Médicis Daughter (54 page)

As we come in sight of my door, my cousin sighs. Glancing at him from the corner of my eye, I see a man being eaten alive by captivity, as Mother predicted. This frightens me. If my cousin can be lured into doing something stupid, even the council’s pardon may not be enough to keep him from being consigned to a grave like his fellows.

“Thank God, the Cardinal de Bourbon does not come today. I do not believe I could sit through his catechism though my life depends on it.” My cousin paces to the window. “Two weeks, Madame,” he says with his back to me. “Two weeks from today I must embarrass myself with a false conversion. And before that I must find a way to choke down my pride and write a letter beseeching the forgiveness of the Holy Father.” He turns to me, his face animated. “Why should I apologize to him when it is said he organizes a great
Te Deum
at Rome to celebrate the deaths of those I held most dear?”

“It is not a matter of should.”

“You are right.” His shoulders fall and he appears older than his years.

“Sir, you must find a weapon—a shield to protect yourself—or you will be broken by the aftermath of a horror which failed to kill you.”

“I have never felt more impotent.”

“I have felt impotent all my life.” The admission surprises him, but me more.

“How have you survived?”

I am not sure that I have. My life at the moment is no life at all. I have no consequence; I am alienated from the man whose love I thought would sustain me always; I have not even the facile distractions of Court entertainments.

“By subterfuge. You would do well to clothe yourself in that bravado which used to mark your speech and actions. The more my family can determine what hurts you, the more accurate their blows become.”

He nods. “All the roles I played in the pageants surrounding our wedding were given me. You urge me to create my next role myself. I would be the King of Navarre, free and far from here. I must find a way to escape south and raise an army.”

“Yes, but such a flight will take time. Do it precipitously and you will be displayed at Mountfaucon for the crows to desecrate. Until your chances of escape improve, while you may live for revenge, you must find some other occupation.”

Looking at my cousin, I ask myself what I miss most in my own life. The answer is immediate: love. That is something I cannot give him. But I know who can. Charlotte has made several attempts to see my cousin these last days, but he has been unwilling to receive her. It is time for him to start.

“Sir, why not pass an afternoon with the Baronne de Sauve? Surely that would be better than sitting here with me, contemplating my family’s sins.”

He colors. “It seems wrong, Madame, to repay your kindnesses with infidelity.”

“Political allies do not demand that sort of faithfulness,” I reply. “If they did, then no man would ever have one.” He ought to laugh but he does not. “Come, Sir, you know the nature of our agreement and by its terms your dalliance has my blessing.”

He looks at me incredulously. “I feel as though our bargain has been overtaken by events.”

“
Everything
has been overtaken by events. If we are to have control of our lives once more, we must wrest it back.”

“All right,” he says. “I will take comfort in another, if only so you may have your rooms to yourself again for a few hours.” He smiles and even manages a touch of insouciance.

“I will find Charlotte.”

I am moving through the halls with a lighter step than in many days when I hear it—a wild, croaking cry, then another. They ring in such a way as to suggest they come from the courtyard. My blood runs cold. Rushing to the nearest window, I peer out. An enormous crow sits on the cobblestones below. Raising his head, he meets my eyes, then sounds again. Birds begin to fall from the sky—no, not fall, plunge—down into the courtyard with a great flapping of wings. I stand transfixed. Soon there are too many to count, yet more arrive. Unlike the first bird who drew me to the window, these are silent, eerily so. When there is no more room on the ground, birds perch on outcroppings in the architecture. One lands on the ledge outside the window where I stand. It tilts its head and considers me with its beady black eyes. I open my mouth to say I know not what, and he opens his black beak, issuing something very like a scream. His cry is but a beginning. The moment he makes it, his fellows join him in a concert of shrieking, groaning, and howling.

I have the wild thought that these are the souls of my husband’s men come back to the scene of their murders. I want to run but I cannot move—cannot turn away or even raise my hands to cover my ears. I am aware of movement around me. People stream to the windows as they did on the day Pilles brought his four hundred. Within moments the cries of the crows are joined by the wailing of ladies. I feel a hand on my shoulder. Someone leans forward until his lips nearly touch my ear. “‘And shall not God avenge His elect, which cry to Him day and night?’” The voice is my husband’s.

