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inside and sleep. I will send for you on the morrow. From this day forward you are esquire no longer, but a knight. I will outfit you with horse and armor from my father’s treasury myself.”
    Guillaume bowed lower, even as he kept to his knees. I felt his lips on my hand, on my father’s ring.
    I turned to Amaria, who stood back just a little, enough to show respect to the archbishop, but still close enough to hear my orders.
    â€œTake Guillaume inside, and give him a bed and food. Pay the men who rode with him in gold.”
    She did not question me, but raised one hand. Maria, another of my ladies, stepped forward from the shadows, tears on her cheeks. She curtsied to me, and after Amaria had whispered instruction in her ear, she went at once to do my bidding.
    The archbishop was impressed by this small show, but I knew, as he did, that I would have to be able to conquer more than my household to save the Aquitaine.
    I was a marriage prize now. I must lock myself tight within the stronghold of our palace at Bordeaux. I could not stir to hunt or even to take the air on our ramparts. I must hide, as a coward might, while I waited for my marriage arrangements to be completed.
    â€œI would have seen my father buried at Talmont, next to my mother.”
    â€œYou could not travel to see him laid to rest, my lady,” the archbishop said.
    As I watched, he gathered himself to speak against my traveling anywhere, for any reason, as if he needed to explain to me the deep danger I was in until I took my marriage vows. As if my father’s death by poison had not taught me of my danger already.
    I would have laughed on any other day, that a man would think me so blind and so stupid. But Papa was dead. I would never see his face again. I did not laugh, but clutched my sister to me. I would not fail. As I met the archbishop’s gaze, I saw for the first time that he knew it.
    â€œI must stay here, locked behind my father’s walls, a rabbit beneath a stone, still and silent, in the hope that the hunter will not see me. And you . . .”
    The archbishop who had been my father’s friend took strength from the certainty behind my eyes. Whatever he had thought of me before, this man would serve me now, and for the rest of his life.
    â€œYou must send for the King of France.”

Chapter 6
    Palace of Ombrière
    Bordeaux
July 1137
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    I STAYED SAFELY HIDDEN BEHIND THE WALLS OF MY FATHER’S castle at Bordeaux. The life of my duchy went on beyond those walls, and reports were brought to me daily. My father’s spy network was still in place, and now had become mine. Its ranks were made up of many people, from the great to the small, all gathered into my father’s service over the course of his lifetime. Each man was paid in gold for his information, but each also served my father out of loyalty, and out of love for him. The bishop of Limoges was a member of this corps of spies, as were a dozen other priests scattered throughout my father’s lands. More than a dozen knights were enlisted in my father’s service in the houses of both his friends and his enemies. This network of spies was a secret, even one member from another, but I knew them all. My father had made me memorize each man’s name from the time I was a child.
    That network served me well, now that I was trapped in Ombrière. No one was allowed into the city gates, nor into my keep, for fear that an enemy would sneak in and take my maidenhead and the duchy before my marriage contract with France could be signed. Marriage negotiations took the rest of the spring, for the king knew he had me by the throat, and hoped to make the most of it. But I knew his son was getting the wealth of Aquitaine and Poitou, if not complete dominion over the lands themselves. He would have to be content with that.
    My representative, the bishop of Limoges, made the king see reason, for in the month of June, my betrothed left Paris