Courtesan (61 page)

“My jewels! Quickly, my jewels!” she cried. “The ones I had made for my presentation to parliament! Lucrezia, my hair. Oh dear, what of my hair?”

“Very pretty, Your Majesty.”

“And my gown? Is it all right?”

The jewels were fastened at her neck and more musk was applied to her wrists and throat. The room was blue with it. Catherine stood in the center of her receiving room, swaying back and forth like an adolescent girl. As Henri came toward her, everyone in the Queen’s apartments bowed or curtsied. He kissed her cheek with a sensitivity that overwhelmed her.

“Leave us please for a few moments. We have private business with the Queen,” he said and waited until they had all gone. Then he led her slowly to a forest green velvet couch in the center of the room. They sat down beside one another as awkwardly as two children newly betrothed.

“May I have something brought for us?” she asked. “It will take only a moment.”

The smile that passed across Henri’s lips was strained. “Thank you no, Madame. I cannot stay.”

He turned to face her and took the small fleshy fingers of one of her hands in his own. It was warm and moist and he felt a churning in the pit of his stomach, but he suppressed it. “I have had a great deal of time to think of late, and I find that I have been remiss. I have not told you that I owe you a great deal of thanks.”

“Thanks? For what?”

“It is no secret to you that I had reservations when I was required to name you Regent in my absence. I was, however, informed soon afterward by my staff that your performance in that capacity was exceptional.” He took a difficult breath. “Catherine. . .no matter what has passed between us over the years, you did not hesitate to come to my aid when it mattered. This country and I owe you a debt of gratitude that cannot be easily repaid.”

Catherine was completely overwhelmed. It was the first time she could recall that Henri had ever thanked her for anything, and one of the few times in twenty-four years as his wife that his overtures toward her had been genuine. Then he handed her a small chest of painted oak, studded in silver. She looked up at him, her brown eyes brimming with tears.

“What is it, Henri? What did Monsieur Nostradamus tell you yesterday?”

“Can a man not, when he feels so inclined, honor his wife? Well go on, open it!”

Catherine pushed back the lid and let out a gasp. Inside, on a bed of red velvet, was a national medal fashioned by Clouet. On one side was her image and on the other was the face of the King. Tears rolled down her full painted cheeks, staining them. She looked back at him, unable to speak.

“You deserve this recognition, Catherine. I truly hope that it pleases you.”

She looked back down at the medal as though it might have disappeared as Henri offered her a handkerchief and waited for her to dry her eyes. She knew about all the medals he had struck in honor of Diane de Poitiers over the years. It had been another recognition of which she had been deprived by her husband’s obsession. But now, in this rare private moment between them, she could think of nothing but forgiving him everything.

“I know that these years have been difficult for you and that I have often been less than kind.”

“You need say nothing more, Henri.”

“But I want to.” His tone was gentle. His words were honest. She fingered the medal. “You have been a good wife and you have tried your best to please me. We have rejoiced with the births of ten beautiful children, and together we have suffered the loss of three of them. . .Oh, mine was a miserable youth, Catherine. I was tormented by so many things, and I know I gave you cause for nothing but to despise me. Still, you never did. I just want to say now, for everything, I thank you. . .truly, thank you, and I hope that finally now there can be peace between us.”

He was gone before Catherine had stopped crying.

She was still sitting on the embroidered couch when Lucrezia and the Cardinal de Châtillon returned. To say that she had been stunned by his coming, much less by his words, was as grave an understatement as she thought there might be. He actually cared for her. He had said as much. It did not even matter that he was leaving her now to go to his mistress. Diane was finally inconsequential. Catherine was Queen. When he had really needed something, he had turned to her, not to Diane, and she had not disappointed him. Her entire life and her future had changed in that one exacting moment between them. She had guessed there was hope before today; now she knew. It was she who would match his step, she who would stand beside him and she with whom he would share history, at last.

C
ALAIS HAS BEEN TAKEN
in the name of the King of France!”

