To Serve a King (17 page)

“I swear to maintain the town’s privileges….” The king raised his arms in a wide, benevolent gesture.

“We swear to obey our king and no other….” The
prêvôt
spoke for his people, bowing before their sovereign.

The gifts offered, the king receiving the keys to the town in exchange for a small casket of gold coin, François took his place upon a litter draped with a rich canopy and was carried off in procession upon a carefully prepared route through town. He waved regally with a jaunty tip of his head to the never-ending line of villagers festooning both sides of the wide main thoroughfare.

People hung from every window, waving and cheering, calling to the king and wishing him long life. Sand and rushes covered the road, hiding the black line of sewage running in a squiggle down its gutters, obliterating its offensive fumes. Instead, the air was redolent with the great feast being prepared—mouthwatering aromas of freshly picked fruits and sweet pastries. Great tapestries hung over the façades of many of the grand homes as if the entire town had become a magnificent mural.

“Madame.” Arabelle raised her voice to be heard over the cheering, and pointed a finger toward a particularly large and colorful tapestry. The scene depicted the king at hunt, splendid in his
hunting costume, blazing colors of a fall landscape behind him. By his side was a beautiful woman, green eyes sparkling with the thrill of exertion, cheeks blooming like a budding red rose. The artist had captured Anne’s beauty—her inner fire and passion, as well.

The duchesse smiled and shared her silent pleasure with the ladies riding beside her. Geneviève craned around in her saddle, squinting at every tapestry they passed. Not a one displayed the image of the queen.

As they neared the cobblestone square, the festivities set forth for the king’s entertainment gained momentum. Upon columns of whitewashed wood made to resemble those of the Coliseum, young women dressed in togalike costumes stood, each one holding up a letter of the king’s name. Between the columns, the town’s principal families enacted
tableaux vivants
, and François was obliged to stop before each and watch the short play in its entirety. In one, the king defended peace against the duke of Milan and the Swiss bear. In another, he appeared as Hercules, gathering fruit in the garden of Hesperides.

The head of the procession pulled out of the wide square, the road leading to Blois winding like a ribbon before them, snaking through the small, lush forest surrounding the palace. It would take hours for the remainder of the king’s assemblage to pass through the town, but the citizens would continue to perform for their benefit, until the very last of the royal household passed by.

Of all Geneviève had seen this day—the sumptuous decorations, the human sculptures, the amusing plays—the castle rising up before her took her breath away as nothing else had; it was perhaps one of the most famous castles in all of France. Built in the thirteenth century by the counts of Châtillon, it had become a royal possession through the duc d’Orléans. Most importantly, it was the very spot where Jeanne d’Arc had received her blessing from the archbishop of Reims before successfully engaging the English in Orléans.

Drawing ever nearer to the front of the four-storied palace, the two sets of loggias dominating the façade—one above the other and over them a third floor of square openings—Geneviève was reminded of delicate lace. She prayed her siege, though covert, would be as successful as that of the most holy of female warriors.

11

Opportunity makes the thief.

—French proverb

T
he two women sat in the cool shade of the tall yellow yew trees, their somber, lace-trimmed gowns spread upon the marble bench. The queen and the Dauphine looked more like someone’s nursemaids than the ruling feminine royalty of the land, their solitude adding to their inconsequence. Catherine had sent their ladies off to pick flowers, assuring them they would call if need be.

“Do we dare?” Eleanor whimpered at her companion. The queen’s hood sat far down upon her small face, sienna hair hidden beneath the bleak, unembellished taupe material.

Though more than a decade the queen’s junior, Catherine’s fortitude belied her years. The jeweled headdress Catherine wore did little to become her, pushed far back on her head, the frizzy, straw-colored wisps of hair straggled out in all directions, her hard, chiseled features appearing all the more sharp. “What do we do that is so egregious? We do no more than postulate what we have seen.”

“But no doubt it was on king’s business,” Eleanor said sheepishly.

