"I will tell you how I broke the king's great heart."
"Henri." I whispered, trapped beneath him in cocoon of silken linen and strong, firm muscle. "Henri, you must let go."
The king murmured incohertently and tightened his arms around me. Dawn was beginning to break through the camp and the first streaks of weak light shown through the colored glass window above the bed. Within his room the air still smelt of night, perfumed with incense and the aroma of our bodies, bitter and heady as wine against my tongue. With a sleepy smile felt against my neck he pressed inside of me.
"Henri!" I squeaked. "Your gentlemen wait outside!"
He moved again, gently testing the strength of my resistance and found none. He raised himself, stiff armed, and grinned, face full of mischief. Red hair stood on end, wildly disordered, and rose gold dusted his body, the gilding on a statue, marching down over muscles honed by constant exertion. Broad shouldered and narrow waisted with powerful thighs, he appeared more glorious to me than God, and my heart worshipped him. How different the lover in my bed was from the man that reigned as king! Demanding and arrogant as a monarch, he was the most unselfish of lovers, giving of himself unstintingly until I found bliss and then delaying his passion still further until I became as much a slave to his desires as he was to mine.
"Then you must be silent." He teased and he settled back against me with the contented noise of a man that had found his hearth after a long time away.
When he finally let me go the day had begun around us and the noises of the gentlemen outside the door were disgruntled. We had been lovers for a week, and each day he made me stay later and later with him, sleeping in his arms until I would steal away back to the pavilion under the cover of early morning. The Borgia sensuality which was my birthright had come into full flower and found in Henry its perfect match.
He sprang from the bed. "Cover yourself. I would not have the men see that which is mine alone."
The king was in a playful mood and he laughed and jested with his gentleman of the privy chamber as they went about the preparations for a meeting with King Francis.
"A fine day, Majesty." The man who spoke loomed tall and even more handsome than the king. "You appear to be in good humor."
"Indeed, Suffolk. The sun has never shone so brightly."
"Was your night restful, Majesty?"
"No." He said and then chuckled ruefully. "I shall be forced to sleep through the night soon else I shall waste away like a bull with too great a herd." The men laughed appreciatively and cast looks to the bed where only my blushing face was visible.
A metal tub for the king's bath was prepared and servants entered, filling it with buckets of steaming water. Order was restored to the room by their hands, and the king's men laid out his garments for the festivities and retrieved the jewels scattered about the floor, remnants of the king's whimsical lovemaking of the night before. Henry's eyes never strayed from mine as he waited, gloriously, unconcernedly nude and becoming aroused once more as our eyes clashed and danced over the well used form of the other. Several long scratches blazed crimson on his chest, fitting retribution for the love bites that discolored my neck. He lowered himself into the tub and submerged completely, then slicked back wet hair, the movement sculpting the lines of his chest and arms into glorious perfection. Droplets of water clung to his eyelashes and beard, kindling again the desire that he had so recently assuaged. Henry watched me with a smile and raised eyebrow, reading the prurient directions of my thoughts, and dismissed the servants with an impatient hand.
"My liege, the tourney shall begin soon." One man protested.
"Out." He ordered, and when the men had left I slipped naked from the bed.
"My apologies, Majesty." I said, coming to stand behind him and smoothing my hands over his shoulders. I bent low and whispered in his ear. "I merely wished to tend to your washing as the men would have done."
"Henry. I am Henry to you." He said roughly, twisting and lifting me into the tub astride his hips as though I weighed no more than a child. He found his place inside of me with a groan wrenched from the center of his being. "By Christ woman, I shall draw blood again if I do not tire soon of your charms."
I twined my arms around his neck and moved in the slow rhythm that he had taught me, a dance of straining limbs and endless heat. "I am Borgia, Henri. Perhaps it is I that shall bloody you."
Much later the king's men returned and robed him in accustomed splendor, red velvet doublet slashed to reveal cloth of gold edged with pearls. Undoubtedly the scandal of our intemperate passion would travel through the king's court, many of whom had been kept waiting while he spilled water upon the floor and made me cry out in delight. I dozed in bed, content until I could retrieve my gown without the intrusion of a dozen eyes.
"Lucia." He had come on silent feet to stand beside me.
"Majesty." I whispered. He took my hand and raised me upright. I pressed the linen against my chest, trying to preserve some semblance of modesty.
