Médicis Daughter: A Novel of Marguerite de Valois
Sophie Perinot
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To E, K, and C,
Never let any person’s will
supplant your own,
nor anyone’s advice override
the dictates of your
conscience.
Not even mine.
PART ONE
Si jeunesse savait …
(If only youth knew…)
PROLOGUE
Summer 1562—Amboise, France
In my dreams the birds are always black.
This time when I wake, breathless and frightened, I am not alone. Hercule, perhaps disturbed by nightmares of his own, must have crawled into my bed while I was sleeping. I am glad to have his warm little body to curl around as I try to go back to sleep. No, he is no longer called Hercule, I remind myself sternly. Since his confirmation he is Fran?ois, the second of my brothers to bear that name. The older, other Fran?ois was not my friend or playfellow but rather the King of France. He has been dead nearly two years.
My nurse claims it is because King Fran?ois II died young, and my father King Henri II died tragically before him, that large black birds fill my nightmares. She insists images of weeping courtiers clothed in somber black etched themselves upon my youthful mind and were turned to birds by my overactive imagination.
I know she is mistaken, but I bite my tongue.
My brother Henri was equally mistaken. When we shared a nursery at Vincennes, he teased me that the birds were crows, noisome and noisy but, à la fin, harmless. They were not crows then, nor are they now. Crows with their grating clatter have never frightened me. Besides, my birds are silent. Silent and watchful. And always one is larger than the others. This one stares at me with beady eyes as if she would see into my very soul. I recognize my mother, Catherine de Médicis, Queen of France, even if none to whom I relate my dreams ever see her.
Putting an arm around my brother, I pull him close and smell the summer sun in his hair. I recall this night’s vision—the birds arrived out of the northern sky, swooping over Amboise. The one in the lead was so large, she obscured the sun. Lower and lower they flew, until they came to rest on the spire of the Chapel of Saint-Hubert.
My mother is coming. Even as I close my eyes and my thoughts blur, I know it. I am as certain as if I had received a letter in her own hand declaring it.
The next morning, standing at the limestone parapet in the chateau garden, I feel rather smug. My gouvernante laughed when I said Her Majesty was coming, but crossed herself when the messenger arrived, proving me right. Madame kept giving me strange looks all the time she was fastening me into one of my best gowns—the one Monsieur Clouet painted me in last year, all heavy cream silk and pearls. Looking down to make certain my hem did not become dirty as I ran here, I realize my beautiful dress has grown short.
Never mind, I think, Mother is coming! Pushing myself up on my tiptoes, I rest my arms on top of the wall and look over—experiencing a familiar mixture of awe and apprehension. On the other side everything falls away precipitously. Below, the calm, green Loire winds past, giving way to the deeper and more varied green of the trees on its opposite bank. To the left, the river is traversed by a bridge as white as the wall I lean upon. My eyes follow the road across that bridge. I can see a long way, and just before the road dissolves into shimmers of light I see movement. Can it be Mother’s party?
A motion closer at hand draws my attention. Fran?ois followed me when I snuck out, and now he is trying to pull himself up onto the wall to see better. My stomach clenches. The drop from the top to the rooftops below would surely break his body to pieces should he go over. Grabbing my brother around the waist, I try to haul him back, but he clings tenaciously to the stone.
“Let go,” I command.
Whether in response to my demand or under the pressure of my tugging, Fran?ois’ fingers release and we tumble backwards into the dry dust of the path. My youngest brother is slight of build, but at seven he is still heavy enough to knock the wind out of me. He scrambles up indignantly, heedless of the fact that he finds his footing in my skirts.
“I am not a baby.”
“You are certainly behaving like one!” I shriek, looking at the dirty marks upon my gown. I can only imagine how the back of me—the part sitting in the dirt—looks. I feel like crying and my face must show it, for Fran?ois’ expression changes from defiance to guilt.