Courtesan (23 page)

“Go on, lad, dance with her!” urged the old innkeeper who served soup for the guests. François de Guise was flinging a puffing, wheezing Charlotte about the room on his arm, and Jacques was dancing with Hélène.

“Go on!” the innkeeper urged again. She smacked Henri on the back and winked at Diane.

“I am afraid I do not know how,” he finally conceded and shifted in his seat.

“Oh, go on, laddy boy! I’m sure she’ll teach ya. Will ya not, deary?” she prodded at Diane with a gapped-tooth smile. Michel whistled a rousing tune on his pipe and the rest of the guests laughed and clapped their hands to the time of the music. Their happiness was infectious.

“Will you dance with me, then?” asked Diane in a voice just above a whisper.

He wanted to reject the idea but he could not for, in an instant, he found his hand tightly wound in hers as she led him just outside the open door and into the courtyard. Their movements were slow and studied, and were not to the rhythm of the music inside; but gently and carefully she gave him the patience with which to learn to dance.

After a while in the evening breeze, his uncertain expression passed to a studied smile as he continued to peer down at his feet and twirl around to her lead.

“Well, imagine it,” he chuckled. “I am dancing!”

“That you are.” She smiled back at him. At that moment, under the shimmering light of the moon and the scratching music of the crickets, they looked into one another’s eyes. There, each of them uncovered something new. But it was Diane who made the greatest discovery. It was as if she had never really noticed his eyes until then. Until that day, that very moment in the freedom of Cauterets, his had been sad, lonely eyes. Now, there in the cool glow of the moonlit sky, they were strong eyes; passionate and questioning. He gazed at her until she blushed like a girl, and he made her dance with him again and again. They did not speak. There was no need. There was only the sound of music and laughter and the rustle of her skirts as they swept over the cobblestones.

T
HE NEXT DAY
they took a shorter route back from the village after vespers, winding their way through a deep green clover meadow. It was a steeper grade down which they needed to pass to return to the inn, but the poppies were much more lush and the view of the valley had beckoned them since their first day in Cauterets. Diane ran down the hill ahead of Henri, her black silk gown flowing behind her with the breeze.

“Oh, how I wish I were a boy! To always be free like this!” she laughed, running with her arms outstretched.

Diane ran down the incline laughing and skipping. The fresh air blew through her thick blond hair and pulled it away from her face so that she did not see the large stone beneath her feet. She tripped suddenly and went reeling, head first, into the masses of rich meadow grass and red poppies.

Henri ran after her, shouting her name, but as he neared he could still hear her laughter as she lay in a pile of her rumpled skirts. Henri knelt beside her and grabbed her hands. His face was full of anger. He was prepared to shout out that she had needlessly alarmed him, but before he could, he met once again with her eyes; those same fragile blue eyes into which he gazed the night before.

They looked at one another as her chest lightly heaved from her running. Slowly, a breath at a time, each drew nearer the other. There amid the rustling trees, the poppies and clover, Henri pressed his lips to her cheek and then slowly moved them over to meet hers.

“You mustn’t,” she whispered, but this time she did not struggle against him as he pressed her soft rose petal lips more firmly on his own; breathless and urgent. She was powerless against him; his youth; his urgent virile body.
I must be mad,
she thought, as her mind whirled.
I know that I am!

Diane grew weak beneath the weight of his straining body as a primal instinct drove him to press her back beneath him into the soft clover. Kissing her. Touching her. Unsure and yet powerful. She opened her mouth to him, guiding his tongue over her own. It was warm. Like liquid fire. . .and she was weak. She wanted just to lie beneath him here, alone, and give in to what she knew he thought was love. They were alone. He was young and he would recover from his first experience.
Oh, it has been so long. . .so very long.

She felt the firmness of his hand on her thigh; his lips trailing a path on her neck. The press of his body against her own. Then she became mildly aware of a distant sound. Thundering. Pounding. Hooves of a horse digging into the loose earth. Growing louder. Diane sat up, looking around in a panic. She shook back the strands of hair that had fallen into her face, and quickly straightened the bodice of her gown. It was François de Guise. Henri moaned and moved away from her.

