She is right: Why waste my time or concern on men who mock me? I turn from the railing.
“Wait.” It is my cousin’s voice. Turning back, I find him close to the mesh curtain, his fingers laced in it as they were the morning after our wedding. “I apologize for my gentlemen; they are overwrought.” He looks for some acknowledgment, but I offer none. I know very well his followers consider my status as a Catholic and a Valois to be insuperable barriers to trust. I will not pretend otherwise. “When we spoke yesterday,” he continues, “you showed great prescience—a prescience that gives your words today increased weight. I will go armed. I will be cautious.”
I nod, uncertain why I care—if I care—about my cousin’s safety. There are worse things than being a widow.
*
The streets roil with people. I am glad to be on horseback, for a carriage could not pass. In the Rue de Béthisy there is a makeshift wicket guarded by Protestants. An hour ago Charles ordered those Catholics living near the admiral to give up their houses temporarily so Coligny could be better protected. He also forbade citizens to take up arms, but I notice the glint of swords and glimpse a pistol on a bystander as we dismount. Charles is eager to see Coligny, despite reassurance from Amboise Paré that the gentleman will certainly live. Mother pushes to be beside the King. I press forward as well, using my elbows where necessary. Monsieur Paré waits inside. He looks dismayed by the size of our party—as do the dozen Protestant gentlemen guarding the door and the stairway leading to the admiral’s bedchamber.
“Your Majesty.” Paré bows. “I have removed the ball from the admiral’s elbow and also the remains of the little finger shattered by the shot.”
Charles cringes at this reported amputation.
“The gentleman rests but is eager to see his king. May I ask, however, that not everyone go en haute?”
“I do not like it,” someone mumbles, “His Majesty alone in a nest of angry hornets.”
“Surely, Monsieur, room can be made for a dozen—the admiral has so many who are concerned for him and who cannot be made easy on report alone,” Mother says.
The royal physician is not so foolish as to speak in contravention of Her Majesty, so he nods. Charles, Anjou, Mother, and the King’s chief councilors head up the stairs. I attach myself to the rear of the party.
The room is stifling. The admiral, lying on his bed, lifts his head. “Your Majesty, I regret I am in no condition to greet you properly.”
“And I regret, my dear father, that you have been so brutally attacked.” Charles moves to the bedside, displacing my cousin, who goes silently and without looking at me to where Pilles and Téligny stand near an open window.
“I have ordered an inquiry into this cowardly assault,” the King says, laying his hand gingerly upon the admiral’s bandaged one. “Whoever struck at you struck also at me, for you are my right arm and good counsel.”
“I hope, Your Majesty, to shortly be sound enough to sit beside you in council once more. In my absence, I urge you to listen to your conscience, not to those who would steer you in a manner beneficial to themselves but not France.”
“Admiral,” Mother says, “you need have no fear. I remain steadfastly at His Majesty’s side.”
I seriously doubt this comforts the gentleman.
Téligny steps forward. “Your Majesty, my father and I have every faith in your justice. To that end, may we hope to hear before this dreadful day ends that the Duc de Guise has been arrested?”
The admiral casts his son-in-law a warning look.
“If you have evidence implicating the Duc,” Charles says, “I charge you by the duty you owe me to present it to me.”
“Everyone knows Guise vowed as a mere boy to kill my father.”
“And everyone also knows,” Mother says, “that His Majesty forbade action on that pledge. And yet”—she sighs—“too often men of heated blood disregard their sovereign’s will.”
I cannot believe it! Mother has just suggested, in a room full of Protestants, that my beloved may be responsible for the admiral’s wounding. She has thrown him to the dogs!
“Still,” she adds, “inquiries demand evidence, Sir, not conjecture.”
“Your Majesties, perhaps you have not yet heard, but an arquebus, still warm from firing, was found on the first floor of a house in the cloisters of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois—a house belonging to the Duchesse de Nemours.”
I grow cold at the mention of Henri’s mother.
“This will be looked into,” Charles says.