Courtesan

by Diane Haeger

  “She is in the convent Filles-Dieu with her younger sister, Louise. I am pleased to say that they are both doing splendidly. And look at you! Your Highness has grown up as well. You are not the fair little boy who used to hide from the Queen behind my skirts.”

  Montmorency’s fleshy wife, Madeleine, strained to hear their conversation.

  “And your brothers?” she asked. “My Louise will certainly want to know about Henri and Charles.”

  The Dauphin battled a disdainful smirk and a sarcastic tone. “I am afraid little brother Henri has been woefully bad, Madame. Father has sent him on to Fontainebleau to seek his punishment by spending time with our Spanish Queen. But there is Charles. See over there, by the fires.” He pointed.

  Diane turned to see a chubby, flour-faced boy sitting on the hearth, stroking one of the hounds.

  “Perhaps you would graciously consent to give him a turn. I am afraid he is too uncertain of himself to dance with any of the younger girls. But I know he would most definitely dance with you.”

  His words, cast-off and thoughtless, startled her like a sudden shaft of lightning. She looked at the future King, so slim, young and exquisite before her. His youth, like his brother’s was a sharp reminder of her own age, and the time she had wasted.

  AFTER BEING COAXED by the Dauphin to dance with young Prince Charles, Diane was breathless. They danced two Galliards, a long and strenuous dance full of strenuous kicks and hops designed for the most athletic. Diane then took refuge at one of the long tables. The room was bursting with music and laughter. She finally breathed a sigh of relief and began to bask in her own precious, if momentary, anonymity. As she sat with a goblet of wine, she watched a popular new form of the Galliard called the Volté, and waited for her breathing to return to normal.

  Anne d’Heilly was more beautiful and much younger than she had imagined, she thought as she watched her dance with the English Ambassador. Diane was certain that they would never be friends, but she also felt happily absurd about her former suspicions. The King was just an unbearable flirt. He loved women. He always had. Of course, he had only been taking the liberty to which Kings grow accustomed. It had meant nothing more.

  As she bit into a moist hunk of veal, Diane realized that she was ravenous. The table before her was covered with a virtual orgy of food. Meat pies were piled high on silver dishes; tureens were spilling with stew. There were capons and roasted partridge, giant plates of hare and venison, cakes made of pine nuts, sweet cup custards and marzipan. Every dish was set out for the guests on silver serving dishes; each one ornately appointed and turned. Servants, dressed in the same familiar blue and crimson uniforms, kept wine flowing from giant ceramic urns that they lugged about the room.

  She swallowed the last bit of her meal with a sip of wine and leaned back in the high-backed crimson tapestried chair. When the meal was complete, each guest was presented with his own silver ewer of Damascus rose water and a fine embroidered linen napkin with which to wash. When the napkins were unfolded, each guest found imprisoned inside a little bird, all of which, for the further enjoyment of the guests, began to hop around on the table and peck at the plates and dishes.

  At the same time, another new dance step was being shown to the King. He watched intently from his seat the Branle des torches, so named because as the steps progressed, the dancers passed torches between themselves. The rest of the room watched as the King studied the steps to the echoed sound of the trumpet, clarion, viols and lute. The courtiers were careful not to applaud or to condemn the step until the King had done so. He looked regal dressed in a doublet of red silk, the collar of which was braided in gold. His toque was brown velvet, plumed with one large white ostrich feather.

  “He will not like it, you know.”

  The voice of the man next to her came echoing out of his large silver chalice. Diane, who had not until that moment noticed him, turned to see who had addressed her.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The dance step, I mean. I have been watching His Majesty for a long time now. I have studied him at all of these affairs and I wager it will be too intricate for his liking,” he said as he tossed out a coin, which clinked as it hit his dinner plate.

  He was a thin graceful man, costumed in a doublet of indigo velvet, the slashings of which showed a yellow shirt of linen and lace. His hair was light and curled around his forehead. It matched the vague, dusty beard which came to a point at the end of his chin. He could have been handsome had it not been for the lack of a rugged quality which Diane had always found appealing.

