The Rival Queens (22 page)

Perhaps; but it seems that someone alerted at least François, if not Henry, to the possibility that the queen of Navarre had interfered with their plans, because very soon after this incident the duke of Alençon made a concerted effort to gain his sister’s affections—and, coincidentally, her support for his cause. “Soon after [the thwarted escape attempt], we arrived at St. Germain, where we stayed some time, on account of the King’s indisposition,” Marguerite recalled. “
All this while my brother Alençon
used every means he could devise to ingratiate himself with me, until at last I promised him my friendship, as I had before done to my brother the King of Poland. As he had been brought up at a distance from Court, we had hitherto
known very little of each other, and kept ourselves at a distance. Now that he had made the first advances, in so respectful and affectionate a manner, I resolved to receive him into firm friendship, and to interest myself in whatever concerned him, without prejudice, however, to the interests of my good brother King Charles, whom I loved more than any one besides, and who continued to entertain a great regard for me, of which he gave me proofs as long as he lived.”

Despite his having once beaten her and forced her into a marriage she didn’t want, Marguerite’s fondness for Charles seems to have been genuine. Certainly these two drew closer together after the horror of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, as the realization set in that both of them had been deliberately set up and duped by Catherine and Henri. The guilt Charles experienced over the massacre consumed him every bit as relentlessly as his tuberculosis. He blamed his mother for having forced his hand: “
Madame, you are the cause of all!
” he once spat at her. Shunning Catherine but needing warmth, he turned to Marguerite, who understood and shared his pain and who was also starved for affection. Their attachment was not sexual, as has often been implied; this was not about passion but rather a shared exclusion from maternal love. They had been used and rejected and had bonded together in self-protection as a result.

François, too, was an outsider in the family, scorned by both Charles and Henri and slighted by Catherine. Perhaps it was this quality that awakened Marguerite’s sympathies and persuaded her to join forces with her youngest sibling. Or it may have been her knowledge that Charles was dying and that when he did, Henri would come back. It was better to take a chance on the devil she didn’t know than to leave herself completely unprotected against the man who (despite his recent assurances of devotion) had made it his business to torment her in the past. Certainly it didn’t hurt that her lover, the seigneur de La Môle, was a trusted member of François’s household.

To be true to both Charles
and
François, however, represented something of a challenge, as Margot soon discovered. For no sooner had she pledged her friendship to the duke of Alençon than another
intrigue involving his and Henry’s flight from court surfaced. Inexplicably stymied in their previous attempt to liberate the princes, the Politiques, in alliance with the Huguenots, tried again to free their two leaders, but this time in a far more menacing manner. Instead of having François and Henry run away from court to join forces with an army, they decided to bring the army to them.

So bold a stroke might have represented a serious threat to the Crown—if the plan could be carried off with precision and discipline. Luckily for Charles and Catherine, these qualities were not much in evidence among the members of the opposition party. For example, it is helpful when organizing the overthrow of an established government if everybody involved in the cabal pays attention to minor details such as the date on which the various troops comprising the rebel force are supposed to rendezvous and storm the castle. Obviously it is better to show up all at once and surprise and overwhelm your adversaries rather than trickle in piecemeal and hang around waiting to be discovered. In any event, one of the cavalry commanders failed to take this bit of acknowledged wisdom sufficiently into account and showed up ten days early with just enough men to arouse the queen mother’s suspicions but not enough to mount an attack on the palace.

The court was still in residence at Saint-Germain. At the sighting of the small Huguenot force, panic ensued. Catherine called for reinforcements, including the fearsome Swiss Guard. “
The excitement was very great
, baggage was trussed up, the Cardinals of Lorraine and Guise leapt to horse to escape from Paris and many others followed their example,” an eyewitness reported. Petrified at the consequences of being found out and accused of treason, François broke down immediately, rushed to his mother (who, he rightly concluded, was more likely to be lenient with him than his brother the king), and gave away the entire conspiracy, implicating not simply Henry of Navarre but also everyone he knew, including the seigneur de La Môle and Annibal de Coconnas (lover of Marguerite’s best friend, Henriette), who had acted as liaisons between him and the
Politiques. That same night, the entire court fled to Vincennes, with the duke of Alençon and the king of Navarre under heavy guard. “
We set off
… two hours after midnight, putting King Charles in a litter, and the Queen my mother taking my brother and the King my husband with her in her own carriage,” Marguerite reported.

