Médicis Daughter (53 page)

I realize those around me are moving, filing forward toward the bush. At the front, Charles receives a blessing and stoops to kiss the white blossoms. Courtier after courtier follows suit. My feet will not move. I stand rooted like a bush myself as others pass. Then my hand is drawn through an arm. I know even before I see his profile that my escort is Guise. He does not turn to meet my gaze but very softly says, “If you will not have a care for yourself, I must do it.”

He draws me onward and then, as the bush is reached, steps back so I am in front of him. Just before me, Amboise d’Bussy accepts the blessing, murmurs “Thanks be to God” and kisses the blinding-white flowers. Advancing upon me, the priest makes the sign of the cross, then lifts the branch so I may offer thanks and kiss it in my turn. I have no intention of doing any such thing. Then I think of poor Armagnac sobbing on my shoulder. I have things, even at this horrible moment, I should be grateful for. If they are not the same things commemorated in the others’ prayers, so much the better.

“Deo gratias!”
Unlike the others I do not mumble, but say it clearly so all can hear.
Deo gratias,
I think
, for giving me the strength to save La Mole from the archers and Armagnac from my mother. Deo gratias for the life of the King of Navarre.
As I kiss the blossoms, I ask for God’s help in keeping my husband alive awhile longer. Then I move back to my horse as quickly as possible. I am done with this place. I wish it were as easy to break with some of the people in it.

*   *   *

When I return to my apartment, the King of Navarre is sitting at my table, writing with Armagnac beside him. Both gentlemen have changed into fresh clothing. I give Gillone a questioning look.

“I went to His Majesty’s rooms and collected some of his things.”

“For which I am profoundly grateful.” My cousin looks up. He is a man entirely different than the one I left sitting on the floor of my bedchamber. He has marshaled his composure, and the strength such an act reveals impresses me deeply. “As I am for greater acts of compassion.” His eyes move in Armagnac’s direction.

I look away, still unwilling to take credit for the
valet de chambre
’s life, as the price I paid for it is so loathsome to me.

“What are you writing?”

“An accounting of those I know to be dead. Perhaps you can assist me.”

I wince.

“Or not.” His voice is gentle. “It is a grim task, but I think it important, for perhaps those not yet dead can be preserved.”

Hope, it seems, is in Navarre’s nature.

“If you think it to be valuable, Sir, I will help. When we have a list, I shall ask the Duchesse de Nevers to examine it. Her knowledge will be greater than either of ours.”

“You could ask the Duc de Guise for his list. He must know how many and who he killed. Or perhaps he killed so many he lost track.” The words are as quiet as his last, but they are angry—the first angry words he has spoken that seem, at least in part, directed at me.

“I could not. I believe it will be a long time before I speak with the Duc again.”

There is a knock. Gillone cracks the door. Her eyes widen. The hand she slips through the crack returns, clasping a note. I know the moment I see the handwriting it is from the same man whose company I have just forsworn. Only three words: “Talk to me.”

“I must go out.” I know my face betrays surprise and perhaps even dread, but certainly there might be many causes for such a reaction. The King of Navarre cannot suspect the Duc waits on the other side of the oak. And this is well, for if he did there might be violence. There has been enough of that.

Slipping into the corridor, I find Henri waiting, his eyes traversing the space from end to end. When they find me I cannot distinguish if they contain surprise or hope. Perhaps both.

“You do not invite me in.” Awareness comes upon him, slowly changing his expression. “He is with you.”

“If you mean my husband, then yes. He has been with me since the King saved him yesterday.”

“The King saved him?”

“Of course! You could not honestly have believed His Majesty would permit the murder of a man linked to him by both blood and marriage.” There is absolutely no reason for me to reveal how uncertain I was upon that very point yesterday.

“I hoped he would. Just as your brother Anjou doubtless prayed Condé would lie among the dead.”

A horrible admission but hardly surprising. Henri hates my cousin not just as a heretic but as the man who holds the place he wanted himself. I have felt the same about the Princesse de Porcien, and, if I am honest, I would, I think, have been glad of my cousin’s death before I wedded him. Would I have cared who killed him or how?

“Is this what you have come to tell me?” I ask.

