Royal Blood

by Rona Sharon

Genres: Historical Romance

Synopsis

In the Tudor Court of 1518, your friends and enemies can be one and the same. . . During the annual celebration of the Order of the Garter, Sir Michael Devereaux arrives in King Henry VIII's court on a mission for his benefactor. The celebration's endless feats and sumptuous women delight the charismatic newcomer, who becomes captivated by the enigmatic Princess Renée of France. But evil, it seems, has followed Michael to the court. Shortly after his arrival, an unknown killer claims several victims, including the Queen's lady-in-waiting, and the powerful Cardinal Wolsey asks Michael to help with the investigation. As he searches for the killer, Michael is haunted by disturbing images of the victims--flashes of violence that lead him to doubt his own sanity. Michael soon realizes that the key to solving the crime is connected to both the Pope's Imperial vault in Rome and a mystery from Michael's own past--revealing a secret that is so damning, it could forever alter the future of mankind. Powerfully evocative and steeped with detail from the breathtaking era of the Tudors, Royal Blood is historical storytelling at its richest--an unforgettable tale of intrigue, passion, and danger.

Release date: March 30, 2009

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 497

Sample

In front—a precipice;

Behind—wolves.

—an ancient Roman aphorism

Tiltyard at Castle Tyrone, Ireland, 1518

“Again!”

The command was followed by a clap of thunder.

Michael slammed his visor shut and stormed into combat. Rain sheeted the marshy, torchlit lists, rendering him near blind. After hours of training, his arms throbbed from holding the lance and shield, his leg muscles burned with the effort of keeping his hot-blooded destrier at a straight gallop. The earth shook beneath the thundering stallions as mighty hoofs plowed through sludge. Dreading the collision and despising his fear, Michael couched his lance at his sinister opponent, armored in black steel cap-à-pie and bearing down on him like a dark chthonic force.

Aim low, then at the last moment strike the helm, the Earl of Tyrone’s instructions resounded in Michael’s head. Strike the helm, the helm…

The shocking blow to his own helmet prized Michael out of the saddle. He crashed into the squelchy ground, whence he had risen moments before, in an ungainly heap of armored limbs.

Mud splotched the grille of his visor as massive hoofs reached his sprawled form and reared up, threatening to fossilize him in the midden. With an oath, Michael recoiled on capped elbows and spurs, glaring up at Sir Ferdinand, Lord Tyrone’s shadow. “Blood from a stone!” the raspy voice mocked him. The raven visor turned toward the shrouded figure observing the joust from a recess inside the barbican. “Your incompetent sunflower is not ready! He will never be ready!”

Michael felt murderous. Yes, he had lost, again. But he could cudgel Ferdinand for drubbing him and then deprecating him to the great lord who had reared him as his own son and legal heir. Only killing Sir Ferdinand would be akin to slaying a mountain; the knight was indestructible.

Michael fell back on the pulpy alluvium, exhausted and dispirited. Rain drummed his visor; cool rivulets sluiced his face. The storm was gathering force. Dusk bled into night. Squinting at the donjon, its diamond panes glowing brightly beneath the darkening welkin, he fancied a long hot bucking by a roaring fire, a flagon of mulled wine, a juicy hunch of mutton, a pliant wench…

“Again!”

The terse order sliced through his aching head, jolting his battered bones. The varlets’ strong hands hauled him up and set him aright. He wrenched himself free from their steadying grip and trudged, clanking, to the end of the course. Pippin, his manservant, bridled his horse. Archangel snorted, shook its armored head, and stomped its feet in protest, fetlocks deep in mud.

Michael gentled the destrier with petting and praise. “One last time, and we will have done, O great one. My word upon it.”

He swung onto his weary horse with a metallic clang, his muscles groaning at the ongoing torture like rheumatic joints on a withered nun. Pippin handed him the lance and buckler with his usual word of encouragement. “You will fell him this time, master. I know you will.”

“The left shoulder.” Michael eyed his complacent adversary. “He protects his heart.”

“A delicate heart, eh? Forsooth, that is a point in his favor, for I doubted he had one.”

“Aye, ’tis black as his suit of armor—and his soul.”

“God smite him,” Pippin muttered scathingly.

Michael steered Archangel to the starting line. The signal was given, and he was hurtling up the rain-battered course at full tilt, the sloughy ground quaking beneath Archangel’s hoofs. The heart, the heart, Michael thought, focusing on the magnificently wrought black breastplate.

A heartbeat later, he was on his back in the muddy puddles. His left shoulder hurt as if it had been ripped from his body. He shut his eyes tightly. He felt…routed, peppered, unworthy.

Sir Ferdinand drew rein, laughing viciously. “Mind your own heart next time, sunflower!”

The authoritative voice in the tower rumbled, “Put him on his feet and bring him to me!”

 

Michael, divested of his armor and a good deal of aplomb, leaked mud at the threshold to the castle’s eyrie at the top of the bastion. His noble protector’s preferred haunt was constructed after the Pantheon in Rome, an architectural marvel with a rounded dome and a skylight carved out of its center that formed an interior waterfall when it rained. A gilt gridiron set in the black marble floor drained the rainwater into the support pillar around which the tower stairwell spiraled and straight into the castle’s water reservoir. Here, the Earl of Tyrone, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and England’s bulwark against a Celtic uprising, came to study the heavens through his teleskopos.

