“Are we caught?” Henriette asks.
Charlotte shakes her head. We make way for her. Pushing past Henriette, she sits upon the bench and pulls her feet up on it as well. She looks very sad.
“Come, you will feel better when you tell us,” Henriette urges.
“I have been given a frightful task.” Charlotte looks up mournfully.
“Who?” Henriette asks. “The gray-bearded, unsmiling Baron de Rosny?”
“Would that it were.” She covers her face and from between her fingers says, “The Queen Mother has asked me to stand ready to seduce the Prince of Navarre should Margot fail to beguile him.”
Henriette gives a low whistle. I reach out and steady myself on the confessional wall. I ought not to care. I have no desire to sleep with my cousin—ever. But the fact that Mother personally arranges an infidelity for the man she thinks to make my husband galls me. It is savage. Particularly when undertaken by a woman made deeply unhappy by her own husband’s dalliance.
“Margot, say something.”
“I hate her.”
“But not me?”
“Never you!” I touch Charlotte’s shoulder.
I exit the confessional first. Rather than returning to my room, I kneel to pray. The silence left in Henriette and Charlotte’s wake is a balm. I drink it in, staring at the crucifix above the altar.
“I was Catholic as a young woman.”
I scramble to my feet and turn to face the Queen of Navarre.
“So I have heard.”
“In fact, until I was nearly thirty.”
“But you are not Catholic now, Madame, so I cannot account for your presence in this chapel.”
“I do not believe that.”
“You wish to speak to me alone.”
She smiles slightly. “I have told my Henri you are quick. Do you know what he replied?”
I do not, nor do I care.
“He replied that he remembers as much from when you were children; that you were always the brightest of his Valois cousins.”
“Very flattering.”
“I have no concerns about your mind, only about your character.”
“Madame! Have I not shown you every politesse since your arrival? How, then, have I earned such discourteous speech?”
“I do not mean to be rude, only forthright. In fact, I am surprised to find you as unspoiled as you appear—and told my son so—given the atmosphere of this court. Whatever our religious differences, as you are a woman of sincere faith, you must know the Court of France is rife with sin.”
My cheeks warm. “If you have such concerns about my upbringing, I wonder that you are still here.”
“Your past is not my primary interest. There are good reasons for me to consider this match despite it. But the merit in all of them falls short if I do not have some assurance of your future conduct.”
“If you ask if I can love your son, I tell you plainly, no.”
“So it is your turn to be forthright.” She nods. “Good. I do not particularly care if you will love Henri. I married Antoine de Bourbon for affection. Such an act can have as many pitfalls as pleasures. What I wish to ask is: Can you obey my son?”
“Madame, if the Prince of Navarre is made my husband, I will be obedient in all reasonable things.”
This does not appear to satisfy. Jeanne looks at me intently. “But who shall be the judge between you of what is reasonable? As husband, Henri must lead. Can you let his conscience be yours? Will you follow the religion of your husband?”
I straighten to my full height and touch the cross I wear round my neck. “Madame, I would not set aside my conscience for your son, nor switch religions, if he stood to inherit the crown of the whole world and not just a kingdom much smaller than the one my own family rules.”
“Might not your own conscience counsel a change? A church, like a court, can become corrupt. What, then, is the point of clinging to it?”
“What comes from Our Lord cannot be corrupted by man and is unchangeable. Men may ignore God’s word through sinful action, or trespass it through heresy, but that changes nothing. It remains the only truth.”
I brace myself for anger. I have come perilously close to calling the Queen of Navarre a heretic to her face. But she merely looks at me for a moment through her cold, unflinching eyes, then nods as if deciding something.
“It is the way of the young to speak with a certitude they have not earned by experience. I have often cautioned Henri about it. But I encouraged you to be candid, and I am not sorry to know your mind. Will you be sorry, I wonder, to know mine? I believe I have traveled a very long way for naught. You are not the bride for my son, however lovely you are and however advantageously connected.”
*
“What did you say?” Mother is furious.