Chapter Twenty-One
Palais de la Cité, Paris
October, 1356
“Aliénor de Tournan.”
The words echoed in the rafters of the royal palace. She stilled among the row of stone pillars carved with the likenesses of the kings of France, sure she’d dreamt what she’d just heard.
“Thibaud,” she blurted, gripping his arm.
“Aliénor de Tournan, come forward before your prince.”
Her uncle moved into action, shoving a shoulder between two clergymen standing in front of them before thrusting her bodily into the gap. When the strangers whirled in outrage, she slipped around them only to crash into others.
“Coming through,” Thibaud bellowed, elbowing deeper into the great hall. “His Grace has summoned my kinswoman. Let. Us. Through.”
Though she’d been living in Paris for months, Aliénor still couldn’t believe the crush of petitioners who swarmed every official court gathering. King Jean wasn’t even in residence—either then or now. Back then, he’d marched his army south to stop the approach of the Prince of Wales’ forces. He’d left behind his hapless and powerless representatives to hear the pleas of the dispossessed from a war that had made beggars of them all. And now King Jean was a prisoner of the English, captured during the disastrous battle at Poitiers.
With so much upheaval, she’d all but given up ever having her petition heard. Yet now, as she stumbled into the clearing before the dais, she found herself face-to-face with the king’s firstborn son Charles, known as the Dauphin and acting regent of France.
She dipped into a curtsey beside a bowing Thibaud, very glad she’d made the effort to fix a tear on the hem of her honey-colored kirtle last night.
A low, bored voice spoke her name.
“Yes.” She straightened up. “Yes, it is I, Your Grace.”
The regent, red-headed, ruddy-faced, and perhaps a few years younger than herself, sprawled in a carved, gilded chair pushed away from a black marble table. Unsurprisingly, he looked weary. He’d returned from a crushing military defeat to take his seat in a bankrupt city, with the people in revolt, and a contender for the throne churning up discontent all through the countryside.
The regent tapped the desk upon which was spread a wealth of parchments. “It says here you’re from Gascony.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” She swallowed the lump in her throat to deliver the one piece of news that had found its way to their humble lodgings near the Abbey of St. Martin. “My father, the Viscount of Tournan, fought beside your father at Poitiers. My father died on the field of battle.”
She lowered her head not to hide raw grief, but a lingering sorrow. In truth, she’d lost her father a dozen years ago at Crécy.
“Many a good man died on the battlefield,” the regent said, nodding his head, as she’d seen him do many times when other petitioners spoke similar words. “My sympathies, mademoiselle, for your loss.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“Your father’s lands,” he said, as he ran his fingers over the three stripes of ermine on the sleeve of his robe. “Where are they?”
“On the border between Aquitaine and the lands of the counts of Toulouse,” she said, as Thibaud had tutored her, “at least the border as it once stood before the prince burned his way across Gascony.”
The regent leaned to one side and perused a map one of his aides had lifted into the light. Beside her, Thibaud shifted his weight, stifled by the protocol forbidding him from addressing the regent before being spoken to.
Lifting his gaze from the map, the regent asked, “How many castles?”
“One castle seat.” By the way the regent’s lips tightened, he clearly thought a single castle a meager estate. “We had another,” she added, “but the English took it earlier in the war—”
“One castle,” he interrupted, “and another one stolen, and yet you have friends in high places.”
“Your Grace?”
“I’ve received not one but two petitions in your name, mademoiselle.”
She sidled her uncle a confused glance. His face was turning red with the effort to hold his tongue. “Perhaps my uncle,” she ventured, “who has some history in your grandfather’s service, can clarify—”
“I have read your uncle’s petition. It’s the other that intrigues me.” He lifted a paper from one of the piles. Light sifted through it so she could see a dark wax seal weighing it down. “This one arrived just yesterday,” he said. “It’s written by a knight in the Prince of Wales’ service.”
A tingling passed over her skin, like a thousand little pinpricks piercing her from scalp to toes.
“The knight writes quite eloquently for a traitorous Gascon,” the regent continued, tilting the paper to the light. “… the lady, as my chatelaine, held the castle for her family and kept its people safe long beyond what should be possible in a country ravaged by plague, famine, and war, showing strength of character and loyalty to King Jean that wins high praise even from those who she calls her enemies…”
She couldn’t seem to catch her breath.
Not dead by a French scout’s sword.
Not dead by a brigand’s dagger.
Not dead on the field of battle.
She bathed in Jehan’s words while white light streamed from the high windows and poured across the paving stones at her feet.
“I assume you know this knight, mademoiselle?” The paper rustled in the regent’s hand. “This…St. Simon?”
I know the way the corner of his lips tilt when he’s amused, the way his lids grow heavy as he looks upon me, the way he stands with his shoulders sloped when he’s still in thought, planning something, thinking of a future I can never share.
She stuttered, “I do, Your Grace.”
