Queens of Fennbirn

by Kendare Blake

  “If I did, it would not be written,” she said, and slapped it gently away.

  “Of course.” He wiped his face roughly with both hands, trying to quicken his wits. “Is the queen all right?”

  “Do you have reason to think she would not be?”

  “No. Only you here, pacing back and forth and looking like a wolf is on your trail.”

  Bess stopped pacing. She took a deep breath. Then she smiled at him, such a warm and fetching smile that he could not help but return it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have frightened you like this. I shouldn’t have even come here. But—”

  “But what?”

  “The night you spent in the queen’s chamber.” Bess spoke in a rush. Color rose into her cheeks before she could get all her words out. “Did you . . . have you . . . are you as they say? Are you the queen’s lover?”

  “No—no! I swear it!”

  “I am her closest friend and confidante. You must tell me the truth.”

  “It is the truth, Bess. That night we talked. And she . . . I have come to care for her. As more than just my queen. But we didn’t—she wouldn’t—”

  Somehow, his declaration seemed to make things worse. Bess’s hands flew to her face, and she began to moan. “I wish that she had! My poor queen! And you are only her painter! Not a lover at all!”

  “No, not a—” he said, and placed his hands on her arms to calm her, “not that. But I would like to think I am not only a painter. I would like to think that I too am her friend.”

  “You may need to prove that.” Bess wiped at her eyes. “Elsabet does not have easy days ahead. She will need us. All of us.” Morning was beginning to creep over the city, and her eyes widened at the sight of his nightclothes. “I shouldn’t have come. Forgive me.” She made to reach for the door, and he stopped her and instead drew her farther inside.

  “Bess, wait. Please stay a moment and sit. Tell me what you meant about the queen. Why will she suffer? What’s the matter?” Bess nodded, and let herself be led to his table and two lonely chairs. “Your hands are like ice.”

  “There was a chill in the air tonight, from the water. And I haven’t slept. I hope the queen is sleeping now. . . .”

  Jonathan stoked his small fire back to life and swung a pot of water over it to heat for tea. “A warm cup will put you to rights.” He searched his cupboard. “I don’t know if I have untainted sugar. I have untainted honey; will that do?”

  After the tea had steeped, he got it into her hands and waited as she sipped.

  “You and I and Rosamund,” she whispered. “Catherine Howe. Gilbert Lermont. We may be the only loyalists the queen has left. I don’t want to believe that, but—”

  “Why do you think so, Bess?”

  She shook her head. “To tell you would be to place you in danger.”

  “Then let me place myself there.” He took her by the hand. “I suspect that Francesca Arron has somehow been poisoning the queen’s tonic.”

  Bess’s eyes widened. He knew by the expression on her face that Francesca Arron was also the one whom she suspected.

  “I was near to the queen when she took her nightly dose,” he explained. “And I am a poisoner and curious about healing. I asked her if I could take a sip, and she consented. And instantly, I knew that something was amiss.”

  “Are . . . are you sure?”

  “The Dentons have little to recommend them, but we are excellent apothecaries. I am certain. I even took a sample to my family in Prynn.”

  Bess stood and set down her teacup hurriedly, sloshing tea over the rim. “I must go and tell the queen of this. I must tell Gilbert.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he said, and looked down at his nightclothes. “Just let me get dressed.”

  Bess put her hand on his chest. “No. You must stay here. This will all move very quickly, Jonathan, and if what you say is true and what we believe is true, then it is better if no one see us together yet. Rosamund—Commander Antere—does not want to alert Francesca to our suspicions.”

  Jonathan thought of his conversation with Francesca the night before. “She may already suspect me.”

  “All the more reason for you to stay away. The queen will send for you soon, I am sure. She will send for you when it is over and Francesca has been arrested.”

  “Bess,” he said when her hand was on the door. “Tell the queen . . . tell the queen I am thinking of her.”

  “I will, Jonathan.” Bess glanced toward the windows in his bedroom. “It’s later than I thought. I should go.” She stepped out as he held the door for her; she took his hand and squeezed it. “It will be all right.”

