Courtesan (43 page)

The Italian page at the door took her cloak and then retired. She was alone. They had not heard her come in. The conversation continued beyond the arched entry. Diane gazed around the corner of a white stucco wall. They were sitting together in the next room, beside the fire. Catherine was laughing and she had just put her hand on Henri’s arm. Diane watched with disdain her attempts at coquetry. She straightened her collar, straightened her skirt, and with determination prepared to enter the lion’s den.

C
ATHERINE’S APARTMENTS
on the second floor of Saint Germain-en-Laye were ominous. Everywhere was the scent of Italian musk and incense. Heavy velvet drapes hid the last remaining light from the windows throughout the large opulent rooms. For all the years Catherine had now spent in France, she still preferred the Italian designs. Her rooms were cluttered with heavy oak furniture, stained dark, and then painted in ornate designs. There was a collection of cabinets, chests and a heavy credenza painted black. The walls were thick with Italian tapestries, most of them hunting scenes. A long table draped in crimson silk near the door was covered with silver trays of jams, confits and pastries; another was covered with a selection of wine decanters and goblets. Though her obsession with astrology and mysticism was widely known, hidden from view now were the ever-present astrolabe, the charts and potions; evidence of practices of which her husband strongly disapproved.

As she might have guessed, Catherine had seen to it that they were alone. The expression on her full face when she saw Diane revealed that she had not expected further company.

“Good afternoon, Your Highness,” Diane said in a confident tone as she stood in the doorway. She watched Catherine’s expression change even before she looked up. Henri sprang from his seat and came toward her.

“Is it four? Oh, goodness yes, already. Catherine has been harping on me for approval of some sketches; ideas for the chateau in Gien. I thought I should make good use of my time here and come a few minutes early.”

As Henri drew nearer, he reached out for her but Diane resisted. She believed that outward expression of their affection in the presence of the Dauphine would be cruel. Henri took her hand anyway and led her to the conversation area near the fire where Catherine was still seated, heavy now after the births of two children. Diane sat in the third chair. It was small, covered in brown velvet, and sufficiently lower to the ground than the other two. Catherine loomed over her, the corners of her thick lips turned up in a little half smile as Diane sank slowly into it. Diane silently wondered how long it had taken her to conjure up this subtle slight. She took a deep breath to steady herself. The smell of musk was suffocating.
Only for Henri,
she thought.

“Your Highness, I wish to offer my personal congratulations on your forthcoming child. It certainly is a wonderful day for all of France.”

Catherine only nodded. Henri watched them, Diane could feel it without looking. She knew he was searching for the least bit of disrespect paid to his mistress.

“Indeed it is,” Catherine added at the last moment. “The physicians tell me that it shall be in late autumn.”

“Ah, an autumn child. How fortunate not to face the summer heat for the birth. My daughter, Louise, was born in autumn and I found it much easier to bear than my first.”

Diane realized that she was making polite conversation and she detested herself for it. But like everything else in her life, she did so without complaint, for the love of Henri. Even after all of the years, it had never ceased to trouble him that, by his love for Diane, every day of his life he committed the sin of adultery. Yet, he told her many times that an eternity in Hell would be far easier to face than life on earth without her. Reconciling his wife and his mistress, if only in his mind, somehow made it easier to live with his sin.

“So do you hope this time for a boy or a girl?” Diane asked, trying to keep her voice reasonably pleasing. Catherine looked down from her chair. She brushed a hand across her face. Her fat fingers were covered with gold and jeweled rings that sparkled with the movement.

“I care only, Madame, that my child is a legitimate heir.” She paused a moment in the stiff silence of the room to which Henri seemed unaware. Then she added, “Now then, may I offer you a cup of wine?”

Catherine filled a small silver goblet from a decanter on the table beside her chair before Diane could reply and handed it to her with an ingratiating smile. As Diane raised the goblet to her lips, something made her stop; a force telling her no, she must not drink the wine. Then, as she held the goblet up before her, the blood drained from her face. She looked at Henri. His cup was different. It was crystal and studded with stones. She could see through it that his wine was not the same as hers. She looked up at Catherine who was still smiling at her. The hand that held the silver goblet began to tremble.

