Blood Ties (36 page)

Laughter greeted his Majesty’s question.

‘It seems so, Father.’

‘And do you love her, my Little Bear?’

Tagay looked down at the face that lolled against his shoulder. ‘Beyond measure, my King.’

There was a murmur, especially from the ladies of the court. Diane de Poitiers, the King’s favourite mistress, was standing just behind him. She laid a caressing hand to his neck.

‘Majesty, is it not our duty, as ambassadors of love, to help our Little Bear in his plight?’

The King smiled back at her. It was well-known he could refuse her nothing. ‘How fares she, Tagay? Will she survive her fall?’

‘I think so, Father. But I would get her to a bed and swiftly.’

More laughter, the King leading it. ‘I am sure you would, Tagay. But be gentle with her, heh? She might yet break.’

Commands were issued, stewards sent ahead to prepare a room, physicians called.

‘Go now, and attend to your love, Little Bear. And we will send to inquire how the lady is later.’ The King turned back to his court, raising his voice. ‘Well, dessert has been overthrown by love. What a pity. But as we are discussing little bears, I believe we have another to attend to here.’

They had all forgotten in the new excitement. They returned to the killing ground behind them as Tagay went the opposite way, bearing his burden toward the palace, shrugging off the grasping fingers of the Marquise who angrily tried to delay him. As he entered through one of the great doors, he heard the hounds’ baying begin anew, heard the deep-throated grunt of the chained bear.

‘Die well, brother,’ he said quietly. ‘Die well.’

Her sleep was almost unbroken, through the night and long into the morning. Tagay had allowed the doctors to set her arm, her only serious injury, though her left side was badly bruised. Then he had dismissed them all. It was he alone who attended her when her eyes started open, soothing words accompanying the cordial or broth he fed her. Soon she’d sleep again and he would watch and wonder, eating and drinking nothing himself.

For when a goddess fell to earth, had not the hour come to fast?

It was the bell that woke him, striking somewhere within the palace. He could not have slept for long, but in that time her eyes had opened and were fixed upon him. He was at her side in a moment.

‘I met you in my dream,’ she said.

‘And I met you in mine.’ He raised the glass of cordial to her lips.

She shook her head. ‘Tell me how that can be.’

Her eyes were pools of cool darkness. He had to look away before he slipped into them.

‘In my land, it is said that dreams are the rulers of all life.’

‘That sounds like a land where I could live.’

He looked up at her then, risking her eyes.

‘Where lies this place? What is it called?’

‘We call it many things. But the French, who seek to possess it, have named it Canada, which is the name we give to a big village. It lies far away, across the water, beyond the setting sun.’

‘Tell me of it.’

‘I have never seen it, for I was brought here inside my mother. All I know was told to me by her, and by a chief who was also brought, my uncle, Donnaconna.’

‘Then tell me that.’

So he did and as he talked Anne watched him. Listening to the words, to the feelings behind them. His voice took on a cadence, a rise and fall, almost as if he were singing a song of the ways of his people and of the place they lived. She took most of it in, for in his attitude to the world there was a similarity to her own, a recognition of something other that underpinned everything, living on mountaintops, in the depths of forests, in streams at twilight. Sometimes though, she found she was just listening to the way his voice sang. It was only when he spoke of the bones of his ancestors that she came fully back to her own world and its peril.

‘Do you have what I asked you to keep?’

He pointed to a pillow beside hers. There, re-wrapped carefully in its cloth, she saw the hand.

‘My people also keep safe and honour the bones of our ancestors.’

‘She is not my ancestor. She …’ Anne hesitated, unable to decide where to begin, how much to tell. ‘She was a woman of power, who entrusted herself to my father. He seeks to protect … this. To hide it from men who would misuse it, abuse her memory. But it is so …’

She faltered. How could she explain the danger she was in? She had groped her way in the darkness, had followed the warnings of her dreams to this point. Ahead of her now, nothing was clear. Then she remembered one more thing that she could speak of.

‘And I am named for this woman. We are both called Anne.’

