The Maltese Star

* * * *

One

It was just a dream and Alix knew it. But it was also real and she knew this as well. In her dream or out of it, the man and woman were in love. One could tell this. She could tell this, as she stood within her dream, standing just a little away from them and staring through her clear turquoise eyes at their shared dark beauty.

The two of them fit so well together, as if they had always been in love and always would be. Alix would have had to be blind not to see this. It was evident in the way the man took the woman's hand and tucked it around the safety of his arm, the way his soft eyes smiled down into her even softer ones, the way he reached down and gifted her with the last wildflower that remained upon their path. Alix had heard that he'd always been like this with this woman. He could not help himself. Since childhood, whatever his hand fell upon, whether a diamond or a dandelion, he had given it to Solange.

He, Robert de Mercier, one of the mightiest nobles in mighty France, wanted to give her everything that belonged to him. Even after all these years and the birth of their son, his love for this woman was palpable. Alix could feel it scintillate the air around her. She tasted it on the bile in her throat. She knew that this love was not a dream and that it would not pass with waking.

If anything, Robert's passion for Solange had grown through the years, especially after the birth of their child--his child. Any woman could see the signs of his passion, especially a woman who loved Robert as much as Alix did. Who needed him as much as she did. She watched as Solange reached to brush a wayward leaf from his cloak and smooth back a curl in his crisp, dark hair. Wifely gestures.

Except that it was she, Alix, who was this man's wife.
The Count de Mercier has ever but one love.
His heart forever.
His childhood flower, Solange.
His life's one quest.

How easily troubadours and jongleurs gossiped in their witty tunes about the passions and the sentiments of life, not thinking that what was love for one was often heartbreak and humiliation for another. Or not caring. For years musicians had earned bright silver half-livres by warbling on and on about the great love Robert, Lord de Mercier, bore his peasant mistress. Certain sensitive noblewomen, safely cocooned within the steel clauses of their own carefully arranged marriage contracts, had been known to swoon sympathetically at the mere mention of so great a passion. The scandalously impossible liaison between a First Peer of France and one of his serfs could only be rationalized by thinking of it as the truest of true loves.

Love was the basic gossamer intertwined within all of chivalry's most resplendent myths. It was deemed as important to life as bread, and almost as necessary as battle and conquest. Thus, everyone in France, be it the humblest Parisian glover or the king himself, knew of Robert's passion for Solange. But unfortunately--at least for Alix--there were too many other tales to carry in these warring days for the story to have worked its way throughout the rest of Europe. It would have had to be startling indeed to have traveled as far as the Emperor Sigismund's court in Hungary. No one knew or had time to care about the niceties of a French love story there. Life was too real and too rugged. It had to be seized quickly and on its own terms. Which is why Alix's loving but unsuspecting parents, Count Olivier Ducci Montaldo and his wife the Lady Julian, had betrothed, dowered, and married their only child into this nightmare.

Alix herself had learned the truth soon enough. It had been waiting in the courtyard of her husband's castle to greet her two years ago, when she had arrived fresh from her marriage at the Cathedral in Buda. She had been all of sixteen years old. The truth had been dressed in rich blue velvet and pearls. The truth had been dark and graceful and full, not thin and light as Alix herself was--the kind of woman who, even now that she was wedded, could easily have passed for a boy. The truth had taken Robert's hand and smiled at him and led him away.

"He had no choice." For an instant, in the dream, Solange turned to face Alix and her eyes filled with something that might well have been compassion. "He needed to make a noble marriage. He needed to produce a legitimate heir, or else his lands would have been forfeit to the Duke of Burgundy. You know that as well as I. He told you so himself. Robert did not marry me because he could not, but he has always loved me. He will always love me. I am the mother of his only child."

Even in her sleep Alix felt the pain of this as she clenched her hands, digging her fingernails deep, deep into her own flesh. Any mention of the son Robert had fathered upon his mistress brought out the same shameful reaction. Alix could not help herself. She fought against the feeling and loathed herself for it and confessed it repeatedly to Padre Gasca, but she hated Solange's child.

Above all else, she hated the child.

