Free Reign of Madness by Lynn Cullen Page B

much-loved bird into our rooms this evening, reassuring me that she could never free herself of her tethers and do harm.
    The hangings were yanked open. My naked husband stood with the candlelight behind him.
    “Well, Puss.” He dropped onto the bed next to me, sending bits of down into the air. “What did you think of a real Burgundian wedding feast?”
    “It was big.”
    He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “The Houses of Burgundy and Habsburg like an excuse to show off. Was it better than in the Spains?”
    I thought of when we celebrated my sister Isabel’s marriage to the King of Portugal. There was feasting and jousting all the way to the Portuguese border, but there was also much attendance of Mass. And there was no wine for the ladies. No delicious, fruity wine. “Your sister won’t have as magnificent a wedding feast as ours.”
    He blew away a bit of down floating before his face. “A pity. Marguerite’s a splendid girl. As witty as a jester, and damn goodlooking. Does your brother deserve her?”
    “Juan has a good heart. He’ll treat her kindly. She’ll fare especially well if she likes to hunt.”
    “Likes to hunt! She has Burgundian blood in her—we would all rather commit murder than miss a good chase. My mother died hunting, you know.”
    “I am sorry, Monseigneur.”
    “Don’t be. From what I hear, that’s exactly how she would have liked to die. Come to think of it, me, too. At any rate, I didn’t know her. I was not quite four when she died. Tell me—what did my sister have to say about me?”
    “That I had better like hunting.”
    He laughed, then raised his voice. “Delilah!”
    Through the open bed-hangings I could see his gyrfalcon, craning forward on her perch as if to listen to her master. She cocked her head to catch his voice, for she wore a leather hood and could not see.
    He clucked at her. “Isn’t she beautiful? And I’m not just saying that because she’s one of the most expensive birds in the world.”
    “Would not a male of her type be more valuable?”
    “Not at all. Female gyrfalcons are bigger and stronger than the males—quite the reverse of mankind.”
    I thought of Mother, dominating both council and home as Papa good-naturedly stood back. She loomed over him and everyone else like a single mighty oak over a grove of squatty olive trees. Perhaps I was wrong to have been disappointed in Papa. Perhaps it was Mother who was to blame. It was she, by her dominance, who had caused him to stray. I would do things differently. I would like the things my husband liked, do what he desired to do. We would be such kindred spirits that he would never be unfaithful.
    “Does your bird always wear the hood?” I knew nothing of falcons. I would have to learn.
    “Indoors, yes. Or would you prefer that she mark your ladies’ little dogs as prey?”
    I sighed, missing Estrella. My only comfort was in knowing she would hate it here—the cold, the wet, and now having to share a bedchamber with a falcon whose talons were as long as my fingers. She would have never come out of the bedclothes.
    “What did my grand-mère have to say about me?”
    I stopped pinging the tassel with my toe. A sense of discomfort penetrated my haze as I saw myself at the feast, with Madame la Duchesse perched immediately to my right. Margaret of York, Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, the third wife of Philippe’s grandfather, held her receding chin aloft with the authority of a queen. Though the rest of her aging face was as bland as a skinned rabbit, a compelling, nay, intimidating, fire sparked from her eyes. Here was a woman used to going her own way. Indeed, my ladies have whispered that she once bore an English bastard. Surely that could not have been true. Charles the Bold, Philippe’s grandfather, and in his time the richest man in the world, earned his name by demanding nothing but the best. He would not have accepted a soiled woman as his wife, even if she was sister to the English king.
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