  He closed the door and wandered back into his room. Not knowing what else to do, he cleaned up the tea and dressed, readying himself for the day. But time had never moved so slowly. He could not stop thinking of what was happening at the Volroy. Of Elsabet and how he might be of help to her. “Blast,” he said, and stood. “I cannot just wait.”

  He threw open his door and went down the steps, hurrying up the alley toward the square. Bess might frown when she saw him, but Elsabet would not be angry. And besides, if it was as Bess said, Elsabet needed all the friends around her that could be summoned.

  When he turned the corner into the square, he stopped short. A crowd was gathering across the street. People, standing around and staring at something on the ground. His heart thumped as he walked closer and elbowed his way through. Then he saw the edge of her brown cloak.

  Bess lay on the stone street, facedown, her arms at her sides. The arrow that had killed her stuck straight out of the back of her head, pinioning her cloak hood to her skull.

  “Bess!” He fell to her side and turned her over. Her face was broken and bleeding from striking the stones when she fell. Her pretty eyes stared at the sky, and as he held her, blood soaked through her red-gold hair and into the hood. He drew the cloak hood back slightly and moaned. Whoever had done it had been a fine shot.

  “Poor girl,” the woman muttered. “Such a lovely thing. Who would think to do it on such a morning?” She looked at Jonathan sadly as he wept. “Was she with you, young man?”

  “Elsabet,” Jonathan croaked. Then he set Bess gently down. He got to his feet and ran for the Volroy, wiping her blood onto his tunic.

  “Wonderful,” Sonia said sarcastically to Francesca as they watched the Denton boy fuss over the dead maid. “We’ve killed the wrong commoner.”

  “You killed the wrong commoner,” Francesca corrected.

  “What was she doing, leaving his apartment at this hour?” Sonia asked, and Francesca wanted to slap her. That did not matter. The girl was dead. The queen’s dear friend. And someone would have to pay. “What do we do now?”

  “Now,” Francesca whispered angrily, “we use it.”

  Stepping out of the morning shadows, she drew her hood down nearly completely over her face. She walked lightly and quickly, moving through the back of the crowd, slipping between people in that way that was natural to all poisoners, that way that made it easy for them to sink a poisoned dagger into a thigh or drop a poison-coated berry into a drink. But that morning, it was poison of a different sort that needed to be spread.

  “Oh,” she murmured in a gentle voice. “That is one of the queen’s girls. One of the queen’s maids! And she was coming from the queen’s lover’s apartment!”

  That was all it took. The people latched on to it and filled in the rest. “The queen is often jealous,” someone said. “How foolish of the boy,” said someone else. “But who could blame him? Look how lovely this girl was. Lovely as our queen is not. That’s why she’s so jealous in the first place. Poor queen. Poor girl.”

  “Poor queen? This is murder! Murder over a lover’s tryst!”

  Francesca smiled. When she returned to Sonia she nearly laughed as the two of them walked out of the square unnoticed.

  “How did you know to do that?” Sonia asked.

  “You know what th
ey say. An Arron is ready for anything. Now let us go. Our plans have changed.”

  THE VOLROY

  Elsabet ordered Bess’s body brought to the Volroy. She ordered healers and priestesses to look upon it, to provide her with what answers they could. But there was only so much that could be told about an arrow to the back of the head.

  “Get away from her, then,” Elsabet said, and draped herself over her friend. Her cheeks were red and wet with tears. She kissed Bess’s cold hands. “What good am I?” she asked, wiping her eyes. “What good is an oracle queen who cannot see enough to protect those she loves?”

  Rosamund, Jonathan, and Gilbert stood by helplessly. They too were full of sorrow. Even Rosamund had wept when she heard the news. Wept and raged when she saw the arrow struck through Bess’s pretty head. Now they were alone in the throne room, the healers dismissed, the priestesses’ prayers said. No other members of the Black Council were brave enough to show their faces with Bess’s body stretched out across the council table.

  “How could this happen?” Elsabet stalked back and forth, long legs shaking.

