History's Great Queens 2-Book Bundle: The Last Queen and The Confessions of Catherine de Medici (95 page)

“Remember who you are,” I said to her. “Remember, the blood of kings flows in your veins.”

She gave me a bitter smile. “How can I forget? It’s my bane.” Kicking her heels into her palfrey, she cantered off, the guards close behind.

Within moments she had vanished into the swirling snow.

The harsh winter gave way to famished summer and a drenching autumn. Even as the harvest again moldered in the fields and riots broke out in Paris over the price of bread, Birago’s network of informants sent daily reports of Catholic lords congregating at Guise’s estate, of retainers being summoned and weapons stockpiled—all paid for by Philip of Spain. From the opposite side of the country came equally disquieting news, of more cities overtaken by Navarre, of thousands of Huguenots rallying to his standard and the seizure of every piece of artillery from every castle he could overtake. War was imminent, a war to the death; and trapped in my rooms as rain heaved against my windows, I penned letter after letter, asking Navarre to meet me before it was too late.

One evening as I sat with my fingers raw from holding my quill I heard the door open. I looked up to see Henri. He’d retreated to Vincennes following his humiliation in the Louvre; though we met weekly with his Council, he had not visited me alone since that incident.

“Do you know why he despises me?” he asked.

I regarded him with bleary eyes. “Yes. He thinks you plotted to kill his brethren and friends. Though we saved his life, he’s never forgiven us for that horrible night.”

“No, I mean Guise.” He stepped inside. His shoulder-length hair was tied back from his arresting face; as he neared his thirty-fifth year, his features had grown more defined and angular, like a Valois, though his eyes remained pure Medici: expressive, long-lashed, and exquisitely black. Birago had told me he’d been training daily with his sword and bow and riding for hours every afternoon in the forest; it showed in his taut stance.

“I loved him once.” His face turned supple in the candlelight. “When we went to fight together against the Huguenots that first time, we ate together, shared the same pavilion; we were more than friends. He was my brother, the brother I’d never had in François, Charles, or Hercule. He watched over me every moment; he claimed he would die before he let anything harm me.”

He gave a soft laugh. “I fell in love with him. How could I resist? He
was beautiful as a god, fierce as a pagan. He was everything I wanted to be.” He paused at my desk, ran his long fingers along the chipped walnut edge as if he were recalling a lover’s skin. “When I finally got up the nerve to tell him, he was horrified. Oh, he hid it well. He said all the right things, that he was honored but unworthy, but I saw the loathing in his eyes. He could scarcely contain it. I could have ordered him to my bed, I could have taken him on his knees like a dog; but I knew that even so, if I wasn’t his prince, he would have killed me. Only then did I realize how unworthy he truly was. He took something that was precious to me, sacred, and with one look he made it shameful. I vowed I would never love again, never be vulnerable to another’s disdain.”

He lifted his hand to his throat, as though he could still feel the pain. “And I never did. None of the others, not even my poor Guast, ever equaled the passion I had for him.”

He leaned to me. Still in that low, intimate voice he said, “I’m finished with it. I want you to find a way for us to be rid of him. Find it soon, before I find it myself.”

He reached into his doublet, took out an unsealed paper. “From Navarre: he agrees to meet, providing you go to him. He’s received all your letters and says he doesn’t want war any more than we do. Tell him, if he converts I’ll make him my heir and send him Guise’s head.”

I started to reach out. Before I could touch him, he drew back and left me.

I reached the citadel of St. Brice in the Huguenot territory of Cognac in mid-December. I had ridden through a frozen landscape of skeletal trees festooned with icicles, the glacial wind barely stirring the drifts of snow at the roadside, but Navarre greeted me in the courtyard dressed in his habitual wool doublet, only he now sported a black cap with a bristling white plume. I was struck by the sight of it, recalling it was the same cap I’d seen him wearing in my vision, so long ago.

