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Day One
Christopher
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Christopher had watched from beside his friends, Thomas Hartley and William de Bohun, as his cousin had been humiliated by the French king. He himself was fuming, and it was only William’s steadying hand on his arm and the presence of Henri, a knight of the Templar order, in front of him that stopped him from barreling through the crowd and punching Philippe in the nose.
Henri was a familiar sight in the palace, being one of the higher ranked Templars (even though, ostensibly, there was no rank among them) and had done much of the reconnaissance, since a Templar could get away with wandering about at will and was never questioned. Everybody was even supposed to get out of the road when a Templar rode by, as Christopher had experienced himself recently hanging out so much with Thomas.
“We are here for support, nothing else,” Henri said. “Nobody knows who you are, and it needs to stay that way.”
“I can’t believe it’s already over.” Christopher bent his head, knowing Henri was right but hating the fact anyway.
Given that Christopher was one man in a much larger conspiracy they were currently running underneath the noses of King Philippe and his advisers, it wouldn’t do at all for him to start complaining about the role he was playing in it, when he’d campaigned to be included in the first place.
William was looking pensive as he gazed towards the throne. “What does King Philippe think he’s doing?”
That was the question of the hour and had been asked by more people than just William. Christopher had been part of the conspiracy from the beginning, so he had known what might happen, but he still thought it was stupid of Philippe to treat David the way he had. David was willing to believe that Philippe’s advisers had led him astray, which was too bad if true. But if that was what had happened, then Philippe had given them too much power in the first place.
Christopher was all for democracy almost all the time, but in the couple of years he’d been in Earth Two, he’d come to appreciate every now and then the benefits of having a king in charge, especially when that king was David. The problem, of course, as in the case of Philippe, was when the king not only allowed his power to go to his head, but when he and his advisers were more interested in advancing their own power than in the wellbeing of the people they governed.
“It’s already late, and he hasn’t even started hearing petitions!” Thomas stood for a moment on the tips of his toes, looking over the heads of those closest to them.
He was speaking from experience, since this wasn’t the first audience they’d attended. They all had spent the last several weeks becoming familiar sights in and around the palace, under the patronage of Livia and Michael, who’d been welcomed as visiting nobility from Sicily. Their acceptance had provided an umbrella over everybody else. Christopher himself had formed acquaintances with several of the lower level nobility, who now nodded to him with recognition whenever they saw him.
“Go, Thomas.” Christopher spoke under his breath, for their ears alone. “You too William. My mom needs to know what’s happening.”
“Christopher’s right.” Henri herded them in the general direction of the door. “Take your opportunity before the king resumes the audience, and those around become bored enough to look elsewhere for entertainment instead of towards the king. We don’t want anyone wondering about the handsome young Templar and his friend.”
“We’ll be waiting at the tavern on the bridge,” William said to Christopher as Henri shooed them away, “even if it’s two in the morning.”
Thomas and William pushed through the crowd, just two more onlookers among hundreds.
Back in Avalon, Christopher hadn’t really known what his mother did. She was a marketer, whatever that was. It had always seemed to him a catchall term encompassing everything from graphic design to writing catchy phrases. He wasn’t wrong, necessarily, but directors of marketing, which his mother had risen to become, recently for the US Embassy in London, had to be experts in strategy and planning—and leading a team of people towards a common goal. Management, it turned out, wasn’t simply a matter of ordering people around. In the case of his mother, she’d learned to dissect a problem, determine who among her staff were best suited to accomplish it, and coordinate the team’s efforts.
The campaign they were waging in Paris required all the same skills, with the benefit, as his mom had said, of being carried out under the table, so she didn’t have to care what any of her bosses thought. It was a weird feeling to be proud of his mother, like she was a real person instead of just his mom. It occurred to him that at some point he ought to tell her.
What was really clever too, though he hadn’t realized it until they’d arrived in Paris and saw it happening, was the way her design background came into it. Back in London, during the initial planning stages, Elisa had told David that Livia and Michael made great tentpoles. At the time, Christopher hadn’t known what that meant and had needed it explained to him.
Tonight, Henri served the same purpose. Although he wasn’t as beautiful and distinctive in his personal appearance as Livia and Michael, he was impossible to miss in his white surcoat with the large red cross on the chest. Elisa had insisted his cloak and surcoat be particularly gleaming, and from the moment Henri had arrived, all eyes had gone to him, whether in the street, in the courtyard, or in the audience hall. She’d intended that to happen and had known it would. It was the reason Christopher and William had dressed as blandly foppish as possible.
His mother, it seemed, thought of everything.
“Our initial plan for rescuing David isn’t going to work now.” Henri didn’t use David’s title. It had started with the Irish, who referred to him by his given name. It wasn’t out of disrespect but because there could be only one David, and the subject of this conversation.
“So we move on to Plan B,” Christopher said.
Henri scoffed under his breath. “I don’t understand this labeling of plans A, B, C. Why not 1, 2, 3?”
Christopher stared at him for a second, and then he laughed. “I have no idea. Maybe because Plan A sounds better in English than Plan One?”
“One of those plans included a long incarceration, if necessary,” Henri said, as yet another petitioner came before the king, explained what he wanted, and was granted it. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the king was granting every petition. Christopher didn’t know if it was to make up for what he’d done to David or to highlight it.
“I didn’t like that plan,” Christopher said. “I’m pretty sure a full-on assault of the palace is ranked above that.”
They’d had Plan A in place, of course, literally for weeks. But they hadn’t known until his arrival that David was going to be forced to give up Aquitaine this quickly, and thus the steps involved needed to be reworked and the proper people put in place.
Making David and his family Philippe’s guests indefinitely was certainly a bold move for Philippe—almost bolder than not giving back Aquitaine. It was tantamount, in fact, to abducting him, and if Philippe followed through with it, even for the amount of time it took to take Aquitaine from Callum, no king would ever trust him again.
What Christopher didn’t at all understand was how Philippe thought he was going to actually wrest Aquitaine away from David’s control. Surely he had to know the forces there, both English and those native to Aquitaine, wouldn’t be giving up their country without a fight. Even if David was forced to write a letter telling Callum and his other commanders to give way to Philippe’s army, they would know not to do it and that the letter had been written under duress.
Philippe’s decree had only the power people chose to give it. In the same way, a rebellion became lawful when the rebels won. Even Christopher knew that. Any American knew that. Why didn’t Philippe?
What did he know that they didn’t?