A plethora of horn lanterns set in the rotund wall paid homage to marble busts of gods and emperors and to the arms man had wielded on battlefields since the birth of time: The twenty foot long sarissa Alexander the Great conquered Asia withal; the Roman gladius that taught the old Greek world Latin; the francisca that shattered the shields of the legionaries and catapulted the Roman Empire into darkness; the crushing Norse mjolnir, the bane of the Saxons, the Celts, the Franks, and the Iberians; the Mongol short bow that kept vast territories under Genghis Khan’s thumb; and Don Álvaro de Zúñiga’s innovative espada ropera, the light blade ushering the future.

Tonight, as it rained, instead of standing beneath the center skylight, training a rock crystal on a comet, the earl prowled round the cascade. “Trounced today, battered yesterday, and barely held your own with the sword the day before. You outwit your tutors in every discipline. Why can you not outmaneuver Sir Ferdinand in combat? The annual chapter of the Noble Order of the Garter approaches, Michael. My honor is at stake here, as is the future of my house!”

Michael shifted restlessly, his gaze on his toecaps, his conscience trammeled by unpalatable failure. It took all he had to drudge up the galling admission. “He is stronger.”

“Brains carry a man further than might, Michael! It would behoove you to know this!”

Setting his jaw, Michael lifted his eyes. “He knows my next move before I make it.”

“Then outthink him, damn you! Can you not keep your thoughts under lock and key? Must the secrets of your mind be an open tome? Did I waste two decades of my life teaching you the quadrivium, training and instructing you in the games of kings to be thusly disillusioned?”

Michael remained silent.

“Ferdinand knows that the future of my house depends upon you. He pushes you to excel.”

Michael bristled. “He pushes me to commit murder, my lord.”

“Alas, my only son was destroyed on a foreign battlefield years gone, and the gods have not blessed me with other offspring—until you came along. Your noble sire, who fought like a lion and died for his king at Blackheath during the Cornish rebellion, had sworn me to take his son, begotten off a second wife, and raise him as I would mine own, for fear his heir would reject a half sibling. He did not swear me to embrace you to my loving bosom and set you up as my legal heir, but I saw a bright-eyed lad, quick and sharp and steeled. I thought, ‘Here be my son, here be the man unto whom I shall bequeath my lands, chattels, and the honor of my name, my heart and soul and all that I am! Here be my future’!” The earl circled the waterfall, hands clasped behind his back. “I did not expect you to fell Sir Ferdinand. He is stronger, a bloody-minded bull who would sooner crush a lit candle than snuff it out. He has fought a thousand battles and lived. I expected you to persist! To take his blows and jolt his confidence! That was the point of the exercise! Now you come to me with your head downcast, all pity-pleading and beaten…”

Stoically Michael straightened his back. He had his lord’s inches now, yet, heart-burned, he felt shorter than a mouse. Tyrone gazed at him grumpily, fondly. “Ferdinand has his weaknesses, greater than yours. I want you to attend this year’s knightly chapter. It is important to me.”

Michael blinked in surprise. “You would still send me to court?”

“I would send a champion!” Tyrone’s dark eyes glinted. “Swift, cunning, and ruthless in his devotion to me! Indomitable. Unstoppable. Relentless. Are you this man? Or has the precocious boy I have nurtured to become the Seventh Earl of Tyrone traded his tiger spots for a plumule?”

Michael sensed without being told that his lord and mentor expected more than words from him, an assurance of sorts, some proof of his commitment and wherewithal.

“The greatest battles are not won on battlefields, Michael. They are predetermined in council chambers and ladies’ beds, in courtly banquets and tournaments, in the nursery and…up here!” He tapped his temple with a finger. “An illustrious general may win the battle and lose the war. In contrast, a downtrodden soldier who takes the worst punishment and rallies for another battle will triumph in the end. Remember the Battle of Cannae, Michael. When the Carthaginian army led by Hannibal slaughtered Varro’s army on Italian soil, the Romans, incapable of stomaching defeat, withdrew, recovered, and returned at full strength to ultimately obliterate Carthage to all eternity. Survival is the key. If beaten, retreat, regroup, and rally—and never ever give!”

“Give what, my lord?”

“Give up, give in, give out…Never! Till your last drop of blood! Do you understand?”

“I do.” Michael swallowed. “Command me to London, my lord. I will do you credit.”

“You will pledge it? You will do for me as I did for you?”

“More. I swear it.”

“Upon your honor, you will serve none but me and let not temptation lead you astray?”

“Temptation, my lord? What could possibly tempt me to violate my pledge to you?”

Tyrone’s mouth twisted wryly. “Think you I am ignorant of how you soothe your mind and body at night? You spill your vigor into wenches and souse your head with wine. You grin?”

Michael schooled his features. He could have sworn he had curbed the very emergence of a grin. Yet his lord was a master at diving thoughts. “I had as lief die than fail you, my lord.”

“Attend me, Michael. The rule at court is simple: Enthrall but do not love; be loved but do not become any man or woman’s thrall. Be a Spartan in an Athenian pelt, or all will be lost.”

“I know my duty.” Michael drew his dagger and knelt before the earl. “In blood I pledge my ever-binding fealty to you.” He fisted the sharp-edged blade and was about to wrench it hard.

“Spare your hand. You will have need of it.” Tyrone seized the dagger and walked over to a table laden with a gold chalice. “Come. Let us observe the proper rite of initiation. My son.”

 

Pain and desiccation harbingered the sunrise. Michael came awake parched, sweaty, and in a state of excruciating agony. He shivered violently with cold, his skin burned, his heart palpitated madly, his brain screamed in torment, as if a thousand heated pokers cut through his flesh, and he was overcome with irrational terror. A roar of anguish tore from his throat to echo throughout the vaulted passageways, halls, staircases, and chambers of the vast castle.

