The Miracle Thief (6 page)

“If you will not fight them, and if, because of it, I am not to be allowed to keep my own daughter, then you must forfeit something in return.” My father, seemingly done with the count, took a step toward the archbishop.

That unfortunate man stumbled back, away from him.

Now my teeth were clattering together. I could not seem to stop them.

Andulf set the child down and pushed her back toward the door of the villa. “My lady?”

My father was still shouting. “You tell that Dane he will find his new lands here, in Neustria.”

The count's face went dark as his hand dropped to his knife. “But these are my lands, Sire!”

“He can have all the lands from this river to the Seine and out to the sea. I trust those will be more to his liking.” He turned his wrath on the archbishop. “If those are sufficient, then he shall meet me in Rouen three months hence, when you will indeed baptize him and save his piteous, black soul.”

The archbishop bowed. “For the glory of God.”

My father stared at him for one long moment. “For your glory, Franco. I suspect this has been for your glory all along.”

I do not know how I made it back inside the villa; my knees were shaking like leaves, and I could not have had my wits about me. Once inside, once I had gained the sanctuary of the royal bedchamber, I waited for my father while my belly twisted with fear. Had I once thought my life sad and sorry? Had I despaired of being forgotten and neglected? How I wished it were now so!

As my father entered the room, I threw myself before him. “Please, Sire. I beg of you, on the grave of your mother, the rightful queen, do not give me to the pagan.”

His own queen looked on from her silk-cushioned retreat in the corner of the room.

He sat in his armed chair. When I reached for his slippered foot, he shifted, removing it from my grasp. “What else can I do? I cannot defend my own kingdom, and I cannot control my own vassals. And now I cannot even save my own daughter.”

“But the pagan already has sons. He already has a wife! So what would that make me?”

He did not need to answer. We both already knew. It would make me my mother. His face went dark, and I knew I had overspoken. I rose to my knees as I beseeched him. “And—and I was not told. I was not even asked—”

“Nor was I.”

“The archbishop cannot expect that—”

“He does.”

“But
you
cannot just—”

“What else am I to do?” He passed a hand over his face with a weary sigh. “If I will not agree, they will keep on fighting. Robert may have more men than I do, but in this, he is right. The Danes will keep on attacking. Perhaps not this spring, but surely the next. And maybe the one after that. How many times will Chartres be burned before there is nothing left there to destroy?”

“But it is the count who won the battle. At Chartres
he
was the victor, not they.”

“A truer word was never spoken. He won. And now he will never let me forget it. So now he has what he wants, he has a treaty, although I've wrested his best lands from him in forfeit. Lands that ought to have been my own.”

My father thought the count's lands and titles ought to be his, just as the count thought my father's crown ought to have been his own. There was no end to the enmity between them. “And what of me?”

He turned a sorrow-filled gaze on me. “You heard the archbishop. He made an agreement.”

“Then unmake it, I pray you!”

“And go back on my word? The Danes would mock me. And so would all of my vassals. What man would pledge himself to one who will not keep his own word?”

“But it was not
your
word. It's was the archbishop's—”

“Whom I appointed to speak for me.”

“But, wasn't I to marry Rudolph of Burgundy? Or the Count of Vermandois? Is that not what you've always said?”

In her corner, the queen stirred.

“It's what I had always hoped. An alliance with the Burgundians would have been wise. And very profitable.”

Would
have
been?
Had he already given me up? A desperate panic took wing in my stomach. “I would rather—I would rather…”

His gaze sharpened as if he were curious to hear what I would say.

“I would rather marry Robert's son Hugh than—”

“Do not say it! Do not even think for one moment I would consent to unite that despicable family with my own. At least the pagan is honorable.”

“But, they're—they're
Danes
! They're murderous monsters who do nothing but pillage and plunder. You have not consigned me to some ignominious marriage. You have consigned me to death!”

***

I had entreated my father to be kind to me. I had appealed to his sense of justice. I had invoked the grave of his mother, the old queen. It had availed me nothing. I was to be offered to the Danes as if it had been my father's idea from the first. Would that I was marshy like Flanders. Then perhaps the chieftain would have no use for me.

