Hysteria

by Lily Blake

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  A Sneak Peek of Reign: The Prophecy

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  PROLOGUE

  The great ballroom buzzed with the sound of champagne corks popping and the happy chatter of the French court. Everywhere Mary looked, she saw people smiling, her friends laughing, and it filled her heart with joy. It had been far too long since the French court had enjoyed a real celebration. The king and queen had not hosted a ball since their coronation; there had been so little to celebrate. The plague had taken its toll on the country, and on the court, and the Protestant threat grew ever stronger since Mary’s cousin Elizabeth had ascended to the English throne.

  Mary, Queen of Scots, glanced across the room at Francis, the King of France, her husband. Things had been so strained between them, it did her heart good to see him enjoying himself. Ever since she had lost the baby, they had struggled to recover their once unwavering connection. While he was physically there, a constant presence by her side, she felt as though he had been somewhere else these past weeks. And now, she wanted him back.

  “You look stunning,” someone whispered in her ear, an arm snaking around her waist. “That gown is so beautiful.”

  The queen turned to see her three best friends, Lola, Kenna, and Greer, beside her. Kenna, the owner of the offending arm, squeezed her tightly. “You look tiny, Mary,” she said, flipping her long honey-brown hair over her shoulder. “How long did it take you to get into that corset?”

  “Too long.” Mary smiled, breathing in for effect. The full skirt, supported by layers and layers of tulle, fluttered around her. “I keep seeing those tiny almond pastries I love so much, but I can’t eat a thing.”

  “It’s worth it,” Lola said, eyeing Mary’s black-and-gold gown with friendly envy. The low neckline showed off Mary’s creamy white skin and the golden embroidery made her dark brown hair shine, while the narrow long sleeves came all the way down to the diamond rings on her fingers. “You look exquisite.”

  Lola had chosen her loosely fitted soft pink dress specifically to hide the evidence of her new baby. Not that it was a secret anymore. It was hard to conceal the fact that you were the mother of the king’s son, even if he was illegitimate.

  “You all look quite lovely,” Mary said, admiring Greer’s sky-blue velvet gown, which made her blond hair look even brighter than ever. “Very elegant, Greer, and, well, I’m not sure elegant is the word for you, Kenna.”

  The Scottish lady laughed, giving her friends a spin, making her rose-gold silk dress swirl around her. “Bash got it for me from Paris,” she said, smoothing the dress down over her curves. “I’m amazed he even let me leave our bedchamber.”

  “Because it looks like underwear?” Lola asked, all innocence.

  “Oh, honestly.” Greer rolled her eyes at her friends, a smile on her face. “We all know he can’t keep his hands off you, Kenna. You’re hopelessly in love and your passion knows no bounds.”

  With a teasing shrug, Kenna said, “I can’t help it if my husband is besotted with me.”

  “And where is Aloysius this evening?” Mary asked Greer before Kenna decided to regale them all with further tales of her and Bash’s bedroom antics. “Will he be joining us?”

  Greer’s shoulders fluttered in an uncertain shrug. “He’s away,” she said. “On a business trip somewhere. He won’t be back for a week or so. The spice trade waits for no man.”

  “Some newlyweds you two make,” Kenna commented, accepting a glass of wine from a passing servant with a polite smile. “Bash and I had broken two beds within the first month of our marriage.”

  Mary clapped her hands together, determined to have a fun evening without any unnecessary dramatics. “Lords and ladies of the French court,” she announced loudly as her friends stepped behind her. “I thank you for joining us this evening and hope that you will find a moment’s respite to congratulate and thank one another for all that you have done to ensure the ongoing prosperity of our country. France is greater for your support.”

  “And I would like to thank our queen,” Francis interrupted before the ballroom could applaud. “For being the epitome of grace and beauty and strength, and standing beside us at this most crucial time.”

  Mary felt a blush come to her cheeks as Francis descended the staircase and walked toward her. Sometimes he could still catch her off guard. She felt as though she were standing outside the castle for the first time again, watching him stride across the lawn toward her, eschewing protocol and winning her heart. His thick blond hair curled around his crown, and his black jacket, adorned with golden buttons, complemented her gown perfectly.

  “Now I think we should have some music,” Mary said, recovering herself as Francis took her hand. “I feel as though I should like to dance.”

  Francis bowed low as the musicians struck up their instruments. He had always looked young—his good looks were boyish in a way—but over the last few months, a maturity had come over the king. His blue eyes remained crystal clear and full of love for Mary, but the stresses of the crown showed on him physically. No one else would notice, Mary thought as he took her in his arms and began to move about the room. No one else would see the beginnings of creases around his eyes, around his smile. But Mary saw them. And she loved him all the more because of them.

  “That’s a singular expression on your face,” he whispered as they spun across the ballroom, their dance as easy and natural as breathing. “Whatever are you thinking about?”

  “You,” she said. Mary was trying terribly hard to make honesty her only policy with Francis. “And how handsome you look tonight.”