  “Watch,” he said, directing her gaze back to the King’s table.

  Before the King, a young page now twirled and hopped to the lute player’s tune, his torch leaving a streaming trail of light as he moved it. Just as the boy bowed at the dance’s completion, the King stood.

  “Bravo, my boy! Come everyone, young Guise, the Cardinal’s nephew, has given us a new step to try! Lute player, the music!”

  “One would hope, Monsieur, that you know your women better than your King,” she quipped, pulling the coin to her own plate and turning back to him.

  “Most assuredly.” He smiled. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jacques de Montgommery, Captain of His Majesty’s Scots Guard.”

  “And I am—”

  “Oh, I know who you are. I am most honored to meet you, Madame La Sénéchale.”

  “Ah, I see that my reputation precedes me.”

  “I have heard only the most favorable things.”

  “Then you have undoubtedly heard that I prefer to go by the name to which I was born, not by the title that was given to me when I married.”

  He jutted out his lower lip and shrugged his shoulder as if, with his movements, to say, whatever you like. “And what might that name be?” he added as he picked a stray piece of meat from his red and yellow balloon sleeve.

  “Diane. Diane de Poitiers.”

  “Diane.” He rolled the name around on his tongue as though he were tasting it. “Lovely name.”

  “Quite common really,” she replied, trying to negate his flattery.

  “Ah, but the novelty is with she who bears it.”

  “You flatter me, Monsieur.”

  “I should consider myself fortunate to do so, Madame.”

  “Do you manage to be so charming with everyone?” she asked, finding it difficult not to be just a little taken in by him.

  “Only when I see something worth the effort. Ah, they are beginning the next Galliard. Please. . .you must dance with me.”

  Standing beside him, she now saw what a tall lean man he was. He smiled a confident, effortless smile and he danced as gracefully as he spoke.

  “The color becomes you,” he said, gazing down at her gown.

  “It is black, Monsieur. A mourning costume. My husband has died only six months ago.”

  “Still, Madame, with every color of the rainbow exhibited here tonight, these women look like peacocks while you are like a beautiful black swan.”

  “Monsieur, you must agree not to flatter me so. It is not proper.”

  As though he had not heard her, Montgommery clutched her wrist and whirled her around to the tune played by the quartet. It was only after the dance was over, and he had bowed his thanks to her, that he answered her remonstrations. “Ah, Madame, I know that you have been away a long time, but you may as well learn early on how things have changed here. The moralist cuts a poor figure in King François’ Court.”

  Diane looked at him strangely, but he was no longer looking at her. She turned around to see what had averted his gaze. It was the King who was standing across the room, near Admiral Chabot. Although the Admiral was talking intensely to him, His Majesty appeared lost to the words, staring instead across the room at Diane. Anne d’Heilly, who was still clutching the King’s arm, watched His Majesty watch Diane. The forced smile which the favourite had worn earlier in the evening now faded as she nodded, pretending to be listening to the Admiral, bu
t all the while, never breaking her gaze from Diane.

  Montgommery, standing across the room from the King, could see the scene from its full perspective. His smile became a sneer as he fingered his yellow moustache.

  “Well, well, well,” he muttered so only she could hear. “It appears that things are just beginning to get interesting around here.”

  BY THE TIME DIANE slid between her heavy damask bedcovers, it was nearly dawn. Her feet ached from dancing and her head was spinning from the wine.

  There had been, in all, five interludes to the meal. Each time the lute player sounded a tune, the table was stripped of the meal. In place of the food, the tables became a stage and five different kinds of entertainment were enacted. There was a mystery play during which the guests were encouraged to guess the ending for the prize of a lock of His Majesty’s hair. Afterward, the food was returned and dancing recommenced. Another hour passed and the food was again cleared away. Four acrobats, dressed in multicolored costumes, leapt upon the tables to further entertain the guests. By the early hours of the morning, a young singer, whom the King had coaxed into asylum from Venice, took the stage.

