Courtesan (8 page)

After the banquet Diane had gone a little reluctantly on the arm of Montgommery to the King’s private apartments. There, with a select group of the King’s closest friends, she watched and drank more wine as His Majesty and the Cardinal de Lorraine discussed Plato’s
Dialogues.

As dawn washed the horizon with a blurred pink sunrise, Jacques de Montgommery offered to escort Diane back to her apartments. Once there, faced with her half-open chamber door and the flood of morning light from her windows, he had wasted no time in conveying his intentions.

“I should like to share your bed,” he whispered. His words fell off into the folds of her gown as he swayed from the wine.

“Monsieur, you insult me!” She pushed him away and poised her hand to slap his face. As she raised her arm, he caught it; the strength of his conviction returned.

“You still have not figured it out have you, my pretty one? Do you think any of those people in the King’s apartment tonight have gone to bed alone? Even the good Cardinal is at this very moment likely burrowing beneath his bedcovers with one of Mademoiselle d’Heilly’s willing ladies. It is simply how things are, and you are far better off if you learn to accept it.”

“Stop! I will not hear this!”

He still had a firm grip on her arm and she struggled to free herself. “Do not play the virgin with me! Everyone knows you bedded the King, and with your husband’s blessing; all to barter for your father’s life!”

There. He had said it; said what everyone had thought. Said what all the others in their little groups had mumbled when they saw the King take her out to do a Pavane. She had felt their stares. She knew their envy. She had waited until her husband had died, secured with his estates, and then, as brazen as a common strumpet, had strolled back into Court to finish what they had begun. There was no point in denying the accusation. Montgommery was drunk. He would probably not remember having said it in the morning anyway. Diane simply stared at him a moment longer, watching him sway back and forth. Her silence drew more frustration from him, but then, before he could act on it, she turned away.

“I am going to bed. Alone! Good night, Monsieur!”

He grabbed her arm again and pulled her forcefully back to face him. “Very well, then. Go off to your cold empty bed! But for all of your righteousness, you shall soon be just like all the rest of us. It is part of the plan. Eat, drink and be merry, says our good King. I simply thought you might as well initiate yourself sooner than later.”

“Well, clearly, Captain Montgommery, you thought wrong!”

And so the scene between them had gone. Diane had left him standing bleary-eyed at her doorstep. She had heard him rustling about for some time in the hallway before he finally went away.

“Who was that, Madame?” Charlotte asked as she rubbed a thick finger across her cheek and met her at the door.

“It was no one, Charlotte. No one. Go back to bed.”

This definitely was not the refined Court she had known with Louis, she thought, as she rubbed her red and swollen feet against the edge of her bed. But so far, the unpredictability intrigued her. It was a side of courtly life that she had not been permitted to see before. There was so much about life in general that she had not been permitted to see. She would need to use great caution here, but for the time being, Diane had decided to stay.

T
HE
K
ING PULLED
his head slowly from the pillow as Anne slept motionless in his arms. He was restless. Bedding the ambitious Comtesse de Sancerre the night before, with Anne in her apartments just down the hall, had done little to stave off the wanderlust that grew to nearly violent proportions within him.

Anne had known where he was and what he was doing and yet she had said nothing. It had spoiled the fun of being bad. Now, all that he felt as he lay in her arms was the dull ache of being unfulfilled. But since women were not the real problem, neither were they the answer. The real issue was power. François wanted Italy.

He would never forget his disastrous defeat at Pavia. . .the price he had paid. He had been forced to marry the Emperor’s ugly sister. It had been part of the bargain for peace, and for the safe return to France of his sons. François burned to make the Emperor pay for their imprisonment; François burned again for war. He could not help it. He could not deny it. The desire coursed through his blood; through his body; searing him; taunting him. If he could just gain Italy then he, not the Emperor Charles, would dominate the Christian world. It would be a fair trade for what he and his family had been forced to endure.

