She stiffened. The muffling blanket seemed to lift from her mind. She tried to push him away. "Raymond...don’t."
He released her with a faint sound. He took her hands between his palms, staring down at them. "I have been a very fool," he said hoarsely.
Her heart beat harder. In her wildest dream she had not hoped he would ever say so. But she pulled her hands away. "That is done with now. I had your vile letter."
He grimaced as if she had struck him. He looked up, his face tormented, and it was all she could command to prevent herself from leaning down and pressing her lips to his.
"Yes," he said painfully. "I did not know, Elayne. You shouldn’t have led me on so, to believe it was ever possible."
"Led you on!" she cried softly. "And what of me? Now that you have your banns and your widow for comfort!"
He scowled and looked away. "Don’t tease me for that, I beg you. What was I to do?"
"You might have stood by me," she exclaimed, "instead of disavowing me as meanly as you could!"
"Disavow you?" he said. "No, I never could. I never would, but my lord commanded me to abandon my suit."
"Commanded you? But your letter—you told me to make no presumptions upon you."
"Oh, that letter," he said. "I was angry. I meant it not, what a scribe wrote for me—you know that!"
"Raymond," she breathed. "Do not make a fool of me."
"Make a fool of you!" he snapped. "I’m the one befooled, Elayne! I’m the one fool enough to plunge in love with a country chit, only to be told she’s royal blood! I’m the one who couldn’t buy her hand with all the gold I could beg or borrow in my sorry lifetime. I’m the one ordered to marry a woman twice my years and shrill as a peahen, and do it before St. George’s Day!"
"What are you speaking of?" Elayne whispered. "I believe you have run mad!"
"Mad enough," he growled, "when my liege told me who you were in truth."
"Who I am?" she echoed, baffled.
"Yes, you need not deny it now. I know all. I submitted to him for permission to wed, and gave his clerk your name and dwelling, and thought no more of it but to await his blessing and then go to the Countess Melanthe. I suppose you meant it to be a good joke, to let me find out that way. And shamed I was, Elayne, to stand before my lord Lancaster and be told I was too lowborn to think of you. He was kind enough, God assoil him, but he made it plain. You’re his ward, and he has higher designs for you."
"His ward! What nonsense!" she exclaimed. "My ward belongs to the countess!"
"So I thought. But the clerk read it to me himself. Lady Elena Rosafina of Monteverde, that is you, is it not?"
She nodded. "It’s my font name."
"Wella, then you’re upon the rolls of widows and orphans in the king’s gift, and my lord John is appointed your guardian."
"No," she said. She drew in a breath. "That cannot be so. I know nothing of this."
"It is so."
"But—Lady Melanthe—she is my godmother. I always thought..." Her voice trailed away. "Raymond!"
He shrugged. "It makes no difference. You’re a princess. I’m beneath you."
"A princess! Have you lost your very reason?"
"A princess of Monteverde." His jaw grew taut. "I believe there’s some prince of the Italian blood he has in mind for you."
"No," she said faintly, bewildered.
He looked up at her. "You didn’t know?" he said, his voice wistful. "Truly?"
"I don’t believe it. There is a great mistake."
He smiled weakly. "That’s something, at least," he said. "I thought you had done it all to mock me."
She sank down onto the stone step. "I don’t believe it."
"Ask your godmother. She must know."
Elayne stared at him dazedly. "I don’t believe it." She put her fist to her mouth. "Raymond, this cannot happen. It’s a mistake. We must do something."
He looked hard into her eyes. "I have no means to change who I am, nor you."
"Do you have to marry her?" Elayne cried.
"I have no choice!"
"I can’t stand it!" she whimpered. "I can’t bear it."
He put his hand over hers. "We can pray to God for Providence to aid us. More than that...Elayne...fare you well." He turned.
"Raymond! Wait!"
She stood up, reaching for him, but he was already descended the curve of the stair and gone.
* * *
"I did not conceal her from His Majesty," Lady Melanthe said in a calm voice. Her tone was soft, but she sat very still in a carved armchair as she faced the Duke of Lancaster across a table laid with wine and sweetmeats. "She is not King Richard’s subject by blood or birth. Therefore her wardship was never eligible to be counted among the orphans in his gift."
Lord John glanced at Elayne huddled on her stool. "She greatly resembles you, my dear countess," he said, equally languid. "It’s quite astonishing."
Lady Melanthe nodded. "So I’m told, my lord. Though we’re relations only of the fifth degree, through my mother’s descent."
The duke smiled slightly. He was a striking man, graying at the temples, with powerful shoulders and finely molded hands. His scarlet sleeve swept the table-carpet as he gestured toward a folded document that dangled many seals. He looked toward Melanthe. "I still hold your quitclaim to Monteverde, Princess— after all these years."
"It’s yours, sir, and welcome," Lady Melanthe said.
"Mine?" He raised his brows. "But I have no income from it, nor sovereignty in your Italian princedom." He gave an amused snort. "Alas, I can’t even get a loan from the celebrated treasury."