The door to his bedchamber opened. Cáit, the pretty maid he bedded on occasion, rushed in to light candles. Pippin barrowed in an iron casket on a pulley and left it by the bedside. An old man marched over to examine Michael. He wore a black houppelande, a hoary beard masked half his face, silvery hair flew down his back. Dark eyes gleamed at Michael. “Hold him down!” he told the servants. “Laddy, my name is Donough O’Hickey. I will make you well again.”

Michael thrashed wildly, flinging battle-hardened limbs pellmell and arching fitfully off the mattress. Semidelirious, he fought the invisible hellhounds tearing him to shreds from the inside out like a baited bear. His two attendants lost the battle in restraining him.

“Jesu, he is burning up!” cried Cáit.

The old man took charge with superior strength. He jabbed one of Michael’s eyelids open, felt his forehead, and probed at his mouth. “As I thought, food poisoning, same as His Lordship.”

“Food poisoning?” Cáit exclaimed disbelievingly. “Looks more like the Sweat to me.”

“I will give him a physic to cleanse his bowels of venom. Leave us. You may return later to clean him up. But mind, his ailment may not pass for a sennight. Food and drink are prohibited. He may only drink my physic until he is fit.”

Michael howled in frustration. “Seven nights like this?” Cursing at the violent pain ravaging his mind and body, he glared at the old healer and growled, “Get this thing out of me now!”

Cáit patted his arm tentatively. “My dearest lord—”

“Come away, Cáit. Master O’Hickey knows his business.” Pippin towed her out, the mere mention of the sweating sickness sprouting wings on his back.

The Irish healer removed a precious Italian glass bottle from the casket. “Alack, the serving wench had the right of it. I did not care to stir up panic and mayhem, for you and His Lordship are afflicted with the sweating sickness. This is the second stage of the disease. Cold shivers, aches and burns, apprehension, perspiration, delirium, megrim, heart palpitations, and intense thirst.”

“The Sweat!” Michael lunged up, mad with terror. “You dotant! Why conceal the truth from my servants? They will infect the vill! Have you no care for babes, Celtic tinker?”

“Fables! The contagion is in the blood. The old sages knew it, but their wisdom was torched by savages. The disease is venerius vrulentus. Know you Latin? What is vrus, lordling?”

“Poison,” Michael chocked, agitated, feverish.

“Precisely. You have consumed natural venom that had been put in your food, such as blood of a sickly rodent. See, I was partially untruthful with the tasty wench. You cannot infect others with your breath. Nor with skin contact. The illness lives within you. Your blood is dying. If it is not treated, you will perish in three days. Recovery may take seven nights. What is your choice?”

“Life!” A stab of pain arched Michael off the bed. When it subsided, icy tremors seized him.

“Interesting. That is the usual preference among my patients.” The motley-minded O’Hickey shoved a hand beneath Michael’s head and put the mouth of the bottle to his lips. “Drink this.”

Panting, Michael complied. His first gulp of the medicament nearly ripped the inside of his throat. “Hell’s broth! What is it? Blood and uisce?” Instantly he craved more.

“The blood of Grendel’s mum! He-he-he… Lick your throat, did it?” O’Hickey cackled. “It is dragon’s blood, a cordial of sweet wines, crushed pearls, lead powder, marshmallows, salt of Amen, coral, elder leaves, sorrel, linseed vinegar, worms, marigold, meadow plant, feverfew—”

“Enough!” The old rook’s imbecility of mind was exacerbating his sufferance.

“Certes, if my potion is not to your taste, I could leech you. That is what they did last year in London when the plague smote them. They bled the sick three days afore they burned them.”

Michael snatched the glass bottle and drained it in a long swallow. Sweetness suffused him. He fell back on the pillow, gasping for air, and closed his eyes as the palliative effect of the thick brew spread through his tormented body, soothing his flesh, his mind, his spirit…

“You will want to sleep now, little lord, but harken well. My lord of Tyrone says you are to England for the St. George’s tournaments.”

“I doubt I will partake of aught but my own funeral…” Michael heaved.

“In a sennight you will be as good as new. Better than new. You have a casketful of bottles and will need every drop to carry you through your adventures. Once a day you will have a fierce thirst on you, mayhap twice. Drink and be merry but do not let anyone find you out, nor transfer the contents into another vessel, for the elements will lose their curative qualities if not contained in glass. You may feed and drink properly but do not wet your drouth with aught else.”

Michael realized the dotard had the right of it. None could know he had the plague, not even Pippin, who was to accompany him to court. His thoughts drifted. Through the mist he heard the Irishman say, “Ah, the forest of dreams beckons, and the worst to affright now lives within….”

 

Michael’s eyes flicked open at the sharp pricking at his gullet. Darkness filled his vision, but within two heartbeats he gained focus. A polished blade of a sword reflected silvery moonbeams. A shadowy form loomed over his bed. “Cockcrow in two hours, sunflower,” Ferdinand informed him, malevolence thickening his raspy voice. “King Henry’s court awaits your incompetence.”

A woman moaned sleepily; a rounded bottom wiggled against his naked hip. Ah, Cáit. After seven days and nights of sweaty delirium, of ravaging pain inflicted by inner fire and imaginary stropped blades, of fighting off the effects of the poison with the remedy prescribed by the Irish healer, Michael emerged from his sickbed hungry for life. However, his fête was premature. He felt ill and thirsty all over again. He ached for O’Hickey’s draught.

