The Queen's Bastard

BELINDA PRIMROSE

12 August 1587 Lutetia, capital of Gallin “Ya think God gave ya teats ’cause he wanted ya ta think?” A barrel-chested Gallicman thrust his face into Belinda’s and exhaled breath laden with the stench of beer. She allowed herself the luxury of gagging, turning her head away to cough out the odor she’d inhaled. For a moment she thought of Viktor and his bad breath, and sent an apology to him, wherever he might be.

It was the curse-well, one of many-of being a woman: there was nowhere for women to gather and talk in the way that men did, at least not women above a certain station. Belinda dared not play a part too close to the street, not when she ultimately needed to walk into the palace, but for her first days in Lutetia she saw no other choice.

Chances were good it didn’t matter. She would shed her identity and create a new one within the Lutetian walls as many times as necessary. So long as she moved from one part of the city to another, she remained anonymous: as in all Echonian cities, the classes rarely mixed. This was her third tavern in as many nights, and there would be more before she was satisfied.

Her costume was as much disguise as she needed. The corsets were thick and weighted, giving her the bulk of a larger woman. She went barefoot in the August heat, subtracting inches from the height a noblewoman would stand at, and wore her hair in a rat’s nest that approximated the smooth coifs of the upper class. It would take a week to comb out. Between all that and her breasts being shelved as high as they could be without popping out of her dress, she had reasonable confidence she would go unrecognized between tavern and a rich man’s church.

“All I’m sayin’,” she gave back to the blowhard, in language as base as his own, “is that it seems like the only godly thing to do.”

“You’re mad.” He sat back on his stool so hard it creaked and one leg bowed out dramatically. “Do you know what a crusade is, lovey?”

It would hardly do to show surprise that a base-born Lutetian had any especial grasp of crusading, though interest piqued in Belinda’s breast, flickering her eyebrows upward. “Naw. What is it?”

“It’s a lot of people thinkin’ like you do getting together and riding off to some foreign land to correct their religious beliefs.” The bulky man raked a hand through sandy hair, signaling for another tankard. Half a dozen people reached to pay for it. Satisfaction glinted in his eyes as he lifted it to them all in thanks.

“So I don’t see what’s so wrong with that,” Belinda snapped. “Someone’s gotta save the heathens, don’t they now?”

“Mebbe, mebbe. But it’s the noble houses leading ’em, lovey, and it’s the likes of you and me who die for ’em.”

Belinda put all her suspicion into a squint. “How d’you know so much?”

“My granfa three hundred years back went to the Holy Lands.”

Belinda snorted. “And my grandmother was the Aulunian consort. You’re full of shit.”

“She coulda been, with the way that bastard went through women.” Raucous laughter split the air. Belinda leaned forward to pound on the table.

“That’s what I’m sayin’! All them wives and divorces and what have you, and leavin’ the Church behind! It ain’t right! Don’t the regent have a right to Aulun, better’n that red-headed harlot they got on the throne? How long’s the Reformation bitch sat on the throne, anyways?”

“What’s the point in changin’ out one woman for another?” the man demanded. “God didn’ give any of them teats so they could think, neither.”

“But the regent is a godly woman,” Belinda protested. “The son’s been raised in the true church. I’ve got no call against you, mister, women don’t belong on thrones but for holdin’ ’em for their sons. But that woman, Lorrene?”

“Lorraine,” someone said. Belinda waved a hand at the man in thanks before hitting the table again.

“Lorraine. She’s got no get and no chance of it now, as long in the tooth as she is. Does she think she’ll live forever? We got a duty! Think of all them souls being damned to hell because the regent won’t act!”

A rumble of discontent swept through the men and women gathered around her. Her debate partner snorted and drank from his tankard, watching her with hazel eyes less bleary from drink than she expected. Others refused to meet her gaze, letting theirs slide uncomfortably away from her even as they exchanged little nods to one another. “It ain’t right,” someone agreed.

“Mebbe not,” someone else said, “but I’m not lookin’ to die for it.”

Belinda’s drinking partner leaned forward, crooking a finger at her. She folded her arms under her breasts and leaned on the table, watching his gaze drop to her bosom before he lifted it to her face. “You’re trouble, lass,” he told her in a smelly growl. “There’s them that agrees with you, but it ain’t good for your health to be spouting off like you’re doin’, you understand me?”

“No one cares what I say,” Belinda said, infusing it with all the bitterness she could. “A woman without two coins to rub together. No one cares.”

The man smiled, lecherous and foul with beer. “Can’t do a damned thing about the womanhood, but the coin, now. Might have a few to spare for a woman as eager in bed as she is about politics.”

He was, Belinda thought later, considerably less coarse than she’d expected.