The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (3 page)

During the celebrations that followed, king and pope exchanged extravagant gifts. François gave Clement a tapestry woven of silk and gold and silver thread depicting the Last Supper. The pope gave the king a “unicorn” horn two cubits long (the length of two forearms) mounted on a solid gold pedestal. These horns had become an obsession among the nobility and even among the higher clergy. Unicorn horns were said to sweat in the presence of poisoned liquid or food; it was also believed they could detect heresy. The gift, in reality a narwhal tusk, was symbolic, intended to remind François of his duty to detect and expel the poison of heresy from his kingdom.

The French king took advantage of the occasion to rid himself of an unwelcome gift he had received from the Turkish corsair Barbarossa,
⁸
lieutenant of Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire. It was customary for great princes to exchange rare or exotic gifts, including animals such as elephants, monkeys, or sometimes deer, but the pirate had recently presented to François I a huge, tame Nubian lion with an insatiable appetite. With considerable relief, the French king passed this gift to Ippolito de’ Medici, the pope’s nephew and Catherine’s dashing favorite cousin. Ippolito was delighted, and on his return to Rome, he commissioned a portrait of himself posing with the lion.

Catherine’s marriage portion of cities, gold, and a large income was substantial; the marriage bed alone cost 60,000 gold écus, a formidable sum. In order to pay for her trousseau, the pope pressured Alessandro de’ Medici
⁹
for part of a forced loan he had levied on Florence intended for new fortifications. It was a trousseau worthy of a queen: chests of fine lace; valuable brocades, silks, and velvets; cloth of gold bed hangings; and fashionable black silk sheets to show off the whiteness of the bride’s skin. To hold the communion host in her private chapel, the pope gave Catherine a rare crystal casket, its panels engraved with scenes from the life of Christ. Catherine was now the owner of a fortune in jewels, including seven glorious pearls
¹⁰
thought at the time to be the most beautiful in Christendom; a gold belt studded with rubies and diamonds; and a parure of diamonds and pearls. Three other fabulous pieces—perhaps the most famous—are mentioned in a number of sources: the “Egg of Naples”—a large pear-shaped pearl encircled by rubies; the “Tip of Milan”—a hexagonal diamond; and the “Table of Genoa”—a large, flat-cut diamond. A mystery still surrounds these treasures. In the view of scholars today, their names represented a secret code between the pope and the king, and referred to cities in Italy the young couple would receive once their alliance was victorious. In later inventories of Catherine de’ Medici’s jewels, the pieces no longer appear under such names.

Finally, on October 27, the marriage contract was signed. The next day the little Medici
duchessina
, whom the French called a grocer’s daughter and worse, became the duchesse d’Orléans, wife of the king of France’s second son. For her wedding ceremony, Catherine wore a dress of gold brocade, trimmed with ermine; her tight-fitting bodice was of purple velvet, embroidered with gold thread in the Florentine style, edged with ermine and glittering with precious stones. Her thick, dark hair was elaborately dressed and woven with jewels, and on her head she wore her ducal crown. The radiant bride, wearing the pope’s enormous pearls, was led to the altar by the king. François was dazzling in a suit of white satin embroidered with silver thread; his great cape, covered in gold-embroidered
fleur-de-lys
and precious stones, hung from one shoulder. Prior to the wedding, the king had knighted his son, a ritual custom dating from chivalric times. The act of bestowing knighthood still held a mystical aura from its roots in medieval mythology, Christianity, and the chivalrous code of warfare. It certainly would have meant much more to Prince Henri than his enforced marriage. The nuptial Mass was conducted by a cousin of the royal family, the cardinal de Bourbon, and the pope blessed the young couple.

Almost everyone who would dominate Catherine’s new life attended the ceremony, and she observed each of them shrewdly. She liked her father-in-law immediately, with his bold, handsome face, ready smile, his height and natural air of kingship. Although he could be very authoritarian, François looked at her kindly, and would do so
for the rest of his life. His second wife, Queen Eleonore, a good and virtuous lady who had little say at the court, also welcomed Catherine generously. Catherine admired the king’s ravishing and beloved sister, Marguerite, queen of Navarre—yes, she would do well to become her friend. The king’s new mistress? He had rejected the gracious Françoise de Foix for the vixenish Anne de Pisseleu, another she would try to woo. And, of course, Anne de Montmorency, Grand Master and future Constable of France, was much in evidence—she noted that this grand statesman was Henri’s mentor. Catherine might have guessed, though she could not yet know, how strongly Montmorency had opposed her marriage.