My father left me there, prostrate, my pleas resounding from the marble walls. He declared he must dine with his counselors. In truth, I knew he was trying to escape me. He hated me to be angry with him. I could not say I had not used it to my advantage once.

Or twice, perhaps.

I lay there for several minutes, trying to think of what I had forgotten to say, of some other thing I might have used to change his mind, but there was nothing. As I pushed to my feet, I heard something, saw some movement in the corner. Whirling, I expected to see my stepmother lounging there, gloating. But it was not her. It was Andulf sitting upon her cushions, peeling an apple with his knife.

“How long have you been there?”

“Here?” His gaze lifted for a moment from the apple and then went right back to it. “On the cushions? Not long.”

I could not decide if I ought to be offended. But how could I fault him for performing the task that had been set before him? Still, shame crept up to warm the tips of my ears, and I wished there were some other society I might seek to join. But there was none.

“They are not married, my lady.”

I was too spent to pretend I did not know to whom he referred.

He took a bite of the apple, and then spoke as he was chewing. “Poppa is just a concubine.”

Just
a concubine. “And you think that makes me feel better? That it should abolish all of my complaints?”

“I did not think—”

“No. You did not. And now you've done nothing but make it all worse. Be gone!”

“You cannot—”

“Go!”

“I can't.” He had not even unfolded those long legs of his to try.

A sorry use I was of royalty. Even my own knight would not obey me. “If you do not go now, then you will be full sorry that you stayed.”
I
would be sorry he stayed. I would be mortified should he see me give vent to my anger through raging tears and heaving sobs.

“Your father said I was to escort you to dinner when you wished to come.”

“I do not wish to dine tonight.” I did not want to smile at the Count of Paris and receive the archbishop's blessing as if they had not just sold me for the bounty of a thousand convert souls. I did not want to feel the eyes of all of the nobles upon me or watch the looks they passed me as they wondered what kind of man the Dane was and how ill he might use me.

The knight shrugged as he took another bite.

“Must you eat that here?”

“What else am I to eat? Just because you do not want anything does not mean that I do not.”

At such an imminently reasonable complaint, the dam that held back my tears broke, and they overflowed my eyes with the force of fury and desperate fear. “And just because the archbishop promised me to some pagan does not make it right. And just because my father cannot bear to break a promise someone else made on his behalf should not mean I have no opinion about it!” And just because the marriage was part of a treaty did not mean I would become like Poppa…did it? Could it? If she were a concubine, then I would be the Dane's lawful wife, would I not? But as I turned that thought over, I found all I had been clinging to was a flimsy bit of straw. My worst fear was going to come to pass. It did not matter if Poppa was just a concubine. She was with the chieftain just the same. And though he had abducted her, she had stayed with him and borne him sons. She might as well be his rightful wife. And that would make me, in all the ways that mattered, his concubine.

The knight could not say I had not warned him. When I could not staunch the flow of those pitiful tears, he finally picked himself up and left.

***

My sleep that night was short. My dreams haunted by that nameless, faceless woman of my childhood and her dire warnings of the Danes. By the time morning dawned and the sun sifted in through the gaps in the shutters, I was famished. Rising before the others, I went out and begged some bread and pickled fish from the kitchen. I ate near the door, out of the way of the servants' preparations, where I could still benefit from the warmth of the fires. I was not the only one about at such an early hour. As I was finishing, I heard the shuffle of footsteps across the courtyard.

They drew near and then stopped just short of me.

It was my father. I could tell by the scents of the lavender that was used to freshen his tunics and the cloves he liked to chew. “I wish you would not weary yourself over the Dane.”

It was as close to an apology as I was likely to receive. If I hoped to gain anything, any promise from him, then this was the time to try. I turned and took his hand in mine. “I do not doubt this was the archbishop's idea, and I know it was done without your consent, but I fear for my life. Please. Do not let me become a Saint Lucy or Saint Agnes. Please do not send me away.”

We parted, dropping hands, to allow a water carrier to pass.

When he spoke again, his eyes were soft with compassion. “Surely God will defend you.”