“Healed, sunflower?” snarled the bane of his existence, his sword point intentionally keeping Michael away from the glass bottles stored in the cupboard. “You are swyving harlots while your liege lord is dying.”

“There is no shame in living, you spayed ox!” Michael growled. His triumph over death was eclipsed by his lord’s ongoing battle with the disease. But what could he do? Tyrone would not see him. Stealthily he wound his hand in the sheet and reached for the dagger stashed under the mattress. Of a sudden he lunged up, deflecting the sword from his neck and pressing the dagger to his archrival’s black heart. He met Sir Ferdinand’s stunned gaze at eye level. “Rouse me at the tip of a blade again, and I will execute you, with or without my Lord Tyrone’s permission.”

“A harmless thunderbolt, a vain threat, a voice and nothing besides! We will meet again on the combat field upon your return from court! I will not be merciful as I have been hitherto!”

Michael shoved past him and sauntered to the cupboard across the spacious bedchamber. He ripped the doors open, grabbed a bottle, unsealed it with his teeth, and poured its contents down his throat. Cool air blew on his bare back.

“My lord would see you!” Sir Ferdinand growled from the entryway, and slammed the door.

Gasping for air, Michael leaned back against the wall and savored the sweet relief flowing in his body. His skin felt hot and febrile, the once pale complexion resembled a roasted swine. He knew he should be thankful, for few who were struck down with the Sweat survived it. It was a marvel he lived at all. Yet how could he journey to England, knowing his noble protector might never recover and that he might never see him again? And how would he prevail over the king’s champions in his dismal state? He would not last a single course in the lists. He would disgrace his lord’s insignia, lose Ireland to some trencher-knight, and make a laughingstock of himself.

Fortune favors the brave, Tyrone had taught him. Michael’s mind cleaved to the maxim as the Irish villagers drew faith from their crucifix and weeping deities. Moments ago he had bested his archrival for the first time. Mayhap his luck was changing. He had to believe it.

“Come back to bed,” Cáit whispered drowsily. “I’ll give you a proper send-off.”

His thirst slaked, a familiar hunger awakened. Michael came over and flung the bed linen off her curvaceous softness. He flattened his hands on either side of her and climbed in between her warm, parted thighs. “We’ll have to be fast,” he murmured, and invaded her lush country.

 

A mere shadow of a great man, the formidable Earl of Tyrone looked deathlike in the tawny candlelight silting his bedchamber. Tapestries depicting ancient battles swathed the stone walls. Swords, axes, and chieftain shields hung over the cold fireplace. Michael had not seen his worthy lord since the night he had gone up to the eyrie, the night they had both contracted the Sweat.

“Michael.” Tyrone extended a feeble hand.

Michael knelt down beside the bed and clasped the veined hand in his. His gaze darkened on the ugly incisions marring the skin along Tyrone’s wrist. “O’Hickey leeched you? Why?”

“Make me proud at King Henry’s court. Bring honor and glory to my house…and all that is mine shall be yours, riches and power beyond your wildest imaginings.”

Terrible sorrow possessed Michael. “You are dying….”

Tyrone found the observation amusing. “I am old. Certes I am dying. I have been dying for a long time. Pale death kicks with impartial foot at the hovels of the poor and the towers of kings. Oh, if only Jupiter could restore to me the years gone by…. I vow I shan’t depart this life ere I see you again.”

Michael drew a breath. “My lord, any words of wisdom to see me through the games?”

“Words of caution: practice modesty, gallantry, and reserve. Invite not the probing minds to meddle in your affairs. Conceal your purpose. Let no man discover your malady, nor its remedy. Keep your own counsel. Love not. Trust your senses and do not be afeared. I have given you the best of mine, my knowledge, my strength. Use my gifts wisely, discreetly. Here, take my ring. It will be your amulet. It belonged to my great Roman forebear who came to Britannia with the Ninth Legion and conquered a future under the golden standard.”

Emotion choked Michael. He had never seen the ring leave the earl’s forefinger before. The Tyrone arms under which he would compete in the tournaments displayed a rampant red eagle with golden talons over black. The emblem etched in the gold ring was of a serpent with the head and breasts of a woman and the wings of a dragon. Reverently he removed it from the anemic hand and slid it onto his. Anticipation flavored with apprehension urged him to be on his way.

“I suggest you conceal this ring from the eyes of the court, for the pagan symbol may offend their Christian sensibilities and condemn you to suspicion and reproach. Remember, you are no fondling, Michael Devereaux, future Earl of Tyrone, though you may seem so. Appearances may deceive, words may deceive, and even actions deceive. You will see what others cannot. You will know their lies. You will taste their fears and desires. Use them, beguile them, but never let yourself be fooled. Let not idle pursuits deflect you from the course you are on. I took a fearless boy and forged him into a fearsome man. What you most desire is always within your grasp.”

“I’m your liege man. I feal to you in all things, my noble lord. Your desires are my desires.”

The earl’s dark, sunken eyes gleamed with pride and affection as he patted Michael’s head. “My golden boy. You are a good son, dutiful and clever. You know what you have to do.”

Splendidly false, nobly untruthful.

—Horace: Odes III

The Royal Château in Amboise, France

“Move your feet, little whore!”

Princess Renée de Valois of France, wishing the varmint taking her by the arm ten fathoms deep, staggered out of her apartment with a sheet wrapped around her nude body. Mortification cooled her fury as she caught sight of the sea of goggling eyes, noble and common, enjoying the spectacle: the late King Louis’s youngest daughter being dragged in dishabille along the gallery like a condemned prisoner to the execution block. Bedraggled, quivering, ebony tresses tumbling in a tangle to her waist, she lacked only the crown of nettles to complete her shame.

