Authors: Sophie Perinot
Her Grace leads us into the next room. My brother-in-law stands, hands on hips, interrupted in midsentence by the opening of the door. Henri sits before him, looking more bored and vexed than terrified. At the sight of me he leaps to his feet.
“Marguerite!” The way he says my name, the light in his eyes—I am nearly undone before I begin. In a few strides he is at my side, slipping an arm about my waist and pulling me against his hip in a protective manner, heedless of the impropriety of these actions. “These fools do not understand how I love you.”
“We do,” Claude replies. “But we also understand that love will not lead to happiness, nor will it restore you to your place at Court.”
“The King has publicly turned from you, son,” Anne d’Este says. “There is talk of negotiations with the heretics. Do you wish the houses of Guise and Lorraine to be absent from such talks?” I feel Henri stiffen.
“The devil take the King and the Huguenots!”
“That is precisely what I fear,” his mother presses. “Think of the harm that may come to France without the staunch Catholic voices of Lorraine at any conference for peace. Will you surrender the souls of your countrymen because you are crossed in love?”
“If my countrymen and my king have not enough sense to look to their own salvation, why should that concern me? I have executed my duty to both faithfully. Fought for both. And my recompense has been ill use. I am through being His Majesty’s loyal servant.”
Even though we are just five in the room, both Anne d’Este and my sister glance around nervously at this pronouncement.
“Are you through too with all ambition?” Henri’s mother asks. “Content to be a ruined man and stay one? Are you ready to cast all that your father achieved for this house aside and live—if you are allowed to live—at Joinville in obscurity?”
My beloved starts as if slapped. His arm goes slack for a moment as if he would release me, then tightens again. “Surely matters are not so serious.” He tries to laugh but fails. “Or at least not permanently so.”
“Your Highness,” the Duchesse de Nemours appeals to me, “speak to him.”
“Yes. Marguerite, speak,” Henri urges. “Tell them what we mean to each other.”
“Henri, you know that I love you”—I am surprised at the calm of my own voice—“but my sister is right: Charles will never allow us to be happy. He has set his mind against us and the only person who could turn it, my mother, wishes us ill.”
This time he does release me, taking a step away so he can see my face. The pain and confusion in his eyes wrings my heart.
“Will you urge me to marry another? For that is what the Duc de Lorraine proposes. He wants me to set the Princesse de Porcien in the place you thought to occupy.” His voice is urgent, but still tinged with confidence.
Oh, Henri, how I love your boldness, but this is, sadly, no moment for bravado.
Impatiently he takes another step away, rounds on me and, with eyes as sharp as swords ever were, lowers his voice and demands, “Will you say you no longer wish to be my wife?”
“I need not give voice to a lie to urge prudence upon you. I want to be your wife more than I have ever wanted anything, but my experience of life tells me that what I want does not matter—it has never mattered. The King told me the night of the ball that he will see you dead before he will consent to see us wed.” I notice the Duchesse de Nemours put a hand out to steady herself at these words. “Do you believe that if I cannot have you I would wish you dead? Can you ask me to carry your destruction on my conscience?”
Henri hangs his head. And I know we are close to prevailing. Success has never seemed more unwelcome. The first tear rolls down my cheek and I brush it away angrily. I cannot afford to give in to my own emotions until I have finished.
“Henri, look at me.”
He does not look up.
Slowly, as if I were a woman of great age, my bones brittle, I move forward and get to my knees before him. I can see him watching through lowered lashes. “My love,” I plead, “you must save yourself. You cannot be my husband but you can yet thrive as one of the greatest and most powerful men in France. Do not let my brother take your future as he has taken mine.” My voice shakes and, despite my best efforts, tears continue to fall. Henri looks at me squarely.
“What would you have me do?” he asks, his voice breaking.
“Solicit the hand of the Princess de Porcien.”
“You condemn me to a life of unhappiness.”
“I condemn myself to one as well. And yet I think it a good bargain, for while you may despair of domestic contentment, I believe you will find purpose and satisfaction in other realms. I pray it may be so.” I mean what I say, but saying it takes the last of my strength. I collapse to the floor and, heedless of my dignity, lay on my side weeping.
