Read Chapter 38: A Brother's Choice

The gardens of the ducal palace were a careful lie, ordered hedges and gravel walks pretending the world outside was not still smoldering. Claude breathed the scent of boxwood and damp earth, watching a finch pull at a worm in the fresh-turned bed. The morning light was weak, filtered through clouds the color of bruised steel.

He heard her before he saw her, the rustle of wool and the soft drag of a foot that favored its wounded side. Marguerite came down the path on the arm of a nun, her face pale but composed. The nun released her at a bench and retreated to a respectful distance, folding her hands into her sleeves like a hawk being hooded.

His sister sank onto the bench with a sigh that betrayed more pain than her face showed. She wore the simple gray of a novice, not the rich wool of the court, and her hair was hidden beneath a white coif. She looked smaller than he remembered. Or perhaps he simply saw her differently now, without the shadow of conspiracy between them.

"Brother," she said. Not a question. A statement of fact, as if she had known he would be here, waiting.

"Marguerite." He sat beside her, close enough to speak quietly, far enough to give her air. "They say you are pardoned."

"Conditionally." A ghost of a smile touched her lips. "I am to return to the convent at Poissy and take my final vows within the year. In exchange, I have given them everything I know of the cardinal's network. Every name, every safe house, every code."

"And they believe you?"

"They verified the first three names quickly enough. The rest will follow." She turned to look at him, and her eyes held a weariness that made him ache. "What of you? They released you as well, I heard."

Claude nodded. "I am free to go. Free to return to Burgundy, if I wish. Free to remain here, if I wish. Free to do anything except hold office or command." He paused. "They do not know what to do with a man who serves neither duke."

"They know exactly what to do with such a man," Marguerite said. "They watch him. They wait for him to reveal which way he leans."

"Then they will wait a long time."

Her hand found his. Her fingers were cold, the nails bitten short, and he remembered suddenly the small girl who had bitten her nails before their father's inspections. Some things never changed.

"The priest at the convent told me something," Marguerite said. "He said that Father Pierre's death was investigated. That a rogue agent confessed before witnesses, and the matter was closed. He said the confession was quite detailed, quite specific. Almost as if it had been written for the occasion."

Claude said nothing.

"Was it you?" she asked. "Did you do that, to protect me?"

"I did what was necessary."

"Claude." Her grip tightened. "You lied before a joint council of both realms. You fabricated evidence and swore to its truth. For me."

"I told a greater truth," he said. "Pierre Laurent died because of the cardinal's plot. He died because powerful men decided that a fire and a pogrom would serve their purposes. The manner of his death was not the crime. The crime was the plot itself."

"And you punished the crime."

"I exposed it. That is not the same thing."

She released his hand and looked away, across the gardens to where the palace walls rose, gray and implacable. Two guards walked the parapet, their halberds catching the weak light.

"Mother would have hated this," she said. "The lying. The scheming. The choosing of sides."

"She would have hated it," Claude agreed. "And then she would have asked us whether we had done what was right. I think... I think she would have said we did."

Marguerite was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was small.

"I thought you were lost to me. When I saw you in the church, when that barrel caught and I thought we would both burn..." She stopped, swallowing. "I thought God was punishing me for what I had done. For the lies I had told. For the cousin I had turned against his own family."

"Jean," Claude said.

She looked at him sharply. "You know about Jean?"

"I know he was taken. I know the cardinal's men held him to ensure your obedience." He reached into his doublet and withdrew a small object, wrapped in linen. "I had heard rumors that he was being held in Burgundy, not France. It took time. I had to..." He hesitated. "I had to call in debts. Old favors. Our father's name still carries weight in certain quarters."

He placed the bundle in her hands. She unwrapped it slowly, as if afraid of what she might find. Inside was a man's ring, heavy gold, set with a dark stone carved with the D'Argent crest—a shield, a sword, a single star.

"This is Father's ring," she whispered.

"No," Claude said. "It is Jean's ring. Father gave it to him before he rode to the wars. I found it when I bought his freedom. He sends it as proof that he lives, and that he is well, and that he bears you no ill will for what was done to him."

Marguerite stared at the ring. A tear slid down her cheek, and she brushed it away with an impatient gesture.

"How?" she asked. "How did you manage it? You had no coin, no position. You were a clerk, a spy, a man with no standing of any kind."

"I had our father's name," Claude said. "I had the memory of what that name meant before the war tore us apart. And I had letters. Letters I had copied from the cardinal's own correspondence, which certain men in Burgundy were very eager to see buried forever."

"You blackmailed them."