Henri’s secretary, Florimond Robertet, stormed into the grand gallery at Anet, past a sea of startled faces who stopped their laughing and dancing and turned to listen. The King was hosting a New Year’s feast in honor of the Duchesse de Valentinois and the room was packed to capacity with the most highly placed French and Italian ambassadors and nobles. The room was dressed with holly and ivy, and the fireplace hearth overflowed with traditional New Year’s gifts. There were long white-sheeted tables full of nougat, pastries, jams and special holiday hypocras. Everywhere was the scent of pine. Henri was on the dance floor with his daughter, Elizabeth, and Diane was being led through a Galliard by the Dauphin, François. No one moved as Robertet spoke.

“Praise be to God!” Henri finally declared with a resounding holler and thrust his fist into the air. Then he pulled his daughter to his chest and kissed her. Everyone followed the King, hugging and kissing those who had the good fortune to be nearest. Diane embraced the Dauphin and he rejoiced with the others. But to this simple boy, even at the age of fifteen, the gravity of the implications of the victory for France, to whom Calais had been lost almost 200 years before, was still hopelessly lost.

Across the floor near a banquet table, an overwhelmed Cardinal de Lorraine hoisted a heavy silver goblet studded with jewels and then emptied it with one swallow.
He has done it,
thought Charles.
My brother has taken Calais! A victory of this magnitude was needed to raise us in favor and François did not disappoint me.

Beside him, Anne d’Este, his brother’s wife, wept with joy, knowing the implications for the entire family of her husband’s victory. After order was restored to the crowd and everyone began to lift their goblets in a cheer for France, the Dauphin requested another dance with Diane. She curtsied respectfully and then obliged him.

“You dance very well, Madame,” he said as he awkwardly tried to keep the beat to the music. “Is it true that you taught the King to dance?”

“I did, many years ago, when he was just your age, as a matter of fact.”

“I think His Majesty owes a great many things to you.”

“Your Highness is very kind to think so, even if it is untrue.”

“No. I am certain it is true. I only pray one day to be as happy in my marriage to the Queen of Scots as the King of France is with you.”

François was a sensitive and thoughtful boy, and perhaps next to her own daughter by the King, she loved him best of all the remaining seven royal children. They had formed an early attachment to one another because he had been the first. The feeling had always been mutual. He quite plainly adored her. Even with the bevy of nurses and tutors to confuse him, for the first two years of his life, he had persisted in calling Diane
maman.
Their conversation now, as they danced the Galliard, was stopped by François’ velvet slippered foot on top of her toes. Diane grimaced beneath the sudden missed beat.

“Oh, please forgive me, Madame. Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course. It is nothing at all. But careful now or you shall lose the beat,” she said, directing him back to their dance. “Listen to the music. Catch it again. There you go!”

The boy looked down at his feet and his movements became more labored. “I am afraid I am a dreadful dancer Madame. The only person whose feet I do not manage to injure is the Queen of Scots.”

“Your Highness is very fond of her,” Diane observed.

“I adore her. She is the kindest, most gentle girl. . .We knew from the first that we should always be together. I pray that one day His Majesty shall agree to our marriage, but he has put it off for so long I sometimes fear as much as Mary that he may desire us otherwise matched.”

Diane knew that she was being used as a conduit to the King by this awkward segue, and could not help but be charmed by the boy’s conviction. Like the Dauphin, she too believed them ideally matched. Their attraction and devotion to one another had been instant and had been sustained these past ten years since the Queen of Scots had come to live in France. But Diane also understood and agreed with Henri’s reserve in the matter. There was more at stake than a young boy’s
coup de coeur.
Such a match would bring unparalleled power to the house of Guise and give it an unsurpassed influence with the Crown.

Once there had been no question in either of their minds that such a match would be desirable. Both François de Guise and his brother, the Cardinal de Lorraine, had always supported her. But time and the power that they now possessed had changed the brothers; had deepened their desire for ultimate control. After Henri had named François as Lieutenant-General, the ingratiating veneer that they had always exhibited at Court, and especially to her, had slowly fallen away. In its place were arrogance, entitlement and deceit.

The Cardinal, who had given up his table years ago to dine with the Duchesse de Valentinois, now returned to his own chateaux in Paris and Joinville. He regularly responded to requests for his company with polite excuses. Neither Charles nor François attended Diane with the frequency they once had, or felt the need for civility toward her as a primary concern. Their younger brother, Claude, her son-in-law, was the one family exception.

