The Rose Bride, page 17
His wine goblet splashed against his doublet as he swayed before La Magnifique, his hunting horse. The riders were assembling. The king would lead the hunt for the treacherous deer.
Ombrine was dressed for the hunt, in riding clothes and boots. A huge dark bird sat on her leather gauntlet. She held out a goblet of wine to Jean-Marc and said, “Fortify yourself, Your Majesty.”
He drank lustily. “By the gods,” he said, “this is bitter brew.” But he drank it down.
Then she turned her attention to Desirée, as her litter approached. Lying on soft pillows, she had put on her bridal gown as a token of her love. When Jean-Marc’s eyes met hers, a tear slid down her cheek.
“Please be careful. Come back to me and to our child.”
“I’ll come back to you,” he vowed. He took another draw on his wine. Then he handed her the cup.
“To horse!” he cried.
The call went up.
“To horse! To horse!”
Miles from the castle, Rose found Reginer and Claire beneath the wooden bridge that spanned the river Vue. Claire was in labor and Reginer was frantic.
Wolves and boar swirled behind Rose like a living cape. Reginer, I am your half sister, Rose, she pleaded, as a black wolf pulled forward from the pack and flew at her. She smelled dead meat on its breath. Droplets of saliva sprinkled her fur.
It was about to go for her throat when her fur turned white and she began to glow. From head to hoof, she shimmered with magic, and Reginer gave a shout of surprise. He pulled his sword from his scabbard. He speared one wolf through the foot; another, through the heart. He cut down a boar, which squealed and thrashed until it died.
The rest ran off to await an easier catch.
“Do you come from Hermes?” he asked, dropping to his knees. “For the love of the gods, I pray you, help us. Our horses have run off and my wife is having our baby.”
She said nothing, only nosed him aside so she could examine Claire. There was nothing she could do for her sister-in-law, so she bumped up against Reginer, hoping to give him comfort.
Horns, drums, and hounds exploded, and Rose sniffed the air. The fur rose on the back of her neck. She smelled at least a dozen horses. At least twenty men.
And Jean-Marc.
“They’re hunting us,” Reginer said. “I heard the herald. We’re wanted for treason. I’m sure it’s the queen’s doing. I’ve had a feeling about her. She’s an imposter. I know it.”
You are right. She stamped the earth. She heard the swoop of the threshers as they smacked the bushes. The clamor of the drums. The baying of the dogs.
Horse hooves pounded. Horse tack jingled.
“Reginer,” Claire moaned, reaching for her husband. Her hair was damp against her forehead. “Our baby, our baby. I can feel it coming!”
“I pray you, help us,” Reginer implored Rose. He fell prostrate before her. “I have been a loyal worshipper of Hermes for my entire life. Je vous en prie, reward my loyalty. Or if I must die, save my wife and child.”
Artemis will save you through me, Rose told him. Adieu, my beloved kinsman.
She dipped her head in farewell and turned tail. She dashed into the bracken, directly for the hunters. She prayed to the goddess to keep her alive at least long enough to deflect the pursuit from Reginer and Claire.
The light faded from her body. She became a simple brown doe again. But her heart glowed like a comet.
Now I know true love. I know what it is. I know how it feels.
Overcome with joy, she ran to certain death.
“I’m on the scent!” Jean-Marc announced. Then the world wobbled and rocked and waves of dizziness made him grab the pommel of La Magnifique’s saddle. He put his trembling hand to his sweaty forehead. He was shaky and ill.
“My son,” Ombrine shouted to him. “How do you fare?”
Something is wrong.
He shook his head as if to clear it. Sharp pain throbbed behind his eyes and sliced into the back of his head. His stomach clenched.
“Keep riding,” he gasped, gathering up the reins as he held on to the saddle.
She couldn’t have heard him, but she spurred on her horse, thundering on ahead into the dark forest.
Another pain seared his eyes. This is wrong.
He pulled out the mirror and gazed into it. The little brown doe stared back as if she could see him. She ran along the river, panting and bleating. He knew she was afraid.
