The Dark Queen Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  The Legend . . .

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Praise for . . .

  Read on for a sneak peek . . .

  Don’t miss all three captivating novels in the Dark Queen trilogy

  Also by Susan Carroll

  Copyright Page

  To Kay Krewer and Armin Weng,

  True friends for all time, whether it be

  the nineteenth century or this one.

  And to the memory of Fred Zimmer,

  Gentle farmer and philanthropist.

  Acknowledgments

  This novel has proved a long journey for me, more difficult than most. I could never have arrived at the end without the unfailing support and enthusiasm of my agent, Andrea Cirillo, and the staff at Jane Rotrosen. Nor could I have brought this work to a satisfactory conclusion without the patience of my publishers at Random House and the talented and insightful editing of Shauna Summers and Charlotte Herscher.

  I also have many friends to thank for making my long hours at the computer more bearable: Carol Boomershine for her constant encouragement, my dear friend Kim Cates, her husband Dave and daughter Kate, for always being there for me, my own personal cheering squad, the ladies of Monday night, Stephanie Wilson, Sheila Burns, Gina Hinrichs, Amy Lillus, and Trudy Watson. My daughter Serena for never losing faith in her mom.

  And lastly but not least a very special thanks to the three ladies who inspired me to write this tale of the Cheney sisters . . . my own siblings, Dorothy, Jean, and Janet. It was from them that I learned of the special love and unshakeable bonds of sisters.

  Author’s Note

  The Dark Queen depicted in this book is based on an alchemical mix of myth and fact. Throughout Catherine de Medici’s reign, rumors of her use of black magic abounded. Many believed her to have been a witch and a notorious poisoner, although there is no evidence to back up these claims. It is known that she did employ a band of beautiful women she called her Flying Squadron to seduce her enemies at court. And she was undoubtedly mistress of the arts of political intrigue.

  Combining a little fact with fiction, relying mostly on legend, embellished by the powers of imagination, I created this tale of the Dark Queen. By no means do I claim to be putting before you an accurate portrayal of the complex woman who was Catherine de Medici or of the events that led to that murky night in August 1572. Centuries later, historians still argue over who was to blame for the tragedy of St. Bartholomew’s Eve and debate the elusive character of that “Italian woman,” as her subjects called her. For more information about French politics and history, I respectfully refer you to the domain of scholars and historians.

  My realm is one of fantasy, romance, and adventure in the country of long ago and the land of might have been . . .

  The Legend . . .

  Long ago there lived a group of women known as the Daughters of the Earth. These women were revered for their wisdom and knowledge, skilled in all the arts of healing and white magic. They lived in a more innocent and peaceful time, when men and women were deemed equal and shared in the governing of their kingdoms.

  But as time passed, the balance of power shifted, men coming to dominate with their warlike ways. Women were slowly denied more of their rights to govern and to learn.

  Most of the Daughters of the Earth sorrowfully accepted these changes and gave up their power. Some became embittered and took their vengeance by learning to employ the darker arts. But a brave few persevered, struggling to keep the ancient knowledge alive. They passed on the secrets of the white magic from mother to daughter for generations. It was an increasingly dangerous proposition, for the Daughters of the Earth were no longer revered as wise women.

  They had come to be known by a far more sinister term . . . witches.

  Prologue

  The bride was late.

  The crowd gathered outside the cathedral grew hot and restless. Murmurs, low at first, then steadily louder, rippled through the throng of townspeople lingering to gawk. Ariane Cheney was not coming. No one was particularly surprised.

  She was known as the Lady of Faire Isle, and all the women who inhabited that island had a reputation for being contrary and strange. None more so than Mistress Cheney, and the lady had made no secret of her reluctance for this marriage. The comte was rumored to have all but wooed her at the point of his sword.

  As the sun rose higher in the sky, the bishop drew farther back into the shelter of the cathedral portico. Straining beneath his heavy miter, His Eminence showed signs of impatience, his clerics wilting in their flowing vestments. The wedding guests exchanged disgruntled glances, shifting wearily from foot to foot.

  The bridegroom appeared unperturbed. Mounted upon a richly caparisoned stallion, Justice Deauville regarded the street leading toward the cathedral with unwavering arrogance.

  The Comte de Renard was a man cut on a grand scale, a veritable giant, well over six feet of solid muscle and long limbs. The broad span of his chest strained beneath a satin doublet studded with sapphires. Uneven lengths of golden-brown hair fell past his shoulder, giving the impression of a man too impatient to sit still for his barber. Although clean-shaven, his face was rough-hewn, with a square jaw and a nose that appeared as if it had been broken at some point in his past.

  Exactly what that past was no one seemed able to say. Many in Brittany scarcely remembered that the late Comte de Renard still possessed an heir until Justice Deauville had turned up a few months ago to claim his inheritance. Despite his elegant attire, he looked more like a man one would fear to encounter alone in a darkened alley than an aristocrat.

  Even though weariness spread through the guests and attendants, no one dared suggest to the comte the possibility that his bride was not coming, not even the bishop. As the morning waned, only one rider ventured to nudge his horse out of the line of gold-and-black-clad retainers, an old man with a shock of white hair and a lifetime of adventures mapped across his craggy face.

