"Your Majesty." a soft voice said. The aged woman in black looked up slowly, she looked so fragile now. Thinner, older, more fragile.
"What it is?" The newly appointed Queen grandmother of France said. She sounded so small, so tired.
"The Queen Regent and Mother, your grace. She wishes for an audience." the squire said. Gulping, Catherine nodded her consent and Mary walked inside the room. The newly appointed Queen Regent of France walked inside the dim chambers of Catherine de Medici. Her body was covered in a long sleeved satin ball gown with a long train and wide skirt, her shoulders and chest bare. Covering her face and hair, trailing long past the skirt of her gown, a simple, unadorned black veil. In her arms, the recently anointed King of France. He lay awake in his mothers arms, small noises escaping him. He was donned in a little black velvet suit, gripping his mother's gown and veil, watching her eyes and the thick crown of diamonds that lay upon her forehead.
"Catherine." Mary said. Catherine and the ladies in the room bowed. "May we have the room?" Mary asked, her own voice cracking with grief and pain like she'd never known before. The ladies and servents instantly started leaving. She waited until the door closed, starting to speak.
"I wanted to give you something before the King and I sail to England in three days time." the Queen of Scotland and Regent of France nodded and Lady Greer Castleroy stepped out behind her, holding something encased in black velvet. The Lady curtseyed to her, before handing her the item. Catherine unwrapped it slowly, lips parting in a gasp as the crown of gold and pearls fell into her hands. "This no longer belongs to me." she acknowledged, looking down at the four month old baby gargling in his mothers arms. "It will belong to my son's Queen, whomever she may be. I thought you should keep it safe until we return." she said, her voice so small.
"I thought I wanted this back." Catherine started. But Mary cut her off.
"Perhaps you were right to hate me." she sighed. "Nostradamus was right all along. I brought Francis' death, just like he predicted." she sniffles, grateful for the veil covering her face and her child. "I let him sleep with Lola, get her pregnant. And I didn't stop him from running to her last year. And after what the Pope just ruled over not long ago, I know it to be true. I caused his death. And the death of my Lady and their baby." she sniffed. "If I could do it all again, you must know that if I could go back in time and change what happened, what I did, then I would." Mary said, looking down at her baby, their matching eyes interlocking. "I am so sorry Catherine." she choked.
The Medici former Queen slowly got up from her bed. Mary didn't look up from her son, watching him and hearing the rustling of her gown. Soon, the tips of her court heels and the edge of her gown came into view. A soft hand cupped her chin over her veil and slowly tilted it up.
"I don't blame you, child." her voice so soft and almost maternal. She didn't dare fall into that trap. Catherine always had and always would hate her in one way or another. But she listened anyway. "Francis was his own man who made his own choices. He chose his path in Paris, he chose his actions in the plague. And long ago, he chose to love you." Catheine took a breath. "I see you as children so clearly now, as if it were yesterday." she looked down and touched James' head over the veil. James gurgled in recognition, moving his little arms and flexing his little legs. "I see Francis the same age as his own son, your baby." she looked up at Mary once more.
The new regent couldn't hold Catherine's stare, how unlike her. She bowed her head and quietly sobbed her pain and grief, sorrow threatening to choke her. The elder placed her hands on the youngers biseps. She looked up, tears gliding down her cheeks. "He loved you and you loved him. That love, it gave him so much joy. That is what you need to remember as you move ahead in this life."
"Move ahead?" she asked, her voice shaky with tears. "I don't know how." her voice cracked at the last word.
"You've already started." Catherine insisted. "Elizabeth is dead. You have England. You have France. You have an empire." one hand cupped Mary's cheek, the other cupped James' head. "You have an heir. You have Francis' son, a little piece of him for the rest of your life." she paused, the hand cupping her cheek slipping down to touch her bare chest, landing right over her heart. "And you have his heart. You will always have my son's heart." she paused, stepping forward a little. "You are so strong, Mary. You will survive this."
