The Wild Queen (19 page)

Philip is so much older than I,
she wrote,
that I feared we would have little to say to each other. But he is a most tender and attentive husband, and I count myself to be among the most fortunate to have married such a charming man.

I was especially interested in the part of the letter in which Élisabeth confided to her
maman
that the charming Philip had found himself in such a state of delight with his new wife that he had abandoned his mistress. I managed a surreptitious glance at Queen Mother Catherine, whose own husband had never been in such a state of delight that he was inclined to abandon Madame de Poitiers.

Late in the afternoon François returned from hunting. A freezing rain had been falling for most of the day, and he was wet and shivering. The queen mother immediately began fussing over him.

“Perhaps you wish to see to your husband's comfort?” Catherine asked me pointedly.

“I believe that my husband can see to his own comfort,” I replied. I too was concerned, but I felt that he was of an age to change his clothes and have a hot drink and warm himself by the fire in his quarters without help. I was his wife, not his nurse or governess.

My mother-in-law glared at me disapprovingly. “Then I shall see to it,” she said, and she marched stiffly out of the chamber.

I have since regretted my words, but at the time I continued stubbornly with my work, needle in, needle out, needle in...

***

We did not realize at first how ill François was. He complained that his ear hurt. He felt dizzy. “The world is spinning,” he said.

Two days later it was still spinning, and he told his physician that he heard ringing noises and buzzing. The next day, while we were kneeling side by side at Mass in the royal chapel, he suddenly slumped over in a faint. When he revived, he cried, “The pain! The pain!” as he was carried to his bed.

I did not want to accept the words of the physicians who gathered around him. They told me that he was terribly ill. “It is possible that his illness is fatal.”

“You must save him!” cried his mother. “You must not let him die!”

My uncles paced, clearly agitated, but they were distressed for a different reason. They understood that if
le petit roi
were to die, they would lose the main source of their power. For a time they understated the gravity of the king's illness when members of the court asked them for reports. They claimed that he suffered from a catarrh, no more than that. But most in the court thought my uncles were lying. The rumor circulated that
le petit roi
had been poisoned.

The doctors worked desperately to save him. They bled him and purged him with enemas. His condition worsened. Watery stuff ran from his ear. At times he was unable to speak and lay motionless, staring blankly. I rarely left his side, and then only for short periods. He did not seem to recognize me.

My relations with my mother-in-law worsened. The enmity that had brewed quietly for some time had intensified after King Henri's death. Now it was out in the open. As Francois's condition became graver and he moved ever closer to Death's black door, Queen Mother Catherine made it plain that she, as his mother, had the right to make the decisions concerning his care. While François lay unable to tell anyone what he needed or wanted—except, perhaps, for the torment to end—Catherine took over. I was pushed aside. Suddenly I was nothing, of no consequence, and I deeply resented it.

On the fourth day of my husband's terrible illness I learned from a servant that all of the king's gentlemen had been sent away.

“By whose order?” I asked.

“The queen mother's, madame.”

I believed it was my right to decide who should be dismissed from my husband's bedchamber and who might be allowed to stay, and I determined to confront her. But when I looked into Queen Catherine's eyes and saw the anguish of a mother faced with losing her beloved child, I relented.

“We must find a way to care for him together,” I told her. “I love François as much as you do, Madame Queen Mother.”

“Non,
you do not,” she said wearily. “But my son believes that you do, and in order to help him, I will agree to whatever you wish.”

Her words wounded me, but I said no more. The two of us kept watch at François's bedside from the earliest hours of the morning. We tasted the food that was brought to him to assure ourselves that he was not being poisoned. I had a pallet made up and stayed through the night by his side so that if he was able to call my name, however weakly I would be there to hear it, and I promised to send for his mother if he spoke even a single word. Queen Catherine then left for the night. I had asked her not to come to his bedchamber after the last visit from the physician. He was my husband, and I wanted him to myself. But so did she. I often awoke to find her, a wraith in black, hovering over his bed. No matter how much I protested, no matter how I wished she would remain in her private chapel to pray for him, the queen mother could not stay away.

When he was able to mumble a few words, I rushed to summon the priest to hear his last confession and to give him the sacrament before he lapsed into silence again. If I thought he could hear me, I lay beside him, whispering to him, sometimes singing the songs my mother used to sing to me. I endured his violent episodes, shut my ears against his screams and cries, covered my face against the terrible stench of his illness.

The days passed in what must have been utter agony for my poor
petit roi.
Increasing his suffering were the bloodlettings and purges prescribed by the physicians; they only added to his torment. When I heard them discussing the possibility of drilling a hole in his skull to allow some of the fluid, or whatever was causing the intense pain, to escape, I fled from his bedchamber. My husband's physical agony had become my heart's anguish.

Occasionally I briefly left the king's side and called upon Sinclair to bring me the oat porridge that had always been a sustaining comfort and was now the only food I could swallow. After my wedding Sinclair had asked to be allowed to return to her family in Scotland, but I begged her to stay with me: “Just for a few months, Sinclair.” She had agreed, but the months had stretched into a year, and then more, and still I could not let her go. At this difficult time in my life, my old nurse remained my connection to earlier, easier days. Her fault, as well as her virtue, was that she repeated to me the rumors that always swirled through the servants' quarters.

“Sinclair, you must tell me what you hear,” I said as I poured thick cream over the soothing porridge. “It is important to me.”

She shook her head. “There is nothing, mistress.”

I looked at her sharply. “I do not believe you,” I said.

After a long silence she relented a little. “ 'Tis too painful, mistress. I cannot see how it would help you,” she insisted stubbornly.

But I could be just as stubborn. “I order you to tell me, Sinclair. The truth, and all of it.”

