The story requirements were genre: historical fiction (not my forte), Character: ballerina, and plot device: secret club.
Burning Truth
SYNOPSIS: Marguerite de Valois,
Queen of France, wrote her memoirs while imprisoned by her brother in his
castle. Only after she delivers them to their keeper, where they remain hidden
until her death, does she sit at her desk to pen the true story of her
husband’s salvation from the Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
To read the Actual letters, click here: http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Memoirs-of-Marguerite-de-Valois-V1.html
***18-Burning
Truth
Marguerite de Valois,
Queen of France, fanned herself with her palimpsest of secrets. Though pursing
her lips might ruin her powder, she made the face anyway. No one of consequence
would see it. Unlike this salty memoir in her hands, most of which was even
true.
The tang of blood
burned her mouth as she chewed her lip. If she tarried any longer, her resolve
might burn to ashes. She must execute this final transaction anon.
Queen Marguerite thrust
the parchment toward a servant. Slender fingers, cool and sure, closed around
her clammy ones.
“Here!” Marguerite
commanded. “I charge you to take this and hide it where you will. Do not
release these words of scandal and mischief until my death.”
She whirled away from
her act, heavy skirts swishing. Rank fear billowed from under brocade and
starched collars. The servant should have left by now, but Marguerite heard her
breath.
“I may be a prisoner in
this castle,” Marguerite complained, “but I am still wife to King Henry IV of
France, am I not?”
A familiar squeak
sounded behind her. She did not turn. This would not do. This was no regular
servant. This woman...she owed this woman her life, the Monarchy. The Queen
softened her voice.
“Do as I bid, Anne. I
swear upon my crown, my gowns, and the sweet Virgin that I have not exposed
your role that night.” Marguerite turned back toward the woman. She held out
her hands as if to grasp the servant’s, but stopped. Her hands rubbed
themselves against her bodice, soiled by the mere thought. She locked eyes on
the poor girl.
“Now, child, our
previous familiarity endears you to me, and as a consequence, I have written
this letter recommending your service to anyone who would wish to have you. I
may never escape my gilded cage, but you will, my nymph. You have saved my
silly Huguenot husband more than once; I will admit to wondering if the ballet
you danced for the Royal wedding were some portent. But, enough." Queen
Marguerite pointed her finger. "If you dally any longer, I will have your
head. These parchments must be hid, rested until my demise. If word reaches me
or my successors that these secrets came out, or were lost…my revenge upon my
brother is worth even your life.
“Away with you, that
you might be safe from Catholics and Huguenots alike. That my words might be
safe from the Queen my mother, who schemes whilst her plots fail around her.
Dance away.”
Hearkening to her
former ballet career, Anne arose and glided through the doorway, past the guards
in wigs, tights, and pikes. Now, with Anne safely away, she would write the
last scandal: the secret clan of ballerinas and the improbable rescue by common
court dancers.
She perched upon her
ornate chair. A quill, not yet cold, fit snugly into her hand. There was
nothing else to do, she reasoned. For her own safety she'd been imprisoned by
her brother, so no fit vengeance for her lot in life existed except to tell the
truth. The trivial truth from a woman, a non-entity, a vacuous girl with dreams
and laughter in her head and no cares except donning the most expensive frock.
Well, she’d given them that. No one could fault her for the whimsical tone in
her memoirs, for that is how they saw her: whimsical. Weak. Powerless.
But here, in her hand,
she held more power than her mother ever did. Catherine de Medici’s family
thought power resided with the Church, but the Protestants proved it resided in
ink when they printed those Bibles and unleashed the Huguenots upon the world.
Words had beaten down the once mighty Catholic Church; her words would beat
down this farce of a monarchy.
She dipped her nib into
the ink, tapping her quill.
“Letter V Redux
“The True Events of the
Massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Day.
“King Charles, as I
have written before, a prince of great prudence, always paying a particular
deference to his mother, did indeed adopt a sudden resolve to follow her
counsel, and put himself under the protection of the Catholics. Sadly, it was
not in his power to save the wretched Teligny, honorable La Noue, or M. de La
Rochefoucauld.
