The stands, and the long wooden barricades that marked the lists, were not empty. The stands were full of the gentry of the court, reinforced by the folk of the southern Albin—some hundreds of men and women dressed in their best. They were apprehensive—most had left home for the great day long before the King’s arrest of the Queen was even a rumour.

And many of the commons had come, as well. The barricades were lined, three or four deep. Many of the refugees who had fled the burnings in the city had gone no further than relatives north of First Bridge or on the Lorica road, where the city’s suburbs sprawled for three leagues, and unshaven chins and close bundled children spoke of many families who’d slept under the stars in order to see the King—or see the Queen burned.

But the mood of the commons was ugly enough. A squire was foolish enough to stop and make a great show of pissing on a fallen shield with the Queen’s arms. He was an Alban, a southerner, and he did it for the entertainment of his friends. He was badly beaten by a dozen ploughmen who didn’t see the world as he did.

Increasing numbers of peasants pressed in around the Queen until the King, or his deputies, sent a strong detachment of the Royal Guard to watch over her. The Guardsmen, however, were careful not to offend the people, and did nothing to move the crowd itself, which grew denser.

It became so dense that Blanche had a hard time penetrating it. She couldn’t have said when she went from being a laundry maid of some distinction to the Queen’s last handmaid, but when she understood what Edmund and the apprentices planned, she had slipped out of Master Pye’s house in her plainest clothes—her hair covered in an old wimple. She’d watched older women often enough to pass for one, although it hurt her pride. She bent her back a little, and waddled a little, and bound her breasts so that they were flat against her, wrapped her blaze of bright blond hair in a piece of clean old linen, and was transformed from the magnet of every male’s attention into an old thing of no interest to anyone. It troubled her how quickly she could be ignored, as an old woman.

She spent Easter night in a shed next to the palace. She made it into the laundry without being questioned because most of the Guard was away fighting the Occitans, and it was from Goodwife Ross that she learned that some of the King’s Guard seemed… different.

Twice now she’d visited the Queen—she’d become a poor creature who seemed broken into madness, except when you looked into her eyes.

So—at any rate—on Tuesday morning, Blanche was pushing through the press of the commons with a basket on her head. The press was so thick she might never have gotten to the ring around the Queen except that one of the King’s Guard saw her and smiled.