The Ruins of Lace

by Iris Anthony

  I reached down and placed a hand on his arm.

  “Half of what Julien thinks I have is not even really mine. I hold it by proxy…for my friend.” He sighed once more and looked up toward the mantel. He tried to stand, holding up the dagger.

  “Let me.” I took it from him and put it back.

  “Thank you, my dear, for listening so graciously to the musings of an old man. Now what is it that you came for?”

  Why is it I had come? I had come to save a man just as old and tired as the marquis. I had come to save what was left of my family. The marquis had spoken of nobility and honor. Perhaps he would respond to a request for those very same things. “I wanted to speak to you, in fact, about your son. He’s unsettled by the coming birth of your child.”

  “My son. So many disappointments Julien has brought me. I do not know that I could survive anymore. You know how he is, don’t you?”

  I hesitated only for a moment before nodding. I could speak nothing less than the truth to a man who had bared his soul to me.

  “I left him alone too long with his mother. Such a beautiful girl she was…only she did things to him…to punish me.” His voice trailed off, and then he blinked and seemed to return to the conversation. “I thought…She made it quite clear, at the start, how she felt about me. I thought…She practically gave herself to me. Why did she then despise me for the…” His eyes drifted toward the fire as I read a thousand sorrows in his eyes.

  I shivered in spite of my proximity to the fire.

  “Julien desperately needs someone to save him. I used to think I could do it…maybe—do you think you can? Can you save him from himself?”

  “I don’t…” I did not want to disappoint him, but neither did I wish to promise him something I could not undertake. “I do not know.”

  He seized my hand. “You can do it. You must do it. He is anathema to all that is right and true, and yet…I find myself hoping. You see why I must have a new heir. A real heir. But I will not abandon my son. I will make provisions for him. If you stay with him, I will see neither of you lack for anything. Please…you could be his salvation.”

  If he weren’t so bent on destroying me! There was nothing more to say. I had accomplished what the count had requested of me. I curtsied. “Thank you, my lord, for your kindness.”

  “You will consider what I said, won’t you?”

  •••

  I returned to my chamber and was helped from my basque and gown by a maid. She had hardly turned me into my night clothes when the door opened. Startled, I clutched at my nightshift.

  It was the count. He stalked into the room. Settling himself into a chair beside the table that held a looking glass, he propped his chin in his hand. “You weren’t there very long. What happened?” His gaze fastened upon my face.

  My eyes fell from his as I felt a blush rise to my cheeks. “I…”

  “Yes?”

  What did I have to be ashamed of? I had done nothing wrong. Raising my chin, I took a breath. “I did not have to do as you asked. He has already planned to make provisions for you.” Now maybe he would leave me in peace!

  “Provisions! I don’t want provisions. Before his arrangement with the cardinal, that might have sufficed, but now, I want it all!” He swept a fist across the table, spewing the glass and a hairbrush onto the floor. “I want everything! I want all the world to know I am his son. If he won’t be proud of me, at least he must claim me.” He snarled at the maid, who left without even a backward glance. Then he came at me, his dark, flinty eyes reflecting no light at all. “I want everything, and I will have it. You must return to him at once and find some way to secure it for me.”

  I took a step backward toward the door. “I can’t.”

  “I don’t care whether you can or can’t. You must.”

  “He thinks I can…I can save you. He thinks you have an interest in me. And he wants so badly to believe it…”

  “Yes. I’ve heard all that before. He used to have special masses said for me. For the benefit of my eternal soul.” He stared at me with such malevolence, I began to tremble. “I warn you. Unless you save my inheritance, there will be no hope for your own.”

  •••

  “You are so pensive, Lisette. I need you to be amusing and gay.” The marquise looked as if she were trying to smile. “Though I can no longer see them, I feel certain my feet have swollen to twice their size. I can no longer wear my stays, and my back aches abominably. I must be distracted from my thoughts, not forced to face them.” Exasperation was evident on her face, and reproach embroidered her words. She set her needlework on a table and put a hand to her back.

  “My apologies, my lady.”

  “Is it Julien who has distressed you?”

  If only I could have kept that smile on my lips. “I’m sure there can be nothing but celebration here once the babe is born.”

  “I wish he would hurry!”

  “Do you think it’s a he, then?” If it were a girl, then the count could cease his scheming…but the marquis would be sorely disappointed.

  “Of course I am! I’ve been sleeping on my right side for months. And look. Don’t you think my right eye shines brighter than the left?”

  It was difficult to tell in the afternoon’s gray light.

  “It has to be a boy. If we can find a bucket of water, I shall slit my finger, and you’ll see that my blood sinks. Straight to the bottom!”

  “No, please. Don’t worry yourself.” I had not meant to annoy her. Indeed, aside from the beauty of the château, her company was my only pleasure.

  “It must be a boy. Don’t even suggest it is not!”

  “I have always thought it must be.” I’d only prayed that it would not.

