There is one man who looks at her differently from the others.
In the king’s salle, most of the men come together in knots, tight with their own importance. Standing at the periphery of the room, Catherine sometimes hears wisps of their conversations—they speak of politics, of Catholic might and Huguenot wiles, their voices low and intense, their eyes widening with meaning at the corners.
Catherine listens, though all their talk seems very far away from here, this court, this beautiful palace; even from her life in Lyons.
Catherine’s husband does not take part in this talk. As far as she can discern, he is not asked to. He stands a little apart. Only country nobles, newly arrived at court, pause to speak with him. Some cock their heads, as if trying to determine whether there is some trickery—a wig, glue. Others ask him questions, then turn to one another and say, How extraordinary! when her husband does something so very ordinary as bow and greet them with politeness. Catherine’s stomach sickens, watching him.
Only one person seems to seek him for himself. The Duke of Nevers, to whom Catherine was introduced on her first morning as a married woman, often comes to stand beside her husband, and they speak as old friends speak, every line of their bodies relaxed and easy. They even laugh, her husband’s teeth—square and decidedly human, with one blackened molar and one front tooth a little chipped—showing as he grins.
The duke has a beard and dark curling hair. His eyes are large, his form elegant in its fine clothes. Sometimes, Catherine sees him watching her, curiously, she thinks, as if she is a puzzle. Whenever he realizes that she has noticed his notice of her, he smiles, gentle, with none of the hidden meanings contained within other men’s smiles. His curious gaze is vastly preferable to the way the other men look at her, their eyes more like noses, practically sniffing; they see no puzzle at all in her, but think they understand her perfectly: penniless merchant’s daughter, caught fast underneath her savage husband. Eager for the glide of something smooth.
The duke watches her in the king’s salle. He nods to her on the grounds, where she walks alone through knotted hedges, always with a quick smile. Even when her husband walks beside him, it is the duke whose attention warms Catherine; his notice of her as someone, a person. Not a conquest, not Madame Sauvage. Her husband nods to her as well, but his gaze skitters away, nervous as mice across a kitchen floor. He has scarcely looked at her since the night of his dream—if that is what made him lurch upright from their bed, cry out as if something attacked him. Or was it something else—some innate wildness from his former life, some madness? When he tore the hangings from their bed, when he screamed, she thought, for a moment, that he had transformed, become the thing in truth that, already, he so nearly resembled. That he would eat her thighs, her belly, her liver, her heart.
Later, though—he had not seemed wild at all. He had seemed, if anything, childlike.
Catherine, lying very still beside him, feigning sleep, listened as his rapid breaths slowed. She thought he was sleeping, then, until the mattress shuddered lightly, and a pitiful sound, like a babe grizzling in the night, came from his side of the bed.
Her husband and Nevers spar sometimes in the wide rectangular courtyard, and Catherine watches them both, flinching at the swipe of their blades, the ferocity of their movements. They both have skill, even she can see that, though only the duke has used his in true battle. She watches, breathless, as they grunt and parry, hands over her mouth, her eyes, though for which man’s tender flesh she cannot decide.
Today’s match ends abruptly—her husband’s sword hooking itself under Nevers’s in such a way that the duke’s sword flips from his grasp and falls, ringing, to the stones. They stand, breath smoking from their mouths in the late autumn chill.
Silence, just for a moment; and then someone calls “Sauvage!” eliciting cheers from the other observers. The king, wrapped in a heavy furred cloak, steps forward and flips a coin at Catherine’s husband. To her relief, he catches it before it falls to the ground at his feet. Then His Majesty turns away to return to the warmth of his rooms, his fire.
“The wolf almost fights like a man,” says one of the king’s favorites to another as he follows His Majesty, and Catherine looks instantly to her husband to see whether he heard, her body hot. But no—as she watches, the duke puts a hand upon her husband’s shoulder, his big fingers curling with tender familiarity.
“Thank you, old friend,” he says. “I needed a good bout.” Then his hand falls away and they gather up their scattered things, capes and jerkins and hats and doublets, all shed before the match. Her husband grins at something the duke says. If he heard the other man’s remark, he gives no indication.
Nevers glances at her once, sees her watching. Catherine’s cheeks warm, despite the cold-edged air, and he gives her a lively grin, one eye winking down.
He glances at her husband, who is fastening his doublet, and comes to her. “Madame,” he says, still smiling. “I am afraid your husband bested me once again.”
“You both fought well,” Catherine says. Her voice wavers a little; her cheeks flush further.
“Ah—but was I holding back?” Nevers winks once more, then adds, “Or was he? Could he have bested me more quickly than he did, do you think? He is a skilled swordsman, our Pierre; it is a shame he was never allowed to fight for his king.”
“Did he wish to?” Catherine says, startled.
A nod. “But of course. At least, when King Henri still lived. Now?” His lips pucker. “Now I cannot say. With so beautiful a wife warming his bed, what man would choose the discomfort of a march, a battlefield?”
She is silent, but she dares a hooking smile; thinks, by the lifting of his brow, that he feels it in his belly.
“And what of you, Madame?” he says. His posture shifts, shoulders settling back, legs thrown wide. “How do you find court? Marriage?”
He asks, she thinks, as if he truly wishes to know. She fumbles for a response that will seem at once refined and truthful, but before she can settle upon one another man is calling to him.
“Ah—I apologize, Madame,” he says, bows a quick farewell, and is off, the wind lifting his hair. He whistles a little as he walks, the sound lighter than the air, singing, Catherine feels, of a happiness that is complete.
She thinks about him—his curling hair, his confident air, his smile. She thinks about him at night when she and her husband ready themselves for bed without speaking; the next day, when they walk silently together to Mass. When she combs her hair, she imagines the touch of his hand, smoothing her hair as Maman once did, but more slowly, lingering at the point where her neck and shoulder join. In the chapel, she cannot concentrate on the priest; her mind flies to where Nevers stands, she bites her lips to bring the blood to them, she wonders whether he will turn and look at her, whether he will smile at her again before all the court.
Whenever she can, she listens. Eagerly, to rumors of his valor in battle, his trusted place at the king’s side; less so, when she hears of his wife in Paris, his children. And yet still, her head turns to impossibilities, to dreams—him as a minor country noble, not the son of a grand house in Mantua; a minor country noble with a sweep of land, an old, solid house for her to run, softened inside by rugs, candles, silver. She imagines sheep in broad meadows, geese herded by a sturdy young girl. Children—theirs together—learning their letters, scampering about the garden. Him, speaking to her, earnest. Telling her of himself, learning about her in turn. He would still have to come to court sometimes, she thinks, and perhaps she would join him, as long as she hadn’t a child in her belly. They might stand together, looking about them, here; uncertain, but not alone.
She even ventures to ask her husband about him one night.
“How long have you known the Duke of Nevers?” she says. Her voice, she hopes, is disinterested, as if the question is merely a passing thought, easily dismissed.
He pauses, his comb in one fist, and looks at her. “Since we were boys,” he says. “Nevers was fostered here at court.” A slight smile, and he resumes his combing. “He never left.”
“Is it true that he is a hero?” Catherine says then. “In battle, I mean.”
This time, the comb continues raking through the thick hair on his chest. “Yes.” Short, stiff.
“And a favorite of the king?”
A nod. Frustration builds behind her breastbone; she exhales to release it.