Revenge of the Rose

by Nicole Galland

  Konrad was still displeased about Marcus’s lack of delight for his impending dukedom, but out of habit and necessity was treating the steward again as his closest confidant. As they rode, they discussed the mundane logistics of Konrad’s rule: which lords he should meet with at each town they passed, what size gift he should bestow on each, whom to press for food along the way. Marcus was by now so obsessed with his concern for Imogen that he answered Konrad automatically, by rote, while his inner attention remained completely fixated on thoughts of her. The party was traveling north, away from her; he wanted some plausible excuse to turn back south alone— then he could keep on southward until he returned to her, abduct her, and disappear into the Italian alps…”Yes, sire, I believe the Duke of Austria is visiting the archbishop in Speyer, and I know he had wanted to speak with you about the river tolls…,” he heard himself say, as if he took an interest in it.

  Sensing this dull discussion would absorb them awhile, Willem dropped back, needing a respite of solitude. Paul was also riding alone, and their horses out of boredom moved to walk together.

  Alone beside the cardinal, Willem gave in to his impulse to act directly. He was not forswearing his oath to Jouglet, he decided; his oath was not to do this in front of other people. “Your Eminence,” he said sternly. “I find myself sickened by the endless politics of the court.”

  “It can be very tiresome,” Paul said, with a sigh. “I often wish that candor could prevail more often.”

  “Then would you welcome candor from me now?”

  After a hesitation, and a little too heartily, Paul said, “Now and always.”

  “I know about the forged document and the girl who stole the signet ring,” Willem said in an even-tempered voice.

  Paul blanched. “I don’t know what you speak of,” he said.

  “You know exactly what I speak of,” Willem said, his voice tightening a little. “I want you to do the proper thing, and let justice prevail. Help return to me what was taken, and I’ll forgive you all the sins committed against me. I will not make problems for you with the emperor, but I require justice. Give it to me. Or I’ll summon that girl from hiding, and all the proof she has to damn you. Alphonse merely robbed me of my land, but you, Your Eminence, committed treason when you stole the ring. You have until tomorrow midday to decide your course of action.”

  He spurred Atlas ahead into the lengthening shadows.

  * * *

  Konrad’s mother was buried in the crypt at Speyer Cathedral, and he went with his servants and bodyguard to pay his respect at her tomb while Marcus, across the way in the archbishop’s roomy palace, prepared the archbishop’s roomiest chamber to receive His Majesty that night.

  There was a knock on the door, and he opened it to see Paul, in his familiar frenetic state. Before Marcus could usher the cardinal into the room, Paul jerked his head out toward where he stood. Perplexed, intrigued, and not the least inclined to help the man, Marcus stepped outside onto the small landing that looked over the hall.

  Paul held two scrolled papers. In the dim light from a torch by the stairs, he lifted one, and without greeting explained briskly: “This is an edict from the papal nuncio— myself— telling Konrad that his daughter will remain a veiled maiden.” Seeing the relieved look on Marcus’s face, he lowered that scroll and lifted the other. “This one is from Alphonse, Count of Burgundy, requesting the king’s blessing to marry you to Imogen immediately.”

  Marcus took a breath of amazement. He tentatively reached out for the scrolls, but Paul whisked them away behind his back. “They will be delivered to Konrad as soon as Willem of Dole has been delivered to his reward.” And then he smiled like a cat.

  Marcus heard himself utter a low, pained sound. “I cannot do that, Paul,” he said. “If you rely on me for it to happen you will be disappointed, no matter how I crave the reward you offer.”

  Paul shrugged, apparently unconcerned. “I knew you would lack the stomach for it. But you should be aware that it is intended, and you will assist when called upon to do so, if you want to see your own expectations fulfilled.”

  Marcus did not remember Paul’s leaving the balcony, so instantly was he reenveloped by his inner morass. Standing alone outside the bedroom, where he had made himself a pallet near the fire, he found he could not enter. He could no longer remember, or imagine, what guiltless slumber felt like.

  He went down the stairs to the hall, wondering if he could learn where Willem was staying.

  Then he heard something that made him stop, turn at an angle, and walk instead to the dying embers of the great hall hearth: Jouglet was playing the last tune of the evening.

  He squatted down behind the minstrel. “Your knight’s in danger,” he whispered into the back of Jouglet’s head. “Keep an eye out.” He rose and walked back to the steps to Konrad’s room, hoping he might be able to sleep now.

