Catherine glanced pleadingly at Madame Simon.
The woman shrugged and turned back to her seat by the stove. “See if you can get him to eat.”
Catherine moved across the room toward the small bed.
Louis Charles’s ghastly pallor made his blue eyes look enormous as he gazed at her in desperation. “They cut off her head, Catherine,” he whispered. “Like they did Papa’s.”
Catherine sat down beside him on the bed. “Yes.”
“You knew?”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“She wasn’t wicked,” he said with sudden fierceness. “They shouldn’t have done it.”
“Shh.” Catherine glanced over her shoulder at the couple by the fire but they didn’t appear to have heard. “You must be careful, Louis Charles.”
“Why? They’re only going to cut my head off too.”
“No, not you.”
“I’m the king. No one likes kings anymore.” Tears were running down his face. “But they didn’t have to cut off her head. She was only the queen. They should have killed me instead.”
Catherine’s hands gently stroked the fair hair from his face. “I know it’s hard to understand why bad things happen. I can’t understand it myself.”
“He said they didn’t give her proper burial. They just threw her body into a pit with lots of other traitors and poured lime into it so that no one would ever know she lived. He said since she didn’t have the proper rites she couldn’t ever go to heaven.” His eyes were wide with panic. “She’slost, Catherine.”
Catherine cursed Simon beneath her breath. It wasn’t enough that he’d told the child his mother was dead, he had to condemn her soul as well. What could she say? she wondered frantically.
“Listen, Louis Charles, do you remember what I told you about some fragrances living for thousands of years? Perhaps souls are like fragrances. Perhaps they don’t really need a body or rites or hallowed ground to live on.”
Louis Charles’s gaze clung desperately to her face. “She’s not lost?”
She shook her head. She was silent a moment and then spoke hesitantly, feeling her way. “I think memory must be the fragrance of the soul. As long as we remember yourmaman, she’ll linger with us. She won’t be lost.”
“I’ll remember her,” Louis Charles whispered, his thin fingers nervously clutching the coverlet. “I’ll remember her every day so she’ll never be lost.”
“It doesn’t have to be every day.” Catherine took out her handkerchief and gently wiped his damp cheeks. “Sometimes at Vasaro we barely notice the perfume of the flowers because it’s always with us. But then suddenly something happens to remind us. It rains and the scent becomes more powerful or there’s a strong breeze after a long stillness. You don’t have to try to rememberwhat’s already a part of your life, Louis Charles. Do you understand?”
“I think so.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I wish I had something to remember her by. I’m afraid she’ll slip away if I don’t have anything to remind me of her. They keep telling me things and sometimes I believe them. I’m not like your friend Michel.”
“You don’t have to be like Michel. You’re fine just as you are.” She kissed his forehead. The nuns would have probably condemned every word Catherine had spoken, but she had been desperate to help him and they had seemed somehow right. “Will you eat something now?”
He shook his head. “Will you bring me my violets?”
She got up and went to the cabinet and brought back the box of violets. “I see you have some new blossoms.”
He nodded, his gaze on the violets. “If they don’t cut off my head, I’ll have an entire garden of violets someday.”
“They won’t do—” She stopped in mid-sentence. How could she assure him this world would not take his life when it had taken both his parents? If they didn’t manage to get Louis Charles out of this prison soon, he could well lose his head. “I’ll bring you another box of violets the next time I go to see my cousin.”
She wasn’t sure he had heard her. His head was bent forward over the violets and he breathed deeply, taking in the fragrance. He murmured something, but she couldn’t quite catch the word.
It might have beenmerci.
Or it could have beenmaman…
TWENTY-FOUR