Henry gestured to a tall man. "This is Suffolk. He will see to having your things brought from your sister's pavilion. You must make ready for we leave in three days time."
I made no reply. His insistence that I accompany him to England had been our only source of discord during the last heady days. The position of his official lover I refused with as much vehemence as I had earlier refused to share his bed and Henry had ignored my objections with royal indifference.
"Stay here, Lucia." He commanded, including the Duke in his look, ensuring that I would not be allowed to flee. "I will return at midday."
Gorgeously robed noblemen followed the king, leaving me with the Duke who, for all that he possessed the heady beauty of a Greek god, stirred me not at all. The Duke of Suffolk was so great a person in my lover's kingdom that Louise had deemed it necessary to warn me of him during our whispered morning conversations The kings most trusted confident, Suffolk had married Henry's sister, the Dowager Queen of France, without permission and escaped with little punishment for such was the great love Henry bore him. A man to be feared, my sister said, and respected.
"You have made my king very happy."
I said nothing, only returned his look.
"He has spoken of you to me, and his plans for the future. He will build you fine homes close to each of his palaces. A title is to be yours, and jewels and gowns fit for a queen. Anything you desire shall be provided. He schemes and plots like an Italian Pope already to find a way that your sons will inherit his throne."
"I have asked for nothing save his love." I told the Duke, angry that I should be thought so mercenary.
"Which has made you all the more desirable in his eyes." He studied me in silence, taking in the measure of my character with eyes that appeared too jaded for his handsome face. "You seem to be a righteous woman, Lucia de Corella, for all that you have taken him to your bed. Do not come to England. He desires you now, but there have been other loves, other bastard children. In time they have all faded from his mind and you shall as well."
His words stung, for they were a reflection of my own fears. "Would your king approve, that you have spoken in this way to me?"
Suffolk laughed. "He would probably chop off my head for he is infatuated with you such as I have never seen. But he is my king, and my dearest friend, and I would not have him suffer for your sake. And it will end that way. If you come to England blood will be shed. Think on it." He turned for the door and called for servants to attend me.
The Duke's words resonated, though I knew he spoke more to protect his own interests than from any noble intent. With the assistance of a sour faced maid I clothed myself in the crumpled gown of yesterday and walked through the deserted palace rooms. The canvas walls breathed gently in air swept that swept in from the sea, redolent of salt and fish and the increasingly rancid odor of the field. I found a window that showed the festivities outside, the jousts and wrestling, the actors and acrobats who preformed for the enjoyment of the nobles who were becoming restless after two weeks of endless entertainment.
What held my attention was not the festivities but the desolation of the land surrounding the encampment, the deep trenches in the mud from the passage of wagons and the absence of birds or wild animals. Spectacle and show had destroyed the once pristine field, stripping it down to bare earth and the ruins of its beauty were only disguised by the golden pavilions, fantastical banners and glittering gowns of the revelers. When the courts departed it would take years to repair, decades before deer would brave the quiet of a sunset without fear of the hunter's horn. The memory of the untouched landscape from the first day filled my eyes with tears, for I recognized in myself a similar fate.
I searched through the palace until I found the king's private chapel, complete with a separate alter where he took communion each morning. Here the colors of the hangings were more subdued, with tapestries depicting the life and sacred passion of our Lord. The stillness of heart needed for prayer eluded me though I assumed a supplicants posture upon the kneeler. The sanctified air of the chapel cleared my thoughts, allowing me to escape the sensual trap of Henry Tudor's embrace.
I breathed in the familiar scents of beeswax candles and the heady, cloying incense, letting them remind me of the life I had left behind, the life that God had chosen for me.
A shaft of weak sunlight broke through the clouds and shone through the single window behind the alter, illuminating dust motes that hung in the air and catching the errant sparkle of a tiny jewel trapped in the thicket of my curls, blue as the king's bright eyes. Henry had decked me in the splendor of his regalia the previous night; diamonds the size of pebbles, blood red rubies and the chain of office clasped around my neck were his promise to me. If I journeyed to England I would be cherished, loved, and provided for as long as the king's favor lasted. And yet however much honor he heaped upon me, whatever titles his grace saw fit to grant, I would be a whore. For one promised to God, accustomed to the veneration due a virgin, that fate was unendurable. Already sneers and disapproval dug into my skin with a thousand shallow cuts, wounds of a careless thought and a maid's disapproval. Where I to become his acknowledged mistress for longer than this short season out of time it would destroy me, stripping away the light he claimed to cherish until I became only another Borgia lost to excess and the lure of power.