  Toussaint Debec had faced down Turks in the Middle East, Venetian pirates in the Mediterranean, even the monks of the dreaded Inquisition. He had one other advantage over everyone else. He had known Justice Deauville since he was a boy.

  The old man brought his mount calmly alongside the comte and remarked, “Well, lad, it doesn’t appear to me as though you are going to be married this day.”

  “She will come.” Renard’s gaze remained upon the empty street.

  “I warned you that you were being too high-handed with Mistress Cheney. She is not like other women. She—”

  “I know exactly who the Lady of Faire Isle is,” Renard interrupted.

  “Then you should have known you could not just issue commands to her.”

  “I am the Comte de Renard now. I can command anyone.”

  “Not this lady!”

  “She will come,” Renard stubbornly repeated.

  “Why? Simply because you ordered her to?”

  “No.” An odd smile played about Rena
rd’s lips. “Because she won’t be able to help herself. I am her destiny.”

  “Oh, Lord!” Toussaint muttered, rolling his eyes. But just then a shout rose up from the crowd.

  Some half dozen of the comte’s own retainers came into view, escorting a gilt-trimmed coach pulled by a team of snow-white horses, plumes fastened to their manes. The townsfolk surged into the street to gape.

  As the coach drew to a halt in the square, Renard shot Toussaint a look of pure triumph. Renard dismounted, tossed his reins to one of his squires, and strode toward the coach. Brushing the footman aside, he yanked open the carriage door.

  Heavy curtains had been drawn across the windows, leaving the interior dark after the glitter of sunlight. Squinting, Renard could just make out the willowy form of his bride seated in the corner, the billows of her satin gown spread out around her, a heavy veil concealing her face.

  “My lady, I was just starting to fear that I would have to—” Renard’s eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  There was something very wrong in the way his lady slumped against the cushions, a fear that was confirmed when he took hold of her gloved hand.

  “What the devil!” Renard hauled his bride from the carriage none too gently. Her veil caught on the coach door, tearing free along with a long brown wig, leaving exposed a round head of cloth stuffed with straw, as was the rest of the satin-clad body Renard clutched in his hands.

  He stared in astonishment at the muslin head painted with gray eyes and a mocking vermilion smile. A hush fell over the crowd, and then Renard heard the first titter of laughter.

  For a moment, time fell away from him and he was not the all-powerful Comte de Renard, but only Justice Deauville, an ungainly boy picking himself up from the dirt of the tournament field while the crowd snorted with derision.

  The sharpness of the memory surprised him, as did its ability to hurt. But he was quick to shrug it off. There were many years between him and that raw, awkward boy, a lifetime of experience that had given him, among other things, the ability to laugh at himself.

  His jaw relaxed. Renard flung back his head and roared. After a flicker of uncertainty, the crowd joined in, the entire square ringing with laughter. As Renard finally subsided, he found Toussaint at his side, grinning up at him.

  “Now, lad, perhaps you are finally willing to admit you made a mistake trying to force that woman to marry you.”

  “I made only one mistake, old man,” Renard retorted, “and that was in not going to fetch Mistress Cheney myself.”

  Renard thrust the straw bride at the dismayed Toussaint. The comte wheeled about and remounted his horse. He then galloped away, leaving the entire square gaping after him.

  Putting the spurs to his mount, Renard tore through the streets, and out the city gates, following the road that led down from the town. Only when he reached the rocky stretch of beach did he rein to a halt.

  Off the coast, the Faire Isle could be seen, its outline growing dimmer by the moment, disappearing in the haze. The place was not, properly speaking, an island, but connected to the mainland by a rocky isthmus of land just wide enough to support a road.

  Renard urged his horse toward that narrow channel, but the skittish stallion balked, all but rearing back on its haunches when Renard tried to force it forward.

  The horse was showing better sense than he. The road leading to the Faire Isle was treacherous on a fair day, but in fog or storm, the passage could be lethal. The sea had claimed more than one rider foolish enough to attempt it.

  As the mist thickened, Renard reined in his mount and watched the island disappear as though it had been veiled by a sorcerer’s magic. Or perhaps, more aptly, a sorceress.

  Renard expelled a frustrated sigh. Toussaint had been right. The comte would not be married this day. The old man was also right that Renard’s blunt approach had not worked with Ariane Cheney.

  But he had learned long ago that the meek did not inherit the earth. Being patient and gentle meant being ridden over roughshod and having the woman one loved married to someone else.

  The fog blurred before his eyes and he was hurled back across the years. Once more he stood shivering and bleeding on Martine’s doorstep while she gazed up at him with dismayed blue eyes before slamming the door in his face.

  Renard shook the memory off. So long ago, and what did it even matter now? Except that his experience with Martine had taught him a hard lesson.

  When a man wanted something, he had better be ruthless when going after it, whether it was a parcel of land, a horse, or a woman. Of course, he was obliged to admit that the Lady of Faire Isle was no ordinary woman.

