Médicis Daughter (50 page)

I scramble from my bed with the unfortunate wounded gentleman still clinging to me. The guards stop for a moment at the foot of the bed, then the man in the lead presses toward me.

“Stop!” I cry. “What has this gentleman done that you pursue him into the private chamber of the King’s own sister.”

“He is a heretic,” the soldier replies.

“So is my husband, but what has this man done?”

The man reaches for the back of La Mole’s shirt and pulls. I, irritated at not being answered, put my arms about the Seigneur’s waist and hold firm, eliciting a groan of pain.

“Sir! Leave my rooms at once or I shall have you beaten within an inch of your life.”

The guard does not move, nor does he cease to pull at La Mole. A guard at the foot of the bed actually sniggers.

“Your Majesty,” the guard doing the tugging says, “this man is an enemy of the King and we pursue him in accordance with the King’s will.”

“Well, Sir, I will not be satisfied until I hear that from the King’s lips. Meantime, leave my chamber, and leave it without your quarry.” As I speak, Monsieur Nançay appears in my doorway. “Captain, your men ignore my commands. Let us see if you can do better. Call them off!”

Nançay’s eyes meet mine with a look that contains equal parts puzzlement and respect. “Leave him!” he says to the soldiers. “You waste time. If the Queen of Navarre wants this gentleman, we can spare him. His Majesty may dispose of him later.”

The guards file out as I lower the now insensate La Mole to my bed. Nançay bows.

“Monsieur, what goes on?” The question keeps him from departing but is not immediately answered. While I wait for him to speak, I am aware that I do not do so in silence. There is a great deal of noise beyond my apartment—noise of a most disturbing sort, including the sound of feet running and anguished cries.

“Your Majesty”—the captain bows again—“I regret I have neither the time nor the authority to answer you. But, as you are the King’s sister and dear to him, do not quit your apartment.”

I step forward. “Sir, as we have been always friends, tell me: Where is the King of Navarre?”

“I cannot say.”

“Cannot or will not?”

He leaves without replying. I snatch up a
surcote
and pull it over my blood-streaked shift. “As soon as I leave, bolt the door and open to none but myself or the King of Navarre,” I instruct Gillone. “Do you understand? No one else. Not the King himself.” Opening a casket on my writing desk, I pull out a dagger. “Do your best for the Seigneur in my absence.”

My antechamber is in disarray. Is the mess a result of the guards, or were things moved about by my husband’s gentlemen who slept here? Where are those gentlemen now? I crack the outer door and my eye lands immediately on a figure facedown on the stone floor beyond. His head is turned toward me but I cannot know who he was because his face has been kicked beyond recognition. His wide-open eyes convey fear even in death. I recoil. So the guards hunt more than La Mole for some sinister purpose I cannot understand. Drawing a deep breath, I step out of my apartment, glad of the dagger I clutch.

At first I see no one and the noises I hear, while dreadful, are distant. Then the shrieking comes. Ahead of me a man emerges from a chamber. He runs, full speed, in my direction, screaming. Behind him three archers come into view. They pause, take aim, and down the gentleman goes, not ten steps from me, arrows in his back. Yet the shrieking does not stop.

Holy Mary mother of God, am I screaming?
I must be. But this fact has no effect on the archers; they merely lower their bows and run past, barely pausing to see that the fallen gentleman is dead. I close my eyes. Surely this is a nightmare. But even before I open them again, I know that the body of the gentleman will remain; the odor of blood fills my nostrils.

I begin to move again, faster and faster. The windows to my right give a view of the courtyard where, when last I looked, four hundred Protestants stood. I hear a barked command echo up the stone walls. Running to the nearest casement, I look down upon a scene from Dante. His Majesty’s soldiers run pikes through men who, by their garb, are as Protestant as those who stood demanding justice yesterday. In fact, to my horror, I recognize the Seigneur de Pilles, his breast pierced, lying face upward on the stones. I have no desire to gaze on the terrible scene, but cannot turn away. I find myself frantically searching for my cousin.
Is that him pursued by three guards? No, too tall. Is that him fighting furiously with a sword, then crying out as he is felled?
I hold my breath and am strangely relieved when the victim’s head falls back: the face is that of the Seigneur de Pont, not the King of Navarre. Then it dawns on me: I know very few of the King’s gentlemen by sight. The fact that I have already identified two below suggests the men being slaughtered are of the highest sort—my cousin’s inner circle. I am frozen to the spot by the thought. A window on the other side of the courtyard opens. A gentleman runs directly out of it, his legs pumping in the air as he falls. He lands on the paving stones below with a sickening crack, limbs akimbo. Two of the King’s gentlemen wearing strange white crosses upon their sleeves lean out of the casement, laughing. Somehow this spectacle frees my feet. Crossing myself, I set out again at a dead run, hoping I am not too late.

