SIX
What do you suppose it means?” Bao asked as we followed Messire Lambert, the royal steward.
I didn’t have to ask what he meant; Bao had felt the spark of our shared diadh-anam quicken as surely as I had. “I don’t know.”
“Do you ever?” he asked.
“Seldom precisely.” I smiled ruefully. “The Maghuin Dhonn Herself may guide us in certain directions, but She leaves us to make our own choices. Especially the difficult ones.”
“I don’t see a choice here,” Bao remarked. “Difficult or otherwise.”
“Not yet,” I agreed.
We climbed the wide, winding staircase to the second floor and followed the steward down the hall. Outside the door of a corner chamber, Messire Lambert hesitated. Beyond the door came the sound of women’s voices raised in frantic pleading.
“Wait here, please,” the steward said to us before knocking.
The door opened a crack, and a woman with a pretty, harried face peered out, her eyes widening at the sight of the steward in the livery of House Courcel. “Oh, messire! Tell me his majesty’s not sent for her!”
“No, no,” he assured her. “But his majesty sends visitors. Lady Moirin mac Fainche, and Messire… Bao.”
Her eyes widened further, showing the whites. “Jehanne’s witch?”
The steward cleared his throat. “As I said, Lady Moirin and her husband.”
The young woman shuddered. “Elua have mercy! All right, all right, messire. Give us a moment.”
She closed the door behind her. Sounds of a heated argument interspersed with urgent pleas ensued. Bao raised his brows at me. I shrugged in reply. The royal steward looked profoundly uncomfortable.
“Oh, let them in!” a second woman’s voice said in frustration, loud enough to be heard clearly through the door. “If the Queen’s witch can lay a spell on the child before she breaks her stubborn neck, so much the better!”
“Fine!”
The door was flung open wide. The young woman dropped a curtsy, her face flushed. “Welcome, my lady, my lord.” She made a sweeping gesture. “Forgive us. Her young highness is as you find her.”
I entered the nursery chamber, and caught my breath.
It was a pleasant, sunlit chamber with a canopied bed set into the near wall. Against the far wall stood an array of ornately painted cubes filled with cunningly made toys and dolls. Atop a dangerous perch on the highest cube sat a girl of some three years of age, kicking her heels and giggling.
Jehanne’s daughter.
Belatedly, it struck me that that was what King Daniel had called her—Jehanne’s daughter, as though she were not his own, too.
Gazing at her, I understood why. Desirée de la Courcel was her mother in miniature, a picture of gossamer beauty. A thin white shift adorned her small figure, leaving her arms and legs bare, skin so fair the pale blue tracery of her veins showed through it. Her pink lips formed a perfect bow. Her white-blonde hair curled in soft ringlets, haloing her head. Her eyes were Jehanne’s eyes, an ethereal blue-grey.
And ah, gods! How they sparkled.
It wasn’t just the resemblance; it was Jehanne’s mercurial spirit that shone forth from her, delighting so shamelessly in her own misbehavior that one could not help but be charmed by it. At least, I couldn’t.
My heart contracted sharply. Beside me, Bao chuckled.
Desirée stopped giggling and contemplated us.
I bowed to her in the Bhodistani fashion, my palms pressed together. “Well met, young highness.”
“Who are you?” Her childish voice was high and clear.
I shifted my hands into a calming mudra that Amrita had taught me, steepling my middle fingers. “Come down and find out.”
“No.” Considering it, she shook her head. “I don’t want to.”
“Well, then, you will have to wonder,” I said.
Behind us, the nursemaids whispered while the steward questioned them in a frantic hiss, wondering how the child had gotten up there in the first place. It seemed she had climbed the staggered blocks one by one, and refused to come down.
“She’s uncommonly agile for her age!” the older nursemaid said in an aggrieved tone. “And uncommonly precocious!”
I ignored them.
Bao whistled through his teeth, inspecting the toys stored in the hollow cubes. “Look at this, Moirin,” he said cheerfully, showing me a miniature carriage. “The doors open, and the wheels turn.”
“That’s mine!” Desirée said with a flash of temper.
He glanced up at her. “But you’re not playing with it.”
“It’s mine!” Her perfect pink lips formed a pout. Bao shrugged and put the toy back.
“Your mother used to pout when she didn’t get her way,” I informed her. “But even she admitted that it was tiresome.”
