Chapter Text
The sky should not have been so blue, Madeleine thought, her work forgotten in her lap as she gazed out of the solar’s southern window; it had no right to be such a beautiful day, when all of Germaine held its breath to find out whether its king would live or die. She had left the sickroom under duress, after both the court physicians and her closest ladies begged her to rest.
“You know that I will not be able to sleep,” she told Lady Lianne. “Not while my father struggles so to breathe.”
“Of course.” Lady Lianne always understood: she was Madeleine’s confidant, offering advice in every situation and ready with a witty retort or whispered comment to defuse tension, and there was no-one the princess trusted more. Lianne squeezed her hand. “Why not sew an offering to Iaçe and Acese, and pray for your father’s health?” Madeleine nodded, and allowed herself to be led away to the solar, where she allowed Lady Jeanne to cut a square of white silk for her to embroider with a prayer and Lady Cornelie to put a length of golden thread through a needle. She could only manage the first few letters of her prayer before she laid her hands in her lap and stared blankly out the window.
Lady Lianne had tried to console her the night before, offering her sweet mouth and fingers if they would help her sleep, but Madeleine could not bear to be touched at the time. She sat near the princess's feet, glancing up every now and again without speaking, for which Madeleine was glad. She did not know what to say. Unless the gods were merciful, within a matter of days or possibly hours, she would be taking on the role she had been trained her entire life for – she would rule Germaine. And while she had never been fervent in her ambition (indeed, there were many times that she had wished Guy were the older sibling and that she could become a consort, not to be required to make heavy decisions regarding war and peace and executions), she could not imagine wanting it less than she did at that moment.
Suddenly, the door was flung open with such force that it rebounded against the arras behind it. Adele screamed, dropping her sewing basket, as four guardsmen rushed in with drawn blades; Jeanne and Marie clutched at each other and looked fearfully for the threat that had brought their protectors crashing into the solar. But the protectors were the threat, Madeleine realized in the split second while she fought through her weariness to stand, before they fell upon her ladies.
It was a slaughter. They were gentlewomen, none taught to fight. Quick Cornelie ran, but there was only one door to the solar and it had been blocked, so she was chased and stabbed awkwardly – it took several cuts to bring her to the floor. Adele was not so quick, not even getting to her feet before a heavy downward thrust pierced all the way through her body. The others fell, one by one, in terror and pain and blood – so much blood, spurting and oozing and dripping and, finally, spreading quietly over the floor. It happened so quickly that before Madeleine could think of what to do, it was over, and she stood by her chair among the dead bodies of her women, trembling, with her hands balled into fists by her side. Only Lianne was left, crouched by her legs – it must have been a miracle.
But that was also not what it appeared, Madeleine realized, as her first lady of the bedchamber slowly stood and went to stand behind the guards, who were now turning their gazes on her. Lianne's face was sick and pale, but there was not even a hint of surprise on it. She was joined from the corridor outside by another familiar figure: Sir Pierre de la Guiaume, Lianne's brother and Prince Guy's favorite companion. A handkerchief was at the ready in his hand, and he pressed it to his face as he looked about the room, ensuring that the slaughter had been complete.
"A pity," he said after overlooking Jeanne, whose lovely long neck bore an obscene gash across it, and whose body was pierced in two places. They had been betrothed, and Jeanne had read aloud so many poems written by her supposedly ardent swain on the subject of his eternal devotion and submission to her wishes. That was all that she merited: two words, the same he might have delivered if a brachet were gored during a hunt.
He was finally satisfied, and turned to Madeleine. "Which one of you has the gag?" he asked, holding up a hand and motioning forward with his fingers. Two of the guards sprang to order, but now she found her ability to move again, and she backed away, past the window.
"How dare you," she said in a half-croak. "How dare you commit this violation, this atrocity on my women? You will be tortured, and flayed, and then hanged, drawn, and quartered for this – I shall see your heads rotting on spikes until there is nothing left but clean bones, and I will have them crushed to dust."
