Free The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory

another, I don’t want to do it with you.’
    My hand tightens on the nightgown at my throat. My mother will be appalled when she finds out about this. I am going to be in so much trouble with my father. ‘My lord, I am very sorry. You don’t like me?’
    He laughs shortly. ‘What man could not? You are the most exquisite girl in France, I chose you for your beauty and for your youth – but for something else too. I have a better task for you than being my bedmate. I could command any girl in France. But you, I trust, are fit to do something more. Do you not know?’
    Dumbly, I shake my head.
    ‘The Demoiselle said you had a gift,’ he says quietly.
    ‘My great-aunt?’
    ‘Yes. She told your uncle that you had the gift of your family, she said you have the Sight. And he told me.’
    I am silent for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘She said she thought you might have. She said she had spoken with you. Your uncle tells me that you studied with her, that she left you her books, her bracelet with charms for foreseeing. That you can hear singing.’
    ‘He told you that?’
    ‘Yes, and I assume that she left her things to you because she thought you would be able to make use of them.’
    ‘My lord . . . ’
    ‘This is not a trap, Jacquetta, I am not tricking you into a confession.’
    You tricked Joan, I think to myself.
    ‘I am working for my king and for my country, we are near to finding, please God, the elixir that brings a cure for death, and makes the philosopher’s stone.’
    ‘The philosopher’s stone?’
    ‘Jacquetta, I think we are very close to finding the way to turn iron into gold. We are very close. And then . . . ’
    I wait.
    ‘Then I will have enough coin to pay my troops to fight for every town in France. Then the rule of England can spread peace over all our lands. Then my nephew can sit firmly on his throne, and the poor people of England can work for their living without being taxed into poverty. It would be a new world, Jacquetta. We would command it. We would pay for everything with gold that we could make in London. We would not have to dig it in Cornwall nor pan for it in Wales. We would have a country richer than any dream. And I am, I think, perhaps only a few months from finding it.’
    ‘And what about me?’
    He nods, as I return him to the reality of this wedding-day morning, which is not a real wedding at all. ‘Oh yes. You. My alchemists, my astrologers tell me that I need someone with your gifts. Someone who can scry, who can look into a mirror or into water and see the truth, the future. They need an assistant with clean hands and a pure heart. It has to be a woman, a young woman who has never taken a life, never stolen, never known lust. When I first met you they had just told me that they could go no further without a young woman, a virgin, who could see the future. In short, I needed a girl who could capture a unicorn.’
    ‘My Lord Duke . . . ’
    ‘You said that. D’you remember? In the hall of the castle at Rouen? You said you were a girl so pure that you could capture a unicorn.’
    I nod. I did say it. I wish I had not.
    ‘I understand that you are shy. You will be anxious to tell me you cannot do these things. I understand your reserve. But tell me only this. Have you taken a life?’
    ‘No, of course not.’
    ‘Have you stolen? Even a little fairing? Even a coin from another’s pocket?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Have you lusted for a man?’
    ‘No!’ I say emphatically.
    ‘Have you ever foretold the future, in any way at all?’
    I hesitate. I think of Joan and the card of le Pendu , and the wheel of fortune that bore her down so low. I think of the singing around the turrets on the night that the Demoiselle died. ‘I think so. I cannot be sure. Sometimes things come to me, it is not that I call them.’
    ‘Could you capture a unicorn?’
    I give a little nervous laugh. ‘My lord. It is just a saying, it is just a tapestry-picture. I wouldn’t know what one is