by Iris Anthony
“Hmm?” She lifted her gaze from her work.
“There’s a carriage. A man of the church, by the looks of it.” The coach was carved from ebony and gleamed with gold. The windows were hung with crimson curtains.
“I expect it’s probably Cardinal St. Florent.”
What reason would the cardinal have to visit? He generally preferred to perch in grander places than this.
“He’s come about the arrangements for the annulment.”
I shut up my book with a vehemence that surprised even me. “There will be no more talk of annulments! I already told you he wasn’t serious. You wouldn’t know this, but he’s been spouting threats like that one for years.”
She fastened her gaze upon me. “I don’t think it’s a threat this time.”
“You don’t know my father.”
“Perhaps not as well as you do, but he did make a special request for the babe’s baptism…” She held up her needlework, and before my eyes appeared the coat of arms of the Marquis of Eronville. A shield upon which ten blazing suns, reflecting the presumed glory of our King, surrounded a lion rampant. It was a coat of arms reserved for the Marquis of Eronville alone. And that was my title. At least, it should be.
I lingered in the salon until I heard the cardinal leave my father’s chambers. I caught him as he was descending the front steps toward his carriage. When he offered up a plump, gout-swollen hand, I kissed his ring.
“You must know, Your Eminence, that age has begun to show itself in my father’s mind. You must not think he’s serious about these plans of his.”
He pursed his lips as he withdrew his hand from mine. “What plans?”
“Come now.” The man had never liked me. A sentiment perhaps born of the fascination that glittered in his eyes whenever he looked at me. I tried out a smile, just to see what might happen. Many times, in my experience, a throw of dice could change everything. “You cannot take his demands for an annulment seriously…”
He cleared his throat as he continued down the steps. “Everyone knows he and your mother were unsuited. The match was doomed from the start. It’s a simple case of consanguinity.”
“And yet nobody stopped it at the time.”
His harrumph was dampened by the sheer magnitude of his collar. It was made from the finest linen and edged with a band of exquisite lace. Lace in the style I once had. But lace had been deemed illegal. No lace could be worn in the kingdom of France. Of course, in Cardinal Richelieu’s eyes, there were the common sort of nobles and clergy, and then there were the favored few. Those who could break the rules and keep their fortunes, and their heads, intact. Cardinal St. Florent clearly wanted to be one of those… though I suspected he had not yet climbed quite as high as he hoped.
“You can see how it might be an inconvenience for me to be denied my inheritance at this point in my life.”
“Yes.” His gaze took my measure from tip to toe. “I’ve seen a thing or two.”
“Considering how much the Marquis of Eronville will leave to his heir, and considering this new babe of his will never know how great a debt of gratitude he owes you… might it not be wise to side with one who does?”
“Wise?”
“Profitable, even…?”
“I’ve never had anything against profit…which is why I’m so inclined to agree with your father’s point of view.” His smile was perfunctory as he moved to step into the carriage.
Apparently, my father had thought of everything. “So he’s offered you money, then.”
The cardinal turned, his brow raised.
My gaze fell once more upon that splendid collar, and then shifted to the avaricious gleam in his eyes. I made another gamble. “What does a man like you need with money? What you need is power. Influence. You need something that will let all the court know you are a man to be reckoned with.”
“Well…I like to think that…” He proffered a modest shrug.
I leaned close. “What you need, Your Eminence, is more lace.”
“Lace?” His gaze narrowed as he looked at me. “Lace is forbidden.”
“Tut, tut. As are all manner of things one can confess to a priest and then receive an indulgence for.” I leaned even closer. “Indulgence.” I whispered the word. “A privilege only the pious can hope to obtain. And lace is an indulgence only a very privileged few can even find anymore.” I reached out to touch the lace that trimmed his collar. “I can get you what you want. I can find you something better than this.”
His gaze touched my lips and then crept up to my eyes. “You disgust me.”
“Tell God whatever you think he will believe, but between the two of us, let there be nothing but truth. The truth is that if you deny my father’s request, I will get you the finest length of lace you have ever seen. Courtiers will envy you, and Richelieu himself will wonder why he hasn’t thought to take you into his council before. Think of it. You could be the owner of the finest length of lace in France. And all you have to do is agree with God himself, with me as supporting evidence in favor of your decision. My father was married to my mother. It’s so simple, Your Eminence. How could you be expected to rule in any other way?”
He pulled his gloves onto his hands. Squinted up into his waiting carriage. “I hear the nuns up in Lendelmolen make the finest lace in Flanders.”
I took his gloved hand in mine and pressed it to my lips. “I’ve heard that very same thing.”
Chapter 7
Alexandre Lefort
Château of Souboscq
The province of Gascogne, France
Accursed, damnable lace!
How was it a flimsy confection of thread could have turned into such a weighty burden?
I stood behind a parapet on the roof of the château, surveying the fields of Souboscq, a great rage building within me. All I saw before me, all that grew in the fields that rolled beyond my sight, down into the valley, enriched the Leforts no longer. All of our care and worries, all of the peasants’ hard labor would fill not our own coffers, but those of the Count of Montreau. It had been thus for ten years. There was little solace that there was not very much in those fields to be seen. The crops, again, had mostly withered and died before the harvest.