The regent’s voice, thick with impatience. “Well?”
“Sir Jehan is the English knight,” she said, daring to speak his name for the first time in months, “who seized both of my castles.”
The ripples of the regent’s forehead pressed up against the rim of his crown. “A Gascon knight with English loyalties speaking in support of the very heiress he dispossessed?”
She lowered her head to find her hands clasped in a grip of prayer. “Apparently so, Your Grace.”
“Why?” he barked. “Why would an English knight plead a French noblewoman’s cause, when it can benefit him none and cause him no end of trouble should you rally a French knight to take up your banner?”
Because he loves me and I love him and the whole world conspires to keep us apart.
She said, “This will take some explaining.”
“My lady, these days three things elude me: Good news, good wishes, and good stories.” He tossed the paper on the table and waved at her. “Proceed at will.”
She smoothed her hands down her skirts, biding for time as she marshalled her scattered thoughts. The truth was a better story than the tale Thibaud had concocted for her, but Thibaud had forbidden her to speak the truth to anyone. She’d only agreed because her great-uncle had warned that the regent would likely toss her into a convent if it was made known she’d taken an English lover.
So, as dispassionately as she could, she recited the events leading up to the loss of her castle and her decision, after the dark winter of the Prince’s raids, to seek the protection of her father’s liege lord. She told the tale without ever mentioning she’d spent the cold winter snug and happy in Jehan’s bed.
As she finished, the regent said into the silence, “This is a weary, common tale—”
“If I may be so bold, Your Grace.” Thibaud interrupted, stepping forward to fall on one knee.
The regent raised pale brows at her great-uncle’s breach of protocol, but waved away the guard who’d stepped forward. “Thibaud de Pirou, I presume?”
“At your service.”
“Your niece said earlier you knew my grandfather.”
“I fought for King Philip VI at both Crécy and Calais.”
“Ah.” The regent leaned forward. “My grandfather was full of stories.”
“I know of exploits that I wager not even you have been told.”
The regent’s grin was quick and surprisingly boyish. “You must tell me every one. All I hear in these terrible days are of burning and plundering and rebellion.”
“With your permission, I’ll tell you a tale now, one that will lift your spirits. It involves the young brother of the lady who stands before you.”
The regent’s smile dimmed. “She has a brother?”
“A crippled one,” Thibaud said. “Long disowned by his father—”
“But yet still living.”
“Bound by honor to join a monastery,” Thibaud added, “and no threat to the claims of his sister. Yet this boy was the agent of a great victory—”
“Impossible.” The regent cut a glance to one of the knights behind the throne. “I’m told victories no longer occur in France.”
Thibaud stood up from his kneel. “If you but give me a moment of your time, Your Grace, I shall tell a tale of valor and virtue unlike any you’ve ever heard.”
***
“Come sit with me, Blanche.” Aliénor slid onto a bench at the far end of the great hall in the castle outside Meaux, a little town about twenty-five miles northeast of Paris. “If we’re talking together, maybe all these courtiers will leave us alone.”
“My dear,” the woman said, adjusting her voluminous skirts as she sat on the bench beside her, “no man in the room is likely to leave you alone.”
“Flatterer.”
“But I’ll sit with you anyway, in the hopes of catching a leftover.”
“Blanche, stop. You deserve better than a ‘leftover.’”
“Duckling, we are the leftovers, remember?”
Aliénor pulled a face at her friend. She’d met this forty-year-old, irrepressible widow on the first night she and Thibaud had dined at court, when they were seated together far, far below the salt. The court swarmed with the dispossessed, eating freely of the regent’s generous bounty, and she and Blanche were only two ladies out of hundreds now under the regent’s care.
“Ah,” Blanche said, with a sudden edge in her voice. “Look there. Your great-uncle is making a fool of himself again.”
Aliénor turned her attention to the blur of dancing. Thibaud was among the dancers, his back military-straight, saying something to make his partner laugh. Aliénor marveled at her kinsman. For a man who’d spent most of his time pacing the ramparts of Castelnau and sparring on the training field, he moved among these ladies and courtiers as if he’d been born with royal blood. In the weeks since they’d joined the French court, Thibaud had spun gold out of his dusty old stories and made more friends than she could keep up with.
“That uncle of yours,” Blanche continued, “should spend less time dancing and more time seeing to your welfare.”
“He would say he’s doing just that, making influential friends and connections.” For reasons Aliénor didn’t quite understand, Thibaud and the widow had been at odds since they’d met. “In any case, right now he’s far too busy with the regent to worry about matchmaking.”
And that’s just fine by me.
“Your uncle is doing nothing but spinning fanciful yarns for the regent’s pleasure. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took the fool Mitton’s place in the regent’s affections.”
“Blanche, please, he’s my kinsman.”
“All the more reason why he should see you settled. He’s not getting any younger.”
“So quick to marry me off, are you?”
