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said.
    “No, Your Majesty. I did not know.”
    “Most royal abbeys are like this one. Full of gold plate, and tapestries, and beeswax candles.”
    “And fat abbots,” she said, her smooth voice belying the glint in her eye.
    I smiled at her. “Yes.”
    The knife she had been given was almost not sharp enough to spread butter on the bread, much less cut the meat. Soon she would have to tear the food with her teeth. I saw her annoyance and laughed, drawing another dagger from my sleeve. “Here, Alais, use this one. The monks did not give you a decent knife because they don’t want you to assassinate me.”
    “I would as soon cut out my own heart.”
    I touched her cheek. “Well I know it. Do not trouble yourself over the assumptions fools make.”
    My acknowledgment that the abbot was a fool calmed her at once. She picked up the dagger I had given her, and started to eat.
    I smiled, watching her devour her meat. The squab was good; in that house, the abbot’s table was always well stocked, as anyone could tell from his ample belly. But I would have known that without seeing him, for I paid the abbey’s bills. Such trifles were the foundation of my spy network. I was always amazed at how easy it was to buy a man’s soul, and how cheap.
    “You might be a spy for France, you see,” I said, sipping my wine. “Your betrothal to my son might be a ruse. You might be here only to kill me.”
    “Why would they send a girl?” she asked.
    I laughed, and though she smiled with me, I saw that she did not make a joke. She was not quite easy enough with me for that. Not yet.
    “I do not think this, Alais. I only tell you what others think. Those who are not trained to kindness and obedience as you are.”
    Alais met my eyes when I said this, to see whether I teased her, which, of course, I did. Though kindness and obedience had been bred into her from birth, much more lay behind the maple brown of her eyes, and she and I both knew it. She smiled wryly, and the light in her eyes did not dim.
    “You will find that the world is not the place you were told it was in the nunnery. Men are cruel, and women are their playthings.”
    “I am not afraid,” the French princess said, all light of mirth going out of her eyes. Her strength was revealed to me then, unsheathed, like a weapon used in war. I knew she never dropped that mask before another, and I was gratified.
    She looked away from me, her eyes cast down at her plate. She did not eat another bite, nor did she move, but sat frozen, as if waiting for an assassin’s knife. I found myself holding my breath, taken in by her reverent silence, until she looked up once more at me.
    “Where were you just now, Alais?”
    “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I was saying a prayer for my father, and for France.”
    I do not know what I expected. I myself had left her in a religious house, and one where the abbess had a true calling. Had I wanted to wean her from her father’s religion, I would have done well to send her someplace else.
    I would have her for my own, Louis and his religion be damned. But clearly I would not have her for myself that day. I would lay siege to her piety; I would find a breach in the wall, or perhaps a door. Piety was something I had never understood. In spite of my best efforts, and Henry’s, it had taken root in Richard, too.
    “It is kind of you to pray for Louis. No doubt he needs it,” I said.
    Two lay sisters came in then to clear away the plates, and a third to lead Alais to her room. I took my daughter’s hand as she stood to leave me, and when she met my eyes, all thoughts of religion fled.
    “The world is hard on women,” I said. “You must prepare yourself” For all her religious leanings, she was the girl I remembered, the girl whose strength had called to me from the first, my daughter in truth, grown now into a woman. Her strength shone out of her face, from the depths of her maple eyes, a light that surrounded me.
    “I am ready,” she