Three Nights With the Princess Page 2

  “Perhaps the Duc de Beure will be tall . . . with hair the color of new-spun silk . . . and a face that would make the angels sigh,” Lillith mused, watching Thera from the corner of her eye.

  “Or perhaps he will be short, bald as a melon, and smell like overripe curds,” Thera countered testily. Lillith frowned and tilted her nose, undaunted.

  “Chancellor Cedric says Normans are wondrously fine bowmen . . . that they can nick the spots off a hound at forty paces.”

  “I shall remember that,” Thera said, “in the event I should ever have a hound that needs a few spots nicked off. However, in point of fact”—she leaned closer—“Norman yeomen are the ones handy with a bow. Norman lords are always bladesmen . . . huge, galumphing, radish-faced fellows who use their chins for whetstones and would rather sleep with their broadswords than their wives.” The very thought of having to wed such a creature sent a shudder through her.

  “Well, he will surely love to ride,” Lillith asserted stubbornly. “Norman lords are unsurpassed as horsemen . . . true masters of the arts of breeding and training horseflesh. And Elder Mattias says we could use new blood in Mercia’s stables.”

  “There is nothing whatsoever lacking in Mercia’s stables,” Thera declared, her voice rising, so that Lillith’s eyes widened and she put a finger to her lips. Thera glowered, but lowered her voice. “I know full well what Elder Mattias wants . . . he wants horse races again.” She turned back to the screen and leaned closer to it. “And what a huge waste of time and effort that would be. Where’s the point in breeding faster horses, when even our slowest mounts can cover our entire kingdom border to border in less than an hour?”

  “One and three-quarters,” Lillith muttered under her breath.

  “What?” Thera turned back with a scowl.

  Lillith gave a start. “Letters. I said Elder Margarete insists he will be a man of letters . . . able to speak a number of languages. She says Norman nobles educate their sons in fine estate.”

  “Fine only if you consider warfare, wine-bibbing, and oppressive taxation a proper curriculum,” Thera said disgustedly. “Just imagine what sort of things a man who has applied himself diligently to such studies would add to the life of Mercia.”

  Lillith drew back her chin, annoyed by Thera’s determination to dislike her potential husband, sight unseen.

  “Well, we in Mercia never journey anywhere. Perhaps he will have traveled much and can tell us all about Paris and Venice and the Holy See of Rome.” Her face lighted anew. “Perhaps he has even seen the Holy Lands themselves.”

  “Lillith”—Thera crossed her arms with an air of strained forbearance—“there are packhorses all over France who have seen the Holy Lands at one time or another. It hardly qualifies them for sainthood, either.”

  The countess reddened. “Elder Audra says he will have a fine head for numbers . . . will be deft at ciphering and quick on the beads. And Elder Jeanine is certain, if he has spent time in Venice, that he has learned the new Arab numerals and astronomy . . . so he can render star charts and do the computus for us—”

  “I do the computus for us. I calculate the fall of feast days and Christ Mass and Easter,” Thera declared, truly incensed now. “And if my counselors find the Duc de Beure so worthy why don’t they bloody well marry him and leave me out of it!”

  Lillith clamped her hands on her knees and blurted out: “Because they’re not the heir to the throne of Mercia. They don’t have to marry, according to law, in order to be crowned queen of their own realm. And you do.”

  There was the bitter truth of it. Thera glared down into the empty courtyard . . . seeing only her crowded and distressingly conjugal future. Married. It was the blight of her otherwise perfect life: she had to marry to be crowned queen of the kingdom she already ruled.

  Since ascending to the throne two years ago, at the age of nineteen, Princess Thera had managed to delay, dissemble, and generally avoid the problem of finding a man with whom to share her throne. The Council of Elders, whose task it was to advise the princess and oversee the welfare of the kingdom, had grown increasingly distressed by the way she defied both their revered law and the sacred natural order to remain unmarried. For order—natural and otherwise—was what Mercians valued above all else.