I begin to tremble, for I believe I hear the cries of the dead, and I am certain God must. My cousin, moving beside me, puts his arm about me and pulls me close against his side. There is a great commotion. The King arrives with Mother at his elbow.

“You see,” she says as Charles looks down upon the cloud of screeching birds. “They are only crows. There was no need to send your guard into the streets.”

So Charles too mistook the cries for human.

The King looks at my husband. “Make them stop!” His shrieking sounds very much like the birds’.

“Your Majesty, if I could, I would, for they frighten my wife. But the birds of the sky are no more my subjects than yours.”

“It is an omen.” Anjou sidles up to the King. “I told you it was a mistake to leave any alive.”

The Duc de Guise, standing just behind my brother, nods.

“Henri,” I say, “I have heard and seen enough.”

It takes my cousin a moment to realize I speak to him—takes him far longer to react than it takes Guise. At the sound of his shared Christian name applied to his hated rival, the Duc blanches and his hand twitches across the pommel of his sword. He casts my husband a look of pure hatred.

As my cousin turns me from the scene, his arm still about me, I realize I have made a misstep. Much as I wanted to pain Guise, I ought not to have left him so long with the false impression that I have been intimate with my husband. The thought clearly feeds Guise’s hatred, making him more dangerous. As we move through the crowd, I spot Charlotte, whom I sought in the first instance. I mouth the words “Henriette” and “Come.”

Despite the distance, I can still hear the birds in my apartment. The others must be able to as well, but, like me, they studiously avoid remarking on the fact. We three ladies draw together and put our arms around one another—a unit as we have not been since the violence began. Then Henriette notices that Charlotte and I are crying.

“Come, my beloveds, there have been enough tears already. Where we three are together there ought to be smiles, or at very least schemes.”

“The latter is what I had in mind,” I reply. “Charlotte, you and the King of Navarre have been too long apart.”

My friend, who had been drying her tears, begins to weep again. “I fear we will be parted more permanently. Her Majesty declares I am no longer to see him.”

She has forgotten that my cousin never knew of the Queen’s sanction. I cannot see his face from where I stand, but Charlotte can. Whatever she sees brings horror to her eyes. She covers her face with her hands and sobs. The King of Navarre turns his back on my friend.

“The time has come for truth,” I say, putting a hand on his shoulder. “At least between the four of us. If we can be honest with each other, then we shall have a great advantage over those others who go about the Court.” I take a deep breath. “The Baronne was set upon you by my mother, just as I married you by her will. But what does that signify?”

My cousin spins to face me, his expression full of disbelief and fury. I put up a hand before he can speak. “Hear me out. I had no desire to marry you, yet we have since pledged ourselves of our own accord and on our own terms. Charlotte seduced you for my mother’s purposes, but I suspect she cries now at the loss of you for herself.”

“It is so,” Charlotte says.

“You see, Sir. What does the beginning matter if the end is love?”

His eyes soften slightly. I push harder. “Are there so many who love you in France that you will let pride keep you from embracing a true heart?”

“No.” He opens his arms and Charlotte runs to him.

“Charlotte,” I say, “as a wife I have no objections to your
amour,
but as an ally of the King of Navarre I must ask for your word that you will no longer carry tales to Her Majesty. She has forbidden you from continuing with my cousin. Let her think that you obey.”

Charlotte looks into my husband’s face. “You have my word. I will cut out my tongue before I will say aught that will damage you, Sir.”

“Now off with you. While all the Court wails over a flock of crows, you two have better things to do.”

“Ally of Protestants, matchmaker, your marriage has made you many surprising things,” Henriette says when we are left behind by the departing pair. “But I would venture to say it has not made you happy.”

“No. Yet I can hardly complain, because this does not seem an auspicious time for happiness in the court of France. If you can tell me one person who is happy presently, I will be astonished. My mother, perhaps?”

