Royal Blood. Rona Sharon
come prepared for the joust, I see. But harken, you may yet live, my prickled friend.” Stanley guffawed at his own gibe. “Now tell me, was it painful?”
“Not as much as taking a Norman arrow in the eye, methinks.”
Stanley chuckled. “I take it you are with the Devereaux brood, eh?”
Michael’s startled gaze locked with Stanley’s. “You know my name.”
“I know your arms.” Stanley indicated the mark on Michael’s wrist.
With a negligent shrug, Michael replied, “I am a stray Devereaux.”
“Then we shall have to bring you back into the Devereaux fold, runt.”
“Your pardon, I neglected to properly introduce myself. Michael Devereaux is my name. I come to represent the Earl of Tyrone in the tournaments with the honor and flair befitting his august house. You are the Undefeated Baron Monteagle everyone is betting his purse on, eh?”
“Ah, the pleasure of notoriety! But you are wide of the mark, m’boy. I am Baron Monteagle to my tenants, Edward to my lady mother, Ned to my beauteous future bride, whoever the good Lord should deem her be, and Stanley to my mates, even the prickled ones.”
Michael shook the proffered paw. “Undefeated, I’m honored to make your acquaintance.”
“A fine device you have there, my spruce friend”—Stanley indicated the rampant bloodred eagle of rubies stamped in the scabbard of Michael’s eating knife—“the lord of which this court has oft extolled but never entertained. You serve him? Why has he not come in the flesh?”
“The king’s business keeps my lord in Ireland. I am here on his behalf, an ambassador.”
“An ambassador, not a knight?”
“Alack, no.” Michael grinned sheepishly, then sobered. “Not yet, anyhow.”
“Not a knight? A strapping runt such as you? Saints, you are twice my inches, Devereaux! I was rather anticipating aggrandizing my reputation at your expense.”
Michael appraised his newfound friend. Although Stanley was a good deal shorter in height, the muscled, barrel chest rivaled that of an ox. “I do intend to compete, under my lord’s arms. So you see”—he gave a fulsome smile—“you may yet trounce me with a glad heart, and may the mud of your glory stick to my breastplate.”
Chortling ebulliently, Stanley slapped Michael’s shoulder fondly. “Save your glib tongue for the ladies, codling. Your poetry shan’t sweeten me up for our engagement in the lists.”
“It was worth a try.” Michael’s grin turned lopsided.
Stanley studied him soberly. “I suggest you bank that high-resolved gleam in your eye, runt, lest you tempt the hardy dogs of the jousts to shiver their lances on you.”
“Would a bloodless, meek mien make me less of an appetizer? I am thinking not. They will know me for the unfledged challenger that I am, whether I cower or strut.”
“True, but your inevitable defeat will hurt less if you prudently dampen your ardor.”
“A goodly advice, I am sure.”
“Aw, that wasn’t a nettle! Hark, you did me a good turn beckoning me hither. I shall repay the courtesy. Two years I am undefeated. My Lord Lovell over there, all high-proud and merry”—his glower indicated the man who had baited him—“comes last at the tournament and reaches higher each year. The reason is…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Our king is a passionate jouster and despises defeat above all things. Hence, this time next year, the Undefeated shall be known as the Once Defeated and dining at the king’s table. Savvy?”
“A shrewd strategy and very politick.” Michael appreciated the hard-earned advice for what it was: his first significant lesson in court politics. “I thank you. I shall not forget your counsel.”
An usher appeared in the doorway, thumping a gilded staff on the rushes-strewn floor and heralding at the top of his lungs, “His Royal Majesty, Henry Tudor, by the grace of God, King of England and France, Protector of the Faith, Defender of the Realm, and Lord of Ireland!”
The result was a thunder of wooden legs scraping the flagstones as everyone pushed to their feet and plunged into deep bows and curtsies.
King Henry VIII, magnificently dressed in gilt-embossed imperial purple with a heavy gold chain twinkling with gems slung across his wide shoulders and a crown set atop his reddish gold head, entered the great hall with his regal-looking, matronly Spanish queen on his arm.
“—and Her Royal Majesty, Queen Katherine of England!” the usher finished.
Leading a solemn procession of lords and ladies, splendidly clothed and lustrously jeweled, followed by pursuivants, pages, and footboys, the royal couple made its way to the high table.
Michael went stock-still as he recognized the treasonous Lord Ned walking behind the king, paired with a churchman in rich scarlet robes—doubtless the illustrious Cardinal Wolsey—and looking none too pleased. The Lady Anne his sister appeared in the queen’s train, her curvaceous assets alluringly displayed in a red gown, and gliding next to her was the mysterious spy.
Dainty and petite, her head held regally high, she shimmered in a low-cut, waist-tight, pearl-dripping gown of nacre satin that set off her alabaster skin. Her ebony tresses, partially veiled by a stylish jeweled hood, glistened under the cresset lights. She floated swanlike among the geese in the queen’s train like an otherworldly sylph in a dark wood. When her thick-lashed, purplish blue gaze cut to him unexpectedly, Michael felt a kick in his gut. She was exquisite.
His neighbor’s wry observation anchored him in reality. “The vision you are hard ogling is Princess Renée de Valois of France, Duchess of Brittany and Chartres. Best couch your lance at the red-blooded prizes of this court. That one is much too lofty and blue for your blood.”
A sweeping glance about him confirmed that Michael was not the only one agape; Renée de Valois looked so pearly pink white and deliciously pretty that every man in the chamber was stripping her bare. So this was the notorious princess of France. A delicate creature with a rapier for a tongue. He would have been hard put to believe it had he not caught her spying fearlessly in the cellar. She intrigued him, and she aroused him. Then the crux of the matter dawned on him: the French were now apprised of the conspiracy. Which way would the notorious weathervanes intervene, if at all? He was in need of information, and Stanley seemed as good a fount as any. Fixing his gaze on Anne, he affected a lecherous smile that Stanley, in his predilection for using bawdy tourney language, would describe as codding, and said, “Who is yonder poppy?”
“My Lady Anne Hastings, His Grace of Buckingham’s lady sister.”
Of course—Lord Ned was the Duke of Buckingham! His father, Harry Stafford, the second Duke of Buckingham, had backed Richard of Gloucester to the throne and then rebelled against him, thus opening the road to Henry Tudor, the late king. Jupiter’s thunder, how had he missed that? Maybe because his mind had been soused with lavender and ambergris….
“The Lady Anne,” Stanley gossiped, “is newly restored from dieting on piety at St. Mary’s and with any luck all the lustier for her three years’ deprivation. By comparison I hear the French princess is flint-hearted as her royal sire, the not-so-much-lamented King Louis the Twelfth, and the scourge of princes. Her affianced have all fled the snare, some by dying, others by running.”
Michael was hard put to accept Stanley’s word on this matter but kept the observation to himself. “King Louis’s daughter?” A veritable princess of the blood, her kind was usually kept under lock and key until a connubial alliance was contracted with an heir to some throne.
“Aye. The king her father coaxed the pope to grant him a dispensation to put aside his first wife and then browbeat the lady’s mother, then the Duchess of Brittany in her own right, into accepting his troth, just so he could add Brittany to his