Soon after their arrival and the meeting with Solange, her husband's visits to her chamber--never frequent or especially ardent, even during the early weeks of their marriage--had ceased completely. Alix had heard chambermaids snickering behind their hands as she passed through the cold and friendless halls of her new home. Yet she knew that one day Robert must return to her. He had no choice. He needed an heir--a legitimate heir--or else his lands would be confiscated and devolved to Lancelot de Guigny--or worse, to the new upstart warrior lord, Severin Brigante Harnoncourt, who eyed them from Angevin, Italy. It was a universal truth that in this, the year of Our Lord 1414, a legitimate heir could only be begotten upon a legitimate wife. The Duke of Burgundy's threats had been enough to make Robert marry her. Surely in the end they would be enough to make him bed her again as well. Especially now that Burgundy had taken the particularly risky step of siding with the English against his own liege lord, the King of France. Alix, never particularly prayerful in the past, prayed each night that Robert would come to her. She loved her husband. She had never loved anyone before him, and in her heart she was certain that she would never be able to love anyone else. Despite everything, she must continue to love Robert.

Yet that did not mean that she loved his son. She fought against it; she prayed against it. She had to continue reminding herself that the pain in her life was not the fault of a six-month-old boy. Nothing mattered; no argument helped her. Robert's child should have been hers.

Things were different now, however. They had changed. Robert would not be able to refuse her much longer, not with the Duke of Burgundy turned traitor. Not with Guigny and that upstart Harnoncourt both threatening his lands. The very air they breathed was filled with the scent of war and usurpation. It was only a matter of time now. Robert must come to her. He must put her to bed with his heir.

Alix shivered in her sleep and snuggled more deeply into the shelter of her fox fur blankets. In her dream she watched Robert as he took his mistress's hand and crossed toward the dense, dark forest that lay beyond his castle. Alix had seen him do this a thousand times before in the reality of wakefulness, but she frowned now in her sleep. Something was wrong. Something was missing. But then Alix saw the two of them turn back and smile at the young child who gurgled and waved at them. For an instant all time stopped, and the three were framed in a golden glow of falling autumn leaves. The child giggled rapturously, and the sound of his happiness rippled upward into the sky and the clouds that were just beginning to form upon its surface. Even the ravens, flying swiftly south and away from the threat of winter, stopped to squawk and flutter, obviously wanting to be part of the pretty scene playing out below them. The beautiful, loving parents; their perfect, happy son. Alix heard the boy's laughter ring through her dream and she winced.

Then, from her place just outside the circle of their love, Alix sighted her husband's young squire rushing toward them. He ran forward with the intense, slow motion that one saw in a nightmare that was just about to deepen. But this was not what had attracted Alix's attention. Her forehead crinkled in perplexity as she stared at the running youth, as she tried to piece together what was wrong. And then she recognized his livery. Robert's squire no longer sported the crisp silvery blue of the Counts de Mercier. His tunic was a blaze of bright scarlet, and in his hand he carried the standard of a scarlet flag that rippled and undulated over his head. Alix frowned at this. What could it mean, all this red? All this running? Whose colors did he wear? Who called his allegiance now?

"Alix."

She heard Robert call her name and she turned toward his beloved voice, just as she always had and just as she doubtless always would. She thought her heart would burst with love for him.

"You must care for Yvrain now," said the man to whom Alix was married. "You must see that he is kept safe for Mercier. You must promise me that."

Alix hesitated.

"You must promise me," Robert insisted. His image had grown faint but his voice still carried. "Promise me before it is too late."

Not wanting to, the Countess de Mercier nodded.

The babe was alone now, and he was no longer laughing. His parents had moved far, far away, almost to the very edge of the forest. At the tree line, they turned to look back at him with sad, reluctant faces. But they did not come back. They did not motion for him or wait for him. They moved on.

Alix shivered again, and as she lay dreaming she automatically reached to touch the Maltese Star that hung at her throat. It was the same small golden, six-pointed charm that had belonged to both her mother and her grandmother. Alix felt the amulet grow warm and move just slightly beneath her fingers. She felt its power. For the first time in a very long time she let it call her back to Belvedere.