Behind her, her beloved Raphael was being marched by the royal guards, his untidy clothes smeared with multihued paints, for he had been interrupted while creating a new masterpiece for which she provided the subject matter: Froward Renée, whom the court would henceforth dub “the wanton princess who shamed the Valois,” had been posing for a Venus.

The Duke de Soubise, her tormentor, smiled with cruel satisfaction as the crowd parted to clear a path for them toward King Francis’s apartment. Renée held her head high, deploying the majesty impressed upon her by Queen Anne of France, Duchess of Brittany, her dearly departed mother. She disregarded the leering faces marveling at her degradation; she ignored the orphaned girl inside her, desperate to crawl into a hole and weep. She had none to blame but herself.

Soubise had merely taken advantage of her foolish temerity. It never occurred to her that the besotted old lecher, whom she deemed an innocuous pest, would burst upon her with guards issued by Long-Nose. Alas, while she had been savoring her first affaire de coeur, the great love of her life, Soubise had been plotting his coup de grâce down to the last detail. She was doomed.

Renée remembered the sweet-tempered, dutiful little princess she had once been. That girl would never have conceived of taking a pauper for a lover, but she had not been herself since her mother passed away three winters hence. She loved her sweet mother, heart and soul, and would gladly have traded places with her rather than endure the pain of watching her waste away of an illness. King Louis, upon glimpsing his youngest daughter’s grief the first day of her mother’s funeral, ruthlessly commanded Renée to compose herself, muttering in her ear, “If a single tear should roll upon your cheek in the common gaze, you will cease to be a daughter of mine.”

Queen Anne’s funeral lasted forty days. Forty days of hell during which Renée mourned her mother’s demise in secret, in terror of discovery, and in absolute solitude. Afterward, in the spirit of her mother’s fiercely independent nature, she cut the reins imposed on her by a heartless sire, becoming refractory, bold, and feisty insomuch that King Louis felt hard-pressed to contract an immediate new marriage alliance for his fifteen-year-old shrew of a daughter. As her betrothed, Prince Andres of Navarre, had died in battle, her royal sire settled on the aged Duke of Lorraine, who thereupon accommodated Renée in passing away before the ink dried on the settlement. Oh, he could have married her against her will, but he knew she would be back within the month and that he would have to bear the brunt of whatever trickery and mischief she had applied to be free.

She distinctly remembered her father telling her that she would be the death of him when no other groom could be found to take her off his hands. A war had been declared between them. To wear her spirit down and convince her to seek refuge in the arms of a husband, he kept her at his side, employing her in all sorts of tedious matters of state that tested her fortitude and patience.

Two years later he had lost the battle and perished. Of exasperation, Renée presumed, albeit others claimed that his aged body expired from “overexertion in the bedchamber” while in the throes of his last desperate attempt at begetting a male heir off his third and very young wife, Lady Mary Tudor, King Henry VIII of England’s sister, who had become Renée’s bosom friend.

“Froward Renée,” King Louis called her at his deathbed, an epithet that had somehow found itself into the mouths of the court and stayed with her. “You think you take after your mother, but it is I you resemble. Were it not for Salic Law, which precludes women from ascending to the throne of France, I would see you on mine, my daughter.”

“My sister Claude is the eldest,” Renée reminded him. “She has precedence.”

“And the wits God gave a cow,” her father stated with disgust. “Claude the Cow.”

Not once did Renée miss him after his death.

Lamentably, as soon as Long-Nose inherited the crown, she had a new betrothed. A German prince, rumored to be crablike and malformed. She disposed of him easily. Well-placed whispers as regards poison effectively put him off the idea of marrying her. King Francis was outraged.

“You look fetching, Renée, a veritable goddess of love,” said the decrepit Soubise, smacking his lips. “Although I prefer you nude, as you were a moment ago. A feast to mine eyes.”

“Your eyes will be the first items I cut out, imbecile!”

“This is the Lady Marguerite’s influence. She has odd notions of a woman’s place at court. All that free thinking and free spirituality and free love…”

Renée shot Soubise a sulfurous glare. Lady Marguerite of Angoulême, King Francis’s older sister, was a patroness of the arts, of humanists and reformers, a poetess and an author of plays. Her acclaimed salon, the New Parnassus, had become Renée’s haven after losing her royal parents to God and her older sister Claude to a new husband and an elevation to the throne of France. There she had transformed from a lonely, malcontent, introverted girl to the lady she was meant to be. “I am certain His Majesty will be interested in your opinion on his lady sister, Soubise.”

“You mistake me, ma petite. I’m grateful to my king’s lady sister for delivering you into my clutches. Fear not, we’ll continue to practice her notions of love indefatigably. They would say at court, ‘The radiant young princess of the violet-blue eyes has become the loving lady wife of—’”

“An ancient wittol with maggots for brains!” She let out a cry as tentacles bit into her flesh.

“Better me than no man, for no illustrious prince would have you for a wife, Princess Lust.”

She made the mistake of glancing at him—seeing the covetous lust in his rheumy eyes, the spittle foaming in the corners of his mouth, the sagging dewlaps of his pockmarked visage—and almost retched. A more repulsive creature did not exist at court.

Her bare feet pattering along the cold stone, Renée looked back at the swarthy young man prodded onward by pikes at his back. Raphael, save us! Her eyes spoke in silent supplication. Her lover’s head wilted. Was he crying? His frailty incensed her, disgusted her. As much as she admired his artistic gentleness, at that moment she needed him to be the stronger of the two of them. Then it dawned on her that his penance would be much worse than a hair shirt, for he, a common painter, had dared to carnally know a princess of the blood.

