The Hostage Queen (5 page)

He’d died an ignominious death, being hit by a musket shot whilst relieving himself at the Siege of Rouen, done as a gesture of contempt to his enemies, and had forfeited his life as a result. It was almost a fitting memorial for a King with a ripe sense of humour. One Henry felt certain he’d inherited.

Finally freed from the bitterness of a loveless marriage, Jeanne had thrown herself heart and soul into the new faith, becoming a fanatical Puritan, surrounding herself with black-gowned ministers who conducted endless prayer-meetings. His mother had come to despise luxury and revel in austerity and privation; callously driving out priests and nuns from her land, forbidding Papist ritual and did not hesitate to have churches pillaged and destroyed. The Catholics might see her as a ruthless, despotic heretic; Jeanne saw herself as simply observing the tenets of her faith.

Since then Catherine had insisted Henry live at the French Court. He knew that his mother missed him and longed to have him home with her in Nérac, and to return him to the Huguenot religion. He wanted that too. He went through the motions of taking Mass with his royal cousins, but was indifferent to it.

‘You know that I remain loyal to the reformed faith,’ he assured her now, as he had done many times in the past.

In truth he had no strong feelings either way.
Henry felt no passion for religion, couldn’t quite understand this fanaticism of hers. For some reason he could always see the other point of view, and certainly wouldn’t risk his life for a doctrine. Since he was brought up to be a Huguenot, both by his mother and his tutor, Gaucherie, then that is what he was, but he could just as easily have been a Catholic. Wasn’t there but one God? What did it matter how He was worshipped? Why was one way right and another wrong? And why did Catherine de Medici see the Protestant faith as a threat?

Jeanne listened with increasing alarm to the tale he was telling her. Some mischief had been hatched at that chateau amidst the semi-tropical, hot-house atmosphere of the Bay of Biscay. But she gave no indication of these thoughts to the young prince.

‘You should join the hunting party, my son. The fresh air will bring the colour back to your cheeks, grown pallid by court life, I fear.’

Henry returned her warm embrace, basking in her approbation, yet he was equally eager to be out in the sunshine, as a certain dairy maid had caught his eye. He knew his mother was afraid he would grow up to be a licentious libertine like his father. Henry thought she might well be right, but why should he care?
He loved women, whatever their age or class, whether court ladies or peasant girls. And i
f the desire to make love was in his blood, wasn’t that better than making war? He strode from her privy chamber feeling proud of his achievement. Not such a country clod, perhaps.

Margot was bubbling over with happiness, not only because she would be with Guise back in Paris in a few short months, but Madame de Curton had smilingly informed her that she was, after all, to be spared marriage with a madman.
T
he meeting at Bayonne had not been the success Catherine had hoped for, and the talks with Alva had ended in failure so far as the marriage proposals were concerned. Since these joyful tidings Margot had thrown herself wholeheartedly into the dancing and merry-making, even if it was only at the provincial Court of Nérac.

She thought the town pretty enough with its red-roofed galleried houses, and she loved to walk in the Queen’s gardens along the banks of the wide River Baïse with its stone bridge and ancient mill. Today she was out following the hunt, riding lazily along the forest trails of
the Landes de Gascogne, the tall oak and pine seeming
to go on for ever. Margot kept to the back of the main party on her white palfrey, simply enjoying the freedom and the cool breeze in her hair, when Henry brought his horse to her side and challenged her to a gallop.

There was nothing Margot loved more than a dare and normally would have welcomed any adventure to break the tedium, yet she hesitated. She hated to be outshone, and this high bred horse was trained to amble with a smooth gait over long distances. Beautiful as the animal was, she certainly wasn’t made for a fast gallop.

‘I think not. Pray ride with the other silly young boys, if you are bored.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re afraid you might lose?’ he teased.

‘I am afraid of nothing, certainly not an oaf like you.’

‘Or are you nervous that you may get lost?’

‘Of course not.’

‘If so, you need have no fear. This is my country. I know it well. And everyone knows me.’

‘Every peasant, I dare say.’

Henry smiled. ‘Indeed, and every farmer, every woodsman, every milkmaid. Have you not heard them hail me? They call me
noste
Enric.’

‘Our Enric?’ Margot scornfully mimicked. ‘No doubt because no one else would ever lay claim to you.’

‘Not even you?’

‘Particularly not me! I’d sooner die than . . .’ The words were no sooner out of her mouth than a wild boar suddenly charged out of the undergrowth in front of them, startling both Margot and her horse. Cursing, she fought with the reins to bring the skittish animal back under control while desperately attempting to maintain her seat in the saddle.

Henry put back his head and laughed, but when he reached out to grab the reins and help steady her mount, she turned on him like a spitting cat.

‘I can manage perfectly well, if you please. Unlike the countless pretty girls who fawn at your feet, I need assistance from no one, least of all from you.’

This seemed to amuse him all the more. ‘I’m thankful to hear it, since a Princess of France must surely be both brave and steadfast, although she must of course obey her husband, once she has one. If you were my wife, that would most certainly be the case.’

Cheeks flushed bright pink, and not simply from the effort of bringing her mount back to a steady gait, Margot responded sharply. ‘Only if a husband were worthy of respect, which you would not be. I should never do as you ordered me. Fortunately, I never shall be your wife, so the point will not be put to the test.’