But the young Queen simply shook her head and whimpered out, burying her face in Catherine's neck as they both suffered from their grief and sorrow.
"Excuse me, your Imperial Majesty." a soft voice said. Mary looked up and saw Sara, one of her bastard nieces, poking her head in the doorway. She quickly looked from side to side, seeing her large bed drowning in warm furs and blankets. Mary bit back a sense of sadness when she didn't see Francis, nor his carelessly thrown night clothes that he had a habit of leaving laying on the bed, but she quickly overcame the feeling. He had sent word that he was going to stay with James for the night.
"Yes, what is it?" Mary cleared her throat, inhaling sharply as she felt the effects of giving birth. Her abdomen screamed in pain and the lower area felt stretched out and used, raw and stinging harshly at every waking moment.
This was not one of the things she missed about having a baby.
Sara spoke again, drawing her attention from the pain she felt to her illegitimate niece.
"Forgive me for waking you madam, aunt." she amended herself, upon Mary's stern glance. "But the nannies assume that the Prince Lucien wishes to eat." Sara rushed.
"Of course," Mary nodded, trying her best not to think of the dream -flashback?- she had or the pain in her stomach. "Bring him in." she sat up slowly, hissing as the pain worsened.
"Yes, m'lady." Sara bowed out. A few seconds later, the door opened and her new baby was brought to her. Mary smiled in delight at the sight of the tiny, whimpering bundle and took him into her arms, waiting until the nannies bowed out to undo the ties on her nightgown, feeling it fall and hissing at the feeling of the bitter cold attacking her bare breast before Lucien started to suckle instantly, his small whispers settling as he burrowed into his mother's arms.
"There," Mary cooed. "That's better, isn't it?" she smiled down at the blonde haired, blue eyed baby. His small fist settled upon her chest and she covered them both up with blankets, fighting against the bitter cold of her rooms, the fire unlit. Mary smiled down at the still visible image of her newborn baby suckling happily at her breast. She gripped his small hand, pressing kisses onto his tiny fist.
"I love you so much, Lucien. You know that, yes? Mama and Papa may be going through some issues, but you and your brother mean the world to both of us." she pressed more kisses to his fist that now gripped her thumb as he sucked away. "You're so perfect, more than I ever could have imagined. You and your brother are the most important people in my life, a close second all together. I love you, I love you, I love you." Mary repeated over and over. She kissed his tiny hand again. She touched his perfect skin, running her fingers through his soft tuft of silky blonde hair, an exact replica of his father's except for the curls. Who knows, maybe when he was older, he would be the exact replica of the man Mary loved the most.
Of course, the duo still had to work through their arguement a few days prior. But there would be time for that later, they would only get the chance to see the baby as small as he was now. There wasn't a point to be sad when once has the opportunity to be happy.
Mary stared into the eyes of her youngest, wondering if his eyes would remain blue like all babies were born with or if they would turn into hers like James' did.
It was this very thing that Mary honestly wondered if she'd ever have again, when they thought Francis was lost to her forever. At times, she didn't know if she would ever have another child. Then, with Henry, the marriage was simply a political move for heirs and stability. She may have had his child, but it wouldn't have been the same.
The door opened again. In rushed James, on his heels, his father. Both seemed a little raggedy from immediate awakening from sleep, and they seemed even more adorable to her than what they usually were.
"Mama!" James smiled widely, rushing over to the bed. Francis helped him scale the bed and settled on Mary's side.
James planted a kiss to his mother, before immediately looking over to his brother.
"Hello, mama!" he smiled. "Hello, Lucien." he beamed, his voice a little warbled.
"Hello, love." Mary kissed his hair. Francis sat at her other side, watching his youngest feed from his mother. "Did you sleep well?"
"Yes." James grinned, showing off his tiny teeth. "Papa stayed with me."
"How wonderful." Mary replied.
"Look at him eat." James seemd superfied by his little brother. He ran his little fingers over James' blonde hair. "He looks like papa."
"He does." Francis agreed. "And he looks like you."
