So that is the game. The words I sent to Henri to soothe him—words I asked him to hold in confidence—were betrayed to Mother within hours, giving her grounds for an annulment without needing to admit there was no dispensation. Oh, Henri, where is the faith in this? Where is the honor? While I am lost in a swirl of thoughts and emotions, Mother speaks again.
“I have explained to His Majesty that such an admission might be mortifying to you and persuaded him that, if you were willing to attest that your marriage is a matter of paper and no more, he ought, as recompense, to grant you the right to choose your next husband without limits.” She smiles magnanimously.
“The man I would have chosen is no longer free.”
“For the right price, anyone can be made free.”
My eyes sting. The union that Henri and I planned so many years ago and were denied might still be within our grasp. I might yet be happy. I might be loved. And if my life has taught me any lesson, it is that to be truly loved by no one is to be lonely beyond measure. I swallow the lump that rises in my throat.
I may be loved, but at what price?
“What of the King of Navarre? Would you allow him to go south?” It is a trick question, for I know that Mother will never willingly permit my cousin to go where he might effectively lead what remains of the Protestants.
“That could be discussed.” She says this without a flicker of guilt for the lie. “His Majesty will consult with his friends and advisors, your new husband among them.”
A fearful price.
In that one sentence it is clear to me: once I am freed from the King of Navarre, he will perish. Mother wishes it so. Henri does as well. My cousin will not, like his friends who lost their lives in the massacre, be killed openly in the halls of the Louvre. He will be assassinated cleverly: by poison, in a street brawl, or as he travels home, if he is ostensibly permitted to go. My mother and my brothers may be willing—nay, delighted—to be credited with the deaths of thousands, but my family is too chary to take my cousin’s blood upon their hands.
It will be on mine.
No, no, no! I fight the thought. Surely the choice here is not so stark!
Mother comes to stand beside me and slips her arm around me. “My dear Margot, tell me: Is your husband a man?”
“What else should he be, Madame?” I sidestep the intent of her question, postponing the moment that must decide my cousin’s fate. “You have seen him enough times at table and at the chase to know that he has the appetites of one. And you have doubtless had more intimate reports from the Baronne de Sauve, whom you set upon him.”
“The King of Navarre’s foolish preference for a woman not your equal in wit or beauty is another reason to be done with him,” Mother says. “He has a peasant’s tastes which his crown cannot mask.” Mother releases me. “I have come here to be satisfied, daughter. Tell me plainly: Has your marriage been consummated?”
Thoughts swirl about me like the swarms of small insects that descend on Paris in the summer, pricking me from every side. All I need do is tell the truth and I will be unmarried. Free, if my mother is to be believed, to follow my heart. But when has my mother ever been true to her word, at least where that word was given to me? More than this, can I purchase my freedom with another’s life? The murder of an honorable man—and my cousin is honorable—by dishonorable means—this is sin. Not even the Te Deums that have resounded through Paris this last week, celebrating the slaughter of my husband’s coreligionists, can convince me otherwise. I am not my mother, willing to do anything to achieve my personal ends.
“Madame, it has.”
Mother starts. Putting her hand on my shoulder, she stares commandingly into my eyes. Her dark eyes remind me of the crow on the windowsill. She is waiting for me to twitch, to look away, to concede defeat and say what she wants to hear. “Will you swear to it? Remembering that a false oath is a serious thing?”
I have a nearly overwhelming desire to laugh, a reaction which would be most unwise. An oath is a serious thing? Is murder not more serious? Is betraying your children in favor of your own power and political aims not more loathsome? I am about to swear falsely but my heart is light.
“I give you my word as a devout femme catholique and a daughter of France that I consider myself truly joined to my husband.”
For one unguarded moment, Mother’s face falls. Then she is herself again, utterly composed. But that moment was a triumph for me and it is enough. I am free! Not of my husband, nor of the walls of this palace. It seems to me Henri and I will be held prisoner here some while longer. Rather, my mother’s hold over me is broken. My years of struggling to please, of seeking to garner her attention and gain her love through obedience—of being disappointed when her affection proved to be nothing but affectation—are at an end. I am a woman grown, a queen and worthy of that title in this moment for the first time. I do not know if the crows have left the Louvre’s courtyard, but the black birds in my soul have flown and I do not fear their return.
AUTHOR’S NOTE