This May Day, like all the others, she heard the birds singing. The scent of fresh-cut garlands wafted into the open window. The sky was misty with low clouds that already began to disperse, promising a sunny day for the celebrations of the May.
She had never felt so bitter.
"I cannot keep it in my head," she said, releasing the edges of the scroll. The family tree of the House of Monteverde rolled closed with a crackling rustle.
Her godmother looked up from her writing. "You must," she said simply.
They would be standing before the church door this morning, Raymond de Clare and Katherine Rienne. Before the bells rang midday, before the May pole was raised, before the crowning of the mock-king and the bonfires in the streets, they would be married.
Elayne stood up. She gazed out the window.
"Do you wish to join the May?" Lady Melanthe asked. "Take a few hours, then, and make merry."
"Thank you, my lady," she said. "I don’t wish to make merry."
She felt her godmother’s observant gaze upon her. She had not told Lady Melanthe that today was the day. She had not once mentioned Raymond’s name, though she thought perchance her godmother had guessed it.
"It is true that you would do better to put your mind to what you must learn. The time grows short," Melanthe said.
"I will learn it," Elayne said. "It is only a lot of Italian names."
"Elena," Lady Melanthe said softly, "your life there will depend upon what you know and understand."
Elayne did not like the squeeze of alarm in her breast. She lifted her chin. "I’m not afraid of those people. Cara is the one afraid. I’m not."
Her sister—her half sister, it was now revealed—had traveled up to Windsor and begged; gone down on her knees and wept before Lady Melanthe, pleading that Elayne be saved from a return to Monteverde.
Monteverde...Elayne had a faint memory of red-tiled roofs, of narrow alleys, of tall towers and mountains and misted water. Though she recalled so little of it, in the very silence that had surrounded her birthplace and Cara’s, she had understood something of the peril. She had never been so timid about life, so apprehensive of every shadow as her sister who had lived far longer there, but she was not utterly blithe. She did not want to go to Monteverde.
But Lady Melanthe had given her sister a look of the coldest ice and said there was nothing she could do. And Cara had cried and whimpered and sworn to kill herself before she would let Elayne go, but in the end she only sobbed and embraced her tightly. Then abruptly turned away, as if Elayne were dead already.
"Fear will not serve you," Lady Melanthe said. "Sharp wit and knowledge will serve you. God in his judgment provided that no child of Ligurio’s and mine would survive. Your own father would have been the successor to Monteverde if he had lived. Remember that you have worth in yourself—in your blood. You are their only heir."
Elayne turned sharply from the window. "Why did Cara never tell me of my father?" she demanded. "I thought we had the same father."
Lady Melanthe sighed. She put down her pen. "In truth we had hoped that you could grow up here in quiet and safety, and be spared a return to Italy. Though in hap that was wrong, to keep you from your birthright. We had our reasons. Both of us. The Riata...Elena, you should know that they searched for you. For some years they searched. We set about the rumor that you had died of a fever, and finally they ceased looking."
Cara had never told Elayne that she was born of their mother’s second husband, or who he was, or that she had even had a second husband. No one had made mention of what Lancaster’s clerks had discovered in their customary investigation into Elayne’s lineage on behalf of Raymond’s suit. She was directly descended from the ruling house of Monteverde. From the Lombard kings. She was the granddaughter of Prince Ligurio himself, by his wife before Lady Melanthe. If Elayne had been a boy, she would have been his certain heir. She was the last unmarried princess of the Monteverde blood.
Her head throbbed with the tangled history that her godmother tried to impart. Her own father had been murdered before she was born, a brutal loss of Monteverde’s only male successor. There was the family called Riata, usurpers who had grasped their chance at Prince Ligurio’s death to defeat their mortal rivals in the house of Navona and seize power in Monteverde. There was a quitclaim to the princedom that Lady Melanthe had long ago given up, and somehow it was devolved to the Duke of Lancaster. He had a claim, Elayne had a claim, the Riata had only the volatile sway of their own raw power—and the treasury of Monteverde was unthinkably rich, overflowing with silver from underground mines, with levies from trade with eastern potentates and oriental kings.
