“And I did—another twenty years—until my friend and well-wisher finally came into power. The court had moved at last—to Paris—and I traveled to see her there. I brought expensive gifts. I was so excited—”
* * *
“It doesn’t look like the biggest city in Europe,” Mircea said sourly, looking out the side of the creaking carriage. By God, this thing was slow!
“You’re too hard to please,” Bezio told him, frowning as he tried to recall which trinket went in which box.
“You had to take them out,” Mircea said. “You put them back.”
“We’ll be there soon.” Big dark eyes looked at him soulfully. If his old friend had been a girl, instead of a huge, hairy man, he’d have batted his eyelashes. “Help me?”
“It’ll take an hour to get there in this thing, and that’s if we’re lucky,” Mircea snapped. “I knew I should have ridden ahead!”
“But you didn’t.” Bezio looked at him knowingly. They’d been friends ever since his first years in Venice, and the man knew him like no other. Which could be damned inconvenient at times. “I think you want to be there, and you don’t want to be, and it’s making you surly.”
“I bungled it,” Mircea said tersely. “I should have visited her before this. Should have written more—”
“You wrote plenty. You did plenty. Any more and it would have been too obvious. Like this.” He held something up. “Don’t you think this is a bit much?”
“No!” Mircea snatched the necklace, of huge pearls set in gold, and looked around for its box. Which could have been any of them. “Put it back!”
“Well, I will if I can remember where it went,” Bezio said amiably. Mircea wanted a fight, to get the unbearable tension out of his system before they arrived, but his friend wasn’t obliging. “You’re taking a king’s ransom—none of which you need. People have been bribing Pythias for thousands of years—”
“I am not bribing her!”
“But if it helps at all, it’s only to get you in, and you’ve already got an in. But once you’re there, they say what they say—”
“And what would you know about it?”
Bezio rolled his eyes. “Like I said. Surly.”
* * *
“Yes,” Mircea said, his eyes distant, “I was . . . hopeful. Until I saw her face. Until the second no.”
I frowned, because I wasn’t getting this. Even with help, I wasn’t. “But . . . what was so important that you needed to see—”
He wasn’t listening. His eyes were back on the fire; I wasn’t sure he even knew I’d spoken. It didn’t sound like it when his voice came again, rough with remembered emotion. “I asked her why; she wouldn’t tell me. I begged her; she commiserated, seeming sincere. I raged at her; she had me removed. And later sent me a note, in her own hand; I have it to this day. Telling me to give up. To move on. To waste no more time on this fool’s errand.
“I decided the problem was me. My self-importance, my boldness. I was still in those days much as I had always been: outspoken, opinionated, even brash. I said things to her I should not have said. I penned a note of apology. And afterward, I worked to change.”
I didn’t say anything. The words were pouring out of him suddenly, this man who was usually so stingy with facts that I could group everything I knew about him on a single sheet of paper. It looked like I’d need a few more after this.
“It wasn’t easy,” he said. “Biting my tongue did not come naturally, and took years of study. Watching those older than I, learning how to speak without saying too much, how to smile when I wanted to snarl and go for someone’s throat. Learning something that felt inherently dishonest, but I did it—I forced myself to, until it came more naturally.
“Eudoxia aged; she died. A new Pythia took the throne. And I returned, my arguments polished, my words carefully—so carefully—chosen. Like my gifts, which were far more lavish this time. I was growing rich; my family was expanding. I could afford it.
“And I was listened to. Her name was Isabeau, an auburn-haired beauty. Rescued from the gutter, after her parents died in a plague. Intended for little more than a servant, yet she surpassed them all. I thought she would sympathize, would understand what it was to lose everything, and have to claw your way back, and so it seemed. We had many pleasant visits walking in her gardens, choosing flowers for her table. I made her laugh. . . .”
* * *
“I don’t know.” Isabeau leaned against a tree, her abundant auburn hair a contrast to the dark gray bark. She looked back up the impressive sweep of lawn toward the chateau. “It’s better here, outside Paris, but I don’t like the grounds. They’re too formal. Everyone is copying the Italian style these days, and torturing the poor plants into all sorts of ridiculous shapes.”
“It’s your garden,” Mircea said, smiling. And leaning an arm on the trunk above her head. “Do with it what you like.”
“I’ll tell you what I’d like,” she said, gray eyes becoming animated. “An English garden, have you seen them? They just let everything run wild, all over the place.”
“Then why don’t you?”