An errant wind buffeted the canvas walls of the palace and the candles guttered in their golden stands. I had dreamed of winds the previous night and woken with a shiver when I heard them begin to call my name. I did not have to search through my memory for long to understand the meaning of the dream for the story of Francesca and Paulo had been in my thoughts often since I had succumbed to love. A copy of Dante's poem had been a shared treasure among the girls at the convent, carefully guarded from watchful eyes and all had sighed over the fate of the infamous lovers, eternally buffeted by lust in the inferno. Only now did I understand the lure of the passion that had so utterly consumed them.
Gradually the fog of thought lifted and I realized that another had come to seek the comfort of Christ's embrace. Through the gauzy curtain I could hear her approach the alter and lift her voice in prayer, the words accented with the tones of Castile. A spreading darkness on the floor showed where the shadow Queen knelt with her ladies.
Katherine the Queen and Lucia the bastard. How like we were, I mused, watching her. Both light of hair, born of the hot southern sun, and devout. I saw Katherine, and in her broken image what I would become in twenty years of loving the king, only she had the protection of his name and a crown. None of these I possessed, and my life would be utterly consumed by his fire. For that was his nature. The great vigor of the king was fed by love of his country and his people and, ultimately, the love of the women drawn helplessly to his side.
Some noise must have alerted her to my presence for she started from her kneeling position and faced me across the partition, an older woman with lines of care creasing her once beautiful face. The Queen recognized me and stiffened with anger. She dismissed her women. After their departure she cast me a look leaden with disdain. "You pollute the king my husband's chapel with your presence." Her voice sounded harsh and resentful, not the carefully modulated tones she used in her court dealings.
"We are all welcome before God, your Majesty." I had no quarrel with her and spoke respectfully, as was her due.
"You would quote the words of God to me? As though you were fit to even speak in my presence?" She drew herself up and in her stocky, upright figure the blood of a hundred kings and queens shone. "So many of you have passed through his life. Whores where he finds a moments pleasure and still he returns to me, for we are bound by holy bonds that nothing can sever."
A shard of ice lodged in my heart at her words and I lashed out in pain. "Who are you to lecture me on holiness, good Queen Katherine, the lover of two brothers? Is your own soul so free of taint?" The Queen gasped in shock as though I had struck at her heart, and I fled from the chapel rather than injure her further with my cruelty.
When the king returned at midday tears had left wet tracks on my face that I could not conceal. He knelt on the floor and embraced me tenderly. In his strong arms I found the peace and joy which had once been mine only in prayer.
"My light, what has caused your tears?"
"Henri, I can not come to England." Hours of prayer to a Saint Lucia, my patron, had shown clearly the path that would lead me back to God.
"No." He said firmly. He tilted my chin back and stared into my eyes. In his I could see a determination bordering on madness. "No, you will not leave me. You will live beside me and be my love. When you become pregnant we shall pass it off as Katherine's and our son will rule."
"And if she does not agree to this?"
"I am the king and it is my will."
"And a will such as hers is not so easily bent. And when the first flush of this passion fades.."
"It shall not." He gathered me into his arms and we sat in the pool of warm colored light that the sun shining through the glass had painted on the floor. "Can you not feel it, Lucia, when we are together like this? That in all the world no one could love you half so well?"
"You have loved others." I accused, infuriated by the calm certainty he could shape the world to suit his desires. "There have been others who have shared your bed and born your children! Should I bear only daughters will they be called Fitzroy as well?" I spat. Whispers like venomous serpents sounded in my head, tales of his many lovers and the children born with his unmistakable Tudor face.
Henry disregarded my words and clasped my head in his hands, bringing his forehead to rest against mine. Thumbs rough as stone pressed against my temples, where blood rushed with the sound of armies on the march, a furious tempo echoed by our breathing.
"Bear me a dozen daughters." He said, voice low and fierce, blue eyes bearing into mine as though to steal my thoughts and govern my actions. "Spurn the wealth which is all that I can offer you. Sink your sharp claws into me and draw blood with your words. Hate me. Do anything you would except leave me." He shook me, bruising my skin, and then pressed his lips against mine in a fierce kiss. "I would sooner lock you in a tower than have you parted from my side for a moment. I love you. I will do anything to keep you by my side."