Damn the count and his pernicious lace!
We hadn’t wanted him to lodge with us, Lisette’s father and I, those many years ago. His reputation as a libertine had preceded him, even so far as our small corner of the kingdom. But we hadn’t the grounds to refuse him. He was from a family both old and noble, and his father was one of the King’s most loyal supporters. He ought to have been no different from the dozens of nobles who had stopped at Souboscq on their way through the countryside. It would have been the very definition of ungraciousness to have turned him away.
And so we had suffered his airs and his affectations. We had suffered the attentions he paid to the companion he had brought along with him. We were suffering from him still. As many times as I had told Lisette what had happened was not her fault, she had refused to believe me. As many times as her father had tried to draw her close, she had refused him the solace of her touch.
But she had been right in her claims of culpability.
And she was also dreadfully wrong.
She had destroyed the lace, but she had not been responsible for the count’s extortion. And it was not she who had persuaded her father to take part in the Marquis of Chalais’s conspiracy to assassinate the King’s chief minister, Richelieu. In our great naiveté of ten years before, the plot had seemed destined to succeed.
If only it had not failed!
If it had worked, then nobles like my cousin the viscount, Lisette’s father, would have maintained some control within the kingdom. As it was, the failure of the plot had allowed Richelieu to strip all power from the nobility and then tax them for his t
rouble. And the cardinal had spies everywhere. Had we known of them then as we knew of them now, my cousin would never have been tempted to join such folly.
He was neither noble enough nor powerful enough to depend upon the King’s mercy. The Queen and the King’s own brother had been privy to Chalais’s plans…and yet they had been able to reconcile with both the King and the cardinal. ’Twas only those without power and influence who had been executed for their part in the plot. If Richelieu ever discovered my cousin’s involvement, there was no doubt he would share the unlucky conspirators’ fate: a dishonorable death in prison or the horror of an executioner’s block.
It was not safe even to think an untoward thought about the cardinal.
Yet not all of the estate’s woes were the fault of the count. These poor harvests had taken a toll, as had the King’s policies of taxation and my cousin’s unwillingness to let the peasants suffer from the King’s levies. Though the Count of Montreau came every year for payment on his lace, and though he seemed to squeeze it from us one hard-won coin at a time, as long as we were not required to forfeit the land, there was hope that one day we would reap harvests sufficient to pay the debt.
As my cousin’s heir, I clung to that hope.
I was not, by birth, a Lefort. I was a Girard. I would not inherit my cousin’s title, but as his closest kin, I was inheritor of the estate. In taking his name as my own, in becoming Alexandre Lefort, I guaranteed I would never again be known as the son of one of the King’s most celebrated warriors. At one time, that might have been a boon, but my father had been struck down in his prime by leprosy. A disease so terrible and shameful no one could avoid being tainted by proximity. The Viscount of Souboscq’s heir had every opportunity open to him; the leprous warrior’s son had none.
I put a hand to the dagger I wore at my waist. My father’s dagger. With Souboscq’s fields so stunted and withered, it might prove my only legacy. I fingered the jewels set into its hasp. The dagger was cruciform in shape, and its short, slender blade was designed to finish off the mortally wounded, to offer a sort of mercy to those not expected to survive. There had only ever been one other like it.
Find its match, fiston. Therein lies your destiny.
Those were the words my father had babbled toward the end of his life. That I had been able to decipher them at all had been a miracle, for the disease had eaten away at his lips as well as his tongue. Those words had often been in my thoughts of late, but they were a cryptic and useless legacy. To admit to the dagger’s ownership, I would have to admit also to my paternity. Find its match? I only hoped it would never find me.
The estate was my only chance at respectability.
But not only for myself did I despise the Count of Montreau. It was for Lisette’s sake, as well. All that was carefree and innocent and childlike had left the girl that night when she was seven. And nothing but misery had come to replace it. She was compliant to a fault, never questioning, never contradicting. She only ever did exactly as she was bid, and then she retreated. She was ever and always retreating, as if she could not believe any would want her present. More than extorting the viscount’s money, the Count of Montreau had extracted my cousin’s heart.
The viscount of Souboscq had always been modest and unpretentious, preferring the simple pleasures of his country estate to all of the pomp at court. He had never been comfortable with the subtle repartee or obsequious gallantries upon which reputations rose and fell in the King’s inner circle. That he should be impoverished to pay for another’s extravagance was unjust. But whenever I chafed at the count’s unreasonable demands, my cousin only paled and said, “Better to meet with misfortune than to meet with Richelieu’s executioner.”
