Courtesan

by Diane Haeger

  He had grown up hearing about the Protestant Reformation. The French Court was known throughout Europe to be sympathetic to its followers. The King himself often introduced it into the discussion circles, and it seemed somehow to be woven into all civilized conversations. His Aunt Marguerite, the famous Queen of Navarre who rebelled against dogma, was inspired by it. It was a philosophical issue aimed at the wealthy and well educated; or so he had always been made to believe.

  In the years since his return from Spain, Henri had never been allowed to hear the other side. Now, as he knelt there in the meadow beside Diane in the soft valley of clover, his knee resting near the folds of her voluminous black silk gown, he felt changed. The alteration in him had been profound. At the same time, he believed he had never been happier and more full of hope for the future than he was at that moment. Surrounded by the purity and beauty of life, exposed to its dark side, Henri knew that this one incident, this moment in time, would somehow change his life forever.

  Père Olivier approached them after the service and thanked them as he had the others, most of whom now made their way back into the village. After kissing Diane’s hand, he leaned in with a smile broader than they had seen before.

  “I haven’t much way to repay your kindness but there is a tavern close by if you would consent to share a humble tankard of ale.” He whispered the words but his eyes danced with the delight of a child, which made them both laugh.

  “We should be pleased to join you,” Henri smiled.

  The tavern was a little stone building at the end of a dark and crooked alley. It was not the kind of place either of them had ever been, or likely would be again. It became an adventure. Henri winked at Diane as they ducked to pass through the low beamed door into the small crowded cellar. The priest led the way through the press of people, to a small wooden table near the back of the room.

  Once inside, they were completely enveloped by the shouts, the laughter and the earthy aroma of the coarse villagers. Père Olivier raised his hand toward the proprietor, a robust man with little hair and the veined face of a drinker, who stood behind a long oak bar. Almost before he could lower his hand, three tall pewter tankards of ale were tossed down before them, each sloshing waves of white foam onto the table. Diane laughed out loud at the novelty then raised her tankard.

  “À Dieu!” she declared.

  “À Dieu!” they echoed and clanked their tankards together.

  As Diane lowered hers to the table, Henri laughed at the small arc of foam that had crested around the top of her mouth. The priest chimed in with a chuckle as Henri reached up to brush it away. But as his fingers met with the smooth skin of her chin, and lingered there, Diane’s easy smile fell away. She lowered her eyes and took a handkerchief from her velvet purse. Père Olivier leaned back in his chair, watching them, and then took another sip of ale.

  “So then, are you to be married? Is that why you’ve come away from Paris? Oh, no need to blush on my account. Your simple costume may fool the others, my boy, but I know nobility when I see it. You’d not be the first gentleman to want to enjoy the simpler life while he’s here. Your parents disapprove? Perhaps it was hers. Difference in your ages, I’d wager.”

  Diane was startled by his words and let her mouth drop open before she again raised her handkerchief to cover it. She looked over at Henri but said nothing.

  “No, that is not why we are here at all!” he snapped and shifted forward in his seat. “Why would you ask such a thing?’

  Père Olivier looked with wise eyes, first at Henri, and then over at Diane whose head was still lowered.

  “Oh, now I have offended you, my friends. Please, my humble pardon. It is simply that I have married so many in my work that I am afraid at times conjecture is difficult to avoid. You may say you are not to be married, but rarely in my many years of service to God have I seen such devotion in the eyes as I do with the two of you.” He took another sip of ale. “I always watch the eyes to predict a happy union. The eyes do not deceive.”

  Diane coughed nervously into her silk handkerchief.

  “Well you are mistaken. Sorely mistaken! Madame is a friend; my chaperone here. Nothing more.”

  “As you wish, but if you should change your mind; if things should change between you, I mean, I should be honored to be the one to join you in marriage,” he said as he shrugged his shoulders and downed the last of his ale.

