Revenge of the Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

followed by her ever-silent mother.
    Willem and Jouglet watched them go. Willem handed down the falcon to the groom. He wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or sorry that the trip had been delayed. “And that, ” he said conclusively, gesturing after Erec, “is why I dread the thought of giving her over to someone just because he happens to have riches.”
    “I think you simply dread the thought of losing her company,” Jouglet said flatly.
    “Well, that too. Wouldn’t anyone?” Willem said with a shrug. He glanced over at his friend, who was fidgeting with Lienor’s rosebud garland, wilting now in the heat. He smiled. “I’m not blind, Jouglet, I know why you’ve been tarrying here with us so long this visit.”
    Jouglet gave him a strange and almost melancholic smile. “My friend, you do not know the half of it.”

2
    Eclogue

    [a work set in the country but preoccupied with matters of the court]

    19 June
    T wo weeks later outside Basel, in silver alpine mist that muffled even birdsong, Marcus efficiently directed the dismantling of the summer camp. A trumpet bleated a warning, slightly muted in the damp air, and horsemen approached through the as-yet-gateless gateway of the courtyard.
    The emperor heard the hooves, the voices calling out with polite familiarity across the broad courtyard, but he paid them no attention. This was his last hour to be free of the burdens of state, and he did not want to be interrupted. So he slouched in his squeaking leather camp chair at the unwalled end of the yard, under a fir, and munched on a spring pear. He toyed with the gold thread embroidered into his beard and pretended for one final morning he had no need of bodyguards.
    The women were back in their usual prostitutes’ garb, which was fashioned less to display finery and more to display flesh. They were ignored once they had ceased to be creatures of fantasy, and now the men congregated at the far end of the clearing, doing the clever things young lords do to entertain themselves, some engrossed in a spitting contest, others arguing politics quietly and simplistically. All of them were noticeably more placid than they’d been two weeks earlier. In the permanent game of allegiances between pope and emperor, Konrad always gained a temporary upper hand after each summer’s camp.
    The noblemen paused to return a greeting from the small pack of fog-dampened riders. Still Konrad did not bother turning to look, listening instead to a lovely pipe tune coming with the breeze from the beeches outside the yard. Marcus had dismissed all the musicians earlier this morning, but somebody apparently had lingered behind, hoping for another handout.
    His Majesty recognized Marcus’s halting footfall and glanced into the yard— then cursed under his breath as he prepared (by deliberately slouching farther) to receive the well-dressed man Marcus was escorting to him. Imogen’s father, Count Alphonse of Burgundy, was as tall as his nephew Konrad and as slender as his son-in-law-to-be Marcus, except for a protruding belly implying he stayed too long at table. Which was true. But then, by Konrad’s measure, Uncle Alphonse stayed too long wherever he went, simply by arriving.
    Marcus was limping, a battle wound from the last crusade that plagued him when he suffered agitation.
    The count bowed deeper than he needed to as he approached his nephew. “Sire— ” he began, but Konrad, alarmed and trying not to stare at Marcus, interrupted at once.
    “Uncle! Come to drag us back to politics so soon? How characteristic. How have you been? How is your lovely daughter?”
    “Imogen is very well, Your Majesty.” He bowed again and tried, “I have come here, sire, to speak not of politics but of matrimony— “
    “Did you bring your daughter with you?” Konrad asked, a shade too heartily.
    Marcus stiffened, and one side of Alphonse’s upper lip twitched involuntarily. “This is hardly an appropriate setting for my daughter, sire.