Had I foreseen the disrepair the estate would fall into, I might have married for a generous dowry and saved us all. But back then, just five years ago at the age of twenty, I had too much of the leper’s son left in me and too little of the viscount’s heir. I didn’t understand how problems that seemed so enormous could be solved through genteel means in salons or at the altars of churches. I had also nursed an impossible, yet undying, hope. I had measured all the maids of my acquaintance by the standard of my cousin, Lisette. And I had foresworn them all for the possibility of winning her love. Now, at the age of twenty-five, when the viscount desperately needed the money a dowry could bring, it was too late to reconsider. The promise of a fortune, which might have attracted a bride, had withered with the crops. Though I suspect nothing would have pleased the viscount more, the flower of love I had hoped would bloom between Lisette and I had never blossomed.
And so we lived together in uneasy proximity. The three of us nursing the flame of a single hope: that the Count of Montreau would die. And soon. Whenever I visited the estate’s chapel, I knelt on the prie-dieu and made an earnest petition for his immediate death, even though I had no reason to think God would listen to my prayers.
I gave one last glance at those rounded hills, which looked for all the world like a cluster of grapes emerging from the cradle of the earth. Imagined the brooks and streams that splayed across the land like fingers, their muddy depths glinting silver and gold. The land must be saved. Souboscq was the only home I had ever had.
If we had to pay the count by selling off what few treasures we still had, we would do it. But I would not—could not—allow the selling of the land.
•••
“Bonne anniversaire, ma biche.” The viscount fairly sung the words as Lisette walked toward the table at dinner. He gestured furiously toward the door, and a retinue of servants advanced toward him. Though our fields had withered, the hills still provided. Wild dove was served alongside a tart that was surely stuffed with mushrooms. And there was a confit of pears and a conserve of apples.
Lisette looked startled, as if she had forgotten it was her own birthday. Her cheeks reddened as she looked around. “Non, Papa.” I derived the words from the movement of her lips, not from the sound of her voice. She shrunk from the table toward the shadows, as if she could not bear to be remarked upon.
“Please, ma chérie. There is so little to celebrate these days. You must grant me this one pleasure.”
I pulled a chair out for her.
She bowed her head for the briefest moment, and then she raised it and looked at me.
I nodded.
Her gown may have been turned to hide the wear on its fabric, and the hems of her skirts might have been frayed, but she lowered herself into the chair as gracefully as any duchess as I pushed it toward the table.
The viscount rose and put a hand into his coat’s pocket. “I have something I wish to give you.”
She made as if to rise. “No, Papa. Please. No gifts.”
“Ah! But it is not from me. This gift is one I have been keeping for some years. It’s a present from your mother.”
He passed a small ebony box across the table toward her.
When she did not move to take it, I picked it up and placed it before her.
“Merci, Alexandre.”
He settled back into his chair, as if watching her open the box was an event not to be missed. “It’s your mother’s chain of pearls. She wore them on the day of our marriage, and she never looked more beautiful. Try them on.”
Regret and pleasure warred in her eyes. She opened the lid and reached inside. When her hand came out, it was clutching a string of beautifully matched pearls. She gazed at them for a long moment before placing them onto the table. And even then she did not relinquish them completely. She drew a finger across first one glowing orb and then another. Moved to cup her hand around them and then stopped and placed it into her lap. She shook her head. “You must give these to the count, Papa. To pay down our debt.”
“No!” His voice echoed in that vaulted chamber like a clap of thunder. We both fell back before it. “I will not allow the memory of your mother to
be profaned by that vile and detestable man.”
Her hand closed about them. “Then I shall give them to him.”
“You will do no such thing!” His jowls trembled as fire lit his cheeks. “I would throw them into the well myself before I would watch you give them to him.” But as he looked at his daughter, his face softened, and he put a hand out to cover hers. “I appreciate all you have sacrificed these years past, ma chérie. I know how much this debt has cost you. But these…I have saved these for you. Please, receive them.”
“Cost me? But I…I can’t…” She bolted from the table, leaving behind an astonished father gaping in dismay.
•••
I sought her where I had always been able to find her: at the top of a ridge from which the estate spilled down and spread out toward the wood below. The mists, clinging to the lowest of dales beneath us, wound like a river through the valley, making islands of even the highest hills.
“It’s not safe to be about like this, at night’s fall.” A bat flitted past us, and a wolf howled as if to help persuade her of the sense in my argument.
“It’s the most beautiful time of day.” There was wistfulness to her tone. She nodded toward the gathered mists. “It looks like a pathway to heaven.”
It did. The mists trailed out toward the gilt-edged horizon, where they seemed to vault up into the sky.
“I used to think if I could be here at just the right moment, and if I could jump far enough to make it to that mist, then I could walk up into heaven and visit Maman.”
We watched in silence as the mist seemed to stir itself, to gather and thicken. It reached out to grasp at the forest. And then, it started to rise.
I slid a glance toward her. “Did you ever do it? Did you ever jump?”
Her lips curved in a sad, self-mocking smile. “I tried. But I could not jump far enough…and I was never quick enough.” She voiced the words with the profoundest regret.
We stayed there watching until the sun blazed out in one last protest. It touched the mist, singeing holes in its fabric, and the white vapor was soon consumed in a purple smoke. A cloud crossed Lisette’s face, and the glow that had seemed to light her from within dissipated.