As a rule, a lady caught with a lover who was not her husband was banished to a nunnery—a lady caught in bed with her spouse became an object of ridicule—and the lover paid his dues in a duel instigated by either the horned husband or the enraged father. As for princesses of the blood, the matter was a trifle more complicated. Certes, daughters were less welcome to their royal sires than sons, but they were useful currency in acquiring thrones and land, as in the case of Renée’s mother. A princess’s maidenhood was a valuable national asset.

Renée, an unwed princess, was setting a precedent in taking a lover, and a nonentity at that. Custom dictated that her defiler be charged with high treason and put to death. Poor Raphael. What did he know of court intrigue, power plays, and betrayed confidences? He was but a poor painter from a village in Perugia, who carved out a life for himself by the skill of his brush. She would have to defend him, but how? Would King Francis spare Raphael if she surrendered the two boons he was after—her body and a renunciation of her claims to the duchy of Brittany?

You fool, she could hear her royal sire berating her, have I taught you nothing?

“Here we are,” the Duke of Soubise announced as the royal bodyguard thrust open the doors to the king’s privy chamber. Keeping her spine ramrod straight, Renée walked in.

King Francis sat at a table with his sister Lady Marguerite. Cardinal Medici lounged in the bay window. Renée’s sister, Queen Claude, was conspicuously absent. Soubise nudged Renée to the center of the luxurious chamber, genuflected fulsomely, and launched into a detailed account of the compromising scene he had come upon. Explaining about the painting would be pointless, Renée knew, for she would be subjected to a physical examination. The king and his sister wore flinty expressions. Suspicion buzzed in her head. In his peroration, the toadying, impudent duke magnanimously offered himself as her savior in marriage. King Francis dismissed Soubise with an ambiguous promise to consider his suit and ordered the guards to place Raphael under arrest. Lady Marguerite sent a page to fetch Renée a cloak and shoes, for which Renée was grateful.

Still their dignified astonishment did not ring true.

King Francis cleared the chamber of his attendants so that only Marguerite, Cardinal Medici, and Renée remained. “We are appalled!” he blasted away at her. “Your wantonness shames us in the eyes of the world! Neither maid nor wife, your name a scandal, your honor slain—we are of a mind to exercise the severest form of penalty. Henceforward your ample dowry and annuity are revoked, your defiler will be trialed for high treason, and you will marry the Duke of Soubise!”

Renée, practicing the sangfroid bequeathed to her by her royal sire, listened and wondered how Long-Nose expected to govern France when a child could see through this charade. The son of a minor French prince, Francis of Valois came to the throne by right of birth strengthened with his marriage to Claude. Though he was generally considered a humanist and a man of letters, Renée knew him to be a man of slight morals. Her father once told her that when something looked like a trap and smelled like a trap, it was a trap. Soubise’s catching her en flagrante delicto was no accident.

“Your Majesty.” She sank to her knees, head bowed penitently. “She who is undeserving of your bounty and grace kneels before you in shame, humbled by your benevolence.”

Her quiet submission threw her spectators into a confused silence. Cardinal Medici stepped away from the bay window. “Does she speak English?”

“She is fluent in English, Latin, Greek, Spanish, and Italian,” Lady Marguerite replied.

The cardinal lifted Renée’s chin. “Are you intimate with personages at the English court?”

Renée studied him charily. Pope Leo X’s first cousin and designated successor, raised by his uncle, Lorenzo Il Magnifico of Florence, the godfather of the illuminated era they lived in, was not the transparent buffoon Long-Nose was but of her sire’s ilk. “I correspond with the Dowager Queen of France, the newly remarried Duchess of Suffolk. Lady Mary and I are friends.”

The cardinal helped her to her feet. “Show me your teeth.”

Renée was taken aback. “Am I a horse—”

“Do as His Grace bids you, insolent girl!” Lady Marguerite scolded.

Renée’s amazement doubled. So, she thought, Soubise spoke the truth. Lady Marguerite had a hand in this. Sweet Jesu! Was Raphael involved as well? No, his petrifaction had been genuine. He loved her; he would never betray her. In contrast, Lady Marguerite was low and deceitful. Simmering with resentment, Renée offered the cardinal a toothy smile.

“Good, good.” He nodded. “Now remove the portmanteau….”

Her eyes narrowed into slits. “I am cold.”

“It would take a minute, no more.”

Reluctantly, she dropped the cloak.

“And the bedsheet.”

Renée felt her jaw slackening. She jutted her chin defiantly. “I refuse.”

“Then we will summon a guard to do it for you.” The Lady Marguerite snapped her fingers.

Renée flushed. She wasn’t timid—she was livid! How dare they insult a princess of France? Thoughts flew like darts through her head. She glowered scornfully at King Francis. The lustful degenerate had untiringly attempted to unclothe her for months. It galled her that he should now get his wish, leastways part of it. “By the rood, what is this about?” she demanded to know.

“None of your concern, at the moment,” the cardinal replied calmly. “The sheet.”

“Guards!” Marguerite called, jolting Renée.

“Call them off!” Renée hissed. She did not stir until she heard the doors close. If these three jades insisted on examining her as one would a broodmare, she would give them a good show of backbone. Her revenge would be all the sweeter for it in the end. They truly had no idea whom they were dealing with. She leveled a cool gaze at the cardinal, burying her humiliation in a dark place, and, with a smile of contemptuous superiority, efficiently divested herself of the sheet. It sashayed off her body to pile at her ankles. “There.” She straightened her spine unabashedly, a gesture that made her small breasts jut. She wanted to die. “Do I please Your Graces?”

