The Devil's Queen: A Novel of Catherine De Medici (48 page)

Hours later, he sat upright and shrieked; a foul-smelling yellow discharge trickled from his affected ear. Mary and I were horrified, but the doctor was pleased: The abscess had burst. If the patient could be strengthened with tonics, he might still overcome the infection.

With the swelling and pain reduced, François fell asleep at last. Relieved, I took the doctor’s advice to go to my bed, where I dropped into fitful slumber.

I dreamt: Again I stood staring out at a field—the torn lists in front of the Château des Tournelles, I thought at first, but there was no palace, no stands, no spectators—no one, save myself and the black, silent form of the man at my feet. The barren ground stretched to the horizon and the fading sky.

My Henri lay dying. I did not call to him or ask how I might help: This time I knew there was nothing I could do save hear him whisper,
Catherine,
and watch him die.

When his final breath was free, blood bubbled up from his wounded eye and flowed forth onto the earth. Farther and farther it spread, streaming outward, until the ground was covered and a thousand separate pools appeared.

From each pool grew a man, in his final anguished throes. And from each man, a fresh spring gushed forth, to form more and more soldiers, each one mortally wounded. A groan slowly rose in strength until it became a roar, until I pressed my palms against my temples to crush the noise echoing in my skull:

Madame la Reine, aidez-nous

Help us, help us, help us . . .

Tell me what I must do,
I demanded.
Only tell me what I must do!

My voice was drowned out by the rising crescendo. I began to shout, more loudly, more insistently, until I woke in my own bed, to a crushing realization.

My sons were not the only ones endangered. Henri’s death had marked not the end of the bloodshed but, rather, the beginning.

I saw the future keenly in the moment after waking: How François would soon die, how his brother ten-year-old Charles would replace him. But
Charles was too young to wear the crown; French law required that a regent rule the country until the King reached his majority at the age of fourteen.

By law, an assembly of nobles chose the regent, and given the growing resentment over the Guises’ ascendancy, there was little doubt the assembly would hand the regency to the First Prince of the Blood, Antoine de Bourbon.

François’s death would strip Mary of her French crown and the Guises’ connection to it. They would not permit Bourbon to claim his rightful place, as he would surely cast them from power. Bourbon, in turn, would lead a Huguenot army against them—and the Guises would call upon all good Catholics to fight the heretics. France would be torn apart by civil war.

I rose and called for Madame Gondi, and directed her to send for Bourbon at once.

The days before Antoine de Bourbon’s arrival were colored by tentative hope. François’s fever abated somewhat; he sat up briefly and ate a bit of barley gruel. Relieved, I went outside alone to take the cold autumn air. I covered the courtyard lawn in good time, came upon the enclosed tennis gallery, echoing with the shouts of boys and the ball’s report as it struck the walls, and remembered the hours I had spent watching my young husband and his brother playing tennis.

Another shout came:
Tenez!
At the same instant, a ball sailed past me, prompting me to turn and look behind me at the sprawling lawn. A surge of nausea seized me; I put my hand to my eyes, and when I drew them away, a mass of naked, mutilated bodies lay piled upon the grass.

I was too stunned to do anything but stare at them. They wavered in the light, then vanished in the wake of running footsteps coming from the direction of the gallery.

I turned to see six-year-old Henri of Navarre, a racquet in his hand. He had stopped several arms’ lengths away, to stare, his eyes stark with fear, at the very spot where I had seen the corpses.

I motioned to him, and he began to run away.

“Henri, wait!” I cried.

He paused, allowing me to draw close enough to speak to him.

“You saw them, too, didn’t you?” I asked, amazed. “You
saw
them . . .”

He looked over his shoulder at me; his face abruptly crumpled, and he ran back into the gallery.

The minute I returned to the palace, I called for Ruggieri.

When the magician sat before me, pale and ageless, I said, “Henri’s death was not the end of it. My dreams brought me to France not only for his sake: There are more who will die, thousands more, unless I take action. We must discover what I am to do.”

Ruggieri’s gaze did not meet mine. He stared beyond me and said, “The lives of your sons were bought with the blood of others. Surely you do not mean to slay a thousand men so that a thousand more might not die.”

“Of course not,” I snapped. “But I am already doing everything that I can, on a practical level, to prevent war between the Catholics and the Huguenots. You are the magician, the astrologer; you are my adviser. Surely you know of something more that can be done—short of shedding blood.”

“I told you before that talismans avail little in the face of overwhelming catastrophe. Eventually, the stars will have their way.” He inclined his face gently downward, strangely diffident. “I have studied those stars recently; they have changed since the day I gave you the pearl. I had thought that . . .” An emotion I had never seen in him—guilt—rippled over his features. “Your husband’s death should have put an end to your dreams, Madame. It should have put an end to the blood. The impact of one child upon the future was, I thought, safe, but three . . .”

The words of the prophet echoed in my memory:

The tapestry of history is woven of many threads. Let even one be exchanged for another that is weak and flawed, and the veil will tear—and blood be loosed, more blood than you have seen in any dream.

Madame la Reine,
these children should not be . . .

“No,”
I whispered. “I am a mother who loves her children. What are you saying? That I should blame my sons? That I should lift my hand against them? Surely you are not, Monsieur, for if you were, I would lift my hand against
you.
”

His head was bowed; in the cant of his shoulders, I read sorrow and defeat.

“You want me to kill them, don’t you?” I whispered. “You’re asking a mother to destroy her own children . . .
Damn
you. Damn you to Hell!”

Ruggieri drew in a long breath and leveled his gaze at me, his expression mournful, urgently tender. “The time
will
come, Catherine. And if you fail to do what is necessary, there will be unspeakable carnage. It may already be too late.”