  Despite his conciliatory words, it was clear that Père Olivier did not believe Henri. Diane knew that the young cleric had the entire story of who they really were formulated in his mind. Whatever he thought, the outcome was still the same. He saw something. It frightened her to be that transparent. She looked away, wanting to spring from the table and leave them both sitting there. She wanted to go back to Anet where it was safe; where her life was certain.

  She looked around the room with anxious eyes. Then, across the room near the door she saw a woman. A collection of men hovered around her at a small wooden table. Diane had not noticed until just then that it was a corner of the room immersed in a strange, dark silence. She was an old woman with frizzled white hair worn long around her shoulders. The men watched in silence as she studied another man’s hand.

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  Père Olivier turned around. “Ah, yes, old Odile.” He smiled. “The fortune-teller. They say she can tell you everything about yourself just by studying your hand. She sees your past. She also claims to know the future!” he said with half a laugh.

  “Is such a thing not blasphemous?” Diane cautiously asked.

  “Oh, she means no harm. It is entertainment, pure and simple. If I believed it was more than that, I certainly could not condone it. I can call her over if you would like to be entertained.”

  “No!” Henri snapped. “I know what is in my future, and I do not need an old woman to confirm it!”

  “Could you call her over for me, Father?”

  Henri turned to Diane. She was looking up at the priest. Her face was grazed by the sunlight from the small box window near their table. Père Olivier stood, brushed off his robes and moved through the crowded tavern toward the woman he had called Odile.

  “Madame, you cannot be serious!” Henri whispered. “What if she gives us away? It will ruin everything!”

  “I think you give her too much credit, Henri. She is an old woman, probably trying to make enough money for food and a couple of tankards of ale. What can be the harm in seeing that she has just that for tonight?”

  Henri was able to carry his objection further when the cleric returned to the table with the woman by his side. When they drew near enough, Diane saw that she was not really as old as she had at first appeared. Her eyes were bright, a shade of green, and her face was nearly free from lines and the spots of age. But the hair, frizzled and completely white, gave her the sage appearance that Diane was certain she had purposely sought.

  Odile sat down and drank from one of the half-full tankards that had been sitting on the table before it was offered. She brushed the foam away from her lips with the back of her sleeve, and then motioned for Diane to surrender her hand.

  “Hmmm. . .a long life,” she said, in a dark liquid voice. “And children. Three.”

  “I have only two.”

  “I see three,” the old woman firmly replied.

  She looked at Diane to punctuate the confidence of her words. As she traced the long, thin palm with her fingers, her green eyes began to narrow. “This is most extraordinary,” she said and then paused a moment, going back over the same line on Diane’s hand. “I see power. Such power. Oh, it is such a strong image!”

  “All right, that is enough!” said Henri. “That is nonsense, and you are frightening her!”

  “I speak only the truth,” said Odile, looking directly into Henri’s eyes. “Have you anything to fear from that?”

  “But there must be some mistake,” Diane said, breaking the intensity between the Prince and the fortune-teller. “I am a
nything but powerful.”

  “Oh, but you are, ma chérie. It is all right here before me; before you! Your future holds for you great strength; the power to lead; to change.”

  Henri shuddered. If this woman was right, there was only one way that Diane could garner that kind of influence. But how could it be? It was not possible. The image of Diane with the King clouded Henri’s ability to reason. Each time he imagined them together it tore a little more at his heart. His breath quickened and he was flooded with fear. There could be no worse fate than that. To have her in the bed of the King of France would, for him, be far worse than death.

  “Do you see anything else?” Diane cautiously asked, clenching her other fist beneath the table.

  “Ah, yes. There is something. A matter of the heart. I see that it is intertwined with the power. As though the source of the power. . .is the love.”

  “And what in Heaven’s name do you mean by that?” Henri snapped again, forcing himself from his thoughts.

  “It means, my dear young man, that this woman before us, though I know not how, will one day rule a great many.” She cleared her throat and then looked back at Diane with the same luminescent green eyes. “I do not understand it myself, my dear girl, I can only tell you what I see. But yes, one day you shall have more power than you can imagine. . .and it will come to you through your power over one who adores you.”