Run, he told her grimly. Then his heart seized with the memory of the nights they had walked together, the secrets he had shared with her. His heart melted for an instant and he thought, Don’t let us catch you.
With another seizure of his body, the thought was expelled from his mind as if he had spit rotten meat out on the grass.
Rose ran. Ombrine’s bird of prey flew above her, cawing, announcing her position to the horsemen. She turned from the river and made for the woods. Alerted, the hounds bayed and charged after her. Horns and drums signaled the change in direction.
Away from the river Vue, away from the wooden bridge, Rose panted and bleated, losing track of her direction. She knew her hoof pads were dropping scent everywhere. The well-trained dogs would run her to ground. The best she could hope for was to divert them from Reginer and Claire before they ripped her to shreds.
She hopped over a branch, smacked into another. Her ankle cracked and she went down. Heaving on her side, she struggled to rise.
The monstrous bird circled, cackled, swooped down. It missed her and soared into the sky again, hovering like a kite, so that its mistress could get a fix on its position.
Rose got to her feet. Her front leg burned; when she put weight on it, she thought she would faint from the pain. But she hobbled on, praying, always praying and wondering why the goddess was allowing this to happen.
“She’s doubling back!” Ombrine cried, pointed at her circling bird.
The alert was sounded. The buglers and drummers announced another direction as the hounds bayed and looped back toward the horses.
Jean-Marc was drenched in sweat. Something inside him pulled at his stomach and pummeled his rib cage. It hunched inside him like a nightmare on the chest of a dreamer and it tried to take the reins. He wondered if Artemis was trying to thwart him.
La Magnifique thundered through the forest and back onto the manicured lawns of the castle. They rounded the battlements.
And then he saw her as she staggered from the trees to the right of the statue of Artemis. She was limping badly and her sides sucked in and out like a blacksmith’s bellows. She fell to her knees, head drooping downward. With supreme effort, she forced herself back up to a standing position and dragged herself closer to the figure.
She looked over her shoulder at the chargers and the hounds. The archers in the party unhooked their bows and notched arrows. They took aim.
“Kill her!” Ombrine exhorted them. “Run her through!”
“Non!” Jean-Marc boomed. “I will do it!” He gestured to the lead rider. “Tell the buglers. The kill is the king’s!”
The word was given. The archers put down their bows. The party split into halves as Jean-Marc galloped down the center. He remembered the night that Artemis had slain the Pretender for him and realized that he was facing her down now himself. If she had a mind to, she could let loose her stone arrow and kill him.
Something is wrong with me, he thought as his guts wrenched. His back felt as if someone were twisting it like a wet bedsheet. Something is alive inside me. Something evil. Something dark.
He steeled himself against the pain as he pulled La Magnifique to a stop. From the corner of his eye, he saw the Rose Bride’s litter. Why had she come? He didn’t want her to see this.
Concealing his agony, he dismounted. Then he pulled his sword and advanced on the little doe.
How could this happen?
Tears rolled down Rose’s face as she fell before the statue of Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt and of the Moon. She heaved with exhaustion; she was cut and scratched. The king had run her to ground and she knew he meant to kill her. His face was grim; his battle sword was drawn.
She could not move.
“I do this for love,” he declared as he raised his sword over his head.
How could that be? Love did not cut down. It never did. Hatred did, and grief. But love nurtured and protected.
At least Reginer and Claire would have a chance now. She had given that to them. Perhaps that was the lesson she was supposed to learn: that to be loved, one had to love first.
She raised her head and gazed up at Jean-Marc. She loved him. She loved what he could have become if he had learned how to love and not only to need. To give and not just to want.
She blinked at him. Adieu, she thought as the sun glinted off the thick, sharp blade.
“Do it!” Ombrine cried.
“Do it!” Desirée chorused from her litter. She was wearing Rose’s bridal gown, and as always, Roses face hovered above her own. But her eyes were black.
Jean-Marc looked in turn at Desirée and Ombrine. Ombrine was dismounting. Desirée climbed down off the litter. Together they converged on Rose and Jean-Marc.
