The Silver Rose

  “Very well. I accept,” he said, then added grudgingly, “Thank you.”

  The queen smiled as though she knew how hard wrung those words were. She eased herself stiffly behind the desk and reached for a piece of blank parchment. As she dipped her quill in the ink, she said, “Now about the troop of men I propose to assign—”

  “I want no men,” Simon interrupted.

  Pausing with her quill suspended over the paper, the queen frowned up at him. “If this coven is growing as large as you fear, you will find yourself badly outnumbered. What do you propose to do when you corner this witch? Simply command her to surrender?”

  “No, I have always intended to seek help from the church or ask one of the local seigneurs to lend me some of the men from his land.”

  “This matter is far too important to be left in the hands of priests or a pack of peasants. I will assign Captain Gautier and his guard—”

  “No!” Simon said more forcibly. “I learned to my cost years ago how difficult it is to control mercenaries like Gautier. Soldiers more concerned with fattening their purse than dispensing justice, slaughtering, looting, burning, consuming the innocent along with the guilty.”

  Catherine pursed her lips. “Very well. We shall leave this matter of soldiers alone for the present, until you actually find this sorceress.”

  Bending closely over the parchment, she squinted as she proceeded to write out the document. Simon watched in disgruntled silence as the quill scratched across the page. The queen finished with surprising swiftness, despite the number of times she had to stop to painfully flex her fingers. As she sanded the ink dry, she said, “I would recommend you begin your inquiries at the Brass Horse Inn. I assume that is why you are there, because of Lucie Paillard. You made reference to the girl in one of your reports.”

  “Yes, but that was over a year ago. And her parents know nothing,” Simon added hastily, lest the Dark Queen be tempted to order the Paillards’ arrest. The unfortunate couple had already suffered enough on account of their daughter. “I have thoroughly examined the innkeeper and his wife myself. They are completely ignorant of their daughter’s whereabouts, have not even heard from her in over a year.”

  “Unfortunately, I have.”

  “What?” Simon asked sharply.

  The Dark Queen heated some red wax and dripped some onto the bottom of the document near her signature. Scarce able to curb his impatience, Simon waited for her to continue, but he had a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, a premonition of what Catherine was about to say.

  “Lucie Paillard was the one sent to poison me with the rose. She appeared in the crowd outside Notre Dame, disguised as a street vendor. She would have escaped the same way, had I not the presence of mind to have her detained.”

  “And where is she now?”

  “She was my guest at the Bastille for a while, but the warder’s entertainment of her was a little too rigorous. The girl died while being questioned by de Varney’s men.”

  No one died from merely being questioned, Simon was tempted to retort. Although he had never resorted to such methods himself, he could well imagine what the warder’s questions had involved, the rack, the boot, whips, thumb screws. Simon had despised Lucie Paillard for the callous way she had abandoned her babe, allowed Luc to freeze to death on that barren hillside. But to be slowly, brutally tortured to death . . . Did anyone deserve such a fate?

  Once Simon might have believed so, or convinced himself that he did. Now all he could think of was Colette Paillard with her trembling mouth and sad eyes. He wondered where he’d ever find the courage to tell that frail woman what had become of her only child.

  “So did de Varney gain any information by this—this questioning?” Simon asked caustically.

  Catherine affixed her royal seal to the bottom of the document. She hesitated before answering, “The girl did provide one clue. Right before she died, she said that the Silver Rose has possession of . . . the Book of Shadows.”

  Simon’s breath stilled. “The Book of Shadows? How is that possible?”

  “You tell me. You were the one who let that book vanish the night of the fire at the inn.” Catherine lowered her lashes. “Or so I have heard rumored. Then you ransacked Faire Isle in search of it.”

  “That is because I believed the Comte de Renard had taken it.”