Henry's love burned like fire, a towering inferno of need and possessiveness that I recognized for they were my own tempestuous emotions. Creatures such as we were could never love gently or kindly, for such softness was foreign to our nature. Truly in all the world there was no other whom I could love half so well, for he was my twin soul, the only man ever to see the truth of who I was and love me for it. Our love was madness and yet I reveled in it, abandoning myself to the whirlwind like Francesca and Paulo and found myself utterly consumed.
There are many memories that I keep close to my heart of Henry Tudor. They hang like jewels in my mind, more precious than any gift he gave to me save one. That first meeting, when he defeated me with a single glance. When he showed me his broken, tormented heart. The kiss upon my cheek. They pale before the glory of that memory, when he loved me beneath the glass window that painted our bodies with the colors of the Tudor rose shown therein, green and gold and vivid crimson. It was the truest joining I have ever known, tragic and wild and full of beauty, like a summer sunrise before a deadly storm.
He sat erect on the floor in the puddle of light and eased me down until I clasped him a velvet embrace. My breasts pressed against his chest and his hands on my hips moved me slowly, savoring our joining. He moved and drank the gasp like honey from my lips. I sought his breath with my mouth, the feather of distance separating our...
"My apologies, Marietta. I have allowed the delights of those memories to run away with my tongue. I did not wish to assault the purity of your ears."
"Please, do not cease on my account." Marietta squeaked and fanned her scarlet cheeks.
Sister Maria Lucia chuckled. "Let it be enough to say that say that Henry loved me long that day and when we two parted the warmth of the sun no longer painted our bodies or even the sky, for night had fallen. He left to attend to duty and I returned to my sister's pavilion."
"You know that you must leave him, sister." Louise and I sat on her bed, where rumpled linens and a faint odor spoke of a lover entertained in the night.
"How can I?" My eyes were still dazzled by the image of him decked in the colors of the rainbow. "I love him."
Louise bit her lip and looked on the verge of tears. "That is why you must leave him. Lucia..." She urged, clasping my hands in both of hers. "Were you other then what you are I would wish you joy of it and him! Truly to be the beloved of a king is not so great a sacrifice. But you are too good for the cruel world of the court. It will destroy you to be known as his whore, to have your children taken from you. And the Queen, for all that she is a dry husk, is a good and holy woman. Would you be the cause of her disgrace?"
"All of this would I bear for his sake." I could see the torrent of words which would soon emerge from her lips and sought to forestall them. "You counsel me to leave him and yet I have seen how you well you govern your own heart. This bed smells of love but not, I think, of your husband."
Louise shrugged. "Yes, and I love as hopelessly as you. Philippe and I.. " She exhaled a huge breath and fell back against the coverlet. She plucked a loose thread from the tiny blue flowers embroidered on her gown. "We journeyed to court on the same road the year after I was married. Spring rains made the way impassable and our parties took shelter in a chateau abandoned during the great dying. We were lovers before the end of that first night. He made love to me in towers crumbling to dust with stones pressed against my back and in courtyards where mist clung to my gown. A hundred times he loved me during those days and the memory of it still warms me. Perhaps one day, if my husband dies before I am a crone... But it is no matter. I console myself with a dream. But for you even that dream is beyond imagining. If Katherine dies, he could never crown you as his Queen. You are a bastard."
Had Louise spoken with anything other than perfect love and sadness her frank words would have torn the fragile fabric of our relationship.
"And what of our family?" She continued. "The secret of your birth is not so well hid that others can not discover the truth of it as I have done. Would you disgrace our Father and Lucrezia's memory, revealing their secret to all and placing the woman who raised you in grave danger? Already the agents of two courts search for details of your life and I have been hard pressed to refuse them."
"How was it you learned the truth of them?" I asked, seeking temporary refuge from words that I could not counter.
Louise laughed. "Our father was not as clever as he thought. On their wedding night Cesare Borgia admitted to loving another, and it took only the rumors of their tender devotion to convince my mother that he spoke of his sister. And still she loved him, and sought Lucrezia's aid to free him from prison for in all the world she knew no one else could love him as they did. When his sword was brought to the Duchess after his death it only affirmed that which she already knew."
