Breakfast at the Court of Normandy was so lavish it nearly stole the breath from my lungs—gilded plates held honey-soaked figs, quail meat pies, and almond-studded cheeses.
I devoured it all with such unrestrained hunger that Nurse Margaret nearly dropped the silver pot in her hand.
"Holy Mother…" She made the sign of the cross. "Your Majesty, a lady ought to eat with small, graceful bites."
"I'm starving," I murmured, licking the jam from my fingers—only then noticing the pale lips of the maids standing nearby.
"Why aren't you eating with me?"
Margaret tugged on my sleeve, eyes wide in horror. "Servants must wait until their mistress has finished, Your Majesty! It is divine law!"
I shoved my plate aside. These girls had been working since dawn and likely hadn't eaten anything but the water from morning prayers. When I insisted they join me at the table, the youngest—Anne—turned red-eyed with emotion.
I would learn later that this was the first time in her sixteen years she had ever been invited to sit at a table.
On the ninth chime of the bell, Captain Richard knocked on the door.
"Your Majesty, the King's… companions have come to pay their respects." A strange glint passed through his gray eyes. "Lady Elena leads them."
The scent of perfume in the receiving hall was cloying, like drowning in roses. Over twenty gorgeously dressed women curtsied in unison.
At the head stood a red-haired woman, her corset scandalously low, a bleeding rose pendant swinging from a gold chain—the unmistakable insignia of the king's mistresses.
"I heard His Majesty spent the night alone," Elena said as she toyed with her ruby necklace. "Poor King Alfred was training in the armory till dawn." Her fingers grazed her pendant with wicked amusement. "Shall I offer you… a few lessons?"
I clenched the gilded armrest of my chair.
She dared flaunt her bedchamber triumphs before me, the Queen!
But what stung even deeper were the knowing looks the mistresses exchanged—all of them aware that I had been abandoned on my wedding night.
A sudden vision overtook me. The library at Cambridge, golden sunlight streaming over shelves, the soft curve of my senior's smile—
"Your Majesty?"
Elena's shrill voice pierced the dream. She had grabbed my shoulder—shaking me!
This shameless wretch—how dare she touch me—
A flash of silver. My dinner knife was pressed to her throat, leaving a thin red line on her porcelain skin.
Silence crashed over the hall like a wave.
"If you ever touch me again," I whispered, "this blade will find its home in the bosom you're so proud of."
Elena staggered backward. That's when I caught the faint scent of roses—my personal fragrance, the blend prepared only for my bedchamber.
Someone had entered my room after Alfred stormed out last night.
"The Lady has exquisite taste in perfume," I murmured, swirling wine in my goblet. "Especially when it contains powdered iris… curious, it's the exact same bottle I knocked over on my vanity."
Elena's face turned ghostly white. The other mistresses went still—trespassing into the Queen's chamber was a capital crime.
"Leave," I said, sipping my wine, "and tell your king that the thorns on his White Rose… are laced with poison."