He smiled at my scrutiny. “So my enemies can mark me better in battle,” he quipped, and he leaned to me, his breath warm as he kissed my lips. While the cold had penetrated my bones, he exuded heat like a kiln.

“Tante Catherine,” he said. “I didn’t realize until now how much I’ve missed you.”

I allowed myself a smile. “And I see that you, my lord, have not changed.”

“Oh, I’d not say that.” He thrust out his chin. “Look here: courtesy of Guise and his Catholic League. I didn’t have a single white hair in my beard before they challenged me.”

He spoke carelessly, but I heard iron underneath. With a smile I said, “Then it seems we’ve much to discuss,” and let him lead me into the house and a private chamber, where he allowed me to warm myself in front of the fire with a goblet of mulled wine. Then we launched into battle. He had developed his diplomatic skills, I noticed at once; none of my offers moved him to concede an inch. He behaved as though he truly did not care whether he forfeited all.

Finally, I hit my fist on the table. “Enough. We’ve been sitting here for over two hours, going around the same immutable point. You know I cannot arrest Guise. He is too powerful; every Catholic in France would turn against us.”

Navarre reclined in his chair with a curious half smile. “He is only powerful because in allowing him to continue unchecked, you lend him authority. What do I gain by agreeing to your requests, save for a lifelong vendetta with Guise, who is clearly resolved to destroy me?” He rose to refill his goblet. “Besides, I think if you had true peace, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. I, on the other hand, am sick of conflict. I wouldn’t wage war again if I had the choice.”

As he turned back to me, I thought of the irony that this one man, whose accession could only mean my sons had failed, might be the answer to everything I strived to give France. Had Nostradamus been right? Had I saved him because he was, in fact, my legacy?

The time had come to find out. I now faced my final gambit.

“You do not need to go to war,” I finally said. “Convert to our faith and you will put an end to it. Guise cannot fight a Catholic heir, which you will be. Your brethren will forgive you. After all, you will inherit France.”

He chuckled. “Can it be that what they say about you is true after all, and religion really means nothing to you when the Crown is at stake?” His smile faded. “I said no. I will not convert. Unless you’ve something else to say, I fear war it must be.”

I put my goblet on the side table and stood, moving deliberately to the window. Outside, winter’s early dusk fell like a cloak, draping its black
folds over the land. I felt the night in my heart, in my sinews, deep in my bones. Time was running out. I had his answer, and it was the answer I had expected. I could not hesitate anymore.

“What if I give you his death?” I said, without looking around. “Would that satisfy you?”

I heard sap crackle in the hearth. I waited, my entire body taut. When he finally let out a sigh, I looked over my shoulder at him. Shadows played across his rugged features.

“You know I am capable of it,” I added. “I have done it before.”

His mouth twitched. He put his goblet on the mantel, stood before the fire with his arms crossed at his chest, staring into the flames. “Coligny died horribly that night,” he said flatly. “My brethren died in unimaginable ways. I thought I would die too. I heard the screams and saw my men struggle when Guise’s retainers came for us. If it hadn’t been for Margot …” He shifted his eyes to me. “He deserves it. He has bathed in Huguenot blood.”

I met his contemplative stare.

“Very well,” he said quietly. “I agree. If you give me Guise, I will defend your son. And when the time comes, France will find a champion in me, always, one who will seek tolerance and peace, regardless of how my subjects choose to worship.”

I felt my pent-up breath leave my lungs. “Then for now we must appear to be foes. You will prepare for war behind my back. Guise will learn of it and pounce. But you must not enter Paris nor seek to usurp Henri’s throne. Do the deed and return to your kingdom. Leave the rest to me.”

He held my gaze. The quiet between us filled with memories. I saw him as he’d been on the eve of my son François’s nuptials, a wary child with prescient eyes; on the day he came to wed Margot and I clasped him to me and felt his strength. I recalled that night of blood, as he lay against Charles with a dagger at his throat; and envisioned him on the day of his escape, riding through our war-torn land for his mountain refuge. I saw him in each incarnation, from child to youth to man; and I knew, without further doubt, that our destiny had been preordained.