"Why were they looking for me?" she asked bleakly. "If the Riata rule now—why look for me?"
"Because a Monteverde should rule," Lady Melanthe said. "You should rule, and the people know it."
"I don’t want to."
"That is little matter." She made a small grimace. "We are pawns of our own heritage, Elena. The Riata hold their place because there was no one remaining of the true blood. Because they were ruthless enough to make certain of it."
"But now I am to marry one of them. This Franco Pietro." Elayne felt she was ensnared in a trance, illusory and menacing, with no means to wake and escape it. Her dark angel, having carried her through the little dangers and trials of Savernake, seemed to have deserted her now when she most needed him. "I don’t understand how the Duke could arrange for it. Why? If they want no one of Monteverde blood to remain alive!"
"Nay, they prefer you alive, my beloved. Alive and safely wed into the Riata. Navona is finished. You and the quitclaim that Lancaster holds are the only things that threaten them now. Once you are the bride of Franco Pietro, you give them—and their descendants—the final right to the throne they took by force."
"But why does the Duke of Lancaster care?" she cried. "What is it to him?"
Lady Melanthe smiled and shook her head. "It is gold to him, Elena. Gold and advantage. I have read the betrothal contracts—he has succeeded in trading his quitclaim and your dower for a right to tax the mines of Monteverde. Upon your marriage, he is in alliance with one of the richest states in the whole of Italy; he gains influence in Aragon and Portugal that he hopes will aid him to conquer Castile—as long as you favor him. And that is what I want you to remember—you have value. You can be more than a pawn. You do not have to dance to any tune they play for you."
"How? I don’t know how."
"Learn. You have a fine intellect, that I know—do not shrink from it now. Listen to what I tell you. Watch for those who claim to wield power, and discover who wields it in truth."
She pressed her lips together. "I suppose I will try."
Lady Melanthe rose. The rings on her fingers glittered. "You must do more than try. Let nothing escape your notice. You must beware of poison; you must distinguish between mere flattery and enemies who smile and compliment you as they plan your ruin. There are a hundred dangers!" She closed her eyes. "God forgive us, I see now that to keep you sheltered here was a grave mistake. There is no time to teach you all that you must know, Elena. Things will not always happen as you expect. Be ready for anything—be clever, be bold if you must, and act on the edge of a moment. Opportunities will come. Use your wits, and your nerve."
"Oh!" Elayne turned away, frightened. "Do everything that Cara has told me all my life I must not do!"
Her godmother’s cold laughter echoed in the chamber. "In very deed, Cara is not a fair teacher for you now. She was a fawn among wolves in Monteverde. But you—I have some hope."
"Yea, I am different, am I not?" she said resentfully. "An extraordinary woman! I only wish I were extraordinary enough to run away."
She thought Lady Melanthe would chide her for saying such a thing. Instead her godmother only said, "I did not want this for you, Elena. But it has come."
Elayne stared out the window. She listened as the church bells began to toll for midday, then broke into a clanging peal of c
elebration. She bit her lip and looked up at the carved stone at the top of the window, blinking hard.
"Be warned." Lady Melanthe spoke quietly, standing at her shoulder. "Never say the truth of what is in your heart. Trust no one, Elena. Trust no one."
THREE
The Knights-Hospitallers of Rhodes sweated in their black robes sewn with white crosses of Saint John, dark skull caps drawn tight under their chins, their tasseled rosaries clashing lightly against their swords with each roll of the waves. A militant order they might be, but they were no match for Countess Beatrice. The only things that seemed a match for Lady Beatrice’s piercing voice were the spaniel’s barking and Elayne’s memory of Raymond, which felt as if it grew stronger and more tormenting instead of dimmer as the distance between them grew.
The glare of the sun already heated the deck, reflecting a brilliant shimmer off the heaving surface of the Middle Sea. Elayne had departed England on Midsummer’s Eve, with great fanfare, aboard her own ship commanded by the sober Hospitallers, sailing with a convoy of thirty vessels bound for the cities of the south. Her bridal wardrobe filled the hold, along with gifts and strongboxes marked with the Duke of Lancaster’s seal and the King of England’s white hart. At the stern flew the red cross of Saint George and the white cross of Saint John, and atop the mast a pennant full twenty feet in length spread the green-and-silver colors of Monteverde across the sky.
