The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [162]
“Yes,” Muriele replied. “I told him that, but His Majesty can be quite stubborn when he has a mind. And I wonder, Your Grace, when you stopped addressing me as Majesty?”
“I am sorry, Queen Mother, but by all of our laws, it isn’t proper to address you so. Only the king and queen are thus referred to, and you are neither at this time. The court has continued to address you so from respect and in deference to your grief.”
“I see. And now it must be that you no longer respect or grieve with me. Such a shame.” She was amazed at how calm she felt, as if the whole thing were a parlor game.
“Queen Mother,” the Duke of Shale interrupted, trying to make his comically rounded face seem somehow stern, “the Comven has posed grave questions concerning the recent conduct of the throne—indeed, we question the very legitimacy of that conduct.”
Muriele leaned back in the throne and feigned surprise. “Well, by all means, discover to me these questions, gentlemen. I am eager to hear them.”
“It is more the question of legitimacy that is at issue,” Shale explained, his blueberry eyes showing sudden wariness.
“Do you or do you not have questions for me?” Muriele wondered.
“No specific questions, Your Highness, only a general—”
“But my good Duke—you said that the Comven has raised grave questions concerning the conduct of the throne. Now you say you have no questions about that conduct. You are either a liar or a buffoon, Shale.”
“See here—”
“No,” Muriele interrupted, her voice growing louder. “You see here. By every law, Charles is king and emperor, and you are his subjects, you palavering, feckless miscreants. Do you honestly think I don’t know what you are all about, today? Did you believe I had walked into your childish trap unawares?”
“Queen Mother—,” the praifec began, but she cut him off.
“You, hold your tongue,” she said. “Your place by absolute decree is limited to council, Praifec.”
“It is all I have offered, Queen Mother.”
“Oh, no,” Muriele demurred. “You have gossiped like the meanest prostitute in a brothel. You have incited, you have conspired, and every person in this room knows that because they are the ones with whom you have done so. You have offered to occupy this kingdom with Church troops and you have threatened to lend them to Hansa if we won’t have them. You have tendered me your goodwill with one hand and a knife with the other, and you are certainly the poorest excuse for a man I have ever seen, much less a man who pretends to holiness. So enough from you, and enough from your Comven puppets and your petty aspirations. Let him come before me. Let the murderer whom you fools would place on the sacrosanct throne of Crotheny stand before me, so I can see his face.”
The crowd erupted, then, as if they were all hens and someone had just thrown a cat amongst them. The praifec alone was silent, gazing at her with a perfectly blank expression that was somehow the most threatening gaze she had ever met.
As the crowd began to quiet its frenzy, it parted, and there he came—Robert Dare, her husband’s brother.
He wore a black doublet and black hose and held a broad-brimmed hat of the same dark hue in one hand. His face was paler than she remembered, but with the same handsome, sardonic cast, the same small goatee and mustache. He smiled, and his teeth were white. He swaggered from the crowd, his effetely narrow sword wagging like the tail of a braggart hound, and bent one knee to her.
“Greetings, Queen Mother.”
“Rise,” she said.
And there he was, when her eyes met his—there was her husband’s murderer. Robert could not hide a thing like that, not from someone who knew him. His glee was too obvious.
“I am sorry to find you so distraught,” he dissembled. “I had hoped this all might proceed more reasonably.”
“Had you?” Muriele mused. “I would imagine that’s why so many of your personal guard can be seen skulking about. Why landwaerden militias gather outside the city, and why your toadies on the Comven have brought so many