Courtesan (58 page)

A confidence was borne of her newfound strength, and, in Henri’s absence, she was convinced that Diane should be the first to feel the force of it. Though she no longer spoke of it to the King, she had never forgiven her for what she believed was the outright theft of Chenonceaux. The years had only sharpened Catherine’s desire to possess the little chateau on the river. Though she said that her reasons were many, there was only one with any great importance. She wanted it because it belonged to Diane.

As the days of summer progressed, she plunged headlong into her new duties as Regent. She read and studied with an enthusiasm that she had not felt since she was a young girl in Italy. Through her own henchmen, she also began the search for a loophole through which she might rightfully take possession of Chenonceaux. She was Queen, she reasoned. It was property of the Crown, and no matter what she must do or pay, she meant to take it away from that whore. But, as if by some strange intervention, the fates she monitored and worshipped so closely through her mystics began slowly to turn against her.

After several weeks of study, Catherine discovered that provisions that she personally had allocated for the troops had mysteriously disappeared. Along with the rations had gone the horses and carts intended to deliver them. Enraged at the negative light that such a misdeed would cast upon her, she sent a letter to her friend Montmorency. She ordered that from then on provisions should be transported in the charge of those who would be held responsible for them. It was these acts of piracy alone that could tear the Queen from her infant son. She quickly cut a path to Châlons, which was the base of supplies for the army. There she hoped to uncover the offender herself.

Feeling weak, she stopped at Joinville, the main seat of the Guise family, and a halfway point on the road to Châlons. She did not know, as her train entered the courtyard, that the Cardinal Charles was currently in residence with his good friend and ally, Diane de Poitiers, just back from her holiday at Anet. It was there at Joinville, in the chateau overlooking the flowering banks of the Marne, that the Queen of France fell critically ill.

“G
OD HELP US,
I have no idea what it is!” declared the royal physician as he hovered over the Queen. He was examining the pustules and red patches on her face and hands with the same unrestrained amazement as if she were already dead.

Diane stood between Charles de Guise and another of Montmorency’s nephews, Odet, Cardinal de Châtillon. They looked down on Catherine, whose eyes were covered with an opaque film as she muttered incoherently between moans of pain.

“I doubt if it is the plague,” the physician continued. “But as to a firm judgment, I confess I am vexed.”

The senior physician to the King, Amboise Paré, had been summoned from his battlefield hospital, but he would not arrive for at least two days. In the meanwhile, Philippe Regnier was charged with her care and could do little more than cover her with washes of rose water and see that she was as comfortable as possible.

“I am certain it is the plague, and I for one am not prepared to die, Her Majesty’s service or not!” whispered Lucrezia Alamanni to Marie La Maure. The two ladies-in-waiting to the Queen stood pensively in the corner near the door, as the physician completed his examination. Both women covered their faces with cloths dipped in mint, rosemary and lavender. The mixture was believed to be useful against the plague.

“Nearly everyone else has left her train already. Surely she cannot begrudge us more than the others if we return to Fontainebleau; that is if she survives.”

“Whatever it is, she certainly cannot last much longer,” agreed Marie. “Just look at her face! She is barely recognizable beneath those oozing sores. Her tongue has swollen so much that she cannot speak. I heard gossip this morning that in Paris they are saying she is dead already.”

“It is the purples. I know it is, and they spread like fire through the forest in summer!” Lucrezia ranted. “I am afraid for my family. I cannot stay with her, no matter what the Crown does to me!”

“I wonder who His Majesty will marry when the Queen is gone. I always thought it would be her,” Marie said, pointing her chin discreetly in Diane’s direction. “But she is getting so old now, and after His Majesty’s affair, it is clear he finally has a taste beyond the well-aged fare that he once found so desirable.”

After the physician had completed his examination, Diane left the Queen’s bedside and swept across the bedchamber to the door where the two servants still stood.

“Madame Alamanni, Mademoiselle La Maure,” she said, “the Queen can have no use for you now. If your change in attitude is apparent to me, then it will surely be apparent to her and we cannot risk upsetting her further. Perhaps it would be better for all concerned if you both would retire to Fontainebleau.”

“But who will serve Her Majesty?” asked Marie.

“For now, that will be my concern.”

“You?” Lucrezia bit her lip.

“I am certain that you both will be summoned again when Her Majesty has recovered.”

“Do you not mean
if
she recovers, Madame?” said Marie La Maure. “I have never seen a plague so vile as hers.”

“Her recovery is in God’s hands, whatever her malady. I trust in the coming days that you shall pray for the return of Her Majesty’s good health, as will I.”

The Cardinal de Châtillon, who was among the Queen’s most intimate friends, was a small man with receding hair and a neat lint-blond beard. He wore the same red robe and heavy gold cross as Charles de Guise, now Cardinal de Lorraine.

After the physician had left, he looked across the room from beside Her Majesty’s bed and saw the two ladies with the cloths held before their faces. He advanced in freshly polished dark leather slippers, and stood behind Diane.

“Well then, are we to lose two more of the Queen’s faithful?” he asked, his voice curbed with irritation and fatigue from lack of sleep. Diane looked over her shoulder.

“I think, Your Eminence, it is better that they go. The Queen cannot hope to benefit from their fear. Charles,” she said, turning toward Guise. “There is no one else. May I count on you to escort them back to Fontainebleau?”

His relief was almost too apparent. “Of course, Madame,” he replied as he lowered his head.

“But they have both been with her for years. If even they are not willing to stay, who do you expect to attend Her Majesty in their absence?” asked Châtillon. “Her entire household and Guise’s staff have already abandoned us and returned to Fontainebleau.”