That is when the screaming started.
* * * *

At first she thought that this, too, was part of the dream. These cries for help and mercy and the ring of clanging steel. They would fade as well with wakefulness, even as Robert and Solange were fading. And Yvrain with them. In fact, Alix could no longer see any of them, though she strained to do so. She had no wish to leave her dream. Somehow she knew that waking would be worse than any nightmare.

"Robert!" Alix did not care about Solange now; she was no longer wracked by jealousy. She and Robert could work things out--as long as he didn't leave her. As long as she was not left all alone to face what would happen next.

"Countess, wake quickly! Quickly."

Alix heard the agitated whisper. She tried to shrug it away. Just a little of the dream remained and she stood on tiptoes within it, straining to snatch her husband from the world of shadows that was rapidly enveloping him.

"Quickly."

Alix felt the shake and the cold as her fur rugs were flung aside.

"'Tis Lancelot de Guigny, coming to kill you in your bed just as he's killed all the others."

Through the slit in her eyelids, she recognized the short, squat shape of Young Sophie, her maid.

"Guigny, here? How can that be?"

"Only the devil knows--for it was he who doubtless spawned him. But indeed he is here and set to murder all of Mercier."

Instantly Alix was wide awake. "Then we must get to my husband. We must inform the count." Her feet were already on the cold stones of the castle floor, her eyes looking beyond Sophie to the door of her solitary chamber.

"The count is dead." Sturdy Sophie grabbed a mantle to wrap around her mistress's thin night tunic. "He was killed in his sleep and Solange with him. Lancelot de Guigny sent knights disguised as mendicants to seek hospitality within the keep. The count opened to them and they in turn opened the castle to their lord. De Guigny thinks he has killed you, the lawful wife of Mercier. Perhaps, if we are fortunate, he will think that for a few moments more. But then he will come. You must leave this place. Now. With sure haste. The Knight de Guigny will want no living witness to his treachery. He will leave alive nothing that can lay claim to Mercier."

"But the village..."

"The village will be left to itself once blood-lust has been spent in the castle. It is only you he will really want. It is you he will kill."

Sophie did not wait for Alix's reply. She threw a fur blanket around her and pushed her toward the door. A scream rang from the Great Hall below them.

"My husband cannot be dead. No one would dare to kill the Count de Mercier. I must get to my husband."

Sophie shook her fine, young curls. "Go to the window, my lady, and see what is left of the castle of Mercier. See if the count could still be alive in this horror."

Cold wind blasted them as Alix flung back the heavy velvet hangings. No clouds marred the winter's sky or blocked the placid, broad moon that cast its crystal light down into the courtyard upon the dead and the dying. Alix had never known the garrison at Mercier contained so many men; she had never thought the world itself capable of containing so much pain and horror.

She looked up to stare at the red and cream standard of Burgundy flying from Mercier's ramparts.

"Good God," she said and she crossed herself. Her hands chilled against her forehead and she felt the ice slither into her and chill the very beating of her heart. "Good God."

But there could be no God of Goodness in the mass of death she saw below.

The hill beyond the castle shimmered with movement and she turned to it. Men--enemies--still galloped toward Mercier. The moon's light rippled against a dark standard that heralded the approach of a force of at least fifty more. They rode fast, holding their bodies low and tight against the wind. Determined to make Mercier before first light. Desperate to make sure they played their part in this carnage of conquest.

She looked up once again at the arrogant standard of Burgundy fluttering above her head. She could see it clearly in the torchlight that ringed both the inner and outer curtains of the castle and in the glow of random fires.

Tears stung her eyes. More than anything else, this contemptuous display of colors told her that her husband was dead. Since the time of Charlemagne, when Robisart the Bold had established this fortress, no colors other than the silver and bright blue of the lords of Mercier had ever flown from its ramparts. It had never been taken.

But it was taken now.

For all of his faults, a living Robert de Mercier would never have allowed this desecration. This meant that he was surely dead. Alix knew this with dull certainty. Yet no matter whose standard graced it, the Merciers were still the traditional seneschals of this outpost and she, Alix, was still the Countess de Mercier. It was her duty to protect whomever and whatever remained within its borders.

"I must get to my pigeons. I must send for help."