  In Mercia’s isolated society, there was a reason and a rule for everything . . . including a rule requiring that the heir to the throne must be wedded before he or she could be crowned. Their code of law had grown out of the ways of the old Celts and embodied the old ones’ recognition of the necessity of both the male and female principles in nature . . . and in the affairs of humans. The statutes set this forth in most emphatic terms: the kingdom would prosper only when governed by a king and a queen who shared both bed and power.

  With the wane of each passing moon, the councillors eyed the empty thrones in the presence chamber with a bit more anxiety. Too well, they recalled the ancient prophecy warning of the woes that would befall the kingdom in the days of an unwed heir and an empty throne. For the last fifteen years, since Thera’s father had died, the fates had been more than patient with Mercia and its youthful heir. The rains had been plentiful and the harvests good, the flocks flourished, and the fine cloth produced by Mercia’s looms commanded good prices. Then came the unexpectedly hard winter just past, exacting a toll of their flocks and harvests, and the elders feared that Mercia’s dispensation of grace had finally ended.

  There the council and Thera had come to an impasse, for the same law which stipulated that Thera must marry before she could be crowned was also emphatic in granting her a choice in whom she wedded.

  From the day her chancellor and the Council of Elders had requested their first official audience with her until this very moment, the shadow of her mandated marriage had loomed over her reign. The cursed phrase “for now” seemed to be an inescapable postscript to every proclamation she issued, document she signed, or opinion she expressed. It was as if her learning, her wisdom, and her hard work meant nothing unless validated by a man . . . a husband.

  It galled her that a nameless, faceless man would someday stride into the palace of Mercia and, simply by virtue of his possession of a male member, claim half of the kingdom she had prepared all of her life to rule. Worse yet: with that same wretched appendage he would also lay claim to her . . . to the privatemost parts of her body, to her nights and days, to her womanly rhythms and fertility. She would have to share her throne, her table, her bed, and her very thoughts with this annoying interloper.

  And what would she get in return? She glowered, thinking of it. A swaggering, snoring, sword-wielding boar who regularly mistook her for a mattress . . . a lifetime of galling deference to a man who might or might not even recognize his own written name . . . and years of watching her belly swell and suffering the recurring horrors of childbed. It was a humiliatingly unfair trade.

  Her only hope, she had realized early on, was to be as slow and as selective as possible in finding a husband . . . so that she might establish her reign and authority firmly before admitting a stranger to her realm and her bed. To that end, she had decreed that she would wed no man without first setting eyes upon him. And it was to that end that she had journeyed from her isolated kingdom to the city of Nantes, to see for herself her chief matrimonial prospect . . . the Duc de Beure.

  “Ever since we left Mercia you have been singing the duc’s praises,” Thera said, turning back to Lillith with a searching look. Her irritation had subsided, allowing the anxiety underlying it to reassert itself. Her hands curled into cold fists in her lap. “You sound as if you truly want me to marry.”

  Lillith took a fortifying breath. “Perhaps that is because I do want you to marry . . . for Mercia’s sake . . . and your own.”

  Thera gave a short, defensive laugh. “What could a man possibly do for Mercia that I cannot do for it myself? I lead the council, direct the treasury, oversee the trading and commerce, consult with the head weavers, craftsmen, stewards, and bailiffs. I
appoint officials, settle disputes, and study writings from other lands to improve our husbandry and trades. I know all of my subjects by name and sight. . . .”

  Lillith cocked her head, noting that Thera had ignored the hint of what marriage might mean to her personally. Thera always dealt only with the public and official aspects of a union . . . never with the personal ones.

  “You were married once yourself, Lillith.” A canny gleam entered Thera’s eye. “If wedded life is such bliss, then why are you not eager to repeat it?”

  “You know full well the story of my marriage, Princess. I was young. He was old and kindly . . . and seedless. I am the Countess of Mercia now,” Lillith said. “I have a duty. And until it is discharged, I am sworn to solemn vows and cannot marry. Your lot, on the other hand, lies in a very different bushel from mine. Mercia needs a queen.” She leveled a faintly accusing look on Thera. “And a king.”

  The color in Thera’s cheeks deepened. “May I remind you that on the day I am fully wedded, you will no longer be a countess.”