  A WEEK OF SIMPLICITY at Cauterets was like a lifetime compared to the mire and deceit of the French Court. The altitude tended to make one a little dizzy at first so that caution in all activities was recommended and encouraged by the keeper of the inn.

  They began each day in the warm sulphur springs. Then each night after supper, Charles played his lute while Michel played the pipe, and everyone danced around the tables in the dining room. They laughed, sang songs together, and fast became friends. Even the mayor from Lyon gave way his propriety. He danced with the innkeeper’s wife, and confessed that his name was Jean.

  Diane and Henri attended vespers each afternoon at Père Olivier’s church in the meadow. Afterward they stole away with him for a tankard of ale at the little stone tavern. They heard more from him about the reformers and their clandestine activities in both France and Spain. They talked about philosophy and art, history and theology, but after that first meeting in the tavern, the village priest chose to honor their secrecy and never asked them again to reveal their true identities.

  “Go on, lad, dance with her!” urged the old innkeeper who served soup for the guests. François de Guise was flinging a puffing, wheezing Charlotte about the room on his arm, and Jacques was dancing with Hélène.

  “Go on!” the innkeeper urged again. She smacked Henri on the back and winked at Diane.

  “I am afraid I do not know how,” he finally conceded and shifted in his seat.

  “Oh, go on, laddy boy! I’m sure she’ll teach ya. Will ya not, deary?” she prodded at Diane with a gapped-tooth smile. Michel whistled a rousing tune on his pipe and the rest of the guests laughed and clapped their hands to the time of the music. Their happiness was infectious.

  “Will you dance with me, then?” asked Diane in a voice just above a whisper.

  He wanted to reject the idea but he could not for, in an instant, he found his hand tightly wound in hers as she led him just outside the open door and into the courtyard. Their movements were slow and studied, and were not to the rhythm of the music inside; but gently and carefully she gave him the patience with which to learn to dance.

  After a while in the evening breeze, his uncertain expression passed to a studied smile as he continued to peer down at his feet and twirl around to her lead.

  “Well, imagine it,” he chuckled. “I am dancing!”

  “That you are.” She smiled back at him. At that moment, under the shimmering light of the moon and the scratching music of the crickets, they looked into one another’s eyes. There, each of them uncovered something new. But it was Diane who made the greatest discovery. It was as if she had never really noticed his eyes until then. Until that day, that very moment in the freedom of Cauterets, his had been sad, lonely eyes. Now, there in the cool glow of the moonlit sky, they were strong eyes; passionate and questioning. He gazed at her until she blushed like a girl, and he made her dance with him again and again. They did not speak. There was no need. There was only the sound of music and laughter and the rustle of her skirts as they swept over the cobblestones.

  THE NEXT DAY they took a shorter route back from the village after vespers, winding their way through a deep green clover meadow. It was a steeper grade down which they needed to pass to return to the inn, but the poppies were much more lush and the view of the valley had beckoned them since their first day in Cauterets. Diane ran down the hill ahead of Henri, her black silk gown flowing behind her with the breeze.

  “Oh, how I wish I were a boy! To always be free like this!” she laughed, running with her arms outstretched.

  Diane ran down the incline laughing and skipping. The fresh air blew through her thick blond hair and pulled it away from her face so that she did not see the large stone beneath her feet. She tripped suddenly and went reeling, head first, into the masses of rich meadow grass and red poppies.

  Henri ran after her, shouting her name, but as he neared he could still hear her laughter as she lay in a pile of her rumpled skirts. Henri knelt beside her and grabbed her hands. His face was full of anger. He was prepared to shout out that she had needlessly alarmed him, but before he could, he met once again with her eyes; those same fragile blue eyes into which he gazed the night before.

  They looked at one another as her chest lightly heaved from her running. Slowly, a breath at a time, each drew nearer the other. There amid the rustling trees, the poppies and clover, Henri pressed his lips to her cheek and then slowly moved them over to meet hers.