  After the banquet Diane had gone a little reluctantly on the arm of Montgommery to the King’s private apartments. There, with a select group of the King’s closest friends, she watched and drank more wine as His Majesty and the Cardinal de Lorraine discussed Plato’s Dialogues.

  As dawn washed the horizon with a blurred pink sunrise, Jacques de Montgommery offered to escort Diane back to her apartments. Once there, faced with her half-open chamber door and the flood of morning light from her windows, he had wasted no time in conveying his intentions.

  “I should like to share your bed,” he whispered. His words fell off into the folds of her gown as he swayed from the wine.

  “Monsieur, you insult me!” She pushed him away and poised her hand to slap his face. As she raised her arm, he caught it; the strength of his conviction returned.

  “You still have not figured it out have you, my pretty one? Do you think any of those people in the King’s apartment tonight have gone to bed alone? Even the good Cardinal is at this very moment likely burrowing beneath his bedcovers with one of Mademoiselle d’Heilly’s willing ladies. It is simply how things are, and you are far better off if you learn to accept it.”

  “Stop! I will not hear this!”

  He still had a firm grip on her arm and she struggled to free herself. “Do not play the virgin with me! Everyone knows you bedded the King, and with your husband’s blessing; all to barter for your father’s life!”

  There. He had said it; said what everyone had thought. Said what all the others in their little groups had mumbled when they saw the King take her out to do a Pavane. She had felt their stares. She knew their envy. She had waited until her husband had died, secured with his estates, and then, as brazen as a common strumpet, had strolled back into Court to finish what they had begun. There was no point in denying the accusation. Montgommery was drunk. He would probably not remember having said it in the morning anyway. Diane simply stared at him a moment longer, watching him sway back and forth. Her silence drew more frustration from him, but then, before he could act on it, she turned away.

  “I am going to bed. Alone! Good night, Monsieur!”

  He grabbed her arm again and pulled her forcefully back to face him. “Very well, then. Go off to your cold empty bed! But for all of your righteousness, you shall soon be just like all the rest of us. It is part of the plan. Eat, drink and be merry, says our good King. I simply thought you might as well initiate yourself sooner than later.”

  “Well, clearly, Captain Montgommery, you thought wrong!”

  And so the scene between them had gone. Diane had left him standing bleary-eyed at her doorstep. She had heard him rustling about for some time in the hallway before he finally went away.

  “Who was that, Madame?” Charlotte asked as she rubbed a thick finger across her cheek and met her at the door.

  “It was no one, Charlotte. No one. Go back to bed.”

  This definitely was not the refined Court she had known with Louis, she thought, as she rubbed her red and swollen feet against the edge of her bed. But so far, the unpredictability intrigued her. It was a side of courtly life that she had not been permitted to see before. There was so much about life in general that she had not been permitted to see. She would need to use great caution here, but for the time being, Diane had decided to stay.

  THE KING PULLED his head slowly from the pillow as Anne slept motionless in his arms. He was restless. Bedding the ambitious Comtesse de Sancerre the night before, with Anne in her apartments just down the hall, had done little to stave off the wanderlust that grew to nearly violent proportions within him.

  Anne had known where he was and what he was doing and yet she had said nothing. It had spoiled the fun of being bad. Now, all that he felt as he lay in her arms was the dull ache of being unfulfilled. But since women were not the real problem, neither were they the answer. The real issue was power. François wanted Italy.

  He would never forget his disastrous defeat at Pavia. . .the price he had paid. He had been forced to marry the Emperor’s ugly sister. It had been part of the bargain for peace, and for the safe return to France of his sons. François burned to make the Emperor pay for their imprisonment; François burned again for war. He could not help it. He could not deny it. The desire coursed through his blood; through his body; searing him; taunting him. If he could just gain Italy then he, not the Emperor Charles, would dominate the Christian world. It would be a fair trade for what he and his family had been forced to endure.

