Courtesan (44 page)

“Henri, please! You’re hurting me!”

“You cannot say something like that to me,
m’amie,
and then expect me to sit blithely by, doing nothing in your defense!” he shouted as he took the stairs, not caring who heard them.

The night air was cold. There was frost on the lawns and tiny crystals dripped from leaves on the trees. There was no one else foolhardy enough to brave the weather, except two guards, who spoke to one another in low tones as they headed toward them at the base of the horseshoe staircase. Before they were near enough to identify their future King, and perhaps perpetuate the gossip, Henri pulled Diane into the small alcove beneath the massive stone stairs. By now she was shivering. Diane wrapped her arms around herself, and then closed her mouth so that her teeth would not chatter.

“Henri, please,” she said after she had caught her breath. This time her words were soft. Controlled. She waited for him to really hear her before she finished her sentence. They were facing one another. He was angry. He had been, as he often was in matters that concerned her, blinded by his rage. “Yes,
chéri,
” she continued. “I fear her wrath, but what might we do? I must live here if I am to be with you, and yet her faction of allies has grown. In that there will always be a threat.”

“That is not acceptable! There can be no threat to you!”

He turned away from her, not wanting to be brought so quickly from his anger by the look in her eyes. “From now on, you shall have a bodyguard. I shall also be arranging an official food taster, just as the Emperor had when he was in France. There shall be someone to go before you in everything. There will be no risks. Do you hear me, no risks!”

“Henri, I cannot live like that, and it would be cruel to put another man in harm’s way to protect me.”

“Oh, rest assured, there will be no serious threat to your new servants. Once Catherine and her entourage discover that I have made these amendments, they will not, I am certain, be willing to risk any action against you that would so clearly lead back to them.”

After he finished speaking, she could see his tense expression fade, his rigid body relax. His lips parted. She could feel his warm breath against her face. He pulled her closer.

“I am sorry if I was cross. It is only that I could not bear for anything to happen to you. . .you know that. . .” he whispered. “The thought of. . .well, you know that I will do anything, and I do mean anything, to protect you!” He kissed her gently, and then pressed his lips more firmly over hers.

After another moment, Diane no longer felt the cold.

W
HEN THEY RETURNED
to the grand ballroom, Henri took her hand and squeezed it. It was a small movement down by her side where, in the crush of velvet and silk, he knew it would go unseen. He meant it as a show of support, a movement that said that she need not be afraid. He was there with her. Now and always. Diane glanced quickly around the room before she advanced farther into it.

Antoine de Bourbon came up beside them and began asking Henri something about the stag hunt that was planned for the next morning. Diane nodded a greeting to Bourbon and then turned away. François de Guise had caught her attention. He was laughing garishly over near the windows. He was drawing attention to himself with the exaggerated laughter. His companion was a woman, though between the plumed toques and the ornate headdresses around them, Diane could not identify her. She could, however, clearly see Guise.

His costume was fashioned of a very expensive brocade. The color perfectly matched his waves of reddish gold hair and the triangular-shaped beard at the point of his chin. Monsieur de Guise, it seemed, was newly betrothed, and that fact had dramatically improved his disposition over the past few weeks. It was a match so advantageous that everyone had come to treat him with a respect almost akin to reverence. His powerful family would have accepted no less for the eldest son. It was clear that his time had come.

His younger brother, the Archbishop, who now garnered powerful influence throughout Europe, had arranged the match. Guise himself had told Diane that he was greatly pleased by his prospective bride. Diane, however, doubted that now. As she gazed across the room, she could finally see the girl by whom he was, at the moment, transfixed. It was her own younger and unmarried daughter, Louise.

Henri felt the change in her posture. He followed her eyes until he saw them. “Brissac,” he said with a hand over his mouth to mask the words, “would you be good enough to retrieve Guise.” He pointed across the room. “And find Saint-André as well. I wish for all of you to meet me in the west wing in half an hour. And you are to say nothing of it to anyone.”

