To Be Queen Read Online Free PDF

in that darkness, letting my eyes adjust to it. My father’s barons filed in behind us.
    Our throne sat midway into the church, with the altar and the bishop at our backs. Though in Paris the Church held sway over all things, religious and otherwise, my father kept to the old Roman ways. The business of the state was a separate thing from the business of the Church. It was a concession to hold this ceremony in a church at all.
    I took our throne, and Papa stood at my right hand. He was dressed in cloth of gold as I was. His blue eyes gleamed bright, even in the darkness of the basilica. This day was a beginning, but it was also a triumph, the end of an arduous path to make me his heir. My father and I had walked that long road, together.
    My sister, Petra, dressed in blue silk to match her eyes, stood behind us to remind the barons that if I died, there was another to follow me. Her gaze sought mine, her skin pale, her soft blond hair coming loose from its braids, making a halo about her face, as if she were an angel. I winked, and she lost her frightened look.
    One by one, my father’s barons knelt, swearing me fealty, as they had once sworn fealty to my father. The ceremony gave every man his lands again, this time from me. These men would stand with me in time of war. When they entered that cathedral, they thought to serve me only out of duty to my father, but I took each baron’s hand before he stood, and caught his eyes with mine. Each man rose, ready to serve the woman I would become.
    The lords dressed well that day, in leather leggings and tunics of woven silk that reached past their knees, bound about their waists with leather belts studded with bronze and silver. But Baron Rancon stood out even in that handsome company, his gaze dark where so many of my vassals had eyes of blue and green, his hair chestnut brown where other men’s gleamed fair in the darkness of the church. Baron Rancon’s hand lingered over mine as he swore to serve me every day for the rest of his life. My breath came short, but my father had taught me well. I smiled at him, serene, as if he were any other man.
    Baron Rancon stepped down from the dais and took his place among my lords. The mass went on after the ceremony was through, but I heard not a word of it. The words of the priests and their incense spilled over me without touching me, as my father stood beside me.
    The people were waiting for us when we emerged from the darkness of the cathedral, and they had more flowers to spread in our path as we walked to my father’s castle against the old Roman wall. I turned back only once, at a curve in the road, and met the Baron Rancon’s eyes. Heat flamed from my throat to my cheeks; I knew I blushed with it. He smiled to see my color rise as I turned away from him.
    My father’s palace was a short walk from the church. Built from the same cream-colored stone, the palace was not cut off from light and air as so many keeps were. Safe on a hill, high in the center of the city, the palace had long windows, all sealed with expensive glass. The light came in from those windows to the north and the west, brightening our hall even in winter, when the light was at its lowest ebb. Now, in spring, sunlight shone into my father’s hall, casting shadows where the columns raised the wooden ceiling high above our heads.
    When I stepped into the great hall, I found the stone walls decked in flowers. My chief lady-in-waiting, Amaria, had been at work all week to make the hall perfect for this one feast. I had excused her from her duties in my rooms. She watched over my women and the tapestries sewn in my chamber, altar cloths that served to keep my ladies busy and out of mischief, at least for part of the day. Alix, my old nurse, loved to work on such embroidery, for she was a religious woman, devoted to God. She no longer ruled my rooms, but she stayed close by, for love of me.
    Petra had risen to the position of chief woman