“What is it, Madame? Do you not care for the flavor?” Catherine asked.

Diane looked at her again. The heavily jowled face glistening with perspiration. The raven hair. The dark angry eyes. It was the first time she had ever considered the possibility that Catherine could hate her so much that she might actually want her poisoned.

Suddenly Diane needed to escape. The urge was overwhelming. She was suffocating; smothered by the sour smell of musk and incense, by Catherine’s smile and by the very real threat to her life. It took no more than a moment for Henri, who was studying the interaction, to see that something was wrong.

“Madame? What is it?” he asked, coming to the edge of his chair.

Diane managed to set the goblet down without spilling it on the small carved table beside her. “It. . .it is nothing. I am just feeling a little tired. I hope that Your Highness will forgive me, but perhaps I should retire.”

“I will go with you!” Henri declared, springing to his feet.

Catherine rose more slowly. She watched Henri leave her room trailing after his whore as a dog does his master. She was careful not to laugh before they had gone. The plan had definitely unnerved Madame Diane, there was no question of that. It had been a grand idea. She would have to thank her mystic, Ruggieri, with something special for this one. She chewed her thick painted lip as her mind filled with evil thoughts. Then she lowered her hand over her belly, feeling the life with which Henri had filled her.

T
HAT EVENING,
Diane stood beside Henri near the copper glow of the fireplace hearth. They were dressed, as everyone had come to expect, in costumes of fine black velvet. The sleeves of her gown were edged in white fur. His shirt sleeves were slashed with white silk. They watched across the crowded ballroom as the King made his entrance into the banquet to celebrate the Ides of March. The trumpets blared. The tune began for a stately Pavane. Everyone bowed. But His Majesty no longer paraded through an entrance as he once so elegantly had done. Now he passed into a room with a low studied shuffle and leaned heavily on a jeweled walking stick.

His once majestic face was covered with a thin patina of perspiration from the exertion. François’ physical symptoms mirrored his political decline. He was now weak and acquiescent; a shadow King, ruled by the powerful orb of his mistress, Anne d’Heilly, and her small collection of aides.

The past two years had been difficult for the King, and his body bore the scars. Wars with the Emperor. A new battle with England over Boulogne and Scotland. Both of these hostilities had exhausted the royal treasury. Equally ruinous to the image of François’ reign was the domestic situation. Poverty from excessive taxation had increased. There was discord among the people. François’ religious indecision was now blamed for the permissive heretical climate rampant in France. Like a pendulum, he had sought, in his later years, to right the wrongs of his early reign by pursuing Protestants with a vengeance. Books were publicly burned. The accused were hung in chains from the Pont Saint-Michel. Many were burned alive at stakes in the Place de Grève. Despite the extremity of the measures, it was widely acknowledged by both sides that Protestantism was now out of control in France.

Diane felt an unexpected burst of sympathy as she looked at the ailing King.
One need not love him to pity such a humble end,
she thought. Then she turned away, and the moment passed. She could not afford to care for a man who had not lifted a finger in her defense for nearly fourteen years. She looked around the room. Tonight it was filled with her own allies. She must concentrate on them. Henri did. Indignant over still not being included in major decisions as Dauphin, he confined himself to this small faction of intimates. He felt safe among them, and so did Diane, even when confronted by the even smaller but vicious faction of the Duchesse d’Etampes.

Among the rising powerful about whom all of France now whispered, was Jacques de Saint-André. He stood chatting with Charles and François de Guise, who were also counted among the inner elite. Charles, Archbishop de Rheims, had just returned from Rome and had come back a far more handsome young man than when he left. He had matured, Diane thought, as she studied the smooth lines of his face and the soft waves of blond hair that rose to a heart-shaped peak above his brows.

