She started to rise, and her knees and back protested so that she almost fell. She-the most graceful of women-pinned by her pregnancy. She fought the urge to whimper, gritted her teeth, and forced herself to her feet. The archbishop’s every sinew expressed his excitement. Never before had Desiderata so completely seen expressed the phrase trembling with excitement. It was as if the man had a fever.
De Rohan, de Vrailly’s former standard bearer and most dangerous minion, was, by contrast, almost bored. Merely fulfilling the function to which he’d been appointed.
And the King-his face was almost slack. His eyes flickered.
Oh, my love. When did you become so weak? Or were you always so?
“Your grace!” said the archbishop. His voice, always high, was shrill. He calmed himself. “Your grace. I come before you with a writ signed by the King.”
“Yes?” she said. While she knew what it must be, she had, in her heart, expected the King to refuse to sign it.
The archbishop produced a writ. She could see the King’s seal.
“I arrest you for the treason of murder with sorcery,” he said, his voice loud and piercing.
She was taken by surprise. “Murder? With sorcery?” she asked, as if struck by lightning.
“That you did work the death of your lover, the Count D’Eu, by the arts of Satan, when he renounced you as a lover and threatened to leave the court and reveal you!” said the archbishop.
Her so-called ladies hastened from the room, leaving her alone.
“Search her room,” muttered de Rohan. He had with him a dozen Royal officers-all recent appointees, and no members of the Royal Guard at all.
“This is infamous,” the Queen said. “Untrue, foolish, and pernicious.” She paused. “The Count D’Eu is dead?” she asked. She remembered his hard arm under hers at the Christmas revel on the ice.
The King stepped forward from his place behind his officers. “Madame,” he said gravely, “I’ll do you the honour of pretending that you do not already know.”
Desiderata didn’t back a step. “Tell me, then,” she said flatly.
“We have all your letters to him,” the King said, the ire in his voice now openly menacing.
A royal sheriff handed a leather trunk to the archbishop. He tried to open it, found it locked, and handed it back to the sheriff.
“That’s none of mine,” said the Queen. “That is not mine, and not-”
“Silence, woman!” said the King.
“Your grace, you know where I keep my letters!” the Queen said.
The King looked away. “I do not know you at all,” he said sadly.
With a snap, the little leather trunk opened, and a dozen parchments fell to the floor. The sheriff put his baselard back into its sheath.
From where she stood, the Queen could see that every letter held the Count D’Eu’s seal.
“Do you think he would seal his love letters?” muttered the Queen.
“Who knows what traitors and heretics think?” spat the archbishop. “Confess, and avoid the stake, your grace.”
“Confess what?” Desiderata asked. “I am guiltless. I carry the King’s son. I have never ceased to strive for this kingdom, and the Count D’Eu was never even my friend, much less my lover. This is all absurd.”
The King was reading one of the letters, his face a flaming red. “That you would dare!” he shouted, and threw it in her face.
“Confess to the murder of D’Eu, and the King, in his mercy, will spare your life.” The Sieur de Rohan stood easily, his voice bored. “See to his majesty. He is over-wrought.”
The King was reading another letter.
Desiderata was closer to panic than the old horror under the palace had moved her, but she held her ground. “Your grace, those letters are palpable forgeries. Your grace. You know my hand!”
The King whirled on her, and raised his fist. But he lowered it, his lips quivering with rage, his jowls-had he long had jowls?-making him look more sad than angry. “I thought that I knew you,” he said. “But de Vrailly was right. Take her from my sight.”
“Where, your grace?” asked de Rohan.
“The deepest pit of hell, for all I care,” said the King. He seemed to have aged ten years before their eyes.
The Queen drew herself to her full stature-not just in the real, but in the aethereal.
The archbishop clasped the talisman at his breast. “Do your worst, whore of Satan!” he said. “I am protected against all of your kind.”
Desiderata smiled with all the scorn she could muster. “The difference between you and I,” she said, “is that I would not stoop to destroy you if doing so would save my soul. I make and heal. I bring light to the dark. And when I do, your kind scuttle for the narrow places the light will not reach.”
She took a single step forward, and the archbishop stepped back unconsciously.
She tossed her head. “Where are you taking me?”
As the door closed behind her, she heard de Rohan’s oily voice say, “But your grace, now we must take thought for her brother.”
The Queen whirled. “Your grace!” she shouted.
The sheriff-cowed by her rank and her condition-let go her elbow.
The door opened. Again, the King was framed in it.
The Queen raised her chin. “I demand a trial,” she said.
Her husband paused. Their eyes met.
“I am absolutely guiltless, my lord. No man has known this body save you.” The Queen did not plead. Her anger was plain-and to most men, proved her innocence. No one could act such a part.
“Take her away,” whispered de Rohan.
“This is Alba, not Galle,” said the Queen. “I demand a trial, by my peers, in public.”
Wat Tyler slipped into Harndon amidst the chaos of the arrival of the Galles. His clothes were ruined, and his face wore the marks of heavy weather and constant strain. A gate guard might have questioned him for the great bow on his back alone, but the movement of a thousand armed Galles through the streets had stripped the gates of all but a token force, and those men still on the gates cared for nothing but what was going on inside their city.
As his new ally had promised him.
He crossed the First Bridge with the flood of morning market customers and farmers, and helped unload a wagon in East Cheaping before he walked uphill into the stews behind the docks. He saw more poverty than he remembered from his last visit, and more beggars.
He exchanged a sign with a beggar-master.
The man nodded at his bow. “That won’t win you no friends with the magistrates,” he said. “Only a citizen of Harndon-”
“I know the law,” Tyler said.
“You look like you’ve been in some hard places, brother,” muttered the beggar-master. In fact, he was more than a little afraid of Tyler, who smelled like the wilderness.
Tyler shrugged.
The beggar-master took him to chapter, a gathering of beggars-sanctioned since Archaic times by dukes and kings, and now held in the old agora by the Tower of Winds. The Beggar King sat on the steps of the old Temple of Ios. There, three Archaic stele formed a natural throne of incredibly ancient white marble.
The Beggar King wore a crown of leather. Unlike most kings, he sat alone. He had no court. Nor was he big, nor ferocious-looking. In fact, he was so nondescript in his dirty leathers and old wool, his lanky brown hair shot with grey and his long beard, that he might have been any peasant or out-of-work farmer on the streets.
“Wat Tyler,” he said. “Last I saw you, you was off to win a great victory against the King.”
Tyler shrugged. “We lost.”
The Beggar King nodded. “Well. And now you’re back.”
“Not for long. Does my place still hold?” Tyler asked.
The Beggar King looked around. The senior beggars and beggar-masters grinned.