"Really?" James asked, seeming ti be amazed, his eyes sparkling with his fatigue. Raven curls were messy and all over the place, pointing out in a hundred different directions. James rubbed his eyes with the back of his little fists, sniffling deeply as he looked at his mother again.
"Yes." Mary agreed. "He does." she looked down at her youngest, observing his puffy cheeks and pouted lips as he suckled away contently.
"My brother eats from you." James observed.
"He does, it's a special way for all mama's to feed their new babies." the patriarch of this royal quartet answered his heir. Francis leaned closer to them both, pressing a kiss to the side of Mary's head as he placed a palm on the back of James' shirt, steadying it before covering it with one of the blankets. They couldn't risk James getting sick in this weather. It was still very cold, after all.
"Did I do that?" the eldest of the two children said.
"You did." Mary nodded once.
"Does it hurt?"
"Not at all." she shook her head, knowing how protective James could be most timed. "It feels a little strange, but it's comforting to us both." she finished.
James placed his head on his mother's shoulder, watching his brother closer. He reached down a hand and giggled loudly as the baby wrapped an even tinier hand around his little finger. The Dauphin cooed at the baby, smiling down at him.
"Love you, Lucien."
"Bash, where have you been?" Kenna asked, leaning up onto her elbows with tremendous effort from their mattress. "I've just been to see the baby, he's such a darling little boy." she smiled. "I thought you told me that you'd go with your daughter and I to see him, last night at supper." Kenna complained.
"Yes, I did. But with Francis with Mary and the boys, I had to take over some of his responsibilities. I am still his deputy, you know." Bash answered his wife, lifting off his balearic from his shoulder, the metal of the sword clinking against the hollister as it moves. From behind him as he walked into their chambers, his black fur cape lay.
"Oh? What was that? I thought being with your daughter and I would be more important." she huffed. "Just one day where you don't solve anybody's problems, Bash. That's all I ask. That's all we ask." Kenna looked down at the sleepy little girl in red who lay upon their bed.
"It isn't that simple, Kenna. I have responsibilities now, I have a duty to my brother and Mary. With the new baby and the issues with Catherine and Spain, it won't ease up." Sebastian asked, still as slightly irritated with Kenna's neediness as ever, which only worsened when she was with child.
"But I'm having your baby, Bash. I'm close to giving birth!" Kenna huffed.
"And that is your world, but mine is bigger. As will yours be when you and Mary are back upon your feet and serving again." Bash answered. "I will be all yours when this is over." he leaned down and brushed a kiss to his wife's lips.
"That could take months." she pouted.
"It may." he agreed. "But there is nothing you or I can do about it. Besides, when Mary offered me the position of deputy, you told me to take it." he said, walking away, pulling off his dark green tunic and starting to run a wet cloth over his face, neck and torso.
"In the hopes you would rise!"
"I have, Kenna." Bash turned around. "I'm a baron, the highest thing a man like me could have."
"Francis offered you a duchy." Kenna pouted, wrapping her arms around her big bump.
"And if I took it, the nobles would kill me for it. I am a bastard, Kenna, they'd never accept it. You know this, we talked about it in France."
"I know," she huffed. "Ignore me, pregnancy makes me over emotional." she sniffed. "Anyway, what did you do?"
"Today?" the Baron and deputy asked. He turned around, slipping on a black tunic. "John is unwell, so Francis took his mother out of the tower to try and assist him. Now that the danger is passed, I had her locked back up." he replied. "In addition to giving Robert a hand sending out notifications to the world of Lucien's birth." he finished.
"What is to become of Lola?" Kenna asked, using the pillow to help her sit up straighter.
"I'm not sure, it's up to Mary, really. Not just having John was a crime, but she consorted with one of Mary's enemies to wed him. They tried for peace when her brother was betrothed to one of them, but we all know how that went." Bash reflected. Kenna shuddered at the memory of the messy break up between one of the Hapsburgs women and the earl of Moray. And with the Hapsburgs strong connection to Spain and the animosity between Phillip and Mary and the ordeal with Catherine- the Baroness forced her mind to stop wondering about the political affairs her Empress and friend would now face. She could do it, she could win, she was Mary Stuart, after all.