Catherine hopped to her feet, kicking at the ground as if she were a child denied. “Yes, yes, and Diane does the Dauphin’s business and we are naught more than the forgotten wives. Well, I am tired of being inconsequential, and I will stand it no more.”

The women’s gaze held, seeing each other for what they were. One the sister to the king of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor, the other the niece of a great pope, and yet they were as feckless as lint that blows in whatever direction the breeze sends it.

“I have had enough of this barren life,” Catherine sniped, though whether she referred to her inability to birth an heir or her own disenfranchised existence, it was hard to fathom. “I have heard great wisdom from a new acquaintance. Michel de Nos-tredame is his name. His words tell me to master my destiny. I say we begin to take back what is ours.”

Eleanor murmured an unintelligible response; she had not the fire of Catherine. Though she craved her husband’s attention, at her age she had grown accustomed to her fate. She could not deny her fear of Anne’s growing power; the woman had flaunted it in her face every day since her marriage. Perhaps there was some satisfaction to be found in taking the duchesse down a peg or two.

“Very well, then.” Eleanor rose to stand beside her friend, two women so unalike, drawn together by a mutual purpose.

“C’est magnifique.”
Catherine clasped her hands together in satisfaction. “Tell the tale to your most loquacious lady, as will I. We will let them do the rest.”

She took Eleanor’s petite, cold hand and wrapped it in the crook of her arm. They strolled together through the garden, unremarkable against the flourishing pink peonies and yellow tulips—no more than shrubbery among the petals.

“That witch!” The duchesse d’Étampes threw open the door between the privy and audience chambers. It crashed against the wall, bounding back and closing itself with a slam. Sybille and
Béatrice rushed through in Anne’s wake, missing the rebounding wood by inches. “I will see her dead this time, I swear it.”

Her hysteria echoed through the chamber, the heavy tapestries covering the stone doing little to muffle the guttural cry. Arabelle and Geneviève jumped to their feet, their embroidery falling to the ground, forgotten.

“What is wrong, madame? Are you harmed?” Arabelle implored with a tremulous voice before the warning gaze of the sisters could stop her.

“What is wrong?” Anne raged with dripping sarcasm, as if Ara-belle offended with the query. “Poitiers. She is all that is wrong with the world.”

The duchesse stomped from cold hearth to sunlit windows and back again, kicking pillows across the room, toppling furniture with one-armed thrusts, possessed by her anger.

“Another rumor is feeding the court,” Sybille whispered to Ara-belle and Geneviève, as if she had not already told her cousin the nasty tale and wished to keep it from her. “This time they are saying she is bedding the baron de Beauville.”

Another screech filled the air, brutal and harsh, like a banshee’s wail. “Beauville, of all people. He is a disgusting old man, more than thirty years my elder. I would rather suffer the plague than allow his spotted hands and crusty lips to touch me.”

“Please, madame, you m—” Béatrice began, but it was no use.

Anne dug in her heels, throwing up a hand toward the door as if Diane de Poitiers stood in its frame. “She may like the feel of thin, cold skin upon her, but I do not.” She turned her finger upon the women who stared at her, speechless, as if for a moment they believed the blasphemous gossip. “I am faithful to my lord and master. I am the king’s greatest love, and he mine. It shall always be thus … it shall …”

Her last words trailed off, breaking to pieces like thin glass against stone; threatening tears diluted the sting from her angst. She threw herself into a chair.

“My mystic, Geneviève. Bring me my mystic.”

Geneviève’s jaw came unhinged; her violet eyes darkened as they bulged from her pale face. “I … uh, madame, I—” She took two hesitant steps forward, ready to confess her ignorance.

“Come, Geneviève, come.”

It was a command, given by Arabelle as she grabbed Gene-viève’s hand and yanked. Geneviève’s body jerked along without recourse.

“Where are we going?” Geneviève hissed at her once on the other side of the outer door.

Hushing her with a finger to her lips, Arabelle led her farther down the corridor, tiptoeing upon the small square tiles as if in escape.

“We are going to bring Madame Arceneau to the duchesse. Perhaps she will see something to appease our mistress.”

Geneviève looked askance. “A mystic?”