None of this pomp moved the elderly Countess Beatrice and her testy spaniel. While Lady Beatrice had readily agreed to alter her mode of transport to Rome and lend her venerable countenance to Elayne’s protection—at a considerable increase in speed and comfort and no expense to herself—the Countess of Ludford seemed no more pleased than Elayne at the unexpected reversal in their positions. In spite of being on Christian pilgrimage, Lady Beatrice practiced unkindness as a virtue.
By the time they reached Lisbon, she had chased all of the handmaids to the lower deck, and insisted upon treating Elayne as her servant within the cramped confines of the ship’s castle. Elayne did not object to the labor; she was glad enough for some occupation on this dismal voyage, but nothing she did was done well or to the countess’s taste. In the night her lantern was too bright. In the day she did nothing to prevent the sun from overheating the cabin. It was Elayne who made the ship roll without mercy. She caused the spaniel to bark angrily at seabirds. Her step was too quick and her voice was too loud. When she tried to be slow and quiet, she was chastised for skulking like a snake.
It appeared that being a princess had no benefit at all that Elayne could fathom, beyond wearing a great deal of velvet and miniver in a climate that grew ever more sweltering, and being addressed by everyone but Lady Beatrice with a number of empty praises and compliments. She could not even write or read in the rough sway of the ship. Her only escape was into prayers of desperate penitence and petition to her guardian angel to turn back the months and let her become simple Elayne of Savernake again—humble appeals that were somewhat adulterated by the simultaneous desire to be turned magically into a falcon, fierce and ascendant, and fly away to some vague place that greatly resembled her own bed at home.
To no one’s astonishment the Countess of Ludford and the Knights of Rhodes did not accord. If the Hospitallers recommended a position midway in the convoy for the sake of safety, Countess Beatrice wished to sail at the periphery, to catch a greater breeze. If the knight-brethren suggested a Benedictine monastery as having guest lodgings that were clean and cordial in port, the countess insisted that she could not tolerate the inflated Benedictine order and could only rest easy with poor nuns. But the most painful disagreement arose from the fact that the famous fighting order of Saint John was divided into seven Tongues, its members drawn from all of Europe. The two Hospitallers appointed to command Elayne’s escort had the effrontery to be French, and no amount of hectoring or contempt could make them English.
Elayne spent most of her days holding a basin for Lady Beatrice. She saw nothing of the fabled Pillars of Hercules as the ship passed into the Middle Sea. Instead she was rinsing the countess’s wimple in tepid seawater and attempting to contrive some way to hang it to dry in the steamy cabin that rolled and creaked with every wave.
By this morning, five days beyond their last view of the Spanish shore, Elayne had long discarded the elegant fur and stiff layers of clothing that swathed the countess. She wore the simplest gray smock that she could uncover from her chests, with just a white scarf thrown over her head and bare shoulders for modesty. She had even put off her rings and dressed her own hair in a loose pair of braids wound up around her head and off the damp nape of her neck.
She gathered the remains of the countess’s breakfast and prepared to take it away. Lady Beatrice, in spite of claiming the seasickness held her prostrate, was sufficiently hale to finish the last of the Portugal wine and berate the Hospitallers for their incompetence. The knights stood just inside the stern castle, bearing the countess’s tirade with perspiring fortitude and a few scattered apologies, when they could insert one. As well they might, since this dawn had discovered the ship alone on the empty Middle Sea, with no sign of the convoy’s sails in sight.
No one seemed quite certain how this misfortune had occurred. Before Lady Beatrice had awoken, the two knight-brethren in command had hastened to assure Elayne, when she emerged for morning prayers, that a correction had been made in the ship’s compass. The convoy would be back in sight before midday, they reckoned.