I pass more bodies, bodies of both men and women. I see Marquis de Renel struggling with his cousin Bussy d’Amboise, who stabs Renel again and again. I am not insensible to these sights but they are not my focus. I feel certain my cousin is in mortal danger and worry that I myself may be wounded if I stay in the open. I must reach my sister’s apartments. I am nearly at her door when I hear a shout from behind. Spinning, I find myself face-to-face with Monsieur Bourse, so close that I might touch him, just as he is pierced by a halberd. The point emerges from his belly, bringing with it such matter that I nearly swoon. He gasps for breath, then tries to speak but only rattles. Only a sharp pull on the weapon by the guard wielding it keeps the dying gentleman from falling upon me. The guard lets the body drop facedown at my feet, pulls his halberd from it, opens a nearby window and, lifting the still-writhing Bourse, casts him out. Then, his halberd gleaming red, the guard says, “Apologies, Your Majesty.”

I bang on Claude’s door as I have never knocked anywhere, crying out again and again who I am. When it opens, I drop my dagger and fall into my sister’s arms, sobbing.

“Margot! Are you all right?”

“She bleeds!” The second voice causes me to look around. Charles’ Queen stands behind my sister.

“Let me see!” Claude wrenches my mantle from me.

“It is not my blood,” I say, looking down and realizing just how much there is.

“Thank God, thank God!” Claude hugs me to her.

“What is happening?” I ask.

“Sin and madness,” the Queen Consort says. Her face is streaked with tears.

“And the King? Has someone told Charles?”

“He knows,” she replies softly.

Dear God, can this be laid at my brother’s door, then?
“What can we do?”

“I intend to pray,” the Queen Consort replies firmly. “I came hither to see that the Duchesse de Lorraine was safe and to ask her to pray with me. I have brought my Book of Hours.” She holds it up as if it signifies something in all the chaos.

I believe my sister-in-law to be a truly pious woman, but prayer seems unlikely to save anyone at the present moment. “Who do you pray for? Charles?”

She blushes.

“You waste your breath! If he has a hand in this, he is destined for the flames of hell. Gentlemen of the highest ranks are being hunted and slaughtered without mercy in the chambers, halls, and courtyards of his palace.”

“Margot”—Claude puts a hand upon my arm—“Elisabeth takes no part in that, nor do I, but what are we unarmed women to do? Run out among the carnage and die ourselves?”

“You are safe here and may remain so without fear of failing in any duty.” I stoop to pick up my dagger, then square my shoulders. “But I cannot. Those I saw dead and wounded were Protestants to a man. I must find the King of Navarre.”

Claude places herself between me and the door. “You cannot go out again.”

“I can and will, but I need not wander aimlessly. Last evening you knew something of this.”

Claude turns her face away.

“You warned me not to retire. The time for warnings is past. I do not ask you to tell me everything you knew or when. I beg you to divulge only one thing: What plans were made for my husband and where should I search for him?”

My sister starts to cry. I have a mind to shake her, but there is no need. The Queen Consort says, “I do not know what was or is planned for the King of Navarre, but he is in Charles’ apartment.”

I do not even pause to thank her. Pushing past Claude, I slide the bolt, drag the door open, and plunge back into danger.

I pray under my breath every step of the way to Charles’ apartment. Pray as I watch men fall under the swords of others. Pray as I see a servingwoman dragged off screaming by men whose eager eyes recall the look I faced when Guast attacked me. Pray as I trip over something that turns out to be a severed arm. Once I leave the more public areas of the palace, I pray for two things: admittance to Charles’ rooms, and that I will find my cousin there alive. I cannot say why the last seems with every step more important, but it does.