She smiled when she recalled her first impression of Charles as a young man. How ill-fitted he had seemed to a life in the clergy. He was the epitome of what the Protestants ridiculed so viciously; he had recently admitted to having fathered a child. He had also brought back from Rome a more apparent ambition. He and his brother, François de Guise, had already garnered great power with the future King; enough to surpass her with very little effort if they so chose. For now they were her friends, but she must take great care with them, she thought.

On the other side of Henri stood two more of his trusted friends, Charles de Brissac and Antoine de Bourbon. This was indeed a night of celebration. Henri was here and her two daughters had been invited to Court. But for the daughter they secretly shared, her family was together.

Diane looked out across the crowded room. Against one long wall, sitting on a sculptured wooden bench beneath the window, was her daughter Françoise and her husband Robert. They were whispering and laughing together like children. Diane smiled. Robert de La Marck was a good man. She had made a good marriage for her eldest child. They had been fortunate; they had managed to find love in their match. But perhaps it was not so much luck as it was logic. Françoise was as wise as she was pretty. That someone like Robert de La Marck should have fallen in love with her did not surprise Diane in the least. Françoise was tall and thin and just turned twenty-eight. She was, she realized for the first time, nearly the same age as Henri. She shuddered at the thought, and turned her face back toward the Dauphin and his entourage.
I will not think of that,
she thought.
Not tonight.

At the moment, she had far more important concerns. Though Françoise was married, her second daughter, Louise, was not. Good matches for her daughters not only secured their future, but her own. If she chose carefully, there would always be a place for her should she ever fall out of favor with Henri. It was not easy to think in such terms now with so much love between them, but she had grown wise in her years at Court. Preparation, she had learned, could one day quite well save her life.

“P
OISON?
What do you mean poison?”

Henri gripped her elbow after she had whispered the words. She had not wanted to tell him what she had suspected earlier that day in the Dauphine’s apartments. At least not here, and certainly not like this. But he had insisted. He was pestering her relentlessly. She had no choice. He detested it when she kept anything from him and he would be cross when he discovered it. He was bound to find out sooner or later.

Now that her suspicions were revealed, Henri’s face was stricken. He had asked her again what had taken her so quickly from the Dauphine’s apartments earlier that afternoon. Nothing could have prepared him for her reply. As he realized the implications of what she had said, his eyes narrowed.

“I will kill her! So help me God, I will kill her myself!” he raged through clenched teeth. His eyes darted around the room for sight of Catherine. The movement of his head was swift, his body tensed. Diane put a hand on his arm with considerable force. Then she too looked around, but with a casual smile, as though their conversation had been only of the lightest nature.

“Henri, please. It is nothing that she has done,” she whispered, still smiling. “At least nothing of which I am aware. It was just simply a feeling that I had there in her apartments. She gave me a goblet different from both of yours. There was even a different wine. I know how much she detests me and, well, I could not help but. . .”

Henri could see that, though they tried not to stare, others around them were straining to hear the exchange. Finally, his anger at a flashpoint, he gripped her hand and pulled her through the crowded ballroom with such ferocity that it was whispered that the Dauphin and his mistress surely must be engaged in some heated discord. Once they were halfway through the crowded room, Ruggieri, the Italian mystic, turned to the Dauphine.

“Well, well well,” he said with a wry smile. “What do you suppose that is all about?”

“With any luck, Monsieur Ruggieri, it is a lover’s quarrel,” Catherine replied coldly before she turned away.

M
AKING HIS WAY
through the crowded room was like wading through mud. The faster Henri tried to walk, the more entrenched he became. Hooped skirts of heavy velvet and brocade impeded his path, but he forged ahead, clutching Diane’s hand until it began to throb. He pulled her out into the corridor, past the stone-faced guardsmen in their red and blue livery. A group of the King’s guests, who had gathered there, stared and whispered as they passed. Henri did not notice. He dragged Diane behind him through the two long doors and out onto the grand horseshoe staircase. She nearly fell twice on a thin sheet of ice that had formed on the edge of each of the stairs. He was snorting wildly and she could see his breath in the cold evening air.