Tu Es Ma Lumière

174 - Interaction

When Sebastian de Portiers was a boy, once of the biggest things he had wanted was the acceptance of the Queen of France. Never before had she smiled at him, given him a kind word, or even just a amicable glance. It had always been the same, Queen Catherine and he. Her sharp, hawk-like eyes would stare at him so coldly, that piercing scowl had always been planted onto her mouth whenever she caught sight of the King's bastard son. She spoke of him in such harsh tones, such scolding manners when all he did was exist. The Serpent Queen of the French Court had always shown the offspring of her husband and his mistress an emotion not that far away from hatred.

And it had hurt, so much as a child. His mother never believed he could remember this, but just before the Dauphin and Dauphine had announced she was pregnant after a decade of barrenness, when the Dauphine had been pale and red eyed, the little boy had run towards the Queen. He looked just like Henry, bordering a ghost of his past before the years in Spanish imprisonment, but with his mothers' crisp eyes. All he had wanted was to make her smile, so he rushed up towards the Dauphine, his long legs barrelling towards her as she sat with her ladies. His hand bled over the green, jagged stem of the brilliant red rose. He had offered it to her as a gift, showing her his brightest smile. She had taken the rose, yes, but his blood on the stem would be the thing to ignite the spark that had left her body for months. Later, he would learn that she had suffered three infant losses due to the stress that he himself - little Sebastian- had brought just because his heart beat strongly in his chest, his lungs took in deep inhales of air.

She had been furious with him, and he didn't understand why. Sebastian had rushed off to his maman in tears, and she would furiously scream at the Dauphin about the actions of the Dauphiness. That night, Sebastian would learn later, would be the night of Francis' conception, when the Princess would stagger from her rooms, bloody and bruised and trembling and pale. A few months later, the Dauphin and Dauphine would stand side by side as King Francis I would joyfully announce the imminent arrival of the heir to France. Court had celebrated so joyfully, for most had long given up on a simple succession when the Dauphin would die. It had been thought that, since the first Dauphin Francis had died nine years previously, the Dauphine's barrenness would mean that Henri's brother Charles would take the throne. Hearing issue had finally caught into the little Duchess of Brittany's womb had been marvellous news.

The Dauphine had laboured for days. Diane had prevented him from going past her chambers, for she didn't want her son to hear the screams. Finally, a son had been borne. Court drank and celebrated happily, and Sebastian had so wanted to rush into the Dauphine's rooms to see his new little brother, even if they didn't share the same maman. Diane prevented this, and he didn't understand why. So, he waited until the mistress of the Dauphin had retired to the salon for the afternoon to drink port and sherry and he made his move, doing something marvellously stupid. Little Sebastian had gone to the Dauphine's chambers to ask her if he may see his baby brother.

Catherine had balled and screamed so much that it had been Henry to remove the child from his wife's chambers. She had been resting in her bed, Bash didn't know why, he had only been three years old at time, but she had been holding her baby. She didn't let him see Francis, obviously, but that only made him more curious. It took everything Diane had to keep her rambunctious toddler from his half brother, finally getting to see him at Francis' christening when Henry had proudly displayed him to all that wished to see the future King. Bash had giggled at him when the baby opened his big blue eyes and looked up at his half brother, touched his wispy blonde hair and told him that he loved him already.

As Francis grew, however, and his sickliness became evident, Catherine's hatred of Sebastian changed slightly. Still, she wished him dead, she always had done, since the moment he had been conceived. She had been so envious that Diane produced the man they loved a healthy boy whilst she gave him a sickly one. Catherine's franticness when Francis caught a mere cough, bundling him up each and every time the little toddler even sneezed, frantically calling for a doctor each and every time the baby babbled and fall down. Her overprotectiveness of him, her indifference to Elisabeth and Claude when they came into the world, that would never change.

It had been the little Queen of Scots' arrival in France that gave Francis the will he needed to prove the courtiers who looked to Catherine to provide another, healthier, son wrong. She had dragged him from his sickly bed and up trees, in berry bushes until their fingertips bled and their mouths were stained with juice, in all the nooks and crannies of the French Court, chasing after Sterling and whatever passed for a ball for four years, until she had been stripped from French Court and mushed back to Scotland after the murder of Marie de Guise.

In a way, Sebastian had always had a bond with Mary. A different one to the one he had with Francis and the one she had with the blonde Dauphin -nobody could have a closer bond than those two- but they bonded over more than horses and dogs and berries and trees. It was the mutual hatred that the Queen of France had for them. Never had either of them been held to Catherine's breast when the rare time occurred that the two of them had gotten sick with chills or viruses. Never had they been held or kissed, never had the two of them been told by Catherine that they were loved by her. Her bitterness that the King favoured Bash and the fact that Francis held Mary in higher regard than he did Catherine. The two of them had been hurt, but eventually, the dislike was mutual. And then it amused them.

But to see the little blonde Prince and the little ravenette Queen as they were now, it was an astounding change to the life they had all had. The childhood, marred with hatred and jealousy from the bitter Queen, the childhood that had ended not so long go, it occurred to Sebastian de Portiers, the Baron de Sévigné that truly, they would be different to their predecessors. Because as he stood outside in the blistering heat, the multicoloured streamers and tents planted around the courtyard, the musicians and the celebrating little servent children, he looks upon the Queen of France, Scotland and England. She plucks up her skirts and kicks a ball around with little Charles, Henri, Hercules and Jean-Philippe. Greer and Kenna join in, they all laugh with serendipity. Mary plucks her bastard step son up under his arms and laughs joyfully as the new one year old squeals with delight. He smiles at the sight, watching the King of France beam with pride at his bride.

Because it's always been known that Mary was the strongest woman either of them had ever met.