Cardinal Medici perused her swiftly and looked away. “Tell me of her character.”

King Francis, who short of rape had done everything within his power to lay her and failed, scrutinized her at length. She felt his lascivious gaze slide over her breasts, belly, mons veneris, thighs, and legs like unwanted hands. “She has all the wiles and guiles of an expensive whore—”

A gasp of indignation escaped Renée’s lips. The lying cur!

“—the proud willfulness of her mother, and the deceitful practices, tricks, and stratagems of her sire,” King Francis added bitterly, his eyes on Renée’s body.

The cardinal searched her eyes. “How many lovers have you had, Renée?”

She sucked in her breath. “I am not a whore!” she ground out emphatically, not the least bit cowed yet exceedingly froward. “If you think to push me into the bed of a poxed—”

“Just the one,” Marguerite replied for her. “She fancies herself in love with the painter.”

Cardinal Medici shot Francis a glare. “Experienced in the art as a professional cortigiana?” What false promises had Long-Nose made the cardinal and why? Renée cared to know. “Mayhap it is better this way. Men can tell the millage on women. Pure-looking is good.”

“Pure!” Lady Marguerite huffed. In millage she surpassed a hackney—and knew it.

“I am chilled,” Renée clipped. “I would be of no use to you if I died of lung rot.”

“You may cover yourself,” the cardinal permitted. As she wrapped the sheet and cloak about her, he said, “The Florentine ambassador described you as a delightfully witty, educated girl of angelic beauty and grace, a replica of the queen your mother, which you are. He said you were not for the distaff and praised you for knowing the secrets of diplomacy. Has she talents, skills?”

“She declaims playwrights, philosophers, poets, and theologians from memory,” Marguerite replied curtly. “She dances and sings skillfully and accompanies her singing on the lute. She has an eye for art and is a sharp cardplayer. There is no end to her artful accomplishments.”

A direct hit! Renée could have strangled the woman she had hereto considered her doting benefactress.

“Convent-bred?” asked the cardinal.

“Fah!” Marguerite fleered. “Queen Anne refused to part with her little talisman. After Her Grace died, King Louis took an interest in the girl. He called her ‘my precocious child, created in my image.’ She became the keeper of his secrets and a shrewd dissembler. I do not know what he hoped to gain by sowing her mind with needless information. He created a most disagreeable creature no prince would have. A woman to be treated with caution, Your Grace.”

Renée seethed. She was nothing like her father! She was her mother’s daughter! “Jesu, pity! What is it you want from me? Let us speak of it and be done!”

“Pray do not expect her loyalty,” Marguerite added. “She keeps faith with no one.”

“I kept faith with you!” Renée cried bitterly. “How confoundedly imbecilic of me!”

“Her loyalty is the least of my concerns, for that can easily be bought.” The cardinal took a seat behind the table and filled a goblet with wine. “She is very young. That is my sole concern. Albeit…her purity and inexperience make her the perfect instrument, for who would suspect a fresh young thing to be anything other than what she appears to be?”

King Francis looked pleased as a swine in mud. “Sister, we should like to offer you a way to redeem yourself in our eyes and regain our favor.”

Aha! The negotiation part, at last! “Am I to be sent to a nunnery?” Renée asked tartly.

“The good Lord offers sinners countless ways to redeem themselves,” Cardinal Medici said. “A girl who wishes to atone for the sin of licentiousness takes the veil, but you are not penitent, are you? You regret getting caught.”

Renée smiled pertly. “Mayhap I should atone for my sin of incompetence.” She was already in so much trouble she doubted her insolence could exacerbate her situation.

“You shall have ample opportunities to atone for that, my dear.”

“Install you in a nunnery!” Long-Nose, as always a step behind, scoffed. “How long before you escape to your mother’s relatives in Brittany and raise an army against me, hein?”

“I would never commit treason against France!” Renée vowed, and meant it.

“Let us discuss your reward.”

“My reward?” Renée blinked in surprise at the cardinal. What had she missed?

“Should you succeed,” he clarified.

“In what?”

“I will double your annuity,” Long-Nose announced.

“As payment for doing what?” she dogged. This could not be good for her health.

“And your lover will be spared,” the cardinal interposed. “Upon your successful return.”

“My return? From England?” Her heart drummed wildly. “But Your Graces will not tell me until we have set a price and I pledged my collaboration.”

“Very good,” the cardinal praised.

“I told you she was shrewd.”

“I am not a whore!”

“This is not an office for a whore,” Cardinal Medici assured her.

“I refuse regardless.”

“Refuse now and your punishment will be as I have decreed,” Francis replied. “Soubise, the death of your lover, and the loss of your annuity and dowry, mayhap even a charge of treason.”

“Consent and you will profit. However”—Cardinal Medici’s enticing tone turned flinty—“should you accept our offer and renege at a later date, your punishment will be death.”

“You expect me to state my price and make my decision before I know the particulars?”

“Once our negotiation is concluded, we will have passed the point of no return,” Cardinal Medici emphasized. “Should you fail and try to flee…”

“I never fail,” Renée muttered dismissively, her mind feverishly weighing the pros and cons. How far would she go to secure her future? “Would I be asked to commit a mortal sin?”

“You will be asked to perform a holy duty,” Medici asserted.

“Is spying on the English a holy duty?” she countered challengingly. She was aware of the risks she was running in conducting herself in this fashion, yet they were testing her.