“Ah,
oui.
She is one of the best. They say that when Madame found her, the woman produced a sealed document from a locked chest, which described every detail of the gown the duchesse wore at that very instant.”

The women rushed onward, heels heavy upon stone, no longer worrying that they would disturb their already agitated mistress. The presence of a mystic at court did not surprise Geneviève; for centuries, royalty sought the advice of seers and, like the wretched sidesaddle, Catherine de’ Medici had brought with her the Italians’ profound belief in a soothsayer’s powers. Now many members of the high court retained their own spiritual guides. Geneviève’s aunt had consulted a mystic on rare occasion. Now, as then, Geneviève held little faith in any genuine gift a clairvoyant may claim to possess.

“Well, if she does not ‘see’ something to cheer the duchesse, perhaps she can pretend,” Geneviève quipped as they rushed through the palace.

Unlike the château at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, corridors connected
every room and floor of this palace perched on the bank of the river Loire. With the coming of court and the best of late spring weather, the corridors teemed with courtiers.

Geneviève searched every face they passed, desperate to see some kind of sign, any glimmer of recognition that would reveal her next accomplice. In the week since their arrival at Blois, she had learned nothing of use to the English king, but the lack of an umbilical cord frightened her. In her communiqué, she had told King Henry of her travel to the Loire Valley with the court. The progresses of the European kings were well-known, no doubt he would have heard of it even had she not advised him of the move. And yet she had received no dispatch, nothing to inform her on how next to send a message if she had one … no Baron Pitou. Geneviève had vowed not to make the same mistake, and she opened herself to new people and new friendships, her persona behaving as her true self never would.

Arabelle led her on a winding circuit to the very lowest floor of the imposing château. With each level they descended, the population thinned, the air thick with deep silence. Staggered snippets of light dotted the long hallway and a few haphazard wall sconces created diminishing yellow circles, like signposts vanishing in the distance. No tapestries adorned the walls; no rushes warmed the floor of stone.

“Are you sure we are in the right place?” Geneviève whispered, afraid to disturb the ominous foreboding of the subterranean passageway, certain she had heard the scurrying of rodents beneath their feet.

Arabelle nodded with confident urgency. “
Mais, oui.”
She knocked on the third door on the left. Geneviève hesitated, pulling up beside the portal and flattening her back against the cold wall.

“Entrez-vous.”

The high-pitched command slithered through the cracks of the door. Geneviève felt the greatest urge to pull Arabelle’s hand back as her companion reached for the latch.

“Madame Arceneau,” Arabelle greeted as she passed through the portal with a quick curtsy.

But as Geneviève made to follow, she screeched to a halt, her feet refusing to move a step more; a sudden twisting in her gut made it impossible to cross into the umbra-filled room.

From the threshold she waited, squinting into the room lit only by candlelight, unable to deduce if there were any windows or if all the windows were covered. She could discern a pale smudge of a face in the distance, perched in a chair at a small round table covered with maroon velvet.

“My mistress bids you to come immediately,” Arabelle said resolutely, half hidden from Geneviève by the shadows claiming the room as their own.

“But she was to come to me to—”

“No, not today.” Arabelle squelched her reply. “Today you must come to her.”

“If it is what she wishes.”

Geneviève bubbled with barely contained laughter at the sound of the voice; a piercing, juvenile falsetto, it seemed more appropriate to a whiny five-year-old child than a grown woman.

From the dim recesses of the room came the sound of glass tinkling against glass, shuffling feet crossing to and fro. All of a sudden, Arabelle turned and left the room, the woman right behind.

As the mystic stepped into the meager light of the hall, Geneviève pursed her lips in confusion. Madame Arceneau was a petite woman, her slight form overwhelmed by a hooded black cloak trimmed with purple braiding. The face within was not of a craggy crone, as Geneviève expected, but of a very plain woman with nary a wrinkle in sight. The woman’s skin was translucent, every bluish vein distinguishable beneath the opaque membrane. Shifting a heavy black leather satchel from one hand to the other, the soothsayer raised her eyes.