He looks about again.

“Is there not somewhere we can go?”

How many times have I heard those words? This time I am struck by the fact that, thanks to the slaughter, it has never been easier to be alone without subterfuge. Countless rooms stand empty, with no chance their tenants will return. The closest belong to my husband.

When we arrive, I am shocked by how normal everything looks. Perhaps the guards seeking to arrest the King of Navarre found them empty and simply had no reason to cause destruction. I have never asked my cousin how or where he was taken, assuming the recitation of the event would increase his pain.

I stand facing Henri, waiting for him to begin.

“Marguerite, as I love you and you once said you loved me, I want to know why you treated me as you did this morning.”

I am being called to account? Me?

“Sir, I find it discouraging that you cannot arrive at such a conclusion on your own. Are you not the man who slew the admiral? The man who joked this morning about the dead lying naked in the avenues?”

“I do not understand,” he says. I can see that—in Henri’s eyes, in his defensive posture. “You have always known what I was. And you have always known I was sworn to kill Coligny. When I marched to the last war, you wept and told me to kill as many heretics as I liked, and certainly as many as I needed to come back safely. You wished me luck in avenging my father’s death. Now I have had that luck and done a son’s duty, yet you seem to think I should be ashamed.”

How can I explain? I do not believe I have changed so much—or perhaps I do not wish to believe it. I would like to think that Henri’s manner of killing the admiral would have mattered to me even long ago.

“I knew you would kill Coligny, yes,” I reply. “But I thought it would be in battle, or sword to sword in the combat that befits gentlemen. I could never have imagined you would have an injured gentleman pulled from his bed and thrown from the window of his own
hôtel
.”

He flinches slightly at my account, and this moves me more than anything he has said or any look he has yet given me. Then his eyes harden.

“One might kill a dog in such a manner,” he says. “Coligny was a dog.”

“No. A heretic, yes, but a gentleman. And even were he not, you are one. It ought to have been beneath you to kill him as you did.”

I wonder what will happen if he hangs his head in shame and admits his fault. If he pleads a sudden madness. Surely many who roamed the Louvre and the streets that night were mad. I think that if he is contrite, I will take him in my arms and soothe him.

“I cannot be sorry the admiral is dead,” he says. “And rethinking the manner of his death is entirely futile.” Lowering his voice, he steps forward, closing the gap between us. “Marguerite, there
are
things about the long night which make me sorry.”

“Yes?” I keep my voice cold, but my heart leaps.

“Children ought not to have been slaughtered. They were but innocents who might have been brought to see the error of their parents’ ways and reclaimed for the Holy Church. Even some of the adults abjured.”

“God cannot reclaim a heart by force.” I think of my husband facing the pain of his own abjuration, of his guilt and of the loathing he so obviously feels for himself at the prospect of becoming Catholic in name again.

Henri throws up a hand. “And it seems that I cannot reclaim your heart no matter what I say! What would you have me do? Shed tears because we have rid His Majesty’s kingdom of his worst enemies and God’s?”

He paces away, and I think our conversation is over. But, rounding, he returns, this time stopping much closer, intimately close. “Is this truly about dead Protestants, or is this really about my asking you to spy on the King of Navarre, and turning from you when you would not? That spat ought never to have been allowed to continue for so long. I have lain awake more than one night reliving my long climb down the ladder from your room and the moment when, at the bottom, I thought to scramble back again and take you in my arms. I have wished countless times I had acted on that impulse. And I tell you now that though my body may have left you standing alone in darkness, my soul in good part did not leave you and has never left you since.”

So I have not been
tout seul
in my loneliness. There is comfort in that—comfort and something more. I feel the understanding between us rekindling. The spark is weak but it is there. I do not wish to speak for fear I will speak wrongly and extinguish it. Henri weighs my silence, examines my eyes, and presses onward.

“Do not spy on the King of Navarre if you do not like it. Such a little matter must not be allowed to separate two hearts meant to be conjoined.”

This concession—which would have made me happy as late as the day before yesterday—fails to satisfy. How surprising. How infuriating.

