The Queen's Bastard

SANDALIA, QUEEN OF LANYARCH

17 October 1563 Gallin, northeast of Essandia

She wears a sheepskin, not against biting wind, but to remind her deserted country that she has not forgotten it. The skin doesn’t suit a silver-shot gown encrusted with pearls, nor the mildness of the Gallic day; the sky lies against the horizon as pale and calm as it does directly overhead, autumn’s sunshine enough to make the day bright and delightful without blinding the youthful Lanyarchan queen.

She wears a sheepskin to remind the gathered throngs who call her name as she rides through Lutetian streets in a carriage behind six matched white horses that she does not come to their king merely a princess, but as a queen in her own right. A queen in exile, to be sure, but a queen loved by her people, and a queen whose faith supports her. She has forgone a crown; such an obvious symbol of power speaks of desperation, a crassness in announcing who she is. Sandalia needs not stoop so low.

But she wears the sheepskin, and no one who sees her on her wedding day will forget it.

She rides alone that day, and when the carriage stops before the cathedral entrance, it is her brother who steps forward to offer his hand. Rodrigo, who sent her north to Lanyarch as winter came on, and who made her a queen by doing so. He had not been there to see her crowned that day, and the softness in his eyes offered apology for that now, two years later, as she goes to make another match in the name of duty.

“A new fashion?” he murmurs as she steps down from the carriage. “Will you set Lutetia on its ear and have them wearing sheepskins before winter has set in?”

Sandalia’s laughter, easy and bright, rolls through the autumn air and reaches the cathedral ahead of her. Behind her and to all sides, voices soar in approval of the young queen’s mirth. It is a good sign, the people agree, that Sandalia goes happy to their king. That she’s a princess of Essandia and not one of their own Gallic-born high ladies is forgiven today, on her wedding day, in face of her delight. Laughter is an omen of the things to come, and the people will forgive her anything for her joy.

“No,” she answers beneath the roar, but smiles as she says it. “Though now that you’ve put the idea into my head, perhaps I’ll make that my legacy. A new fashion for every season. I’ll be even more frivolous than the Red Bitch.”

Amusement quirks Rodrigo’s mouth. “Be careful, Dalia. Such things legacies are made of.”

Sandalia tosses her hair and laughs again. “I’m only a woman, dear brother. No one expects my legacy to be anything greater than sturdy heirs and fashionable clothes.”

“So long as you provide the one, I can accept the other.” Steel slips into Rodrigo’s voice and Sandalia casts a coquettish glance at him.

“Do you doubt me in the bedroom, Rodrigo? Charles was old. Louis is not. There will be an heir.” The same steel, as well-tempered if lighter in tang, comes into her own voice. “My son will be born within a year.”

“May God’s blessings be on you all.” Rodrigo releases her at the doors, and she walks the aisle alone to face the man who will be her new husband.

He is slender and aesthete, blond hair loose in a manner that dictates fashion because of his rank, not his sense of style. That he dresses beautifully is through no deliberation of his own, heavy collar and broad padded shoulders lending him a gravitas that the youthful bloom of his cheeks doesn’t support. He plucks at the collar discontentedly, actions of a man too unfamiliar with fashion to have it made to suit him, rather than the other way around.

Still, he makes a finer picture beside Sandalia than Charles had, the blue of his gaze sharp and strong. It is only Sandalia, standing at his side, who sees in her new prince what she also saw in the old: that the light in his eyes comes to life as he gazes piously on the windows depicting the lives and deeds of saints and disciples.

God save her, she cannot help but think, even as she speaks her vows. God save her from men whom God had saved. Is she to be damned by their presence all her life, wedded to those whose souls were already bound to a higher being? Even Rodrigo, now in his early thirties, seems too fond of God and not enough of flesh, though he, at least, dances in careful negotiations with the Aulunian queen, whose years are still tender enough to bear children, should she finally bow to a marriage bed. That’s the hand Rodrigo wants, not for love, but for the Church: with an Ecumenic king the heretical country might yet be brought back into the fold. If wedding Lorraine is the price, it is one Rodrigo is willing to pay.

Louis at least comes to the bridal chamber, more than Charles ever did.

When it was clear Charles would not come to bed, Sandalia told him through gritted teeth that there would be an heir to Lanyarch if it took her dying breath to make it so. He gazed at her without apparent comprehension, and agreed that there must be a child. Sandalia, innocent, betrayed, furious, turned her eyes from the king in search of a man who could be used and discarded.

She found better in the guise of a hazel-eyed man who wore the collar of a priest. He remained apart from her court, alluring for his remoteness. She warmed to him, seeing in his sharp features and collar a creature that could be used and kept: for all her faith in the Church, she had equal faith that it desired power on the throne, or behind it. Better by far to own a priest than be owned by one. He had long hands, beautifully shaped and soft, and the virgin queen ached with unfamiliar desire at the thought of his touch.

She was trembling on her hands and knees, his soft hands stroking and exploring her sex, when word came that Charles was dead.

And then she was a virgin no more, her priest’s urgent weight behind her, pinning her with a desperation to couple that they both understood. For the rest of her life colour came to her cheeks when she thought of that night; of that week; of the hope to catch soon enough to call the child a king’s. But her blood came, and with it the last chance of pretending a pregnancy that was her husband’s. Sandalia fled Lanyarch, a failure as a woman and a queen, her priest and confessor and no-more lover at her side. She resigned herself to a convent with the memory of a few days’ passion to warm her for the rest of her days, until Rodrigo came to her and spoke quietly of the young Gallic prince and his need for a wife.

Enough time had passed that it was clear there would be no Lanyarchan heir, save through Sandalia’s claim to that throne. The Church declared her fit to be taken as Louis’s bride, and when he makes a feeble, uncertain pass at her breast in the bedchambers, exasperation floods her and she unlaces his breeches and climbs atop him, more determined to be successfully bred than caring for decorum. She will not look to her priest in the days and weeks to come, though he remains at her side. Louis approves; it is well that Sandalia shows such faith, and her piousness makes him more eager to share a bed with her. They will make a godly child, he promises her, and she sets her teeth and keeps her gaze from her hazel-eyed priest.

Ten months later, his young wife pale with the first weeks of pregnancy, Louis rides east to lead a border skirmish against encroaching Reinnish troops, an ongoing dispute that goes back before Sandalia’s memories.

A harried, misery-pelted courier rides back six weeks after that, just a few days ahead of the sledge that carries young Louis’s body home to his devastated country.

Sandalia closes herself away when the cramping and bleeding begins, claiming shock and horror that no one doubts. She will see only her priest, whose soft hands she has not again allowed to touch her. The people whisper she commends Louis’s soul to heaven so often she has no other words left to speak.

Behind locked doors, she claws her fingers in her man’s throat and demands, raw-voiced and full of rage, that a child be found to replace the one her body rejects. It is too well known how far along she is, too long a recovery from a child lost to a new one made, to risk her priest’s long slim body again. If she has regrets they are buried beneath the fury of orders given: a child must be found; a boy, born six months hence. Kill its parents, she says, and because the priest is no fool, he will vanish the same night he brings the child to her. She has given orders for his death; she trusts that his disappearance and that death are one and the same.

At seventeen, widowed twice, exiled queen of one country, young regent to a second, princess to a third, Sandalia de Costa will have her heir.

At any cost, she will have her heir.