the King failed to greet him.
At last we took our places before the massive wooden doors at the front entrance of the palace. Trumpets blared as the doors opened to reveal the crowds, cheering and jubilant despite the heat.
The youngest relatives of the bride and groom-two grinning girl twins and a trio of timid boys-went first, scattering rose petals. They were followed by the Cardinal and at some remove Navarre, flanked by Conde and Coligny.
Once Henri and his party had begun to descend the palace stairs, Margot emerged from her hiding place with her attendants bearing the long, rustling train. A thousand diamonds glittered on her cloak and gown; a hundred encircled her long throat. Her eyes were so swollen and red that I knew she had spent the night weeping. I told myself it did not matter: Few would be able to see her as closely as I could; they would notice only the gown, the cloak, the jewels, and her regal manner, and deem her a proper queen.
With her brothers flanking her and her three attendants in tow, my daughter slowly walked down the steps of the palace. After several paces I followed her; the remaining princes and princesses of the blood from the Houses of Bourbon and Guise came after me.
At the base of the palace steps stood the entrance to the gallery, which stretched from the Cardinal’s palace to a small, roped-off opening in front of a high platform. This platform had been built atop the steps at Notre-Dame’s western facade so that it was level with the cathedral doors and extended fifty paces outward, rendering it entirely visible to the throngs filling the plaza. The gallery was constructed of tall wooden posts-carpenters’ families ate well the year of a royal wedding-set upright into the ground, connected by crossbeams, and covered with a canvas roof. It was draped inside and out with garlands of red roses and swags of billowing pale blue silk to match the bride’s attire.
I forced a dignified smile as I processed behind Margot, past the rows of lesser nobles who stood inside the gallery. The canvas roof provided shade from the fierce midmorning sun, though the air inside was a cloying mix of the essences of rose, sweat, and fresh-cut timber. Sunlight streamed in the gallery’s eastern side and fell on the glorious train of moire silk. I stared at it, entranced by the way the blue fabric shifted in the dappled light like an undulant, shimmering ocean; tiny diamonds, sewn a finger’s width apart, flashed in the sun.
The noise of the crowd suddenly dulled, as if I had been submerged in water; its cheers became muted shrieks of terror, its cries of encouragement faint mortal groans. I looked out of the gallery into the ruthless sun and saw not joy upon the thousands of faces but grimaces of fear and pain.
A torrent of blood gushed out from under Margot’s glorious blue train, past the ankles of the girls who held it aloft. It swept past me, soaking my slippers and the hem of my gown, rushing out to fill the width of the gallery. I stared at the nobles who stood inside the gallery, watching. Their self-conscious grins were unchanged. They did not see the blood; they did not hear the screaming.
I looked down at the fierce red current and thought,
I set my slippered foot down and watched it disappear beneath the dark stream. I could see the blood but not feel it: My heel struck dry cobblestone. I lifted my gaze and forced my lips to curve in a parody of a smile. I did not look down again.
I survived the long procession through the gallery and emerged into daylight and an open space that led to the platform in front of Notre-Dame. The area was cordoned off, heavily guarded, and blessedly unbloodied; Henri and his men awaited us there. Two sets of steps led up to the platform; Navarre’s group ascended the northern stairs, Margot’s the southern. Both groups met at the center of the platform, where the Cardinal de Bourbon stood waiting behind a prayer bench. A row of chairs had been placed nearby so that the wedding party could sit and watch the proceedings; we filed in front of them and sat at the Cardinal’s signal. Margot and Henri knelt at the bench, and the ceremony began.
The ritual had been stripped to the bone, and the Cardinal was efficient. He carried no breviary, but recited from memory from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:
“If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am as a ringing brass or clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and knowledge, but have not love, I am nothing… Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth.”
The full sun was brutal: Beneath swaths of damask and layers of petticoats, I melted. Perspiration trickled down my forehead; I quashed the urge to wipe it away. My eyelids fluttered as the Cardinal’s face began to shift, growing rounder, fuller, paler.
I shook off my dizziness and refocused my gaze until I saw the Cardinal’s features again. He was addressing Navarre.
“Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife? To love her, and cherish her, so long as you both shall live?”
Navarre’s strong voice carried over the hushed, breathless city. “Yes.”
The Cardinal looked to my daughter. “And do you, Marguerite, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband? To honor and obey him, so long as you both shall live?”
The crowd waited. Margot bowed her head and answered nothing. After a torturously long pause, the Cardinal-assuming that heat or emotion had overwhelmed the bride-repeated the question.
Margot did not reply. Her lips were pressed together tightly, her face flushed from something other than the heat. Her groom resolutely fastened his gaze on the Cardinal.
“God be damned,” Charles muttered beside me. “God be damned, haven’t I endured enough?” He leaped from his seat; beside me, Edouard tensed as the King marched up to Margot. He put his hand firmly upon her jeweled crown and began to pump it up and down, forcing her to perform a parody of an affirmative nod.
Margot’s features crumpled with humiliation and fury-but the relieved Cardinal took it as an answer and pronounced the couple man and wife. The crowd’s response was thunderous. The couple rose, and the Cardinal presented them to the assembly-Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre and Prince of France, and his wife, Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre and Princess of France.
I rose to embrace my daughter and her husband. But as I stood up, daylight suddenly flickered. I looked down at my feet and saw there a dark, spreading stain. It traveled quickly until the entire platform bled crimson.
Margot had married the Huguenot king, but it was not enough.
Something prompted me to look over my shoulder and down. On the northern edge of the platform, an arm’s breadth from the halberd-bearing Swiss, was Cosimo Ruggieri.
He stood near a group of black-clad Huguenots and might well have been mistaken for one of them were it not for the red satin stripes on his black sleeves and breeches. The past thirteen years had taken their toll: His blue- black hair was streaked with silver, his shoulders markedly stooped. In the midst of the jubilant revelers, he alone did not smile. He stared somberly, intently, directly at me.
I wanted to run to him, to ask him if he, too, saw the river of blood. But I could only stare fixedly at him until Edouard hissed at me: The time had come to go into the cathedral for the proxy ceremony. While Navarre and his party waited outside, I reluctantly entered the church with the others.
When the ritual was over and we came back out onto the platform, accompanied by the deafening chorus of Notre-Dame’s five bells, I turned my searching, anxious gaze to the crowd, but Ruggieri had vanished.
A banquet followed at the Cardinal’s palace; afterward, the sated diners headed for the Louvre’s ballroom. I ate and danced and kept an anxious eye on my daughter, who had apparently resigned herself to her fate; she danced and smiled with apparent sincerity, though she scrupulously avoided meeting the admiring gaze of her husband.
I had unwisely joined in a vigorous
“
I looked at him from behind my frantically gyrating fan. “What now, Don Diego?”
“It is that ill-bred boor Coligny. Go and listen to him now: He is bragging openly that he will return victorious