He tossed fitfully in his bed as his mind raced, his body wet with perspiration. Opening his eyes, he stared up at the painting by Andrea del Sarto called
Caritas
that graced a wall near his bed. Never in his life had he seen art as beautiful or as moving as he had in Italy. He wanted it. He needed it. He would find a way to have it at any cost; any cost but that of the life of the Dauphin. Nothing would be worth selling the joy of his life, his eldest son, to marriage with a merchant’s daughter. It seemed that there were times when the only thing in his life he had done right was to sire that boy.

But in trying to gain the return of Milan, there was something else to consider: the delicate balance between England and France. There was not only the Emperor, but there was Henry VIII. François detested his English counterpart, finding him unprincipled and uncivilized. But he knew that, at the very least, a broad-based civility between them was essential. The presence of the Pope in Rome did little to balance out this powerful triangle. Despite his forbidding presence, the Pontiff had not been a real threat or a support to any side. It was in reality a weak papacy. Clement VII blew with the winds. Now, as subtle as a spring breeze, the winds were changing. In François’ mind a stormy offensive was brewing against the Emperor. At this point Henry VIII held all of the cards, and the sly fox knew it.

If Henry sided with the Emperor against François, there would be no hope of France taking Italy. There would be no hope of his ever gaining back what he had lost. Unless of course, to get what he desired, the King of France gave the Pope what he desired in return. A French bridegroom for his niece. Perhaps then the pontiff would find the courage to stand with France against the Emperor, after all.

As Anne slept, François rose and looked back at her. She did not stir. She was not troubled by any of this, and she had no idea how it troubled him. As long as she was rich and adored, he thought, she was happy. The tile floor was cold beneath his bare feet and he shivered in the alcove near his bed. After another moment, he rapped on the door for one of his gentlemen-of-the-chamber to stoke the fire which, in the early hours of morning, had begun to sputter.

Henry VIII or Pope Clement. Those were the choices if he meant to regain Milan from the Emperor. And yet, surrendering his eldest son, his heir, to a degrading political marriage. . .in that there was no choice at all.

“No,” he whispered. “I cannot. I must not. The English Ambassador will suggest a course to ally with Henry VIII. I will meet with him tomorrow. There will be another way. There must!”

François crawled back beneath the covers and pressed himself against Anne’s warm flesh. The heat from her body warmed his own cold skin. It aroused him even more than his thoughts had done. He ran his rough fingers across each of her breasts. The contours of her small body excited him. Thank God for his little tart. In her arms he could stave off all of this madness, if only for a while. He reached up and, as she slept, stroked the fine alabaster flesh around her neck. What a good tumble she still was, when he was so inclined to have her. It always amazed him, even now, how ready and willing she was to secure her position by any means he desired. She knew how to please him. Like all successful courtesans, she had made his pleasure her life’s work.

He touched her cheek and her eyes opened. She was beguiling, always knowing when he wanted her; always making him pay for her favors in one way or another. So beautiful and so cruel. He craved the contradiction. It was still early, he thought. As the servant stoked the fire to a fitful blaze, he drew the bedcurtains. There was still time before his
lever
began to avail himself, at least once more, of his little Anne’s very potent charms.

“P
LEASE
, M
ADAME, PERMIT
me to speak!” Jacques de Montgommery called out.

Diane continued down the pillared open gallery that faced the enclosed garden. She was holding open her book of verse as though she were concentrating on some particular passage. She looked down, but still could hear the sound of Montgommery’s footsteps on the stone as he advanced behind her.

“Please, I ask only for a moment. Then I shall go away, if that is still what you desire.”

Diane slowed and turned around. He looked ill. His skin was pasty and he had not changed his clothes from the night before. His doublet was gone and his yellow shirt was crumpled and stained.

“You look dreadful,” she said.

“I suppose that is part of the penance for my behavior last evening. It is no match for the way my head feels.”

Diane closed her book and drew a little nearer. As she did, the smell of wine and vomit caught her and she stepped back, placing her hand to her mouth. Montgommery saw her and stepped back a pace himself.

“Ah, yes. I am sorry about that. I wanted to see you the first moment I could. To apologize. I behaved horribly. I had no right. You certainly had not encouraged my advances.”

