To Conquer the Heart of a King Page 3

  “I felt the devil’s grasp then too.” She shuddered and swallowed before she could continue. She tightened her grip, pulled him closer with a strength neither thought she possessed until her lips were at his ear. “He’s here. In this castle.”

  “I know.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A week later, Lukas ordered the Seer to dine with him at the midday meal. He did not take his repast in the Great Hall as his father had done, but rather quietly in the plotting room. He’d ordered a dining table to be placed at the door to the balcony. The shutters were open to let in the spring air and the sounds of the bustling, and peaceful city below.

  “Magnus, you may take your leave,” the King said as he cut the groveling visit short.

  “How gracious of you, your Majesty,” he replied just as the Seer’s presence was announced. “Ahh this is the prophetess who foretold your rise to power.”

  “I thought you’d met.”

  “Welcome, my dear,” he said as he approached her like a wolf circles a winged dove. He took her hand although she hadn’t offered it, and her knees buckled ever so slightly as if in a curtsey. “Are you ill?” Magnus asked with little sincerity. “Or was it a vision?”

  The Seer nodded. “I saw light, a blinding light.”

  “My future looks bright after all,” he said looking meaningfully at Lucas as he put his lips to the Seer’s hand, on her palm, at the place where she had burned.

  There was significance in that. Lukas was suddenly sure that Magnus knew who the Seer was. And he would use that knowledge against him.

  When Magnus left, the Seer let out a breath. Lukas caught her before she could fall.

  “It’s him. The devil,” she murmured.

  “I know.”

  “That smell…sulfur. He wears the scent of hell.”

  “He dabbles in alchemy.”

  “Kill him,” she whispered.

  “I can’t.”

  “Surely he was the one to betray you.”

  “I can’t prove it.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “For a long time the laws did not matter here. Now that I am King, they will be obeyed.”

  “But the men who rose against you. Did they not implicate him?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “You killed them?”

  “I imprisoned them. They killed themselves.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Neither do I, but I can’t touch him.”

  “You must!”

  “You realize he knows who you are, don’t you? Aren’t you curious about your past?”

  “Not as curious as I am about the future. And there will be no future unless you end his.”

  “I can’t! He’s my brother.” Even as he said it the old doubts surfaced. Different mothers, the same father. But was it the same father? The King had never cast public doubts about the Queen’s loyalty, but his actions in private had showed how he detested both his wife and his only legitimate son. His son he had sent far away; his wife he had sent to an early grave.

  Lukas was nothing like his father, in looks or in spirit. Maybe the Seer was right he didn’t have the heart to be King. If there was any chance that the blood that ran through the heart of Magnus was the same as his, how could he let that flow? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Magnus spent days, sometimes weeks away from the castle. Even then the Seer never felt truly safe. Shortly after Easter, she woke, not to the sun, but to coldness. Her eyes were wet, burning, despite the cold compress that covered them. She sat up abruptly and flung the cloth away.

  “But, it’s necessary,” a woman’s voice said. “The abbess said you’ll always be blind, if you don’t let me--”

  “Leave me!” There was no sound of movement. “Leave me!” she repeated and lashed out. Her hand struck something, a bowl? She heard it hit the stone floor and shatter.

  In a moment Tilman was there and the woman was gone. “No one is to pass that threshold again, but you and the King,” the Seer demanded.

  “But you need a Lady in Waiting to help you…dress and things.”

  “I need no one!”

  “Did she hurt you?” He was suddenly near. The embarrassment in his voice replaced by concern.

  “She tried.” The Seer reached out a hand to the boy. And only when he grasped hers with a steady hand did she realize she was shaking. She did not fear that woman. She was just a tool of Magnus. But how did he know what the abbess had done to her? From the floor came the sickening smell that turned her stomach, the contents of the shattered ceramic. Every week there had been a special treatment for her eyes. To keep the Seer from becoming even more blind, the abbess had said. But in truth to keep her captive there. For the Seer had made the abbess a fortune by telling fortunes. Donations from grateful, and wealthy, pilgrims had gone into the cloister’s coffers. Had Magnus sought the abbess out now? Or had they conspired in the past to steal her future?

  “Tell me something, Tilman.”

  “What should I tell you, Seer?”

  “Anything. A story. Something happy.”

  “I can’t think of anything happy,” he said sullenly after a long pause.

  “What’s wrong?” He’d been quiet lately, dutiful as ever, but withdrawn. “It’s hard for you to be trailing after me like a guide dog, when you could be training to be a Knight.”

  “It’s not just that,” he said then was quiet again. She knew he was blushing. She could almost feel the heat radiating from his fresh cheeks. “It’s an honor to guard you. I do it gladly.”

  “I know you do, Tilman.”

  “But I’m worried.”

