The Devil's Queen: A Novel of Catherine De Medici (34 page)

I steepled my hands, pressed them to my lips, and closed my eyes. “My husband must be sent for at once. He is at Madame de Poitiers’s château at Anet . . .”

“I will see that the Dauphin is notified, Madame,” the doctor responded kindly. “In the meantime, His Majesty has asked for you.”

I banished imminent tears and eased my taut, vacant expression into one more pleasant, then rose and went into the bedchamber.

François was propped up on the pillows, his face grey against the white linens. It was the end of a cold, damp March, and a fire roared in the hearth, leaving the room oppressively warm, yet the King shivered beneath many blankets. The curtains had been drawn and the lamps left unlit, to avoid paining his eyes, which cast the room in twilight. The lines in his brow conveyed misery, but he was altogether lucid, and when he saw me, he managed a wan smile.

I did my best to smile back, but he was not fooled.

“Ah, Catherine,” he said, his voice wavering and reedy. “Always so brave. There’s no need to dissemble; I know I’m dying. Cry if you wish, my darling. I won’t be frightened by your tears.”

“Oh, Your Majesty . . .” I clasped his hand. “I’ve sent for Henri.”

“Do not tell Eléonore.” He sighed. “I regret that I’ve treated her badly, especially when I see what you’ve endured.”

I averted my eyes. “It’s nothing.”

“Oh, but it is. Perhaps . . .” His face crumpled—in physical pain, I thought, until he opened eyes gleaming with tears. “Had I not sent him away to be the Emperor’s hostage, perhaps he would have grown to be a different man. But he is weak . . .”

His teeth began to chatter. I tucked the blankets tightly about him, then
wrung out a towel from a basin of water and set the damp cloth upon his forehead. He sighed with relief.

“That woman . . .” His lip curled. “She rules him, and so will rule France. Henri has made the same mistake I did. Mark my words: She’ll seize all the power she can; she’s ruthless, and Henri too much a fool to see it.”

The speech exhausted him; he broke off, panting, until he could catch his breath.

“Don’t let Anne in here,” he said finally. “I have been such a fool.” He squeezed my hand. “You and I are alike. I see it in you. You’re strong enough to do what is best for the nation, even if it breaks your heart.”

“Yes,” I said, very softly.

He looked at me with wan affection. “Promise me, then. Promise me that you’ll do what is best for France. Promise me that you’ll keep the throne safe for my son.”

“I promise,” I whispered.

“I love you more than my own child,” he said.

At that, my composure broke and I sobbed openly.

The physicians bled the King with leeches and dosed him with quicksilver, but he worsened markedly. By morning, he did not know me. Toward the afternoon he grew lucid again and asked for a priest.

Henri arrived late that night. He and his father wished to be alone, without witness to their grief or final words to each other. The Duchess d’Etampes hovered silently in the corridor, her eyes wide with shock.

I sat on the floor in the King’s antechamber, my back pressed to the wall, and wept into my hands. François had been my protector and dearest friend. I remained huddled on the floor throughout the long night, listening to the rise and fall of Henri’s voice on the other side of the closed door. In the morning, the King’s confessor, the Bishop of Mâcon, arrived. I tried to see past the door as it opened, and glimpsed Henri’s haggard face, his black eyes raw with grief.

The King never called for me again.

When Madame Gondi came for me at noon, I was too weak to resist but let myself be guided to my room and washed and dressed in clean clothes. I
could not rest, but returned to the King’s apartments and settled again on the floor near the entrance to his bedchamber. The Duchess d’Etampes again appeared, dazed and carelessly dressed and minus her white face paint and rouge. She did not dare speak to me, but held vigil in the corridor.

In the next room, Henri let go a heartbroken wail; I lowered my face into my hands and wept. The Duchess seemed strangely unmoved until the door to the King’s bedchamber opened and the red-eyed Bishop of Mâcon emerged. He turned to me, his head bowed.

“His Majesty the Most Christian King François is dead.”

I could not speak, but in the hallway, the Duchess d’Etampes let go a scream.

“May the earth swallow me up!” she wailed—not in grief but in terror. She had abused her power as the King’s mistress to harm many and insult all. Apparently she had thought that François would never die, that retribution from her enemies would never come—and now she was unprepared. I remember her dry-eyed panic well—how she clutched first her cheeks, then her head, as if to keep it from suddenly flying off, how she seized her skirts and ran away, her progress hobbled by her fine high-heeled slippers. It was the last time I ever saw her.

I sat down upon the cold floor a princess and rose from it a queen, but took no joy in the fact. As it would the Duchess, change would bring me catastrophe.

My husband was transformed by the King’s death. Henri wept for his father, but along with his grief came a curious lightness, as if all his anger and pain had died with the old man.

His first official act was to dismiss his father’s ministers and summon the former Grand Master, Anne Montmorency, to the palace. Montmorency had fallen out of favor with the King, though his friendship with my husband had remained steadfast.

Montmorency was like Henri and Diane in many ways: conservative, dogmatic, resistant to change. His very being reflected those traits: He was solid and square of build and pompous of bearing, with a long, old-fashioned grey beard and outdated clothes. Henri named him President of the King’s Privy Council, a position second only to the King. Montmorency at once moved into the apartment adjacent to the King’s—the one hastily vacated by the Duchess d’Etampes, who had fled to the countryside.