My old nurse sighed. “Silly tales of what evil was done to cause him his sickness,” she said slowly. “That his valet is in the pay of his enemies and put a poisonous powder into his nightcap. That his hairdresser was bribed to pour a poisonous oil into his ear.”

Bad enough, but not as bad as I had expected. “Is there more?”

Her hesitation told me there was indeed more. I waited.

“I've told you what I've heard from the kitchens,” she continued reluctantly. “But the truly awful stories come from the peasants in the countryside. They say
le petit roi
has long suffered from leprosy, and there is but one cure for it—to bathe himself in the blood of a wee bairn.”

“In the blood of a child?” I asked incredulously, and I shoved aside the bowl of porridge, unable to swallow another spoonful.

“Aye, mistress. And ignorant people so feared him that they hid their children whenever he happened to pass by.”

“How awful!” I shrieked, and Sinclair folded me in her arms to console me, as she had done so often when I was a child. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against her breast. “You are right, Sinclair. I have heard enough. If there is more, I do not wish to hear it.”

The hours wore on until at last my husband's agony ended, in the evening of Thursday, the fifth of December, 1560.

But my torment was only beginning.

N
UMB WITH GRIEF,
I passed the long night watching over Francois's lifeless body.

My husband was dead. I was a widow, three days short of eighteen. My marriage had lasted two years and not quite eight months. I was no longer the queen of France. It was a stunning blow.

The priest returned to murmur more prayers. I sent him away.

I prayed.

The queen mother was already meeting with the privy council, which was preparing to pass on the crown to Francois's ten-year-old brother, Charles-Maximilien. Catherine would rule as regent, I supposed. For the first time the power rested securely in her hands. I no longer had a role. I was the dowager queen, a mere figurehead.

My first duty was to return the royal jewels. Queen Catherine had already sent a sharply worded message that she expected them, along with an inventory. I summoned Seton, the most pious of the Four Maries, to help me. I trusted her to keep the silence I needed while we made a list of the beautiful jewels I had been given when I became queen. During my brief marriage I had not had a chance to wear most of these gems—lavish diamond necklaces, a huge ruby as red as blood, sleeves encrusted with pearls. Returning the jewels to the queen mother symbolized the stripping away of my rank, and also of my life. I was determined to play my role with complete correctness. The queen mother would find no fault in my behavior.

That task finished, I chose a few personal items to take with me into my mourning chamber, a room with the windows draped in black so that no natural light could enter and only a pair of candles to pierce the gloom. I had been wearing the
deuil blanc,
the white veil, in mourning for my mother; the six-month mourning period was almost over, and I soon would have given it up. Instead, I added a white gown to the veil. I had chosen to wear white at my wedding to flout the custom, having no notion that in the near future I would be wearing it as the widow of the king.

“You may leave me now, Seton,” I said, and my friend nodded and silently slipped out of the chamber. I had intended to pray, but instead I lay down on the narrow bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The long, sorrowful days passed slowly. Meals were brought to me and left on a table where I could eat them or not, as I wished.

Custom allowed visits only by people of rank, and as it happened those were the people I least wanted to see. The ten-year-old boy who would now be King Charles IX paid his respects with a well-rehearsed speech. My Guise uncles came, their distress written plainly all over their faces. I mistrusted them but had no choice but to receive them. Let them offer their condolences, their promises of assistance! I nodded, eyes averted, silent, breathing easily only after they had gone.

Grand-Mère came. Having suffered many losses herself she knew the value of silence. “Time will heal you,” she whispered and stretched out her hand to lace her bony old fingers with mine.

On the third day after my husband's death, I reached my eighteenth birthday No one even mentioned it.

Mostly I sat at my writing table—not writing, just turning over my thoughts one by one, like the pages of a book. Sometimes I composed poetry The first of the verses were for my companion, my friend, my husband, my dearest François. Sometimes I was dry-eyed and empty. Sometimes I gave way to weeping and could not stop.

And though I tried to banish them, my thoughts turned unbidden to James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell. With shame I remembered his embrace, his passionate kiss, and my response—too eager, too willing.

Is this, the loss of everything, my punishment for those few moments? Am I guilty of a great sin? Was my offense so serious? Has a wildness truly taken root in me?

 

The body of King François, age sixteen years and ten months, was buried at the Basilica of Saint-Denis, near his father's. After the funeral, my mourning became more public. The Four Maries were now permitted to visit my mourning chamber, but they scarcely knew what to say. We gazed at one another with quivering lips. “One day soon we will laugh again,” I promised them, though I was not so sure.

Henry Stuart, my handsome young cousin, made the journey from England to offer the condolences of his parents, Lord and Lady Lennox. He was fourteen and, as I could not help noticing, already even taller than my Guise uncles.

I began to receive visits from ambassadors and government officials. None dared ask, but I knew the question that was on everyone's mind:
What will she do now?

I could not have answered the question. This was the problem with which I struggled. Once the traditional forty days of solitary mourning ended, I would go back out into a world that had changed entirely for me. I was now titled dowager queen of France. Queen Mother Catherine would surely regard me as an unpleasant nuisance as she seized the reins of power. But I still held a valuable hand. I was the queen of Scotland; my husband's death had not changed that. I needed no one to tell me that I was young and beautiful, that I was intelligent and capable of charming almost anyone. All of this would make me a highly desirable candidate for a second marriage, if that was what I wanted.

Did I? I had no idea.

My Guise uncles returned. Their demeanor was supplicating, and their words dripped with honey. I expected them to try to persuade me to marry my ten-year-old brother-in-law, the new king, Charles IX. That, of course, would not be possible for another five years and would require a special dispensation from the pope, but it would enable them to regain the control they had lost so abruptly when François died. I prepared for them to set forth this proposal and counted on Queen Catherine to be adamantly against such a marriage.