by Diane Haeger
He handed it to Diane. She fingered the delicate pages of the tiny prayer book beneath the inlaid leather binding. “It is yours if you will do Us this one small favor.”
“It is a travesty that I should come to have such a personal and intimate article,” she murmured as she contemplated the intricate scrollwork of inlaid gold. “The owner must miss it very much.”
“I am certain that Monsieur Bohier would not think so at all, since surrendering it along with his other belongings saved him from complete ruin, or a far worse fate,” Chabot snapped in a harsh nasal tone.
She wanted to object. She wanted to tell His Majesty that it was she from whom his son should escape. But she could not risk it. If she attempted to confess the truth now, an accusation would surely fall back on her from this surly Admiral who now sat picking food from his teeth with his fingers.
Montmorency wanted to object as well. He fought his own urge to stand and silence the King, explaining that there had been a great mistake. But he could not. He had no proof of his suspicions against her, only a raging feeling inside himself that their friendship, if it was allowed to continue, would somehow harm the Prince.
“Very well, Your Majesty,” Diane recanted. “I shall prepare my things at once.”
“Splendid,” he grinned. “You leave by morning’s light.”
TO THE NOBLES it was called “taking the cure” at Cauterets.
For many years it had been the site of healing for the infirm and aged, with eleven sulphur springs bursting forth from the rich earth. It was also an exclusive mountain resort for the aristocracy set in an idyllic mountain village with the snowy peaks of Vigne-male in the background.
At the mention of the excursion by Montmorency, Prince Henri had sprung back to life like one of the King’s painted jesters. The trip was long and arduous; up steep inclines and around sharp bends into the sheer cliffs of the Pyrénées mountains. But the weather favored them, and a light spring breeze urged them onward. To pass the time they sang songs and took turns reading from The Canterbury Tales, the medieval English story about an unlikely troop who travel together on a pilgrimage of their own.
After they had reached the inn, Henri lay sprawled on the embroidered counterpane on his bed. His arms cradled his head as he stared up at the ceiling. The room was rustic with low black wooded beams that Jacques, being the tallest, had to duck beneath as he moved about.
“How many here know who we are?” Henri asked and kicked off a shoe onto the floor. “Well, I suppose the proprietor and his wife, since one of the King’s men made the arrangements.”
“Can you stop the word from spreading?”
“I do not understand, Your Highness.”
“It is quite simple. I wish to be anonymous here.”
“That would seem most unwise, Your Highness. For security’s sake.”
“It is so beautiful. So pure. I feel so alive; as though I have never lived before,” he said, and bolted from the bed toward the window which opened onto a sloping meadow and snow-capped mountains in the distance. “Just look at that!” Henri cried, beckoning his friend toward the window. Both of them looked down onto the meadow below. Like the one through which they had just come, it too was blanketed with green clover and bright red poppies, all swaying rhythmically in the breeze. In its midst, a shepherd boy, followed by his flock of sheep, called out softly for a lost kid. Henri leaned against the wooden casement of the window trying to catch his breath.
“I want to be like that, Jacques.” He pointed back out the window. “No worries. No cares. If only for a little while.” He looked up from the window and his sad eyes persuaded even his most stalwart friend.
“I shall see what I can do.”
“I have not had an official portrait done in years. I know no one will recognize me if I have your help. See the guards as well. Tell them to wear their own attire. No uniforms,” Henri called out as Saint-André headed for the door. “Oh, and have Guise tell the others as well. It will be like an adventure!”
THE HEAVY COPPER dinner bell sounded just as Henri and his companion were descending the narrow, spiral stone steps toward the small dining room. The cool breath of dusk blew in through two open windows which looked onto the stone courtyard. The breeze blew the thin gauze curtains and caused the candles in their wall sconces to sputter.