The queen of Navarre has sometimes been accused by historians of having gained advance knowledge of this plot through her relationship with La Môle and of betraying him to her mother. This is because Margot observes in her memoirs that, with Charles “
daily growing worse
… the Huguenots [were] constantly forming new plots. They were very desirous to get my brother the Duc d’Alençon away from Court. I got intelligence, from time to time, of their designs.” But there is no indication that Catherine had any hint of this particular intrigue until the rebel band arrived prematurely and François blabbed to save his own skin, so it seems unlikely that Marguerite informed on her lover. Also, the queen of Navarre was not one of those implicated by her brother in the scheme, and her subsequent actions would indicate that her sympathies lay rather with the insurgents than their opponents.

It was well known that François had thrown himself upon the mercy of his mother. It probably saved his life, for Charles was as angered by this blatant repudiation of his rule as he had been at any time during his reign. “
They could at least have waited
for my death,” he was heard to fume as they carried him hurriedly in his litter from Saint-Germain. The duke of Alençon and the king of Navarre were both arrested and thrown in prison pending trial. Marguerite tried to get them out: “I had resolved to save them at the hazard of my own ruin with the King, whose favor I entirely enjoyed at that time,” she stated. As a result of her high rank at court, the queen of Navarre had unique access to the prisoners. “
I was suffered to pass
to and from them in my coach, with my women, who were not even required by the guard to unmask, nor was my coach ever searched,” Margot remembered. “This being the case, I had intended to convey away one of them disguised in a female
habit. But the difficulty lay in settling betwixt themselves which should remain behind in prison, they being closely watched by their guards, and the escape of one bringing the other’s life into hazard. Thus they could never agree upon the point, each of them wishing to be the person I should deliver from confinement,” she reported.

La Môle and Coconnas fared far worse than their master; they were repeatedly tortured. La Môle was singled out especially because his rooms had been searched and a small, crude wax image discovered with a skewer stuck in its chest. Catherine, of course, was immediately interested and claimed that the figure represented the king and that this sorcery was responsible for Charles’s diseased lungs. La Môle was shackled and subjected to the boot—a hideous device consisting of two iron plates, studded with spikes, which were attached to the lower leg—a sort of steel vise—then slowly compressed, crushing the bone inside. “
God! May I die
if I’ve ever made any image of wax against the King… Put me to death if poor La Mole ever thought of such a thing,” he moaned and begged.
^*

While her lover endured the agony of this interrogation, Marguerite’s husband and brother were hauled before a special commission of judges and required to defend themselves against the charge of treason. François addressed this body in a long, rambling, seat-of-the-pants explanation in which he justified himself on the grounds that Coligny had promised him the governorship of Flanders and that his sole intention in escaping the court was to use the Huguenot troops to this end. In his recitation, he managed to incriminate nearly all his closest friends and most loyal supporters.

Henry’s rejoinder to the court, which he read aloud from a prepared statement, was far more sophisticated and persuasive. That was because it had been written by his wife. “
My husband, having no counselor
to assist him, desired me to draw up his defense in such a manner that he might not implicate any person, and, at the same
time, clear my brother and himself from any criminality of conduct,” Margot confirmed. This she managed to do by masterfully turning the tables on the prosecution. In substance, her argument was that because the king of Navarre was treated so badly by the court, with so little respect for his undeniable rank and position and at constant risk of his life, he had little choice but to try to escape from these unnatural conditions. If, on the other hand, the king and the queen mother would grant him the respect and honor he deserved as a sovereign in his own right and the first prince of the blood, then he would prove “
to them both, a very humble
, faithful, and obedient servant.” Marguerite’s argument proved unassailable. “
With God’s help I accomplished
this task to his great satisfaction, and to the surprise of the commissioners, who did not expect to find them [Henry and François] so well prepared to justify themselves.” This was the second time since her marriage that Marguerite had saved Henry of Navarre’s life.

But alas, in saving her husband she destroyed her lover. Denied the opportunity to execute the principals in the scheme, Catherine and Charles chose instead to take their vengeance on La Môle and Coconnas. It was decided that both servants would be put to death and that as a further insult they would be treated as common criminals and publicly decapitated. Coconnas was quick to see the hypocrisy of the sentence. “
You see, my lords
, the humble are punished and the mighty, who are responsible, abide in safety,” he cried on hearing himself condemned. Guilt-ridden, François begged Catherine and Charles for his loyal friends’ lives, weeping and going down on his knees. Eventually, he succeeded in convincing Catherine to spare the two men the humiliation of a public execution and dispatch them quietly in private, but the order arrived too late. It was said later that La Môle’s last words were, “
May God and the Blessed Virgin
have mercy on my soul! Commend me to the good graces of the Queen of Navarre and the ladies!”