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN,
you have nothing prepared?” Anne d’Heilly’s eyes flashed with fury at the poet, Clement Marot.

“Well, Madame, I only thought—”

The man who had once been one of her most staunch allies now stammered out a weak reply. Along with Jean Vouté, Marot had composed many cruel verses to slight Diane de Poitiers. But that had been before she had begun her rise to power beside the Dauphin. When he tried to finish, she interrupted him.

“You thought?!” Her eyes were combative and their emerald-green irises brilliant as she repeated his words.

“Yes, I thought that, well, that perhaps now with the King so ill and all. . .” Again he stammered. “That, well. . .perhaps the timing was not as, shall we say, opportune, as it once was, to deliver the same insults to her.”

“Was not as opportune?” Again she repeated after him, her indignation growing. “Monsieur Marot, I pay you, and handsomely I might add, to entertain me with poetry, not advice. If you feel that you can no longer rise to the vocation for which you were selected, perhaps you should consider taking your services elsewhere!”

This was not the first time, of late, that Anne d’Heilly had been forced to defer to the power of Diane de Poitiers. But she could not, for all of the signs, allow herself to acknowledge her diminishing influence. She looked back at Marot, his words ringing in her mind. She caught him looking cautiously around the room. She knew he was trying to avoid being seen in secretive conversation with the fading
favourite.
Many others had begun to desert her in the same fashion. It was slow at first, with several of them playing both sides of the fence. But there was less need for pretense among them now. They saw, as she did, the inevitable. Even her one staunch ally, Philippe Chabot, had had the unbearable lack of grace to die on her, leaving her alone, in favor with virtually no one but the slowly dying King.

“Monsieur Marot, you are a poor excuse for a poet,” she seethed, casting her wounded eyes upon him. “And you are an even poorer excuse for a friend. I want you out of here!” Then, as she turned away from him, someone pushed her from behind so that the wine she held splashed onto her very expensive green velvet gown.

“You imbecile! Now see what you’ve done!” she cried, but as she turned around, the reality of her own demise finally flashed before her, and with a vengeance.

“Why, did I do that?” said Diane, as though she were surprised. “Oh, I am so dreadfully sorry. Please, accept my humble apology.” Diane looked down at the soiled beaded velvet gown that it had taken six months to create and an instant to ruin. She had not meant to do it, but when it was done, she found that she could not help herself; she gave in to a very uncharitable burst of joy. “It is just so terribly crowded in here,” she continued, fighting a smile, “with everyone pushing and shoving. Oh, and your lovely gown, and now it is ruined. Velvet never dries the same, does it?”

Anne d’Heilly’s painted face went white with rage. “You are a stupid woman, Madame! As stupid as you are clumsy,” she declared suddenly and turned away from her. She knew better than to accuse the future King’s mistress of having orchestrated the slight intentionally. She no longer possessed the kind of power necessary to support it.

Diane watched her leave. After Anne had escaped into the crowd, she turned back around to see Clement Marot standing alone, holding his sides, nearly doubled over with laughter.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you! A thousand times, thank you! I never thought I would see it in my lifetime, but it was well worth the price of admission!”

“And what might the price have been?” Diane asked of the poet who had so often and so publicly sought to humiliate her with his cruel verses.

“I have paid the greatest price, Madame. The loss of your favor,” Marot finally replied and then punctuated his words with an expression so humble that she nearly believed him. Nearly. Marot had been the poet bold enough to have written only against Diane one New Year when all the rest of his poems to the King’s
petite bande
had been compliments.

What do you wish, Diane fair

What can I bring you?

You did not have, so I am told,

As much good fortune in the spring

As you are having in the fall

“Madame de Poitiers, if you please, I have been foolish and I believe my carelessness may well have hurt you. For that I am profoundly sorry.”

“Yes, well, none of us can change the past, Monsieur Marot. What is done, is done.”

“But then perhaps, if I am fortunate, what they say will hold true, that time heals all wounds.”

