Chapter Forty-Five
I SINK TO MY KNEES beside the duchess and she remains by the bed, gripping Isabeau’s hand.
Balthazaar is Death.
How could I not have known? Not have recognized it? For of course, looking back, I see all the signs are there. That deep sense of recognition. Him leading the hunt. Possessing my arrow. How could I have been so blind?
But my heart—my heart was not, for it knew Him even if my eyes were too clouded to see it.
My face flames anew when I remember the manner in which I threw His name around, and I nearly writhe in embarrassment.
And what does this mean? For me? For us? Surely there can be no future with Death?
It is too much, too huge a thing to wrap my mind around. Instead, I turn my attention to the duchess. She will need my help to begin to deal with her grief.
In the morning, before the duchess can even stir from her tears, we learn that the French army has arrived and is just outside the city.
“Where is Gisors? Bring him to me at once!” Duval is so agitated he cannot sit still and is pacing the privy chamber.
Chancellor Montauban’s brow is furrowed. “What of our scouts? Surely they should have warned us of the approaching army.”
Duval whirls upon him, jaw clenched tight, but Captain Dunois hurries to answer. “It can only mean the French erected checkpoints along the road and intercepted our scouts so they could not bring us the news.”
I look at Duval, the reason for his distress suddenly clear. What of Ismae? Will they have intercepted her?
The messenger returns just then, his face white. “Ambassador Gisors is no longer in the palace, my lord. He and his retinue left last night.”
Duval clenches his fist, clearly wishing to smash it into something. However, he politely dismisses the messenger before swearing a black oath. “It was a trap. A setup. They knew we would not surrender, but they thought to divert us with such talk.”
“And it worked,” Chalon points out.
Duval’s head whips up. “Only because they stopped our scouts and left us blind.” But it is clear that he blames himself.
The duchess tries to remain brave in the face of this setback. “What must we do to combat the siege?” Her voice is small, and she sounds painfully like the child she is.
All eyes turn to her, and Duval’s voice is gentle. “There is not much to be done but play out our hand. We knew this was coming, Your Grace.”
“Although we had hoped we’d have more time,” Captain Dunois says.
“But we do not.” Marshal Rieux’s voice is curt and abrupt.
“So what do we do now?” asks the bishop, trying not to wring his hands.
“Fight,” Dunois says grimly. “Or surrender.”
“Surely that is not an option,” Chalon says. “Not after we have turned down every chance they have given us to make peace. They will grant us no quarter, nor will we be able to negotiate favorable terms of surrender.”
“We can withstand a siege for months,” Chancellor Montauban points out.
“Yes, but to what end? There is no more aid coming. Whatever victory we will wrest from this thing must done with what we have on hand. All our aid and supplies will be cut off. Before long, they will starve us out. And again, to what end? Simply to surrender later rather than sooner?”
“Enough!” Duval cuts off Chalon.
Marshal Rieux shifts in his seat. “It will take days before the supply trains arrive, let alone their siege engines. We have a little time. Best to have the men ride out immediately and secure all the food supplies and livestock that can be found. No point in leaving it for our enemies, and we will have need of it soon enough.”
Duval nods. “Agreed. We must also find out their numbers, their plans. What siege engines they will bring.” He glances up at Captain Dunois. “Whom shall we send?”
Sybella steps away from her place behind the duchess. “I will go,” she says, and I am immediately filled with shame that I did not think to make such an offer.
“What?” she asks, seeing the councilors’ horrified looks. “Do you think if you ride out on your chargers with shield and banner flying, they will simply confess to you their strategy?” She snorts. “Do not be absurd. But they will never expect a woman, for who is more invisible than a camp follower or laundress? No one notices a woman’s comings and goings.”
Beast looks as if he wishes to put his head down on the table and weep. Or perhaps lock Sybella up in her chamber for the next few weeks.
Duval sends an apologetic glance Beast’s way. “Very well. But be careful, and if there is any sign of trouble, get back here immediately. Find out how many troops they have, what engines of war they bring, how many cannon, if any. We need to know precisely what we are up against.”
Sybella curtsies, then quits the room, grateful, I think, to have some action to perform. Unlike the rest of us, who must wait and wonder.
“Should I go as well?” I offer belatedly.
“No.” Duval gives a decisive shake of his head. “I want one of you to stay with the duchess.”
“You think France will make an attempt on her life?” Captain Dunois asks.
“No, but I am not willing to stake her safety on that.” Duval turns to the window and rubs a hand over his face. Between Isabeau’s death and this, he appears to have aged ten years in a single night. “There has been no word from Ismae?”