‘We may yet be obliged to consider the possibility, since you are back on the market. Would you not care to be my Queen?’

‘No, I would not! Your clothes are outmoded, your manners worse than a peasant’s, and your breath smells of garlic.’

Henry laughed. ‘Of course it does, I’m a Gascon.’

‘That does not mean you must be quite so vulgar.’

But he was no longer listening to her. One of her mother’s Escadron Volant trotted her horse by them at precisely that moment, a pretty brunette with green eyes. Henry instantly lost interest in their sparring and galloped off in pursuit of the girl. Margot was furious. How fickle that boy was.

The moment she was alone Jeanne reached for quill pen and ink, wasting not a moment in sending a message to warn her fellow leaders of this threat.

Condé she knew to be ambitious, brave and cunning, a military genius, and as a
Bourbon Prince more than ready to claim the throne were King Charles to be deposed.
H
ump-backed he may be, but far from repulsive in either appearance or character. F
or all his brilliance he had a weakness for w
omen, who responded easily to his charm and his merry blue eyes. Such antics did not endear him to Coligny, the Admiral, who considered his colleague morally unstable, being himself of a more serious nature.

Jeanne would consider any threat to the leaders’ safety as tantamount to a declaration of war.

She wrote and dispatched the letter with all speed before returning to the entertainment planned for her guests.

Looking about her, Catherine remarked, ‘There are so many nobles here that every evening in the ballroom I could fancy I was still in Bayonne, if only I could see the Queen, my daughter. And everybody dances together: Huguenots, Papists and all, so smoothly that it is impossible to believe that they are as they are. If God willed that they were as wise elsewhere as they are here, we should at last be at rest.’

‘We would indeed, Your Majesty,’ Jeanne agreed, but both queens knew this to be a dream that neither would see fulfilled.

Gaspard de
Coligny read the letter from Jeanne in his beloved rose garden at the family home, the Château de Châtillon-sur-Loing. He
was a sober, kindly, family man who loved his wife, his children, and his garden almost as much as he did his religion and his country.
He’d enjoyed a pious and simple upbringing with his three brothers: Pierre, who had died young, Odet who had become a cardinal, and Andelot whose career was very much parallel to his own.

He had no love of war and no appetite for torture, unlike some of the generals, nor did he tolerate insurrection within the ranks: no pillage, robbery, loose women or dice games. He made stout laws for his troops and did not flinch at ensuring they were kept, considering himself tough but fair; a solemn and ruthless advocate of justice, as well as a ferocious foe on the battlefield. Because of this, his men honoured and followed him.

Coligny
read the Queen of Navarre’s warning with the kind of stoic indifference one would expect from an old soldier. Later in the day he received another message from the Queen Mother, which troubled him more.

‘Her Majesty is demanding that you go to court and take part in a reconciliation with the Guises,’ Téligny informed him, his tone brittle with anxiety. He was the son of a respected Huguenot family and a young soldier whom Coligny had taken into his home for training in arms and the art of diplomacy.

‘Does she indeed?’

The Guises had seen him as their enemy ever since the murder of the head of their house, Francis, Duc de Guise, two years ago in 1563. The murder had been committed by one Poltrot de Méry, a Protestant who had sworn he was Coligny’s agent, no doubt under torture as he’d later retracted his confession. Despite there being no sound evidence the Guises remained convinced of Coligny’s guilt. Paris too was ready enough to believe the charge, being Catholic and passionate in their support of Francis’s son, the dashing young Henri of Guise.

Poltrot had been swiftly and publicly despatched, torn into four parts by strong horses whipped to north, south, east and west, but Coligny had so far escaped unharmed, if still an object of loathing to the Guises.

Now he could not help but wonder what game the Queen Mother was playing by demanding this reconciliation. Clearly she saw the enmity between the two families as a danger to the nation’s peace, and perhaps to the King. But one could never be sure with Catherine that she might not be playing a double game: that she wished for the appearance of peace between them, while at the same time with her serpent’s guile she made other plans.

‘Have I not sufficiently demonstrated my innocence by proving the money I paid to Poltrot was for a horse?’

‘The Guises claim to possess an incriminating letter.’

‘Yet they have never produced such a document, because it does not exist.’

‘They must see that you are not the kind of man to involve yourself in treachery. You are upright and honourable. Why do they not remember how friendly you once were with Francis?’

A wistful sadness crept over the older man’s face as he smiled in recollection. ‘Indeed, that is so. Did I not keep him well supplied with the pick of the crop of my best melons?’

‘It would be unwise for you to go to court, Monsieur.’

‘My relationship with the King has ever been a good one,’ Coligny demurred, while privately acknowledging Charles was weak with little power. ‘And the Queen Mother depends upon me to negotiate a union between His Majesty and Elizabeth I. As Admiral I am also responsible for strengthening the royal navy. She relies entirely upon my service.’

Téligny remained obdurate. ‘I still do not recommend you answer her call. The court is a dangerous place at this time for those of our faith, and for you in particular. Does not the Queen of Navarre’s letter warn you to take extra care?’