THE VALOIS SAGA: Queen Margot, Chicot de Jester & The Forty-Five Guardsmen (Historical Novels). Alexandre Dumas

I am toward you; but if you knew — the fault is not wholly mine; an express command of the queen mother”—

      “Rise!” said Marguerite, “and as I do not suppose you have come with the intention of justifying yourself to me, tell me why you have come at all.”

      “I have come, madame,” said Charlotte, still on her knees, and with a look of wild alarm, “I came to ask you if he were not here?”

      “Here! who? — of whom are you speaking, madame? for I really do not understand.”

      “Of the king!”

      “Of the king? What, do you follow him to my apartments? You know very well that he never comes here.”

      “Ah, madame!” continued the Baronne de Sauve, without replying to these attacks, or even seeming to comprehend them, “ah, would to Heaven he were here!”

      “And why so?”

      “Eh, mon Dieu! madame, because they are murdering the Huguenots, and the King of Navarre is the chief of the Huguenots.”

      “Oh!” cried Marguerite, seizing Madame de Sauve by the hand, and compelling her to rise; “ah! I had forgotten; besides, I did not think a king could run the same dangers as other men.”

      “More, madame — a thousand times more!” cried Charlotte.

      “In fact, Madame de Lorraine had warned me; I had begged him not to leave the Louvre. Has he done so?”

      “No, no, madame, he is in the Louvre; but if he is not here”—

      “He is not here!”

      “Oh!” cried Madame de Sauve, with an outburst of agony, “then he is a dead man, for the queen mother has sworn his destruction!”

      “His destruction! ah,” said Marguerite, “you terrify me — impossible!”

      “Madame,” replied Madame de Sauve, with that energy which passion alone can give, “I tell you that no one knows where the King of Navarre is.”

      “And where is the queen mother?”

      “The queen mother sent me to find Monsieur de Guise and Monsieur de Tavannes, who were in her oratory, and then dismissed me. Then — pardon me, madame — I went to my room and waited as usual.”

      “For my husband, I suppose.”

      “He did not come, madame. Then I sought for him everywhere and asked every one for him. One soldier told me he thought he had seen him in the midst of the guards who accompanied him, with his sword drawn in his hand, some time before the massacre began, and the massacre has begun an hour ago.”

      “Thanks, madame,” said Marguerite; “and although perhaps the sentiment which impels you is an additional offence toward me — yet, again, I thank you!”

      “Oh, forgive me, madame!” she said, “and I will return to my apartments stronger for your pardon, for I dare not follow you, even at a distance.”

      Marguerite extended her hand to her.

      “I will go to Queen Catharine,” she said. “Return to your room. The King of Navarre is under my protection; I have promised him my alliance and I will be faithful to my promise.”

      “But suppose you cannot obtain access to the queen mother, madame?”

      “Then I will go to my brother Charles, and I will speak to him.”

      “Go, madame, go,” said Charlotte, leaving Marguerite room to pass, “and may God guide your majesty!”

      Marguerite darted down the corridor, but when she reached the end of it she turned to make sure that Madame de Sauve was not lingering behind. Madame de Sauve was following her.

      The Queen of Navarre saw her go upstairs to her own apartment, and then she herself went toward the queen’s chamber.

      All was changed here. Instead of the crowd of eager courtiers, who usually opened their ranks before the queen and respectfully saluted her, Marguerite met only guards with red partisans and garments stained with blood, or gentlemen in torn cloaks — their faces blackened with powder, bearing orders and despatches — some going in, others going out, and all this movement back and forth made a great and terrible confusion in the galleries.

      Marguerite, however, went boldly on until she reached the queen mother’s antechamber. But this room was guarded by a double file of soldiers, who allowed only those who had a certain countersign to enter. Marguerite in vain tried to pass this living barrier; several times she saw the door open and shut, and each time she saw Catharine, her youth restored by action, as alert as if she were only twenty years of age, writing, receiving letters, opening them, addressing a word to one, a smile to another; and those on whom she smiled most graciously were those who were the most covered with dust and blood.

      Amid this vast tumult which reigned in the Louvre and filled it with frightful clamors, could be heard the rattling of musketry more and more insistently repeated.

      “I shall never get to her,” said Marguerite to herself after she had made three ineffectual attempts to pass the halberdiers. “Rather than waste my time here, I must go and find my brother.”

      At this moment M. de Guise passed; he had just informed the queen of the murder of the admiral, and was returning to the butchery.

      “Oh, Henry!” cried Marguerite, “where is the King of Navarre?”

      The duke looked at her with a smile of astonishment, bowed, and without any reply passed out with his guards.

      Marguerite ran to a captain who was on the point of leaving the Louvre and was engaged in having his men’s arquebuses loaded.

      “The King of Navarre!” she exclaimed; “sir, where is the King of Navarre?”

      “I do not know, madame,” replied the captain, “I do not belong to his majesty’s guards.”

      “Ah, my dear Réné,” said the queen, recognizing Catharine’s perfumer, “is that you? — you have just left my mother. Do you know what has become of my husband?”

      “His majesty the King of Navarre is no friend of mine, madame, you ought to remember that. It is even said,” he added, with a contraction of his features more like a grimace than a smile, “it is even said that he ventures to accuse me of having been the accomplice, with Madame Catharine, in poisoning his mother.”

      “No, no!” cried Marguerite, “my good Réné, do not believe that!”

      “Oh, it is of little consequence, madame!” said the perfumer; “neither the King of Navarre nor his party is any longer to be feared!”

      And he turned his back on Marguerite.

      “Ah, Monsieur de Tavannes!” cried Marguerite, “one word, I beseech you!”

      Tavannes, who was going by, stopped.

      “Where is Henry of Navarre?”

      “Faith,” he replied, in a loud voice, “I believe he is somewhere in the city with the Messieurs d’Alençon and de Condé.”

      And then he added, in a tone so low that the queen alone could hear:

      “Your majesty, if you would see him — to be in whose place I would give my life — go to the king’s armory.”

      “Thanks, Tavannes, thanks!” said Marguerite, who, of all that Tavannes had said, had heard only the chief direction; “thank you, I will go there.”

      And she went on her way, murmuring:

      “Oh, after all I promised him — after the way in which he behaved to me when that ingrate, Henry de Guise, was concealed in the closet — I cannot let him perish!”

      And she knocked at the door of the King’s apartments; but they were encompassed within by two companies of guards.