The Devil's Queen: A Novel of Catherine De Medici (45 page)

Our sad party made its way up the stairs, to long-unused royal apartments; François was carried to a separate chamber, and his young Queen went with him. Henri was laid carefully upon the bed and his bloodied tunic cut away.

Upon his chest, soaked with sweat and blood, was pressed an emerald kerchief, embroidered with gold fleurs-de-lis by my own hand. At the sight of it, I cried out, then took it and put it next to my heart.

The next few hours were evil ones. The King’s doctor, Monsieur Chapelain, appeared and removed the smaller splinter from Henri’s throat, then probed the wounded eye to see whether he could dislodge the large shard. My husband would not cry out but could not keep from retching during the worst moments. The doctor afterward announced that the shard was fast situated and could not be removed.

Afternoon faded tonight. I hovered at the King’s bedside, watching as Henri’s face purpled and swelled, as his blackened eye began to bulge with trapped blood. Pain left him senseless most of the time, but there were a few moments where he came to himself and spoke sweetly to me. I was only vaguely aware that Montmorency and François of Guise disappeared, replaced by the Chief Inquisitor, Charles of Guise, and the Duke of Savoy.

At dawn, the aging Montmorency, grey-lipped and haggard, came to
fetch me. He caught my arms gently and tried to coax me away, saying that I needed rest. I pulled free, stating loudly that I would never leave my husband’s bedside. My words drew Henri from his semidelirium; at his whispered insistence, I yielded and let Montmorency take me from the room. Out in the antechamber, I fell into his arms and we wept together, all differences forgotten.

At my apartments, Madame Gondi awaited me, dressed and alert. I directed her to send for Ambroise Paré, the most famed surgeon in all France. I was convinced that Henri could survive with the proper surgery, so long as he did not yield to infection. Afterward, I dozed for an hour, and woke filled with dread.

At midmorning I returned to the King’s chamber to find Montmorency and François of Guise with him. The swelling on the right side of Henri’s face had reached grotesque proportions, though the eye had been bandaged. Doctor Chapelain had worked throughout the night to keep the wound clean and drained, with some encouraging result: Henri had no fever.

When I sat close at his bedside and called his name, he turned his face toward mine. I thought perhaps he knew me—but his remaining eye, glittering in the lamp glow, wandered.

“The young captain,” he breathed, and I knew at once he spoke of the Scotsman who had dealt him the blow. “He must know I forgive him . . .”

“Captain de Montgomery has fled,” old Montmorency answered, shooting François of Guise a dark look; the enmity between the two men was palpable. “No one can say where he has gone.”

Later I would learn that the Guises publicly blamed the old man for the King’s injury, arguing that, as Grand Master, he was ultimately responsible for the King’s armor, and thus Henri’s unlatched visor. Montmorency, it seemed, was keenly desirous of questioning the now-missing Scotsman.

“Ah!” the King said and closed his good eye; a single tear spilled from its corner and into his ear. “Diane . . . Where is Diane?”

“Madame de Poitiers remains in her apartments,” the Grand Master answered. “She is indisposed, Your Majesty, and begs your forbearance.”

I reached for Henri’s hand; he returned my grip with surprising strength. He would not die, I told myself sternly, looking at his long, well-muscled body beneath the white sheets.

“
I
am here.” My voice caught, but I forced it to steady. “It is I, Catherine.”

“Catherine!” he murmured. “Oh, Catherine, I thought you foolish, but there is no greater fool than I. Forgive me. Forgive me for it all . . .”

I bent over my husband and leaned my cheek against his chest. The pulse there was the soft, rapid flutter of a bird’s wings. Tears spilled from my eyes onto the linen I felt as though I were melting into him, merging until there was nothing left of me—only his singular heart, beating wildly.

“I blame you for nothing,” I said, “and so there is nothing to forgive.”

“How I love you,” he whispered and began to weep silently. He wound his left arm around my shoulders and pressed me fast against him. I would have killed afresh for him then, would gladly have wielded the knife to shed more blood so that he, Henri, would not endure another second of pain.

