*
“Navarre! Navarre!” The cry jolts me from my slumber—loud, urgent, and accompanied by such a pounding upon the bedchamber door that I am surprised not to hear wood splinter. Gillone, on her feet, clutches the blanket from her pallet before her. If it is dawn, it is just so.
“The door! Hurry! It may be my husband!”
The cry “Navarre!” comes again as she races forward. It is not my cousin’s voice but he may be accompanied. If he must fly, I wonder that he stops here first.
As soon as the bolt is drawn a man, sans doublet, his white shirt covered in blood, staggers in and runs at me. It is the Seigneur de La Mole, with whom I so recently sat at tennis. His eyes are glazed with terror. He cradles one of his arms in the other. When he releases it—to grab the front of my shift with a single bloody hand—he cries out in pain. Before I can say a thing, I know the reason for his terror. Four members of the King’s guard dash into my bedchamber. The last actually knocks Gillone to the floor as he passes.
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 Nan?ay appears in my doorway. “Captain, your men ignore my commands. Let us see if you can do better. Call them off!”
Nan?ay’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. Nan?ay 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.