Henri snorts.
I turn to him across the figure of my friend. “What is garlic compared to the odor of the grave?” I will myself to look into his eyes, daring him to break the stare. “If moral decay had a stench like the decay of the flesh does, you, Sir, would be given a wide berth by all. As it is, I am profoundly thankful for the odor of my horse at this moment.”
His eyes drop, but not before I have the satisfaction of seeing a flare of pain in them. Before this I could not have imagined causing Henri pain without feeling it myself.
I am relieved to reach the cimetière. Here at least the dead are belowground. I experience a strange urge to spring from my horse and run to hide among the bones stacked in the charnel house, but what behavior toward me might be excused if it appears I have run mad? I will not offer myself as sacrifice to my mother and brothers, nor will I offer the King of Navarre.
The bush is old and frames a grave so ancient, the name has been worn from the marker by the drops of a thousand rains. A single branch blooms. I must admit, the white of the blossoms is startling against so much gnarled wood. Against so much death. We dismount and the priests move forward, praying as they go. The King and Mother follow. I am allowed, momentarily at least, to hang back, clinging to the reins of my horse. Henriette comes to my side.
“Margot, calling out the Duc d’Anjou and the Duc de Guise! What possessed you?” Her voice is a whisper but chastisement nonetheless.
“Grief and guilt—maladies which seem to affect far too few in our party.”
Taking my arm, Henriette leads me to the far side of my horse. “Who have you lost that you should grieve? You had little liking for your husband’s companions, and your acquaintance with them was so fleeting that you had yet to learn many of their names.”
“But they were my guests nevertheless. If I cannot mourn them as men, may I not despise the fact that my wedding put them in the way of dying?”
“You may do whatever you like. But whether you should … that is a different matter.” The dismay in my friend’s face leads me to feel dismayed in turn. “How do such thoughts and actions help you?” she asks. “It is a foolish thing in war to side with the losers, most particularly where the losers are already dead. La mort n’a point d’ami.”
“We were at peace.”
“And we will be so again. Who precisely is left to raise arms against His Majesty? Whatever you think of the actions of yesterday, a generation of Huguenot leaders is dead. They drag the admiral’s body through the streets.”
I pry her hand from me. “You speak of that as if it were nothing. You who dined with Coligny, and hunted with him! Just a week ago he was everywhere we went, a royal advisor, one of the most powerful men in Charles’ court.”
“Too powerful.”
“Too powerful for the House of Lorraine.”
“And”—Henriette’s voice drops so low that it comes out as a hiss—“for the House of Valois. Did you consider that when you savaged Guise? He is not the only one who wanted Coligny dead, or who had a hand in the first attempt.”
“There is plenty of blame to go around,” I whisper back furiously.
“Thus laying blame is both futile and dangerous. We are here to celebrate. Put on a smile, if only as an act of political expedience. If it is less than honorable to kill women and children in their beds, be glad common men, not courtiers, did that dirty work. Henri finished the admiral, yes, and in doing so avenged his father. Is that not the act of an honorable man? I thought you loved him.”
And, without waiting for my reply, she is gone. When I slide from behind my horse, she is with the others, in a ring about the bush, head bowed. Henri is not far from her. Looking at the profile I know so well, at the sandy hair I have tousled in play and in lust, I know that I did love him. I love him still. Perhaps that is why I find myself unable to embrace Henriette’s justifications of his actions.
Mother casts a look in my direction. I glare back but move to join the others, bowing my head as if in prayer, though my thoughts are more temporal.