Several of the troopers laughed, and the rest grinned. Cole nodded, and the sergeant smiled as he said, “Might be we did, milord, but I doubt you’d want to hear it.”
“Try me,” Papa invited, returning his grin.
“Well…” The sergeant glanced to both sides elaborately and leaned close to Papa, muttering behind his hand—and winning a few more laughs for his performance. “Those of us set to guard the guards who guarded King Drustan’s and Queen Petronille’s suite did notice that they argued whenever they were alone. Quite loudly, too.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Papa told him. “You couldn’t understand the words, though.”
“No, we were too far away—but I think the Bretanglian guardsmen caught the odd word or two, and it made them, shall we say, nervous.”
“I should think it would.” Papa considered the range of topics for royal argument—adultery, control over the Merovencian provinces, adultery, which son should inherit what, adultery … “How long did they argue on their last night here?”
The soldiers fell silent again, finding great fascination in the patterns of their bootlaces.
“Come, come,” Papa cajoled. “No one is blaming any of you—and I certainly won’t say where I heard it. How long?”
“Perhaps the half of an hour,” the sergeant told him. “Then, say the guards who were in the hall, the king stalked out in high dudgeon, whipping his cloak about him. But he wasn’t even gone an hour!”
“Home in plenty of time to start arguing with his wife again, eh?”
“Of course.” The sergeant spread his hands. “What else would they do?”
“What indeed?” Papa could have mentioned Drustan’s rumored libido, and Petronille’s still-vibrant beauty, but he was too busy wondering if Drustan really could have found the Inn of the Courier Snail, sneaked in to stick a knife in his son’s ribs, then run back to the castle in less than an hour.
The sergeant kept his eyes carefully on his boot toes. “They say that with some couples, fighting leads to lovemaking.”
“I’ve heard that, and seen a few,” Papa agreed, “but those fights always have the quality of a game about them, keen enjoyment just in the shaping of clever phrases. Such fights are not as bitter as those between King Drustan and Queen Petronille.”
“I suppose not,” the sergeant agreed in chagrin.
Another soldier said, “I’d say their love has died.”
“Not died, perhaps,” Papa said, “but it’s certainly in a coma.”
Ordinarily, Rosamund loved rainy days. Even now, gazing through the ripply glass in the leaded panes of her window, she watched the pot-boy poling his little skiff back to shore with a string of fish dragging in the water—her supper, no doubt. The rain had caught him unawares, in spite of the lowering sky. He would probably curse it, but she blessed it. The gentle susurrus of the raindrops soothed her, and the rain’s blending of the trees and bushes with the wall enclosing her country house lulled her, letting her own melancholy harmonize with the world around her…
… until the mist lifted and showed her the walls of the castle, only a hundred yards distant.
The royal castle. The castle where her nemesis, King Drustan, would live if he won the war. Rosamund imagined the king coming to call on her with news of his victory, stepping too close to her, smiling down possessively, lecherously, reaching out to touch…
She turned away from the window, shuddering, and prayed with all her heart for the queen to win. Without Petronille’s protection, without Brion’s, shorn even of the mild protection of a betrothal to the heir, she would be at the king’s mercy in every way, and with no defense. She swore to herself that she would rather die. She touched the front of her bodice to caress the small hard oval of the crystal teardrop she wore between her breasts, the clear little tear in its basket of leaden strips that held the single drop of poison old Aunt Maude, her grandmother’s sister, had given her the day before she left her father’s palace in southern Merovence.
“God grant that you shall never need it, my dear,” the old woman said, “but if it is a choice between your virtue or your life, choose virtue, for a life without it is a torment for a woman in this day and age.”
Little Rosamund had shied away from the crystal drop, asking, “Is there no other way?”
“There is this.” Aunt Maude turned to show her a log of wood lying on a velvet cushion.
Rosamund stared. “What good is a log? And why do you treat it with such luxury?”
“Because that is where a princess should lay her head.”
Aunt Maude passed her hand over the wood, chanting a rhyme in archaic words—and the air about the log shimmered, its form seeming to melt and reorder itself, and there lay a perfect likeness of little Rosamund’s own head! She cried out, hand covering her mouth, and Aunt Maude explained, “It is now no longer a stick, but a stock. Find one that is as long as you are, and it will take on the appearance of your whole body. Moreover, another spell will make it walk with your gait and talk with your voice for three days. Then the spell will wear off and let it become only a log of wood again. Come, recite the spells after me, learn them by heart, for they may someday give you time to escape. Even then, though, you may need the drop of poison, for you may be caught, and life without virtue or love is worse than no life at all.”
She hadn’t explained, but she hadn’t needed to—Rosamund understood her full well now, had understood for several years, ever since she blossomed into womanhood and King Drustan’s eye had glinted whenever he saw her. Her own future husband had been worse, for Prince Gaheris had pressed her not to wait for the wedding, whenever he could catch her alone.
“A betrothal is almost a wedding,” he had protested.
“It is not,” Rosamund asserted, “or you would be willing to wait for it.”
Even so, she had dreaded the day it would come, for her flesh shrank whenever Gaheris touched her.
A knock at the door brought her back to the present. Her heart hammered with apprehension, but she kept her voice calm as she called out, “Who knocks?”
“Count Sonor, my princess,” the rich baritone answered.
“Enter, my gaoler,” Rosamund said. After all, she could scarcely deny him. She braced herself for an unpleasant interview.
“Scarcely your gaoler, my lady.” Count Sonor entered “Say rather, your host.” But his smile belied his words and told her that he relished his task.
No, worse—his smile was unctuous, his eye glittered. Rosamund’s heart beat more faintly at the sight, for there was a gloating air about the nobleman that made her demand, “Have you news for me, milord?”
“The best.” Count Sonor’s eye flashed with malice. “King Drustan has put down the rebels and will ride home in triumph tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 9
Rosamund fought to keep her composure while panic screamed within her. When she could trust herself to speak, she asked, “What of the queen and the princes?”
“The king has accorded Durif Castle to Her Majesty as her royal residence,” Count Sonor told her, “with a company of soldiers to protect her, four ladies to wait on her, and a dozen maids in attendance.”
“Alas, my lady!” Rosamund whispered, turning away. She knew a sentence of imprisonment when she heard one. The thought of that brave, daring spirit shut up within four stone walls, never to go forth again, made her heart ache in sympathy. She had heard of Durif Castle—small, even cramped, with no courtyard and a garden only ten paces’ walk in either direction. It was scarcely larger than her own moated grange— but it was all of stone, hard stone, and the only entrance was through the gatehouse.