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To disturb a cardinal and a prime minister of France is certainly a forbidden thing to do by anyone ever existed, even his assistant. But that night you simply felt restless. There was heaviness stuck within the strings of your heart. You took deep breaths repeatedly with the hope it would loosen up any unknown emotions that occupied your chest. Panicked, you decided to go to his study room as adhering to the rules was no longer something you could afford.
He was there, in a white nightgown layered with brown robes over his shoulders. His face sunk in a scroll he lifted near the candlelight as there were books and papers all over the table. As he heard approaching footsteps, he put down the scroll almost in frustration. His sharp frown was visible before the limited light, trying to gauge the insolent being who dared to disturb his focus. He let out a long exasperated sigh as your form started to get visible to his sight.
“My dear, I'm pretty sure Father Joseph told you that I need my space for an important matter right now,” he immediately warned, yet still trying to make his voice gentle.
You flinched and stopped midway. You gulped nervously. Your forehead was sweating as you were trying to find any word to explain your action.
“My apologies, your eminence. My… my judgement is clouded.”
“It certainly is,” he replied, folding his arms. His eyes wandered at your form, noting your disheveled nightgown before he looked back at your eyes.
“You need to go back to sleep. Now, leave me alone,” he ordered.
“I can’t.”
Your quick response certainly caused him to raise an eyebrow. There was a long pause between the two of you before he finally replied with a mocking tone.
“‘Can’t’, you said? Did you have a nightmare or something?”
You carefully approached him, making yourself fully visible within the range of the candlelight. His eyes followed your figure with both amusement and annoyance.
“You haven’t answered me.”
As you stood closer to his chair, making yourself fully visible before his eyes, you pointed your finger to your chest, “This can't stop being loud and heavy.” Your voice was trembling with the emotion that was threatening to break out.
He looked at you curiously.
“Your heart?”
You nodded.
His hand stretched out, grabbing your arm and pulling you closer to him, making you stand between his knees. His eyes deep into yours.
“Are you unwell?”
You shook your head, “It's in there inside. It's heavy and… And I feel like I want to cry,” you repeated. He sighed softly.
“Can you tell me what emotion it actually is when you think about crying?”
“Fear, trapped…,” you mumbled. Your eyes looked around as if trying to find something to describe what had been stuck in your heart. You sighed heavily before your gaze came back to his. “Has something wrong happened to me?”
His eminence’s eyes gazed back into yours. There was a realization pooling inside his head. What you described was something he was familiar with the first time he took the bishopric position. Something that fed him, fueled him, until the day he met her. But, he needed to know more. After a couple of silence, his hand slipped around your waist and pulled you closer, while the other hand reached out to your cheek.
“What scares you… ma chère? What has trapped you?” He asked. His voice was surprisingly softened. “Talk to me.”
You slightly trembled under his gaze. The pressure of his hands that kept you close made the confession harder. Your throat felt tight, like the words refused to come. You took a deep breath, trying to manage your nervous system and the truth finally bursted out ragged.
“I’m… I’m scared of being locked… into a path that I can’t escape,” you said.
“What?”
“ I want… and want… and it never comes,” you continued breathlessly, shaking.
“Ma chère.”
“It’s as if… as if every choice has already… been made, and… nothing, not even prayers can change that...”
“Ma chère!” His clutch tightened around your waist to the point you forgot your own panic. He undeniably saw the younger him within those distressed eyes of yours. Why did you have that wound too? His lips parted slightly, but after a while they closed again. He almost confessed himself, telling you about a boy who once longed for a sword but instead was given a robe. But no words ever came out.
He exhaled, and you sensed something trembling yet firm in the air he expelled. Then, without haste, he guided you over his lap. His arms encircled your trembling form, pressing your forehead against the rise and fall of his chest.
“You will endure it,” he murmured against your temple, his voice firm yet weighted with the past you weren’t in. “The heart survives more prisons than the mind believes possible. And this heaviness…,” his breath lingered while he drew his index finger towards your chest, tracing the place where your heart beat, “...it will not devour you, ma chère. Not while I hold you.”
Your breath hitched at his words. Your hands clutched to the sleeve of his robes, tightly. No words ever came from your lips but your body was clearly seeking more warmth, more closeness, as you snuggled against his chest deeper. One of his arms immediately caught your body, wrapping around as if guarding you from a perceived danger in the room. He landed a lingering kiss on your temple and eventually, the measured and strong beats of his heart lulled you, easing the fight within your ribs. Your eyes were getting heavier as exhaustion stole over you.
As your body was getting heavier, he slightly adjusted his sitting so he could support you better. His arm still firmly held you around, while the other began to reach out the scroll he abandoned on his desk before. His mind once again went back to focus. The night was getting darker and the burning candle kept getting lower and lower. Its light flickered across his face, showing a man who was split in two: a man who was burdened with the affairs of France and a man who silently sheltered the fragile weight of your sleep.