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  Her mother! Well, she should have expected that. Even as a tiny child, she had known that Umberto followed her mother with his eyes every single time she was anywhere around the docks where the caulkers worked. The older man had plainly been crazy about her. He had even called Maria by her name a couple of times by accident. How could she start a good fight with someone who was still in love with her dead mother?

  At least she wasn't in love with Umberto herself. If this was hard, trying to rival the memory of her dead mother and win over someone she loved would be even harder.

  Maria sighed again. She leaned heavily on the broom, and some of the birch twigs cracked. Outside the chief forester's house the rain fell in heavy sheets. Once upon a time all she'd wanted was a house that was warm and dry. Now she was almost tempted to go out in the rain. It hadn't melted her in all those years of sculling her gondola through the wet winter canals of Venice.

  Housekeeping, cooking and preparing baby clothes did not fill up the day, let alone her mind. True, being warm was good and so was being well fed. But being cooped up, being a good wife, even a good pregnant wife, was going to drive her crazy, even if the final stages of this pregnancy were beginning to leave her feeling permanently exhausted.

  "Really, why don't you have a little rest, dear," clucked Issie again.

  Maria swept irritably. She'd been just about ready to do that. Now she wouldn't.

  The jingle of a horse's harness was a welcome distraction. Ignoring the rain, ignoring Issie's squawks of alarm, Maria ran out to the messenger, who was wearing wet Venetian Republic livery. It must be something important to bring the man out here in this weather. The messengers of the Republic were supposed to conduct their business with the utmost dispatch, true. But out here, this far from the authorities in Venice, that meant "when it wasn't raining." The forests of Istria were vital to the shipbuilding in the Arsenal, but they were also a long way from the messengers' capi back in Venice.

  She was drenched the moment she stepped foot outside the door, of course, and she didn't give a damn, of course. This wasn't the canal; she wasn't the same Maria who hadn't but two dry skirts to her name. There were several warm outfits inside that house that she could change right back into when she got inside. Issie could spread this one on chairs in front of the fire—it would give the old cow something to do.

  Maria struggled with the buckle on the wet leather pouch, ignoring the shivering messenger who was trying to tether his horse with numb fingers. "Can you help me?" he asked finally.

  Maria looked up from her task with annoyance. "Take yourself and your horse into the stable, you fool. Are you not bright enough to get in out of the rain?"

  A smothered snort from the messenger suddenly drew her attention to the fact that she was apparently not bright enough to get in out of the rain.

  She got the pouch off the saddle, and retreated into the house.

  Issie, clucking like a wet hen, handed her a rough towel. Maria had no time for it now. The fussing about while she was trying to get to the message in the pouch would drive her insane. "Go get the messenger a drink," she snapped. "He's wet through. I'm just a little damp."

  Issie sniffed irritably. "He's not pregnant." But she went anyway. The pouch buckle finally surrendered to a superior will. There was only one wax-sealed missive inside. The seal was that of the House Dorma, the Doge's house, and not the familiar crest of the Montescue. It was addressed to her . . . and not to the chief forester of Istria.

  Oh blessed Jesu—

  Maria tore at it with trembling fingers.

  No one would send a special messenger to the wife of a forester unless it was horrible news. The worst of all possible news.

  No one from Dorma would send me news by a special messenger. It must be from Marco. It could only mean Benito had been killed. . . . Why hadn't she . . .

  Inside was Kat's familiar handwriting. It started with the words: Glad news!

  Maria sat down with a thump on a hard oak settle, and composed herself with a deep breath. She patted her bulging stomach to still the flutters just under the skin. "If Katerina only knew how close she came to causing your premature birth, child," she muttered, blinking to clear her eyes before reading further.

  I've got Marco to use the Dorma seal so this will get to you as soon as possible, wrote Kat. Fantastic, wonderful things have happened!

  That seal could indeed achieve great things. It had nearly achieved an early baby, thought Maria wryly. She read on, learning of the Vinlanders who would restore the fortunes of Montescue, of the annulment of Marco's marriage to Angelina, and Angelina's hasty internment in the Cloister at Santa Lucia Della Monte outside Verona. It seemed that this had been a very busy week.