And she met for the first time the woman into whose care she had been placed: the beautiful Diane de Poitiers,
dame d’honneur
to Queen Eleonore. Diane had been chosen by the king as Catherine’s guide to the court and its intricate ritual because she was the bride’s only close relative in France; their mothers had been cousins. Newly widowed, Diane’s black and white clothes were in stark contrast to the brilliant colors of the courtiers and their ladies. Diane de Poitiers seemed to tower over Catherine as she greeted her, and her grace and beauty made Catherine appear short and clumsy. She watched as Henri came so naturally to stand at the widow’s elbow, noticing that her husband wore black and white plumes on his hat matching those in Diane’s hair. Other than making her marriage vows, Catherine had yet to speak a word to her husband.

The festivities were interrupted by an incident that almost marred the proceedings. Emissaries from Henry VIII arrived unannounced in Marseilles, vociferously demanding to know if the pope would withdraw the threat of excommunication from the English king and allow the annulment and Henry’s remarriage. All the courts of Europe knew of the king of England’s burning desire to sanctify his civil marriage to Anne Boleyn. Catherine, too, would have known of the French king’s diplomatic efforts to help Henry. François, who had been proceeding gently and tactfully with the pope on Henry’s behalf, was outraged at the emissaries’ rude interruption. He dismissed them without ceremony, accusing the English envoys of having greatly harmed their
master’s cause. One year later, Henry VIII would break England’s ties with the Holy See, creating the schism that led to the formation of the Church of England.

The interminable ceremonies did nothing to encourage what little romance might have survived the bridal couple’s first meeting. Both Henri and Catherine played their parts in the ritual, but were soon forgotten or ignored by their elders, immersed as they were in their power play and drunken enjoyment of the festivities. According to one of the guests, the Milanese ambassador Don Antonio Sacco, Henri remained his dour self throughout the masked ball and the banquet that followed. Catherine, however, was radiant and animated. Then, wrote the ambassador, the king, the queen and her ladies, including Diane de Poitiers, accompanied the bride and groom to the nuptial chamber. François was eager to bring the couple to bed and watch them “joust,”
which he later declared they did valiantly. It seems strange to us today that a king of renowned courtesy should subject two shy fourteen-year-olds to such an ordeal. But it was the custom for witnesses to be present during the first amorous exchanges between a newly married couple, and this applied to all classes. The story comes down to us from Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, a near contemporary who wrote eleven gossipy volumes of court activities during the reign of François I and of Henri II. Brantôme notes in his journals that anyone not present in the bedroom would be listening outside to the appreciative noises (or otherwise) made by the bridal couple.
¹¹

According to some observers, when the royal party left with the bride and groom, the festivities grew wilder. A famous local courtesan stripped naked and lay on a banqueting table among the platters of food, to allow the guests to marvel at her perfection. Not to be outdone, some other young ladies undid their bodices and exposed their own assets. By all accounts, a merry evening followed.

The next day, the pope hurried to the bridal chamber, anxious to examine the sheets. He had great plans for the future of the Medici and a consummated marriage could not easily be repudiated. Clement noted that Henri and Catherine slept late and arose looking content, but that morning, a number of the courtiers lamented the speed with which the negotiations had been conducted and the marriage arranged. There were mutterings that the Medici balls had no place on the royal coat of arms among the
fleur-de-lys
of France.
¹²
In the years to come, Catherine would be made to feel the shame of her
mésalliance
with the house of
Valois. It was the one blot on this great honor of which she was so proud: a mere Medici, married into the oldest royal house in Christendom, and yet scorned by this ostensibly well-mannered assembly, the gracious, smiling, bowing courtiers who laughed at her behind her back. On the day after her marriage, Catherine already knew she must face this opposition and she began to wonder to whom she could turn for support and guidance. Her husband had performed his duty, but had hardly looked at her. She thought of the beautiful widow in black and white. Diane de Poitiers was to be her guide, the woman whose colors her husband wore.

_____________________

1
. The pope was actually the first cousin of Catherine de’ Medici’s grandfather, but because of her youth, he preferred to call her his niece.

2
. The title “Grand Master of France” is the equivalent of the Court Chamberlain or Master of the Royal Household in England. Montmorency was christened Anne in honor of his godmother Anne de Bretagne, twice queen of France. He pronounced his name “Annay.”

3
. A palfrey is a quiet saddle horse particularly suitable for women to ride.

4
. There was no stigma attached to illegitimacy in the sixteenth century, though it precluded dynastic inheritance.

5
. A plume or tuft of feathers arranged as an upright head ornament.