If it were possible for them to be more disliked at Court than Montmorency, the Guises now were. But despite the pervasiveness of his doubts against them, the King of France was an honorable man who made a promise and kept it. Diane knew without needing to ask that this victory in Calais, thanks to the leadership of François de Guise, would finally be paid for with the marriage of the Dauphin of France to their niece, the Queen of Scots.

“T
HE KINGDOM HASN’T THE MONEY
for such a marriage and I haven’t the inclination, but what else can I do?” Henri asked.

Before dawn, while everyone else slept, Diane and Henri bathed alone together among the water lilies, in the new lake he had built for them at Anet. “Guise is owed the marriage of his niece for his victory in Calais, and I know very well I must agree to it.”

Diane brushed the wet hair from his eyes under the moonlight. “But you do not trust him with so much power.”

“Not anymore.”

“You have as good as promised him the match.”

“Yes, and I fear I shall be forced to make good on my word.”

Diane stepped naked from the water and wrapped herself in a large blue blanket. Henri followed her and they sat on the stone bench listening to the birds and watching the early-morning mist rise from the lake. She looked for a long time at the perfectly still surface on the water before she spoke.

“The Guises were once our friends. . .”

He looked at her, then mouthed the words of Tacitus with a disparaging sigh, “But lust of power burns more fiercely than all the passions combined.”

I
N THE AUTUMN OF 1558,
the death of England’s Queen Mary changed the political playing field yet again. Suddenly now, Philip II, the Emperor’s son and Mary’s husband, was a widower. If a marital alliance could be made between France and Spain, there might well be a true peace at last. Like his father before him, Henri was finally tired of the battles and tired of the death. He had won back Calais but he had paid a heavy price.

Henri had grown to manhood wanting to possess Italy because his father, and the King before him, had wanted Italy. It had been his duty to fight the Emperor and his heir. But now he had begun to think of how many had died for the cause, how much money had been spent and how many sacrifices had been made over nothing more than patches of land. Henri was tired now as his father before him had been tired. He wanted there to be an end to it. He wanted to enjoy his life and the family God had given him in peace.

Thirteen months after François de Guise’s brilliant victory and the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to the Dauphin, the King of France stunned his advisors by agreeing to two treaty weddings. His sister, Marguerite, would marry the Duke of Savoy and his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, would become the bride of his greatest rival, Philip II. It was a marriage of Spain to France. An end to all of the fighting. At last.

W
HEN THE TREATY
of Cateau-Cambresis was ratified in April, Henri, Diane and the entire Court turned their attention to the upcoming treaty weddings. It was to be a double union, first uniting King Philip II of Spain, by proxy, with Henri’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, and the King’s spinster sister, Marguerite de Valois, with Emmanuel-Philibert, Duke of Savoy. Henri, who still touted jousting as the ultimate chivalric spectacle, commanded a full round of tournaments to commence upon the arrival of the throngs of Spanish nobles and courtiers who came to Paris for the wedding.

A newly renovated Paris shone proudly beneath the pageantry and celebration. Brightly colored banners that also sported the royal emblem hung from paned windows. Roofs and windows of houses near the jousting field were rented out at great prices. In the shadow of the Bastille, scaffolding was erected all around Les Tournelles where the joust would be held.

This great renewal of the French capital that the Spanish and other dignitaries now saw was due to the influence of one woman, and everyone was made to know it. Diane de Poitiers had not forgotten the foul rancorous odors of the sewers of Paris, all of them teaming with disease. Nor could she erase from her mind the tenement houses and barefoot children who wandered through the city streets when she had first returned to Court twenty-six years ago. Her work to reform the city hospitals had expanded into reform of the city itself. Residents followed the lead of their King and his mistress, who had begun reconstruction of the Louvre Palace. The old thatch-roof houses in Saint-Honoré were being replaced by stately mansions, many of them exhibiting the
favourite
’s designs. New pride in the city was clear.

“You have done it, Madame!” they cheered as she rode her handsome black stallion through the rue de Saint-Antoine beside the King.

“God save Diane de Poitiers!”

