She looks at him with her sad blurry eyes, and he knows she'd hate him if she could. But she can't, not even now, not even after everything he's done to her. He remembers the look on her face when he yelled at the guards to grab her, remembers her screaming, cursing him, threatening. He remembers every little detail, every day that's passed since that moment, every word she's said.
«Henry,» she finally breathes, barely audiable, her mouth and her toung don't really obey her. «Did you come to glout?»
He sighs. It's been months since he placed his wife into the tower, and she still doesn't want to understand why. Or maybe she does, and that idea, a glimce of it even, it frightens him. But his wife's belly grows, it's visible now, much more visible than the last time Henry came here. It has been two weeks ago, he thinks. Maybe even three. He had some matters to attend to in Paris, some lords to please here at court, he simply didn't have time to spend with his... He stops that thought right there and then. He doesn't want to think of her as a wife, only a mother to his children. To his child, he corrects himself sadly, still seeing the agonized faces of his dead sons, still feeling the smell of the rotten flesh eaten by the black death. Still moarning.
«I can see you're feeling better now, Catherine,» he responds with a small grin, touching his wife's cheeck with his fingers. She doesn't move away, she's silently looking at him for what seems to be eternity.
«You know it will kill me,» she finally says, her voice dry.
He does, indeed. And he hates that it's come to this, but there is no other choice. He needs an heir, a son, and Catherine will give him one even if that is the last thing she does. Henry looks at her with pity — she's pale, her hair is messy and sweaty, her body is bounded to the bed.
She doesn't want this child, he knows. She wouldn't let him touch her like a man touches a woman ever since she nearly died giving birth to their twin daughters... The daughters who didn't survive. It happened four yeats ago, but Catherine still hears the doctor say that the next child will kill her. And she keeps her husband, her king, as far from her as possible. And it irritates him, even if for a time being he knows he doesn't really want to bed her.
And then he ocuses her of treason, of adultery. He threatens her with an execution. And his Catherine breaks. She comes to him, and that's as close to begging for her life as it gets: she lets him kiss her, touch her. She allows all the memories from the past come back. She's too old to bare children, she says several hours later, while still moaning and breathing heavily with pleasure under her king. Her husband. And for a moment he really wants to have her back. That is, untill he finds out she'd been unfaithfull for real. She'd given birth to a bastard child. And she deserves to die in the most horrific way possible.
«France needs this child. France needs a future king,» he nods to a woman standing next to him, and she bends over Catherine, pours liquid into her mouth, holds her head above the pillow, wipes away the tear escaping the queen's eye. She then touches the belly, inspecting, afraid to find out that something went wrong. But everything is exactly the way it should be. The woman sighs relieved.
«You tried to put your bastard son on the throne once, why not try it again with my blessing?» Catherine hisses as morphine starts its way through her body. She's been getting the drug every day ever since she's been put into the tower.
«Because Vatican said no,» Henry sounds irritated. It didn't please him to spy on his wife to learn whether she could still bare children. It didn't please him to order all of her medications to be secretly stollen. All those potions she took to make sure she wouldn't end up pregnant... And it sure as hell didn't please him to rape his own wife. But he didn't have a choice, he says to himself again.
«It's a sign, Henry. All of your sons dying during a plague, it's a sign...»
«Our sons, Catherine, our sons...»
They stare at each other in silence. It happens all over again every time he comes to his wife's cell. He wants to make sure she doen't get rid of the child. He's locked her up for that. He keeps giving her morphine to avoid any stress, anything that could cause a miscarriage. He doesn't allow any of Catherine's trusted ladies or servants into the tower. For they can help her, and the king doesn't want that. He handpicked the people he trusts the most to take care of the queen: to feed her, to wash her, to watch her day and night...
And then he thinks of it as a retribution. Not just now, but every time he finds himself feeling sorry for his wife, he reminds himself of her betreyal, of her lover and of the child she gave to another man. She owes a child to her husband. One more child is what Henry needs from her, and if she manages to survive, he might forgive her after all.
«And what if it is a girl, Henry?» she asks slowly, swallowing a peace of fruit the woman's just put into her mouth. «You will kill me for nothing,» she adds closing her eyes. She tries to move, but the ropes won't let her. The morphine won't let her.
«I could have killed you for your treason, Catherine...» his fingers rub her sweaty forehead putting away the wet hair. She's trembling visibly.
«I loved you,» she whispers and for a moment he thinks he's imagining it. «Ever since we were wed, we learnt to love each other and I never learnt not to.»
This is the first time she says that. Henry shivers. He always knew his wife loved him in her own way. In a way only Medici could love. And it irritated him, because as years passed he grew weary of her, tired. Bored. He still liked the idea that he posessed her. He loved the fact that she belonged to him and couldn't ever belong to someone else — perhaps, that was why it hurt him so deeply to learn she'd taken a lover while they still shared not only a bed, but the affecton for each other.
«You always had your special ways of showing it, Catherine,» he laughs sitting next to her and waving a hand at the woman to make her leave.
«You didn't have to do this to me,» Catherine's voice has hardened, it's loud and clear. Surprisingly clear. «I would have given up willingly if you only asked. But you didn't, you forced yourself on me!»
He clenches his teeth. It's not what he wants the guards to hear, it's not what he wants anybody to know. She's lying, he thinks. She'd never let him impregnate her, she is too keen to keep her own life. Perhaps now more than ever. And he wonders why. He wonders what gives her strength to go on, because God is his witness he's never thought a woman could bury all of her children and stay sane.
She smiles at him with that evil Medici smile of hers. She's tied up to a bed in a tower for the the past several months, and she still manages to smile at her husband. For that Henry hates this witch. For that and for the fact that she survived the plague while their children didn't. It's not fair. This woman made his life miserable, she never cared for him, she always treated him as if it was her who had royal blood in her veins...
She tries to move her hand towards him — just as far as the rope will allow. He sees the gesture, his heart melts again. Not because he loves his wife, but because it pleases him to finally be in control of their relationship. Henry lowers his head kissing his wife's fingers, takes her arm into his. It's not too long before she'll give birth to either his savior or her death. Or both, he grins. Henry looks down. She's still smiling, lips spreading wide in an insane laughter.
«I miss them,» he says slowly, untying her hand to bring it to his chest. «Our boys, I miss them greatly».
The smile vanishes from Catherine's face as she closes her eyes. She's all too sleepy and blurry and God knows what else with all the morphine in her blood, and frankly speaking Henry cannot recognize the woman who he eiher loved or hated all those years. She's not Catherine de Medici. She's a doll, a figurine, a pale copy. Watching her drift to sleep he regrets that he didn't try it in a diferent way. Perhaps she's teling the truth and if so, he wouldn't be alone right now. But her eyes are closed, and he puts his wife's hand back to the bed. He gets up. The rumor from right after the plague comes back into Henry's mind: they said the queen had tried to kill herself. They said she'd drunk the poison... She claimed it'd happened by accident.
Henry kisses her forehead and slowly leaves the room. The next time he comes he hopes to see a son born. For if it's not a boy and Catherine still survives, Henry doesn't know what he'll do. He knows however what he'll have to.