“How dare you speak so vilely to me,” I said, my voice trembling as I got to my feet. “How dare you speak so of my children. If you will not help me in the manner I desire, perhaps the time has come for you to leave my employ.”

He rose. The sadness left his features, replaced by the elegantly composed mask. He bowed, the consummate courtier.

“As you wish,
Madame la Reine,
” he said.

By the following morning, I had convinced myself that my memory of our conversation was faulty, that Ruggieri was not capable of saying such awful things. I had misunderstood him, certainly. When I sent for him again, my courier returned to say that his apartments were already vacant, and his serving woman did not know where he had gone.

I blotted Ruggieri’s impossible words from my mind and turned it to more practical concerns. I worried that rumors of the young King’s poor health might have circulated and alerted Bourbon that the moment had come for him to rally his followers and march upon the palace. Happily, he arrived only three days after my summons—in the company of his valet and two lesser nobles, no more.

On the threshold to my cabinet, Bourbon balked when the guards there informed him that his friends would have to remain outside. I sat behind my closed door and listened to his vehement curses: Subtlety and self-possession were traits he lacked.

Yet when he calmed—and the door to my office was opened—he smiled brightly at me and bowed with an unctuousness verging on the comical. He doffed his velvet cap, revealing a goodly number of white hairs and his fluffy grey hairpiece. He wore more jewelry than I: a gold earring studded with diamonds, a ruby pendant, and several glittering rings.

“Madame la Reine!”
he said. “I stand ready to be of service. What shall I do to please you?”

I held out my hands to him. He was the husband of Henri’s cousin Jeanne and the father of little Navarre, though—involved with scurrilous politics and women—he rarely saw them. On the occasions we met, we treated each other as family.

“Come,” I said, “and sit with me. It has been so long since we have spoken.”

He took my hands eagerly and kissed the back of each one, then settled happily into his chair. I smiled also, but it faded quickly. I was too hollow after Henri’s death to waste time with pleasantries. My tone turned serious.

“I have heard, Monsieur, that the Protestants have grown disaffected. That there was a meeting at the port of Hugues, and that the overthrow of the Guise brothers was discussed.”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise; the fine skin of his brow wrinkled easily into a dozen shallow creases. For a moment he stared, quite speechless, at me, then stammered, “Ah,
Madame la Reine
. . . Ah. It is nothing personal, you see. It is only that my rights, as First Prince of the Blood, must be protected.” He paused and, in a pitiful attempt to switch the subject, said, “On my arrival here, I inquired after His Majesty and was told he is indisposed. I am sorry to hear this; is he unwell?”

“He is troubled,” I said, “by the actions of the Huguenots. By the thought that men would conspire to take up arms against him—”

“Not him!” Bourbon waved his hands as if to ward off the very idea. “No,
Madame la Reine
! I would rather die than act against the King!”

“But you would lift your sword against Grand Master Guise, whom my son himself appointed, and against his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, whom my husband named Grand Inquisitor. Is that not treason, Monsieur?”

Bourbon’s eyes widened in dismay; whatever he had expected from me, it was not this. “No! Madame, I beg you, it is not!”

“
How
is it not?” I demanded.

“We do not take up arms against the King. But we wish to show, most emphatically, that the Guises have overstepped their bounds.”

“You would show His Majesty,” I said, my voice growing lower and ever more
dangerous, “with arquebuses. With swords and cannon. You would shed blood, to force him to oust the ministers he and his father chose. That is not loyalty, Monsieur de Bourbon. That is treason.” I rose, forcing him to rise with me.

“No! I swear before God!” He wailed and wrung his hands. “
Madame la Reine,
please listen to me—”

“I have heard enough,” I said coldly. “Step aside so that I can call the guards.”

At that, he fell to his knees—blocking my path—and quivered, a weak, disgusting thing.

“For the love of God!” he shrieked. “What must I do to convince you? I will order them all to disband. I will disavow them. Only tell me what His Majesty wishes, and I shall do it, to prove that I am loyal only unto him.”

I sat down. I slid open my desk drawer and drew out a piece of parchment covered in a copyist’s perfect script. Bourbon could disavow the Huguenots all he wished—but he was only a figurehead. The rebellion could easily continue without him.

“Get up,” I told him, “and sign this.”

He pushed himself to his feet and peered uncertainly at the paper. “Of course,
Madame la Reine
. Only what is it?”

“A legal document surrendering your rights to the regency in the event of King François’s death,” I said, “and transferring them to me.”

Revelation dawned in his eyes as he stared down at the writing; the color returned to his cheeks and increased to a full-out flush. He had been played, and he knew it. “The regency?” he whispered, then more loudly said, “Do not tell me our young King is seriously ill.”

I answered nothing. I did not want to call for the guards to haul him to prison—but I would, if necessary, and Bourbon sensed it. Beneath my ruthless gaze, he began to fidget.
Wretched creature,
I thought.
God help France if you ever become King.
I found it hard to believe he had produced such a fine son.

I dipped a fresh quill in the inkwell and proffered it across the desk.

He stared at it as though it were a scorpion. Yet after a long moment, he took it, and asked, “Where shall I sign?”

I pushed the parchment toward him and pointed to the spot.

He leaned over and scribbled rapidly: the
A
and
B
were huge, dramatic, looping. Afterward, he sat back with a long sigh of self-loathing.

I took the document and waved it a few times to dry the ink before setting it back into the drawer. Then I stood, prompting him to do the same.

“Your Highness,” I said, as though finally remembering that I was speaking to a prince. “Your heroic act of self-sacrifice shall not go unmarked. When the time comes, I shall tell everyone how you have put the good of France far above your own.”