“What’s the alternative, my dear? Staying here, suffering a lifetime of listening to the whining of the regent’s wife?”
“Have pity on the duchess, she’s hugely pregnant.”
“And she makes sure we all remember it every time she’s loaded into another carriage and the entire court is dragged to yet another provincial castle on the regent’s whim.”
Hardly on the regent’s whim, but Aliénor didn’t want to argue the point. She wouldn’t soon forget the day last month when an angry mob of peasants had broken into the royal palace in Paris and killed two marshals right before the regent’s eyes. Since then, the whole court had been traveling from fortress to fortress in a wide circle around Paris so the young regent could fortify them before returning to take the rebellious city by storm.
The city of Paris, it seemed, was as unsettled as her own heart.
“Pardon my interruption,” came a voice from above, “but do I have the honor of speaking to Aliénor de Tournan?”
The words were polite and courtly but it was the Gascon accent that slipped beneath her defenses. The slide of the man’s vowels raised memories of the bright silver ribbon of the Arrats, the warmth of the rock slope beneath her feet, the scent of ripe grapes on the autumn wind, the ducks waddling in the muddy courtyard. She glanced up, hopes rising for a familiar face, but the man was a tall, young stranger who looped a thumb under his low-slung baldric as he gazed upon her with deference.
Aliénor said. “Are we acquainted, sir?”
“We have never met,” he said, with a bow, “but the regent just informed me of your presence. I am newly returned from Gascony on orders to report about the strongholds no longer in our hands.”
She sucked in a breath. “You saw Castelnau?”
“Yes.” A sad smile flittered across his face as his eyes roamed elsewhere on her body. “Though it is thinly guarded, mademoiselle, it is still in English hands.”
“And St. Simon,” she said, trying hard not to stutter over the name, “is he still in possession?”
“His colors flew from the ramparts, indeed, but he was not in attendance.”
“Oh?”
She held this young man’s gaze like a straw that would keep her from drowning. She hated how desperate she sounded, but the rumors and gossip flooding the court rarely included any news about English knights. She was desperate for information.
“He’s in London.” The young man watched her face with great care. “With the prince himself, so the villagers of Castelnau told me.”
She swallowed and nodded while her thoughts vaulted to Jehan in England, perhaps meeting his new bride.
“And…the village,” she added, deflecting, “and my people?”
“The villagers were out in the fields when I arrived, harvesting a fine crop. It was a rare sight, one of the few pleasing ones I saw. Most villages and bastides in the area were burnt to the ground, their fields destroyed.”
She bobbed her head, words failing her.
“If I may be so bold, mademoiselle…”
“Yes?”
“Is it true you remained in the castle after St. Simon captured it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I commend you for your bravery and loyalty.”
“Bravery?” She seized the end of her tippet, running it through her fingers until the crackling of the static shocked her to her wits. “It’s not bravery to stay safe within my own home while war rages beyond the walls.”
“I speak of your refusal to become the English knight’s bride.”
Her fingers stilled on the tippet, ceasing the scattering of tiny blue sparks. Beside her, Blanche shifted on the bench. Her gown rustled like dry leaves.
“Sir,” Aliénor said, speaking through a tight throat. “Sir Jehan made me no such offer.”
“You jest.”
“He was all but married,” she retorted, wanting a quick end to this conversation. “The Prince of Wales promised him to an English lady.”
“Ah, a prince’s promise would be hard for an ambitious man to resist.”
The shame falls on him, Laurent had once said, for letting ambition rule over love
“Still,” the knight added, “a man is generally better served securing what he holds in his hands rather than hoping for something that might never come to pass. From what I know of St. Simon, I’d have expected him to seize what he could.”
God’s Blood, she couldn’t help herself. “You know him, sir?”
“In passing.” His attention drifted to the swirl of dancers in the room. “Sir Jehan and I have met on more than one occasion, which is one reason why your particular situation has attracted my interest.”
Heat crept up from the neckline of her kirtle. She’d done her best to deflect suspicion of what had really happened over winter, but this man now had her wondering if he knew more than he should. He was dressed in a close-fitting tunic with dagged edges, all the style in the French court. The flicker of the rush lights shone on the gold threads in his doublet, yet in the shadows she couldn’t make out the colors.
He certainly wore finer clothing than any simple messenger, which is what she’d first assumed him to be.
“You are upsetting my friend, sir,” Blanche said, bless her, as the widow covered Aliénor’s hand with her own. “Her losses are great.”
The man’s attention returned to them swiftly. “My apologies, ladies, I forget myself.” He put his feet together and offered a bow. “Mademoiselle Aliénor, I’d hoped to introduce myself if the opportunity ever arose, for our families have a connection.”
When he straightened up, light rippled over his doublet and she caught sight of his heraldry at last.
“Guy de Baste, at your service,” he said, as a smile curved his lips. “I believe we were once nearly betrothed.”