Prologue: By the Grace of God
“Peter. Peter, wake up!"
The large man shot up to a sitting position on his four-poster bed. His disoriented mind took several seconds to realize that an almighty thunderclap had announced the presence of a raging storm outside the window to his left. His sister stood to the right of his bed. In her hand, the single burning taper cast wildly dancing shadows in the bedroom. The tiny flame deepened the dark circles under her dark brown eyes.
“Dear God, Emelia! You are too old to be scared of a storm!”
“Seems like you were the one scared, brother,” she observed with a pointed look at the knife he directed at her. “Put that away. Or better yet, bring it with you. We must leave Brittania.”
“Wait…Leave? Leave to where?” The knife disappeared back to its place underneath Peter’s pillow.
“Frankia,” said Emelia. “We must leave for Frankia. The king is dying, and we will soon be no longer safe here.”
“Dying? Says who?”
Emelia turned her dark brown eyes to the window as streaks of lightening raced across the turbulent night sky. “God came to me in my dreams.”
Peter widened his own dark brown eyes. “Em, what about Princess Mary? You’d be leaving her!”
Em squeezed her eyes shut, cracking her previously stony look with anguish. Her free hand rose up to clutch at the beautiful onyx and pearl rosary hanging around her neck. “God commands, we obey.” She looked back at him. “Stand up. We prepare now.”
After a frenzied day, the siblings watched from the starboard side of The Santisima as the tall, white cliffs of Brittania steadily sank below the sea’s horizon line. One pair of eyes was misty with budding homesickness. The other pair was resigned to what was to come.
Em looked up as her older brother wiped his eyes. As he stepped away from the railing, she told him, “I’m sorry, Peter.” She tossed the black veil attached to her gabled headdress over her shoulder. It flapped wildly in the wind. “I don’t really understand it, either, but in several days, all Hell will break loose throughout Brittania. Prince Edward hasn’t made it exactly a secret that when he becomes king, he will have all of us convert to the New Religion.”
Peter shook his head. “I’m not mad at you…or God for that matter,” he added and crossed himself. “I just wonder why Frankia. We have other options.”
Em let out a shaky breath. “I don’t understand,” she repeated. “If it were up to me, I would have gone to Espanya. ’Twould have been more to my tastes.”
Peter turned away from his sister and toward the ship’s bow. Despite his somber expression, excitement bubbled inside him from the prospect of being at the more free-thinking and licentious Frankian court. “Thank God we already have a place to call home in Frankia. Hopefully your closeness with Princess Mary won’t prevent us from being granted visas.”
“Our family has been close to her—”
“We’re lucky that Ambassador Lavenye is retired from politics because he would not have forgotten you tripping him years ago.” He lifted a hand to rub over his closely shaved head, reminding himself of that awkward diplomatic snafu. Thankfully for his sister, King Henry had laughed it off in the face of the Frankian ambassador’s ire.
Em snorted as she crossed her arms over her chest. Underneath all the layers that kept the salty spray and cold air at bay, she felt the reassuring beads of the rosary against her skin. “He tripped himself, trying to show off,” she insisted.
“He didn’t see it that way, dear.”
Em stared at her brother’s profile for a few seconds before he could no longer play the disappointed older sibling. Her smirk met his grin. Together, they looked forward to what awaited them in Frankia.
Emelia slipped her hand into her older brother’s larger one.
“If God is with us, who can be against us?” she intoned.
“Amen.”