That was the one moment I try to remember of those terrible days: The rest was only suffering.

The famed surgeon Ambroise Paré arrived the morning after. Even he was intimidated by so grisly a wound. By that time it had grown pustulant, and my husband feverish. The surgeon was frank: The shard was so firmly wedged into my husband’s skull that any attempt to remove it would be instantly fatal. Not removing it would inevitably lead to infection and death: In short, nothing could be done to save the King.

I sent for the Dauphin, to ensure that he saw his father one last time. Montmorency returned, shaking his grizzled head: François had refused to come. I went to get him myself. Mary sat stone-faced in the Dauphin’s antechamber while my son sat cross-legged upon his bed, moaning and rocking and striking the wall with the back of his head. I pulled him to his feet and led him to his father.

As the King turned his face toward our approach, François let go a wail: the right side of Henri’s face was so grotesquely swollen that the cheek had pressed against the side of his nose, pushing it to the left. His wounded eye—bandaged to permit the jagged shard to protrude two fingers’ width beyond his profile—stunk of rotting meat.

The Dauphin’s eyelids fluttered and his head lolled upon his shoulders;
Montmorency and I caught him as he fell. The Grand Master laid him gently in his father’s arms and told Henri that his son had come. At the sound of his old friend’s voice, Henri opened his good eye, then reached out blindly to embrace François. When the boy stirred, Henri whispered: “God bless you, my son, and give you strength. You shall need it, to be King.”

At that, François let go another low wail and fainted again; Montmorency and a valet carried him from the room. Henri’s eyelid closed as he returned to his unhappy rest. I remained on my feet at the King’s side—but, overwhelmed, pressed my hands against the mattress in an effort to hold myself up.

“Catherine,” my husband whispered, his eye still closed. He fumbled for my hand, his touch hot.

I gripped his hand and kissed it. “I am here,” I said. “I will not leave you.”

He let go a groan that was also a sigh. “Promise me,” he said.

“Anything.” My voice sounded deceptively strong.

“Promise me you will protect and guide my sons. Promise me an heir of Valois will always sit upon the throne.”

“I swear it.” Ignoring the reek of pustulance, I kissed his grey lips—lightly, gently, to avoid causing him further pain.

Afterward, he sank into a deep slumber, from which he could not be roused. I kept my promise: I did not leave him but stayed at his side, still dressed in the purple gown I had worn to the tournament. For seven days, he lay blind and speechless, unable to give voice to his agony.

In the early afternoon of the tenth of July, His Most Christian Majesty King Henri II died in Paris at the Château des Tournelles. Once the doctor had pronounced him gone, a gentleman of the chamber ran to part the heavy brocade drapes and push open the window, releasing the stench of rotting flesh. Outside, the air smelled of rain.

The living move swiftly to dispose of the dying: As I lay grieving, my cheek pressed to Henri’s silent chest, Doctor Paré pulled all the bed curtains open with blunt finality. Those who had sat vigil with me that day—François of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Dukes of Savoy and Nemours—left at once to spread the grim news. The corridor filled with murmurs and footfall. I heard the gentle sloshing of water and looked up: Two serving women had arrived, basins in hand, to wash the King’s body.

“Go away,” I snarled and turned from them, only to start at a gentle touch upon my shoulder.

Madame Gondi stood over me, her lovely face swollen from too many tears.
“Madame la Reine,”
she said softly. “You must come. Please. You will make yourself ill.”

“A few more minutes,” I told her. “Do not take me from him so very soon.”

Her lips trembled. “Madame,” she said, “you have lain here for six hours.”

I planted a kiss upon Henri’s cooling cheek and ran my fingers tenderly over his wiry beard; only then did I let myself be led away toward my apartments. On the staircase, I balked, panicked.

“The children,” I said. “They must be told. The Dauphin must know at once.”

“They already know,” Madame Gondi said gently. “Some hours ago, the Duke of Guise and his brother went to inform them.”

“It’s not right,” I said. “They should have heard it from my lips, not another’s.”