“We are not asking you to spy,” muttered the cardinal. “Yes or no? Decide now.”

“If I am caught, the English will execute me. If I refuse, you will execute Raphael. If I fail, you will kill me. So, in effect, my only recourse is to accept your assignment and succeed.”

“Yes!” the cardinal and the king responded cheerfully as one.

“In that case, I demand the duchy of Brittany and Raphael’s freedom as my reward.”

“You cannot have Brittany!” Francis thundered as Marguerite cried, “The nerve of this girl!”

Renée glared unflinchingly at Marguerite. “You are not the one being asked to risk her life.” She regarded the king and the cardinal. “Whatever you would have me do, I set Brittany as my prize. Once my ‘holy duty’ is performed to your satisfaction, the queen my mother’s titles and estates will be restored to me with a royal assurance that the right of succession will be passed to my issue, in female line. I will then leave your court and your realm.”

An angry muscle twitched in King Francis’s jaw. “The duchy of Brittany is within my realm, as it was within the realm of the king your father!”

“As decreed by Semi-Salic Law, the duchy of Brittany belonged to the queen my mother.” Renée listed all the arguments her mother had plagued her father with before and after they were married. Her sire, resolved to absorb the duchy into his dominion, bribed Pope Alexander VI for a dispensation to put aside his wife, Queen Joan, and bullied Anne of Brittany into marrying him. Queen Anne refused until death to sanction the marriage of Claude to Louis’s heir, pushing instead for an alliance with Luxembourg and for Brittany to go to Renée. Nevertheless, with his single-minded ruthlessness, Louis saw to it that the marriage of Claude and Francis took place in the year following Anne’s death and kept Brittany within the grasp of the French monarchy.

“You cannot have Brittany,” King Francis repeated decisively. “You shall be paid in gold.”

“One has no use for gold within a prison. I would have my independence or nothing at all.”

“This nothing includes Soubise,” he reminded her. “And the death of your lover.”

“So be it.” Renée fixed him with her notoriously stubborn glare.

Cardinal Medici seemed displeased with King Francis’s maladroit handling of the matter. “I should like to remind Your Majesty that his contract…with the Medici Bank—”

“My dear Cardinal Protector of France!” cried Francis. “I won’t pay for your triple tiara with civil war. For all her false vows of loyalty, once this malapert has Brittany, she will recoup her mother’s sovereignty and break from France. I will lose a considerable share of my taxes and have a Franco-Breton war on my hands. No amount of Florentine gold is worth the trouble.”

Renée smiled. Medici gold in exchange for trebucheting Medici into the chair of St. Peter’s. She was eager to see which one of them would cave in first. Her purse was on the buffoon.

“You may have the duchy of Chartres,” Long-Nose relented, as expected.

Pedantically she replied, “His Majesty has already dowered me with Chartres.”

“Revoked! But, if you are satisfactorily obedient, we shall let you keep it.”

“May I be excused?” Renée stared him in the eye. “Soubise is waiting.”

The cardinal glared at Francis, who grudgingly offered, “Chartres and lands near Nantes.”

Was it his last ditch-stand, Renée wondered, or would the millions in gold the Medici Bank of Florence was willing to pay to instate another Medici pope after Pope Leo X moved to higher pastures prove too tempting to refuse? “Your Graces, I fear me you have placed too great a store in my capabilities. I am but a woman—frail, docile, meek, ignorant of the world—”

“Fah!” said Marguerite. “A headstrong trickster is what you are!”

“What if I were to disappear somewhere between France and England and never return?”

“You could, but then you will have forfeited Brittany, as well as your lover, and be forever on the run,” the cardinal reasoned softly.

Renée plunged on. “If I refuse, I die. If I fail, I die. If I succeed, I shall be in mortal danger. Your Graces leave me with little to lose. Anything short of Brittany is not worth the trouble.”

Long-Nose addressed the cardinal. “How will you compensate me for Brittany?”

“Double the figure we agreed upon.”

“Treble it.”

“Done.” The cardinal beamed. “My dear girl, you will travel to England, perform your holy duty, and upon your return, you shall be vested Duchess of Brittany.”

“And Chartres,” Renée amended. “I require this in writing, validated with Your Graces’ seals, and I will be vested before my departure.” She smiled prettily. “If it please Your Graces.”

Marguerite’s face turned beet red. “You…impudent, insubordinate, froward girl!”

Yes, always froward. Renée sighed, dreading to hear what precisely she had agreed to.

Cardinal Medici offered her a wine cup. “Here’s to the success of your mission, Your Grace!”

Renée forced herself to sip, not gulp the calming rosé and prayed she would not become the shortest-living duchess in the history of Brittany and Chartres. “Your Graces, now that all is settled between us, I should like to know the particulars of my assignment. Surely you would not be so generous were I to merely spy on the English, for I am confident you have ambassadors aplenty.”

“All in good time,” said the cardinal, and sent for one Lieutenant Armado Baglioni.

What could it be? Renée’s brain spun with possibilities. “Am I to steal the queen’s jewels? The Great Seal of England, perchance?”

“I would send a thief for that.”

“Poison the Lord Chancellor?”

The cardinal laughed. “I would send a poisoner. Ah, Lieutenant Armado. Madame, meet the commander of your personal bodyguard.”

The Italian officer bowed. A pendant dangled from his neck. It was a gold cross over black. Renée eyed it with interest. “Your family emblem, Lieutenant?”

“No, madame. The insignia—” A hiss from Cardinal Medici hushed him.

She snort. . .