  “I could only ever be a frame to a piece of art such as you,” he replied, smiling at his own compliment as Mary laughed. “I haven’t heard that sound nearly often enough lately. I should like to hear you laugh at least once a day.”

  “Let’s make a promise,” she said, watching half a dozen other happy couples join them in the dance. “We will make each other laugh every day.”

  He buried his face in her hair and inhaled, taking in her delicate rose scent. “Sometimes it’s hard to find things to laugh about, isn’t it?” he said.

  “It is,” Mary replied. “But that’s why we have each other, to remind each other of what is important.”

  “How about this,” Francis said. “I promise never to forget what is important.”

  “It’s officially a promise,” she answered. Francis grabbed her by the waist and lifted her high above his head, spinning her around before bringing her back down to the ground and pausing to press his lips quickly against hers.

  As the dance went on, music and people and laughter swirling all around her, Kenna dancing with Bash, Greer and Lola dancing together, even Catherine seeming to enjoy herself, Mary tried desperately to remember each moment and lock it away for a time when it might be needed. For one perfect evening, it seemed as though all of France was happy and its queen content.

  Several hours’ ride to the south, another group of people were gathered together, but it was far from a celebration.

  “It’s going to be all right.” Mélanie Février sat in the kitchen of her home, smiling bleakly at her family as the jeering and screaming came closer. “We know we’ve done nothing wrong. We will be safe if we stay inside.”

  Two little blond girls
sat by their father’s feet, holding hands and clinging to his legs. The father stared at his wife, a fear in his eyes she could do nothing to quell.

  “They just need something to be angry about tonight,” Mélanie told him quietly. “Madame Limaine lost her baby today. I’m sure they have been drinking; they will pass.”

  “But why are they outside our house, Maman?” the smaller girl asked. “Do they think we don’t care about Madame Limaine? Should Papa go outside with the other men?”

  “No, my love,” Mélanie said. She flicked her eyes over to her elder daughter, who was shaking. Mélanie knew why they were here. She didn’t understand it but she knew. Alys had been attacked in the apothecary, had rotten vegetables thrown at her in the street. “People who are hurt and angry do not always make sense and cannot be explained. Try to ignore them; it will pass.”

  But in her heart, she was no longer so sure. Terrible things had been happening in their village and none of it could be explained. And so the village elders had found an explanation of their own. Mélanie looked sadly at Alys, her special, sensitive daughter. She had heard the whispers, the stories. These villagers had known Alys since she was born, known Mélanie and her husband since they were children—how could they believe any of it?

  And then came the knock at the door.

  “Jehane Février,” a loud but calm voice echoed through the wood. Inside, the man grabbed his daughters’ hands and stood, terrified. “Jehane Février, open this door at once.”

  Mélanie stood slowly and walked toward the door.

  “What are you doing?” Jehane asked. “You cannot let them in.”

  “If we don’t open the door, they will knock it down,” she said, forcing herself not to show fear in front of her daughters. “Jehane, take Ada downstairs. Alys and I will talk to Duquesne.”

  With the greatest reluctance, Alys’s father let go of her delicate fingers, a sob choking in his throat as he did so. Wrapping her in his tightest, strongest hug, feeling as though he would rather crush her himself than let these monsters take his daughter, he kissed the top of her head, breathing in her woodsy, fresh clean scent.

  “Be strong,” he whispered in her ear. “And believe.” His shoulders shaking, he picked up his younger daughter, ignoring her kicks and screams, and disappeared into the back of the house, locking every door behind him.

  Pulling back her shoulders, Mélanie opened the door to find Duquesne, the leader of the village council, smiling politely. Behind him were dozens of her neighbors and friends. Their expressions were not nearly so friendly. The black of the night was torn apart by flaming torches and shining axes and pitchforks held aloft.

  “You know why we are here,” he said, eyeing the young girl.

  “I know why you believe you are here,” Mélanie replied. “But you will not take my daughter. She has done nothing wrong. There is no proof.”

  He entered the house as though he owned it, the rest of the mob staying safely behind him. “Alys Février, you have been accused of witchcraft,” he said, his gray whiskers gleaming gold in the light from the hearth. “As by the decree of the village of Auxerre, you shall be tried by fire.”

  “Mon Dieu!” Mélanie threw herself on the floor and grabbed her daughter. The girl just stared, speechless. “No, please, Duquesne. That is no trial, that is murder.”

  “It is the only true way to eradicate a witch,” he replied, beckoning two huge men to enter the house. “If she is by some miracle innocent, her soul will be purged and she will be accepted into heaven.”

  Mélanie covered her daughter as the men advanced. “What is your proof?” she demanded. “You cannot link my daughter to the things that have been happening in the village.”

  “She gave me herbs and then I lost my baby!” a woman Mélanie recognized as the village baker screamed from the front door.

  “And when she treated my father,” another cried out, “he died two days later.”

  Even though they were certain in their judgments, no one wanted to cross the threshold of the Février house. No one wanted to tempt their witch.

  “You should have left the village when you had a chance,” Duquesne said, casting the girl a dark look. “Your husband was warned when these stories first came to me.”