"I did what I could to aid you," the countess said. "I regret that it was of no advantage to my lord’s grace."
"Ergo," the duke said, "it might be reasoned that you yet owe me."
"For what debt, my lord?" Melanthe asked instantly. She did not move, and yet Elayne thought her godmother grew taut as an unseen bowstring.
"Melanthe..." He said her name softly, like a mild reproof.
The countess smiled. "Come, don’t deny me, Your Grace," she said lightly. "I’m old and vain enough to wish to hear that you regret me still!"
"Not so very aged, madam." He grinned, a sudden boyishness on his hard features. "I vow you could make a lovesick calf of me again, were we both free."
Elayne realized with amazement that they seemed to be speaking of some past connection between them. She felt a twinge of disapproval on behalf of Lord Ruadrik.
"We might have done much together, my lady," the duke said, his smile fading. "I’ve regretted it, from time to time."
"No, sir. You’re made King of Castile and Leon by your Duchess Constanza, may God bless and keep her. What could I have ever brought you to match that?"
"Ha. Now you mock me," he said. "I’ve no more dominion in Spain than in your Monteverde. But you and I—and our lands united here..." He shrugged, then narrowed his eyes. "You do owe me a certain debt, my lady, for your love-match with my green knight."
"I don’t see it," she said. "You dismissed Lord Ruadrik from your service into mine. None could foretell that God willed I’d be wedded to him by and by."
He made a sound of discontent. "I dismissed him, yes. And nothing did go well for us after that cursed tourney at Bordeaux. Perhaps I should call him back to our service, and make some use of him to recover our losses in France."
Lady Melanthe said nothing. The duke looked at her long.
"Would that please you, my lady—to have your husband lead some archers into Aquitaine?"
"Lord Ruadrik is at the behest of His Majesty," she said, her eyes meeting his steadily.
"Do not forget it. You may argue that this girl is not our loyal subject, but don’t fail to remember that you now are."
"Certainly," she said, unruffled.
He sat back, drumming his fist upon the table. He turned his look suddenly upon Elayne. "Have you a sweet, child." He pushed the platter of sugared nuts and tarts in her direction. Sh
e glanced toward Melanthe, who nodded. Elayne took a handful of lozenges and looked dumbly down at them.
"I don’t think they’ve been poisoned," the duke said dryly.
She ate several, forcing them down against the anxiety in her throat.
Lancaster took up a parchment, narrowing his eyes and holding it out at arm’s length to read it. "You aver, then, that the King has no claim to her guardianship," he said.
"We do," Lady Melanthe said. "I am her guardian, appointed by my late husband the Prince Ligurio of Monteverde, God assoil him."
"Alas, His Majesty does not concur. He asserts that she has been given succor and safe harbor in England these many years since forsaking Monteverde, and therefore claims her as his rightful subject. By his good judgment, His Majesty has been pleased to affix responsibility for her lands and person upon myself until such time as she may be legally wed."
Elayne bit her lip, but her godmother did not flinch. "His Majesty may be interested to discover that Lady Elena has no lands nor income but what I intend to bestow upon her at my chosen hour," Melanthe said. "Will he persevere in his opinion when he learns of this?"
"He will," Lancaster said. He bowed his head toward Elayne. "He has a great affection and concern for the last princess of Monteverde, now that her location has been revealed to him."
"How much did you pay him?" Melanthe asked frostily.
He folded the parchment and smoothed the seals. "His Majesty would not entrust the young lady’s welfare to me for less than three thousand crowns. Of course her merit renders it but a trifling sum. Arrangements for her marriage and return to her rightful throne have been well in hand since Shrovetide." He smiled and nodded at Elayne. "We will do favorably by you, child, I promise."
* * *
From Lady Melanthe’s solar, Elayne watched the maidens of Windsor returning with their armloads of sweet blossoms and sheaves of greenery. This May Day, like all the others, she heard the birds singing. The scent of fresh-cut garlands wafted into the open window, 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 his bride. 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’s 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’s 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. "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 wasn’t 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’d hoped that you could grow up here in quiet and safety, and be spared a return to Italy. Though perhaps that was wrong, to keep you from your birthright. We had our reasons. 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 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’m 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!"
"No, 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’s gold to him, Elena. Gold and advantage. He’s succeeded in trading his quitclaim and your dower for a right to tax the mines of Monteverde. Upon your marriage, he’s in alliance with one of the richest states in the whole of Italy; he gains influence in Aragon and Portugal that he hopes wi
ll 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 don’t 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—don’t 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’s no time to teach you all that you must know, Elena. Things won’t 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."
"Yes, I’m 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 didn’t 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 celebration. She bit her lip and looked upward, 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."
* * *
Elayne departed England on Midsummer’s Eve, with great fanfare, aboard her own ship commanded by the sober Knights-Hospitallers of Rhodes, 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.