Médicis Daughter (30 page)

“Cinq heures et quart.”

The apprehension coloring Gillone’s voice fills my breast. Something is wrong; there can be no other explanation for my being roused at such an hour.
Has something happened to Charles?
“Quick,” I admonish. “I must dress.” Under such circumstances I have no patience for all the accoutrements of proper attire. When I join the Baron de Retz, who waits to escort me, I do not even wear a farthingale.

I am ushered to the apartment of the King. Charles, Mother, and Anjou stand in a little knot. I am relieved to see them all, for this means no one is dead—at least, no one at Paris. I say a silent prayer that neither Claude nor her children at Nancy have been taken from us. Unlike myself, both Mother and Anjou are perfectly dressed. Charles on the other hand wears only his nightshirt. As he turns to face me, the King’s eyes are wild either with fever or anger.

“Charles.” I move forward. “What news?” My hands touch his for a moment before he pulls away. His are cool. Not fever, then.

“News?” He laughs. “What disturbs our rest this night may be news to us, but I am quite sure it is not so to you.” A muscle in his check twitches.

I am being called to account. I tremble, not because I know myself guilty of anything, but because reason and my brother’s temper are quite often strangers.

“Show her.” Charles spits the words.

“Do you know what I have here?” Mother holds up a single sheet of vellum and my mouth becomes dry. I do know—a letter of the Comtesse de Mirandole, doubtless the very one to which, only two nights ago, I lovingly added lines to Henri. Perhaps I ought to feign ignorance, but my mother surely recognizes my handwriting.

“How did you get that?” I ask. I see Anjou smile and I know—though how precisely he intercepted the letter I cannot say.

“Let us say”—my mother rests a hand on Anjou’s arm, confirming my suspicion—“that some at Court care more for your reputation than you do yourself.”

“Madame, surely a few lines are not so serious. I swear I have done nothing worse—nothing to compromise my reputation.”

Mother’s hand moves so quickly that, before I realize it has left my brother’s arm, I feel her palm strike my face.

As I raise a hand to my stinging cheek she glances calmly down the page. “‘I long for you by the light of the sun and dream of you by the light of the moon.’” The words I wrote so lovingly are defiled by her cold voice. “‘Come back soon, that we may enjoy such words as cannot be trusted to a letter.’” I spring forward, reaching for the page, but Anjou grabs me and pulls me back sharply, tearing my sleeve as he does. There is nothing I can do but watch as Mother touches the corner of the page to one of the tapers, then drops the sheet to the stone floor. When the page ceases to burn, she calmly grinds the remnants to ash with her foot. Anjou releases me with a shove.

“Do you realize,” Mother asks, “that, before I bid him hold his tongue, the Cardinal of Lorraine boasted his nephew will have you for a bride? Perhaps the Duc de Guise has
had
you already.”

“Whore!” This time it is Charles who slaps me, so hard that I stagger backwards.

“No! Charles, I swear I have no sin of that type upon my conscience. The Duc’s intentions have been honorable. He does wish to marry me; in this his uncle is not mistaken.” This is not the ideal time to approach my brother with my hopes, but I have no other defense. I reach out to Charles, but he recoils.

“I have no doubt that the Duc wishes to marry you.” Charles’ voice is filled with venom. “He is wildly ambitious. But what Guise wishes for and what he will get are two different things.”

“Very different.” Anjou’s voice is menacing.

“It is not only the Cardinal of Lorraine who speaks of your marriage to Guise.” Charles circles me slowly, coming to a stop behind me. Leaning in, he hisses, “My court hums with talk of it.” I tremble. “But I was willing to believe the rumors arose solely from your beauty and the Duc’s avarice, even when our brother told me things were otherwise.” I feel his hand in the hair hanging down my back and then, in a single, violent, twisting pull, I am drawn back against him. “I thought you an innocent”—he twists harder, until I fear the hank of hair he holds will be ripped from my head—“and you made a fool of me.”

“Charles, please,” I beg, trying to reach behind and free myself from his torment, “I swear that I have consented to nothing. I have promised nothing. We meant to come to you when Henri returned to Court. To come to you together so that the Duc might ask for my hand.”

Charles snorts in disgust, but he releases my hair and pushes me away. For a single instant I consider running, but I am like an animal cornered with the King behind me, my mother before me, Anjou to one side, and the door, which I know to be guarded by the Baron de Retz, to the other.