  “This is our home, why should we leave?” Mélanie argued. “Alys is a child, she is thirteen years old, an apprentice healer. Just because these things happened after she treated you does not mean she caused them. Every time we lose a friend in our village, Alys feels it more than anyone. She is a healer because she wants to help.”

  “She is a witch,” Duquesne replied. “Because she wants to kill. And the only way to rectify that is with fire.”

  He gave a soft wave, then the two men hulking over the Févriers reached down to peel Mélanie away from her daughter. Mélanie kicked and screamed and scratched and bit the first man as the second picked up Alys, who hung limp in his arms like a rag doll.

  “The tests!” Mélanie shrieked. “If you will try her as a witch, first you must perform the tests.”

  Duquesne’s lips formed a hard line. He looked at the desperate woman and then at the wild-eyed mob outside her front door.

  “Fine,” he replied. “I will administer the tests. If she fails, the trial will take place immediately.”

  “Maman?” Alys reached out for her mother as she hung over the man’s shoulder, her arms outstretched but too far away. Duquesne exited the house first, Alys and her captor close behind him while his partner stayed back to subdue Madame Février.

  “Stay strong, Alys,” she called out, locking eyes with her elder daughter. They looked so alike, both slight and blond and both terrified. “Believe, my love. We will find a way to stop this.”

  Once Alys was out of the house, surrounded by a human prison, the man holding down Mélanie let her go. He turned and spat on the stone floor as he left. She lay there nursing her bruises as the echoes of the crowd grew farther and farther away, leaving only the thin strains of her younger daughter sobbing in the basement beneath her. Oh, Alys. What could be done now? Her own village, her own people had turned on her, she who had only devoted her young life to helping others.

  Now all they could do was trust that someone else would help her.

  CHAPTER ONE

  And so, I ask for Your Highnesses’ assistance.” Lord Verrier bowed deeply before his king and queen. “As you can tell, this is a most pressing matter, which must be received with the utmost urgency.”

  “Really?” Mary replied, her perfectly arched eyebrow raised. “The utmost?”

  “What the queen means to say,” Francis said, drawing Lord Verrier’s confused gaze back to his throne, “is that perhaps a dispute over the ownership of chickens isn’t something that necessarily requires royal intervention.”

  “But, Your Highness—” Verrier began.

  “I will have it dealt with,” the king interrupted. “Thank you, Lord Verrier.”

  Red-faced, the nobleman nodded and shuffled backward out of the throne room. Francis waved to the guards to close the doors behind him.

  “Are you not enjoying yourself?” Francis asked his wife as she carefully lifted the weight of her crown from her head. Nursing it carefully in her lap, Mary rolled her head from side to side before resting her huge brown eyes on the king.

  “How many more are there?”

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “But I do know how important it is that we keep the nobles and the peasants on our side right now. Giving the people an audience with their king and queen allows them to feel they are being heard.”

  “No one believes that more than I, Francis, you know that.” Mary reached across her throne to take his hand and he squeezed her delicate white fingers tightly. “Only I hadn’t expected to be hearing quite so many, well, petty squabbles. It’s like being a little girl in the nunnery again; she stole my chickens, he took my carriage. Really, I begin to wonder, do people ever grow up?”

  He smiled playfu
lly. “More than a year at court and you have to ask me that?”

  “Good point,” she replied. “To think of all the little girls across France, dreaming of glamorous court life.”

  Mary stretched her arms above her head, breathing in to find some relief in her green brocade gown. A dress this tightly corseted was not designed for sitting on a throne listening to childish arguments between men old enough and rich enough to know better.

  “You talk as though you didn’t dream of debating the ownership of Lord Verrier’s farm animals,” Francis said, teasing. “Mary, Queen of Scots, Queen Consort of France, and chicken fancier.”

  Mary looked down at her beautiful brocade gown, at the diamonds and rubies that sparkled on her fingers, and then at Francis, the King of France and her husband. These were the things that little girls dreamed of across the country, across the world even. What they didn’t anticipate were the politics, the power struggles, the constant threat of assassination, not only from the Protestants inside France who resented their Catholic rulers but now from her own cousin, Queen Elizabeth, who sat on the throne in England, only a short sail across a small sea. And then there was this distance between herself and Francis that she could not seem to breach. He was beside her always but sometimes felt so far away, as though his head and his heart were elsewhere, and it scared her. Life in the palace was far from a fairy tale.

  “Mary?” Francis saw his wife’s happy expression shift and squeezed her hand again. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, of course.” Mary recovered herself quickly. Replacing her crown, she smiled at Francis. His golden hair shone in the bright afternoon sunlight and his blue eyes shone with relief. She was getting too good at lying. They both were. “Shall we get on with it? I’d like to have settled whether or not Madame du Metiere’s goats should have been sent to market or not before it’s time for dinner.”

  With a quick grin that reminded Mary he was still the man she loved, Francis motioned for the guards to open the door to the throne room and send in their next guest.