F
IRST THERE WAS BLOOD
washed across her mind like paint on canvas; red liquid oozing through her unconsciousness. Flash. A thunderbolt of lightning, and then the screams. Wrenching wails of agony. Twisted contorted faces, moaning, pleading. . .praying.

Then she woke.

Catherine bolted erect in her bed, her chest heaving with terror. Her heart was pounding with such ferocity that she could not breathe. She gasped, then screamed again.

“Your Majesty! What is it?” Lucrezia darted into the room in her nightclothes. One look at the stricken face of the Queen and she knew.

“Did you have the dream again?”

“Oh. . .yes. . .yes, and it was so real! It was real! I know it. His Majesty is in danger.” Catherine grabbed the shoulders of her lady-in-waiting as she sat down on the side of the bed. Marie, who had come in behind her, poured her a goblet of wine from a decanter on the night table, then helped her drink it. In the preceding weeks, this had become a nightly ritual for the women of Catherine’s train.

“Now, Your Majesty, you know it was just a dream. The physician warned you about eating so late in the evening,” Lucrezia carefully chided.

“But I did not eat anything! Oh, do you not see, the King is in grave danger, I know it! Gauier was right. I feel it. Monsieur Nostradamus even confirmed it. Oh, dear God, there must be something I can do!”

“But, Madame, the war is over. There can be no more danger for him. He is safely installed at L’Hôtel de Graville.”

The two women looked at one another. “Would you like me to send for him?” Marie asked.

“No! No, that shall not be necessary,” she replied and then took in a deep breath to clear her mind. She wiped a hand across her brow and felt the perspiration. “Oh, Lucrezia, it was so real!”

Both of her ladies-in-waiting watched the Queen’s fear transform into an unbearable look of remorse as her heavy eyebrows parted. “I know there is danger to him. I feel it to the very core of my soul and yet, it seems that there is not one thing I can do to save him.”

She sank back against her pillows, spent by the ordeal.

“If Your Majesty will not let me send for the King, then you must go to him at first light,” Marie said. “I fear you shall have no peace from these nightmares until you do what you can.”

“It is the joust,” Catherine murmured, not having heard Marie’s words. “He was not meant to die in battle after all, but in a battle of a different kind.” She closed her eyes. “The young lion. . .” she began to whisper, “will overcome the older one, on the field of combat in single battle. . .then he dies a cruel death.”

“His Majesty must be warned,” said Lucrezia.

“I am his Queen, I must warn him! He cannot. . .he must not die, now that he is finally nearly mine!”

Catherine bolted from her bed. “What is the time?”

“Just past four, Your Majesty. Not yet dawn.”

“I must go now! I must warn him now before it is too late. His Majesty is scheduled to joust today. He must not. I know it! Send Madelena at once to dress me, and send word to the equerry that I shall need a horse readied by the half hour.”

“Your Majesty, are you certain that you want to go to him now?” Lucrezia asked, lowering her eyes. “It is quite likely that you shall not find him alone if you do.”

“That does not matter. Do you not see, either of you? Nothing matters anymore if he dies! Please, Lucrezia, just do as I ask. I shall face what I must when I arrive at L’Hôtel de Graville.”

D
IANE SLEPT FITFULLY.
She could not seem to find a comfortable position beneath the heavy bedding. She was surprised that all of her tossing and turning had not awakened Henri. She finally opened her eyes again, surrendering to the insomnia, and looked over at him. His face was peaceful. Soft. It reminded her of him when he was a boy. When they had first met. She watched the gentle fluttering of his lashes, the unguarded parting of his lips.

“Beloved,” she whispered, and ran a finger across his bearded chin.

What would my life have been without you? If I had not written to you from Chenonceaux, would I have been alone as Montgommery once thought? Lonely? Plagued by regret?

Her thoughts took her to the day just past. The wedding of Henri’s daughter, Elizabeth. They had attended together with the pride of parents as the young woman had taken her vows. Their own daughter was also well married. After Diane de France’s first husband had been lost at the battle of Hesdin, she was now wisely and strategically married to Anne de Montmorency’s eldest son, François.

