I do not even know what to believe anymore. Did the convent send me a letter to cut me loose from their service? Or did Count Angoulême lie to me? The choices are equally breathtaking.
I remember so clearly being called into the abbess’s office prior to being sent to France. She explained precisely what would be required of me. If she thought I would balk, she was mistaken. The daughter of a whore does not have many reservations about the nature or value her body can provide, the doors it can unlock, or the secrets it can shake loose. Even so, I asked her what my other options were, for only fools do not weigh all their options before committing to a course.
She told me that if I did not wish to serve Mortain, she would find me a husband, one suited to my station in life, with whom to spend the rest of my days. She pointed out that while most girls opted for serving the convent, not all did, and some had gone on to have quite normal lives.
As if that were a good thing. Surely it is to escape such normal lives that we end up at the doorstep of the convent to begin with.
And yet, after my swearing to follow Mortain’s path, wherever it led, after being isolated with no guidance or so much as a note asking if I was still alive, she has suddenly decided that I should live a normal life after all.
Or has she?
The other possibility is that Angoulême lied, but to what end? He cannot be so determined to bed me that he would betray his relationship with the convent. What other purpose could he have for destroying my ties with them? It makes no sense. Unless he is trying to ingratiate himself with the king or regent, but then, surely he would have been the one to tell them of the convent’s existence.
I finally reach my room, no closer to anything resembling understanding. When I let myself in, I sense immediately that someone else has been there. I pause, but hear no sound of movement or breathing. I close the door behind me and take a cautious step into the room. When nothing happens, I hurry to the cupboard where my knives are hidden in my saddlebag. I snag one before turning back around to face the room. “Show yourself!”
The only answer is silence. Keeping my eyes on the darkness in the corners, I light the candles, relieved when the soft yellow glow of their flames chases away the thick shadows. Truly, no one is here. But someone was.
I return to the door and lock it before studying the room more closely. There. Something is on my pillow that was not there when I left. As I approach the bed, I am consumed by an impending sense of dread, as if some deeply hidden part of me recognizes the object before my eyes do.
It is long and black, like a knife blade. My knees weaken, and my heart races as I reach out and lift the crow feather from my pillow.
After five long years, it has finally come.
Author’s Note
As with the original His Fair Assassin trilogy, the broad political brushstrokes and people in Courting Darkness are based on historical events and personages. Near the end of the final conflict in the French-Breton War, France held nearly all of Brittany and had besieged the city of Rennes, where the duchess had fallen back behind the city walls. Full-scale war was averted by the Treaty of Rennes, in which King Charles VIII of France and Anne of Brittany agreed to marry. (Though history has no record of Arduinna’s arrow!) In order to do so, both Anne’s proxy marriage to Maximilian, the Holy Roman emperor, and the king’s betrothal to Maximilian’s eleven-year-old daughter had to be annulled by the Church. By all accounts, this troubled both participants greatly, although both were assured by their advisors and bishops that it was not only necessary, but morally acceptable.
One of the greatest liberties I have taken is compressing the timeline of the historical events that occurred. In reality, the major events in the His Fair Assassin trilogy and Courting Darkness occurred over the course of two and a half years, during which there was a great deal of tedious waiting while messengers were dispatched back and forth. I pulled most of the major events of 1490 and 1491 into 1489, the year in which the story takes place. The wedding that occurs in Courting Darkness did not actually happen until the end of 1491.
An unfortunate result of this compressed timeline is that in Courting Darkness, Anne is only fourteen when she marries, rather than her actual sixteen years of age. Despite popular misconceptions, marriages at fourteen were not commonplace. When they did occur, it was most often between royal families and noble houses eager to seal alliances and treaties. Commoners, as well as second sons and daughters who were not heiresses, often married much later in life, needing to establish some economic security for themselves first.
Even when these earlier marriages took place, families often allowed for time to pass between the marriage and the consummation. Sadly, however, the records indicate that there were a number of royal marriages consummated when the wife was fourteen. To not do so was to leave an avenue for annulment—and too much was at stake. While fully public consummations had receded in popularity, semipublic consummations such as Anne of Brittany’s were still conducted.
It can be hard to fully grasp how a society as obsessed with the Church and getting into heaven as fifteenth-century western Europe was could also have had such a laissez-faire attitude toward sex. They were far earthier than we are, the Puritans not having come along yet. During the late Middle Ages especially, sex and prostitution flourished.
Louise of Savoy did indeed live side by side with her husband’s mistress, and they were by all accounts good friends. She raised his illegitimate children alongside her own and even provided for them once she came into power in her own right. Anne of Brittany also grew up in a household that included her father’s mistress and her half siblings.
Prostitution was viewed as a necessity, often regulated by cities, states, or town municipalities and having a guild, like many of the medieval trades. Prostitution establishments were by and large run by women, and many sex workers were daughters, widows, or wives of poor craftsmen.