Her fair brows knit. “You knew my mother?”
I nodded. “Very well.”
“I’m coming down,” Desirée announced, beginning a precarious descent.
Both nursemaids rushed forward to aid her.
“Don’t,” I murmured under my breath. “She’s Jehanne’s daughter; she thrives on drama of her own creation. Don’t encourage her. It’s all right. Bao will catch her if she falls.”
She didn’t.
Once she reached the floor safely, her nursemaids descended on her, chastising her, hastening to get her clothed in a miniature satin gown stiff with elaborate beadwork. Desirée bore it with surprising patience, all the while keeping her eye on Bao and me.
“I am being good now,” she said when her nursemaids had finished with her. “Now you have to tell me.”
“Moirin.” I knelt to sit on my heels opposite her. “That is my name, young highness.”
She tilted her head. “And him?”
Bao threw a standing somersault, drawing startled squeals from the nursemaids, landing and settling to sit cross-legged in one fluid movement. “Bao.”
“Bao?” Desirée mimicked his inflection exactly, capturing the rising and falling tone with a child’s careless ease.
He grinned. “Uh-huh.”
She studied him. “Why do your eyes look so funny?”
“Mine?” Bao touched the outer corners of his almond-shaped eyes. “I am from Ch’in, young highness. This is how we look. There, you would be funny-looking.” Dragging down his underlids, he widened his eyes. “Round eyes!” Making a beak with forefinger and thumb, he touched his nose. “A big nose, like a bird.” Stretching out one arm, he compared his tawny-brown skin to hers. “And so pale! In Ch’in they would ask, what happened? Did someone leave you in the bath too long, so all your color faded away?”
Desirée giggled. “That’s silly!”
“I suppose it is,” he agreed gravely.
I could sense the royal steward hovering behind us, and turned to him. “Please, do not wait on us, Messire Lambert. I know my way around the Palace. Tell his majesty I am at his disposal whenever he pleases. We’ll be some while making her young highness’ acquaintance. If that’s all right?” I added with an inquiring glance at her nursemaids.
The younger glanced at the older, who shrugged. “After you coaxed her down from yon perch? Take all the time you like, my lady! I don’t care if it is magic.”
I smiled. “No magic. She’s got her mother’s temperament. I knew it well, once.”
The royal steward departed with a relieved bow, and the younger nursemaid left to bid the princess’ tutor to delay the morning’s lesson.
“Do you like your tutor?” I asked the child. “What do you study together?”
“Manners and counting and singing,” she answered obediently. “And I am learning my letters. Nurse says I am too little for letters, but mademoiselle says she could read whole books by the time she was four.” She considered. “Most of the time, she is nice.”
“Only most?”
Desirée looked down, plucking at the beaded hem of her gown. “Not when I am naughty.” She looked back up at me, her expression achingly candid and woeful. “My mother was naughty, wasn’t she?”
“Oh, dear heart!” I suppressed the urge to hug her, knowing I was far too much a stranger still. “Your mother was a great many things. Sometimes, yes, she was naughty. But she was kind and generous and brave, too.”
“She was?”
“She was,” Bao confirmed. “I did not know her so well as Moirin, but I know this is true.”
“How?” Desirée demanded.
“When you are older, I will tell you the whole story,” I said. “It is a story for grown-ups. But I will tell you this. I was there when your mother learned she was going to have a baby. You.” I laid one hand on my belly. “And she was happy, so very happy. That is why she named you Desirée, so you would always know that she loved you and longed for you.”
She looked down again. “Is my father coming to see me today?”
I glanced at the nurse, who shook her head. “Not today, your highness. You know the King is a very, very busy man.”
“You told the steward my father could see you when he wanted.” Desirée gave me an accusatory look.
I had no doubt that Jehanne had been as precocious as her daughter; I wondered if she’d been as observant, too. “So I did,” I replied calmly. “Bao and I have come from very far away, and we have much news of foreign lands to tell him.”
She shook her head, silver-gilt ringlets dancing. “He never wants to see me.” Her fingers plucked at the beadwork of her gown again. Two seed pearls came loose and rolled across the floor, accompanied by an indrawn breath of dismay from her nurse. Desirée flashed her a look at once guilty and defiant. “I don’t care! I don’t like this gown anyway! It prickles!”