Falling to his knees beside me, Henri gathers me to him so that he cradles me against his breast like a child. “Help her,” he says to my sister.
“Only you can do that.”
Henri rocks me gently, putting his lips first against my temple and then close to my ear. “I will marry her,” he whispers. “God forgive me for the lies I will tell at the altar when I do, and for the pain I have caused you.” Raising his head, he says to the others, “Make your plans. Seek the lady’s hand on my behalf and I will take it.”
I feel a tear drop from Henri’s face onto mine. Looking past my beloved, I see that the Duc de Lorraine has turned away—either moved or horrified by his cousin’s display of emotion. Claude and the Duchesse de Nemours cling to one another. Their eyes are wet, yet they shine with triumph. I ought to feel the victory as well—Henri is saved—but I am conscious of nothing but pain, my own and Henri’s.
My sister takes a step forward and reaches out a hand.
“No!” Henri’s voice is adamant. “Leave her. You have succeeded in separating us, but not yet. Not yet!”
I bury my face against his chest.
I sense rather than see the others retreat. A click of the great oak door marks their passing. I am seized by the sudden horrible thought that this is the last time Henri and I will ever be alone together.
Henri’s hand is on my hair, both catching and caressing it. He is shaking, not with desire, but with grief, and so am I. Tipping my face up, I see in his eyes a mirror of my own heartbreak. “We haven’t much time,” I sob.
No, we have no time at all.
“Do not forget me,” he says, “when they send you to Portugal.”
And as painful as the thought of seeing him as someone else’s husband is, this sudden idea of not seeing him at all, of being away from Court, is worse. “Never,” I say, reaching up to touch his cheek. “My heart is yours; it cannot be recalled. It stays with you wherever my hand is given.”
Lowering his mouth, he kisses me. I taste the salt of both our tears. Our kiss is deep but neither springs from nor ignites passion. It is a kiss entirely spiritual, the union of two hearts and souls soon to be torn from each other.
“Come,” Henri says, “let us go out of our own accord before they come back to take you away.”
I understand what he means. Nothing is left under our control but the manner of our parting, so we must not cede that. Wiping my tears with both hands and rising, I ask, “Is this what it is like to ride from a field of battle defeated?”
“Yes,” he replies with a nod of his head. “We cannot, it seems, carry the day, but we can surrender with dignity rather than begging for mercy where we will get none.”
We walk out together, heads held high, hand in hand, but I wonder as we go:
Why was there no mercy to be had, either at the hands of our king or our god?
March 1571—Paris, France
“Close the shutters. I do not intend to rise.”
Gillone moves back toward my window but Henriette stops her. My friend comes to the bed where I lean back against the headboard, a look of determination on her face.
“Enough!” She takes me by both shoulders and shakes. “For months you have been listless and fading.”
I know it to be true, but make no reply. This seems to exasperate her further. “You were present in body only at the King’s nuptial celebrations at Mézières. You crept around Blois as a ghost.” Releasing me so that I fall back against my pillows, she puts her hands on her hips. “At last we return to Paris and all the city enjoys the spectacle, save you.”
Shrugging, I close my eyes.
“Today you will rise and dress to dazzle.”
“Why should I?”
“Why should you not?” my friend challenges.
Tears well beneath my closed lids. “You know why.”
“Because the Duc de Guise is married nearly half a year and has lived away from Court that long? Well, in case it has escaped your notice, he returned two days ago for the Queen Consort’s upcoming coronation.” My eyes snap open at Henriette’s unfeeling words, loosing the tears that had gathered.
She shakes her head angrily. “Is the sight of him what prostrates you? Have you not observed that, despite his long looks in your direction, he is a picture of health. You, on the other hand, are a shadow of that princess he fell in love with.”
I push myself further upright. “I am certain Henri expected to find me thus,” I snap, “and sees my condition as a mark of a faithful heart. Why can you not respect it as such?”