The common rooms of the inn were not unlike the Prince’s room. The beamed ceilings were low and dark and there were only a few candles to light them. Copper pots and ladles hung from the open beams and clanged together gently in the breeze. The inn was not elegant. It was musty and rather old, but the people came for the springs, not for the accommodations. It was thought to be very smart among the privileged class to come to Cauterets, and while there, to live a novel spartan existence. It was all the rage to purge one’s body of the excesses of nobility in the pure mountain air before returning to the comforts of their opulent lives.
Diane was already sitting on one of the long wooden benches between Hélène and François de Guise when Jacques and Henri came down the stairs. Everyone looked up casually, but it was Diane who blinked hard at the sight of the young Prince in coarse wool pants long around his calves, and a shepherd’s surcoat with a long black hood hanging down between his shoulders. His dark eyes sparkled as he came into the room.
“I hope we are not late. I am famished,” he said as a short, stout woman with a red cotton bonnet lumbered past him with a steaming iron pot of soup. The other guests looked up from their conversations at the communal table but paid little attention to his entrance. Henri glanced around the room and, feeling that he had been sufficiently disguised, smiled.
Around the courtly entourage was an oddly matched set of guests. There was the white-haired judge from Lyon who rarely spoke but instead, when he desired something, repeatedly tapped his cane on the wood floor. There was a newly married couple from Rouen, a banker and his wife from Paris, and the village priest who regularly took his meals at the inn.
“It is so lovely here!” Henri exclaimed with a hearty smile. “I can scarcely wait for the baths!”
He sat down on the bench across from Diane and broke off a large hunk of bread from a crusty loaf in the center of the table. The same stout woman returned from the kitchens, clanging dishes and whistling to herself as she set the assortment of food on the bare wooden tables.
“Where did Your Highness get those awful garments?” Brissac muttered, his hand hiding his mouth to disguise the shock of the sight.
“I paid the shepherd for them,” he whispered, “and I shall thank you all to remember my name is Henri, simply Henri, or you shall spoil all my fun.”
The old woman then set a large steaming tureen in the center of the table and slammed down a large clay jug of malmsey.
“À votre santé!” she wheezed and everyone nodded to her as the old judge from Lyon leaned in and greedily filled his bowl first.
“So nice to have new faces among us. From where do you people hail?” asked the priest, Père Olivier, as he took his turn and scooped up a spoonful of the stew. Everyone exchanged a quick glance, all of them afraid to speak contrary to the wishes of the Prince.
“From Paris,” Diane calmly replied and then took a sip of wine.
“So have you all come for the baths, or are you here to see the travesty?”
“What do you mean?” Henri asked as he took a bite.
“My little church in the village that those blasphemous swine got their hands on.”
He brushed a piece of bread around in the stew and when it was soaked, he tossed it to the large dog beneath his feet.
“People have been coming from all parts to see it; some others from Paris not long ago. Natural curiosity, I suppose. Never thought God would allow it to happen to His house. Sacrilege is what I call it. Ought to burn it to the ground instead of keeping it as it is, in shambles. There’s just the shell left now. Some of the people want to rebuild. . .But. . .I don’t know.”
Diane’s
face faded to ashen. Her smile was gone. “Someone burned a house of God?”
“Burned it down to nothing. We saw it yesterday,” the young bride chimed in and then stifled her comment upon seeing Diane’s grave expression. She coughed nervously and raised her goblet.
“Not just any someone, Madame. The Lutherans did it,” the priest explained. “They’ve been only too glad to claim responsibility.”
“But why? I know they take issue with the papacy but what on earth does that have to do with a house of the Lord up here in the mountains?!”
“They left placards afterward saying, THIS HOUSE STANDS FOR WHAT A FEW MEN BELIEVE. They broke a stained-glass window that was nearly two hundred years old. The sacred altar was scavenged. There were sheep feeding from it like a trough, when I finally found it at a little place in the valley.”
“And why do you not report such criminals to the King?” asked Jacques as he leaned over his steaming earthen bowl.
