The first day of the tournament—the day of the Queen’s trial by combat—dawned grey and foggy.

The guards found the Queen asleep in her cell—a cell, they said, that had become a rose garden overnight. Many men—hard men—fell to their knees as the Queen emerged from the cell. She was dressed in a plain brown gown, and her pregnancy was so pronounced as to make her ungainly—yet she was not. She was calm, and beautiful.

They put her in a wagon. They did so with surpassing gentleness.

She was taken through the streets of the city, and she could see how few people there were. She knew nothing of what had passed, but she could guess much from the burned buildings and the silence.

But what men and women there were bent their knees as her cart passed. And many, many men, and not a few women, buttoned their hoods against the unseasonable cold and damp and followed the cart out to the tourney grounds.

The gates of the city were open and, outside the city, the lists and the stands and all the pavilions for a great tournament were prepared.

And mostly empty. Thousands had left the city.

They took her from the wagon and set her on a chair—not in the stands, the formal stands, to be above the lists, but at eye level with the men who would fight.

Only then, quite late in the proceedings, did she fully understand. Her understanding came from seeing the pole of iron, with a huge pile of wood already piled about it.

She did not avert her eyes. She looked at it.

She turned to one of the men guarding her. “Is that for me?” she asked. Her voice sounded deeper than she had expected.

“Your grace, I…” He swallowed.

“It is, if my champion fails,” she insisted.

Her guard nodded.

“Is my brother here?” she asked calmly.

Her guard would not meet her eye. “No,” he admitted.

In the middle-distance, emerging from the fog of early morning, she could see a great column of richly clad nobles and ladies approaching. At its head she saw the King, attired in his usual red. He appeared listless, puffy-eyed and absent as he approached.

By him was Jean de Vrailly, in armour, cap-à-pied. And around him were half a hundred other Galles, all fully armoured, even de Rohan. There was no shortage either of Alban nobles, men and women. Many of the Alban knights wore harness, too.

The King was directed by a sergeant-at-arms to the pavilion where he would await the events, but he rode past the gesticulating man, and his horse’s hooves rang on the ground as he approached like a bell tolling her doom.

But his face was working like an infant in the moment that the pain hits, just as it opens its mouth to cry.