In her memoirs, Margot says only that La Môle was executed.
But the memoirs of the duke of Nevers
, written later, are more suggestive.
According to that document, on the night following the execution, the queen of Navarre and her friend the duchess of Nevers slipped silently out of the Louvre and, shrouded in grief and veils, took a carriage to the Place de Grève, site of La Môle’s and Coconnas’s martyrdom. There they claimed their lovers’ heads, carrying them to a private chapel in Montmartre, where they had them interred, perfumed, and embalmed as a mark of honor and respect.
^*

On May 30, 1574, exactly one month after the slaying of La Môle and Coconnas for treason, Charles IX died of tuberculosis. He was twenty-four. Cut down so early in life, he was unable to redeem his name after the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The young man who had craved honor and dreamed of courage and constancy as a child would go down in history as a depraved madman. This is not quite fair, as even in death he was dominated by a greater power. In her letter to the king of Poland advising him of the demise of his elder brother, Catherine claimed that Charles “
begged that I should take
the administration of the kingdom” and that his last words were “my mother.”

Margot took Charles’s death very hard, particularly as it came so close on the heels of La Môle’s execution. She called him “
the only stay and support
of my life,—a brother from whose hands I never received anything but good… In a word, when I lost King Charles, I lost everything,” she grieved.

Her sorrow was not only over the demise of a beloved brother. Charles’s end meant the ascension of the duke of Anjou to the throne. “
He [Charles] begged me that I should send
in all haste to get you,” Catherine wrote to the new king of France. “
You know how much I love you
and when I think that you will never more leave us that makes me take everything with patience,” the queen mother added with satisfaction.

Henri was coming home.

C
ATHERINE WAS SO EAGER FOR
Henri’s return that she sent not one but two messengers, each instructed to travel by separate roads so as to minimize the chance of delay or interception, to inform the king of Poland that his older brother had passed away and that consequently he was now monarch of France. The first of these arrived in Kraków on June 13, 1574, just two weeks after Charles’s death.

The news could not have been more welcome to Henri and the coterie of nine young gallants who had elected to remain with him during his exile. Henri had not been at all happy in his adopted realm. He had arrived with an impressive retinue of French aristocrats, but the majority of these had been only too pleased to return to France after the opulent coronation festivities had concluded, leaving Henri and his companions, among whom were Guast (Marguerite’s bitter enemy, who had taken a leading role in persecuting her for her romantic attachment to the duke of Guise before her marriage) and two very attractive rakes, René de Villequier and
Jacques Lévy de Quélus, also called Caylus, to face the bleak isolation of a winter in Poland.

The fact was, there wasn’t anything to
do
in Poland. There wasn’t much in the way of nightlife, nobody knew how to flirt or throw a good party, and Henri didn’t care for cold weather or outdoor sports like hunting. He sulked in his castle away from everyone but his small French entourage. He did no official or administrative work but instead wrote letters home to his mother every day and penned passionate love notes to the prince of Condé’s wife, even pricking his finger and scribbling to her in his own blood. After a while, his subjects, displeased by their new sovereign’s ill humor and general unavailability, complained about his behavior and Henri roused himself enough to throw a few banquets, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it. He was lonely and miserable, and in his misery the homosexuality that he had kept hidden in France, perhaps even from himself, came out. For according to the ambassador to Poland from Savoy, who seems to have been in a position to know, while Henri was pouring out his heart in blood letters to the princess of Condé he was also engaged in a sexual relationship with at least the handsome Villequier and possibly others of his circle. “
He has been imbued by him [Villequier]
with the vice which nature detests which he could not unlearn,” the Savoyard reported. “I will say only that his cabinet has been a real harem of all lubricity and lewdness, a school of sodomy, where filthy revels have occurred which all the world has known about.”

Henri’s Polish subjects did not view the tidings of his brother’s death with the same enthusiasm as did their sovereign. For all Henri’s faults as a king, they wanted to keep him (and his promised future income stream) in Poland. They naturally felt that their realm was every bit the equal of France in terms of prestige and importance and insisted that Henri stay with them. Consequently, he and his little band of devoted acolytes had to pretend to agree to remain and then make a mad dash for freedom by first feigning sleep and then hiding in the kitchen in a very unkinglike manner before fleeing through the servants’ entrance at midnight. Even so, their ruse
was discovered, and they were pursued by the Polish baronage all the way to the border with Moravia, which, luckily, was under imperial rule, enabling them to cross over the river and into safety.