“Come up to your room now, and lie down,” she soothed. “I will have you brought something to eat.”

I had refused food for days and drunk little; when I began to climb the staircase again, the walls started slowly to spin. I gasped and turned to Madame Gondi, but there was only darkness.

I woke to find myself undressed to my chemise, lying in my own bed. The window was open to the midsummer heat and encroaching dusk. Nearby, Madame Gondi stood next to the silver-bearded, portly Doctor Chapelain. On the bedside table was a platter of mutton and boiled eggs, and a flask of wine.

“You must eat and drink,
Madame la Reine,
” he said, wagging a plump fore-finger in my direction. “And then you will sleep until morning.”

I said nothing. The doctor left, and I took the plate Madame Gondi proffered. I chewed and swallowed the mutton and drank the wine, but tasted nothing: Food was an offense, a bitter reminder that Henri was dead and I was alive, that I should have to eat and drink from that moment forth without him.

It would have been easy, then, to lie down and let sorrow blot out all else. Yet one small ray pierced the growing gloom: the thought of my children. For their sake, I rose from my bed, suddenly desperate to tell them gently of their father’s last hours and to offer what comfort I could. I demanded fresh clothing, so emphatically that my ladies quickly obliged me.

They produced a new dress of white silk damask studded with pearls, with a high ruffed collar of starched white lace. It was a pristine creation, an exquisite mourning gown for a French queen, with a matching hood and a veil of white gossamer. The seamstresses had no doubt worked long, feverish days since Henri’s mishap to complete it.

I spat on it and ordered them to take it away. I called for my gown of plain black silk, the one I had worn when the twins died. But before I could put on my slippers or lower the dark veil, I heard a high-pitched, anxious call in the antechamber.

“
Maman . . . ? Maman,
hurry, you must come at once!”

Barefoot, I moved as quickly as shock allowed into the next room, where my darling eight-year-old Edouard stood in the doorway leading to the corridor. He was slender, with the Valoises’ long torso and limbs, and his father’s shining black eyes. His expression was one of pure panic.

“My precious eyes,” I said. “My sweet child, what is it?”

“The Duke of Guise and the Cardinal,” he said, his cheeks stained with tears. “They have told François to meet them downstairs. He is to bring Mary, Charles, Margot, and me. They are going to take us all away. They said not to tell you, that they must speak to François alone now that he is King.” His eyes narrowed; he was capable even then of understanding intrigue. “I don’t trust them,
Maman.
They are friends with that wicked Madame de Poitiers.”

My fingers dug into the sides of his shoulders. “When? When are you to meet them?”

“Now,” he replied. “At the entrance leading to the western gate.”

I gripped his hand. Together, we dashed from my apartments, down the spiraling staircase leading to the ground floor. On the landing, I almost collided with Montmorency. The old man was so stricken by his master’s death that he did not react at all to the fact that I had been running at full tilt down the stairs.

In a voice as dull as his bloodshot eyes, he said, “I came to inform you, Madame, that the vigil in the King’s chamber will commence tomorrow, at nine o’clock. You must rest well tonight, for the coming days will be long ones for you.”

He referred to the mourning vigil kept by all French queens: Tradition bound me to spend the next forty days at the Château des Tournelles, secluded in a darkened room beside my husband’s embalmed body.

But I had vowed to protect Henri’s sons. “I cannot stay,” I answered quickly. “The Guises are taking François away. I must go to him.”

He drew back, for love of Henri offended, but I had no time to explain. I squeezed Edouard’s hand, and my son and I ran down the stairs, through the vast, echoing reception halls to the chateau’s western entrance.

Outside, a carriage waited at the edge of the driveway. The sinister-eyed Cardinal of Lorraine, Charles of Guise, was holding the Dauphin’s elbow as my son ventured the high step into the carriage. The Duke of Guise, Mary, and my two younger children were waiting to follow them in.

Thunder rolled in the distance. François, skittish at storms, jerked and almost hit his head upon the carriage ceiling as he climbed inside. A cold drop of rain stung my cheek, then another.