“Why should I condescend to have the Duc as my brother when I expect to call the King of Portugal by that name?”

“Because he loves me, and I him.” The moment the words are spoken I wish them unsaid. The mocking looks of Mother and Anjou are painful proof that my confession makes me ridiculous in their eyes.

“Charles, you know what it is to love, even if others do not,” I plead. “You love Marie.”

“But I do not think to marry her. I must consider my duties as a monarch and you must remember your duty to your monarch.”

Moving to stand beside the King, Mother says, “Daughter, you do Mademoiselle Touchet ill by comparing her to Guise. She is utterly devoted to Charles. Can you really be foolish enough to believe that
you
are the Duc’s object?” The curl of her lip is like a knife upon my flesh. “Let me disabuse you of that notion. You may be a fool in love, but the Duc is a practical man, a man of power who hungers for more. When he whispered pretty words to you in the dark, it was a connection with the royal House of Valois he sought.”

“That and a cozy place for his cock,” Anjou sneers.

Anjou’s words sicken me. And Mother’s—I do not credit my mother’s assertion. I cannot. Yet it enrages me. And, at the edge of my mind, it occurs to me that some part of the anger I feel is directed at myself and at Henri. Am I a fool? If not for letting Henri speak love to me and loving him in return, then for failing to heed Henriette when she foretold this? And ought not Henri to have kept our hopes to himself instead of filling the mind and the mouth of his uncle with them? The doubts my mother causes make me hate her as I never have before.

“Why, Madame,” I ask, advancing on her with fury, “can you never believe that I might have value to someone in and of myself? Why can you not conceive that anyone could love me? Is it simply because you yourself do not?”

“Do not speak nonsense. My children are my life! France is my life. Of course I value you—better than you value yourself—for I know the worth of a woman’s honor.” Mother’s face is fierce. Her hand rises; then, just as I expect her to strike me again, she lets it drop. I watch with fascination as she takes control of her temper, rearranging her face into a look of deliberate calm.

“You will not hurt me, Marguerite, though you try.”

The idea that she would paint herself as the aggrieved party in this situation is beyond comprehension. I want to attack her, to tear at her as she and my brothers have just torn at me. I take another step, but Anjou catches me easily and restrains me.

“You will not hurt me,” Mother continues, “and you will not endanger your brother’s reign. This folly stops now. From this moment all communication with the Duc, save the words required by politesse in open court, will cease. Resign yourself to that or risk far more serious punishment than the few blows you have endured here. And know this: you will never be permitted to marry the Duc.” Her tone has a finality to it that sucks the air from my lungs. I look at Charles. The sight of his face—entirely unsympathetic—causes my knees to give way entirely.

Anjou supports my weight for a moment and then, giving a high, brutal laugh, releases me and lets me fall to the floor. “What about Guise?” he asks. “Blighted ambitions seem too small a price to pay for deflowering our sister. Your Majesty must have a better revenge.”

“Guise is hunting, is he not?” Charles looks down upon me with pitiless eyes. “I will send Angoulême hunting as well and ask him to bring down more than a stag. He shall strike the Duc and bring the House of Guise down a peg and back to its senses.”

No, no, no!
The voice inside my head screams in terror. If Charles gives such a command, our half brother will obey. His fortunes and his very life depend on the King. He has no friend in Mother, who sees none of her husband in him and too much of the lady who seduced that husband.

“Excellent.” Anjou laughs. “Shall I take our sister back to her room?”

“Get her out of my sight,” Charles says, averting his gaze.

“Let me make her presentable first,” Mother says. “We do not need talk that might further compromise her.”

Do you not mean talk that would reveal you to be monsters capable of beating your own kin?

Anjou takes me beneath the arms and draws me to my feet. At the King’s dressing table, Mother brushes my hair and tidies my face. She can do nothing to conceal the tear in my sleeve or stop the bruise rising along my right cheekbone. Looking in the glass at Anjou, who hovers behind us, she says, “Go quickly, before the whole palace is awake.”

I rise with as much dignity as I can muster. Anjou takes my arm. I try to shake him off but he shows me by a shake of his head that he will have none of it. Swinging the door to the hall open, he pushes me before him. The Baron de Retz stands aside, his face impassive. Whatever he heard, whatever he observes, he will keep my mother’s counsel.