"I negotiated a trade. The letters for my brother." He shrugged. "It seemed a fair exchange. The letters were already served their purpose."

Marguerite laughed, a broken sound that was half sob. "You are more dangerous than I ever was."

"I learned from watching you."

She looked at him then, truly looked, and he saw something in her face that he had not seen in years. Recognition. Understanding. The sister who had taught him to read, who had bandaged his scraped knees, who had sung him songs when the night terrors came. She was still there, beneath the years of lying and plotting and the terrible necessity of survival.

"I am sorry," she said. "For everything. For choosing the French cause. For lying to you. For putting you in a position where you had to choose between your duty and your blood."

"You chose what you believed was right," Claude said. "I cannot fault you for that. I have spent my whole life choosing what others told me was right. I chose Burgundy because I was born in Burgundy. I chose the duke because I was sworn to the duke. I never once asked myself what I believed."

"And now?"

Claude was quiet. A wind moved through the garden, rattling the dry leaves that still clung to the hedges. The finch had flown away. Perhaps it had found its breakfast elsewhere.

"Now I know that I am neither Burgundian nor French in my heart," he said slowly. "I am a man who saw a plot to burn a church and kill innocent people. I stopped it. Does that make me Burgundian? Does it make me French? Or does it simply make me a man who did what was right?"

"Some would say those are the same thing."

"Some would say a great many things." He stood, offering his hand to help her rise. "But I am done listening to what others say. I will decide for myself what oath I swear, and to whom, and whether I swear any oath at all."

She took his hand and rose. For a moment they stood close, and he could smell the incense on her clothes, the faint sharpness of the salve the physician had given her for her burns.

"Will you come to Poissy?" she asked. "When I take my vows?"

"I will try."

"That is not the same as promising."

"No," he said. "But it is the truth."

She smiled, and for a moment she was the girl he remembered, the girl who had hidden his broken arrow so their father would not know, the girl who had wept at their mother's funeral while Claude had stood dry-eyed and numb.

"I am glad you found Jean," she said. "I am glad you saved him. I am glad you saved me, whether I deserved it or not."

"You more than anyone," Claude said. "You were doing the good work. You were the one who arranged for the royal guards to intercept the cardinal's orders. If you had not done that, the fire would have worked. The pogrom would have happened. I only ran into a burning church and made a mess of things."

She laughed, and it was a real laugh this time, warm and unguarded. "You always did make a mess of things when you were trying to be a hero."

"I was trying to save my sister."

"Then you succeeded."

The nun came forward, her hands still folded, her face patient. Marguerite turned toward her, then looked back at Claude.

"Be careful," she said. "You have made powerful enemies. The cardinal is still out there. The provost is dead, but there are others who would see you silenced."

"I know."

"And you have claimed to know the names of other conspirators. In both courts. That makes you a target for everyone."

"I know."

"Then why do it?"

Claude considered the question. Around them, the garden was quiet. Somewhere in the palace, servants would be preparing the midday meal. The council would be meeting. Life went on, indifferent to the choices of a clerk and a novice.

"Because someone must," he said. "Someone must stand outside the factions and speak the truth. If no one does, then the cardinals win. The provosts win. The men who light fires and blame their enemies win."

Marguerite stared at him for a long moment. Then she stepped forward and embraced him, fierce and sudden, and he felt her tears against his neck.

"You are a good man, Claude," she whispered. "Whatever you swear, whatever you choose, remember that. You are a good man."

He held her, breathing in the smell of her hair, feeling the fragile bones of her back beneath his hands. She had almost died. He had almost lost her. And now she was leaving, returning to a convent, to a life of prayer and silence and a God she had never stopped believing in.

"Write to me," he said when she finally pulled away. "Send word through the convent. Let me know you are safe."

"I will." She wiped her eyes. "And you. Do not get yourself killed."

"I make no promises."

She laughed again, and then she was gone, walking down the path with the nun, her gray robes blending with the stone and the shadow. Claude watched until she disappeared around a corner, and then he was alone in the garden with the wind and the hedges and the weight of everything he carried.

He was not a loyal Burgundian. He was not a traitor. He was something else entirely, something he did not yet have a name for.

A seeker of truth. That was the best he could call it.

He looked down at his hands. They were empty. The ring was gone, sent with Marguerite to be returned to Jean. In some strange way, it felt like a release. He had spent his whole life carrying the weight of his father's name, his father's honor, his father's duty.

Now he carried only himself.

He turned and walked out of the garden, past the guards who watched him with careful suspicion, out through the palace gates and into the streets of Paris. He did not know where he was going. He did not know what he would do.

But for the first time in his life, the not-knowing did not frighten him.