“The King, you say?” he asked with a disdainful chuckle. “God bless His Majesty, but the poor bastard’s no better than the rest of them. His own sister’s one of their worst! You know she leads a whole colony of them from her palace in Navarre!”
“But there must be something that can be done!” Diane interjected.
“I am afraid not, dear lady. Yes, I am out of a parish, to be sure, but I am never out of my faith. I hold vespers each day in the meadow across from the remains of our church, and I hear confessions in the village in a room behind the butcher’s house. It is not what I would have wanted but it was God’s will and for now we make do.”
“I would like to see it tomorrow,” Henri said, as he pushed the spoon around his bowl.
“Oh, but why?” Jacques asked, leaning in toward the Prince. “It is bound to be disheartening, and there is very little you can do.”
“I simply want to see it.”
“I shall go with you,” Diane announced, her voice low and resolute.
After the last of the stew had been consumed and the remaining bread thrown down for the dogs, the young bridegroom, who said his name was Michel, pulled a reed pipe from the pocket of his doubtlet, and began to play. His young bride, with corn-colored hair and a quiet, oval face, gazed at him adoringly. Everyone else sat back on the benches to listen. He played a hypnotic piece that tangled with the soft breeze that blew through the open windows.
Only when it was safe and the others were relaxed did Henri’s eyes begin to wander toward Diane. He gazed at her hair and watched the way the light played off the loosely braided strands. He watched her eyes, sparkling blue, focused intently on the young musician. He swallowed hard as he marked with his own eyes the contours of her breasts behind the tightly fitted bodice of her black satin gown. God, she was beautiful, he thought, longing for tomorrow.
THE NEXT MORNING, Henri held Diane’s hand as they made their way through the clover, down the steep incline of the meadow. They walked into the valley, then onto the cobbled streets at the entrance to the village. The lane on which they found themselves seemed like a continuation of the fields. There were flame-lit poppies, irises and bright yellow primroses inextricably braided into the gardens and window boxes of each tiny thatched house.
The town was crested by enormous, gentle green trees that rustled and tossed stray leaves onto the stones. There were other dashes of color on the narrow twisted village lane. A purple drape before a window, a young woman’s yellow kerchief; and everywhere, the intoxicating scent of flowers. They had walked only a short distance through the village when Diane gripped Henri’s hand and came to a halt.
“Dear God,” she uttered, staring straight ahead, forcing Henri’s eyes to follow hers. There, at the end of the lane before them, were the charred remains of the church that Père Olivier had described.
They slowly advanced with neither of them breaking their gaze. They looked in silent horror at the blackened frame, like a grotesque skeleton; the carved archway that once held the doors, the soot-covered stone belfry, and the tumbled tombstones which lay beside it.
“Are you certain that you want to go on?” Henri whispered, overcome himself by the enormity of the destruction. She nodded and they continued to advance, their hands linked.
They walked slowly over the charred ruins that were once pews, communion rails and crumbled walls. Diane genuflected and made the sign of the cross in the direction of the place where the altar had once stood. As she did, she saw beside her shoe in the ashes the imprint of a small crucifix. Like everything else around them it had been reduced to ashes so that only the outline remained.
“God, forgive them,” she uttered, “for they know not what they do.”
Diane and Henri faced one another for a long moment where words have no place. As they stood wide eyed, gazing around at a manner of devastation foreign to them both, Henri saw, through the fallen timbers, a dirty-faced man hauling beams from the ashes. Henri charged at him, his eyes filled with rage. Both men sailed into a billowing pile of soot as rotted boards came crashing down around them.
“I ought to kill you myself!” Henri raged and landed a blow to his jaw. The stranger moaned and sank beneath Henri’s firm grip. He did not struggle.
“Please, Henri, let him go!” Diane screamed as she ran after him.
“Dirty, rotten bastard!”
