The Stars Are Right: The Irish Rose: Letter3

"Give me your knife." At first we did not know what he wanted. But it became quickly clear when he set aside his cuff links, and turned up the sleeves of his shirt, to bare from the elbows down.

"Mssr. de Bonnevault told us to protect Her by all means. He will not take it well if She were to die from Her own stubbornness."

Jean-Marc shook his head. "Do not do this, Franz," he said. "If you fail, She will hate us, and by connection Mssr. de Bonnevault, too. If you succeed, something worse may come of it."

"Give me the knife," Franz said more firmly. "She will do as She must, or I will die. If She is as they said, the choice will be simple. If I die... then She is Unworthy of ourselves and of Mssr. de Bonnevault — whom we all love."

He looked at me then, and I felt ice on my spine. As if he had just rearranged some fated event with his words.

Though we all have never had cause to doubt the strength of our family — it has been Franz, braver in his own strange way than the rest of us. How little we have known of the depths of this quiet, fussy little man.

Jean-Marc looked at me, and I back at him, as if he expected me to make the decision.

"Go ahead, do as Franz ask," I told him. All of us knew for a certainty then what he intended, and the depth of the loyalty he holds for you. Because you charged us with this task — to keep Her well, safe and alive — he went forward. Not to help Her, but because to allow Her to continue to suffer (even if it was Her own desire to do so), or perhaps to die — would mean failure in the task you had set us.

Franz took the knife, and with shirtsleeves rolled up, went into Her private rooms through the adjoining door, and closed it behind him.

"Is Franz a fool — or a brave man?" I asked Jean-Marc.

He shook his head. "Neither," he said back to me. "Only a man who loves Mssr. de Bonnevault more than life."

I cannot tell you the details of what happened behind that door. Jean-Marc took the boy away to bed, and only I stayed behind to wait. I can tell you that I heard voices — his and Hers, raised sometimes in anger, sometimes in fear, sometimes in black despair. I could not make out the words said, and I am happier not to know.