The Stolen Queen Read Free Page B

nights, protecting her descendants with her demonish powers. But if ever she was seen, it meant death to the Lusignan lord.
    They are black, the Lusignan men. Their hair is the colour of the river in winter, sucking the light around them, their tip-tilted almond eyes like nuggets of charcoal in sallow, horn-tinted skin. And they are tall. So tall that when Lord Hugh stepped down from the dais in his hall to greet us after our journey my father’s head only reached his shoulder. My father had put off his hauberk as he dismounted, to show that he came in peace to his old enemy, and Lord Hugh, also, wore no armour. But where my father’s mantle was travel-stained wool, bunching over hisround belly and gathering under his red beard, which fell to his chest, Lord Hugh wore white silk, spotless as an altar cloth, and a short green cloak clasped at one shoulder with a huge gold brooch shaped like a serpent, and his shaven face was all clean, hard planes. A little behind him stood his son, Hal, nearly as tall but narrow and gangling, a sapling next to his father’s massive oak, with the same pitchy hair falling fashionably long, the tips curling to touch his soft, sulky mouth.
    The Lusignans and the Taillefers had always been enemies, for my father was King Richard’s man, defending his lands against the rebellious lords who sought to chip away at the empire of the English king while he was in the Holy Land. But now, my mother had explained as we bumped along in the litter, the leathery smell of the curtains wafting over us, the Lusignans were our allies, ever since King Richard had made Lusignan knights kings in Cyprus for their service on Crusade, and a marriage, my marriage, between our houses, would seal our loyalties and protect our lands together under the leopard flag of the Angevin kings. It had been King Richard’s wish that a match be made, before he was struck down by a crossbow wound in his shoulder and died without children, leaving his crown and his dukedoms of Normandy and Aquitaine to his brother John. At least, that was what she told me then.
    It seemed unreal to me, all this squabbling about lands, and yet at the same time it had always been as much a part of my life as hearing Mass or doing my lessons. Fighting was what men did – they rode out as soon as the roads were clear in the spring and returned with the fogs of autumn, and I would hearmy parents talking as I dozed in the solar after supper that such a county had changed its fealty again, or that the French armies had taken a castle from the English, or they from the French. It was a game, I supposed, that great people used to pass the time, as shifting and impermanent as the quarrels and alliances of a childhood afternoon in the garden. Men fought and women married, that was what my mother said, and with our marriages we would weave peace between the counties of France. It was men who made war, Maman explained, but it was women’s holy duty to make peace, for that was what God commanded.
    â€˜See how handsome he is, Isabelle,’ whispered Agnes. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
    I did not think him handsome. I thought he looked stupid. I wanted to rush and hide in my mother’s skirts and beg her to take me home to Angouleme, but she was moving forward, inclining her head graciously to Lord Hugh, though not too low, as she was a granddaughter of the king of France. I gave Agnes’s hand a tight squeeze before I stepped into my own curtsey, as my mother had taught me, only wobbling a little when my knees touched the rosemary-scented rushes. When I looked up, he was standing over me, impossibly high, smothering my hand in his great hard palm and leading me forward to present me to Hal.
    â€˜The Lady Isabelle.’
    I curtsied again, with no shaking this time. I bit my lip and thought of the Courtenays, princes of the desert, and of my father’s people, the Taillefers, the iron cutters, who gained their name from