"Charlotte de Albret must have been a woman of unparalleled strength and beauty, as you are. I wish I could have known her."
Louise clasped my hand. "She would have loved you as I do. The world would have trembled in fear had we her wisdom to guide us."
We embraced and the tears on our cheeks mingled
"Love him, sister. But I have made plans that will allow you to escape if there is a need."
A noise outside the king's door pulled me from slumber. Henry lay sprawled face down in the bed, deeply in the arms of Morpheus. He had fallen asleep before I came from Louise's pavilion and rather than wake him I had slipped next to him, where sleep soon found me as well.
It sounded again, and a hastily muffled word of protest. Footsteps approached the door. The king's gentlemen would never disturb him in this manner and icy fingers of fear crawled up my back at the knowledge of danger. Naked, I slipped from the bed and found my knives. I waiting in the deepest shadows, the training of Micheletto sounding like a prayer in my ears.
The door opened, and in the dim light a large man walking quietly toward the bed. I emerged from the darkness and shadowed his movements. When he drew close to where Henry lay I pushed him off balance. He crashed to the floor and I straddled him and pressed my knife to the place on his throat where a jeweled collar met a dark beard.
"Majesty." I called, and then called again. With a muffled oath Henry sat up, blinking. His eyes found where I had trapped the man on the ground. From the open door light spilled into the room and a dozen French and English watched with horrified faces.
"My dear." Henry said gently. "Why do you sit upon my brother the king of France.?"
With a gasp I threw myself back even as the prone king began to laugh.
"Henri, do not rebuke her. I was quite enjoying myself. I come to visit you this morning and instead of my brother Henri I am beset by an Amazon." The king laughed. His words showed good humor but his eyes sparkled with desire when he looked at me. "How very astute you are, brother. In this one you have both a lover and a defender." He held his hand out and, thus forced, I rose naked from the floor to stand before him. "What a beautiful little devil you are," he said, admiring my form with a practiced eye. "The cousin of my darling Louise, I think. Will you next travel to my court?"
Henry rose from the bed and walked soft footed, to stand behind me, his naked thighs brushing the roundness of my hips. "She will travel with me to England, brother. I have not tired of her charms." His hand curled about my waist possessively. Rage stiffened my spine at the knowledge that in this moment I was no more than a prize that Henry had won.
The king's lip protruded in an unmistakable pout. "I am loathe to let you leave with such a jewel. I must rebuke my friend Louis. He did not tell me the songbird has such splendid feathers and sharp claws." Francis's eyes continued to caress my body, displayed like a prize under Henry's hands. His dark eyes suddenly flashed with wicked humor. "Let us wrestle for her. If I win she shall come to my court."
Henry laughed, the booming, good natured laugh of the king. "You bargain too meanly, bother. Let me send this girl away and we can discuss the nature of the wager." He turned his back on my horrified eyes and ignored my silent plea. "Suffolk!" He bellowed. When the Duke arrived I was shoved to his arms as though I were chattel, a harlot where the king had found his ease for a single night. The Duke spread his cloak over my shoulders and led me from the room where I was assaulted by the laughing, sneering faces of French and English noblemen.
Suffolk helped me to gown myself in a small chamber and said nothing about my furious, humiliated tears. I was still weeping when soldiers returned me to my sister's pavilion.
Louise sent everyone away and with a glance she divined my thoughts. I would leave, that very moment had I been able for I had been humiliated beyond endurance by the man who claimed to love me.
"You are certain?" She asked. "You would never be able to see him again."
I am not a whore, my pride screamed, remembering the laughing faces of the court and the king's indifference. I am the daughter of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia. I am the granddaughter of Alexander Sextus. "Yes."
I spent that day and night in the pavilion of Philippe de Bourbon, where the servants of the king could not find me, though I watched as men in green and white livery scoured the entire field.
"You must be seen." Louise said, and she touched fragrance to the hollow of my neck and brushed paint on my pale cheeks. The last tourney was soon to occur and she had come to Philippe's tent to prepare me. The black gown she brought emphasized the pallor of my skin and the deep hollows under my eyes, the remnant of a sleepless night. Her arm around my waist lent me strength, and together we walked to where the last day of jousting would soon begin. Thunder rumbled and the gray skies matched my desolate mood. A storm would soon break across the field, and the air felt heavy with impending rain.
