“Shut the window.” Mother looks up from her embroidery. I hurry to comply. The warm breezes of summer are flown, as are all the men. I wonder if the nip of fall is in the air where they are. For that matter, I wonder where that is, precisely.
Each day Mother and I wait for two things: word that the war is over with Anjou victorious; and a letter from His Majesty’s ambassador in Portugal declaring me betrothed. We both anticipate the first with genuine impatience. When it comes to the second … I continue to feign enthusiasm, but it taxes me. Two weeks ago Her Majesty had a report blaming an outbreak of the plague in Lisbon for the delay of my betrothal. I found myself thinking—though it was unchristian—that Dom Sébastien might succumb. Since then we have had word the plague recedes, without the King even catching it. Death, it seems, cannot be counted on to extricate me from my situation. I must exert myself to do so.
“Shall I bring you a wrap?” I ask Mother.
“No, I will adjust my chair a little closer to the fire.” Settling in with her work again, she pauses to smile at me. “What a companion you have become.”
“Nothing pleases me more than my closeness with you and my brothers, Madame. Truth be told, I am not eager to leave the bosom of my family to become Queen of Portugal.”
“No girl is eager to leave what she knows for what she does not know,” Mother replies. Then, after a moment of consideration: “I may have been the exception, for though my uncle the Pope was good to me, he was not as a mother or father. Your grandfather Fran?ois was much more of the latter to me.”
“The King of Portugal delays matters. Might we not do the same? He and I are both young. Surely another year with you, Madame—which would give me the greatest pleasure—would be nothing to the Portuguese?”
This time when she looks at me Mother’s eyes are more searching. “It means so much to you not to be parted from me?”
“It does, Madame. Serving you … I feel it is my life’s work. Serving you, and being always here for Anjou.”
“You miss him as much as I.” She nods understandingly.
“If only the sentence of death pronounced by the Parlement upon Coligny were enough to kill that gentleman!”
“Have faith, daughter. Someone will claim the fifty thousand écus, or your brother will do the deed without expectation of reward and come home to us.”
“The Duc de Guise would surely also kill the gentleman without recompense.”
“True, but we must not hope for that. After all, if His Grace were to have credit for the admiral, your brother would return to us all scowls and curses.”
“However he returns, I wish to be here, Madame,” I say, endeavoring to turn the conversation back to my impending marriage.
“And you shall be. Even if you were married tomorrow by proxy, some months must pass before your journey to Portugal. The gowns alone would take so long.”
“I of course stand ready to do my duty, Madame. I only ask you to consider if I might be dutiful from a lesser distance. If I were given a French husband as my sister Claude was, I could be ever close to you.” There, I’ve said it. The thing I have longed to say but been afraid to.
“Margot!” Mother’s face is not exactly angry, but neither is it pleased. I swallow hard, waiting for a lecture, balancing continued resistance against quick capitulation.
A heavy knock sounds. The door swings wide, though Mother has not yet commanded the knocker to enter. Anjou’s close companion the Seigneur du Guast crosses the threshold, covered in dust. In a single instant my thoughts of the King of Portugal are gone and I doubt my mother could remember his name if pressed. This man comes from the field of battle. He comes with news of my brother … and of Guise.
“Your Majesty, Your Highness. I have ridden from Moncontour. There has been a mighty battle.”
“And?” Mother demands.
“His Majesty’s troops, under the Duc d’Anjou, were victorious. Eight thousand Huguenots surrendered. Coligny flees south but is badly injured, and surely, once cornered, he and those with him must fall.”
“Praise be to God,” I say, crossing myself adamantly.
“Praise be to your brother,” Mother responds. “He is a warrior prince to match any alive. How is my son?”
For the first time I notice that Guast’s face does not entirely reflect the triumph he reports. “Your Majesty”—he licks his upper lip as if he is nervous and my stomach clenches—“the Duc was unhorsed at the height of the battle.”
“Oh, dear God!” Mother’s face blanches and my stomach flips. If something has happened to Henri, how shall either of us bear it? “Is he hurt?”
“Scrapes and bruises only, Your Majesty, I give you my word, and I was with him after the event.”