The Lure of the Moonflower by Lauren Willig Page B

say.”
    “Yes,” said Jack, trying to hoist Bernardo upright as he started to slide down the bench. “A very good man.”
    It was like wrestling with blancmange. Bernardo’s mouth was roughly on a level with the underside of the table. Jack had to lean over to hear what he said.
    “. . . in force, they say. With banners of gold . . . of gold . . .” Bernardo’s mouth opened onto a snore.
    Releasing the back of his jacket, Jack gave up the battle to keep him upright and let him sink the rest of the way to the floor.
    Banners of gold. A picturesque image, to be sure, but nothing more than any exile might whisper around the fire. To be fair, Bernardo and his kin hadn’t been exiled, but their experience was similar. They found themselves strangers in their own homes, yearning after all that was familiar and lost to them.
    When the Queen comes again . . .
    It was nonsense, all of it, but Jack couldn’t quite get it out of his head. Look to the north. A closed carriage. Two days before anyone realized she was missing.
    Bernardo’s sister-in-law had been one of the Queen’s waiting women. If someone had spirited the Queen away, on the very day of departure, they would have needed connivance in the Queen’s household, someone to throw together the necessities for the exiled Queen. Including, Jack thought cynically, enough drugs to keep her from shouting down half of Lisbon.
    No. He’d heard the stories of life in the Queen’s household. It was hardly cozy and chummy. The Queen’s mania inclined her to violence; she flung anything that came to hand at her underlings, accusing them of stealing from her, of plotting against her. There was a higher rate of attrition in the Queen’s household than in the East India Company’s army, and given the number of British soldiers Jack had seen fall prey to cholera, syphilis, and bazaar girls, that was saying something indeed. There were days the Queen banned all of her waiting women from her household entirely, admitting only her confessor.
    Only her confessor.
    Outside the tavern, Jack could hear the rising and falling chant of monks in procession. Through the half-open door, he could see the palanquin they carried, bearing the carved figure of a saint, gaudily painted, draped in silks and velvet. In his character as Alarico, he clumsily crossed himself as the saint’s statue passed, a gesture that would undoubtedly horrify his Calvinist grandparents, the gesture habitual after three years in Portugal. It was hardly anything out of the ordinary. It seemed, sometimes, that every other day was a saint’s day. Robed religious of a dozen orders passed through the streets: mendicant friars, prosperous abbots, white-wimpled nuns.
    Jack had grown accustomed to it. He scarcely noticed it. Nor did anyone else.
    Reaching down, he took Bernardo by the shoulder and shook. The only response was a gentle snore, followed by a much less gentle snore.
    That, thought Jack with some asperity, was the problem of
veritas
by
vino
. With enough application of wine, one passed truth and hit oblivion.
    Damn, damn, damn. The hint of a memory teased him. In the week before the court had departed, the Queen had acquired a new confessor. Jack was certain. Almost certain. He hadn’t paid terribly much attention at the time; he’d been more interested in the rumors emerging about the movements of the French troops marching their slow way through the rains towards Lisbon. But anything to do with the Queen was potentially news, so he’d stowed it away without really thinking of it.
    Even in her mania—especially in her mania—the Queen was intensely religious. She swore at her son and mistrusted her maids, but any man in a monk’s robe would have her unquestioning obedience.
    Particularly if he promised her salvation.
    It was beginning to take shape in Jack’s brain, the outlines of a plot both daring and bold and so absolutely simple he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it