My eyes flew straight to Henry and I drank the sight of him in, knowing it would be my last. He stood under a cloth of gold tent as his men finished fastening the armor around his chest. His face was as pale as mine despite the heat of the day, and his eyes searched relentlessly up and down the field as the men readied him.
For all my anger I could not stop the softness that flowed through me at his obvious misery, the grief and regret stamped so plainly upon his face. A night of thought had clarified my mind and allowed me to understand why Henry had acted as he had. A king's mistress could be exploited and bribed, threatened or cajoled. A king's beloved was a fatal weakness, a loosed arrow that could pierce his heart. Knowing this I forgave Henry but I was Borgia, and would not allow myself to be debased again.
The unremitting darkness of the gown caught the kings eye and I felt the moment that he found me, pale cheeked and drab among the cheering crowd . He started toward where I stood but the Duke caught his arm, gesturing toward the other side of the field where an opponent already waited upon a prancing horse. The king swore, uncaring of the watching cardinals, and mounted his horse.
"Have you ever seen a joust, Marietta?"
The question jarred Marietta from the waking dream of a shouting crowd and a handsome, red headed king whose heart bled upon the field. "No." She answered.
"They have fallen out of favor. And, verily, they were ridiculous things, so much danger and gold expended on something that took only a moment. Years later Henri injured his leg during a joust and it troubled him ever after. That is why he grew so fat."
Marietta had learned much of the elderly nun's mind over the past hours and did not protest against the interruption in the narrative though she very much wished to. At the end of a long life, when she faced the unending darkness of the grave, only happy memories were to be savored.
"For that day though, all fell before the power of his lance and he blazed with the glory of the sun."
He unhorsed his competitor and acknowledged the roar of the crowd with an indifferent wave, for he had found me again. He pulled off his created helmet. Sweat had matted his hair and brought a hectic flush to his cheeks.
Forgive me. His eyes begged. Forgive me, I love you.
Words had never needed a voice to be spoken between us and I made no attempt to conceal my anger and hurt. To be disregarded like a slipper, wagered about as though a whore cut so deeply that the wound still bleed. I allowed my anger to lash against him, white hot as lightening and Henry flinched back from it. He dismounted and walked to the pavilion. He spoke to the hovering Duke of Suffolk as the gilded armor was removed and pressed something into his hand. The Duke made his way to where I stood, and the crowds parted in front of him like the armies of Pharaoh before the fiery pillar.
"My king sends you greetings, lady, and hopes that you will join him in his quarters soon."
"What, and miss the rest of the jousting?" I said, unable to summon a drop of enthusiasm for the sport.
Suffolk chuckled. "You truly are in a temper, as my king said. He bid me give you this, a symbol of his deepest apologies." The ring in the Duke's hand was simple, a small red stone encircled by a golden band. "It once graced the hand of Margaret Beaufort, his grandmother, and it is among his most precious possessions. For him to gift it to you is no small matter."
The king's eyes burned across the field so I made a show of curling the dukes fingers around the ring.
"Pray tell your king that I am not to be bought."
Another rumble of laughter started deep in the duke's chest. "I feel as though I stand between the fire of two cannon." He said ruefully. "His majesty said you would refuse but I was to tell you that had he wished to regain your favor with jewels he would have sent something worth tenfold of this ring. Instead he sent a memento he cherished of a good and holy woman who loved him before he was a king, knowing that you would do the same." I would have refused again but the Duke lowered his voice and spoke urgently. "Take it else the king will come himself and place it upon your hand. He is half out of his wits with grief already."
The Duke slid the ring upon my finger where it lay like a drop of blood against my knuckle.
"For all his fine words has his majesty forgotten that I am now pledged to journey to the French kings court?" The scandal of the wager had traveled widely. King Francis and Henry had wrestled and my lover, perhaps distracted by my absence, had been felled by a cunning move.
"They did not wager about you, girl. My king lost a diamond bracelet, nothing more." The Duke hesitated and then spoke again. "It was an error when I counseled you to leave."
"No, sir, you spoke rightly.
"Lucia.." His voice faltered when he felt the point of the knife I had pressed against his side.
"Loose your hand, sir, else you shall not live out the hour. Tell your king that I mean to return to God and my vocation." Across the crowd I found Henry's eyes for the last time.