“Not even she, not completely. She is celebrated by the common people as savior of the kingdom and she is taking credit for the events of last week where that will help her, but did you not see her face this morning as His Majesty ranted?”

“She fears losing control of the King and the situation,” I say.

She nods. “Neither His Majesty nor France is known for fidelity of opinion. And the latter has always had a healthy skepticism where Madame Catherine is concerned. So Her Majesty still reaches. My husband worried that all the begging I urged him to would be insufficient to save Condé.”

“So you are an ally of Protestants too.”

“Not at all.” Henriette manages a wry smile. “But I would not let a sister’s husband die if I could prevent it. Neither of my sisters’ husbands.”

“Surely Guise is in no danger.”

“Not from Her Majesty. At least, not at this moment. But I believe he is in very great danger from you. He is being torn apart and changed in unbecoming ways by your rupture. He wanted Condé’s blood, though he is also related to that gentleman by marriage.”

“I will not accept blame for Henri’s bloodlust. It is the very reason we have no rapprochement, and I told him so. What concerns me now is that he clearly longs for my cousin’s blood, and that is in part my fault. I have allowed the Duc to believe, as the rest of the Court does, that my cousin is my true husband.”

Henriette’s eyes open wide. “No wonder he wants Navarre dead.”

“Go put that particular fear to rest. Tell Henri I was true to my pledge and that—as he claims still to love me—I rely upon him to guard this knowledge, which I have good reason to wish kept secret.”

As I watch Henriette go I find myself hoping that somehow my confession will both protect my cousin and provide the next step back into the Duc’s arms. For with my cousin restored to Charlotte, I have the presentiment that my own loneliness will be harder to bear.

*   *   *

My husband sends word as night falls that he will remain in his apartment. I hope this is not foolish even as I smile at the thought that two among my friends are happy this night. Climbing beneath the covers, I think how good it will be to be spared my cousin’s snoring. An hour later, when I am still awake, I wonder if that same snoring might not soothe me.

Rising, I pad to the next chamber, where Gillone sits at the table in a small ring of light, replacing some pearls on one of my partlets. I send her to the kitchens to fetch me a sleep pillow of lavender and chamomile. The relative dark of the chamber bothers me as it never has before.
Am I become a child again?
I think, angrily.
No: even as a child the dark was not among my fears.
I close my eyes, but a sudden vision of Gillone lying dead with a halberd through her forces them open. I shake my head to clear it. I must put aside such morbid imaginings. Why should anyone harm Gillone?

Yet my stern thoughts are not sufficient to set me right. I take the lamp from the table and begin to rekindle every light in the room, lifting shades with shaking hands. Perhaps action will restore my self-possession where sheer will has failed.

I have my back to the door when it opens.

I turn, expecting my little shadow, and nearly scream. My mother stands just inside. Here is a thing more justly feared than the dark.

“Daughter,” she says, “I’ve come to have a little talk.” Her smooth, unctuous tone turns the blood in my veins to ice, but I will not give her the pleasure of seeing me shiver in the summer heat and work hard to keep the hand holding the lamp from shaking as I place it back upon the table.

“What demons do you hope to banish with all this light?” Her question is oddly knowing, as if she could see into my soul.
But,
I try to assure myself,
she cannot
. Foresight she may have, but the power to see into hearts surely lies beyond her.

“I banish nothing,” I reply. “I would read and do not wish to do so in the next room where I might disturb my husband.” I pray she takes me at my word.

“Husband. Hm.” Without being invited to do so, she takes a seat at the table. Unwilling to stand before her like a naughty child, I too take a chair.

“Would it surprise you to know that I am sorry?”

The list of things my mother ought rightfully to be remorseful for is enormous. But I feel certain the greatest of her sins do not trouble her.

“Sorry?” I reply. “Madame, I can think of no apology you need make to me—at least, none which would be timely.”

“Ah, you still cleave to old grievances … to old loves…” She lets her voice trail off and turns her eyes to her own fingers, which trace the pearl pattern on the partlet that lies between us.