To Serve a King (19 page)

Geneviève stood rooted in the abyss of the horrifying events.
Here,
she thought as she stared at the king, as she watched him smile at Anne and his men, and drink of his wine.
Here is the man who killed my parents.

No more than gray dawn light caressed the sky, but she trudged out of the castle, her longbow and arrow-filled quiver upon her back. She cared little that dew stained the hem of her vermillion moiré silk gown as she swept a path in the moist green lawn behind her. Geneviève needed to be away from the castle and all who slept in it. She needed to find release.

The archery butts were abandoned, as she knew they would be; it was far too early in the morning for most courtiers, nor did the sport enjoy as much popularity in France as it did in other countries. Birds twittered and cawed, gathering their breakfast, indifferent to the lone intruder. She felt confident in her solitude.

Geneviève’s step quickened as she strode onto the field and the fresh scent of the earth anointed her nostrils. It had been so long since she felt the bow in her hand, the power of the shot; she trembled with anticipation like the lover an inch away from the juicy lips of her beloved. From beside the mounds of turf, she gathered as many plaster targets as she could hold, and threw them haphazardly over the grassy knoll, returning to the edge of the field, at least two hundred meters away.

Taking the bow stick from her back, she pulled on the strap of the quiver until it sat perfectly placed at her shoulder. Gripping the center of the varnished stave with her right hand, she drew an
arrow with her left, coupling its nock to the bow string. She raised her arms to slightly above shoulder height, her string hand brushing her cheek with a feathery touch. Pulling back on the cord with a two-fingered draw, she felt the stave bend, felt the animal-gut string stretch to its limit with a drawn-out creak. In this moment, she and the instrument became one, a lethal weapon.

Closing one eye, Geneviève aligned the arrow a hair’s breadth above a target. Upon the blank ceramic sphere, she imagined his face, the face of king François. With all the pressure of the taut string and compressed bow, with all the ferocity of her hate, she released.

The arrow flew from her grasp with a strident twang, stave vibrating as it sprang back into shape. Her practiced eye followed the projectile as it arched through the air. Her heart leaped in ecstasy as it struck dead center, shattering the target—and the king’s face—into fragments. Her stomach churned at her delight in hate satisfied.

Arrow after arrow she loaded into her weapon, eyes squinting with steely, deathly determination. With each shot, she fed the beast within, replacing her powerlessness with brutal control. Her body shook with adrenal surges, and yet her aim exhibited inhuman precision. The images of the previous night haunted her: François’s brutality coming upon the heels of his words on enlightenment. Geneviève laughed bitterly at his hypocrisy, frightening the robins hopping in the grass as they scavenged for the day’s first worms. With each shattered disc, she felt an appeasement of her hate, and yet she recognized the hate for the poison it was. She trampled on the part of her that longed for the antidote. Time became meaningless as she emptied her quiver, covered the butt with more targets, and gathered up her arrows, only to fire them off again. Each successive shot came faster; she created a song of
twang
and
thump, twang
and
thump.

“That is some of the best shooting I have ever seen.”

With no more than a flinch, Geneviève spun round, bow and
arrow at the ready, nothing but the tips of her fingers holding off the shot as she turned toward the intruder’s voice.

“Stop!” Sebastien cried, and threw himself to the ground, flattening against the moist earth. “Friend, friend!”

With slow suspicion, Geneviève collapsed the tension on the bowstring as the taut hold of alarm released the grip on her body. Her belligerent stare captured him, held him as securely to the ground as had her arrow.

“I find it hard to fathom that a member of the Garde Écossaise has never been taught not to approach an archer from behind,” she said with impatience.

Sebastien stared at her from the ground; there was no mistaking his hesitancy to move as long as Geneviève held firm to her bow. “You are right, mademoiselle, of that I have been taught. I thought you were empty of arrows. It is my mistake. My apologies.”

Geneviève dropped the stave to her side, putting the lone arrow back in the quiver, fiddling with the nutmeg-colored fletching on its tip. “Indeed, it is. But I am sorry to have drawn on you nonetheless,” she relented honestly.