  “About what?” The Seer could have asked, “About whom.” Slowly, with embarrassed pauses, with youthful pride, with the whole mix of everything that drives a man, he told her the story of young love, of courtly arrangements, of a girl with flaxen hair and blue eyes. A girl with a good heart promised to a bad man.

  And it gave the Seer an idea. “Things will work out, Tilman,” she said as she released his hand.

  “You’ve seen it happen?” he asked in that perpetual naivety.

  “No, but maybe I can make something happen. Don’t dwell on it. Come, help me now to clean up this mess.

  He seemed to become aware of it only now. She heard a sharp intake of breath. “What was in that bowl?” he asked in a surprised voice. “It’s blanched the floorboards.”

  As she dined with the King that afternoon, the Seer had little appetite.

  “Lent is over. There’s no need for you to fast,” he said with irony. The laws of the Lenten season had not been followed. At least at the King’s table.

  “I wonder if your subjects know that.”

  “No one is starving in my Kingdom.”

  “Do you think you could perform your duties on their diet? Should I ask your chef to throw away the venison steaks and serve only spaetzle noodles for the next week? Would that appeal to you?”

  “I’ll have him prepare bread and water for you for the next 10 years. Now leave me, if you’re not going to eat anyway, before you completely ruin my appetite.”

  She stood, but did not leave.

  He sighed. “What is it?”

  “I need a woman.”

  He gave a short laugh. “We have more in common than I thought.”

  “I have someone in mind who could assist me and be my guide. Would you allow me to send for her?”

  “Of course.”

  Out in the corridor, Tilman would be waiting to take her back to her chambers. The King’s voice caught her before she reached the door. “And don’t bother me with matters of personnel again.”

  He did not see the pleased smile on her face that she could not suppress. So satisfied was she in her own scheming, she did not share with him her suspicions about Magnus’ pact with the abbess. It was an omission that would have consequences.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Royal subjects were expected to give their lives for their King in service of his army. They also gave what little wealth they could accumulate in taxes. And they took their fates in silence. For there was no way for a common man to gain an audience with the King. In some realms, that silence grew and grew until it burst into the angry cry of revolution.

  In Falkenberg, it was well-known that the Seer in her blindness could never be the King’s eyes, but the people had sensed early on, she had his ear. Beneath a trellis of snaking grapevines in the castle’s courtyard, she gave audience to those who sought her out. Each day there were more. Each evening the guards would shoo them away and shut the heavy castle gates behind them. This evening, the air was thick and heavy with the scent of new blossoms. It weighed on her like the stories she had collected of hunger, misfortune and unfairness.

  “Luzia,” the Seer called, as she stood and reached out a hand. The girl was there in an instant, guiding her from the castle’s courtyard into the maze of corridors and stairs to the plotting room.

  “Won’t his Majesty be angry?”

  “I’ve kept him waiting before.”

  “I meant about me and Tilman?”

  The Seer didn’t answer that question. “Go to your husband, now.”

  “But how will you…”

  “I know the way.”

  “But--”

  “I said, go to Tilman!” The Seer waited until she could no longer hear Luzia’s quick footsteps then she nodded to the guard she knew would be there before the plotting room. He opened the door.

  Voices halted for a moment inside the chamber, but just for a moment. The Seer stood patiently listening to the King confer with his general. Listening to how little the ambitions of a King matched the needs of his people. Finally there was a rustling of pape
rs, a rolling of maps, a curt dismissal from the King.

  The Seer held out her hand. “Bastian, you are well.” It was a long-practiced habit of hers to phrase questions as statements. Stating things sometimes made them true.

  “As are you,” he replied and there was a smile on the tenor of his voice. He gave her his rough hand and she took it. And kept it.

  “You wished to see me, my Liege,” she said without turning.

  “Hours ago,”

  “There were many of your subjects who wished to see me.”

  “Are they more important than a King?”

  “That is a very interesting question, Sire.” Sebastian’s grip tightened for a moment, in warning. Or amusement? The Seer did not release his hand. “Come see me tomorrow. I’d like to talk to you about Tilman’s training.”

  “And I’d like to talk to you about Tilman,” the King’s voice had warning in it.

  For such a large man, Sebastian moved quickly. He took his leave and was gone in an instant.

  “You’ve put me in a difficult position,” the King said when they were alone.

  “Have I?”

  Something, a book maybe, landed on the floor, propelled by his anger.

  “You have! And you know how. I have no patience for your mystical bullshit tonight. When you said you needed a girl to assist you, you never told me you had chosen Luzia of Sankt Georgen.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  Something hit the table then. A fist?

  “Zaehringen is already disposed towards you,” she said. “After all they entrusted Tilman’s education to you as a sign of their allegiance.”

  He snorted. “They made me a babysitter and spared a distant relative to the King that they had no use for.”

  As if she hadn’t heard, she continued, “An alliance between Zaehringen and St. Georgen can only help you and hurt your enemy. She was promised to the Prinz of Littenweiler. We all know he’s a monster.”