  “Elsie,” Gilbert ventured softly. “Let me get you something.”

  “What, Gilbert? What do I need?”

  “I don’t know. I could summon your king-consort. He will want to know of this.”

  In the corner of her eye, Elsabet saw Rosamund bare her teeth.

  “William?” Elsabet laughed. “He is hiding somewhere like the rat he is. He knows he does not need to put on an act anymore.” She turned back to Bess and wiped her eyes again. “Where is Catherine Howe?” she demanded, voice booming.

  “We don’t know, Elsie. She is not yet at the Volroy this morning.”

  “Where is Sonia Beaulin?”

  “She is here,” Rosamund answered. “I don’t know where just now, but I have seen her.”

  “Where is Francesca Arron?”

  “We have not seen her yet this morning either.”

  Elsabet looked at Rosamund. “Things will move quickly now.”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  “What will move quickly now?” Gilbert asked. He had not heard the news that Rosamund had delivered to her that morning that thanks to Catherine Howe’s spies, they knew her king-consort was betraying her with Francesca Arron. Nor had he heard the message of poisoned tonic that Jonathan had whispered into her ear.

  “Then give me a moment alone with Jonathan.”

  Rosamund nodded and tugged a sputtering Gilbert from the room.

  “My queen,” said Jonathan, his shoulders square. “Queen Elsabet. What can I do to help you?”

  “You can run.”

  “What?”

  Elsabet wiped another tear from her cheek, the last she would allow herself to cry today. “The capital will not be safe for you for a time. Not even here in the Volroy. You must find a way to get out of the city before it begins.”

  “But”—he gestured sadly toward Bess—“it’s already begun. I can’t leave you, not now.”

  “You can and you must, because I order it. I have arranged for enough coin, and you will find a fast horse awaiting you in the stables.”

  “No,” he said, and to her surprise, he came and took her by the shoulders. “I am supposed to be here. You dreamed of me. You dreamed of me so I could fight for you.”

  Elsabet smiled. She touched his face. How she wanted for that to be true.

  “No, Jonathan. I dreamed of you for solace. So you could be a moment of peace for me when everything around me crumbled. But it was not a vision. It was only a dream.”

  After Jonathan had gone, Elsabet summoned Rosamund and Gilbert to return.

  “Tell me,” she said to them, “in your short time waiting in the halls, what are they saying? What are the whispers?”

  “They are trying to say it was an accident,” Rosamund muttered. “As if an arrow to the head can be an accident.”

  “It can be,” Gilbert said softly. “It could be. Bess could have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been a case of mistaken identity.”

  Elsabet looked at him sharply. “Now that I do not doubt. Covered in a heavy cloak in the early light of morning? Having just left Jonathan’s apartment? Mistaken identity, indeed. That arrow was meant for him, and it found her instead.”

  Gilbert’s lips trembled around his words, cautious, as if he feared whatever he said next could lead them down dangerous paths. “Who? Who would dare? Have you seen something?”

  “Seen something? No, I have seen nothing.” Elsabet closed her eyes, then opened them, fixed upon his face. “Though perhaps I could, if I were to have more of your tonic.”

  He twitched but did not speak. He did not confess. And that hurt her as much as anything else.

  “Did you know, Gilbert? All this time that you were poisoning me, poisoning my sight gift right out of me, did you know?”

  His lower lip wobbled, and he closed his eyes. “I had no choice.”

  “No choice?” Elsabet exploded. “No choice but to betray me? Your own foster sister? Who has loved you since we were children?”

  “I had to. Francesca poisoned my way onto the council, and she swore she would poison me, too, or reveal my secret—”

  “Francesca Arron does not give commands! I give commands! Francesca Arron does not rule! I rule! And you should have known better, Gilbert.”

  Gilbert dropped to his knees. He clasped his hands together. “Forgive me, Elsie. I never wanted to—”

  “Be silent.”

  He tried to obey, though he began to weep. “What would you have of me? What can I do?”

  “I don’t know yet what I am going to do with you,” Elsabet replied. “For now, get out of my sight. Return to your rooms and stay safe. Stay there under guard. Until this is over.”