For a man who had voiced such anxiety about possible challenges to his succession should he stay too long away from France, Henri certainly took his time getting back. He had made his somewhat inglorious escape from Kraków on the evening of June 18, just five days after learning of Charles’s death, and within a week was in Vienna. There, the whopping sum of fifty thousand crowns awaited him, sent by a doting Catherine to pay for his journey home.
^*
But instead of going straight to France, he lingered for two weeks in Vienna, where he and his followers were lavishly entertained by the emperor, before proceeding on to a leisurely two-month tour of Venice, Padua, Ferrara, Mantua, and Turin. His behavior was that of a man who had lost years in prison (he had been in Poland approximately seven months) and was finally back in civilization, where he intended to enjoy himself. He did not write his mother once during his travels and ignored her many pressing appeals to return. Like any good tourist, he admired the sights, shopped extensively, and reciprocated his hosts’ profuse hospitality. He particularly adored Venice, where he was in his element and could meander from merchant to merchant or simply float for hours on a golden barge provided by the doge. He spent 1,125
écus
on perfume alone and bought gold, diamonds, and a pearl necklace from the most expensive jeweler in Italy. By the time he finally crossed over into French territory he had spent all the money his mother had sent him.

He made his official entry into Lyon, where the royal court was waiting for him, on September 6, 1574. The entire family was present, and there was a great show of unity and bonhomie. The queen mother cried in happiness at her son’s homecoming, and both
François and Henry of Navarre pledged their undying loyalty to the new king. Only Marguerite, who had anticipated this moment with dread for months, struggled to keep her composure. “
Amidst the embraces and compliments
of welcome in that warm season, crowded as we were together and stifling with the heat, I found a universal shivering come over me, which was plainly perceived by those near me,” she later recalled. “It was with difficulty I could conceal what I felt when the King, having saluted the Queen my mother, came forward to salute me.”

Her fears for her safety and position at court would prove only too true. Henri was not in Lyon three days before he went right for her.

A
LTHOUGH
H
ENRI HAD NOT
bothered to communicate with his mother while he was on holiday in Italy, this had not prevented her from writing to him, and so the new king of France was aware that Catherine was keeping both his younger brother and the king of Navarre under such close surveillance that they were virtual prisoners. “
I have forbidden any subject of my lord
and son the king to quit the realm without my permission,” the queen mother had informed him coolly. Henri was further cognizant that Marguerite had stepped in and saved her husband from execution by coordinating the defense at his trial and that since this time a tenuous trust had developed between the king and queen of Navarre. The establishment of amicable relations between these two, in combination with Margot’s friendship and protection of François, made the possibility of a revolt against him that much more likely. Encouraged by his principal adviser, Guast, he rode into Lyon determined to do what he could to dissolve this alliance by setting husband against wife and cousin against cousin. This being the court of France, he naturally chose sex as his weapon of choice.

It was the queen of Navarre’s first visit to Lyon, so soon after she arrived she and some of the members of the Flying Squadron decided to do a little sightseeing. “
Mademoiselle de Montigny
… observing
to us that the Abbey of St. Pierre was a beautiful convent, we all resolved to visit it,” Marguerite reported. The entire party piled into Margot’s coach and drove to the church, which was located in a part of town where many courtiers had rented rooms. “My carriage was easily to be distinguished, as it was gilt and lined with yellow velvet trimmed in silver,” Margot observed. The coachman was commanded to wait in the square while Marguerite and her friends visited the convent. While they were inside, “the King passed through the square on his way to see Quélus, who was then sick,” said Margot. “He had with him the King my husband, D’O [another courtier, unnamed]—and the fat fellow Ruffé.

“The King, observing no one in my carriage, turned to my husband and said: ‘There is your wife’s coach, and that is the house where Bidé lodges. Bidé is sick, and I will engage my word she is gone upon a visit to him. Go,’ said he to Ruffé, ‘and see whether she is not there.’ ” Ruffé, understanding the implication—that Margot was not tending to a sick man but meeting a lover—did all he could to ingratiate himself with the king. “I need not tell you he did not find me there; however, knowing the King’s intention, he, to favor it, said loud enough for the King my husband to hear: ‘The birds have been there, but they are now flown.’ This,” Margot concluded grimly, “furnished sufficient matter for conversation until they reached home.”

