She still couldn’t tell her anything. Maybe it was foolish, but she had spent two and a half years trying to shelter Amélie. She couldn’t bear to undo that now.
But she couldn’t let Amélie’s concern go unanswered, either.
So for the first time since she had pulled a bloodstained, crying Amélie off the street, wrapped her in a coat, and taken her home, Rachelle put an arm over her shoulders.
“Thank you,” she said.
20
The next day was Sunday. All the court was expected to accompany the King to the palace chapel, where every week he demonstrated his devotion to appearances, if not to God.
Rachelle had not attended mass since she became bloodbound, and she hadn’t expected to start now. For the past two weeks, she had gotten Erec to watch Armand while he was in the chapel. But this morning she couldn’t find him, so she had to follow Armand inside.
She knew that the stories about bloodbound screaming and bursting into flame on consecrated ground were false. Justine was proof enough of that. But the last time she’d walked into a church, she hadn’t been bloodbound. She’d been the good little daughter of Marie and Barthélemy Brinon, training to become a woodwife and dreaming of saving the world. She’d still believed that she loved God. That chapel was everything she had lost and renounced and spat upon.
But when she actually walked inside, it wasn’t so bad. The church she had grown up with was a little stone building, the walls plastered and painted with fading, clumsy portraits of the saints. The windows were narrow slits paned with cloudy, pale glass. The altar was a simple square stone with only the jawbone of a nameless martyr sitting upon it.
The royal chapel was a jewel box of a room: the floor was pure, shimmering white marble, while the walls and pillars were coated with a vast tracery of gold leaf. Between the gem-like stained glass windows hung tall paintings in equally glowing colors. Before the marble altar lay the skeleton of le Montjoie, patron saint of the royal line. Every one of his bones was completely gilded, enameled eyes set into his sockets, jeweled rings on his fingers and jeweled chains about his neck. It didn’t feel a thing like the place where Rachelle had worshipped as a child, and filing into it with a mass of richly arrayed courtiers didn’t feel much different from filing into the Salon du Mars.
Rachelle and Armand were seated in the lower section. That was the other thing that was different: in Rachelle’s church, the people had all sat watching the priest as he stood at the altar. Here, every seat faced the back of the building, so they could spend the entire time looking up at the King sitting in his elevated red-velvet box with his chosen few. Today that chosen few did not include Rachelle and Armand, so they got the full view of the royal presence.
As the choir began to sing, Armand’s jaw tightened, and then he turned around to stare at the altar.
“I think that’s an insult to the King,” Rachelle muttered under her breath.
“Forgive me if I don’t feel like worshipping him today,” Armand muttered back.
“I don’t think anyone’s worshipping anything in here,” said Rachelle. Certainly the ladies next to them seemed a great deal more absorbed in whispering to each other and playing with a tiny dog than in paying due reverence to their King or deity. For a brief moment, she felt very sorry for whatever priest would be called upon to minister to such a blatantly impious congregation.
Then she realized who was leading the crowd of acolytes: Bishop Guillaume.
She felt hot and cold at once. Who let him into the Château? One glance up at the gallery convinced her that it hadn’t been the King.
Well, who cared? She had never yet been forced to sit through one of his sermons, and she didn’t care to start now. She stood, pushed past the other people in the pew, and walked out of the chapel. Whatever trouble she might get into, she’d rather bear it than the sermon.
Outside, leaning with her back against the wall, she knew she was a fool. It was a man she hated muttering prayers to a God she’d rejected. What did she have to fear? You couldn’t get more damned than damned.
“Shouldn’t you be in the chapel?” said Justine.
Rachelle’s eyes snapped open. “What are you doing here?”
Justine stood a pace away, her arms crossed. Her face was grim, though as that was her usual expression, it meant nothing.
“Never mind that,” Rachelle went on. “What’s your precious Bishop doing here?”
“He came to preach to the King,” said Justine. “I came to speak with you.”
Rachelle’s stomach turned. “I know what you’re going to say. And I’ll die before I join him.”
Justine pursed her lips. “Did I ever tell you,” she said quietly, “that before I was a bloodbound, I was a nun?”
Rachelle stared at her. It was the unspoken rule of the King’s bloodbound that they never, ever talked about their pasts. But Erec had broken it last night, so perhaps she shouldn’t be so surprised at Justine.
“I was pure as an angel and proud as a devil,” Justine went on, frowning slightly as she stared into the distance. “Only, I found that neither purity nor pride was courage, in the end.” Then she looked back at Rachelle. “Your pride won’t be enough for you either. Give up serving the King. Ask to be made the Bishop’s bloodbound.”
“And then what?” Rachelle demanded. “Help put him on the throne? Do you think treason will save your soul?”
“I think I would rather serve him for the last of my days than the King. Why do you think the days grow shorter and the forestborn grow stronger?”
Rachelle threw away her caution. “Because the Devourer is awakening.”
She’d expected nothing else, but it still hurt when Justine’s mouth twisted with disgust. “Do you still cling to your heathen superstitions? The darkness falls because God is judging us for our sins. He has delivered us over to the woodspawn and the forestborn for chastisement.”
“Our sinfulness,” said Rachelle, “is in living and in letting other bloodbound live. If you were truly sorry, you would get out a knife and cut your throat. As for me, I’ve spent more time talking to the forestborn than you ever have, and I much prefer them to the Bishop. At least they don’t pretend they’re holy.”
“Do as you will, then.” Justine stood. “But I will pray for you,” she added imperturbably, and walked into the chapel.
The doors had barely shut behind her when la Fontaine wandered into the hallway, gently fluttering a mother-of-pearl fan. She raised an eyebrow at Rachelle. “Slipped out before the consecration? Perhaps we should call you Mélusine.”