  He tossed fitfully in his bed as his mind raced, his body wet with perspiration. Opening his eyes, he stared up at the painting by Andrea del Sarto called Caritas that graced a wall near his bed. Never in his life had he seen art as beautiful or as moving as he had in Italy. He wanted it. He needed it. He would find a way to have it at any cost; any cost but that of the life of the Dauphin. Nothing would be worth selling the joy of his life, his eldest son, to marriage with a merchant’s daughter. It seemed that there were times when the only thing in his life he had done right was to sire that boy.

  But in trying to gain the return of Milan, there was something else to consider: the delicate balance between England and France. There was not only the Emperor, but there was Henry VIII. François detested his English counterpart, finding him unprincipled and uncivilized. But he knew that, at the very least, a broad-based civility between them was essential. The presence of the Pope in Rome did little to balance out this powerful triangle. Despite his forbidding presence, the Pontiff had not been a real threat or a support to any side. It was in reality a weak papacy. Clement VII blew with the winds. Now, as subtle as a spring breeze, the winds were changing. In François’ mind a stormy offensive was brewing against the Emperor. At this point Henry VIII held all of the cards, and the sly fox knew it.

  If Henry sided with the Emperor against François, there would be no hope of France taking Italy. There would be no hope of his ever gaining back what he had lost. Unless of course, to get what he desired, the King of France gave the Pope what he desired in return. A French bridegroom for his niece. Perhaps then the pontiff would find the courage to stand with France against the Emperor, after all.

  As Anne slept, François rose and looked back at her. She did not stir. She was not troubled by any of this, and she had no idea how it troubled him. As long as she was rich and adored, he thought, she was happy. The tile floor was cold beneath his bare feet and he shivered in the alcove near his bed. After another moment, he rapped on the door for one of his gentlemen-of-the-chamber to stoke the fire which, in the early hours of morning, had begun to sputter.

  Henry VIII or Pope Clement. Those were the choices if he meant to regain Milan from the Emperor. And yet, surrendering his eldest son, his heir, to a degrading political marriage. . .in that there was no choice at all.

  “No,” he whispered. “I canno
t. I must not. The English Ambassador will suggest a course to ally with Henry VIII. I will meet with him tomorrow. There will be another way. There must!”

  François crawled back beneath the covers and pressed himself against Anne’s warm flesh. The heat from her body warmed his own cold skin. It aroused him even more than his thoughts had done. He ran his rough fingers across each of her breasts. The contours of her small body excited him. Thank God for his little tart. In her arms he could stave off all of this madness, if only for a while. He reached up and, as she slept, stroked the fine alabaster flesh around her neck. What a good tumble she still was, when he was so inclined to have her. It always amazed him, even now, how ready and willing she was to secure her position by any means he desired. She knew how to please him. Like all successful courtesans, she had made his pleasure her life’s work.

  He touched her cheek and her eyes opened. She was beguiling, always knowing when he wanted her; always making him pay for her favors in one way or another. So beautiful and so cruel. He craved the contradiction. It was still early, he thought. As the servant stoked the fire to a fitful blaze, he drew the bedcurtains. There was still time before his lever began to avail himself, at least once more, of his little Anne’s very potent charms.

  “PLEASE, MADAME, PERMIT me to speak!” Jacques de Montgommery called out.

  Diane continued down the pillared open gallery that faced the enclosed garden. She was holding open her book of verse as though she were concentrating on some particular passage. She looked down, but still could hear the sound of Montgommery’s footsteps on the stone as he advanced behind her.

  “Please, I ask only for a moment. Then I shall go away, if that is still what you desire.”

  Diane slowed and turned around. He looked ill. His skin was pasty and he had not changed his clothes from the night before. His doublet was gone and his yellow shirt was crumpled and stained.

  “You look dreadful,” she said.

  “I suppose that is part of the penance for my behavior last evening. It is no match for the way my head feels.”