“What the devil do you want?” Henri shouted when Guise was near enough to hear him. He rose and walked over to his friend who stopped his horse near them on the hill.

“I beg Your Highness’s pardon, but a messenger has just come from the King. He says we are to return to Court at once. He asked that I give you this.” He extended a letter with the King’s seal and added as he did, “The messenger also relayed that it is of the utmost urgency.”

“What is the news? Has something happened?”

“Perhaps the letter. . .”

Henri snatched the parchment from Guise. “Damn him!” he growled. “Even with this distance between us, he still manages to plague my life!”

D
IANE LAY ALONE
on her bed in her black silk shift and blue jersey stockings, trying to rest before supper. But she could not sleep. The depths of what she had just felt frightened her. She had broken the boundaries of decorum.

I am too old for romance with a boy.
She closed her mind to the mere possibility of it.
It can go no further. I was right to think that he is infatuated.
She grimaced and shook her head.
There can be nothing but danger and heartbreak in it for us both. He does not need a lover so much as a mother. The King said so himself.

Try as she might to push the thoughts from her mind, they crept back in. Silent thoughts. Deadly thoughts. To have a young lover, a boy to teach, to mold into the perfect lover. The image of his hard body pressed against her own in that field brought her from the state of dull, dazed half-slumber to a tortured awakening.

She bolted from her bed wet with perspiration. Beads of sweat dripped from the top of her lip. Her heart raced. She was lying to Henri and lying to herself. There was nothing maternal about her feelings for him, nor did he want that from her. She poured water into the white porcelain basin at the foot of the bed and splashed it onto her face over and over until the upper portion of her shift was soaked.

No matter how much like a man he looked, no matter what feelings he had managed to awaken in her, he was still a boy. The son of the King. That was a dangerous combination for a widow by whom the King himself was tempted. If she wanted to keep her place at Court, she must not lose His Majesty’s favor; that was a balance every courtier walked. But her thoughts were not so selfish as they were realistic. What would be left to her if she fell from grace and was sent back to exile in the cold, lonely domicile of Anet?

She shivered as the cool breeze washed through the window across her wet skin. She was already in disfavor with Anne d’Heilly. That state of affairs alone could spell her ruin if it continued. Were it not for the King’s amorous intent and their mutual love of the arts, she was certain she would already have been sent home.

Diane rubbed her hands up and down the gooseflesh that had formed on her arms. God help her, in spite of it all, she wanted to feel his touch again. She wanted him, once again, to kiss her. She wanted him. He wanted her. Neither of them were betrothed or married. It seemed so simple. He was a young man eager to give his love. She was a lonely widow desperate to receive it. What real harm could there be in helping him reach the confidence of manhood which, in the face of the King, seemed so intent on eluding him?

He trusted her completely. She wanted to trust him. They were
compagnons d’armes
in a war that seemed, though in different ways, directed only at the two of them. They were both inexperienced and uneasy against all the intrigue and ugliness of the French Court. For all her money, her connections and her noble birth, Diane was not so worldly as she might have been. She had been hidden away. Sheltered. This return to Court had been difficult. Henri had made the path easier. He had made her depend on him. It lessened the differences between them. And though she would not realize it for some time, the bond between them, which even death would not sever, had already begun to form.

“W
E UNDERSTAND,
Monsieur Henry
,
that you leave by the morrow,” Michel said as he bit into a piece of bread at the dining-room table where all of the guests had gathered. “My wife and I have become quite fond of all of you and of this place. Rarely have I had such a welcoming audience for my playing. You shall be missed.”

His wife nodded in agreement.

“Not so fond as I have become of this place. It is painful for me as well, to part from it,” Henri replied and once again tried to engage Diane in a glance.