  With a recalcitrant bride like Ariane, a man might be obliged to resort to more devious methods. Especially a man determined to marry a witch.

  Chapter One

  The chamber lay hidden beneath the old part of the house, far from prying eyes. During Roman times, when a fortress had stood on the island, the room had been part of a catacomb of prisons, a dark place where frightened souls had been imprisoned awaiting torture and death. But that had been centuries ago.

  The chains and manacles were long gone, the stone walls now lined with jars of herbs, dust-covered bottles, and books preserving knowledge forgotten by the rest of the world. The grim place had been completely transformed by feminine hands into a repository of ancient learning and a keeper of secrets. There was enough evidence stacked upon these shelves to get a woman condemned for witchcraft seven times over.

  No one could have looked less like a witch than the young woman stirring the hearth’s bubbling cauldron. Ariane Cheney was tall and thin, her slender form clad in a russet-brown gown protected by the apron knotted round her waist.

  The orange-red light of the torches imbedded in the walls flickered over her grave features; her thick chestnut hair was demurely bundled beneath a kerchief. Ariane had an unusually solemn face for a woman barely one and twenty, her pensive gray eyes seldom given to laughter, her lips rarely transformed by a smile.

  She had little to smile about these days since her mother’s death. With her father still missing, that left only Ariane to protect and care for her two younger sisters. Speculation grew daily that the Chevalier Louis Cheney’s grand voyage of exploration had come to disaster, that the Chevalier was either lost at sea or killed by natives on some hostile foreign shore.

  Ariane gave the contents of the cauldron one final stir, then carefully ladled some of the clear liquid into a thick clay flagon. She carried it over to the long wooden worktable. The powder she had ground rested in the bottom of the iron mortar, a concoction partly gleaned from her books, partly from her own ingenuity.

  Setting the flagon down, Ariane scooped out a spoonful of the powder. She hardly knew how much to use. It was a matter of guesswork. Ariane closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer.

  “Oh, please, please let this work.” Opening her eyes, she carefully ladled the powder into the flagon. She watched anxiously, preparing to give the potion a stir, but she never got the chance.

  The reaction was immediate and violent. The liquid began to smoke and hiss, bubble and foam. As the potion roiled over the sides of the flagon, Ariane emitted a cry of dismay. She grabbed for a cloth to check the mess, but the spitting flagon forced her to retreat.

  She backed away, flinging up one arm just in time as the vessel shattered, spraying the chamber with flecks of red foam and broken pottery. An acrid haze hung over the room, a sharp stench that caused Ariane to choke and her eyes to sting with tears. She flapped her cloth to clear the air and then mopped her eyes to survey the damage.

  She was not hurt, but her potion had left a scorch mark on the table and burned tiny holes in her apron. Ariane had failed.

  If only Maman was here to help me, Ariane thought, the familiar ache of loss tugging at her heart. It was a wish she made a dozen times every day.

  Evangeline Cheney had been a true descendant of the Daughters of the Earth, as learned in the old ways as any woman who
had ever lived. She had been known as a leader among wise women, the Lady of Faire Isle, a title that had passed to Ariane, but she had never felt equal to slipping into her mother’s shoes.

  It had been over two years since Ariane had watched the life ebb away from the once-indomitable Evangeline. Still, not a day went by that she did not miss her mother’s gentle strength, the wisdom of her counsel.

  Oh, Maman, Ariane thought, to be able to hear your voice again. She wondered, would it really be so dreadful, to summon her mother’s spirit, just this once? She knew well what her mother’s answer to that question would have been. Evangeline Cheney had taught her three daughters many marvelous things, but she had solemnly adjured them against any meddling with dark magic.

  Ariane forced her attention back to the mess she had made of her workshop. She had most of the broken pottery picked up when she realized that someone was shifting the trap door that concealed the way down to the hidden chamber.

  “Ariane?”

  Gabrielle’s voice floated down to her from the regions above. Ariane had just enough time to dump the shards of pottery into the ash bin before her sister came down the twisting stone stair with all the air of a grand duchess about to make her curtsy at the royal court.

  The girl had been cutting and refitting one of her old gowns again in an effort to appear more fashionable. What had once been a sweet and simple frock had been dyed carnelian and trimmed in a rich pattern of gold embroidery. The full skirts flared out over a farthingale and opened in the front to reveal a cream-colored underskirt frothing with lace. But it was the bodice Ariane eyed with misgiving, cut too low and displaying far too much of Gabrielle’s generous bosom.

  As she descended the stairs, Gabrielle lifted her skirts, managing to keep the gown clear of any stray dust with one elegant twitch of her hand. Her hair was of fairest gold, her face noted for its alabaster complexion, full red lips, and jewel-blue eyes.

  She was so perfectly lovely that it often made Ariane’s heart ache to look at her. Perhaps because she missed the days when Gabrielle had not been quite so concerned about her appearance, when her little sister had torn about Faire Isle barefoot, her curls in a flyaway tangle, a smudge of paint on her cheek, as she had demanded a fresh canvas to work upon. Her hands had been callused, her nails broken from her latest effort at sculpting.