Sebastien pushed himself from the ground, wiping dirt and grass from his striped royal blue and moss-colored doublet, and his knees, where his blue stockings were blotched with moisture.

“I must surmise that my amazement at your proficiency chased away all common sense.” He approached her and bowed with a tilt of his peacock-plumed toque. Geneviève curtsied, remembering she had left her crescent hood in her chamber. She raised a hand to her pinned-up hair, fearing what a mess it must be after her exertions.

“You look wonderful. Have no fear,” Sebastien assured her with a charming, dimpled smile. “Tell me, how does a beauty such as you come to shoot like the most skilled of warriors?”

Geneviève shrugged, remembering to smile her courtier’s smile as if it were all a merry jest, dousing the flutter his flattery ignited. “As a child, my only companions, other than my aunt, were the
household servants, and I was a bit of a ruffian. I fear the men indulged me. They took me on the hunt with great frequency. Too often, I suppose.”

Sebastien laughed. “I can imagine what a little rapscallion you were.” He leaned toward her, his fathomless blue eyes glimmering with a spark of amusement. “I can see her there, in your eyes.”

Geneviève turned from him, pretending to be the coquet, fearing he would see the true hunter in her depths, and diddled with her stave. He took it from her hands and studied it, running his palms over the smooth, polished surface.

“Belly of horn, the best for compression,” he mused as he rubbed the inner curve of the bow. “Back side of sinew. An impressive weapon, Geneviève.”

“Merci,”
she acknowledged with a prideful nod, entranced by his slow caress upon her bow. With a small shake, she turned away, striding to the crest of the archery butt and returning her arrows to their place in the quiver.

“Did you come to shoot, Sebastien?” She straightened, realizing he had no weapons of his own.

“Ah, no, I did not.” He joined her at the small mound of earth, helping her retrieve her arrows. “Though I would like to pit my skill against yours sometime. I know—” He slapped his muscular thigh with the shaft of an arrow. “You must join a hunt. I insist you be my guest when next we ride. The king would be delighted with your prowess.”

Geneviève racked her mind for some feasible excuse, but as Anne and her ladies often took part in the festivities, nothing sufficiently logical suggested itself. “I look forward to it,” she told him, denying the many ripples of truth in the reply. She would look forward to hunting again. And she would anxiously await a return to this man’s company, though to herself at least, she would pretend otherwise.

“Wonderful,” he announced, stepping intimately close as he
put the arrows in her quiver, his chest brushing against her shoulder.

Geneviève inhaled the manliness of him, the leather of his gloves, and the musk of his hair.

“You must return to the château, Geneviève,” he said with reluctance. “Your mistress looks for you.”

Geneviève’s eyes bulged in concern and she grabbed her bow, slinging it with her quiver once more upon her back.

“No need for worry, it was not urgent. But I assured her I would send you along at your leisure.”

“Then I thank you for your errand.” Geneviève gathered her skirts in one hand and set off at a trot.

“
Au revoir,
Geneviève. I will see you soon, I hope,” he called after her.

Without turning back, she waved her free hand.

As she rushed from his side, Sebastien prowled the top of the knoll, finding every small fragment of the targets the astounding archer had left behind. They were not large pieces nor corners clipped from the edge; they were no more than slivers, the targets smashed into smithereens. Direct hits—hit after hit—produced such complete devastation. He looked up at Geneviève’s fast retreating form as it shrank away from him, no longer a dashing smile upon his lips or a glimmer of charm in his eye.

She sat at the large vanity, the triptych looking glass showing all sides of her face. Diane stared at each of her reflections, looking for impurities, any signs of the age she fought against like a crusader. The graceful line from jaw to narrow chin seemed a tad droopier and she vowed to increase her cold-water soaks from two to three a day.

Henri lay sprawled upon her bed, his youthful beauty framed by the royal blue curtains and tester. He stared as Diane brushed the reddish gold of her long hair. He adored how it looked blond in the sunlight, but then here, in the ochre light of her candlelit
chambers, it looked rich and deep, as if he could lose himself in the gently curled locks.