  “Obviously, you were wrong. I strongly suggest you search both your memory and any records you made of that day. Figure out who else was there at the inn, had the opportunity to steal the book, and you may well unmask our clever Silver Rose.” Catherine slowly rolled up the document. “The Book of Shadows is said to be a grimoire full of the most deadly spells ever conceived, but written in an ancient language, not easy to decipher. This sorceress has already learned to brew a powerful poison. If she is able to unlock any more of the book’s secrets, I need hardly tell you the kind of danger we all will face.”

  “No, Your Grace,” Simon murmured. Alarmed as he was at the thought of the Book of Shadows being in the Silver Rose’s possession, other equally disturbing thoughts raced through his mind. For a woman who insisted she was not a witch, the queen knew a damnable lot about both the Book of Shadows and what had transpired at the Charters Inn that night.

  Simon had always been afraid the Dark Queen might read his thoughts. He had never expected to find himself in the position of reading hers.

  “Damnation,” he thought. “She wants that book for herself.”

  Now, not only did he have the Silver Rose to defeat, he was going to have to thwart the Dark Queen as well. For a man who had already found himself on shaky ground, Simon felt as though he had suddenly sunk up to his waist in quicksand.

  As Catherine bound the document neatly with a thin black ribbon, she said, “As soon as you discover who the Silver Rose is and where she is hiding, report to me. Do nothing until I give the word. This arrest must be handled properly. I want both the sorceress and that book brought straight to me. I—I will not rest easy until I see that dangerous text destroyed for myself.”

  “Of course, Your Grace,” Simon said, thinking that he’d consign the Book of Shadows to hell before he ever surrendered it to the Dark Queen, even if he had to convey it there himself.

  Catherine held the rolled commission out to him. “Keep in close contact, Monsieur Aristide. I should not like to have to send Captain Gautier looking for you again. I have many worries and difficulties weighing down upon me. If you succeed in ridding me of this one, I shall be eternally grateful. You may name your reward, ask any favor you like.”

  Simon merely arched one brow at the offer. As he accepted the document from her hand, he could not refrain from reminding her. “You once made similar promises to my late master. The cold dark of a grave was his only reward for serving you.”

  “That was none of my doing, but the Comte de Renard’s. Alas, I fear acquiring such deadly enemies is a hazard of the witch-hunter’s profession.” The queen smiled blandly up at him. “I trust you are better at guarding your back.”

  “Oh, I will be, Your Grace,” Simon said, baring his teeth in a smile of his own. “I promise you.”

  ———

  IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT by the time the queen’s ladies helped her ready for bed. Sensing Catherine’s dark mood, the women spoke in hushed voices instead of their usual chatter. Catherine scarce noticed them, her energy focused on subduing the weakness of her own body as she eased painfully into her nightdress.

  She ached and throbbed in every joint, the journey to Chenonceau having taxed her to the limits of her endurance. In her youth she had been a skilled and intrepid horsewoman. But those days were long gone. Hampered by her age and weight, she now had to suffer being jarred along on a litter for days on end.

  If the journey itself had not battered her enough, she had been further drained by the meeting with Le Marle and his friends. Huguenots, Catherine thought with a grimace. Such a dour, serious, and persistent thorn in her side.

  The St
. Bartholomew’s Day massacre had been a nightmarish debacle, going beyond even what she had intended. Inflamed by her, the Catholics of Paris had gone on a rampage of riot and murder that had lasted for days and left Catherine with much blood on her hands and piles of bodies stacked along the banks of the Seine.

  Her reputation further blackened and that of France as well, at least Catherine had congratulated herself that she had stemmed the rising power of the Protestants. But the Reformed religion had continued to spread like the plague. Once it was contained in the southwest corner of France, mostly within the borders of Navarre, but now there seemed to be enclaves of Huguenots everywhere.

  As far as Catherine was concerned, men might worship however they pleased as long as they did it quietly and made no trouble for her. But unfortunately these Protestants provided the perfect excuse for enemies to meddle with her kingdom under the excuse of religious zeal. The pope, the king of Spain, and worst of all the duc de Guise.

