Honneur et Patrie
The ballroom is bustling with life; throngs of couples dancing, streams of laughter and chatter and plentiful wine-- there is laughter and good cheer within; the most lavish display of pomp: grand and delightful, tis the ball, befitting the situation, for Elizabeth’s donations to the Royal Army have been liberal and large, and she, most generous. Nobles are drunk with mirth and drinks, and the hallways are empty, abuzz and echoing with a collection of voices that spill from the ballroom; there is a salvo of approval when the musicians play a most cheerful song, and the candles flicker in the peak of the merriments.
She talks to Diane and Cosimo, and then, she slips back inside, her senses prickling; most alert and watchful, is she, and she draws her path toward his chambers; for she has already drenched his bedsheets and clothes with poison--arsenic; he, such virile and strong a man, whose hands have claimed the life of the Most Gracious King of them all; no less than blood in his mouth, he deserves, and she, most zealous and loyal to this crown, and a slave to her own pride and ambition, too, seeks to spill his blood--for tis most atrocious, that he is allowed to sleep and show his face in the castles of the man he has murdered. Diane, to her, is most innocent; a mother saving her son, a woman -- betrayed; surviving -- taking matters in her own hands; but he. Oh, he! Most deplorable of all men, exploiting this crown’s honor and strength. Blood has been spilled, and he deserves to bear the punishment; deliver Diane from its stain-- for Sebastian and their Good King, too, know his hands are sullied with Henry’s death-- the punishment befits the crime, for this Crown is France, and he, the scapegoat. The more to be desired is it, therefore, that His Gracious Majesty’s death should deserve honorable absolution-- in the name of this land, The King, and their honor-- for Charles, too; for he is fatherless, now, and her heart starves for the good things to happen to her most beloved godchild.
To his chamber, she goes, unassuming and swift as a bird, she slithers through the long halls; for it takes wits and resources to enter his rooms-- she trusts Rose to play her own part most competently. She waits in his room, her cloak drawn tightly around her; his wine and food are dipped in poison too--- to think that he has dared to show his face in public! To think that Sir Nicholas has been forced to sit there -- surely, boiling with anger-- and watch him sully this palace with his presence: such bold and heavy an insult; to ridicule the King so openly and deplorably, to have the nerve show his face in this ball so boldly!
He enters his room with a grunt, his skin blistering, his throat, thick and slick with sweat; for he can scarcely breath, and when he tries to peel his shirt off, it clings to his skin, and he howls in agony, delirious with the pain that is throbbing in his pores. In a heap, he collapses while a mixture of vesicants seeps into his sweat pores, and she slips toward him at her leisure, her face half-obscured by the shadows. She looms over him, and watches him gasp for breath; for it brings her such great a satisfaction to know that she is watching the murderer of their King gulp his last breaths. She kneels at his side and lifts his chin with two fingers at her leisure, most hungry to watch him perish, regarding her victim with a look of bitter irony. “--“I had a gift, given to me long ago by a monster of olden time, aid stored in an urn of bronze;” she tells him, her voice dripping with low tones, light and smooth, relishing in the sight of him stewing in her poisons, “a gift which, while yet a girl, I took up from the shaggy-breasted Nessus,- from his life-blood, as he lay dying; Nessus, who used to carry men in his arms across the deep waters of the Evenus, using no oar to waft them, nor sail of ship.” she slips her hands over the taut lines of his arms, and pauses as a trickle of blood spills between his teeth, “I, too, was carried on his shoulders,- when, by my father’s sending,first went forth with Heracles as his wife; and when I was in mid-stream, he touched me with wanton hands. I shrieked; the son of Zeus turned quickly round, and shot a feathered arrow; it whizzed through his breast to the lungs;” she paws at his chest as his blood bubbles in the depths of his throat, and lifts her hand to feed him the slick stem of wolfs-bane dipped in a collection of poisons, her fingers tracing his lips, “--and, in his mortal faintness, thus much the Centaur spake:--‘Child of aged Oeneus, thou shalt have at least this profit of my ferrying,- if thou wilt hearken,-because thou wast the last whom I conveyed. If thou gatherest with thy hands the blood clotted round my wound, at the place where the Hydra, Lerna’s monstrous growth, hath tinged the arrow with black gall,- this shall be to thee a charm for the soul of Heracles, so that he shall never look upon any woman to love her more than thee.’ I bethought me of this, my friends- for, after his death, I had kept it carefully locked up in a secret place; and I have anointed this robe,” she sweeps her hands over the folds of his clothes, “doing everything to it as he enjoined while he lived. The work is finished. May deeds of wicked daring be ever far from my thoughts, and from my knowledge,- as I abhor the women who attempt them!” she smiles-- he is strong and fists handfuls of her skirts in tight grasps, spasming and twitching, for his mouth is slick and overflowing with rivers of blood, and his stomach, churning with the poisons, sizzling and blistering.
“gifts should be meetly recompensed with gifts-- am I not right, Alexander? For France is most generous, and you deserve no less.” she drawls in a low voice while he writhes and growls in fits of delirium, his flesh slick with sweat and blood, his gaze most dark, and she drapes a handkerchief embroidered with the Gallic rooster on it over his mouth, slow and savoring the moment. She rises to her feet, satisfied and pleased, a pillar of strength-- her posture straight-- and offers him a long, lingering glance while she steps back-- he, a spurting, choking mess at her feet, and then, she opens the door and slips outside, quite and swift as ever--her maid is waiting in the shadows to relieve her of her cloak, and she makes her way back to the ballroom, picking her way through the longer hallway, lest she is seen, her gaze seeking Rose’s the moment she slips inside, most cheerful and pleasant in appearance--unassuming; tis done, it says, and she knows that Rose knows it, too.