If there is one tragedy in life that could make a mother’s heart be broken into pieces, it would be the death of her child. Beatrice, a woman toughened by hardships brought about of running a kingdom alongside as trong-willed husband, is no foreign to the experience of losing a child from the moment it first breathed the air we all share. She sat rigid at the bedside of her youngest child and namesake. The ever powerful and strong matriarch of the Gaerdinian royal family sat curled, hair tangled and in a mess, feeling lost and petrified. Her ladies removed her hood and it showed the lines that started forming on her forehead. She could not be offered anything, and she just rested her head on the cold and stiff hand of the darling princess everyone loved.
“Mother,” said Madeleine, going down beside her late sister’s bed, reaching out to her mother, “it is time for her to go.”
Beatrice and her blue eyes looked intently at her firstborn child.
“My darling Beatrice need not go. Can’t you see how beautiful she looked just now? Oh but she has the face of an angel!” said the queen, all the hope in this world present in her delusion, “She stays with me, you may all go.”
Madeleine could not contain the emotion she has been trying to repress all the while caring for her younger sisters. She dropped to the floor and wailed, pounding the marbled earth beneath her.
“Mother… she is gone. Beatrice is dead.” she said, raising her head to meet her mother’s gaze.
The physicians attending to the princesses led the other ladies-in-waiting to go outside and give the queen their private time. Barnes, the chief physician, approached the queen and parted her hand with the princess.
“Your Majesty, the Princess Beatrice’s body should be—“
“How dare you touch my daughter!” the queen bellowed. She was suddenly frenzied and attacked the man who had spent the sleepless nights with them. The other physicians tried to restrain the queen, but the Princess Royal entered in and held her mother for them.
“Please sirs, take my sister away. I’ll take care of Her Majesty.” she ordered.
“No! Madeleine let go of me! Don’t you dare take Beatrice away or I’ll kill you!” shouted the queen. “Don’t!”
“Doctor Barnes, please do your duty to the princess. Mother, please—“
The princess’ good will was met with a slap from the queen. She ran to the corpse of her dead daughter and snatched the rigid flesh from one of the physicians.
“My daughter stays with me.” she stated heavily. “She is not dead. She is just sleeping and she will wake up later for her supper. She told me she wants the game her father brings home from the hunt today. I dare you to tell me otherwise!”
~
She was running through the wheat fields, and she noticed her gown of blue velvet was that of her sister Natalie’s.
“Hélène!” shouted Natalie from the other end of the wheat field tended by the family of Miller Partington. “You lose again!”
She tried to reach for her, but her sister’s figure was always looking as far as she had started. Natalie waved goodbye at her, and turned round about.
“Natalie, no!” she hollered, her voice reverberating across the golden ears of wheat. “Come back Natalie!”
Natalie looked back, but to her horror, the face looking back at her was as deformed as a travelling gypsy would show a freak from the east.
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Beloved of a King
Historical FictionKingdom of Gaerdin, 16th century. When Mistress Hélène Feuillets won the intimacy of the king, Henry III, she thought she could finally be happy. It was common knowledge the king must have a son, an heir to the throne, and he needed to have him soon...