Diane looked again at the two women, their eyes laced with fear and their faces punctuated by an overwhelming desire to be dismissed.

“I shall stay with Her Majesty,” said Diane. “Your Eminence shall have to look to your own heart to know what is right for you.”

“It is God’s gift,” said the Cardinal, “that at least she has not developed the swelling in the pits of her arms. Then we would know that it is the plague. There is comfort in that. If you should like, Madame, out of a sincere and respectful affection for Her Majesty, I too shall stay.”

After the final two ladies-in-waiting were dismissed from service, Diane returned to the Queen’s side. The dark bed with the heavy velvet curtains hid the Queen’s disfigured mass within its folds. She had fallen asleep again and Diane whispered a Hail Mary. The contorted expression of pain and fear on her thick, blemished face had been difficult to bear. It softened a little as she slept.

Diane was not so detached from Catherine as the years and the manipulations might have led her to become. Despite their differences and the man who divided them, they had shared a household, the love of seven children and their lives for nineteen years. Ironically, Catherine’s Italian faction, who had filled her head with gossip and kept the hostile fires burning between them, had all run in fear. In the likely hour of her death, Catherine had been abandoned. Of all those who supported her, flattered her and protected her, only her greatest rival remained.

Madame
M’amie,

I shall not write a long letter, for I have given the bearer all the news, nor have I the leisure, being now about to make the passage of the river Sarre. I beg leave to tell you that my army is in excellent condition and of fine spirit. I am confident that if we are opposed at the crossing, Our Lord will aid me by His grace, as he has done from the beginning.

I will write nothing else to you, for Monsieur Avanson, who brings you this letter, will give you my messages. Meanwhile, I entreat you will remember him who has never known but one God and one love, and be assured that you will never have cause for shame to have granted me the name of servitor that I beg you to keep for me forever.

Diane neatly folded the letter and lay her head back against the soft crimson velvet of the carved oak chair. She was exhausted. She had not slept nor eaten for three days.

Hélène took the letter from her mistress’s limp hand and set it on the small table beside her.

“He does not know about the Queen,” said Diane. “It would seem his men have found a reason to keep it from him.”

“Please, Madame, you simply cannot go on this way. I beg you. Let me have something made for you to eat and pour you a bath.”

“Her Majesty is still alive, and while that is the case, I must continue with her.”

“But the Cardinal de Châtillon is with her now, and even he has begged you to get some rest. You can be no good to her like this.”

Hélène’s words had a ring of truth and Diane cast her tired eyes upon her friend. “I wished that she would die,” she whispered, and looked away. “I swear that I did not mean to wish it. I tried to push the thought from my mind, but when she first fell ill, before we knew the extent of it, I found myself thinking how many years it had been and how much simpler my life would be without her anger and her remonstrations against me. It was only a passing thought; no more than a moment, but now I feel somehow, that perhaps I am responsible.”

“Madame, that is. . .”

“You must get word to him, Hélène. He has a right to be told. Send a message through Saint-André. Tell him that the Queen is near death. Tell him that he must come at once.”

Hélène knew that Diane was rambling. The lack of sleep and the hunger had rendered her words, at times, incoherent. She put a hand to her mistress’s forehead to check for signs of fever. She made the sign of the cross when she was met with cool skin. She did not need to coax further. As she looked up again, Diane, who had spent much of the past three days on her feet between the wash basin and the Queen’s side, gave in to the cushioning support of the soft velvet chair. Hélène brought a bedcover from the foot of the bed, covered her with it, and stood protectively by for a moment until she was certain that Diane had fallen asleep.

When Diane’s eyelids began to flutter and the sculpted muscles of her face relaxed, Hélène walked to the small writing desk at the opposite end of the room. She drew a sheet of parchment from the drawer, dipped a quill into the ink and addressed the letter to Jacques de Saint-André on the battlefield at Metz.

M
ETZ FELL WILLINGLY
into the protective hands of the preliminary French troops. The way had been paved through the region several days earlier by possession of Toul. The fact that the Emperor refused to believe the German princes had turned against him until the French troops were nearly at his border had been the final blow.

Henri sat at Châlons, the Queen’s unmet destination, in the middle of reviewing his infantry, when Saint-André brought him the news that Catherine was desperately ill.

In his tent, a huge black and white pavilion sixty feet high, Henri collapsed onto his cot and surrendered his head to his hands. Around him was a table covered over with maps, a compass, an empty flagon of wine and two silver goblets. At the entrance, two guards stood sentry. On the wall, held to the tent by a leather thong, was a small painting of Diane done the previous year at Chenonceaux. There were guns, two daggers and his pearl-handled sword. They lay along with the bright blue embroidered pillow, a gift from his daughter, Elizabeth. His silver prie-dieu had been assembled for morning prayer, and some recent sketches in a folio of his children were tossed open across the cot. On the small tortoise-top table beside his cot was the first sketch of Diane done by Clouet, just after the birth of their daughter.

“Hélène says that Madame Diane and the Cardinal de Châtillon are the only two who would stay. The others were all afraid that the attack was dangerous, and that it would spread,” said Saint-André. “Word, Your Majesty, I am afraid, is that the Queen may already be dead.”

“Is it the plague?” he asked as he ran his fingers through the coarse tufts of his dark hair.

“Monsieur Regnier did not think so, Sire. But to be certain, Madame Diane has had Monsieur Paré recalled from the front to make a final determination. Sire, if it is contagious, as Mademoiselle Gallet says that they believe it is, then I cannot advise you to go.”

“Diane is there!” he snapped. “She is risking her own life to nurse the Queen. How could I possibly stay away? I want you and Marck to accompany me,” he said boldly, and then he softened. “That is, if you should consent to go.”