  She tried not to think how busy she would have been, had she been there, how in the thick of it all. She'd be poling Kat about, of course, and maybe helping her a little with the Vinlanders. And she wouldn't be getting the news of the wedding plans at second-hand like this.

  Petro Dorma insists it is to be a great state function. Marco and I have had to agree. On conditions: First, I want you to come and support me on that day. Second, Francesca de Chevreuse will be returning to Venice. She is to be my other matron of honor. Dorma says he will make arrangements for you and Umberto to return to Venice for the occasion. She had to read that twice, and then a third time, before it began to make sense.

  And when it did, Maria could only laugh helplessly. The flower of the House Montescue and the heir of the House Valdosta, grandson of the Duke of Ferrara . . . with a caulker's wife and one of Venice's most famous courtesans as her attendants to the altar.

  Well, she could hardly refuse. Kat, after all, had come to her low-key caulker's wedding in the same role. But it would mean returning to Venice. Returning—she looked at the date of the wedding—returning with a three-week-old baby, if everything ran to time.

  The back door banged, and her head came up. If it was Issie—

  A sneeze. Not Issie; Umberto. He came through to the front parlor. Maria took in the wet-plastered gray hair and the faint bluish tinge to her man's lips. He smiled caressingly at her, and a wave of affection swept through her. Her man might have his faults and his rigidities, but he was a good one. People might become exasperated with Umberto Verrier, but you couldn't really dislike him; he was too mild a soul to engender anything so active as dislike. And he was such a good husband. A conscientious one, at least.

  He was shivering slightly, and she beckoned to him, smiling. "Umberto! Come over to the fire, before ice forms on your poor nose."

  He did, holding his thin hands out to crackling flames. "There is a message from Venice? One of the foresters said he saw a messenger in the Doge's livery coming across."

  She'd pulled a chair up for him by this time, handed him the towel Issie had been trying to press on her. "It was for me, dear. A letter from Katerina Montescue, the lady who was my maid of honor at our wedding. She is to marry Marco Valdosta, you know, the Doge-elect's ward, in a great state ceremony in the early spring. It's all finally been sorted out, and settled at last."

  Umberto looked at her wonderingly. "I have never understood how you came to know such a one. The Casa Montescue! She is a great lady."

  I don't dare tell you how I know Kat, thought Maria. It was no tale to chance spreading about among all these foresters, especially as Issie had come in with a goblet of hot, spiced, honeyed wine, her lined face alive with curiosity. She'd have it all over Istria before tomorrow night. The new chief forester's wife! Blessed Jesu, she's worse than we could have thought! A smuggler! Poling her own canal boat! And no better than she should be, no doubt!

  Well, the wine might be just an excuse to find out what was happening, but Maria was grateful. Umberto was in need of it. "There was more to it than just telling me that the wedding has been set, or she wouldn't have needed a messenger. She has asked that we—you and I—go back to Venice for the wedding. She has arranged with Petro Dorma to make it possible."

 
; Umberto sipped some of the hot wine. "Well, it would be nice . . . I have been thinking how I would like to go to town. It would be very good to see people again, perhaps to ask if I might take a post closer to the city. But . . . what about the . . ." He hesitated, "the baby?"

  Maria patted her stomach. "Baby should be born by then. It had better be. Katerina has asked me to be one of her matrons of honor."

  The goblet crashed to the floor. Neither Issie nor Umberto seemed to notice.

  Chapter 12

  "You're not that old," protested Manfred for the fifth time.

  The Emperor smiled wryly. "Thank you. Nevertheless, I still want you to do it. You will pray for my soul in Jerusalem. It needs it, believe me. And it wouldn't do you any harm to do some thinking about your own mortality."

  Erik looked at the emperor's nephew. Manfred was trying to keep a straight face. He glanced at Charles Fredrik, and realized that the Emperor understood the humor in this too. Erik could see the similarity between the two men in the facial lines. Of course Manfred was bigger, and had a darker Celtic complexion, but the family likeness was definitely there—and went deeper than appearances. He could readily believe, looking at the Emperor, that there were some sins worth praying about.