Their children were given to good marriages. Finally, there was peace in France. Henri and Diane had everything they could possibly have wanted. She touched her own chest where the Crown Jewels still lay. He had insisted she wear them to the wedding despite her own reservations. So she had cast off her pearls, putting in their place the gift that had marked the beginning of their reign as King and unofficial Queen.

She gazed down at a large ruby set in gold that lay between her breasts. He had made love to her like this, with the same passion as when he had first given them to her.
Wear them for me,
he had bid her.
Wear them for me tonight when we are alone.

She rolled onto her back and gazed up at the canopy. Twenty-six majestic shining years. Even now she marveled at the idea that he had told her all those years ago,
I have known but one God and one love.
He had kept his word, though even she had never expected it to last this long.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but you cannot go in there! You cannot. . .”

Jacques de Saint-André’s insistent voice pierced the calm darkness as Catherine swept past him and into the bedchamber of the Duchesse de Valentinois.

“It is all right, Jacques,” Diane said as he stood open-mouthed beside the door. Henri, now roused by the commotion, sat up in bed, his eyes squinting from the beam of light at the door. He lit the candle beside the bed. The early-morning sun was just beginning to come up and filter pink through the long paned windows.

“Great Zeus, Catherine! Have you any idea what time it is?” he asked, holding the candle near the clock. When she did not reply he looked up and was met by her waxen, tear-stained face. Diane sat up and wrapped herself in a robe, but not before Catherine could be spared the sight of the Crown Jewels still glittering around her rival’s throat.

“Well, what is it that has troubled you to come all this way over here in the middle of the night?” he asked, rubbing his eyes again.

She rushed at him as Diane moved away from the bed. “Oh, Henri, I beg you not to joust today. Please do not!”

“What are you saying?”

“The prophecy from the
Centuries
! This is what he meant!”

“Nostradamus? Catherine, that is absurd. The threat of that was laid to rest long ago when I returned from Calais. Besides, his words say that harm shall come in
combat.
I face no such action in the lists. What has brought this about?”

“I have been having the most awful dreams.”

He tried not to laugh at her for all the pain in her eyes, but he could not contain himself. He rose from the bed, wrapped himself in a robe and stood before her. Her trembling had moved him, and he draped an arm around her.

“Here, come here and sit down. May I have some wine brought for you?”

Diane stood near the fire saying nothing. Saint-André remained motionless by the door.

“No. I want nothing but to hear you say you shall not joust.” Long streaming tears flowed down onto her round face as she pleaded.

“Catherine, that is foolishness. I am a knight, a gentleman. I must. . .I want to joust. It is a matter of honor now that I have committed myself to it. What would my people think of me if I withdrew now? They would say that their King was a coward; that he was weak. No, I must joust and I shall not have you going on like this and frightening yourself or Madame.” Then he softened again. “I shall be fine. You shall see. Really. There is nothing for you to worry about. The danger is past. It was over in Calais. I promise you.”

A
FTER SHE HAD BATHED
in cold water
,
Diane returned to her bedchamber. Henri was standing in the center of the room being fitted in new armor by two of his grooms. Saint-André stood beside the King on one side, Montmorency on the other. Outside were the sound of townspeople shuffling past L’Hôtel de Graville on their way to Les Tournelles for the day of jousts.

“I think you have never looked so handsome,” Diane said, pausing to look at him as she leaned against the door. Henri smiled at her. The armor had been especially made for this event. It was wrought of silver, tooled in black and completely covered with their emblem. Her crescent. His letter H with the crescent above it. The ultimate symbol. The goddess of the moon who still, and forever, ruled him.

“Then you like it,” he said. “It was to be a surprise, but you’ve ruined that.”

“It is exquisite.”

“It is Spanish silver.”

“Now that is a surprise.” She smiled.

“Yes, well, I thought it time to put the last of my demons to rest.”

Once he had her approval, Henri stood still as his grooms stripped off the layers of silver and he stood before them in plain black shirt and stockings. His feet were bare. Montmorency and Saint-André both gave the armor to the grooms who would see it safely transported to the field, then left the room with them.

“Do you think she could be right?” Diane asked once they were alone.

Henri looked up with an expression that said he had not heard her correctly. “You were listening.”

“It is only a very few steps from the fireplace to our bed,
chéri.
I could not help but hear.”