The other guests as well had come to share Michel’s fondness for the mysterious group who said they were from Paris. They asked questions and drank continuous toasts to prosperity and to the happiness of their new friends. Between the dialogues and the embraces, Henri struggled to find a way to request a private moment with Diane. Though she avoided his gaze, he could not help staring at her. She drew him like a magnet. He traced her long thin nose with his eyes; the nose that gave way to those lips.
Those lips that I have kissed,
he thought.
Now, by the indifference she is showing me, she would have me believe that it never happened.
He grew more rigid in his seat as Michel moved near the dancing area with his flute. He would play the music for a last dance for the group who, as the mayor had muttered, would probably never be together again. Jacques took Hélène’s hand and the mayor led Michel’s bride in a dance.

“Dance with me?” Diane whispered.

In his surprise, Henri found himself unable to object. He let her lead him outside into the courtyard where he had first learned. As they moved alone through the steps in the shadows of the moonlight, she finally met his gaze. He drew near enough to her to feel her breath.

“I have had such a wonderful time here,” she whispered. “This place is magical to me. It is as if here, all time around us has stopped. I wanted you to know how special this has been.”

Henri tried to smile but he was tortured by her nearness. He wanted to claim her as his own; hold her in his arms and kiss her as he had done that afternoon. But he dared not. When the music ended, she curtsied to him as part of the dance and slipped a small piece of parchment into his palm before she returned to the open dining hall.

The men shook hands. The women embraced and said their tearful adieus. Michel’s wife promised to write and perhaps to visit Henri’s fictional address on the rue des Étuvres, when they were next in Paris. It was only after most of the guests had retired, and Diane had bid an early good night, that Henri glanced down at the folded slip of paper. His heart raced as he read the words which, by now, he knew well.

Before I stirred from that place where I should wish forever to remain, I plucked with great delight, the flower from the leaves of the rosebush, and thus I had at last, my rose.

It was the last line from
Le Roman de la rose.

T
HE JOURNEY BACK
to Court was arduous, with sloping hills and twisted roads. But this alternate route, charted for them by the King’s guides, would be more expedient and the urgency of their return required it.

Charlotte had fallen ill near Targes and Hélène and Diane were forced to attend her closely. As the ride on horseback would have proven too strenuous, a sedan chair, draped with heavy tapestry to block the wind, was hastily constructed for her.

They traveled down through the villages of Agen and Cahors, surrounded by bare, wild hills. Past Brivé and Limoges. The final night of their long journey home was spent in Chateauroux on the banks of the river. Henri and his friends were welcomed by the mayor of the town and would stay the night at his manor. Diane and her attendants stayed at the home of Monsieur Dutel, the town’s wealthiest merchant. It would be their last night together before returning to Court and Henri desperately wanted things more clarified between them.

Throughout their journey home, Diane avoided being alone with him. They had not shared a private word since their final morning in the baths at Cauterets. He had gone there after receiving her poetry, expecting a change in her. A change in him. But she was indifferent. They sat together in the warm, effervescent sulfur water speaking about Père Olivier and what they might further do to help him rebuild the church. Their conversation was cordial; at times, even happy. But for all the smiles and the plans, she had made no mention of their kiss in the meadow the day before. In his overwhelming confusion, neither had he. Now was his final opportunity to establish things between them.

Diane descended the stairs just as Hélène showed him inside. She stood midway between the top and the bottom of the carved mahogany staircase as Hélène looked up at her. Henri’s eyes followed. He gasped at the sight of her. Diane had not expected to receive visitors and she was not properly dressed. Her thick blond hair was loose and hung long over her shoulders and she wore a loose fitting dressing gown of embroidered white silk.

“Please leave us,” she said to Hélène, and descended the rest of the stairs with a silver hairbrush still in her hand. Henri waited to speak until they were alone.

“I think you look more beautiful than I have ever seen you,” he whispered and moved closer to her. Then he stopped. He could see in her eyes that something had changed. “I have missed you,” he added with an awkward cracking voice.