Jean-Marc hesitated. As he gazed down at Rose, he grimaced. Sweat was rolling down his face and she realized he was in pain.
“Who are you?” he asked in an agonized wail. Are you a sorceress? What have you been doing? What did you do to me?”
She bleated. She was terrified. Was this to be her end? Would he make it quick?
The sword wavered. His face changed. Angrily, defiantly, he stabbed the sword tip into the ground.
“You wouldn’t harm me,” he declared. “You wouldn’t harm my child. You couldn’t.”
Then he contracted forward with a groan. He began to retch; he gripped his head and moaned low and long. He fell to the grass and onto his side.
His men leaped off their horses and raced toward him. From her vantage point, Rose watched him writhe and groan. A trail of darkness escaped from his mouth, undulating as it rose into the sky.
Ombrine and Desirée reached Jean-Marc. Desirée grabbed his sword. It was too heavy for her; her mother wrapped her hands around Desirée’s and together the two women rushed Rose.
“No!” Jean-Marc yelled from the ground. He forced himself upright and ran for his sword. But he was too far away and the two Severine women had the advantage.
As the tip of the sword touched Rose’s throat, the statue of Artemis moved. Her chin raised, her eyes narrowed, and she pulled on her bowstring. She aimed and let her arrow fly.
It shot through the air like a falling star, like a comet. The assembly fell back, watching as it arched against the sun and plummeted toward the earth.
And though the arrow’s trajectory made it impossible to accomplish, the stone arrow slammed into Desirée’s chest and pierced her heart.
“Maman,” Desirée whispered as Rose’s features completely disappeared and Desirée’s true face was revealed.
“What is this?” Jean-Marc shouted as he grabbed up his sword and pointed it at the pair.
A shadowed figured hovered behind Ombrine’s shoulder, bent over as if to inspect Desirée’s wound. Ombrine did not see it; nor did she see the large blackbird—Le Noir—perched on its shoulder. The bird lifted its beak to the skies and cawed.
As if summoned, a tremendous flock of large blackbirds burst out of a bank of clouds. Hundreds of them wheeled and shrieked, as they had on the day the Pretender had attacked the coach. But in that case, they had protected Ombrine and Desirée Severine. Now they shot down toward them like more arrows of Artemis.
As Ombrine screamed and flailed her arms, the birds descended on her, catching up her hair, her clothes, her fingers. They clung to Desirée like ravening beasts as well.
Then they rose up, up into the sky, bearing mother and daughter with them. Ombrine struggled, shrieking, “Au secours! Au secours!” until they flew so far away that she became a dot and then nothing.
Nothing at all.
Rose stared at the vast sky, feeling sorrow and anger rising from her shoulders and flying away into the heavens with her evil stepmother and stepsister. Perhaps the God of the Shadows had taken a firstborn in payment after all.
She nearly floated into the sky herself. They were well and truly gone and she was free. She was safe.
For a moment, she was overcome. She had gone through so much, and had endured, come through changed, certainly. And yet she had been on guard for so long that she didn’t know how to let go of her fear. So it tugged at her heart a while longer; then it too, flew away.
“You are safe now,” a breeze whispered against Rose’s ear.
Jean-Marc and all the other hunters looked from the sky to her. No one spoke. No one moved. A horse nickered. A dog barked softly.
“You loved boldly and freely in the face of certain death. Your love is true and you know that it is true. You know love for what it is and what it is not. You are truly Best Beloved of the goddess, and I charge you Rose Marchand, to accept nothing less than true love from one who would walk in the garden with you. For while men themselves may be imperfect, they can strive to love perfectly. When one struggles to love in this way, one is a lover worthy of you. Else, you must bid him adieu.”
Rose bobbed her head. She understood.
“Then I release you from your enchantment.”
And in that moment, that instant in the sunshine, Rose sent out a thought for the king of the deer and wished him well. She could almost hear his answering nicker, wishing her the same. Then the deer that had been Rose Christine Marchand vanished. Rose the woman stood before Jean-Marc in the black rags she had worn when she’d left the château.