  “And since you arranged a secret marriage between Tilman and Luzia, there’s no danger of him ever getting her, is there?”

  “I never suggested or encouraged their young love.”

  “Neither did you discourage it.”

  She said nothing.

  “Don’t do that again.”

  “Are you unhappy with the results?”

  “No. I’m quite pleased. Tilman proves useful for something after all. But that’s not the point. You did it without advising me. You’ll never do that again.” He closed his hand around her wrist as if to attract her full attention. “Promise me!” he demanded.

  “I promise to inform you of my actions,” she said evenly.

  He laughed. “I know you. You’ll inform me before you act! Say it!”

  The pressure on her arm increased. She remained silent.

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re stubborn?”

  “If they have, I can’t remember.”

  “Promise me!”

  Suddenly he released her wrist. It was her face he held in his hands now, gently.

  “What are you doing?” She tried to take a step back, but he would not let her go.

  “Applying pressure in a different way. Have you ever seen your own face? Before you were blind?”

  “I don’t know…I don’t remember.”

  “So you don’t know what you look like.”

  “Like a witch.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Many of the men and women who come to see me. They think because I can’t see, I also can’t hear.” Her voice she realized was no longer even. A trace of bitterness was there.

  “Do you know you’re beautiful?”

  She tried to shake her head, but it was trapped between his hands. His thumbs traced the shape of her brow, the line of her nose, the fullness of her lips.

  “Say it,” he whispered. His mouth was so close. “Say it.”

  A truth welled up inside her. For a moment she almost gave voice to this secret, if he hadn’t then told her exactly what to say.

  “Repeat after me, ‘I promise I will inform you of my actions first, before I act.’”

  “I promise I will inform you of my actions.” she said automatically.

  He pulled her face closer to his, “Go on,” he said softly, tilting her head as if to gain access to her lips.

  “First,” she gasped.

  He released her so suddenly. She swayed for a moment, not because she sought her balance, but from the sudden harshness in his voice. “Now, leave me!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next day the King did not ask for the Seer as had become his custom. That did not deter her.

  “Let me see him,” she demanded of the King’s guard.

  “That’s not possible.”

  She brushed past him, felt for the door to the plotting room and opened it herself. Even without sight, she sensed the emptiness in the chamber.

  She turned on the guard. “Where is he?”

  “His chambers.”

  “Is he ill?”

  “No.”

  Her own relief kept her from hearing the embarrassment in his voice.

  “Luzia,” she called over her shoulder. “Take me there.”

  “He’s not to be disturbed. Under penalty of death!”

  “Penalty and death are exactly what I would like to talk to him about. Come, Luzia, then take me to the West Tower. I can’t breathe in here.” While the girl led her up the winding stone casement, she let her fingers trail along the rough stone wall. So rigid and strong, but it could crumble so easily. Luzia opened the latch and the iron door, and would have followed her outside onto the turret, if the Seer had not held up a hand.

  “But you’ll never find the way--”

  The Seer cut her off sharply. “I am not helpless!” The wind along the battlements picked up her words and flung them derisively back in her face. She would find her way back. Her feet and fingers had memorized these castle corridors, but could she find a way to convince the King to stop an injustice?

  One man’s life was at stake and it could bring down a Kingdom. A peasant had slain a stag to fight off that beast called hunger. Caring for his family was punishable by death, because he had dared touch game that was the King’s quarry.

  The wind played like a child messing her hair, pulling at her long skirts, flinging up bits of conversation from the courtyard below. She could hear the creaking of carriage springs, the jangling of reins. An important visitor was arriving. Her natural curiosity asked, who was it? In time she would find out, but it would be too late to stop the consequences that already had been put into play. She turned back into the darkness of the tower. The King did not want to be seen? She would have to make him see.

  The Seer went alone to the King’s chambers. A guard denied her entrance with words, but she knew he would never dare touch her. She felt again for the ornate door handle and pushed the door open.

  “You can’t let that man die!” the Seer exclaimed without a greeting.

  “Would you care to join him? How dare you interrupt me!”

  “How dare you put the life of an animal above that of a man!”

  “A King can do as he likes,” he growled.

  “And your subjects will do as they please with your head and plant it on a spike at the gates of Falkenberg.”

  He laughed then, but it was not in amusement. There was anger in it. If she had not been so upset, she would have taken more notice of other sounds in the room. Were those footsteps and the swishing of fabric as someone glided past her, or was it just the crackle of the fire and the ceaseless draft playing with the curtains of the canopy bed?

  “How I would love to have you punished for your insolence, but then I’d have no one to amuse me.”

  “You’d have no one to tell you the truth. How can you kill a man for feeding his family? Is an animal worth more than one of your subjects?”

  “Are my laws worth nothing?”

  “Pardon him, then.”

  “That would be a sign of weakness.”

  “Not seeing reason is also a weakness. Change the law.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “It’s never too late.”