“However, after Charles
resolved upon the “Massacre of St. Bartholomew” with M. de Guise, the Princes,
and the Catholic officers, and before I became aware of the goings-on inside
the palace, my original history took a fictitious, though believable, bent.
“I did, as I reported
so genuinely before, go to the Queen my mother’s bed chamber in my panic,
whereupon it was not my sister who shared my mother’s chambers, but a lowly
servant, whose tears gushed down her linens, and who begged me to stay and defy
the Queen’s request for me to retire. The Queen was, as I wrote in my previous
account, in discourse with another party whom I could not see. The servant
sobbed so loudly I could not hear, except to hear the servant warn me that
leaving the Queen’s bedchamber would mean my life, and I must not go.
“But the Queen
commanded obedience, and, upon the Queen my mother’s wroth, the servant Anne,
rushed me from the room, escorting me to my own chambers, and prevailed upon me
to listen to her tales of intrigue. I would never have listened, despite our
occasional dalliance in the past, except that, in all the palace, she seemed
the only one to be informed as to the general panic and activity.
“As you may know, years
before this night, on the subsequent festival days of my marriage to Prince
Henri of Navarre, dancers performed in a series of festivities arranged by the
Queen my mother, always so fond of the arts. Girls dressed in feathers and
lace, disguised as nymphs, performed a dance, to wit a ballet, much to the
delight of the Court. The aforementioned serving girl was one of these dancers.
Without my knowledge, nor the knowledge of anyone in the Court, including the
shrewd and observant Queen my mother, these dancers then insinuated themselves
into the Courts and the nobles, with that oldest of recreations.
“Having taken up as
lovers with the Princes of the Court and even the Huguenots in the country, who
claimed to eschew such things, their secret group was in the perfect position
to know the impending Massacre and to save the Royal family. You will recall,
prior to the religious wars that plague our country, the manipulation and
misalignments perpetrated by Queen Catherine served only to infuriate both
sides. Far from quelling the fire of religious fervor, her acts merely fanned
the flames of fanaticism. Thus, the plot.
“This the servant told
me, crying into my ear, and bid me to stay in these my own bedchambers as she
barred the door.
“The remainder occurred
as written, with my husband the King and I retired for the night, although we
did not sleep for fear, surrounded by his gentlemen and my new servant, Anne,
whom no one recognized as the dancer. When, in the morning, King Henri IV and
his gentlemen repaired for the tennis courts to speak to King Charles, and
after the hour during which I finally reposed, the pounding on the door and the
shouts, “Navarre! Navarre!” did wake me from my slumber and transfix my nurse,
who threw open the door.
“Despite my previous
chronicle depicting M. de Teian saving me from archers, the afternoon’s
activities unfolded quite differently. M. de Teian did indeed recover from his
injuries, which were sustained outside as he ushered the King to my room. But
as it is unkingly for the King of France to hide inside his wife’s bedchamber,
I have penned the fictitious account, sans dancers, sans secret groups, and
sans hiding King. That the monarchy was saved not by the Grace of God,
Protestant or Catholic, but by lowly courtesans brings me mirth and melancholy
in equal measure.”
Marguerite sprinkled
sand upon the parchment. Her lungs deflated as she leaned back. Her corset
creaked. This history, the true version, amused her now that years separated
her from the affair’s tensions. She stood and held the parchment up to the
light streaming in her window. Her words droll now that the smell of blood and
steel no longer assaulted her nose, now that the bile of fear no longer soured
her breath.
Yet what would such
amusement serve? What would the commoners do if they realized their exalted
King had shivered and cried in the night, and accidentally stabbed a man,
already injured, who’d come to protect him?
It would not serve. If
Kings were not chosen by God to rule—Queen Marguerite shuddered to think. She
drifted toward the fire.
If Kings were not
chosen by God, but were flawed people, no more special than common dancers and
serving girls, then she could foresee a true massacre. A real French
revolution. Her hand fluttered to her chest. No, that could never be. Not now,
not in 200 years. But it was one thing to narrate the Court’s licentiousness.
It was quite another to defame the King, to mortify him. The Court was no place
for truth.
She bent toward the
grate, dropping her secrets into fire. Blackened, the parchment crackled and
curled in the flames.
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