Diane strained and pulled at Henri’s meager shirt. “Please, Henri! Listen to me! This is no way to settle it!”
Finally he heard her. The Prince, still dressed as a shepherd, stepped back and brushed off his hands that had become blackened in the fray. “Of course not. You are right,” he muttered, his breath quickened by the tangle. The man staggered to his feet, blood dripping from the side of his mouth. He faced Henri. “Are you responsible for what has become of this great house of God?”
The man wiped his face with the back of his dirty sleeve and left a streak of blood across his cheek. “No. But I mean to say that I am glad it happened.”
The stranger with the matted black hair and the defiant eyes spat into the ashes. Henri grabbed him by the shirt once again.
“Where is your respect, man? Can you not see where you are?” he seethed.
The man’s face was hard. This time he did not flinch, but flicked Henri’s fists from his soiled shirt, as one would rid oneself of a bothersome pest. Again their eyes met. “It does not look like much of any place at all; at least, not now.” His lips stretched into a sarcastic smile.
“I could have you hanged for your insolence!” the Prince bellowed and again aimed his fist at the stranger’s face.
“Henri, be still!” Diane urged, and pulled his poised arm back behind him. The man was urged on by Diane’s cautionary words.
“This church and the priests in it had everything up here; warmth, food. . .even women! Yeah, how do you like that? Now they are just like the rest of us. Ha! And I am glad they were finally made to pay,” he said, licking his lips.
The two men exchanged another combative stare before the stranger bent down to pick up his small pile of partially charred wood. “At least now I can heat my stew and my cottage for a night or two.”
After he had gotten what he had come for, the man stalked off down the lane and disappeared into an alley between two buildings.
“Why did you stop me?” Henri raged and swung his head around toward Diane. The blood of anger had flushed his face and a small vein in his neck pulsed with fury.
“He is nothing but a scavenger. It would have come to no good. Besides, you know the King does not see it as the threat it truly is. The reformist movement that his sister the Queen of Navarre so embraces is a pastime; like poetry or jeu de paume. He entertains heretical debate as a way to clear the palate for the evening meal.”
Henri felt the press of a hand on his shoulder. He whipped around, prepared again to strike. Diane turned around too.
“Père Olivier!” she exclaimed, faced with the gentle eyes of the cleric they had first met at supper.
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��Mademoiselle is correct, you know. It will do no good. The people here see it as a sign of the times.”
“But there must be something that can be done. Surely such violence is not the answer.”
“The people are hungry and tired; too much taxation and too many wars. They are swayed by a movement that, to have them renounce the true faith, promises them everything they lack. To many of my overburdened flock, prayer was their greatest consolation in these difficult times. Now they have lost even that at the hands of those reformers, the Lutherans.”
“I had no idea that they are against God,” Henri gasped.
“Can you look at what they have done here and think otherwise, my son?”
Diane took her small black-velvet purse from the folds of her skirt and emptied the silver coins and a strand of pearls into the hands of the village priest. She closed her own hand around his.
“Oh no, my child, I cannot take this.”
“You must. It is important that you rebuild God’s house. You must rebuild! If you do not, they will have won!”
Her urgings brought a slow smile to his kind face. “This will go a long way toward our work. May the Lord bless you for your kindness.” He deigned and made the sign of the cross before her.
A CART COVERED over by a plank of wood served as the altar. A pewter mug was used as the chalice for the rite of Communion. The gathering was a meager collection of assorted faithful. Many of the village young who embraced the new ideas were absent. So too were the poor; those who were promised a better life by renouncing the hypocrisy of the Church. Those who did attend were the sick and the elderly. There were also a few wealthy patrons from one of the several inns down the hill.
Despite the devastation they had seen that morning, Henri felt he had been blessed with a new and powerful insight. He knelt through the Mass, his fist closed tightly around a small, gold crucifix, a gift from his mother. His mind was whirling with conflict. His heart was bursting with a clash of feelings.