Again, the breath was stolen out of Blanche’s lungs. “I’m a laundress, my lady,” she said.

Rebecca Almspend had always dressed very plainly—to the amusement of the maids and laundresses. She wore dark, shapeless woollen hose under ill-fitted kirtles and large, practical, warm gowns in winter.

All the palace knew when she fell in love first with Ranald of the Royal Guard, because her shoes grew more pointed, her hose began to fit and even be of silk, and her kirtles seemed to shrink to fit her slight figure. But even today, a day of triumph, she wore a simple, dark blue overgown over a matching kirtle of no great distinction and with plain buttons and not so very many of them, while Blanche wore the magnificent brown wool kirtle that Sukey had given her, which fit her so well as to turn men’s heads wherever she walked. It was not quite indecorous, but the bust and the hips lay on the edge of too tight and the long line of buttons of fine gilt silver on the sleeves were worth her laundry wages for a year and more.

Becca looked at her, head to toe, brown slipper to coiffed head, and laughed. “Well, if anyone entered and wanted to know which of us was a great lady and which a laundress, I’ll wager I’d be the laundress. Fie, girl—you saved the Queen’s life and you’ve been her constant companion—you birthed her son. You can be anything you wish. You have only to ask. Desiderata is the most generous creature in the world, and wouldn’t hesitate to raise you. Lady? Duchess? My sweet, if we survive this war, it will be a new world. I am determined that women will be born anew in this new world. So I say—be a lady.”

“Who’ll do the laundry?” Blanche asked. “The Queen is that particular.”

They both laughed.

“Becca?” Blanche asked very quietly, as if afraid to be caught out.

“Yes, my dear Blanche,” Lady Almspend replied a little too brightly.

“Do you know the Red Knight?” she asked.

“Not at all,” Almspend replied. They could both hear hooves in the flagged courtyard, and night was falling and the babe was blessedly asleep. “But Ranald loves him. He knighted Ranald and sent him back to me. I don’t need to know much more.” As she spoke, she bustled about the Queen’s chamber, laying a few of the Queen’s surviving possessions in their accustomed places. Ranald had rescued what he could from her rooms in the palace.

Blanche realized that she was blushing.

Lady Almspend was too well-bred to notice.

And then the Queen swept in, tired, nay, exhausted, and yet in tearing spirits, with another victory behind her.