  17

  Reiselied

  [a song of travel]

  29 July

  Speyer Cathedral was easily the most extraordinary work of man Willem had ever seen. The vaulted ceilings seemed too high to have been built by mortal hands, even after the soaring outer walls of Koenigsbourg. And while Koenigsbourg had merely been intimidating, here he was overwhelmed with both a sense of peace and a feeling of elation. He wished Jouglet could have been beside him as he stood in line to take communion during mass the next morning, but they were obeying Konrad’s order and keeping away from each other throughout the journey. He was so distracted that Paul, who was celebrating mass, had to physically turn the knight’s head around straight to offer him the eucharist.

  They left Speyer heading north to Worms directly after mass. As they rode along the raised and shaded road, the hills to the west growing smaller and misty, Willem turned a strange color, became ill, and vomited his breakfast onto the roadside. Feeling Jouglet’s furious, suspicious gaze on him, Marcus hurriedly announced that he would personally test the knight’s food at every meal for the rest of the trip.

  When they stopped for dinner in a small grove in the heat of the day, Willem was growing weaker and convulsed with dry heaves, and Konrad invited him to join him in his resting spot beneath the willow that gave the deepest shade.

  Jouglet at once went in search of Marcus and found him by a large spring near the sluggish river, refilling the pot that would replenish Konrad’s water skin. The task, normally performed by a servant, was now— with a poisoner in their midst— appropriate for no one but Marcus himself. “Who did it?” Jouglet demanded without preamble. “What do you know?”

  Marcus looked innocent. “Don’t you think they’re wasting their time?” he said with forced offhandedness, gesturing across the river to a group of heavily perspiring peasants, who were pounding great vats of sand dredged up from the water, in search of Rhine-gold.

  “You warned me last night that Willem was in danger.”

  Marcus, his attention now on balancing the pot in his damp grip, avoided Jouglet’s glare. Realizing, he winced inwardly at his own carelessness. “Why would I warn you? Considering you’re under watch and under orders from Konrad to keep your distance, you are now doomed to impotence as Willem’s self-appointed guardian angel. Whoever warned you should have thought of that, and gone directly to Konrad.” He looked back across the river at the fruitlessly industrious peasants. Their labor struck him as a painful metaphor.

  Jouglet huffed with an indignant laugh. “You must be a very tortured soul, Marcus,” she whispered. “I would like to think you’ve conscience enough that you are in an unending state of torment.”

  “It is my conscience that has brought me where I am,” Marcus answered quietly, still staring grimly at the sand miners.

  “Then bring your conscience along right now and speak to Konrad,” Jouglet urged. “Tell him why you warned me last night.”

  “I didn’t warn you.”

  “Marcus!” Jouglet snapped.

  Marcus’s eyes flickered along the resting, sweaty convoy. �
�I’ll tell you what I know, and you tell Konrad. That’s better than my telling him directly while the count and the cardinal are watching us.”

  “You don’t want to be held accountable for what you tell me,” the minstrel shot back.

  “You’re probably the only man at court he trusts right now,” Marcus said bitterly. “He’ll believe you. Tell him Paul offered to secure me my heart’s desire if I got rid of Willem, but I would not.”

  “And that is the balefully beautiful Imogen, I suppose?”

  “Yes,” Marcus said, so miserable that Jouglet finally understood, too late, what he was truly capable of.

  * * *

  There are certainly some advantages to whoredom,” Jeannette said sweetly from behind Erec’s saddle, brushing away a cloud of buzzing insects. “For instance, we’re so low that we’re considered incapable of obeying the law, so it doesn’t apply to us. I certainly count that an advantage! It lets me get away with all sorts of awful things!”

  Erec elbowed her to stop, but he knew why she was doing this, and he was actually grateful: Lienor was sick with exhaustion, and the heavy humid heat, and her only energy reserve seemed to lie in intense emotion. Jeannette, realizing this, was happy to keep her in high dudgeon as much as possible. It had worked for a day and a half; from what Erec could tell from the detritus before them on the roadside, they had not gained on the imperial retinue, but neither had they fallen behind.

  But now even the dudgeon was depleted. “That’s interesting,” Lienor said in a less-than-interested voice, her entire body swaying, almost to exaggeration, along with her dun.

  “And the church doesn’t tithe us because it does not want to profit from the wages of sin. Which is particularly ironic if you think about who some of our most frequent customers are.” She and Erec, on Erec’s horse, glanced over at Lienor, who was squinting into the very far distance.

  “That’s interesting,” she said in the same tone.

  Jeannette chewed her lower lip a moment, trying to think of something inflammatory. “But St. Augustine, God bless him, thought prostitution was for the public good, since its eradication would lead to utter chaos.”

  “That’s interesting,” Lienor intoned, glassy eyed.

  “Jouglet screws me almost every day,” Jeannette said experimentally.

  “That’s interesting,” said Lienor. Erec reached out to take her reins.

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

  * * *

  Willem 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 marrie
d 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.

  30 July

  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.