To be caught in open daylight in a compromising situation violated Catherine’s unspoken rules of decorum, so Henri made haste, as soon as he had returned to court, to inform her of her daughter’s supposed indiscretion. Marguerite finished her tour of the abbey and came back to discover herself the centerpiece of a laughably contrived but nonetheless odious scandal. Luckily Henry, who had evidently warmed to his wife after she had saved his life a second time, warned her of the plot: “
Upon this occasion
, the King my husband displayed all the good sense and generosity of temper for which he is remarkable,” Margot recalled gratefully. “He saw through the design, and he despised the maliciousness of it.” Her husband laughed and sent her to her mother to find out the details of her sin but made
it a point to reassure her. “
I do not give the least
credit to the story,” said Henry, “which I plainly perceive to be fabricated in order to stir up a difference betwixt us two, and break off the friendly intercourse between your brother [François] and me.”

Bewildered, Margot sought out her mother, who received her in high dudgeon. “
She would not hear a word
I had to offer, but continued to rate me in a furious manner; whether it was through fear, or affection for her son, or whether she believed the story in earnest, I know not. When I observed to her that I understood the King had done me this ill office in her opinion, her anger was redoubled, and she endeavored to make me believe that she had been informed of the circumstance by one of her own
valets de chambre,
who had himself seen me at the place.”

But of course the presence of so many witnesses who could vouch for Marguerite’s innocent visit to the chapel made it very difficult for Catherine to persist in believing Henri’s story, and within a day or two both were obliged to retract their accusations. The queen mother took the usual way out—she punished an underling. “
She had discovered, she said, that there was not the least foundation for the report her
valet de chambre
had made, and should dismiss him from her service as a bad man,” Margot related wryly. But this was not enough for her daughter. “As she perceived by my looks that I saw through this disguise, she said everything she could think of to persuade me to a belief that the King had not mentioned it to her. She continued her arguments, and I still appeared incredulous. At length the King entered the closet, and made many apologies, declaring he had been imposed on, and assuring me of his most cordial friendship and esteem; and thus matters were set to rights again.”
Score: Margot, Henry, and François 1; Henri and Catherine 0.

Sadly, this episode, seemingly so trivial, represented the high point of cooperation between Marguerite and her husband. Henri had assumed that Margot was the weak link in the alliance, but he had underestimated her. The next time he struck, which was very soon, he would not take his sister on directly but take aim at her
through Henry and François. And this time, his blade would thrust home.

A
FTER
L
YON, THE COURT
set off on an extended journey through Provence before eventually turning north in preparation for an elaborate coronation ceremony in Reims. Along the way, Henri’s subjects began to get glimmers of their new king’s character and notions of government.

Henri faced a number of serious, but not insurmountable, problems upon his ascension. The most pressing concern was the bleak condition of the royal treasury. Put simply, the kingdom was bankrupt. In addition to the money Henri had squandered on his way home from Poland, Catherine had spent a truly staggering sum—estimated at 150,000 crowns—on Charles’s funeral. The debts incurred during the siege of La Rochelle were still unpaid, the royal army was owed back wages, and even Catherine’s ever-present Italian bankers refused to lend to her. They had good reason: every year, the French royal government incurred expenses of approximately twenty million
livres,
to which had to be added current and past-due debt of some additional twelve million
livres.
But as a result of the damage to the agricultural economy from the continuing civil wars, the treasury was only taking in about 4.5 million
livres
a year in revenues, leaving a deficit of some 27.5 million
livres.
“
The bad administration of money
, and the bad policing of the country which has prevailed with the civil wars, have brought the kingdom of France… to such a pass that at present it is deformed in practically every part,” reported the Venetian ambassador. “Everywhere one sees ruin: the livestock for the most part destroyed, and great stretches of good land uncultivated, and many peasants forced to leave their homes to become vagabonds. Everything has risen to exorbitant prices, principally victuals, [for] which I have paid six times their former value,” he complained. There is no question that Henri was aware of the problem, as one of his most senior military advisers sent him a letter immediately upon his return from Poland urging him
to address this woeful state of affairs. “
The most important and chief point
is finances, because without these, everything is stayed and nothing can be executed,” the counselor wrote forcefully.