  “Faith, what good is being a countess anyway if you’ve nothing to count?” Lillith grumbled, clasping her hands together and tucking them between her knees. After a moment she glanced at Thera from the corner of her eye. “Sooner or later you will have to confront the prophecy. “These seven woes,’” she began to quote, “‘one for each night the bed of the ruler goes unfilled. With trouble and contention ripe, the kingdom will be cursed . . . chaos in the land and in the seasons. . . in the hearts of men and in their reason . . . the sky will withhold its tears but women shall weep . . . the seed will wither and the wombs shall sleep—’”

  “Not another word!” Thera shook a finger at the countess, then forced herself to ease. “Scarcely a day goes by that I am not harangued about that wretched prophecy. One disappointing harvest in seventeen years and the council is in an uproar. Logic alone should allow that after so many prosperous seasons we might expect a fallow year.” She turned a penetrating look on Lillith. “My solitary bed had nothing to do with lack of rain or the shortness of sheep’s wool—”

  A burst of noise and movement occurred in the courtyard below, and their attention flew to the screen to search the arrivals for a glimpse of the Duc de Beure. Thera spotted the host of the feast, the Earl de Burgaud, clad in a gold-embroidered tunic and flat burgher’s hat, directing his guests to the pillow-strewn benches and chairs around the tables. Next, her eyes fell upon the familiar form of her host in the city, the dapper Henri Jannette, the Earl de Peloquin, a lord of her own court who now resided in Nantes and served as Mercia’s agent in the world of commerce.

  Thera’s heart pounded as she searched the faces and forms for the one who could put an end to both her maiden state and her solitary reign. And there he was.

  At first she mistook him for a partition the servants were carrying, then for a part of the wall that was moving. But a head took shape in her vision and she spotted hands at the ends of thick, upholstered arms that were flung wide in a gesture. As introductions and presentations were made, rumblelike laughter set that mass of flesh vibrating. She watched in disbelief as the corpulent figure inched its way through the other guests, behind the earl. A flurry among the servants produced two stout chairs, and the massive guest rolled onto them with a grunt that passed for approval.

  She blinked as Henri took a seat on one side of the huge fellow and the earl took a seat on the other side. Her jaw slackened. Surely, there was a mistake. But the seating arrangement and Henri’s startled glance in the direction of her concealment drove home the reality of it even before the earl rose and lifted his wine cup to offer a toast to his exalted guest.

  The Duc de Beure. She watched with trancelike horror the stubbled bearlike jowls, the eyes bloated to slits, the hair hanging in greasy tangles, and the bulbous lips that parted to reveal a bottomless cavern of a gullet. As the serving began, the duc snatched trays from the servants’ hands, and in short order had downed a whole pitcher of wine, demolished an entire capon, and started on a full joint of lamb.

  Whenever his host engaged him in conversation, the duc first hauled back in his chairs and produced a rending belch, then replied in guttural huffs and grunts. Grease dripped down his chin, and fresh crumbs and droppings soon joined the remnants of past gluttonies which stained the woolen tunic covering his shelflike girth.

  Thera swallowed hard, conjuring an image of this human plague of locusts gnawing its way through her kitchens and ample storehouses, then through Mercia’s well-stocked granaries. For one fleet and terrifying moment, she saw him on the beautiful silk-curtained bed in her personal chambers. And she heard the web of bed ropes snap and saw the boards crack.

  “He’s a swine,” she whispered. Tearing her eyes away to glance at Lillith, she found her companion staring at the spectacle of the duc’s behavior with both hands clamped over her mouth. “Nay . . . he is a whole herd of swine.”

  He was also the only marriageable duc in all of Normandy and the provinces of the Champagne. Slowly it dawned: she was saved . . . spared! Relief flooded through her icy limbs. When Lillith turned to her with eyes as big as goose eggs above her covered mouth, Thera was seized by an unholy urge to laugh, and bit her lip to hold back her mirth as she applied her eyes to the holes in the screen again.