“He did not defend them.”

His face creased with a frown. “There is nothing left for me to do and God could not disagree with this treaty. Why would He not honor a desire to convert the pagans? And in that case, why would He not protect you?” His eyes searched mine for…understanding? Forgiveness? “How could this be wrong?”

The archbishop had brought God into these negotiations, and now my father was doing the same. But I did not want to be used by Providence. “What if it
does
mean certain sacrifice for me? Could we not ask for some sign from God?” For something,
anything
, that would keep me from the Dane.

“A sign?”

“I do not want to act in disobedience, to do something contrary to God's will.” I feared that possibility even more than I feared wedding the Dane. To do so would bring swift and certain punishment. “I simply wish to know it
is
the right thing to do.” The archbishop had placed the future of Christendom upon my shoulders, and it seemed too weighty a burden to bear. But if this destiny was indeed the design of Providence, then what else could I do but make my peace with it?

“But…how could it
not
be God's will? Think of it, Gisele. The conversion of an entire people!”

“Would you give me leave to inquire of Saint Catherine? At the abbey in Rochemont?”

His frown deepened.

“Just to ease my mind, so I may be certain?” God himself might not deign to reveal His will to me, but Saint Catherine might. “What harm could there be in my going?”

“Why Saint Catherine? Why
that
abbey?”

“I just wish…” I wished, for the first time in my memory, that I was not a king's daughter, that I was not a princess, and that my mother had taken me with her when she had fled the court. I wished I was exactly as the ignominy of my birth should have decreed: I wished I was no one at all. But how could I say that without sounding ungrateful or offending my father, the king? “The abbey is my dower.” It was the only thing of value I possessed. “And if I marry the pagan…”

He sighed as his frown eased.

If I married the pagan, I had little hope I would ever be allowed to go there again.

I had traveled there once before. In that place of lofty heights and quiet contemplation, I had known a peace I had never felt before. There, I could pray to Saint Catherine and kiss her relic, she of a noble and pure heart who never ceased to advocate on behalf of maidens and those who died a sudden death. But more than that, I was almost certain if I could just talk to one of the nuns again—not the abbess herself, but the nun who tended the relic—she could calm this fear, soothe this panic that threatened to undo me. Had she not done so before? Had she not had just the right words when I had entertained hopes of abandoning the court? And whether I ought to remain a virgin or sacrifice myself to the heathen, Saint Catherine would not fail to tell me what to do. After that, I would pray for the strength to accept whatever my future held.

“Why could you not just pray at the cathedral in Rouen?”

“Because I want to pray to Saint Catherine.” I had cried enough tears the night before. How could I possess still more? And why could I not keep them from staining my voice? “Even if…” Even if. Even if it meant a long journey to the east and the south. Even if the archbishop would not like it. Even if, in the end, it would change nothing. I took in a great breath and tried once more. “The Danes have asked for a three-month truce. Surely I could make it there and back by then.”

“It's far too late in the year—” A servant was approaching. Father accepted a cup of wine from him.

I held my breath as he took a drink.

“But then why should you not be allowed to ease your mind?”

Praise God and all His angels!

“I am to meet the chieftain this morning.” He took another sip. “You will come with me and—”

“Why must I—”

“Because I say so!”

I took a step backward, away from his wrath.

He closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, he looked even more wearied and worn than he had before. “Because I say so, and it is I who wear the crown and I who sit on the throne of this kingdom. Will no one obey me simply because it is their duty? Must I always and forever explain myself? What other king has ruled a people so stubborn and stiff-necked as these!”

I understood then that it was not I in particular who had incensed him. What other king had had his throne stolen by his father's mistress and then given first to his half brothers and next to a man who had kept it well beyond the day my father came of age? A man who had wanted to give it to his own brother, Robert, Count of Paris, instead?

“My mother, the queen, always said daughters could be of great use.” He took another drink from his cup. “But she never told me they could also be so taxing and vexatious.”

“You would do well to prepare yourself then, for you have three others, and who is to say this next one your queen is breeding might not be a girl child as well?” I bit my tongue to keep from saying anything more. I had said far too much already.