‘Anne, yes. I learnt your name, for you told it to the doctor who tended you.’

‘I did? I do not remember that.’

He rose and bowed. ‘You called yourself Anne Rombaud. And my name is Tagaynearguye.’ He smiled, for there was confusion on her face at the string of syllables. ‘I am known as Tagay. Before you were Anne, I thought you were Ataentsic, daughter of the Sun God. The Goddess who fell to earth.’

He made to withdraw his hand but she held it.

‘No Goddess,’ she said. ‘And my father is no God. He is a man called Jean Rombaud.’

Speaking his name, she remembered him shouting hers as she plunged from the roof. She half-raised herself from the bed, but her dizziness and the firm squeeze of her hand made her settle back. It was the hand that decided her. Not Anne Boleyn’s, for once. The hand of this man holding hers.

Wherever he was, her father would have to come to her.

‘You! Why do you carry nothing? We’ll have no slackness, sirrah!’

Jean bowed low and was rewarded with the stroke of a cane across his backside. He returned, yet again, to the site of the feast, where three other servants struggled to lift a heavy oak table. He made a fourth, heaved, and they carried it into the palace and down into the palace’s depths.

It had been a long night, his disguise a mixed blessing. Every time he was within the walls and thought to slip away, another servant or steward would call him to help. The carnage of the festivities had to be cleared by the middle of the day for the King would then stroll in his gardens with his mistress. No trace must remain. So, like ants, the workers went back and forth.

In a strange way, Jean began to like what he was doing. His garb made him instantly accepted by all and the strange bulge of the sword under his apron drew no comment – there were at least three other hunchbacks among the drones. There were jokes, some laughter amidst the complaints, and a stew served near dawn. The meat was tough, gamey, and he had half a suspicion that it was bear. But it was hearty, and though his concern for Anne never quite left him, it retired to a place further back in his mind, level with the aches in his body. Also, as he worked, he listened more than he talked. Learnt of the workings of the palace, the layout of its upper rooms. By early morning he had a fair idea where his daughter might have been taken.

There was as much gossip as complaints. Much was to do with the extraordinary events of the night – the falling of the woman from the roof. He learnt of the man who had carried his Anne away, a favourite of the servant girls as well as the King. More than one, it seemed, knew him intimately. One kitchen maid, big of breast and with a sullen-looking mouth, was obviously jealous, and told of the Indian’s bad reputation. But another, a chubby footman named Cahusac, who had complained the whole night about his back and lifted little, defended the youth, saying that the story was like a romance from one of the broadsheets that could be found on any street corner in Paris.

When the noon bell sounded, Jean drained his tankard of beer, rose quietly. It was time to begin the search. He was halfway to the door when it burst open.

‘Did I not tell you it was like a romance from the streets?’ Cahusac cried, waving a piece of paper. ‘Look, look! “The Pagan Prince and Wing’d Love”! It says that girl who fell is one of King Francis’s bastards. The late King and one of you sluttish servant girls!’

There were boos, catcalls, as all crowded around him. Jean was drawn back.

‘How could this story already be on the streets?’ he asked Cahusac, who was struggling to keep hold of the pamphlet.

‘You jest? There’ll be half a dozen versions out by tonight. The printers work all night looking for just this sort of thing. Heh!’ he shouted. ‘Have a care there, you’ll tear it! Let me read it. I’m the only one who can, after all.’

To cheers, he read aloud the tale as written by ‘Doctor M – Physician Royal to his Majesty King Henri II of France.’ It was the usual nonsense, Jean had read some of their like before. Love unrequited, the cruelty of Tagay, the native hostage spurning the late King’s illegitimate daughter, till she threw herself from the highest tower in the land only to float to the ground, a miracle of angel’s wings granted by the power of love, which opened the eyes of the pagan prince to her Christian fortitude and her beauty. But Jean heard all this in a blur, so stunned had he been by the subtitle:

‘The Tale of Tagay of Canada and Anne Rombaud of France.’

These words now drove Jean again to the door and through it.