  The duc chomped, guzzled, and dribbled . . . listing on his seat to talk with his mouth stodge-full, then pounding the table with his hamlike fist as he roared for more wine. Poor Henri’s harried expression, and the way he averted his face and fanned his hand before his nose, hinted that the duc’s aroma was every bit as distasteful as his feeding habits.

  Repulsive . . . malodorous . . . filthy . . . crude . . . He was utterly—perfectly—revolting. With each loathsome trait he exhibited, Thera’s spirits brightened and the corners of her mouth curled farther upward. If she had tried to conjure the worst of all possibilities in one man, she couldn’t have produced a being half so blessedly and fortuitously dreadful!

  “Look at him . . . as bloated as a cow dead three days,” she declared, beaming.

  “Well, he would not be especially difficult to please at table,” Lillith offered weakly. “He appears to eat almost anything.”

  “Everything,” Thera corrected, her perverse pleasure in his hideousness growing. “His hair is nothing but grease and nits. And his garments . . . poor Henri is suffocating from the smell.”

  “Hair may be washed and garments may be changed,” Lillith countered, struggling to say something which did not violate either Christian charity or her vow of honesty. “I doubt he would prove a demanding husband.” She slid her gaze over the duc’s ponderous bulk and winced. “He appears to be more interested in food and drink than in . . . fleshly pursuits.”

  “For which women everywhere must surely thank God,” Thera retorted, adding cannily: “However, making it through the required seven nights with him might prove something of a problem.”

  “The seven nights.” Lillith shuddered at the thought and lapsed into raw honesty. “Sweet Mother of—You would be overcome by the stench or squashed flat first!”

  “Seven nights . . . our revered law is most adamant on that point. I believe that eliminates the good duc from contention altogether,” Thera intoned, unable to contain herself any longer. Her laugh bubbled forth and Lillith spun around on her stool, scowling at Thera’s glowing face.

  “He is a beast,” Lillith declared, glimpsing both the pleasure and the relief beneath Thera’s mirth. “And you are delighted.”

  “Nay, I am . . . devastated.” Thera held her chest, trying to contain her reaction, but her abrupt sense of liberation, after weeks of slow-growing tension, was heady. Tears formed in her eyes, her shoulders quaked, her face flushed crimson, and, as the duc’s boarlike bellow drifted up in the silence, a full gale of laughter struck her.

  Fearing she would give their presence away, she clamped a hand over her mouth and pointed toward the kitchen, just down the gallery. Lillith hissed a warning, but
Thera was already dashing for the doorway, and the countess was left to pick up their cloaks and follow as quickly and silently as she could.

  Thera hurried through the hot, smoky kitchen, holding her spotless white silk up and out of harm’s way, and escaped into the cool, darkened shelter of a stone passageway. There she halted, and leaned against a wall to let the last tremors of mirth wash through her. Lillith joined her and sagged against the stone, too, panting for breath.

  “You know what this means,” Lillith said, glancing back at the arched opening, through which the noise of the kitchen and the muffled drone of the banquet drifted.

  “I do indeed,” Thera said with vengeful pleasure. “It means the council will have to range still farther away to find me a husband, perhaps all the way to Milan or Venice. It may be months”—her eyes glowed at the prospect—“or even years before they find another suitor of such exalted rank who has no hope of inheriting a kingdom of his own.” Satisfaction curled, catlike, around the edges of her smile. “And until an acceptable candidate can be found, I shall just have to rule alone.”

  “An acceptable candidate . . . a man acceptable to you,” Lillith said tartly. “Then I fear we shall be waiting a very long time indeed.” Her eyes narrowed. “A man has to die before he is made a saint, you know.”

  Thera laughed. Only Lillith dared speak to her so. The irreverent countess was witty, perceptive, and uncommonly well-spoken. But the quality which had earned her the role of Thera’s countess was her thorough and unstinting honesty.

  “Well, that explains why saints are in such short supply. A pity. I rather had my heart set on one,” Thera said, reaching for her cloak.

  “What are you doing?” Lillith watched with confusion as Thera whirled her silk-lined garment onto her shoulders and fastened the silken ties.