“Mademoiselle,” Jean-Marc breathed, racing forward and gathering her in his arms. “What magic is this?”
She allowed herself a moment in his embrace, shutting tight her eyes. Then firmly but gently, Rose moved away. No magic then. She was who she was.
“Artemis, I thank you,” she whispered as she knelt before the statue.
Jean-Marc knelt beside her. Then one by one, all the huntsmen bowed before the Goddess of the Hunt and of the Moon, a woman’s goddess.
Rose was given a horse—she refused to ride Ombrine’s—and she guided Desirée’s litter to the wooden bridge. There they found that Claire had given birth to a son, whom she named Laurent. As sister and brother met as humans for the first time, weeping with joy over love’s triumph, mother and babe were put onto the litter.
Reginer rode Rose’s horse, Rose seated behind him with her arms around his waist. She laid her head against his back, unable to staunch her tears of happiness.
As they rode back to the castle, Rose told Reginer everything that had happened since the royal coach wheeled away from the château. Jean-Marc kept pace beside them on his magnificent hunting horse. His face was ashen and he remained silent.
They dismounted at the palace, Reginer first, then he lifted Rose down.
“I thank the gods that all has ended happily,” her half brother said, embracing her tightly and kissing both her tearstained cheeks before he excused himself to be with his wife and new child.
After Rose visited little Laurent and his parents, she bathed and changed into some warm clothes—a deep scarlet velvet gown, one of the many dresses that had been made for Desirée. Her blonde hair was braided and coiled on top of her head, and she was left alone with Jean-Marc in a small private sitting room. Desirée’s scent permeated the room. So did a foul stench of black magic—sulfur, wormwood, and herbs Rose didn’t know.
“All has not yet ended happily for us,” Jean-Marc said as he faced her. He too, had changed his clothes. He wore purple, the royal color. “If I understand you, I married Desirée instead of you. She took your visage in order to deceive me. She convinced me that it was she I loved.”
Rose hesitated. Then she swept a deep curtsy and said, “With all due respect, Your Majesty, you also deceived yourself. You were never in love with her.”
It was his turn to pause. “I grant you that.”
“You don’t know how to love,” she said frankly. “You know how to need.”
His dark eyes met her deep, starry blue ones. He swallowed hard at the hard truth she spoke. Then he swept a deep bow and said, “Tu as raison. I can learn to love. You know that I can. You know me better than anyone on earth. I have told you things I’ve never told another living sour He sounded almost desperate and she knew he was terrified of being alone again.
Rose put her hand in his and his smile lit up the room. Her heart broke again because she was not his true love. How many times had it been broken?
Not so many that true love couldn’t heal it.
But Artemis was right: True love alone could heal it.
Pursing her lips together to force away her tears, she gave his hand a gentle squeeze.
“If you can, then someday you will,” she replied.
Rose turned to the fire and warmed her hands.
If she would turn blind eye to the fact that Jean-Marc didn’t love her as he should—with a strong, giving love, she would be a queen. After all the privations of her life, living such a life held its temptations. But as she gazed into the flames, she heard at last her mother’s wish:
“Let her know that she is loved with a love that is true and will never fade as the rose petal fades. If she knows that, it will be all that she needs in this life. A woman who is loved is the richest woman on earth. Knowing you are loved is the safest of harbors. True love never dies. It lives beyond the grave, in the heart of the beloved. If she knows she is loved, she’ll be rich and safe for all her days.”
“What you offer me is not true love,” she finished as she turned around. “And my goddess—and I—decree that I can live with nothing less.”
FIFTEEN
Why did Rose Marchand look like Princess Lucienne? Perhaps the proper question was, why did Princess Lucienne look like Rose Marchand? What caused the death of a princess, a wound so great that it brought her husband to his knees? What promise did the runes of Zeus foretell when they said that Jean-Marc’s son, Espere, would mend two broken hearts?