  She smiled as if to reassure herself. “It will be a boy. And all will be well during the bearing of him, and afterward, I shall finally be able to dance again! How dull it has been here in the country. I’m sure I’ve missed a thousand things at court since we’ve been gone.” A scowl creased her fine features as she pulled her fur stole up toward her chin.

  I was not performing well at the task she had set before me. What would cheer a creature like her? She was a hundred times removed in nature from me. She seemed to live for songs and chatter and dancing…things I had all but renounced. I lived for peace and solitude, in a perpetual state of penance. She skipped through a life filled with grace and mirth. She was who I might have been.

  There were some thoughts better left alone. “I suppose…you’ll need new gowns before your return to court.”

  Her eyes brightened. “Yes! I shall ask Julien to help me. He’ll tell me what Marie de Hautefort was wearing when he last saw her. And what sort of lace the Queen had at her collar. Not that I could wear its copy, but it would be nice to know. I do so wish the King would relent with his edicts. I don’t see why the rest of us shouldn’t wear exactly what we’d like!” With very little encouragement, she chattered on about this thing and that thing until it was time for dinner.

  I lent her a hand then to pull her away from the chair. I tugged, perhaps a little too strenuously, for she found her feet with a grunt and immediately put a hand to her back.

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—” How many times had I said those words?

  “It’s nothing. It’s just that I’m such a stupid, ugly, old sow.” She burst into tears. “I can’t do anything right anymore.”

  I shuttled her toward the door, ignoring her tears and reassuring her of her worth. “You’re the apple of the marquis’s eye. It’s not what you look like. He doesn’t care what you’ve done or what you can’t do. It’s who you are that’s important, regardless of everything else.”

  “It’s the child that’s important, regardless of everything else. Regardless, even, of me.” The look she gave me was fraught with re
signation. And pity. As if I must be provincial, indeed, if I did not realize the truth of her words. “As long as I have a boy child, then all will be right.”

  Chapter 20

  The Count of Montreau

  Château of Eronville

  The province of Orléanais, France

  The two girls spent their days prattling about this thing and the other. When the weather was clear, they sat together in the garden, enjoying autumn’s warming sun.

  “They seem to be getting on like sisters.” Remy came to stand beside me at the window where I was looking down at them. He carried a glass of brandy in his hand. For once, he was not on a hunt, out with his falcons, or riding through the godforsaken countryside. In fact, it made me wonder why he was not. He must know he could expect no solicitation from me. The good doctor’s enemas didn’t seem to be working.

  As I took the brandy from him, I looked him straight in the eyes.

  His gaze dropped away from mine.

  “Gabrielle can get along even with my father.”

  “But isn’t this what you wanted? To please the marquise in order to appease your father?”

  “Yes.” But my father was a stubborn bastard, taking every opportunity these days to remind me he intended to disinherit me.

  The sound of laughter, carried by the wind, pierced the glass, reaching our ears.

  “Your plan must soon start working, then.”

  Not quickly enough! If I could not persuade my father from his designs before the babe was born, then all was lost. Unless…the babe turned out to be a girl.

  Remy was watching me. “What?”

  “If the babe turns out to be a girl…”

  He raised his glass in my direction. “Then all of your father’s plans will have been for naught.”

  “Precisely.” And if it were indeed a girl my stepmother was spawning, things were not quite so bleak as they appeared. My father could not risk his annulment unless he were certain of having another heir. Was he certain? How did one tell about such things?

  I took another look at Lisette from Souboscq. She wasn’t the worst of females. She didn’t talk overly much, and mostly, she kept out of sight. If my father thought I were truly reformed, then perhaps he wouldn’t be quite so bent on pursuing his course.

  •••

  Father plucked at my arm as I tried to leave the hall after dinner. I offered it to him as if that were exactly my intention, watching as Remy disappeared up the stair. Later, I would find him. I only hoped he wouldn’t want what he usually did. I cringed from the thought of another disappointing encounter. I aided the count to standing and then matched my steps to his. It used to be he could easily outpace me. Now his stride was less than half of my own. War wounds, he said, though I imagined that to be an excuse for old age.

  “We need to speak. In private.”

  Well. That was something. He could hardly stand to look at me. I would never have hoped he might desire to speak to me. I walked him up the stair and into his chambers. Leaned against the mantel as a servant lit a taper and the count settled himself in a chair. The dagger that lay on the mantel winked at me, its many-colored jewels reflecting the taper’s light.

  “I hope you understood me, Julien. When I spoke to you about the annulment.”

  I tried to smile. “I understood you wanted to wash your hands of me.”

  He sighed the tired, heavy sigh of an aged and wearied man. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I only wish that…”

  I stared at him, daring him to say what I knew he’d always thought.

  “I only wish I had never married your mother. How can you fault me for that?”

  Fault him? For wishing to erase the very circumstance of my birth? “Then perhaps I ought to say I wish you had never been my father.”