I love you. Goodbye.
Without waiting to hear the Duke's next words I sheathed my knife and turned my back on the assemblage.
I walked from the field slowly, giving the Duke sufficient time to send men after me. Like a dark shadow I picked my way over the ruts as droplets of water began to fall from the sky. Slowly at first the rain sank into the depleted earth and then it began to race over bare ground as the storm broke. My skirts drug in ankle deep mud as I made my way to Louise's pavilion, where a horse waited with bulging bags tied to the saddle. I slipped into the tent unnoticed, for the dozen men who followed became lost in the warren. There I exchanged gowns with a bright eyed young girl whose honey colored wig was indistinguishable from my own hair.
The adventures of our family should have shown us that plans seldom unfold the way that the are intended. The girl had been instructed to ride for the coast, allowing the men who followed to keep sight of her. A small fishing boat waited that would have taken her to Calais, where a fat purse of gold coins waited for her arrival. The confusion the girl's flight wrought would have given me time to leave the field as part of Philippe de Bourbon's party and I would reside with him for the next year.
What my sister did not foresee was the arrival of the rain, and the storm that soon became a raging tempest. The boat capsized before the horrified eyes of the soldiers and weighted down by heavy skirts the girl drowned in moments. Even her body could not be recovered for burial although the king's agents searched long, combing the sands for the remains of the girl who had broken the English king's heart.
"He wept." Louise said. "I was brought to the chapel and he was kneeling at the alter with tears running down his face. By the living God, sister, he seems to have aged twenty years."
"He blames himself for my death."
"Lucia…what have we done?" Louise sounded terrified, as though the man our actions had birthed was more to be feared than pitied.
I thought of Henry then, the laughing hunter who had followed me from the field but also the tortured prince beset by demons, who feared what he might become. A presentiment of what the years would hold for my beloved seized my throat and it was a long while before I could speak. "God forgive me, I have made a terrible mistake."
Marietta could no longer contain her anger and her voice whipped out like a lash. "But why did you leave him? He loved you!"
Sister Maria Lucia sighed. "I told myself that I left him because I would never have been his equal, and that his love for me would have faded. That morality drove me from his arms or a desire to return to the convent...All of those reasons are lies. I left him because I was a coward, and unfit to bear the Borgia name. I feared he could not love me as I loved him but seen through the prism of 60 years I know that to be false as well. He truly loved me, and if God is merciful I shall see him again in the place behind the dawn."
"If you had stayed with him..."
"With me to guide him, to be the gentle voice of reason whispering in his ear, would any of it have happened?" Sister Maria Lucia held her hands out to Marietta, palms upward. "The blood of thousands stains my hands, Marietta. Moore, Fisher, all of them died for my pride and fear.
"You know the rest of the tale, of course, how he eventually divorced Katherine and married the Boleyn girl, shaking our church to its foundations."
"Do you think he loved her?"
"Anne? Or any of the rest that came after? I know not. In many ways I think the idea of love was twisted in his mind, and it became less about giving and joy and more about possessing someone utterly. Obsession walked hand in hand with passion for Henry even in his dealings with me, but no longer did the goodness of his nature temper those destructive impulses.
"I can not pardon you for what you did to him." Marietta said.
Sister Maria Lucia nodded. "Any amount of anger you feel is but a raindrop before the ocean of regret I have felt in all the years since I left him. He is my greatest crime and deepest regret. I can only hope that God has allowed me to atone in some measure for his many sins, for which I bear great responsibility." Sister Maria fingered the cross at her neck. "That is why I am here, my young sister . When I chose to rededicate myself to Christ it was not to atone for the sins of my family, only my own and they are legion."
In the face if such palpable grief Marietta found her own anger diminished. "My apologies, sister. I grieve for him. "
"It pleases me that you should do so." Sister Maria Lucia passed the cross back to Marietta and bid her look for a small lock of bright red hair almost concealed by the other treasures in the chest. She touched it and brought the hair to brush against her cheek.
"Not long after I arrived at the home of Philippe de Bourbon I realized I was pregnant."
Author's Note- This is probably the last chapter of this for a while. I have other projects to work on but I shall return. And if anyone is curious Chris Pratt is my model for young Henry, who was very handsome and athletic until injuring his leg in a jousting accident in 1536.