“We barely know one another, Captain. How would you have had time to know whether I would be encouraging or not?”

Feeling his legs about to give way beneath him, Montgommery leaned on one of the large stone pillars. The touch of it was cold. He lay his head against it to try to dull the throbbing. He felt as though he would be sick again, but first he must settle this. He took a deep breath so that he might continue.

“From the moment I first saw you, Madame, I knew that you were someone I should be privileged to know. . .and know, I mean, only in the most proper sense of the word.”

The wine he had drunk, and which had turned on him, seemed to have tamed his ardor. She felt safe in allowing him to continue.

“You are an extraordinary woman, Madame; quite different from anyone I have ever met; certainly quite different from anyone at Court. I should be proud to call you my friend. . .if that is all you would desire of me.”

Diane looked at the pathetic dirty mess of a man who now was surrendering his pride to her. In place of her anger there was compassion. “And I have your word as a gentleman that there will be no more midnight seductions outside my apartment doors?”

“I am most certainly, Madame, a gentleman of honor. Although, I grant you, you have very little cause at the present to believe me. No, there will be no more events like last evening; what of it I am able to recall. Unless of course, it is you who wills it.”

He grimaced and then smiled.

“Well, I would like to have a friend here, and it just might as well be you. You were right about one thing, I have been gone a long time. Things are so different from how I remember them.” She drew in a deep breath and crossed her arms as though trying to decide. “Very well, then. But we shall speak no more of last night.” Having decided, she smiled. His easy charm had made it simple to forgive him, and difficult not to like him.

“Then we are friends?” he asked, drawing near her again.

Overwhelmed again by the odor, she took a reflexive step backward and raised her hand as though to stop his advance.

“Friends,” she repeated. Her smile broadened and warmed the soft contours of her thin face. “Now you,
mon ami,
are in need of a bath and some rest.”

Jacques de Montgommery stood in the gallery as she strolled down the corridor away from him. He watched until he could no longer see her shadow cast against the stone wall and he knew that she was gone. Despite the pain which throbbed in his head and the churning in his stomach, he managed to smile. He had done it. She was not so formidable as she looked at first.

She believed he had drunk too much and had spoken foolishly. He had been drinking, but he remembered vividly every word he had said. He remembered the touch of her skin as he tried to draw her near, and the strange, freshly washed scent of her body. She obviously did not think he recalled his accusation about her and the King.

It had been a foolish thing to say if he were to gain her trust. . .even though it was true. It must be. Why else would the King of France, at the very last moment, mysteriously have pardoned her father when he had been sentenced to die for high treason? Clearly, she had sold her body; and in return, her father’s life had been spared. That was quite a power she must wield over His Majesty. Such knowledge would certainly increase his own influence, should he manage to bed her, now that the King clearly wanted her back.

The King must have grown tired of his little bitch. Why else would Diane have been summoned from the comfort and security of her dead husband’s wooded estate after five years? And why, more curiously, had she come alone if that was not precisely what she had expected? Perhaps he could bed her and then bribe her. If they were to have an affair, she would be vulnerable to him. After what she had already endured, she would do anything to keep herself from future scandal. His head whirled with the possibilities. Yes, bedding her would be sweet, and he meant to become very rich in the bargain!

D
IANE WENT ON
with a light heart to her appointment with the King. Anne d’Heilly’s youth and beauty had given her a confidence behind which to hide her fears, and at least now she had one ally at Court in Jacques de Montgommery.

“So you are not only beautiful but punctual as well,” François said with a wry smile, as he and a collection of courtiers and guards came into the library.

Diane curtsied. His Majesty then instructed his entourage, who had hoped to be included in this intriguing encounter, to leave them alone. Diane moved to protest but thought better of it. She held her breath as he closed the doors on his disgruntled friends. Silence followed. The royal library was a shadowy, musty-smelling room, paneled and shelved in dark oak. Leather-bound books lined the walls. In the center of the room between the shelves were three long carved oak tables, each with large candled lamps for reading. A small intricately carved chest had been placed on the table nearest the door.