ON THE TWENTY-FIFTH of September in 1534, less than a year after my marriage, Fate once again intervened and brought my world crashing down around me: Pope Clement VII was dead. My uncle had died without paying the larger part of my dowry still owed to François and without keeping his promise to secure the Italian cities he had guaranteed for the king of France. Clement’s successor, Pope Paul III, had no use for the Medici and refused to honor Clement’s promises. I heard that the new pope demanded that Filippo Strozzi return the Vatican jewels Clement had pledged as collateral for the loan to finance my wedding.
With Clement dead, I no longer had any political value to François, nor had I brought him the fortune he’d been promised. Worse yet, I had not become pregnant. The king had every right to send me back to Florence in disgrace, and it was rumored that nearly everyone in France believed it was exactly what he should—and would—do.
I faced another winter painfully aware of the precariousness of my position as Henri’s wife. I tried to imagine ways to awaken his interest, to make myself more desirable to him. But I could think of nothing, and I had no one in whom to confide, no one whose advice I trusted.
From the time of our first meeting, I’d been bothered by the king’s attitude toward Henri. François showered all his affection on Henri’s older brother, the dauphin. Their younger brother, Charles, was most like his father in his easy manner and delight in dancing, feasting, and women. But Henri was generally silent and withdrawn, often dour, not at all jovial. He disliked feasting and dancing and preferred hunting, jousting, wrestling, and other rough sports. His smiles were rare, his laughter unheard of, and his conversation was always brief, unadorned, and to the point.
All of these qualities exasperated his father. “The mark of a Frenchman is to be always lively and gay,” King François declared for all to hear at a festive dinner before the start of Lent, when Henri had been even more silent and withdrawn than usual. “What ails the boy?”
The king’s mistress could have told him what ailed his son, for it was Anne who explained it to me when we once found ourselves separated from the others while out riding with La Petite Bande. “Henri surely resents his father for turning him over to Emperor Charles in order to secure his own release. And he harbors a burning hatred of the emperor, who held him hostage for four years under the most wretched conditions.”
Who could blame him? Although my months shut up in a convent couldn’t be compared to Henri’s years in a harsh Spanish prison, I did know what it was to be cut off from all that was familiar. Perhaps it was because of this shared experience of isolation that I felt I understood Henri, although I could not seem to find a way to reach him. And even as my love for him grew—who can explain why?—he still didn’t show me the slightest affection.
WITH THE COURT constantly on the move, Diane de Poitiers often traveled with us. When she didn’t, Henri stayed with her at Chateau d’Anet for days at a time. He seemed completely devoted to her. The entire court witnessed my humiliation. Most of them scorned me. Although the ladies of La Petite Bande accepted me as one of them, I felt they were as likely as anyone else to laugh at me behind my back. The exception was the Duchess d’Étampes. Anne remained my ally because she despised Diane de Poitiers and would have gone to almost any length to outdo her.
Sometimes as La Petite Bande rode together or gathered to dine with the king, Anne entertained us with cruel comments about Diane. “Nothing but old baggage,” she said disdainfully “She must be thirty-five, if she’s a day. Her bones are surely creaking by now.”
Anne was eight years younger than Diane, just as beautiful, and she had the king’s love. What more could she want? I could see no reason for her jealousy, but I hungered for her bitter jibes and devoured her cutting remarks. “What a cold fish Diane is! She has ice in her veins, anyone can see that, and a stone lodges where the rest of us have a heart.”
Members of La Petite Bande speculated on Diane’s beauty secrets.
“She believes that exercise is good for the complexion,” observed one lady. “And she gets plenty of sleep.”
“She bathes in cold water to stimulate her skin, and she doesn’t paint her face, because she believes that whatever is in those substances can be harmful.”
But none of that could account for the hold she had over Henri. No one seemed to know, though, if they were actually lovers. Diane had always maintained a spotless reputation, both before and after the death of the Grand Sénéchal. But even if my husband was not enjoying the delights of her body, he was obviously madly in love with her. When she chose to welcome him into her bed, I had no doubt that he would go to her without hesitation. The power was completely in her hands.
EARLY IN THE SUMMER of 1535, I received a letter from Giulietta, describing Niccolà’s wedding and her own betrothal, sending news of Tomassa’s decision to become a nun, and ending with an odd message: “We have found the artist about whom you inquired. The small painting was completed a year ago and has been donated to a chapel.”
I reread the message twice more before it struck me that she was writing about Akasma in a sort of code: Akasma was the artist; the small painting must be the infant she had conceived by horrid Alessandro. She must have left it on the wheel at a convent.
A month or so later one of the pages at Fontainebleau came to my apartment, delivering a message and a bowl of pudding: A girl had come to the kitchen, speaking Italian mixed with a few words of French and claiming that she had once worked in the Medici kitchen in Florence. She asked to see la duchessina. She was refused. Then she told the cook that she knew how to make a certain kind of orange-flavored pudding that was la duchessina’s favorite. The cook let her try, watching carefully to be sure this was not a poison plot. The pudding had been tasted and was declared both safe and delicious.
I accepted the pudding. One spoonful and I knew. “Send her to me at once,” I ordered.