The young woman settled firmer into the white cotton pillows, watching her husband intently. "Yes, of course. It is an even firmer treason, John's attempted engagement, somehow worse than even sleeping with your brother in the first place." Kenna sighed.
"Indeed, she seemed to smart and strong in the start. Where did it go wrong?" Bash sighed, remembering the fondness he had once held for Lola, those few tender moments after his severe injury in Callas. But that had long fizzled out now.
"Bad decisions held bad consiquenses, my love." Kenna reached out a hand for her husband to grasp.
"Enough of that," Sebastian shook his head. "how are you feeling? With all that walking to see Mary and the new baby."
"Alright, he kicks and squirms healthily. I'm sure he's okay, even though I had the sternest look from Midwife Amelia after she saw me leave Greer's room." she chuckled.
"Greer? How is the poor woman?"
"Still in deep mourning. She considers her baby a blessing and a curse. Word has been sent to Castleroy's other children and his eldest son, affairs of his estate and things of that sort. She's seen Lucien, and that seemed to lift her spirits a tad, seeing Mary's joy. But she still mourns harshly. Rose and George spend considerable amounts of time with their mother, that seems to help, but midwives are concerned if she will loose her child if the refusal to eat carries on. I feel for her, I wish I could do something to make it better for her." Kenna babbled on, but her husband cut her off.
"I'm sure she appreciated your support in this tough time, but you must focus on our baby first and foremost. Them both, even." Bash sent a fond look Meredith's way. The girl had fallen asleep, pouted lips open as soft noises escaped her on every exhale into the covers that were fisted in her tiny hands. Long brown eyelashes flickered as she dreamed, her father's hands slowly picking up her little body with tender care. Bash tenderly held his baby against his chest as he carried her over towards the crib that had been placed in their rooms for such an occasion that the sweet girl should find her rest in her parent's rooms and not her own with her own cradle.
Sebastian slowly lowered Meredith into her small bed, cocooning the small girl into the blankets. He pressed a kiss to her cheek tenderly, brushing a brown curl from her face. Kenna smiled at the sight.
"I suppose we should talk." Francis began, settling upon the chair near Mary's bed, holding his sleeping newborn son as his mother recovered from her ordeal. "This little one stifled our trife, did he not?" Francis asked rhetorically, as if trying to make a joke out of the circumstances that Lucien came into the world from his mothers womb.
"Technically it was Kenna, but our boy did have a hand in it." Mary half smiled, looking upon her husband and her new baby with rapt attention, a sight that for years, she never thought she'd see. "I suppose we should reach an understanding of where we are with one another." she nestled into the covers, one hand reaching out subconsciously. "I don't want to fight anymore." Mary said softly. "I just want a chance for us to love each other with the boys."
"Neither do I." Francis replied, just as gently.
"So, where should we start?" she asked, setting her hands upon the shrinking bump she now sported underneath the blankets.
"Lola and my son." Francis acknowledged. "I'm not going to make any excuses anymore. I didn't manage my time with my sons well, I favoured my eldest above our own. And for that I am sorry." he sighed.
"I'm glad to hear you say it, but it doesn't make anything better. You and I talked about this when I went on bed rest, that you would be James' main caregiver until I had the baby, I couldn't play that part for a while. Instead, you picked John over him again." Mary said, her tone sad and disappointed with her husband's decisions.
"I did." he replied after a long pause. "I was told John was sickened with fever. It wasn't looking as though he would make it through. I'm his father as much as I am our sons. I had to be there with him, but-" he trailed off. "I didn't have to neglect James."
"No, you shouldn't have." Mary agreed. "But I suppose I understand. You have to have temporary priorities at points, one child over another. I just don't like the fact my child was upset over this whole ordeal. He doesn't fully understand what happened between us in France, why you didn't stay in the plague with us both. He's scared every time you walk out of a room, thinking he'll never see you again. He knows it's happened before." Mary leaned back against the pillows.
