Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [49]
"It was fine," he said quietly. "Messire Bouvarre was pleased. He wishes to see me again when he returns from La Serenissima."
Confounded by his reticence, I cast about for something to keep him talking. "Did he give you anything toward your marque?"
"No." A hint of cynicism, dark and adult, flickered in his eyes. "Not after paying six thousand ducats for the privilege of having me. But he has promised to bring me a string of glass beads upon his return. I understand they do beautiful glasswork in La Serenissima." Closing his book, he added, "I do not think it is Messire Bouvarre's best interest that I make my marque any time soon."
I had seen the desire like a sickness on Vitale Bouvarre's face; I understood. "Why him? Delaunay and Cecilie picked the guests; they knew who would go highest. What does Delaunay want of him?"
"Poison." It was spoken so softly I wasn't sure I'd heard him aright. Alcuin pushed his hair back, frowning slightly. "They are expert in its usage, as well as glasswork, in La Serenissima. The King's brother, Prince Benedicte, is wed to Maria Stregazza, whose family rules the city. And the Stregazza signed an exclusive trade charter with Vitale Bouvarre not four months after Isabel de la Courcel died of poisoning."
"There is no proof of that."
"No." Alcuin shook his head. "If there were proof, one would not suspect the Stregazza. But after Rolande was killed at the Battle of Three Princes, Isabel de la Courcel began positioning members of her own family to assume power, and there was talk of a betrothal between Ysandre and a L'Envers cousin. It ended with her death." He shrugged. "It may be that Prince Benedicte would not condone such a thing; so Delaunay believes. But the Stregazza would, and Benedicte is still second in line to the throne of Terre d'Ange."
"Did Bouvarre tell you anything?"
"He said one could buy anything, for a price, in La Serenissima; even life and death. Nothing more, yet." Alcuin was quiet again for a moment. "Sometimes when I am serving at a gathering and I am there to overhear what Delaunay cannot, I can take my mind away from what my hands are doing and concentrate all of it on listening and remembering. But it was not so easy with Bouvarre to take my mind away as it is when pouring wine," he finished, murmuring.
"He didn't ill-treat you?" I couldn't imagine that it was so; it was not in Alcuin's contract, and Delaunay would have sued for breach if Bouvarre had injured him.
"No. I daresay he was gentle enough." There was distaste in the words. "Phedre, Naamah lay down with strangers for love of Elua. I would do that and more for him."
I did not need to ask to know that he meant Delaunay, and I did not tell him that each of the Thirteen Houses of the Night Court claims a different cause for the prostitution of Naamah. Instead, I simply asked him, thinking I knew the answer, "Why?"
"You don't know?" Alcuin gave me a funny look. My history was an open book, I supposed, although I found later that he did not know how I had come to Cereus House. "I was born in Trefail, in the Camaelines. One of Prince Rolande's men got me on a village girl, when they were patrolling all that year along the border."
"No small wonder Baudoin managed to be in Camlach," I said, thinking aloud. Alcuin nodded.
"Like Rolande, no? Anyway, my mother's family turned her out. There was gossip; she came near to starving, and word of it reached Rolande. He had my father court-martialed, paid my mother's family a dowry-price and hired a wetnurse, as her milk had failed. There are a few Skaldi living on the edge of Camlach, tribal exiles who've no wish to return to their homeland. That was all he could get."
"Alcuin." It was fascinating, and infuriating. "What does it have to do with Delaunay?"
"I don't know." He shook his head, swinging the ivory curtain of his hair. "Except that he rode with Prince Rolande that year at the Battle of Three Princes, and six years later, when the Skaldi