It is not clear whom he is asking, so I glance at the abbess. She gives a curt shake of her head, then realizes he cannot see it. “No, my lord. There has been no word. But as it was not a convent-sanctioned escapade, I do not expect she would be in contact with me.”
He sends her a searing glare that would shrivel a lesser woman, then turns to me, his face more gentle. “Have you heard anything?”
“No, my lord.”
“Very well. But if you do, send word to me immediately. I have promised my sister I will help with the funeral arrangements.” At the words, a fresh wave of grief passes across his face. He is such a good tactician, so great a strategist, that it is easy to forget he is also an older brother who has just lost a sibling.
There are a hundred small details to be seen to in order make certain that Isabeau is laid to rest with all the honor and respect due her as a princess of Brittany. She was beloved not only by Anne and her family but by the people as well.
The duchess is so pale as she works with her ladies to prepare Isabeau’s body that I fear she will fall ill too. The young princess is dressed in her favorite gown of crimson velvet, and Anne herself braids the pearls into her long brown hair. On the day of Isabeau’s funeral, the cortege carries her to the great cathedral in Rennes, where she is buried beneath the choir.
I have not talked to Balthazaar. It is too hard to think of him as Death since the night He—no, he—carried Isabeau away. It is nearly impossible to reconcile my roguish, moody hellequin with Death. I climb the stairs, moving slowly. I am still uncertain of what to say, how to be with him. I cannot treat him as if he were still simply Balthazaar. And yet, the idea of treating him as formally as I would Mortain feels equally wrong, for we have been much more to each other than that.
The thought has me blushing. To have lain with a god and not even known! Truly, I am three kinds of fool. But looking back, I feel as if my heart has always known. How else to explain that sense of recognition, of connection, that I felt at our first meeting? Is that even possible? For our hearts to know things that our minds do not?
Would he ever have told me if I had not asked him to escort Isabeau? That is one of the questions that has been tumbling around in my mind for the past three days. Was he trying to trick me? And why does he carry my arrow with him?
My fear is that I somehow called him to me, much as Arduinna binds hearts with her arrows, and that feels like another sort of trickery all its own. One that I never intended.
And how will we ever be together again? It was bad enough to have fallen in love with a hellequin, but to fall in love with Death? Surely there can be no happy ending to that story.
When I reach the battlements, I take a deep breath, then step outside, grasping my skirts firmly so that I will not feel the trembling in my hands. As I make my way to the shadowed corner, all the clever things I have thought of to say, all the burning questions I have wrestled with coalesce into one: Why me?
Unable to help myself, I slow my steps before I reach the corner. As I take another deep breath to fortify myself, Balthazaar’s low deep voice rumbles out into the night. “I wondered if you would ever return.” While his voice is teasing, I can hear the thread of true worry that underlies it. Then he steps out of the shadows, onto the catwalk.
“My lord.” Without conscious thought, I start to drop to my knees.
“Stop.” The feel of his hand grasping my arm startles me into silence.
I long to look up, to see his face, to try to discern if he is angry or amused or any of a hundred possibilities. But I am too embarrassed and feel far too foolish.
“Do not treat me differently now. Please.” The annoyance and frustration in his voice sound so much like Balthazaar that it is almost possible to forget all that has transpired.
I sigh. “I do not know whether to rail at you in anger or beg your forgiveness.”
He lets go of my arm. “Most likely there will be both before we are done, but know this: You have nothing to ask forgiveness for. It is I who tricked you, although I did not intend it to be a trick.”
I do look up at him then. “What was your intent?”
His dark, depthless eyes study me a moment, as if he himself is perplexed by the question. Then he goes to lean against the parapet and stares out into the night. He runs his hand through his hair, and in that moment, he is so much a man rather than a god that the tight iron band around my lungs loosens somewhat.
“Once, I was so much a part of both life and death that time had no meaning for me. My existence was as much about beginnings as it was endings. People recognized that death was part of the journey, not some grim punishment meted out for one’s sins. But over time, and with the help of the new church, my existence narrowed so that all I was and would ever be was Death. Oblivion, at best, and at worst, eternal hellfire and damnation. Everything that gave purpose and meaning to my existence was stripped from me.”
I grow very still.
“I had been reduced from a god who brought death with one hand and used it to create life with the other to a demonic specter of the night used to frighten people into complying with the new church’s beliefs. I found myself the ruler of only half a kingdom, and it was the terrifying, feared half.”
“Except for the convent,” I whisper.
He nods. “The convent remembered me as I was, as well as small pockets of people here and there. Enough to sustain me, albeit in a reduced existence. To ease my loneliness, I sought a wife—”
“Amourna.”