I did not like Montmorency, though I respected him. I saw arrogance in his narrowed, deep-set eyes, in his bearing and speech. He was quick to dismiss the opinions of others but was loyal and did not, like so many others, see Henri’s accession as an opportunity to increase his own wealth.

The same could not be said of Diane de Poitiers. Not only did she convince Henri to give her all of the Duchess d’Etampe’s assets but Diane asked for and received the breathtaking palace at Chenonceaux—royal property that was not Henri’s to give. In addition, Henri gave her the taxes collected upon his accession, a veritable fortune. He even gave her the Crown Jewels, an insult I did my best to bear gracefully while my friends howled at the injustice.

To me, Henri gave an annual allowance of two hundred thousand livres.

He also indulged in political matchmaking: He married his cousin Jeanne of Navarre to Antoine de Bourbon, First Prince of the Blood, who would inherit the throne upon the death of Henri and all of his sons. Bourbon was a handsome man, though very vain; he wore a fluffy hairpiece to hide his balding crown and a gold hoop in his ear. By then he had converted to Protestantism, then recanted, then called himself a Huguenot again, as it suited his political aims. I despised his inconstancy but was glad that the marriage brought Jeanne to live at Court again.

Henri also increased the status of the Guise family, a branch of the royal House of Lorraine. His closest friend was François of Guise, a handsome, bearded man with golden hair and magnetic grey-green eyes, who laughed easily. He was warm, charming, and sharp-witted, the sort of man who exuded importance and commanded attention; he could silence a crowd by the mere act of entering the room. Henri elevated him from Count to Duke, and appointed him to the Privy Council.

Henri likewise appointed Guise’s brother Charles to the Council. Charles, the Cardinal of Lorraine, was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, brooding political genius known for his duplicity. Their sister, Marie of Guise, was the widow of King James of Scotland and served as regent for her five-year-old daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots.

At the time, Scotland was in turmoil, and the girl Mary was in great danger in her own country.

“Let her come to live with us in the French Court,” my Henri said, “where she may grow to her majority in safety. When she is old enough, she will marry my son, François.”

Some considered that to be a wise strategy: As a Catholic, Mary was the only monarch of England recognized by the Pope; if she married our son, he would have a claim to the English throne as well as to that of Scotland.

Mary arrived at Blois swathed in tartan, a dark-haired porcelain doll with wide, fear-filled eyes. She knew very little French; she would loose a tumble of harsh, guttural sounds, too coarse to be words, yet those in her entourage understood them. She brought with her bodyguards, brawny, kilted giants with greasy auburn hair and narrowed, suspicious eyes, who frankly stank. The Scots scorned bathing and manners—all except for Mary and her governess, Janet Fleming, a white-skinned beauty with green eyes and hair like sunlight. Madame Fleming was a young widow who quickly absorbed much of French culture and relayed it to her charge.

I was predisposed to like Mary, even to love her: I felt a kinship with this child whose own countrymen had threatened her with death and forced her to flee her home. I understood what it was to be hated and frightened and alone in a foreign land. When I learned of her arrival, I hurried to welcome her.

I entered the nursery without fanfare to see Mary standing beside François, eyeing him critically. She was slight and imperious, with a haughty lift to her sharp chin.

At the sound of my step, she turned and, in thickly accented French, demanded: “Why do you not curtsy? Do you not know that you are in the presence of the Queen of Scotland?”

“Yes,” I said easily, with a smile. “Do you not know that you are in the presence of the Queen of France?”

She was thoroughly taken aback; I laughed and kissed her. She returned the kiss, guarded little creature, with lips that smelled of fish and ale; her stiff posture conveyed an intense dislike. She was two years older than my François but already thrice as tall. At three years of age, my son looked barely two, and his intellect was even younger. At times I looked into his dull, unfocused eyes and saw the ghost of the murdered imbecile.

Henri doted on Mary, saying that he loved her more than his own issue because she was already a queen. I bit my tongue at the insult to my children. François and Charles of Guise were delirious at their niece’s good fortune: When Henri died, our son would be King and his bride, Mary, would become Queen of France as well as of Scotland.

My husband’s accession brought other changes as well. The old King’s little band of women was scattered, with the Duchess d’Etampes disgraced and living in anonymity; her closest friend, the dimpled, coquettish Marie de
Canaples, had been denounced as an adultress by her husband and banned from Court. Two of the women had left for Portugal with Queen Eléonore, who had had enough of France and wished to live out her days far removed from intrigue.

On the day my husband was crowned, I sat in a tribune in the cathedral at Reims and fought not to weep as Henri marched to the altar. It was not only pride that triggered my unshed tears but also the gold embroidery upon my husband’s white satin tunic, directly over his heart: two large
D
’s back to back, intertwined, over which was superimposed the letter
H
. This was to become his symbol, as the salamander had been his father’s, and for the rest of my life I found myself surrounded by Diane and Henri’s monogram in tapestry and stone and paint adorning every château. I told myself that I did not care, that I had what I wanted most: Henri’s life, and the chance to give him children. Even so, it stung no less.

My own coronation took place two years later, at the cathedral of Saint-Denis, just outside of Paris.

I entered heralded by trumpets, my bodice glittering with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies; my deep blue velvet cloak glinted green with the play of the light. Escorted by Grand Master Montmorency and flanked by Antoine de Bourbon, the most senior Prince of the Blood, I glided to the altar. Beneath my gleaming bodice, the magician’s pearl—which had brought me thus far—hung between my breasts.