MY REUNION WITH AKASMA was sweeter than anything I could have imagined. We talked through the rest of the day and half the night. There was much to tell. We had not seen each other for nearly two years.
“The infant?” I asked.
“By the time she was born, Alessandro had forgotten about me, and when he heard that it was a girl, he told me to get rid of her. I took her to Le Murate,” she continued, “and left her on the wheel with one of the purses you sent. It was best, don’t you think?”
I nodded, although I could imagine how hard it must have been for Akasma to leave her child behind. “Maybe you should have kept her with you.”
“But how? I dream that someday I’ll be able to get her back. But I’m so happy to be away from Florence! Alessandro and Lorenzino go drinking and whoring nearly every night, and he has taxed the citizens until they are ready to revolt against him. Plenty of Florentines have fled, and Alessandro has exiled others. He’s the most hated man in all of Italy, without a doubt. Surely the one who despises him most is his poor little wife.”
I remembered sweet Margaret of Austria, the emperor’s daughter, who had visited Florence while I was there, and the pleasant time we had together. “They were married, then?”
“With huge celebrations, all paid for by the citizens of Florence. I can’t think of anything worse than being married to Alessandro!”
Neither could I.
Among those exiled were two of my Strozzi cousins, Piero and Leone, who were now living in France. Suor Margherita had sent Akasma to Filippo, their father, and he’d helped her to reach Piero. Piero had told her about King François’s frequent moves and guided her to the court.
“What luck!” she sighed. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
She brought bad news, too. A number of citizens had persuaded Cardinal Ippolito to take their long list of grievances against Alessandro and deliver them in person to Emperor Charles. “But Ippolito died on the way,” she said.
I covered my face with my hands. Poor Ippolito! “How did he die?” I whispered through my fingers when I c
ould speak.
“Poison.”
“By whose orders?”
“Alessandro’s.”
We were silent for a time while I mastered my feelings. Then I felt Akasma’s firm hand on my shoulder. “And what of you?” she asked. “Are you hiding the king’s first grandson beneath that elaborate gown?”
I grimaced and shook my head. “I haven’t yet conceived.”
“What? Not yet?” She folded her arms and frowned at me. “Are you doing your duty, Duchessina?”
“I am. But Henri doesn’t desire me. He has a mistress, and he spends all his time with her. He visits me only occasionally, and then because the king insists. Now my greatest fear is that if I don’t give Henri an heir, and soon, the king will renounce me and send me away.”
Akasma began to pace around my chamber. “Oh, my dear Duchessina! We have work to do.”
Shaming as it was, I submitted to Akasma and her knowledge of herbal treatments. First she mixed shepherd’s rod with periwinkle that she’d pounded to a powder, added earthworms mashed to a paste, and had me massage the paste into my most private areas.
Next we tried the ashes of a frog, after that the testicles of a wild boar, and then a poultice of ground stag’s antlers mixed with warm cow dung—all to no effect, except that my husband complained of the revolting odor.
I have no idea where Akasma acquired these exotic ingredients, and I didn’t question her. Akasma always had ways of getting what she needed.
Although she’d never learned to read, Akasma had a gift for language. Her native tongue was a mixture of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, but she had quickly learned the Italian dialect of Tuscany and spoke it almost flawlessly. After only a few months in France, traveling with the French court, she could understand the conversations of everyone she met, from courtier to cook. She consulted with astrologers, herbalists, and apothecaries. All offered advice and dispensed remedies, which we then tried, no matter how repellent.
The months passed, Henri made his dutiful visits, and I still had not become pregnant.
“I’ve told you that Henri doesn’t desire me,” I reminded Akasma timidly. “Can you find a charm or a potion that would turn my husband’s heart away from his mistress and toward his wife?”
“I’ll try,” she promised. And she did, but with no better results.
16
Henri
AKASMA HAD BEEN WITH ME for little more than a year when a tragic event changed everyone’s life: the death of Henri’s older brother, the nineteen-year-old dauphin. It happened this way:
The weather had been unusually warm, but the dauphin François had insisted on his usual game of tennis. Feeling hot and out of breath when he finished a game with one of his gentlemen, he called for a glass of cold water, drank it down in one draught, and collapsed. Within hours, he was dead.
Naturally, poison was immediately suspected. But who had reason to poison him, and who had the opportunity? Suspicion immediately fell on his Italian secretary, Sebastiano de Montecuculli, who had once been in the service of Emperor Charles but who had come to France as part of my retinue. It was Montecuculli who had fetched him the water. King François, crazed with grief at the loss of his heir and favorite, blamed Emperor Charles and suspected Montecuculli of being the emperor’s agent.
I believed then, as I believe now, that Montecuculli was innocent, but the king ordered him tortured in a cruel device designed to mangle the legs of the suspect until pain forced him to confess. Once the confession had been wrung from him, Montecuculli was sentenced to die. A month after the dauphin had been laid to rest, I had to watch the poor man’s execution. Queen Eleanor and all of the king’s court were witnesses as the wretched prisoner was lashed by his arms and legs to four horses which then galloped off in four directions, pulling the victim apart. I had never heard anything like his hideous screams. Henri was beside me, his face a stony mask.