If Diane could know his mind, she needn’t have worried overmuch about her passing years. In Henri’s eyes, she would always be that magnificent woman of thirty and three who had befriended the fourteen-year-old when no one else had. A sullen and stormy youth, he had allowed his petulance to segregate him, not only from the father who had used him so heinously, but from the rest of the court as well. The pugnacious adolescent cared not that France was falling apart, that François had been given little choice in his actions. Diane became the beacon of light in his dark world and he had loved her—with his body and his mind—ever since; she would never grow old in his eyes.

“Did you do it?” His whisper held but a touch of accusation.

Diane swiveled on her embroidered cushion, brush poised in midstroke, and stared blankly at her young lover.

Henri raised himself up on an elbow, his sculpted chest glistening with beads of sweat, lingering evidence of the throes of their passion. “Did you begin the rumor of Anne and Beauville?”

With controlled movements, she placed the gilt-edged brush upon the table and rose, the silhouette of her body visible through her thin shift as she stood in front of the candles, stopping at the edge of the bed. “Do you think I did?”

Henri stared up into her eyes for a brief instant, salacious gaze dropping to the curves tantalizing him so, then shook his head. “No. No, I do not,” he said, and reached out a hand for her.

With a harrumph of relief and irritation, she sat by his side. “The woman plagues me, I cannot deny it. But this was not my work, I assure you.”

He smiled at that, amused by all she did not say.

Carine brought the tray into Geneviève’s room and placed it upon the small table by the bedside. Stars glimmered beyond the
windows in a sky long fallen to night; a diminutive fire crackled and spit in the grate.

“Are you sure I cannot attend you further?” She tutted with obvious disapproval; no other maid in the palace was as unused as she, and she thought her mistress’s independence annoying indeed. “There is no need to bathe yourself.”

As if arriving on cue, four more maids entered the chamber: two hefting a large open-topped wooden cask between them, two others lugging buckets of steaming water. They placed the barrel before the fire and poured in the hot liquid with a splash.

“
Merci,
no, Carine. I shall be fine, I assure you.” Geneviève rubbed her forehead, wanting nothing more than a soak and some solitude.

Carine waved the other women from the room, muttering beneath her breath, “Self-sufficient nonsense, if you ask me. That aunt of hers did not teach her the ways of a civilized lady.”

Geneviève dropped her head back upon her shoulders, smiling up at the plain painted ceiling. “Good night, Carine. Sleep well.”

“
Bonne nuit,
mademoiselle,” Carine called with little pleasure.

Before the door closed behind her, another young maid rushed in, a thick, folded linen towel in her hands, her modest white cap bobbing as she ran.

“To dry yourself, mam’selle,” she said as she laid the white material on the bed.

“
Merci,
” Geneviève thanked her dismissively.

As the latch clicked behind the girl’s scampering form, Geneviève stripped off the last layers of her clothing, leaving the smelly shift in a heap on the ground. She had had no opportunity to freshen herself before attending Anne, and the rigors of the morning and the duties of the day had left their stain and their residue upon her undergarments.

With a deep, contented sigh, she lowered herself into the tub, surrendered herself to the soothing, steaming, lavender-scented
water. She closed her eyes in bliss, her body finding its ease, her mind wandering to the events of the day.

How good it had felt to shoot again, and yet already the muscles along the back of her arms ached. Geneviève vowed to practice more often, to keep up her skills, for the satisfaction and exercise it offered. She needed to stay as ready as ever, both in mind and body.

Hearty voices and merry laughter ebbed and flowed, the sound slinking through the crack under her door; footsteps advanced and receded as courtiers made merry. Geneviève’s thoughts skipped to Sebastien. She could not deny her attraction, nor could she risk indulging it. He was the king’s guardsman and thereby her enemy. And yet he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, his masculine handsomeness far outshining that of the pretty Pitou, and worthy of her most lustful fantasies. In the stables of her aunt’s château, in the arms of the lads who toiled there, Geneviève had learned much of the pleasure shared between men and women, but she had undertaken those lessons as dutifully as all the rest. Her body tingled as her thoughts strayed to the charm of Sebastian’s smile, to the pull of his warrior’s physique. She knew there would be nothing dutiful about pleasure found in his arms.