“Platitudes from a poet?” Diane asked with half a laugh.

He cleared his throat. “I am afraid it is the best one can hope for from an unemployed dilettante on such an unexpected moment.”

The trite way he said it made her laugh, despite her dislike of this man who had helped to define her painful early years at Court. Like so many others who had snubbed her, now he too was clambering after her, begging her forgiveness. Also like the others, he sought to carve out a place for himself in the new regime by clever flattery, not sincerity. But there would be no place for the likes of either Clement Marot or Jean Vouté in the new regime. That was one thing to which Diane personally would see.

“O
H
,
M
AMAN
,
isn’t this a lovely party? His Majesty even spoke to me, though I scarcely think he knew who I was. He could not have known that I was your daughter, because he was actually quite polite to me,” swooned Louise de Brézé.

Louise, the whimsical younger daughter of Diane de Poitiers and Louis de Brézé, had come to Court at the Dauphin’s insistence. Not only might she pass the holiday together with her family, but he had also suggested to Diane that this would be a splendid opportunity to formally secure for her a suitable husband.

“He looks so different up close,
Maman;
so entirely different than I had imagined,” she continued and then cupped her hand around her mouth. “So old!”

Diane wanted to tell her to be mindful of her tongue, but she knew that there was little use in it. Louise had been her willful child and she had become an even more willful young woman. Beautiful, impetuous and willful. To the men at Court, these qualities had translated into exciting, and Louise had no shortage of suitors. Diane had seen for herself that François de Guise would become another of them if she were not careful. She knew that the marriage would be a difficult one to settle because quite possibly her daughter would refuse unless the candidate was to her own liking.

“. . .and then that very handsome Monsieur de Guise was telling me all about his family seat at Joinville. It sounds lovely,
Maman,
” she continued chattering in Diane’s ear. “He is one of His Highness’s best friends, is he not? They say he has begun to develop great influence here. Oh, I am certain a place will be carved out for him in the new regime. Quite a large place, do you not think?”

“Louise, I want you to keep away from Monsieur de Guise. He is nearly married, and his betrothed is a wealthy young woman with whom you have no hope of competing. An interest in him now can only mean heartbreak.”

Louise began to laugh. “Humorous, do you not think,
Maman
? You telling me about the dangers of a married man?” She had not meant to be quite so insolent. But when it was out, she could not take it back. Nor could she rid the look of pain in her mother’s eyes. “Oh,
Maman,
forgive me. I had no right.”

Diane looked at her daughter. The elegant veneer only chipped by the girl’s thoughtlessness. “They have sounded the call to dinner. You had better find your sister and Robert, and join them,” she said and turned from her daughter, back into the crowd.

What Louise de Brézé did not know, what no one knew, was that her mother had never learned to take the references to her relationship with the future King of France with the carefree aplomb that it required. Confidence was essential to survive the ridicule and silent whispers cast at a royal
favourite.
Anne d’Heilly had learned it. Françoise de Foix had learned it before her. Both women had taken what the position afforded them, and had held their heads high.

But for Diane, the reality of being a mistress was still too painful. Her one fatal flaw, the one that kept her so vulnerable, did not come from the ridicule of others; it came from inside herself. Diane de Poitiers was above all things a profoundly religious woman. This affair went against all that she believed. She had never made peace in her heart with the sin of adultery, that she committed every day by loving Henri.

No one can be this happy,
she often thought,
and commit a sin as great as mine.
She knew that some day, somehow, she would be made to pay for turning her back on the Commandments.
He may still love me now, but it has been fourteen years. He is still young. Soon I shall be forty-five. He is but twenty-nine.
In the darkest, most secret place of her heart, she was afraid. She knew only too well that from even the best of dreams one must eventually wake.

“I
SHOULD LIKE SOMEONE
sent out there immediately to get the preliminary figures,” said Henri. “I wish to change it all. Enhance everything. The structure, the gardens, and especially the interior. Then bring me the figures. I need a working knowledge of what we are up against.”