Restraining both my fear and my urgency, I rap softly at the private door. It cracks and I see the Baron de Retz.

“Your Majesty?” He seems both confused and concerned.

“Let me in.”

The confusion grows.

“I was told to let no one pass.”

“I am no danger to the King, as you well know. But left out here, I myself am in peril. Will you tell my brother you denied me if I am found injured or worse?”

I have him.
He lets me pass into Charles’ wardrobe. I have the distinct sense that I will have trouble going further.

“Sir, the Queen Consort and my sister the Duchesse de Lorraine are in that lady’s apartment. They are unguarded. I fear for them.” I do not need to feign terror, for after the sights I have seen, I remain terrified. “If I swear on my honor to fasten the door and let none enter, will you go and find some members of the King’s guard to assign to their protection?”

He eyes me for a moment. What he sees is hardly threatening: a woman barely dressed, streaked with blood, armed with nothing but a dagger. I offer him this last item deliberately. He shakes his head no, unwilling to insult me by that level of distrust. “I will go.”

As soon as the door is secure, I move to Charles’ bedchamber. It is deserted save for his old nurse, who stands close to a crack in the door to the outer chamber. At the sound of my footfalls, she turns, her face white as death. Well, it might be, for like my cousin she is of the so-called reformed religion.

“Is the King of Navarre within?” I ask in a hushed voice.

“He is. Do you come for him?”

I nod.

“God be praised.”

I touch her arm to reassure her as I move past.

“Go cautiously,” she whispers. “The Queen Mother is with them.”

Heaven help my husband. I swing open the door and there he stands, leaning heavily on the back of a chair. He appears uninjured, but his clothing suggests a struggle. The eyes, which find mine, are quite wild—or so I think, until I gaze into Charles’. My brother, pacing before my cousin, turns to look at me as if he is not quite certain who I am. His face shows that familiar but disturbing mix of lividity and petulance that marks his rages. Is his current mania spent? As I contemplate the question, a throat is cleared. Mother, seated with appearance of tranquillity, seeks my notice. Her eyes are eerily calm.

I walk directly up to the King of Navarre and do something I never expected to do in my life: kiss him on the mouth. “Husband, thank God you are safe.”

My cousin looks at me as if to say,
Am I?

I see the same question in Charles’ eyes. This is not heartening.

“Your Majesty”—I leave my cousin and embrace my brother—“I am also profoundly grateful to find you unharmed. Though it be the Lord’s day, the halls are filled with evil; there is violence and death everywhere.”

“Good Catholics need have no fear,” Mother says, “though I suppose a few may fall doing the Lord’s work, and the King’s.”

Taking the hands that Charles worries before him, I ask gently, “
Is
this your work, brother? I do not believe it. I thought you were the king who struck medals for my wedding to celebrate the peace.”

“I wanted peace, Margot”—he squeezes my hands—“but they would not let me have it!”

He does not say who “they” are. Perhaps the Protestants’ boldness these last days made them seem dangerous to Charles, as I warned my cousin it might. Or perhaps my brother means someone else entirely.
Or perhaps he has gone mad.
The last thought makes me cold.

As I watch, his expression moves from sad to seething. “If I am not to have my dear
père,
then I want none of them. If I am not to have peace between my Catholics and Protestants, then only Catholics shall remain!”

Holy Mary.

“What has become of the admiral?”

Charles pulls away but does not answer.

“His Majesty and I have just seen his head,” Mother says.

My stomach lurches, and I see my cousin wince at the casual way in which Her Majesty references the dismemberment of the great man.

“It seems Guise has, at last, avenged his father. Are you not happy for His Grace?”

She says this, of course, for the benefit of my cousin. He trembles slightly. I will not let her use Guise as a wedge between the King of Navarre and myself. Not at this moment. Whatever the justice of the Duc’s actions, I have no similarly defensible reason to abandon a husband bound to me before God, however little he suits me.

“If His Majesty gave the Duc his blessing to settle that long grudge, it can be nothing to me.”

“No! His Majesty would never do such a thing.” The outrage in my mother’s voice is wasted: I am not convinced. “Guise would not be governed,” she continues. “He is still in the streets—killing. Who knows what may become of him there?”