The crusading Knights of Saint John were celebrated as the greatest fighting sailors on the Middle Sea, so Elayne supposed they knew well of what they spoke. Lady Beatrice was not as sanguine. Or at least not so forgiving, when furnished such an excellent opportunity for scorn.
"We can only pray to God that you are better warriors than seamen, when pirates fall upon us!" she declared. She bore a close resemblance to her snub-nosed spaniel in a temper, pushing up her lower lip while her jowls quivered with disgust. " ’Tis fortunate that the princess has chosen to dress like a miller’s wife—she, at least, may escape the notice of a pack of infidels who would relish nothing better than to abduct a Christian noblewoman such as myself!"
The knights murmured and bowed as Elayne moved past them out the door with her bundle of linen and soiled dishes. She thought there was a little shame in the glance that passed between them. Or it might have been amusement at the idea that any pirate could be unwise enough to abduct Lady Beatrice. Elayne gave them a sympathetic nod. She was in no haste to rejoin the convoy. If she could have an answer to her prayers, they would toss the compass overboard and miss her destination entirely.
* * *
She lingered below deck, helping her maids to rinse the plate in a great tub the sailors had hung from a beam and filled with seawater. None of them paid any mind when the first loud cry sounded overhead—it was common enough to hear the hails of the crew as they went about their business. Elayne swished a goblet through the saltwater. She paused as more shouts broke out. The sound of sailors’ feet thudded above them.
They all looked up.
The deck tilted. Her maids squealed as the ship lumbered into a sharp turn, wallowing down with a force that threw them all flat to the floorboards. Dishes clattered as the tub swung aside and came back with the force of a huge boulder, pouring water and plate thunderously across the lower deck as the vessel rose and fell.
Elayne lay stunned for a moment. The countess began shrieking orders from the stern castle above. The spaniel yapped shrilly and the maids succumbed to paroxysms of terror. Elayne realized that her foot was trapped in a tangle of hemp rope and pewter-ware. She had to duck, pressing herself flat to the flooded deck as the tub came swinging in her direction, pouring water over her back.
It only wanted this, she thought, but her exasperation dissolved into a flash of panic as the cry of "Pirate!" ran through the ship.
Pirates! For an instant, Raymond’s name hovered in her throat, as if he could somehow save her, but instead an
older guardian came, enfolding her in dark wings. She had no time to think or pray; she only knew that if she did not yield to the frenzy that surged up inside her, she could carefully relax her foot and wriggle herself free, sliding back from the reach of the massive tub.
She rose, drawing a deep breath. She clamped her hand over a maid’s mouth, stopping her wailing. "Hush!" she whispered. "Do you want them to discover us?"
The ship was lolling, the sails flapping loosely, but Elayne heard no sounds of fight or boarding yet. By fortune, none of the maids seemed to have been injured by the force of the swinging tub. They lay staring at Elayne in the dim light of the lower deck, their eyes wide.
"Conceal yourselves!" she whispered. "Under the bed-litter!"
While the maids scurried to find hiding places amid the bundles of straw and canvas, Elayne clambered up the ladder, pulling her wet skirts around her.
In the stern castle, the countess still screeched out hoarse directions while her spaniel barked. Elayne held on to the edge of the deck, craning out of the hatch. The commander-knights were nowhere to be seen, but the crew and men-at-arms lined the sides of the ship, crossbows and spears at ready. The green-and-silver banner of Monteverde hung limp, its fringed tip nearly reaching the deck. It fluttered and rose as the ship spun slowly, finding its way to the wind again. At first she saw no sign of any other vessel—then, as the ship’s sails filled, beyond the high structure at the bow she saw a bare mast. It too spun, the great spar rotating and tilting in the sun. The distant sound of men chanting drifted across the waves, a low hollow sound, terrifying in its regular deep timbre, as if fiends hooted their displeasure up from Hell.
Elayne gripped the hatch and bounded onto the deck. When she reached the mast, she could see a second pirate galley, the oars flashing, speeding toward them with a white spew of foam before it—as it rose on a swell, the apex of a vicious bow-ram split the air and then ripped through the water again, throwing spray aside like a racing sea monster.