"To whom?" Young Sophie's eyes were wide with terror. "Mercier is held under the banner of Burgundy. The duke is liege lord here and for a thousand leagues in any direction. The Knight de Guigny holds this place for his brother and with his brother's consent. Who can help us? We are surrounded by the duke's power on all sides. You must seek sanctuary from the monks at Haute Fleur and from there beg for mercy from the duke himself. Save yourself, and plead for the lives of your people. 'Tis only a part of the castle that is burning. He has left the village in peace thus far."

With this declaration came a wild hope. "But then perhaps Robert did manage to escape..."

Alix ran from the window to the chamber door. She slammed past it and into the corridor that led to the noble rooms of the Counts de Mercier. She had to get to her husband. There might still be time. If he were still alive and she saved him, they might be able to redeem everything in the past. Surely if she saved him he would love her for it.

Sophie caught at her mistress easily, yanking her arm with such force that Alix almost toppled.

"He's dead," the maid hissed. "I saw him myself. And 'tis Lancelot de Guigny who did the killing. Do you really want to see how he did it? Do you really want to see the mess he made of the man you love?"

Alix stopped and looked into the maid's eyes and saw the truth there. She shook her head. More tears slipped from her eyes but she determined they would be the last--at least for this night.

"There, there," said Sophie with a quick and clumsy hug. "But you, my lady, are alive and you must live on."

They ran then. Alix felt her body act on its own as she raced. Up these corridors, down those. Dried thyme on the castle's floor-stones bit against her bare feet as she ran through it. Near the heart of the castle, the herbs beneath her feet were matted with blood. She heard a woman scream and the sound of men laughing. The scream continued long after the laughter had stopped. But here, on this noble floor, where the carnage had begun and where it might well end, there was only silence. Which is why, as they ran nearer to the hidden donjon stairs that would take them from the castle into the safety of the hills, they heard the child's cry with such clarity.

Yvrain, Alix thought and her heart stopped as she remembered.

Alix, I beg of you, save my son. Save Mercier.

The sound halted them in their tracks. Breathing heavily, they glanced at each other. Sophie's brow furrowed.

"'Tis the boy," said the Countess de Mercier. She had never once called Solange's child by name, pretending that she did not even know what he had been christened. But she spoke his name now. "They have not killed Yvrain. They have not killed Robert's child."

In Sophie's eyes she saw awareness of what this meant, and fear of it.

"But they will kill him," the maid whispered. She held tight onto her mistress's arm. "They will kill him--and immediately, once they realize the oversight. All know of the Count de Mercier's son. The Knight de Guigny is a bastard himself, and thus knows a bastard's determination. He will not let this child live. He is too much of a threat."

Sophie stopped and drew back. She had said what needed saying but as a member of the countess's household, she knew the hurt that the birth of this little one had caused her young mistress. She also knew the danger they faced if they stopped to take the child with them. Robert's child. If he had hopes to hold Mercier, then Lancelot de Guigny would not rest until Yvrain was dead. Sophie had risked her life to save the young countess, but she wanted no part in the choice that the countess would now have to make.

Alix felt the blood pound at her temples, bringing back the hatred. She remembered Solange's slights and her ridicule. Alix remembered her own pain. And she remembered how this child had caused it. But the baby, Robert's baby, was crying--yet not really even crying, only whimpering. He wanted his mother and his father near. He had been awakened to death, just as Alix herself had been, but he was too young to know the danger. How old was he? Dear God, only six months.

Abruptly, into that silence echoed the clang of steel. The sound soon died but not its echo. This seemed to go on and on until it became the only thing still resonating in Robert de Mercier's dark and deadly castle. It thundered up from the horror below in the Great Hall to the horror that lay all about her on this, the noble floor.

Still hesitating at the doorway, Alix shifted slightly and slipped in blood. She looked down into the dead eyes of the child Yvrain's nurse. The old woman's arms were flung wide, almost in supplication. Alix stared at the dead woman for what seemed like an eternity as the clang of steel began to ring out once again. For an instant this weapon-clashing was Alix's only reality but it was in that instant that she made her decision. She went to the child and picked him up and snuggled him to her breast.

"There, there," she crooned to him just as Sophie had crooned to her. She touched his dark curls and smiled at him, as the screaming and the laughter started up again. "You are Yvrain of Mercier and I, Alix, plight thee guardianship. You will come with me now. I will keep you safe."