We were indeed two halves of a whole.

• • •

I sent detailed instructions to Henri and packed my valises for my return to Paris. The day before I was due to leave, a courier arrived with an urgent missive. I tore it open and read; I could not repress a dark surge of satisfaction. Though the event itself was horrific, it couldn’t have come at a better moment.

Mary of Scots had been executed at Elizabeth Tudor’s command. In her will she bequeathed to Spain her contested Catholic right to Elizabeth’s throne; Philip was now free to assume the role of avenger of Mary’s death, to rain fire upon England’s heretic queen.

And Guise had the perfect excuse to declare war on Navarre.

T
HE LOUVRE ROSE OUT OF A DENSE MIST. TORCHES BURNED ON
the facade at midday, pockets of light that scarcely illumined my passage through the courtyard. No escort waited to receive me after my absence; only Birago shuffled to me, his cane tapping on the cobblestones.

As he led me into the palace he murmured, “I brought your letter personally to His Majesty and he has done as you asked. He awaits you in the hall. You should know he has a new companion, one Valette, son of a minor Parisian nobleman. His Majesty made him captain of his new personal guard, which he calls the Forty-five. The king’s fear of assassination runs high.”

I nodded in agreement as I moved through the eerily quiet corridors. I could remember a time when laughter and the firefly flittering of courtiers filled every room. I’d been one of them, the foreign duckling in her elaborate gowns, consumed by desire for an unwilling husband and hatred of his mistress. It had been a time when the Huguenots were an unpleasant distraction, when a king of might and wit straddled the throne—a fleeting time of dreams.

Bracketed tapers flared in the hall. A group of dark-clad men stood
near the dais; in their center was Guise, also head to toe in black. I resisted the urge to laugh as the men bowed low, all of whom I recognized as Catholic lords I had instructed Henri to invite. Though white was the color of mourning in France, they’d donned Spanish black in a united show of furor over the martyrdom of Mary Stuart. My son had surpassed my instructions with his usual dramatic flair.

I moved to them. They parted. I lifted my gaze to the dais.

Henri sat with one leg dangling over his throne’s armrest. He alone wore white damask, a pearl-drop in one ear. Coral bracelets encircled his wrists; in his hand he held a
bilboquet
—a child’s toy made of a polished wood stick with a painted ball on a string. He tossed the ball up, caught it in the rounded cup on the top of the stick. Standing beside him was a lean youth of startling beauty, with a mass of dark curls and sapphire-blue eyes; I assumed he must be the new companion, Valette, for he held an identical toy and his stare was fixed on me.

Clip-clop.

Henri smiled. “
Ma mère
, welcome home. I trust you had a pleasant journey, if not a very productive one?” He tossed the ball up.

Clip-clop.

I glanced at Guise. He regarded me as if I were a stranger.

As if he had rehearsed the lines I’d chosen for him, Henri said, “As you can see, we’re in mourning for the unlawful murder of our sister-in-law, Mary of Scots. It is what every Catholic can expect when a heretic takes the throne—persecution and apostasy. God himself, I’m told, is weeping.” He rose and left the dais. I smelled the scent of violets on him as he approached me. “Come see what we have devised.” The men hemmed me in, oppressive at my back. I regarded a large paper on the table: a map of France with pins stuck in designated areas. Though I’d advised Henri to do this, the physical demonstration of my gambit twisted my stomach into a knot. If we failed, we’d have an enormous Catholic force on our doorstep.

“Three armies,” said Henri. “One, led by my Valette, will intercept the German mercenaries Navarre has hired to augment his forces. Another, led by my lord Guise, will engage Navarre himself. And the third I will lead personally, to take position here”—he pointed—“at the Loire, preventing passage into Paris.” He laughed, flipped the ball up. “Delightful!”