  “You mustn’t,” she whispered, but this time she did not struggle against him as he pressed her soft rose petal lips more firmly on his own; breathless and urgent. She was powerless against him; his youth; his urgent virile body. I must be mad, she thought, as her mind whirled. I know that I am!

  Diane grew weak beneath the weight of his straining body as a primal instinct drove him to press her back beneath him into the soft clover. Kissing her. Touching her. Unsure and yet powerful. She opened her mouth to him, guiding his tongue over her own. It was warm. Like liquid fire. . .and she was weak. She wanted just to lie beneath him here, alone, and give in to what she knew he thought was love. They were alone. He was young and he would recover from his first experience. Oh, it has been so long. . .so very long.

  She felt the firmness of his hand on her thigh; his lips trailing a path on her neck. The press of his body against her own. Then she became mildly aware of a distant sound. Thundering. Pounding. Hooves of a horse digging into the loose earth. Growing louder. Diane sat up, looking around in a panic. She shook back the strands of hair that had fallen into her face, and quickly straightened the bodice of her gown. It was François de Guise. Henri moaned and moved away from her.

  “What the devil do you want?” Henri shouted when Guise was near enough to hear him. He rose and walked over to his friend who stopped his horse near them on the hill.

  “I beg Your Highness’s pardon, but a messenger has just come from the King. He says we are to return to Court at once. He asked that I give you this.” He extended a letter with the King’s seal and added as he did, “The messenger also relayed that it is of the utmost urgency.”

  “What is the news? Has something happened?”

  “Perhaps the letter. . .”

  Henri snatched the parchment from Guise. “Damn him!” he growled. “Even with this distance between us, he still manages to plague my life!”

  DIANE LAY ALONE on her bed in her black silk shift and blue jersey stockings, trying to rest before supper. But she could not sleep. The depths of what she had just felt frightened her. She had broken the boundaries of decorum.

  I am too ol
d for romance with a boy. She closed her mind to the mere possibility of it. It can go no further. I was right to think that he is infatuated. She grimaced and shook her head. There can be nothing but danger and heartbreak in it for us both. He does not need a lover so much as a mother. The King said so himself.

  Try as she might to push the thoughts from her mind, they crept back in. Silent thoughts. Deadly thoughts. To have a young lover, a boy to teach, to mold into the perfect lover. The image of his hard body pressed against her own in that field brought her from the state of dull, dazed half-slumber to a tortured awakening.

  She bolted from her bed wet with perspiration. Beads of sweat dripped from the top of her lip. Her heart raced. She was lying to Henri and lying to herself. There was nothing maternal about her feelings for him, nor did he want that from her. She poured water into the white porcelain basin at the foot of the bed and splashed it onto her face over and over until the upper portion of her shift was soaked.

  No matter how much like a man he looked, no matter what feelings he had managed to awaken in her, he was still a boy. The son of the King. That was a dangerous combination for a widow by whom the King himself was tempted. If she wanted to keep her place at Court, she must not lose His Majesty’s favor; that was a balance every courtier walked. But her thoughts were not so selfish as they were realistic. What would be left to her if she fell from grace and was sent back to exile in the cold, lonely domicile of Anet?

  She shivered as the cool breeze washed through the window across her wet skin. She was already in disfavor with Anne d’Heilly. That state of affairs alone could spell her ruin if it continued. Were it not for the King’s amorous intent and their mutual love of the arts, she was certain she would already have been sent home.

  Diane rubbed her hands up and down the gooseflesh that had formed on her arms. God help her, in spite of it all, she wanted to feel his touch again. She wanted him, once again, to kiss her. She wanted him. He wanted her. Neither of them were betrothed or married. It seemed so simple. He was a young man eager to give his love. She was a lonely widow desperate to receive it. What real harm could there be in helping him reach the confidence of manhood which, in the face of the King, seemed so intent on eluding him?