"He doesn't trust me." Francis mumbled. Mary half smiled sympathetically. "Do you?"
Mary blinked in surprise at the sudden question.
"If we're being completely truthful, not entirely." Mary replied. Francis blinked, nodding slowly.
"I understand, I won't push." he started. "But I need you to know that I don't love, nor favour, more John over James and Lucien. I love them equally. But I won't ruin or marriage to appease him or his mother." the King of France finished.
"Whilst they're nice words to hear, we need more than words. We need to see you prove your words." Mary said quietly, fiddling with the flimsy material of her nightgown. Whilst she couldn't regret her words the night she went into childbirth, Mary did know she said more than she meant. She fury she felt was illuminated by the love she felt for her eldest and the insecurity of abandonment that she and James both felt.
"I want to be better for you. For you and James and this sweet boy." Francis looked at the baby in his arms, smiling softly at the new little prince. "I want to be the man you deserve, a good husband and a good father and a good king. Not the playboy Prince and the sentimental fool that I have been. Not like my mother and damn sure not like my father." he shook his head, hating to admit that he had been acting like his father off the past four years. Especially in the topic of his own fatherhood. "But I'm not sure how to."
"Well, I'm not entirely sure how to play the role of a mother, I never knew my own and your mother is, well, you know." she chuckled a little. "We'll figure it out together." she half smiled, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. "But I need you to act like a King in some aspects of our lives. To not be so easily manipulated and not be so sentimental when it comes to John and Lola. Be a father to your son, I endource. But I don't want you to continuously place Lola on a pedestal, to keep pampering her and to keep undermining me when it comes to her punishment of her treason."
"She's the mother of my eldest child, Mary, I don't want her to suffer because of it."
"She always will, Francis. I know we weren't technically together at that time, but she committed treason. Keeping the pregnancy and birthing the child was an even worse. I know you had a hand in your Italian escape, but she nearly shook the European monarchy to her knees, giving you a reason to run into plague. Leaving an unsteady France and an unborn heir we weren't even sure about it's legal King. But the fraternising with my enemy is the last straw. She will be punished. I won't excuse treason just because of what happened between you." she finished, wishing nothing happened between them.
"I don't like it, but I understand." he looked down at the baby. "I don't want my son to grow up without a mother."
"Just because send had you bastard doesn't mean she isn't exempt from the law, Francis." Mary huffed.
"I know, I know." he said quietly.
"About Lola," she inhaled. "You and Lola and John were asleep in bed together. Why?" she asked.
"My son was sick, he wanted me and his mother with him. But he fell asleep after some tonics from sir. Matthias. I was on the bed with him, I must have fallen asleep and when I woke up, Lola was on the bed. I promise I moved immediately after I saw her. She told me that she was simply exhausted from sleeping in the tower, tried to take him from my arms and place him in his own chamber and crib, but nodded off. I didn't mean to hurt you, nor betray you, but I didn't do anything with her. Nothing happened, we just fell asleep together, nothing more."
"That's how it started in Paris. You fell asleep and woke up together, but then you slept together." Mary looked away from him, wishing that it hadn't ever happened.
"I regret it, Mary. I wish I could go back and change it, but I can't." he sighed. "But I didn't do it again, it never happened again. I know me sleeping with her set about the course of what I did in the plague, the abandonment and the betrayal, but I swear to you I won't abandon you or our sons ever again." he swore, but his eyes showed his regret and pain that was always present when they talked about the rendezvous gone wrong that happened between he and Lola.
"I hope you mean it, but I'm just so tired of all this drama with Lola and your son. It seems like every time I get close to you and let my walls down, she's there. All I want is to be contented with you and our family and rule our countries in peace, but it never happens." she sighed. "I can't deal with waiting for the next bout of unhappiness when I get contented, I don't want to live like that."
"You won't have to, I promise."