never know if he were lying to himself. What was done, was done, and had been necessary.

And in vain.

“Do you think he’s going to do it?” Jouglet asked. “Tell them he’ll marry the Besançon girl?”

Marcus nodded. “Yes. It is very sad that his preferred plan did not work out, but I think he’s reconciled to it. Between us, I think politically this is a more sensible match.” A pause, and then he said heavily and sincerely, “But I am sorry for the grief that I contributed to. I wish that I could somehow take it back.”

Jouglet shrugged. “You did what you felt was right. That makes you an honorable man.”

“Thank you,” Marcus said, feeling ill. He turned to look around for Imogen again, when his gaze was struck by a pretty but traumatized-looking young woman dressed in dark robes and wimple. At the moment he saw her she was stepping out of the crowd directly into the open circle before the throne. This alone might not have called much attention to her, but she, after a hesitation, ran through the glaring sunlight, across the circle toward the dais into the shade, and fell on her knees before Konrad’s feet, her face bent over his boots, wailing, “Please, Your Majesty, you must hear me!”

Everyone else in the square gasped and stopped speaking, to gape at her.

“Please, Your Majesty!” she begged with the hint of a familiar accent. “I beg justice, I beg your justice, before your assembled knights and lords!”

Immediately the two royal guards rushed toward her to remove her, but Konrad held up his hand, staring at the back of her head, as if she were insane. “Whoever you are, get up. This is no place for a lady to prostrate herself at my feet. Rise and tell us your complaint.”

“I will not rise until you’ve heard me out!” she cried and grabbed the edge of the gilded wooden dais as if she could hold herself there should the men try to wrestle her away.

Konrad looked over at Marcus impatiently.

“Make her rise,” Marcus ordered the larger guard, who could have easily lifted her over his head. When she felt his hand on her wrist, she pulled away from him, grabbed at her mantle strings, and then looked up, terrified, straight into Konrad’s face.

Her mantle fell from her shoulders and with it, the wimple was pulled free as well, dramatically revealing the thick, curling mane of shining blond hair. Freed from the mantle she stood up taller, and Jouglet almost hooted with admiration: Jeannette had given her a green, fitted, low-cut tunic over a low-cut shift, and a bright gold clasp placed deliberately too low on her shift drew instant attention to her breasts, of which more flesh could be seen than had been exposed publicly since infancy. Her face was pale in just the right way, and then a little pink in just the right places. She was laden with the jewelry she’d gathered from three years of adoring wooers. She looked magnificent.

“Wait,” Konrad said, stopping the guards. He smiled a little despite himself— she was pretty, and he found it entertaining that she was so shamelessly relying on that fact. “Young woman, you have one sentence to tell me what your complaint is, and then you will be thrown from the city walls.”

“I was raped and robbed by a member of your court while I was sitting sewing in my room at home,” she said promptly.

“A member of my court?” Konrad echoed incredulously. “Are you saying somebody present now?”

“Yes, Your Majesty, I can point him out and prove to you at once that he wronged me. I was a virgin until he took me! Unless you would be known as a ruler who allows his men to run roughshod over a lady’s only treasure, I beg you grant me justice.”

Konrad looked up around the collected faces. He hardly knew a nobleman who hadn’t helped himself to some pretty virgin beneath him on the social ladder. In fact, there was something charmingly quaint that the young woman thought her case merited attention. He wondered vaguely if her father might not be important— virgins of certain lineage
did
warrant royal protection. And if he did not take her seriously no doubt Paul would commandeer the moment in her defense as an example of the evils of unbridled secular power. So he would have to at least appear to take her seriously.

Happily, this was precisely the chain of thought Jouglet had anticipated from Konrad.

His Imperial Majesty looked astonished and shook his head. “This is a serious charge, and a most dramatic way of bringing it to my attention. If this turns out to be nonsense, we will have your head on a platter before the Assembly is called to order. Stand and step forward.”

Unsteadily, she did so, her hesitation caused as much by travel weariness as fear. Then for a moment she did nothing, looking too cowed to speak. Murmurs began to grow.

“Hurry up then!” Jouglet snapped. “There are more important— “

“Jouglet, that is no way to speak to— ” Marcus began sternly but was interrupted by her shrill cry. He looked over at her and saw to his astonishment that she was pointing directly at him.

“That is him, my lord! That is the very criminal! Give me justice, sire!”

All eyes swept toward Marcus, who blinked, surprised but unruffled. “Sire,” he said firmly, “I have never seen this lady in my life, I swear.”

“Don’t lie about me!” she shouted with sudden ferociousness, almost sobbing with fury. Her face went red with rage. “You raped me and took my virginity and you even bragged about it!”

“I did no such thing,” Marcus said disdainfully.

“And you robbed me, not only of my virginity, but of my jewelry, too.”

“You’re gaudy with jewelry,” he scoffed, taking a single step toward her into the circular space. “Crazy woman, what are you talking about? Remove her,” he instructed the guard, but the guard looked to His Majesty for guidance. His Majesty, riveted by the bizarre scenario— and intuiting some current running under it— held up his hand: not yet.

“Sire, if you will excuse my speaking before the Assembly,” Jouglet said loudly, also taking a step to stay beside Marcus, “take this poor disturbed creature out of here and have the physician attend to her, so you may get on with the tasks before you.”

Lienor raised a violently shaking arm and pointed again at Marcus. “Just moments ago this man stole my best gold emerald ring set with rubies and a beaded belt I was saving for my wedding day!”

Marcus went white and for a moment was too flummoxed to think. In that moment, Jouglet leapt forward another step and sneered at her. “Stupid woman, he’s been standing here with me all morning. Where would he hide such a belt? Under his clothes, I suppose?” And radiating self-righteousness, the minstrel reached out for the steward’s tunic and flipped up the skirt.

Revealing the beaded belt.

“What?”
Konrad said in astonishment.

Jouglet cried out and dropped the tunic skirt, leaping away from Marcus and insisting, “There’s some mistake here, sire!”

Konrad gaped. “Marcus, lift your tunic,” he ordered. In the background the crowd murmured and then shushed itself.

Marcus, almost hyperventilating, put a hand defensively on the skirt of the tunic. “Sire, I must tell you in private how I came to— “

“Lift. Your. Tunic.”

The steward looked like he might faint, and Jouglet took a step closer, solicitously holding out an arm to steady him. Marcus took it, and then very slowly, choking back the coppery taste of fear in the back of his throat, he lifted up his tunic skirt, and there, as before, was a woman’s beaded belt.

“My God, Marcus,” Konrad said, flinty. “Hold out your hand.”

Marcus sighed shakily with resignation and held out his left hand. On the smallest finger, turned in toward his palm, was the emerald ring. It glinted mockingly up at him in the sunlight. Again the crowd murmured and again shushed itself sharply.

“This is witchcraft,” Jouglet said with a venomous hiss toward the woman in green. “Sire! He is your closest friend, that is a stranger. How can you believe her? This is obviously witchcraft! Or a trick!”