Anjou pushes me through the door to my apartment, nearly into the arms of the waiting Gillone. Her face reflects the shocking sight I present as clearly as Charles’ mirror did. We are not alone. The Baronne de Retz sits on one of my chairs.

“How did it come to this?” she asks sadly, shaking her head.

“It is the province of the young to fall in love. You once said so yourself,” I reply, disentangling myself from Gillone.

“That is not what I am talking about and you know it.”

“I have done nothing else,” I snap. I am tired of protesting my innocence.

The Baronne stares into my eyes as she never bothered to in all the lectures she delivered on appropriate behavior—as if she would see my soul. Perhaps she does, for she says, “I believe you.”

“Help me, then.”

“I cannot.”

“Then you condemn the Duc to death.”

“Surely that is an exaggeration.”

“The King is in one of his rages,” I reply. “He means to arrange a hunting accident and none around him have any reason to dissuade him. There must be some way to get word to the Duc so he will be on his guard.”

“The Duchesse de Nevers.” The Baronne’s tone is resigned. She knows, of course, that much of whatever passed between the Duc and me beyond the eyes of the Court must have been managed with Henriette’s help. She has for some time viewed the Duchesse as her adversary and my corruptor. How I love her for putting aside her personal feelings. I only hope Henriette will do likewise. It has been a month since we argued, and though, on the surface, we appear to be as we were, there remains a reticence between us.

“They will be watching for the Duchesse at the wicket,” I say. “If my mother has not thought of this precaution, Anjou will have.”

I send Gillone to the Hôtel de Nevers to tell Her Grace that, if she loves me still, she must put a man in the saddle on his way to where Guise hunts. A man she can trust who will warn my Duc that there is more of danger in the woods than the chance he will be thrown from his horse, and that he would be better returned to Paris and safe behind the gates of his
hôtel
.

I watch my shadow go, then sit down and put my head in my hands and cry. If Charles has fixed on my beloved’s death, surviving his hunting excursion is only a first step. Must Henri live always looking over his shoulder for Angoulême? One attempt, even more, may be survived. But where my family is determined to be rid of someone …

After a few moments of sobbing I feel a hand on my shoulder. “Is the crown of Portugal such a terrible fate?” the Baronne asks softly. “You fell in love with the Duc because he is handsome and brave. We have it on good authority that the King of Portugal is both. Allow yourself to be guided by duty and all will be well.”

I look up at her, incredulous. How am I to stop loving Henri and begin loving a man I have never met? A man with the red hair of a devil? “If I am forbidden to marry where I love, I would rather not marry at all.”

“Those are very dangerous words—particularly for the Duc de Guise.”

CHAPTER 13

Summer 1570, Paris

Three days later I hear that Henri has returned to the city. Word comes first from Henriette, who in light of my situation has forgiven all, and who has even refrained from reminding me that she warned it would be so. She mumbles “He is
“en ville
” as she breezes into Mother’s apartments. And her information is soon confirmed by the gossip of a hundred tongues as well as by the black looks of my brothers.

In the afternoon, while the King and his gentlemen are playing at tennis, Angoulême arrives. I see him pass the wicket from my seat in an open window. He moves with hesitancy and I delight in that.
You failed,
I think.
I wonder what Charles will say.
I must know. Folding my hand of cards, I look across at Charlotte. “I am bored; let us go and see who has beaten whom upon the court.”

My friend springs up eagerly. Baronne de Retz, who has been at my side nearly every waking moment since the fateful night on which I was beaten, begins to rise as well; then perhaps recollecting that I will be going to the very place Her Majesty is, she settles back with her embroidery.

As soon as we are out of Mother’s apartment, I take Charlotte’s hand and begin to run. We arrive breathless and giggling, looking like two young women eager to be entertained. Mother, after shaking her head at our frivolity, pays us no mind. Anjou is seated beside her, in the King’s usual place, dripping with perspiration. Charles is playing Bussy d’Amboise. Monsieur de Carandas, the most tennis-mad of the King’s gentlemen, yells advice to each in turn from the sidelines, but most other spectators appear more interested in their private conversations. Henriette waves from the other side of the court, where she is consuming grapes from the outstretched fingers of her latest conquest, Charles d’Entragues, or “
le bel Entraguet,
” as most of the Court calls him. Though I am sure she expects me to join her, I take a seat near my family.