  Charles Fredrik shook his head ruefully. "When I was your age I didn't believe in my own mortality either. Just do it, Manfred. Humor me. I'm an old man. I know that both in Venice and now in Norway, the chances of you being killed or injured were remarkably good. Neither luck nor Erik is going to stop everything. So I'm putting in a formal request to the Abbot-General of the Knights of the Holy Trinity to furnish you with an escort of knights. He has already acceded to my 'request' that you go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land for me, while you are still in the holy order. I don't think he will refuse this either. You will be invested, both of you, as knight-proctors and given discretionary command over the Knights assigned to accompany you. To assist you I'm sending my old friend and mentor, Eberhard of Brunswick, with you."

  Manfred rolled his eyes. "To instruct me in statecraft no doubt, Uncle. This pilgrimage is going to be a real penance after all."

  The Emperor covered a smile with his hand. "Yes. Poor Eberhard is expecting to find it that, for a certainty. Now, Francesca, stay with me a while. I would like to talk to you without that young idiot interrupting me. Go on, you two. I'll want to talk to you as well, Erik. But not tonight, I think."

  Erik and Manfred had little choice but to leave. Francesca waved as she walked over to stand beside the Emperor.

  * * *

  "Did you see that!" said Manfred fuming. "One minute he's dying and wanting me to pray for his soul, the next he's stealing my girl!"

  "She's scarcely a girl," said Erik, latching onto the one safe point in the entire argument.

  The disapproving look brought a grin to Manfred. "Among the things I can promise you, she definitely isn't a boy. Or have you forgotten a certain night in a certain brothel? Francesca says you're the biggest stiff thing she's ever had between her legs. Your whole body was rigid . . . with shock."

  Erik fumbled for something to say, and failed. The memory of the first time they'd met Francesca, fleeing from an ambush, still embarrassed him. They'd been ambushed in a brothel in which she was employed at the time, and she'd agreed to hide them—by using the expedient device of hiding them in plain sight, engaged in the sort of activity anyone would expect to see in a brothel. Erik himself, mortified, had faked his part of the thing. Manfred . . . had not.

  Which was perhaps why Manfred reveled in the memory. "It's old age, that's your problem. Memory's going first. Never mind, I'll get Francesca to refresh the picture. Just some millefiori beads as I recall, all she was wearing."

  "Manfred! You know that's not what I meant." Erik wondered just how he should deal with this. "Have you no morals at all? I meant she's a woman, not a girl."

  Manfred snorted. "Only you Icelanders seem to worry about it."

  "Vinlanders take it even more seriously. It's just not respectful!"

  Manfred went off into a guffaw. "Well, that's something, considering her former profession."

  Erik found himself blushing; as usual, confused by what his response should be to the former whore, then courtesan, now a prince's mistress. His conservative upbringing said he should treat her with disdain. Yet . . .

  Francesca, he knew from experience, lived by a rigid moral code too. It just had a totally different set of rules about sex.

  He decided to take refuge in something he was familiar and comfortable with. "Come. You're getting fat, Manfred. Let's go down to the jousting yard."

  "Erik, it's snowing out there. Besides, I know you just want to take it out on me."

  There was some truth to that, even if, as the years went by, "taking it out" on Manfred was getting a great deal harder to do. But at the new rapier-work Erik still had the edge, and always would have. He was just faster than Manfred could ever be. "Then we will find a salle big enough for some more fencing practice. Come. I have the quilted jackets in my quarters."

  "I'd rather go drinking," protested Manfred.

  Erik threw him against the wall with a rolling hiplock.

  * * *

  Francesca looked severely at the Emperor. "Using me to tease your nephew is not kind."

  Charles Fredrik smiled. "It's one of the few pleasures left to an old man." The smile widened. "And by now Erik will have talked him into some training and will administer some bruises, which his disrespect deserves."

  "You are a very bad old man," she said, shaking her head at the most powerful man in Europe.

  The first time she'd met the Emperor she'd been quaking inside. But when all was said and done, he was also a man. Men, she understood. This one, for all his power, was a good man. And behind the smiles she read genuine worry.