“Why should I respect a woman who has given herself over to grief and forsaken all pleasure at an age when there is much joy and pleasure to be had? You behave as if you are a hapless leaf tossed upon the storm-swollen Seine with no power to take matters in hand.”
“Because I have no such power. I am nothing but a point in a treaty, offered to one groom and then another in the manner most likely to bring benefits to the crown. I have accepted that in the past but…” My voice trails off as my mind travels back to the terrible day of my beloved’s nuptials. The wedding felt like a funeral—my own. I survived it, but was so thankful when at last we departed the Hôtel de Guise. How could I know that the cruelest twist of the day was yet to come?
As we entered the Louvre, His Majesty was accosted by his secretary with a letter from Portugal. Dom Sébastien declared himself too young to marry and declared me well able to wait. Tears I had held in check all day, through every sort of agony, began to fall. Not because I wanted Dom Sébastien, but because I ought to have been wanted by him—by someone. At seventeen, I was the most beautiful woman in France and yet also three times spurned. My heart staggered under that blow. It was nearly stopped by the next. As I wept into my hands, Mother and His Majesty pronounced that they were done with Dom Sébastien. That instead they would use my hand as a seal upon the
Paix de Saint-Germain-en-Laye,
forging an unbreakable bond between the Catholic and Protestant branches of our family by marrying me to Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Navarre. My cousin, the ill-kempt and ill-mannered pest from my girlhood. A notorious heretic.
“But what?” Henriette challenges. “You are unhappy. You have been denied your heart’s desire. How will you fight back?
All
women are pawns of their families—bartered and bedded for the aggrandizement of their houses. I was so myself. Yet you do not see me weeping, waiting for my beauty to fade. I am the Duchesse de Nevers, not by marriage but in my own right; I have money, I have looks, I have love—and on my own terms. I engage in the battle for my fate by living as I like.
“You must rise and do the same. You want Guise in your bed. Have him. He is someone else’s husband. My sister’s, in point of fact. You will be another man’s wife—possibly the Prince of Navarre’s. But all this only makes it easier.”
“Easier?” I bristle. “How can marriage to a heretic make anything easier?”
Henriette leans in toward me. “Who is more chaperoned, the maiden or the wife? The maiden, of course. You know that to be true by your own experience. When you are Princess of Navarre, unless you are caught
in flagrante,
who is to know if the gentleman who makes you sigh and sweat is your loathsome husband or another?”
Here is an unexpected thought. For a moment I am stunned—but I am also awakened from the torpor that has held me fast in its grip since last October. “You urge me to embrace a match with Navarre so that I may take Guise as lover?”
“That is what I ought to advise, but I look at you and despair that you will fade to nothing before that. The time for caution is past and you were never very adept at it anyway.” She smiles slightly for the first time since she began speaking. “So I urge you to live again, without waiting for your marriage or any other event. The Duc is at Court after months of absence. Instead of pining for him impotently, remind him why he loves you.”
A sense of power and purpose swells in my breast. I throw off my covers and swing my legs out of bed. Stalking to my mirror, I examine my figure. I am thinner than I was last fall, but I know I am still an object of Henri’s desire. I saw as much in his hungry eyes when he first entered my presence two days ago. Felt as much in the lips that brushed my hand during our brief greeting. And I still want Henri—God, yes. At the thought of him, my stomach quivers.
Turning to my friend, I say, “I will have the Duc. I have been accused of him and beaten on account of it. Let me have the pleasure now; I have been punished for it already.”
“Bravo!” Henriette’s eyes sparkle. The color rises in her cheeks as it has in mine. “I think you must dine with me at the Hôtel de Nevers this week.” She beckons Gillone forward with a clean chemise.
“You mean…”
“What could be more natural than that the Duc should also be my guest?” Henriette pulls my shift off and drops fresh linen over my head. The fabric soft and crisp against my skin is delightful. “He is my brother. My sister will not come. She can scarcely keep a mouthful of food down since the Duc put her with child, and she cannot bear to watch others eat.”
I wince at the mention of the Princesse de Porcien’s condition. The thought of her carrying my beloved’s child—something I hoped to do myself—remains unbearable, though it is no longer news.