For a moment, under the high arches of the cathedral, watching the princess and her intended standing before the cardinal, Petrus thinks that perhaps the queen mother’s plan might not be mad, after all. Princess Marguerite is gowned in blue and fur and jewels; the prince holds his head like a man pleased to be doing his duty. If the staunchly Catholic queen mother is willing to so compromise about the faith of her daughter’s husband, what other miracles might take place? In a show of magnanimity all the strongest and most important among the noble Huguenot leaders have been invited to Paris for the wedding festivities, though they, and the Huguenot prince, were forced to remain outside the cathedral for the Mass.
During the celebration that follows the wedding, Petrus stands on the fringes of the dancing. Though he has been at court for more than twenty years, the spectacle of this wedding feast fills him with something like his old astonishment. There is more glitter, more gilding even than usual, so much that he nearly misses the sharp, metallic tinge to the merriment, the faint tension that vibrates down the length of the feasting hall. He watches as the princess and her new husband dance the pavane, their bodies stiff as corpses. He drags his eyes away from the gold-plated dishes, the peacock dressed in all its feathers, jewels winking in its eye sockets, and finally sees the odd rigidity to the way the Catholic courtiers hold themselves, as if they are armored under their fine doublets.
He seeks out Ludovico, who is dancing and flirting as usual. But despite his apparent liveliness, Ludovico’s dark eyes flick, sharp, about the room, and when he spies Petrus watching him, he does not quite smile. A trickle of cold makes its way down Petrus’s spine then, all the warmth he felt this morning shivering away as he realizes that this marriage, which was meant to solidify the peace between Catholics and Huguenots, has only emphasized its weakness.
He retires late that night, so late that the sky is brightening at the horizon. He pauses at the junction between the corridor to his bedchamber and his wife’s. She danced about the edges of his mind all night, young and moon-eyed, and he thinks, for a moment, of going to her, tapping on her door, sitting with her for a time and telling her all about the marriage ceremony and the merriment afterward. That is how he would say it—merriment—he would make no mention of the strange atmosphere in the feasting hall, the air, under the smells of food and perfume, bristling as if with lightning. He would amuse her, as a husband ought, with stories of the guests’ drunken foolishness, the Fool’s antics. He would describe faithfully the princess’s gown.
He hesitates, imagining this. The two of them, side by side. Her smile, welcoming. His words, entertaining.
He turns toward his own room.
A few days later, he wakes to find the city of Paris in uproar.
The news is enough to cut holes in his chest: one of the Huguenots’ most popular leaders, a man invited to attend the wedding, narrowly survived assassination in the night. When Petrus ventures out of his chamber, the air inside the Château du Louvre is thickened, milk churned to cream. Ludovico is closeted with King Charles and his advisors; the princess and her new-wed husband are locked in their chamber; the queen mother passes through the king’s salle with a sharp smile until she, too, disappears into seclusion with her son and his most trusted men.
Petrus finds himself standing with a group of Her Majesty’s dwarfs, who have been shut out of whatever is happening just like the rest of the court and who, just like the rest of the court, are carefully pretending at normalcy. But this is not normal; he usually takes such care to stand apart from these people, as if their status as oddities of nature might draw further attention to his own. But today he stands beside them, near enough to hear them breathe, to imagine he hears the thumping of their hearts. Agnes glances at him, smiles tight and small.
Petrus goes to sleep and wakes, drowning, early on the morning of Saint Bartholomew’s feast day, caught in a net, roped and grabbed and gulping in salt-thickened waves. The things holding him are shouting, his ears are filled with screams. He flounders up and up, gasping, and when his eyes open at last it is to his narrow chamber, the walls and furniture rendered grotesque as sea serpents in the darkness. He lies still on his back, chest heaving, trying to breathe away the nightmare.
And then he hears them again—the screams—and his entire body goes rigid as driftwood. He strains to listen, and hears them once more, animal in their terror. Outside Petrus’s dreaming mind, they seem utterly senseless, and yet—
A bell tolls somewhere in the city, deep and resonant, raising gooseflesh all along his arms and shoulders. The danger might yet be nameless, formless, but his body recognizes it. Another cry, tearing roughly as a knife through the fabric of the night, and Petrus finds his limbs working of their own accord, finds himself out of his bed and standing barefooted on the floor, feeling heat in all the soft and vulnerable places where he might be pierced. His belly, his sides, his throat; the soft cupped pulse-points at elbows and behind knees; the flesh of his heel, where he might be sliced to the tendon, cut down like Achilles.
But he is no Achilles, glorying in battle. Men’s shouts, the ring of swords, and Petrus finds himself backing up, away from the door, seeking shelter behind the bulk of the bed. His heart knocking against the bone of his chest, water that tastes of the sea sliding into the corners of his mouth.