“It’s all right, young highness.” The nurse sounded resigned.
“It’s because I’m naughty, isn’t it?” Desirée patted the hem, trying to smooth it. “That’s why he doesn’t come.”
It had the sound of a punishment she’d heard voiced many times before. I glanced at the nurse again, and saw her flush with guilt and resentment; and then at Bao, who shook his head.
“I am good at entertaining with tricks and jests, Moirin,” he murmured. “This is beyond me.”
Settling back onto my heels, I let my hands fall into a contemplative mudra and breathed slowly, thinking. “Your father loved your mother very, very much, young highness. He loved all the things that were good in her—and even the things that were naughty, too. Every day, he misses her, and it makes him sad. When he sees those things in you…” I touched my chest. “It makes his heart hurt more. It does not mean he doesn’t love you.”
It was a difficult concept for a child to grasp, and a heavy burden to bear. I watched her wrestle with it, praying that I’d not overstepped my bounds or overburdened the child.
At length, Desirée cocked her head. “Why do you do this?” she asked, doing her best to emulate the mudra I had taken. “Is it a game?”
“Ah.” I smiled. “You might call it a thinking-game, young highness. Each shape you make with your hands is a thought, or… or a wish, or a prayer.”
“What kind of prayer?”
I folded my hands together, steepling my fingers. “A prayer for peace.” I shifted my hands, one above the other, forming an open circle. I could not achieve the gestures with the grace with which Amrita had taught me, but I did my best. “For wisdom.” I fanned my hands before me, interlocking my thumbs. “A prayer that the gods might speak clearly to me.”
She looked interested. “It’s a funny kind of game.”
“It’s a thinking-game,” I said. “Not the kind you win or lose. It helps you to think and wish and pray better, that’s all.”
Her small fingers fumbled through an approximation of the poses I’d shown her. “Will you teach it to me?”
I inclined my head to her. “It would be my honor, young highness.”
During a long winter on the Tatar steppe, where I had first begun to learn patience, I’d learned, too, that young children relished games of hands and words and thoughts. For another hour, with Bao’s helpful aid, I taught the mudras I had learned from my lady Amrita to my lady Jehanne’s daughter. The three of us sat cross-legged on the floor of the nursery, arranging our hands and fingers in contemplative poses and gravely discussing their meaning.
When I sensed that the elder nursemaid, whose name was Nathalie Simon, was growing restless at the interruption in the princess’ daily routine, I rose to bid Desirée farewell.
“I fear your tutor has been kept waiting overlong, your highness,” I said apologetically. “ ’Tis best Bao and I leave for now.”
“Thank you for coming to see me.” There was a formal, rote quality to the words; a seriousness of purpose that was the first I’d seen of Daniel de la Courcel in the child. “It was very nice.”
“We’ll come again if you like,” Bao offered.
Her face brightened, blue-grey eyes sparkling to life. “Will you?”
“Uh-huh.” He grinned at her and nudged me. “Won’t we, Moirin?”
“We will,” I confirmed. “I promise.”
The senior nursemaid Nathalie ushered us into the hallway, closing the door behind us. “My lord, my lady… as you have seen, she’s a precocious and complicated child.” Her expression was stony. “By her standards, she behaved well enough for you today. If there was truly no magic in it, it is only because the two of you presented her with a novelty. Do not presume to understand the difficulties of raising her day in and day out. Do not presume to tell me my business.”
“I don’t,” I murmured.
“I think you do.” Nathalie’s gaze was sharp. “I know who you are, and what you were to Queen Jehanne for a brief time.” She lowered her voice. “Just because you shared her bed gives you no special insight into her daughter.”
I held her hard gaze. “Does the gown prickle?”
The nursemaid blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“It is a simple question,” I said. “Children’s skin is more tender than ours, especially when they are young. It seems to me that if the underside of the embroidery pricks her skin, it might be enough to goad her into misbehaving. Have you felt it?”
“She is a King’s daughter, and a Princess of the Blood. Jewels are her birthright.” Her expression hardened further, challenging me. “Name of Elua! Would you have the child dressed in rags?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not. But have you felt it?”
Gritting her teeth, Desirée’s senior nurse drew herself upright. “No, my lady, I have not. I will do so.”
“Good,” Bao said simply.
Her glare followed us down the hallway.