As Isabella tucked the Byzantine coin into the hidden pocket of her petticoat, her fingers grazed the bruises left by the monastery's stone steps. The tower of Winchester Castle stood like a penitent in the dusk, its silhouette cast long against the sky. And when she saw the palace gates bearing the crest of the White Rose, a strange sense of belonging, absurd and unwelcome, crept into her chest.
"Lady de Clare! Her Majesty has returned!" The gatekeeper's call startled a flock of ravens into flight. Maids rushed out with lamps of whale oil, their shadows long in the courtyard light—but Isabella walked past them all without pause.
The hem of her underskirt still bore the moss stains from Saint-Denis Abbey. Her sleeves were streaked with blood—the remnants of King Alfred II's kiss, bitten into her skin.
In the colonnade, Richard de Clare pressed a hand to his sword hilt.
"You shouldn't have gone to see the King alone."
"So you sent three knights to follow me?" Isabella's voice was iron-edged, her throat still tasting of blood.
When she finally collapsed onto the four-poster bed, the rustle of old servant Adeline drawing the curtains startled the nightingale perched above the canopy.
"My lady, you must eat," Adeline said softly. Her hands were more lined than the stained glass of the abbey.
"In the name of the Father, leave me be!" Isabella snapped, knocking over the silver tray. Pickled venison rolled across the Turkish carpet, leaving oily stains in its wake.
The woman's stunned face reminded Isabella of the matron at Cambridge—those who would never understand what it meant to be called the Burgundy Whore.
Suddenly, the tears came.
"I'm sorry… I just can't bear the way they look at me. The Breton lords whisper that I share a bed with Lady Elena…"
Adeline gently untangled her golden hair with gnarled fingers. "It's the Duke of Winston's doing. If you'd married the Oxfordshire squire—"
"I would've rotted to death beneath Latin tomes!"
Isabella's fingers dug into the embroidered sheets—roses, thorns and all—the same crest that adorned Alfred's ceremonial mask.
When her hand brushed the hidden coin again, its chill struck her like a spell. The memory surged back—the boy from the Cambridge library who shielded her from a falling stone—his fingers had the same elegant strength.
Dreams tormented her more cruelly than the monastery's penance.
In the mist, a youth approached with a leather-bound copy of La Légende de la Rose, chainmail flashing beneath his Cambridge robes. Just as he reached for her, a silver mask slid over the left side of his face. Blood dripped from the Byzantine coin in his fingers.
"Your father traded you for three Flemish cities," he whispered.