The Rose Bride (11 page)

An arrow stuck out from the back of the man’s neck. The man’s mouth worked, the bloody foam burbled out of his mouth, and he died.

“Your Majesty!” someone called.

It was his chief bodyguard, his bow in his hand. He was still riding his horse, and his face was gray with terror. Jean-Marc held up his hand to show that he was all right. But the truth was, he thought he’d broken a rib.

“Thank the gods,” the bodyguard said as he pulled up beside his king.

“À
cause de toi
,” Jean-Marc replied. Thanks to you.

Jean-Marc looked down at the assassin, wondering if the goddess had sent him. How else could he have known the king would ride into the forest? Had someone informed the Pretender of Jean-Marc’s great hunt?

The rest of the hunting party sped to a halt, gawking at the dead man and rejoicing that His Majesty was all right. Several of the women acted as if they were about to collapse, it was all so upsetting.
Better that they lose their own lives than their handsome, young, available monarch lose his....

In a low voice, Jean-Marc said to the bodyguard, “I don’t think I can ride. I need a litter.” He knew he had to take care. He had brought this misfortune on himself; he couldn’t bring tragedy to the country by puncturing a lung with the jagged end of a broken rib.

“A litter for the king!” the bodyguard bellowed. He said to Jean-Marc, “The court painter lives near here, sire. We can take you to his
château
.”

“Very well,” Jean-Marc grunted. Then he closed his eyes and tried to will away the pain.

Something whispered,
“You will love.”

And it began to rain.

Raindrops woke Rose. She felt strangely peaceful. Then she gazed down at the rose draped over her hand. She caught her breath and looked around for the one who had left it for her.

A luminous being knelt beside her. It had been watching her sleep.

“
You are loved,”
the rose whispered to her.

“Oh,
merci,”
Rose said to the being. It pointed at the statue.

“A cause d’Artemis,”
it told her.
“I am but her messenger. You have a choice to make.”

“I—I remember my dream,” Rose replied, her voice shaking.

It hefted its bow in its arm and drew an arrow from the quiver.
“Shall I shoot?”
It notched the arrow and pointed it directly at her.

Rose took a deep breath. She understood that she was at a crossroads. She knew she could give up and it would be all over.

The being waited.

The rose whispered,
“You are loved.”

Rose shook her head. She lifted her chin and said, “I will go on.”

“So are heroes born,”
the being said with approval. Then, without warning, it vanished in an instant and she was alone.

“Rose!” Ombrine bellowed from the entrance to the garden. She was wearing Celestine’s gardening hat and gloves. Beside her, Desirée was huddled under an umbrella, wrapped in Laurent’s cloak.
“Allons-y!
We’re going to the village!”

“In the rain?” Desirée cried.

“Our produce will rot if we do not,” Ombrine said. She huffed. “This rain. If the drought ends, our prices will go down.”

“I don’t want to go.” Desirée pouted. “It’s too cold.”

Rose couldn’t help her smile. This was her reward for agreeing not to die. She had never been taken to the village since her nurse had been exiled.
Tante Elise
, she thought joyfully.
I’ll find her at last
.

“Allons-y!”
Ombrine repeated impatiently. “Let’s go!”

“
Oui
, Stepmother,” Rose said, feigning calm. But inside her pockets, her hands trembled, and she stroked the rose gently like a fragile talisman.

The Marchands had long ago traded their fine coach for a wagon, pulled by a dray horse and dainty little Douce, who seemed very out of place in front of such a humble conveyance, but pulled and tugged as best she could. Ombrine, Rose, and Desirée piled in.

The hood of her black traveling cloak thrown over her head, Ombrine took up the reins. As they bumped along past the scarecrow and the little shrine, Rose remembered the night she had taken the fork in the road to the mountains. What a brave, impetuous thing that had been to do. She was still that girl.

By the time they reached the village, the rain had stopped and Apollo’s chariot warmed the gray sky. The wooden buildings were splintered and muddy. A faded sign wagged in the wind. There were no men about. All had gone for soldiers, and the village was run by women who had too many burdens already. Despite the promise of wages to come, no one could be hired to help Ombrine put in her new vegetable garden.

“There must be someone somewhere,” Ombrine grumbled. “Search around,” she snapped at Rose. She’d not spared a moment of gratitude for the end of the drought.

Rose curtsied to her stepmother and ran as fast as she could to the tavern. In her pocket, she protectively held the tiny purple rosebud, whose soft petals seemed to caress her fingertips. Perhaps she could persuade Ombrine to hire Elise to put in the garden. At the thought, she picked up her pace, dashing like a madwoman down the slippery streets.

At the tavern, which was empty of patrons and very cold, she found an old woman huddled by a single bubbling pot of stew in the fireplace. She was wrapped in a shabby gray shawl and woolen cap.

Rose asked,
“S’il vous plait, madame
, please tell me where Elise Lune is? The old lady who cleans the stables?” she added as the grizzled woman gazed at her with a strange look. Then she cackled as if something greatly amused her.

“Out back,” she told Rose.

“Merci, madame,”
Rose said, curtsying. She ran through the tavern and burst through the back door, crying, “Elise!
C’est moi, Rose!”

And then she realized why the old woman had laughed: A peasants’ graveyard lay before her, with perhaps four dozen graves. There were few markers of any sort and most of them were wood. One was newer than the others.
ELISE LUNE
had been cut into the wooden face, the letters painted in white. There were dates.

Her sweet old nurse had died a year and a month before and she was put in the earth with a stone to tell her name and little else. There was no mention of the nights she had cradled Rose as a teething infant, or clapped her hands when Rose took her first steps, or sat with her young lady after the death of Celestine.