Henri was now the dauphin, next in line for the throne, and I was the dauphine. Because I would become queen when my husband ascended the throne, some in the court who disliked me were ready to believe that Montecuculli might have acted under my orders. I knew there was someone else who would benefit even more: Henri’s mistress, Diane, whose prestige rose with his.
WITH HENRI DESTINED TO become the next king of France, it was now more crucial than ever for me to provide him with an heir. I worried about the problem constantly—we had been married for nearly three years—and my determination to conceive had become my obsession.
Akasma’s methods got more extreme. She coaxed me to drink a glass of vile-smelling and horrible-tasting liquid that she’d tried to disguise with various herbs. I gagged and spat the evil stuff on the ground. “I can’t swallow it! What is it?”
Finally she confessed: “The urine of a mule,” she said. “But you only need to drink a glass of it once a month. Under no circumstances may you go near the mule itself. I will undertake to get its urine for you.”
“I don’t care—I can’t do it,” I wailed.
“There are other things to try,” she said soothingly.
No matter how disgusting the remedies were, we tried them. Nothing worked. I was in despair. But during those months of failure, Akasma and I were distracted for a time by news from Florence: Alessandro was dead, murdered in his bed by his cousin, Forenzino. Neither of us wasted a single moment grieving for him.
“HAVE YOU CONSIDERED that it may be your husband who’s lacking?” Akasma suggested when her cures produced no results . . .
But Henri quickly demonstrated that he was not at fault by impregnating a young virgin during a military junket to Italy, later boasting that he had been with the girl for only one night. The girl gave birth to a daughter and was sent off to a convent. Henri named the infant Diane de France and gave her into the care of the woman in whose honor she was named. Diane de Poitiers, who had two grown daughters from her marriage to the Grand Sénéchal, now flaunted the baby girl in her custody. This was the final blow to my pride.
Henri no longer tried to pretend that Diane was merely his “friend.” He wore her colors, the black and white of widowhood that only emphasized her beauty. He took as his emblem a crescent moon that signified the mythical goddess Diana. Their monogram, the H and the D cleverly intertwined, was placed on the trappings of his horse, at the entrance to her château, and anywhere else he could think of.
Akasma tried to comfort me. “Maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way,” she offered. “To me, the monogram looks like two joined Cs within the H.”
Her explanation only infuriated me. “You can’t even read!” I shouted at her, losing my temper and my patience, as I seldom did.
At my wit’s end, I paced my bedchamber, wringing my hands and worrying aloud about my biggest fear: that King François would renounce me, send me away, and find Henri a new and fertile wife, all for the good of France. I could not fail in my duty to my family. I could not go back to Florence.
Then I had a desperate idea. It would be difficult to accomplish, and I wasn’t even sure I could bear to go through with it, but I outlined the plan to Akasma.
“Henri has given Diane the apartment below mine at Fontainebleau,” I explained. “I want you to find a workman, a person of great discretion, who will drill a small peephole above her bed, so that I can look down on it when Henri is with her and see for myself just what it is that she does to enchant him.”
Akasma stared at me. “This is madness! Spying on your rival with your husband will only make you miserable.”
“I’m already miserable,” I said. “And I’m not at all mad. My principal duty as the wife of the dauphin is to provide him with an heir. If I fail to accomplish that, the king will likely repudiate me. Henri will accept his father’s decision. I have to find a solution to my problem before François decides to act.”
Akasma never stopped shaking her head, murmuring, “No, no, Duchessina! It cannot be!”
But I refused to listen. “My entire life is
at stake, Akasma. So far nothing has succeeded. I must see for myself. Order the hole drilled at once.”
“As you wish, madame,” she said stiffly. “But I can guarantee you, the only thing you will gain from this is pain.” She bowed and left the bedchamber.
Efficient servant that she was, Akasma carried out my orders. The hole was drilled and concealed with a piece of wood. I paced restlessly until the sound of laughter drifted up from the chamber below, Henri’s deep and yearning, Diane’s light and playful. When the laughter quieted, I moved silently to the drilled hole, removed the block of wood, and peered down at the lovers.
Akasma was right: The sight was too painful to bear. Blinded by tears, I slid the block of wood into place and tried to forget what I had seen.
THAT NIGHT I SLEPT hardly at all, and by morning I had made a decision: I would throw myself on the mercy of the king. François had rarely seen me in any but the most cheerful of moods, always ready with a quick rejoinder to his wit, able to keep up with him in the hunt or in the dance. I dressed in a simple gown with only my mother’s ruby cross as an ornament, and when I was sure he was alone, I went to his chambers and fell at his feet, sobbing.
“What is it, my daughter?” He lifted my chin and gazed into my face. “Why so unhappy?”
“I’ve heard that you may decide to repudiate me for the good of France, because I have not been able to provide my beloved husband with an heir.” I glanced up at the king through wet lashes, saw the sympathy on his face, and hurried on. “And I’ve come to beg Your Majesty not to send me away from all that I’ve grown to love, but to let me stay on in your service, even if it means humbly serving the new wife to be chosen for my dearest Henri.”
Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici Page 18