  “This?” he asked.

  “Go!” she roared, and he scurried from the room, so afraid of her that she would have laughed, had she not been so angry and heartbroken.

  Finally, it was only she and Rosamund.

  “What now, my queen?”

  Elsabet looked at her friend, her warrior, her hair so blazing red and her reputation so fierce that rumors persisted of her dyeing it that way with madder root just to make it look like blood.

  “You know what now,” she said. “Now you take your queensguard and arrest Francesca Arron. Arrest her and throw her in the cells on charge of murder.” Rosamund nodded grimly, and Elsabet bared her teeth. “Now we end it.”

  THE VOLROY

  “That is not going to happen.”

  Sonia Beaulin stepped into the throne room with a number of queensguard soldiers. They spilled in through the open doors and spread until they lined the walls and blocked every possible exit. And over Sonia’s shoulder, Elsabet saw more. More and more, armed and ready to fight, clogging the castle with their black-and-silver armor.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Elsabet demanded. But no one answered.

  Rosamund strode forward. Her mere movement was enough to make the closest soldiers shrink back, though she had not even drawn her sword. “What do you think you’re doing, Sonia?”

  “What I must. What you could not. We are arresting a dangerous and murderous queen.”

  Elsabet’s mouth dropped open. “Murderous? Who did I murder?” Her voice grew angrier and louder as she spoke. “Bess? Do you mean to pin the assassination of my own dear friend on me?”

  “Do not listen,” Sonia ordered the soldiers. “The queen is unwell. Take her into custody now and into the West Tower. There she may be kept safe.”

  “Safe? Safe from whom?” Elsabet began to tremble as the soldiers swept past Rosamund. She was as still as stone until they first took her by the wrist, and then she erupted, screaming and cursing them, throwing herself back and forth.

  “Safe from yourself, my queen,” said Sonia as they dragged Elsabet past.

  “You cannot do this to me! I am your queen! I am the Goddess’s chosen! Rosamund!” She craned he
r neck, able to see her commander standing a head above the others, the expression on her face still and full of anger, disbelief, and shame as she watched her own soldiers take her queen away. “Rosamund?”

  They moved her quickly, through the castle and up the many staircases to the newly furnished queen’s apartments in the West Tower.

  “Why do we not go to my chamber?” Elsabet asked. “I have not yet moved to these rooms!” She searched their faces. None spoke. All were afraid. But they did as they were told. They followed their orders. Only they were not meant to take orders from Sonia Beaulin or the Black Council. Not without Elsabet’s approval.

  When she saw the open door, she knew it for what it was: a finely decorated prison. She dug her heels hard into the stones and struck out at the nearest queensguard, her vision blacking in and out with panic as they pushed her toward it.

  “No! No, let me go!”

  But they would not. They shoved her through the door so hard she stumbled and nearly fell to her knees, and by the time she turned back, the heavy wood was already swinging shut.

  Rosamund stood silently in the middle of the throne room. Her eyes focused on no one in particular until she could no longer hear Elsabet’s cries. Then she turned to Sonia.

  The look on the other warrior’s face nearly drove her to strike. So smug. So pleased with herself. She was proud of putting Rosamund in her place. Proud of being a traitor.

  “How does it feel?” Sonia asked. “To know that your queensguard was never really yours? That they have been mine, all this time?”

  “Not all of them.”

  Sonia sighed. “No. Not all. But those have been dealt with.”

  “What do you mean to do here, Sonia? What do you and Francesca have planned?” Her voice remained calm, almost weary. Almost bored. And with every word, a little of Sonia’s joy was chipped away. “Or do you even know? Perhaps she does not tell you. The master often doesn’t inform the puppet about the play.” She raised her eyes to the gathered soldiers. Many were good. Many she had trusted. They were only afraid, and following orders, and being lied to. “I don’t know what she has told you. Maybe she told you they would release the queen as soon as those who led her astray were dead. But you must know that is a lie. They can never let Elsabet out again, not without losing their heads.”