“What?” she asks, seeing the councilors’ horrified looks. “Do you think if you ride out on your chargers with shield and banner flying, they will simply confess to you their strategy?” She snorts. “Do not be absurd. But they will never expect a woman, for who is more invisible than a camp follower or laundress? No one notices a woman’s comings and goings.”
Beast looks as if he wishes to put his head down on the table and weep. Or perhaps lock Sybella up in her chamber for the next few weeks.
Duval sends an apologetic glance Beast’s way. “Very well. But be careful, and if there is any sign of trouble, get back here immediately. Find out how many troops they have, what engines of war they bring, how many cannon, if any. We need to know precisely what we are up against.”
Sybella curtsies, then quits the room, grateful, I think, to have some action to perform. Unlike the rest of us, who must wait and wonder.
“Should I go as well?” I offer belatedly.
“No.” Duval gives a decisive shake of his head. “I want one of you to stay with the duchess.”
“You think France will make an attempt on her life?” Captain Dunois asks.
“No, but I am not willing to stake her safety on that.” Duval turns to the window and rubs a hand over his face. Between Isabeau’s death and this, he appears to have aged ten years in a single night. “There has been no word from Ismae?”
It is not clear whom he is asking, so I glance at the abbess. She gives a curt shake of her head, then realizes he cannot see it. “No, my lord. There has been no word. But as it was not a convent-sanctioned escapade, I do not expect she would be in contact with me.”
He sends her a searing glare that would shrivel a lesser woman, then turns to me, his face more gentle. “Have you heard anything?”
“No, my lord.”
“Very well. But if you do, send word to me immediately. I have promised my sister I will help with the funeral arrangements.” At the words, a fresh wave of grief passes across his face. He is such a good tactician, so great a strategist, that it is easy to forget he is also an older brother who has just lost a sibling.
There are a hundred small details to be seen to in order make certain that Isabeau is laid to rest with all the honor and respect due her as a princess of Brittany. She was beloved not only by Anne and her family but by the people as well.
The duchess is so pale as she works with her ladies to prepare Isabeau’s body that I fear she will fall ill too. The young princess is dressed in her favorite gown of crimson velvet, and Anne herself braids the pearls into her long brown hair. On the day of Isabeau’s funeral, the cortege carries her to the great cathedral in Rennes, where she is buried beneath the choir.
I have not talked to Balthazaar. It is too hard to think of him as Death since the night He—no, he—carried Isabeau away. It is nearly impossible to reconcile my roguish, moody hellequin with Death. I climb the stairs, moving slowly. I am still uncertain of what to say, how to be with him. I cannot treat him as if he were still simply Balthazaar. And yet, the idea of treating him as formally as I would Mortain feels equally wrong, for we have been much more to each other than that.
The thought has me blushing. To have lain with a god and not even known! Truly, I am three kinds of fool. But looking back, I feel as if my heart has always known. How else to explain that sense of recognition, of connection, that I felt at our first meeting? Is that even possible? For our hearts to know things that our minds do not?
Would he ever have told me if I had not asked him to escort Isabeau? That is one of the questions that has been tumbling around in my mind for the past three days. Was he trying to trick me? And why does he carry my arrow with him?
My fear is that I somehow called him to me, much as Arduinna binds hearts with her arrows, and that feels like another sort of trickery all its own. One that I never intended.
And how will we ever be together again? It was bad enough to have fallen in love with a hellequin, but to fall in love with Death? Surely there can be no happy ending to that story.
When I reach the battlements, I take a deep breath, then step outside, grasping my skirts firmly so that I will not feel the trembling in my hands. As I make my way to the shadowed corner, all the clever things I have thought of to say, all the burning questions I have wrestled with coalesce into one: Why me?
Unable to help myself, I slow my steps before I reach the corner. As I take another deep breath to fortify myself, Balthazaar’s low deep voice rumbles out into the night. “I wondered if you would ever return.” While his voice is teasing, I can hear the thread of true worry that underlies it. Then he steps out of the shadows, onto the catwalk.
“My lord.” Without conscious thought, I start to drop to my knees.
“Stop.” The feel of his hand grasping my arm startles me into silence.
I long to look up, to see his face, to try to discern if he is angry or amused or any of a hundred possibilities. But I am too embarrassed and feel far too foolish.
“Do not treat me differently now. Please.” The annoyance and frustration in his voice sound so much like Balthazaar that it is almost possible to forget all that has transpired.
I sigh. “I do not know whether to rail at you in anger or beg your forgiveness.”
He lets go of my arm. “Most likely there will be both before we are done, but know this: You have nothing to ask forgiveness for. It is I who tricked you, although I did not intend it to be a trick.”
I do look up at him then. “What was your intent?”
His dark, depthless eyes study me a moment, as if he himself is perplexed by the question. Then he goes to lean against the parapet and stares out into the night. He runs his hand through his hair, and in that moment, he is so much a man rather than a god that the tight iron band around my lungs loosens somewhat.
“Once, I was so much a part of both life and death that time had no meaning for me. My existence was as much about beginnings as it was endings. People recognized that death was part of the journey, not some grim punishment meted out for one’s sins. But over time, and with the help of the new church, my existence narrowed so that all I was and would ever be was Death. Oblivion, at best, and at worst, eternal hellfire and damnation. Everything that gave purpose and meaning to my existence was stripped from me.”
I grow very still.
“I had been reduced from a god who brought death with one hand and used it to create life with the other to a demonic specter of the night used to frighten people into complying with the new church’s beliefs. I found myself the ruler of only half a kingdom, and it was the terrifying, feared half.”