“No. Not Amourna. Arduinna.”
I suck in a breath. “So it was a mistake.”
“Yes. A horrible, tragic mistake that ended so disastrously, I resolved to simply be with those mortal women who invited me into their beds. But those moments were always fleeting and did little to ease the loneliness that grew inside me. If not for my daughters, who maintained a faint thread of connection with me through their worship, I think I would have gone mad.
“Then, into this grim existence, a new heart opened up to me, as unexpected and surprising as a rose blooming in the dead of winter. This heart was not praying for deliverance or offering herself to me rather than her loutish husband. This heart simply belonged to a small, pure soul, one who brought a glimmer of joy to me once more.
“One day, this soul cried out in terror, and she was so open to me that I heard her. I, who had not been invited into anyone’s life in centuries, had a purpose. And so I went to her, and being with her eased that great loneliness in my soul in a way that lying with all those other women had not. So even as I comforted her, she comforted me. Even as she was nourished by our connection, I was fed as well. For a short span of time—months? Years? I do not know—I was not lonely.
“And then, it stopped. As if a door had been slammed in my face. And once again, I knew despair.”
“I was that soul,” I whisper.
He turns to face me, his eyes bleak with his painful memories. “Yes. You filled a hole that I had all but forgotten about.”
“But I was only five years old.”
He shrugs. “In the world of spirit, where I most often reside, a soul—and the light it shines—is utterly removed from such things as age. I did not know you were a child until I came upon you in the cellar, and then it was too late. I was caught. You prayed and chatted with me constantly, and I did not have the strength to let go of the gift that you offered. It was like bread to a starving man.
“Then later, when that barrier came up between us, it was as if the sun had fallen from the sky, and my existence became even more miserable than before because you had reminded me of all that I missed.”
“And yet,” I say, remembering those long hard years, “you never abandoned me. Even when you thought I had turned my back on you, you did not turn your back on me.”
He turns away, as if embarrassed. “But then you sent me your arrow, and I could not understand why you would do such a thing. It felt like a taunt, and it enraged me, filling me with equal parts hope and fury, and I could not tell what you truly wished from me.
“I had not decided what I would do about it, but I carried the arrow with me. I carry it still,” he says.
“I know. I saw it. That’s why I ran away from the hunt. I thought the hellequin had been sent to punish me for having left the convent without your permission.”
He looks taken aback—almost affronted—that I would think such a thing.
“I am sorry. It was a threat the nuns used with us when we were young, and I believed them.”
“You never needed my permission. You were always free to come and go as you pleased.”
“But that is not what they teach us,” I murmur.
He frowns, distracted by my words, but continues his tale. “And then one night, while I was leading the hunt, there you were. Standing with your back to a tree, making ready to take on the entire hunt if need be. Looking at you opened old wounds.” He clenches his hands into fists. “I hated that I could be made to want again.” He lifts his face to the stars, as if he is too embarrassed to look at me. “I wished to understand the nature of you, the why of you. And so I decided to take you with me.”
“If I recall, I came willingly.”
He tilts his head. “Somewhat. Although I would have insisted either way. I had lost you for long years and was not about to do so again, not until I was ready to set you aside.”
My stomach drops all the way to my toes at his words. “And are you?” I whisper. “Ready to set me aside?”
His eyes burn into me. “No.” After a long moment in which I must look away under the intensity of that gaze, he whispers, “So, what happened? Why did you shut the door and stop letting me in like that?”
“I told someone I had seen you. And I was punished for it, told I was lying, making things up. And so it became my secret, something that I shared with no one. But I was eventually caught out—and punished.” Brutally, but I do not tell him that, nor do I tell him the nature of the punishment, for it shames me still. “Shortly after that, the abbess who made my life so harsh died, and fear was no longer my constant companion. I did not feel as if I constantly walked the razor’s edge between life and death, and so my need for you lessened.” But also, the cost of opening myself to him had proved too great. “With the new abbess, I had been given a new chance, and I did not wish to risk making the same mistake.”
He reaches out and takes my hand in his own, gripping it firmly, as if he could pull me out of the dark confines of my memory. “And thus at a young age you became acquainted with the limits of Death and His power.” He closes his eyes, but not before I glimpse the anger and regret that fills them.
When he opens them again, he looks to the sky. “Dawn is coming.”
I am not ready to leave. There is still so much we must talk about. “When will I see you again?”
He holds very still, as if hope is some fragile thing he must coax forth bit by bit. “Would you like to?”
“I would. I am not done with trying to understand what is be-tween us.”
He smiles then, and bows, then disappears into the shadows.