On the mound of the grave, a purple rosebush grew. Two lush, purple roses rested among the thorns and leaves: The two roses Rose had sent her must have taken root.

“No, oh, by the gods, no,” Rose sobbed. She fell to her knees, pressed her face against the mound and whispered, “I love you, Elise, you cannot be dead!”

The purple rose she had brought with her tumbled
out of her pocket. It landed on the grassy dirt, and joined their chorus.
“You are loved.”

She wept, and then wept harder. Her tears flooded the earth. If it had not already rained, her grief would have ended the drought.

“You are loved,”
the roses vowed.

And as she sobbed, she thought perhaps the goddess had tricked her into agreeing not to die because she had suspected the death of Elise would be too much to bear. Because it was.

It was.

And yet . . . she bore it. The pain was physical, it was unbelievable. It was the final crack in her broken heart.

And yet ... she still knew she was loved.

“And I love. I love Elise, and I love my parents, and I love my goddess.” She reached forward to touch the roses.

The earth shifted again and the scales rebalanced.

She was sixteen and she had just grown up.

“I’ll come back and tend you,” she promised the roses. They seemed to turn their faces to her. They seemed to understand that this was where the garden would be next. “I’ll bring the garden here and no one will take it from me . . . or from anyone who comes here to mourn their losses.”

Wiping her face, she kissed each rose, then put her arms around the gravestone and hugged it tightly, weeping. “I will move forward, Tante Elise,” she said. “I will keep you alive in my heart. I swear it.”

Those who love feel deeply, and Rose felt great, great grief. But grief was not the same as utter despair.

Not at all.

Grief was power and it filled her with resolve.

“Where have you been gadding?” Ombrine demanded when Rose had returned to the village square. Rose’s stepmother was pacing back and forth behind the empty wagon. All their vegetables had been sold—a triumph!—but Ombrine made no mention of it.

Desirée was sitting on the wagon seat, examining something inside a black leather pouch. When she looked up and saw Rose, she closed the drawstrings tight and put the pouch in her pocket.

“I’ve been looking for laborers,” Rose lied.

Ombrine balled her fists. “And I see you failed. Gods! There is no one. No one!”

“No matter, Stepmother,” Rose assured her. She had formulated a plan. “I’ll put the garden in myself. I’ll tend the vegetables and I’ll harvest them. Alone. All I ask in return is that I may come to the village when you sell them.”

“Alone?” Desirée said. She raised a brow. “You can hardly walk.”

“No matter.” Rose squared her shoulders. “I’ll do it, if I may come to the village.”

“You dare to bargain with me?” Ombrine asked.

“Why not?
We
make bargains,” Desirée answered with a sly, knowing smile.

“Tais-toi,”
Ombrine snapped at Desirée. Her
cheeks flushed. “You’re up to something,” she declared, but Rose could see that she was past worrying about what that might be. “You’ll have to load and unload the wagon as well.”

“
Oui
, Stepmother,” Rose answered with a curtsy.

And they went home.

As she had bargained, Rose planted a new garden in the enchanted fairy bower of her childhood. Her work-roughened hands were blistered as she dug the rows and turned the earth; her back never stopped aching, as she put in beans and lettuces and turnips. As with Celestine’s rose garden, the seeds exploded and bloomed into a profusion of vegetables, so perfect and plentiful that soon they were the talk of the village. Ombrine didn’t give Rose any credit for the luxurious yield. The dirt was rich there, she claimed. It was obvious: Hadn’t the rose garden flourished as well?

But Desirée said, “Always give credit where it is due, Mother, or
someone
might get angry.”

“Hush.” Ombrine glared at Desirée. “You are unbelievably reckless and foolhardy.” Then to Rose she said, “You’ve done well.” She glared at her daughter again, as if in warning.

Rose had no illusions that Desirée had meant that she deserved the credit. Her stepfamily was quarreling about a different matter altogether. She cast down her eyes, picturing the strange herbs in the garden and the shadow she thought she had seen so long ago. They were still up to something, still in
league with shadows. She remembered Ombrine’s talk of sorcerers in the land, and an icy finger of dread tapped against her backbone.

Ombrine, Rose, and Desirée went to market once a week, and the masters of the neighboring estates sent their cooks to lay claim on the Marchand bounty as soon as the wagon wheels clattered into the town square.

Each trip, Rose stole away to Elise’s grave. The roses had grown into three large bushes, which sent out shoots to the neighboring graves. The mounds of the dead were wild with color. As she pruned them and fed them and checked them for parasites, Rose would sit and talk aloud as if Elise were still alive, and the purple roses would murmur to her that she was loved. The garden was magnificent and Rose knew that love made it grow. Seeing the glorious evidence that love could not die, she dared to hope that someday, another living person would love her.

One market day, as she sat beside the grave, a shadow fell across the rosebush and she looked up, startled. A tall blond man towered over her and he took a step backward when he looked at her. He was much older than she and dressed in the black-and-gold livery of the king. There was something about the smile lines around his eyes that made her unafraid of him and she smiled at him in turn.

When their gazes locked, his eyes widened, and he swept a courtly bow. Rose was amused by his
gallantry; she sat in tatters and rags, and he was clearly a gentleman, above her in every way. She got to her feet and curtsied.

“Bonjour, monsieur,”
she said politely.

“Bonjour,”
he replied. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy. I saw those roses from the road, and I had to take a closer look. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“Non, monsieur,”
she replied. “I expect you haven’t.”

Together they looked at the flowers. Their purple hue was vibrant and alive. Rose watched to see if he could hear their whispers but he gave no indication.

“Might I buy one?”

“Oui.”
Rose was astonished at herself. The word had sprung from her lips, although she had had no plan to say yes. Then, because she had never sold one of the roses and didn’t want to now, she named an outrageous price.