How could they know her name?
Safety had lain in their anonymity, yet now the name of Rombaud was being bandied through the streets of the city. If it was a pamphlet now, it would be a ballad on every troubadour’s lips by nightfall.

He had to find his daughter. They must be gone from Paris.

Thomas Lawley smoothed the pamphlet out on the table and looked across to the doorway of the inn where his companion kept his keen watch. Gianni had barely glanced at the text, evincing no surprise at his sister’s transformation into a miracle of love. It was obvious that she held no interest for him. He was only concerned with what she had stolen and how he could get it back.

Thomas rubbed at his leg. Her bandages still bound his knee, although he had re-tied them in the complex system he’d discovered on waking in the Tower five mornings before. It helped, enabled him to move. But they were not the only legacy of his encounter with Anne Rombaud; that much was clear from the feelings he’d had on reading the absurd poetry of the love story.

He crossed himself, lowered his head, and behind the shadow of his hand he began to pray:

‘Holy Mary, Mother of our Saviour, guide this, thy humble servant, in his temptations. Heavenly Father, help to make him strong in thy will alone.’

Thy will!
If only he knew what that truly was. If only he had Gianni’s certainty that it was all about the hand, getting it back to London before it was too late, furthering the cause of the furious Imperial Ambassador. Except he knew – and he suspected his young companion knew the same – that cause was dead. If they were indeed in Paris for the hand, it was for more complex reasons now.

Moving his lips in prayer, he tried to seek what his were.

Gianni leaned out of the doorway, spat onto the smeared cobbles. He had read the signs of his family’s flight, had tracked them successfully to Paris. The absurd love story was a fortunate occurrence but he’d have found them eventually anyway. Looking at the palace gates now, he knew his quarry cowered somewhere behind them.

He watched their men moving back and forth, seeking information. Something, at least, the Jesuit had been able to muster on arrival – Imperial agents, roused by Renard’s decrees. A dozen of them circled the walls, though most were here among the crowds at the main gates. All other entrances had been closed, the patrols trebled – the King had been concerned that a woman had so easily penetrated his defences. It certainly made it easier to wait and watch. The quarry may have gone to ground but they would have to break cover soon.

He had no thoughts as to why his sister had got caught up in this ridiculous romantic saga. He didn’t care. All that mattered to him was that he was again within reach of the hand. This time, when he held his family’s curse, no one would take it from him. No one.

Jean stood just inside the doorway of the bedroom, watching his daughter and the man who held her hand.

They did not move. They did not talk. They were simply there – Anne on the bed, Tagay on a chair before it – and Jean could only observe his daughter joined to someone as she had never been before. And there was something in his daughter’s look he recognized immediately. For almost the same dark eyes had once looked at him that way, reflecting the beams of a Tuscan moon. In their daughter he saw Beck, the mother, and the love that had once been his.

Anne suddenly started and the man before her leapt up, hand on sword.

‘No, Tagay! It is my father.’

Jean came forward then, taking his daughter’s unbroken arm, noting the other, her pale face.

‘I thought I had lost you.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘I have always marvelled at your powers, girl. But when did you decide that you could fly?’

‘I had no choice.’ She gestured to the man who stood behind her father.

Jean turned. Tagay stood motionless, arms tense at his side. ‘Jean Rombaud.’ The Frenchman extended his arm as he spoke and the dark young man took it, gripping along to the elbow. They held that and looked each at the other for a long moment. Then Jean nodded and turned back to the bed.

‘Anne, the news of your attempted flight has spread through the city. It will not be long before they come for us and … what we possess.’

‘Tagay knows everything, Father. He saved this for us.’ She moved her head toward the table and Jean saw the package of cloth, the familiar outline within the layers.

‘Then he will know of our great need.’ Turning, he said, ‘Can you help us get away from this place? I fear the gates may already be watched. And I think my daughter will not be climbing for a while.’

‘I can help you away from here. But where will you go?’

‘I do not know. Somewhere else. I cannot think beyond that.’

‘I can.’ Anne had raised herself up in the bed and Tagay moved to place pillows behind her back. ‘I know where we must take the hand now.’

‘Another dream, child?’