The Poisoned Chalice (31 page)

The use of drugs, especially in France, whether poisonous or hallucinogenic, is also well attested. Some historians now claim that many of the visions experienced by monks and recluses were the result of the unwitting absorption of toxins such as the mould which grew on rye bread. Indeed, some of the subtle poisons used at this time are now lost to modern science. Catherine de Medici was well known for her expertise in the field, and the employment of expert poisoners at the French court climaxed in one of the greatest scandals in French royal history within seventy years of Shallot's second journal being written.

Of course venereal disease was common in medieval Europe but, during the French invasions of Italy in the early 1500s, syphilis, a virulent and deadly form of VD, made its presence felt amongst French troops outside Naples to such devastating effect that Francis I had to withdraw his troops across the Alps. It is not impossible that Henry VIII was deliberately infected with the disease as described by Shallot. Such a ruse was definitely used by outraged husbands in the seventeenth century at the courts of Louis XIV and Charles II. When Francis I himself caught the infection, his body became so rotten and putrid that, as Shallot describes, many of his courtiers refused to attend the funeral. Shallot maintains that Francis caught it after seducing
La Belle Fertoniere,
and that this seduction was permitted by her outraged husband who wished to avenge himself on the French king. Shallot may be telling the truth, even though his journals are full of mysterious murders, subtle assassinations, dark intrigue. I have looked at the third journal and really do wonder if it should be launched upon an unsuspecting public, so dreadful are its revelations.