  The duke was demanding the king meet him to cede all control of the military to the Catholic League and to outlaw the Reformed religion completely. God rot the arrogant and ambitious man, Catherine thought bitterly. So many times she had been tempted to take care of de Guise after her own fashion. A little morsel of something slipped into his wine cup or the tip of a poisoned arrow lodged in his back. She was only restrained by the realization that if the duke met his death in any mysterious or violent manner, it would be laid at her door. He was so beloved in Paris, the entire city would rise up in revolution. Both she and her son would have to flee for their lives.

  No, Catherine reflected sourly, the meeting would have to take place. Most likely her weak-willed son would retreat to his hermitage and leave Catherine to deal with the duke and she had nothing to bargain with, no weapons unless . . .

  Unless she could gain possession of the Book of Shadows. It was a slim and desperate hope, but the only one left to her. Catherine was confident she could unlock the ancient book’s dark secrets if only she could get her hands on it. Then what unlimited power could be hers, what freedom from fear, the threats of de Guise, even the ravages of time on her own body.

  She’d had some of her own agents searching ever since the incident in Paris, but her best hope of finding the Silver Rose, of recovering the Book, rested with that clever witch-hunter. But she trusted Aristide no further than he did her. She feared he would destroy the book the moment he found it. That was why she had commanded Captain Gautier to shadow the witch-hunter, keep close watch without Aristide being aware of his presence.

  “Your Grace?”

  A soft voice recalled Catherine from her troubled thoughts. She found Gillian Harcourt at her side. Catherine’s eyes were so bad tonight, the woman’s face was little more than a blur as she presented the tray with the queen’s nightly posset.

  The brew was of Catherine’s own concoction, designed to take the edge off of her pain and allow her a little sleep. Quite often, it did neither. As Catherine sipped from the silver chalice, wincing at the posset’s taste, she reflected glumly that she had always been better at concocting poisons than she was at the healing arts.

  Not like the Lady of Faire Isle. Catherine was surprised to feel a pang at the thought of Ariane. Enemies, they had been, but at least Catherine had always been able to depend on Ariane to be forthright and honest, her motives pure. And that was a rare quality in anyone.

  Sometimes Catherine feared she had set the entire world out of balance when she had allowed the Lady of Faire Isle to be driven into exile. A great sin for any wise woman, one that had left Catherine cursed and that was why nothing had gone right for her ever since.

  Draining the rest of the posset, she shivered and gave herself a brisk shake. Lord, what a superstitious fool she was becoming in her old age. As she returned the cup to the tray, Catherine was annoyed when her hand trembled.

  Gillian reached out to steady the cup before it tumbled to the carpet. “Your Grace is very fatigued this evening,” she murmured solicitously. “Your meeting with the witch-hunter must have been very trying.”

  Catherine merely grunted.

  “I don’t know what service Your Grace requires of him, but Simon Aristide can be a very difficult man. I would be happy to—to help you with him.”

  “How? By seducing him?” Catherine gave a contemptuous laugh. “My dear Gillian, you weren’t able to keep the man in your bed when your looks were at their peak. Considering the extent of your charms these days, you’d be lucky to hold his attention for five minutes up against the stable wall.”

  The queen turned away, trudging wearily toward her bed. Otherwise even she could not have failed to note the courtesan’s blistering look of hatred and resentment.

  ———

  GILLIAN GROPED her way across the palace grounds, stealing a nervous glance over her shoulder. As near as she could tell, her stealthy journey through the gardens had gone unnoticed, her dark cloak helping her to blend with the night, the hood pulled far forward to conceal her blond hair and the pale oval of her face.

  But she didn’t know why she was so anxious, Gillian reflected bitterly. Sometimes she thought she could march brazenly out the main entry instead of slipping out the kitchen door and none of the guards would remark upon it. Strange how as a woman grew older and her beauty faded, she became all but invisible.