“I will grant you this: it is a ‘little matter’ now,” I say. “You no longer need anyone to spy on the King of Navarre. You, my brothers, and Her Majesty have made certain he is a lonely, friendless prisoner. Who can he conspire with now when all his gentlemen lie dead—some in pieces? You think to be magnanimous, but you have missed the mark. You offer nothing of value.”

“I offer you my love,” he says quietly. “Something I did believe you held dear, as I treasured yours.”

He is right, of course. I valued his love. I lived for it. Even at this moment, when I am confused, angry, hurt, and terrified for my future and the future of France, I find it difficult to imagine a life without our mutual affection. Our love, having gone on so long and survived such hardships, seems part of the warp and weft of me. I close my eyes for a moment to see my own thoughts more clearly.

Henri’s voice again cuts through my silence.

“Are we really finished, then? Separated by a victory for the Church you hold as dear as I do and by a man whom you do not love?”

Opening my eyes again, seeing Henri before me, I find that, despite his great sins of late—and they are mortal, to be sure—I am not ready to foreclose the possibility that he will be my own again, and I his. He may repent. God may forgive him. So why not I? But I do not feel that forgiveness in my breast at this moment.

“Peace, Henri,” I say.

His eyes soften at my use of his Christian name.

I lay a hand on his arm. It feels strange to do so, strange but not unpleasant. “Mayhap things between us will be restored, but at present too much happens that is larger than both of us. We are in the grip of history. You and my brothers think to mold it. I have no such pretentions. But I believe all of us, myself included, will be molded by it. I charge you, as I have loved you, to reflect upon that. Who you will be when these dark days come to a close—who I will be—I cannot foresee. I hope I will be a woman you can love. I hope you will be a man I can embrace once more without reservation.”

“And in the meantime?” he asks.

“In the meantime, take your leave and do as you feel you must. God go with you.”

“God and a kiss?”

I hesitate. A great part of me wants to lean forward and taste his familiar lips. I wonder if doing so would make all that has been ugly between us disappear. Then I remember where we are. These rooms are filled with my cousin’s things. The King of Navarre trusts me. Not as wife, perhaps, but as friend. I do not think his trust would long survive should he see me kiss his mortal enemy. He is not here, of course, and would never hear of any such kiss, but knowing how it would make him feel makes the kiss wrong.

“God and my good wishes,” I reply. Then I move past him quickly. I do not want to see Henri’s disappointment or acknowledge my own.

CHAPTER 22

August 31, 1572—Paris, France

On the one-week anniversary of what is being called the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the royal council grants my cousin his life. I stand beside him to hear them pronounce it. I am with him everywhere now. The massacre bound us in a way that our childhood and our marriage utterly failed to. As we leave the council chamber, the King of Navarre turns to me.

“Madame, I owe you my life twice over.”

“That is not the case, Sir. You overestimate my influence with the council. I have none. I promised I would go with you and I did. But it is you who spoke eloquently on your own behalf.”

“All my words would have availed me nothing were I not your husband. That title alone saved me—not ‘King of Navarre’ or ‘First Prince of the Blood.’”

“Nonsense. The Prince de Condé was also granted his life. I tell you, the mania for killing has exhausted itself, at least in Paris.” I am not so certain as I try to sound, and both of us are keenly aware that the carnage so lately halted here has spread to Meaux, Troyes, La Charité—so many cities.

“Perhaps,” my cousin says. “There were several present whose eyes looked murderous. Did you notice the expression on Anjou’s face? And he was not the only duc unhappy with the council’s decision.”

He refers to Guise, of course. Henri lacked his usual self-control. When he saw me enter with my cousin, he looked personally wounded. When the grant of clemency was made, his disappointment was palpable.

We walk in the direction of my apartment—our sanctuary and prison, waking or sleeping. I am afraid to let my cousin live in his apartment alone, and neither of us desire to participate in Court events. We have been ordered to some, and those the most horrible of all. Two days ago we were compelled to take part in a procession to Mountfaucon, where the remains of Coligny were displayed. My cousin was forced to look at the poor tortured body, and so was the admiral’s seventeen-year-old son. The young man cried. My husband did not. But in his sleep that night he called out for Coligny, and I, retreating to the next room after soothing him, cried for both men, and for myself too.