Tu Es Ma Lumière

116 - Fatality

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Prompt - Mary dies in childbirth, leaving behind Francis.

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"You said we'd be a family." the dying Queen of France croaks to her bereft, golden husband. She holds his hand weakly, unable to clench his large palm as he did hers. "That we'd share a life." she whispers, so weak she could barely keep her eyes open anymore.

"We will." the King of France and Scots proclaims softly, the word cracking with the tears in his eyes and the break of his heart. "We will." he insists. "E-everything's going to be fine." Who he was trying to convince, her or himself, he didn't know. "You-you're going to get better. And we'll try again, we'll have living children of our own, who we can love and nurture as our own. Trust me, believe me." he begs.

Mary shakes her head. "Such a beautiful dream." she murmurs. "It would have been a perfect life." her voice cracks on the last word, her head sagging into the pillow with the exertion it caused to even talk.

"Not a perfect life, my love, our life. Yes? Just-just hold on until we can find a way to get you better. And then, we'll live it." he whispers, looking down so she didn't have to see the tears escape his eyes and run down his cheeks, dying a salty, warm death upon his lips. 

Such a tragic hand the Queen and King of France and Scots had been dealt. Was God such a merciless creature, granting such a calamitous existence to a duo bonded in the chains of marriage and love. They do not deserve such a lifetime. Neither of them do, even with their flaws and mistakes.

Baron for a year after their union in holy matrimony, it seems their wishes for a child came to an end when a child finally cought onto the Queen's womb. Sex glorious weeks of pregnancy end in tears and blood as the child slips through the apex of her thighs before the time was right. Another year of baroness equalling the worst year of the Queen's life, for that was the year in which she had no choice than to recover from sexual assault by a vile, evil man with nothing left to loose. Finally, the miracle child that saved the Queen from gossip and speculation.

Her womb grew and swelled with child. Each kick and turn sacred and treasured. The child grew healthily and strongly, kicking and turning each minute of the day. And when the time was right, a day and a half of labor produced the Dauphin James, Duke of Rothsay and Dauphin of France. A beautiful, lively boy with his mothers hair and his father's eyes. Beautiful, lively, attached to both his parents, of who'm holed up in their chambers for the first month of the childs' life to care for their newborn.

A perfect, contented unity. A life cut too short.

No physicians could figure out why, what the cause of the childs' death had been. It was so sudden. The child had been put to sleep in a grandeur, golden crib that had housed the Princes Charles and Henri before him. But he never woke, his body cold and lifeless as the nannies came inside to rouse him for the day.

The King still remembered how the Queen had collapsed into his arms, onto the floor, frantic screams leaving her lips, the biggest heartbreak she had had to face in her young, doomed existence.

Why am I cursed, Francis? she had begged him for an answer for months on end. Why am I cursed? Of course, the King could give her none.

Several months of grief, and the Queen had emerged an expectant mother once again. This fertilisation period had been not the delightful, blissfully happy extent of time in which the Queen's second pregnancy had been. No, this pregnancy was fraught with worry and anxiety. The Queen of Scots and France had desperately tried to keep her heart hardened against the child that was implanted inside her womb. So the pain, when she would inevitably loose the child, would not be as bad. Each kick and turn and cramp were not comforters, as they should have been, but sent a desperate ache through her chest and body. They were nothing but reminders that this child was not James, and it would never be James.