“Who’ll do the laundry?” Blanche asked. “The Queen is that particular.”
They both laughed.
“Becca?” Blanche asked very quietly, as if afraid to be caught out.
“Yes, my dear Blanche,” Lady Almspend replied a little too brightly.
“Do you know the Red Knight?” she asked.
“Not at all,” Almspend replied. They could both hear hooves in the flagged courtyard, and night was falling and the babe was blessedly asleep. “But Ranald loves him. He knighted Ranald and sent him back to me. I don’t need to know much more.” As she spoke, she bustled about the Queen’s chamber, laying a few of the Queen’s surviving possessions in their accustomed places. Ranald had rescued what he could from her rooms in the palace.
Blanche realized that she was blushing.
Lady Almspend was too well-bred to notice.
And then the Queen swept in, tired, nay, exhausted, and yet in tearing spirits, with another victory behind her.
“That Red Knight is the very paragon of chivalry,” she said. “So-odd, considering. I knew he could beat de Vrailly. God willed it.” Desiderata paused. There was her old familiar hairbrush, and there was Rebecca Almspend to wield it.
She looked at her friend, and suddenly, without volition, tears filled her eyes and she sat rather suddenly. “Oh, Becca,” she said.
Rebecca shot a glance at Blanche and went and cradled her friend’s head on her chest. “Your grace-”
“They killed Diota,” the Queen said suddenly. “They killed her. They killed all my friends but you and Mary-all the knights. Oh, Mary, Mother of God.” She choked, almost gagged on her tears, and then wept.
They were her first tears in many days.
Becca held her head and rocked her.
Her eyes met Blanche’s. Blanche was frozen, but Becca blinked, and Blanche understood. She came and took one of the Queen’s hands, very hesitantly, and squeezed it.
“We’re here, your grace,” she said.
“I hate the dark,” Desiderata cried. She clung to Blanche as if Blanche was a floating plank and she was drowning.
“Shush, your grace. It’s all over now,” Almspend said as if she were holding a baby.
The Queen raised her face, and it was ugly with tears, the muscles of it moving as if her face were full of worms, and she gave voice to a wordless cry of anguish.
“Annnnghhh,” she cried. “I loved him, even if he-Even when he-Sweet Christ, they are all dead. All my friends, and my love. Dead, dead, dead. They cut her head from her body and put it on a spike-I saw it.”
Blanche was chilled-horrified.
Lady Almspend merely held her friend. Blanche slipped out and went to the prince, her brother, who came immediately, dropping his cervelleur into the hands of a squire without a word.
He nodded to Blanche. “You are the Queen’s tire-woman? Your hair is like the silk of the east and your eyes are like the sky of early evening.” He smiled. It was a beautiful smile. “I have waited days to say that.” He was still in his arming clothes, sweat-soaked and smelling strongly of man and horse.
Blanche had met Occitans before, and she moved briskly along the corridor.
“I know my suit is hopeless, fair maiden, but give me a lock of your hair and I’ll-”
“Your sister the Queen is in a bad way, your grace,” Blanche said stiffly.
He bowed to her-still moving. He was as graceful as an irk, and there were those that said that there was irkish blood in the south. “I stink-I know it. But I promise you, I am a prince, and well able to-”
Blanche blushed. “Your grace,” she barked. She bowled him through the door into Desiderata’s outer chamber.
He looked back. “I am a fool, of course. You do not want reward for your love, but only-”
Then he saw his sister. To his credit, his face transformed, and from a comic lover he was instantly a caring brother. “Oh, sweet Mother of God,” he said.
Desiderata fell into his arms, and Rebecca backed away.
Rebecca took in the extreme discomfort writ large on Blanche’s face and nodded, even as Desiderata calmed.
“Her grace’s breviary is still, I fear, in her captain’s pavilion,” she said. “Blanche, would you be kind enough to fetch it?”
Blanche curtsied, even as the Queen protested.
“Let her rest, Becca. She has gone through everything I’ve been through but the birth.” The Queen’s sobs were slowing, and with much the same transformation as her brother had shown, the Queen’s face seemed to change. Lines smoothed, tendons were erased, and her breathing slowed.
Her brother held her by both hands. In Occitan, he said, “I haven’t seen you cry like that since you broke your arm as a girl.”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t know where it came from,” she said, her voice lower and easier.
Blanche sighed, accepted Lady Almspend’s smile and nod, and fled before the prince’s eye fell on her again.
She was vexed, and fatigue made her vexation feel like something more serious. The pain was like a splinter in her finger-the more she worried it, the more painful it was.
The prince fancied her and offered her reward. It was plain enough-that’s what men of his class did to offset things like pregnancy and shame. They offered lower-class women money.
But the night before, she’d-this was the splinter in her soul-imagined rewards herself. What did that make her?
Sweet Christ, what did Sukey think? She stopped in the darkness, halfway across the smooth field of grass that grew for a long crossbow shot outside the city walls and on which the company was camped-camped, if few fires and no tents make a camp. The captain’s pavilion-travel stained and with a slightly sagging ridgepole between its two high points-was the only tent in the camp.
Sukey was gone, of course.
Suddenly Blanche had no interest in going to that pavilion, where he sat. She could see the candle-lit space within-there was Toby, his squire, fussing, and there was Nell. And, her mother’s voice said, what would they think?
Men had fancied Blanche since her breasts began to bud. She’d always enjoyed it and never let it drive her, like some girls, whose heads were turned forever-not by love, but by the power. But in this case, she bit her lip in annoyance, turning on her heel.
She was close by the pavilion by then, and she missed a tent-rope in the dark. It tripped her, and she squealed.
In a moment, there was a hard arm across her throat.
A tall, thin man glared at her. His eyes were unfriendly, and his face was like a ferret’s. She remembered him from the birthing.
“What you got there, mate?” barked a voice near at hand.
The thin man gave her a hand up. “Never mind, Cully,” he said. “It’s just the captain’s piece.”
Blanche flushed. Her ankle hurt, and so did her pride. She sputtered.
Cat-that was his name-was not unkind. “No need to sneak, Miss. We all know ya now.”
Unbidden, the language of her childhood hissed out. “Sod off, Beanpole! I’m not your captain’s doxy or any man’s.”
Cat laughed. Cully grinned. “Oh, aye. Our mistake,” Cully said. Then, seriously, “He’s not-his self. He’s…” Cully shook his head and his helmet glinted in the darkness and she realized they must be guards.
“Who’s there?” called Toby.
Blanche writhed.
“The Queen’s lady,” Cully said.
The captain-visible as a shape, a very Red-Knight-like shape, right to his profile, on the lantern show of the tent wall-sprang to his feet. In another mood she might have been pleased by his alacrity.