"You will not," said Pierre, as one of the pair of guards lunged forward. She was wrapped tightly in his arms so that she could scarcely struggle, only kick ineffectually at his ankles. The other was hidden from her sight, but after a moment a sort of pointed leather cup appeared from behind her; it snugly fitted over her mouth and chin, and no amount of head-shaking could prevent it. "You will be far from here, and I suspect that you will die long before any one of the rest of us."
The princess could not make any retort regarding the intercession of the gods in her plight due to the gag, which was tied tightly behind her head and kept her jaw firmly closed.
"Good – you're quiet now. Someone bind her hands and feet, and let us move." She would have thought that the guards would feel something – at least some trepidation at the possible result of this lesé majesté – but their movements were unflinching and sure. With her hands tied behind her back and her ankles wrapped with a cord, she was truly defenseless, though she was forced to admit that she had been defenseless even before: she had been able to do nothing when her ladies were killed, not even scream for help. Still almost disbelieving that any of the events of the past few moments had happened, she looked to Lianne, hoping that some look would reveal her to be acting under her brother's control. Instead, she stared back with a clear gaze. How?
"You may take this as a lesson," Lady Lianne told her, "about not trusting someone simply because they agree with you and bed you well."
"That carpet will do," Pierre said, pointing to one at the side of the solar with only a little blood on it. The guards forced her down onto one edge, and proceeded to roll her up in it. This cut off her senses, and she was left in the hot dark, alone. Her mind went accordingly blank.
That had been a mercy, she realized some time later, after the carpet she was imprisoned inside had been carried out of the palace and unrolled in some damp cellar. She had been roughly stripped to her shift, then left to wait, huddled in a corner – and it was then that her emotions returned. Jeanne was dead. Adele was dead. Cornelie was dead. Beatrice and Marie and Margot were dead. Adele would never tell another of her amusing anecdotes; Margot would never dance a lively rondeau. Lianne was the only one left alive, and that was by her own design. She had betrayed their little sisterhood, allowing her brother to have them all butchered.
Her father suddenly came to her mind, and that broke through the last of the icy numbness, driving her to tears and great, shuddering sobs. She would never say goodbye to him – never observe the funeral rites, not stand by Guy's side at his bier. And Guy would never know what had happened to her. He would have to lose his father and sister at almost the same time. He was a man grown, by many standards, but she still thought of him as a little boy, terrified and alone, and he would have to cope with the greatest responsibilities of the kingdom being thrust upon him.
It was some time before she had herself under control enough to question what would happen to herself. Most highborn ladies who were stolen were ransomed back to their families, or sold to someone else to ransom. That could not be it, though, as once she returned she would only have to give the order for the entire Guiaume family to be arrested and executed for treason, and they would not be so stupid as to think they could get around that. Only two possibilities seemed likely, and the likeliest was that she would leave the cellar soon, but as a corpse. It was possible, in that scenario, that she would be raped before that in order to degrade and humiliate her before her death. The other was that she would be sold to some enemy of the state and executed, although this seemed less likely – the crowns of any of the surrounding countries would want to force her to sign pacts and treaties that would benefit them.
Madeleine was the crown princess, her father’s rightful heir, and so she had been well-educated in statecraft, modern and ancient languages, geography, mathematics, music, philosophy, and rhetoric; she had been only trained enough in swordplay to be comfortable wielding a dagger, and performing ceremonies that required a blade, and could not wrestle or brawl. She would have been defenseless any way, and she was naked, bound, and gagged. She would die, and there was nothing to be done.
At least if she were to die, she would do so with dignity. Her legs had become stiff from being pulled back in one position, and she stretched them before coming to kneel on the damp earth. Her bonds prevented her from raising her hands or speaking any of the words aloud, but she silently began the prayers to the funerary goddesses Tacite and Nenie that she had said with her mother years ago, when the queen’s illness was finally drawing to its end.
When men came for her, Madeleine was prepared and at peace, confident that her soul would descend from her body at the appropriate moment and join her mother’s, and perhaps also her father’s. She did not struggle when she was pulled to her feet, and she walked out with her head held high. If they were to cut off her head, she knew that the gods would ensure that the blade would be sharp and the blow strong.