  He recoiled as if I had slapped him.

  “How can you fault me for that?”

  “I can’t.” He shook his head as he spoke. “How can I? I’ve failed you, Julien…in every way possible.”

  It was the truest thing he’d ever said. “You may have hated her, but I loved her.”

  “No. Don’t say that. Never say that!” That old look of fire and wrath, the one that had always given me pause during my youth, had come back into his eyes.

  But I didn’t care what he thought anymore. “She loved me.”

  “She cursed you. She twisted you.”

  “At least she knew what I was.”

  Chapter 21

  Alexandre Lefort

  Rural France

  I gathered the dog in my arms and started off through the night. But this was not the forest of my youth, where I had known the shape of every tree and the turn of every brook. I did not know in which direction I was walking, knew only that we had to get away from this place of death.

  I’d been waiting in France with the dog runner when a great restlessness came over me. I tried to ease it by surveying the tools of his cooper’s trade. When that didn’t work, I helped him feed wood shavings into the fire.

  “The dog likes it.”

  “…the wood shavings?”

  “The fire. I treat him well over on this side of the border. I tend his wounds. I feed him meat. And cream. Keep him warm.”

  “And how is he used to being treated?”

  The man laughed. “He’s used to being whipped and starved and beaten by my cousin.”

  “And this is the dog that’s to deliver my lace?” What madness was this?

  “My cousin trained him. Dressed himself up in the uniform of one of those border soldiers whenever he beat the cur. Worked like a charm. He wraps the lace around the dog and dresses him up in a fur coat. When he lets the dog go, it runs straight to me.”

  “He beats the dog? On purpose?”

  The man shrugged. “It’s the only way that seems to work. Mon cher argent, I call him. My little purse. An easy way to make my fortune.”

  The restlessness had grown into a pronounced distaste of my host. And fear. If anything happened to my lace, then Lisette and the viscount were doomed. “I need some air.” It was partly true. The smell of pungent, freshly worked wood only partially overcame the fetid stench of his person. The place seemed to close in about me: airless and oppressive.

  The man looked up from the fire. “Don’t…the dog might not—”

  I closed the door on his objections. If that dog had not been carrying my lace, I would have warned him far away from here.

  Out in the night, only the breeze whispered. But here, too, there was a restlessness. It was a countryside unknown to me, and the night might have held any manner of creatures, but I turned from the yard, and walked behind the house toward the wood. I had always felt safest in the forest. Even at Souboscq, I found myself often wandering past the fields toward the trees.

  As I entered the wood, I heard a shifting in the space before me and the scuff of a boot against the earth. Remembering the lessons of my youth, I pressed my back against the nearest tree trunk and held myself as still as I could.

  “You hear something?” The voice sounded anxious. And uncertain.

  “It’s the sound of me, pissing.” That voice was supremely confident.

  “You sure this is the place?”

  “That’s what De Grote said.”

  “It wasn’t one of the other smugglers?”

  “It’s this one.” There was silence for a few moments. Then came the sound of a man spitting. “How many dogs you think are trying to cross the border this night?”

  “Twenty? Thirty?”

  “I bet there’s hundreds. At least we have it easy. De Grote tells us who, and he tells us when. Those other bounty hunters have to take their chances.”

  De Grote. Again. He hadn’t been content just to take my money. He w
anted my lace, too. And these men wanted the dog.

  My dog. Who was carrying my lace.

  I didn’t make a habit of antagonizing people. I had not purposefully set out to make De Grote my enemy. I had approached him honorably, intending to conduct our transaction in an honorable way. Even after he’d had me beaten, I had turned the lace over to him for the smuggling…and I had left him in possession of my father’s dagger. I had not wanted to harm anyone.

  Not even him.

  But now, he intended to steal my future. Our future: the viscount’s, Lisette’s, and mine. I would not allow that to happen.

  As my resolve hardened, I felt a brick settle at the bottom of my stomach, and the hairs at the back of my neck began to prickle. I had experienced another night like this one, a lifetime ago. Back when I had lived with my father in St. Segon, the village priest had made it his duty to dog me, to harass me, to taunt me.

  The forest had been my haven, a near-perfect paradise, where there were none to mock me but the birds, and none to hiss at me but the tortoises who lived by the brook. But one night, when I was ten years old, the priest had decided to follow me home.

  I tried to lose him by leaving the path and dodging through the trees, but always he had reappeared like some tormenting spirit. I plucked a small stone from a stream and placed it into my slingshot. I wanted only to turn him from his course. I took aim at his arm, and I let the stone fly.

  But he moved.

  The priest moved, the stone hit him in the forehead, and he fell over, dead.

  •••

  I never told anyone what I had done, though I knew God had seen me. I dragged his body across the stream and over a hill, where I left it in front of a wolf’s den. Then I ran home to the cave my father lived in.