  Besides, it was not the guards who worried her. She could fob them off with some tale of a secret assignation, stealing out to meet a lover. But should the queen ever become aware of these nocturnal wanderings of hers—

  Gillian stifled a squeak of terror as she blundered into something solid and the Dark Queen herself loomed before her. Pressing her hand to her thumping heart, she gazed up at the statue bathed in moonlight. An eerie and unusual likeness of the queen, it depicted her with snakes entwined about her skirts and arms.

  Gillian shivered. Her Majesty had always possessed a strange sense of humor. Who else but the Dark Queen would have herself immortalized in such a macabre fashion like some—some God-cursed Medusa? The statue’s eyes regarded her with a blank stony stare. A little fogged like the queen’s eyes herself often were these days.

  But unlike some of the queen’s other ladies, Gillian was not inclined to discount her mistress’s faculties. She had lived under the power of the de Medici gaze for too many years. As a young girl, she had been mesmerized by those dark piercing eyes, lured into the queen’s service with the promise of more excitement and riches than she would ever know as some man’s wife.

  Gillian had had her share of both, but any funds or jewels she had ever amassed had slipped through her prodigal fingers. There had never seemed any reason to be saving, not when her life at court was a constant whirl of diversion, intrigue, and the flattery of dashing men.

  But each morning when she looked in her mirror, she despaired as she found another wrinkle despite all the creams and ointments she applied. Her compliments and admirers grew less and less, as did the value the queen set upon her services. Once she had depended upon Gillian to charm some of the most powerful men in France. But the last lover the queen had commanded her to take had been a mere clerk, a servant in the duc de Guise’s household. Gillian had endured the man’s pudgy groping fingers and garlicky breath for nothing. The clerk had imparted little information of any value regarding the duke’s activities. The queen had unfairly blamed Gillian for that.

  But still Gillian knew that the queen would never let her go, not until she had used up all that remained of Gillian’s youth and beauty. Not until she became some dried-up old prune fit for nothing except to sit and stitch upon fine gowns intended for the queen’s younger, more vibrant ladies. No, she would never be free of the Dark Queen until those stony eyes were closed forever . . .

  “Psst. Gillian!”

  A voice hissed out of the shadows, startling her. Gillian caught a flicker of light from a grove of trees near the hidden grotto. She hastened in that direction to find a slender figure garbed in doublet and tr
unk hose. From a distance, the person might have been mistaken for a young page, but up close the lantern’s light revealed a sylph of a girl, so thin that if she turned sideways, she looked likely to vanish entirely.

  Brown curls tumbled about a long narrow face, her right cheek, portions of her neck, and her hands marred by scars. Nanette Scoville, once employed in the castle kitchens, had been badly scalded when a pot of boiling water had overturned.

  As Gillian approached, Nanette held up the lantern to guide her steps.

  “Lower that light,” Gillian whispered fiercely. “Do you want to be seen?”

  The girl did so at once. “You’re late,” she complained.

  “It was not easy for me to get away. I thought the queen would never retire.”

  Nanette looped one arm around Gillian’s neck to embrace her warmly. As she did so, the girl gave a huge sniff. Gillian stiffened and drew back, eying her warily.

  “Are you ill?”

  “It’s nothing. Only too much standing about in the night air.” The girl wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. “Never mind about me. What news have you for the Silver Rose?”

  The back of Gillian’s neck prickled with unease. Even though they stood alone in the garden, far from any prying eyes and ears, she wished Nanette would be more discreet, not utter that name aloud.

  Speaking as low as she could, she said, “I have good news, I hope. The time and place for the meeting with the duc de Guise has been set. Next month in Paris, at the Louvre.”

  “And they will all be there, the duke, the Dark Queen, and the king of France?” Nanette asked eagerly.

  “All of them.”

  “Oho!” Nanette chortled. “Our lady will be pleased.”

  “I fear she will not be pleased by my other tidings.” Gillian hesitated before confessing, “Simon Aristide was summoned to attend the queen tonight.”

  “What!” Nanette squawked.