  "He's turning out well, you know. But he is still very young."

  "And very jealous. If I were twenty years younger he'd have reason to be. Now tell me, Francesca. What do you intend to do now? I am sending Manfred to Jerusalem. But I have a place for you here in Mainz. You've served me well in Denmark, much though Trolliger disapproves of your methods! Mind you, I don't think he realizes that your methods are—"

  "More refined than in Venice. And not horizontal in the least." She smiled tolerantly. "Wait until his spies are done reporting to him—or until he finishes reading those reports he's already gotten. I believe he will be astonished that I have become a veritable pillar of respectability."

  "Good," the Emperor replied, and sounded as if he meant it. "I gathered that already; unlike Trolliger, I read the entire reports from my spies—and his, by the way—not just the parts I deem are pertinent at the time."

  "Well, I may not be Caesar's wife," she said thoughtfully, with a long look through her lashes at the Emperor, "but—"

  "But you must still be above reproach, as my nephew's paramour," Charles Fredrik agreed with her. "Though a bit of banter between the two of us, in private, is harmless enough."

  "And in public," she twinkled, "I find finance to be the most fascinating possible topic for discussion."

  He chuckled, as she had known he would.

  Francesca licked the corner her mouth. Slowly and catlike. "So, whatever could he find to disapprove of in finance?" she asked, innocently, looking at him through lowered lashes.

  She was rewarded with the Emperor's laughter . . . which went off into coughing. It took a while to subside, and now he looked older. Gray and tired, though still able to muster a smile.

  "Don't make me laugh, please!" he said breathlessly. "It's a pity. I find little to laugh at these days. No wonder the Danes were so willing to help you. You must have had them wrapped around your littlest finger. But what do you intend to do now? Because I would like to ask that you accompany Manfred. Not for the reasons he'd like, lucky young dog, but for my own interests. And yours, for that matter. I pay well, as you know."

  Francesca chose her words carefully. She was aware j
ust how dangerous these waters were. She knew she was tolerated as the mistress to the Emperor's second-in-line heir. But more than that? No.

  "I was planning on accompanying Manfred. Not, I'm afraid, for the reasons he thinks. But the truth is that Mainz is not my sort of town. And I fancy seeing the east. Alexandria tempts me."

  "Alexandria!" She was surprised by the enthusiasm in the Emperor's voice. "What a place! I went there, you know, as a young prince." He sighed. "A paradise of a town for a young man. But there is more to it. A place of intellect, too. More than anywhere else in the world, as I know it. I regret, in my old age, that I didn't explore that aspect more."

  "I would wager you didn't regret it then!"

  "True. But I'll have to tell you about it some other time. Right now I want to talk to you about Eberhard of Brunswick's mission."

  "To the Ilkhan."

  The Emperor shook his head. "If I didn't know you better, I'd have you burned for witchcraft."

  She shrugged. "It is quite obvious."

  The Emperor shook his head again. "I just hope that Grand Duke Jagiellon is not as intelligent and devious-minded as you are."

  "If he isn't, he's bound to have someone who is," she said.

  The Emperor looked thoughtful. "Not necessarily. The plots and machinations of Jagiellon are not constructed as you or I would construct them. You've given a lot of thought to western politics. Turn your mind now to the east. There is a factor at work there you must not forget: Power in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is wrested by strength and cunning, not just by hereditary right or, as in Venice, by election."

  He held up a hand. "Yes, I know. There are intrigues and schemes here, also. But this is the playing of puppies compared to the fight for pack-dominance there. Jagiellon dares not allow anyone into his trust. He must always act, to some extent, alone. Even his closest advisor, Count Mindaug, will pull him down if he can, and thus is not privy to the innermost workings and plans and secrets. That would require trust and a loyalty born of love, not fear. Those are as alien to Jagiellon as his kind of absolute enslavement is to us. He gains their loyalty by robbing them of their will and their self. Our most trusted people can betray us . . . his cannot. But his cannot think or act independently, either. Those Jagiellon allows free thought to must be kept weaker, and ignorant. We don't have that problem, although we do need to fear treachery. We must place our trust carefully."