But divorce proceedings—or, rather, petitions for an annulment, for the king of France was seeking separation on the grounds that he and his wife had married within the prohibited bounds of consanguinity without first obtaining the necessary papal dispensation and that additionally Margot had been forced into the union against her will by her family—were notoriously long, drawn-out affairs, and Henry and Marguerite’s proved no exception. It took the pope until September of 1595 just to lift the ban of excommunication against the king and readmit him as a member of the Catholic Church in good standing. By that time Henry’s mistress Gabrielle, although married to another man for appearance’s sake, had already given Henry an illegitimate son. This led to further complications, as it was unclear what the status of the boy would be if the king later married Gabrielle and had other, legitimate children by her. The proceedings dragged on.
But by her swift concurrence with his request, Marguerite had bought herself her husband’s goodwill, and this produced immediate monetary relief and an improvement in her living conditions. She began once again in a small way to indulge her taste for culture, although she replaced the gaiety and grand balls of her youth with a far more tranquil atmosphere devoted to piety and introspection. She still heard music daily, but her vocalists came from the choir of the local cathedral. “Now that the world has abandoned her she has found help in God alone, whom she serves every day most devoutly,” observed her old friend Brantôme, who came to visit her at Usson in 1593. “Never does she miss a celebration of the Mass,” he added. Again in a small, regional way, she undertook the patronage of poets and writers. Many of these came from nearby Lyon, where much of the literary community was consumed with a new aesthetic that attempted to synthesize religion and passion—the doctrine of ideal love, possibly inspired by proximity to the queen. That several books on the subject of ideal love were dedicated to “Madame Marguerite of France, Queen of Navarre,” attests at the very least to Margot’s sympathetic interest and support for the authors.
Marguerite had not given herself over entirely to religious devotion. While at Usson she reputedly began a relationship with her choirmaster, with whom she was close for many years; in 1595, she raised him to the nobility and later made him a high official in her household. One of her other visitors, the Huguenot scholar Joseph Juste Scaliger, sniffed that while in retirement Margot “has as many men as she wishes, and she selects them herself”—this was probably an allusion to the choirmaster, as no other name is coupled with hers during this period.
But it was to her love of reading that Marguerite gave herself mostly during the long years of solitude at the château of Usson. Her library consisted of some three hundred volumes, including works by poets, scholars, and novelists such as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ronsard, and du Bellay as well as many demanding works of history and science. “She is very anxious to obtain all the fine new books that are being composed, those of holy subjects as well as those of the humanities,” reported Brantôme, “and when she begins to read a book, long though it may be, she will not stop until she comes to the end, and often she forgets food and sleep thereby.” It was during this period, too, that she found her own literary voice and began work on her memoirs. She structured the story of her life in a number of letters to Brantôme, who was then similarly engaged in writing a series of biographies of celebrated women, including one of Marguerite herself. “I have been induced to undertake writing my Memoirs the more from five or six observations which I have had occasion to make in your work, as you appear to have been misinformed respecting certain particulars,” Margot explained in her correspondence. “These Memoirs might merit the honorable name of history from the truths contained in them, as I shall prefer truth to embellishment… They are the labors of my evenings, and will come to you an unformed mass, to receive its shape from your hands… Mine is a history most assuredly worthy to come from a man of honor, one who is a true Frenchman, born of illustrious parents, brought up in the Court of the Kings my father and brothers, allied in blood and friendship to the most virtuous and accomplished women of our times, of which society I have had the good fortune to be the bond of union,” she wrote.
It was well that she had this project to occupy her, for by the beginning of 1599 she and Henry still had not obtained the desired annulment. This had far more to do with the question of who Henry’s future wife would be than the behavior of his present one. Gabrielle, the king’s mistress, while not a Huguenot herself, was very close friends with Henry’s sister, Catherine, one of the staunchest Protestants in France, and the pope worried that if the king married his lover she might encourage him to relapse into heresy. Consequently he refused to authorize the necessary inquiry into the matter that was a prerequisite to annulment.
In April of 1599, however, Gabrielle herself settled the question to Rome’s satisfaction by unexpectedly dying in childbirth, thus paving the way for papal approval. Accordingly, on September 24, the pontiff ordered the various parties involved in the petition to be examined by representatives of the Church as a final step before annulment. Although the inquiry was to be held at the Louvre in Paris, Marguerite received permission to give her testimony privately at Usson, fearing that she might break down in front of an audience. “Never did I consent willingly to this marriage,” her signed statement read. “I was forced into it by King Charles IX and the Queen my mother. I besought them with copious tears but the King threatened me that, if I did not consent, I should be the most unhappy woman in the realm. Although I had never been able to entertain any affection for the King of Navarre, and said and repeated that it was my desire to wed another prince, I was compelled to obey. To my profound regret, conjugal affection did not exist between us during the seven months which preceded my husband’s flight in 1575. Although we occupied the same couch, we never spoke to one another.”* Additionally, two members of Catherine de’ Medici’s household, including her chambermaid, testified on Marguerite’s behalf, reporting her many tears of refusal prior to the wedding and her mother’s subsequent threats “to make her the most wretched lady in the kingdom” if she did not go through with the marriage.
Margot’s affidavit was convincing. On November 10, 1599, the pope declared the union of Henry of Navarre to Marguerite de Valois to be null and void. On December 17, this decision was publicly confirmed by the Parlement of Paris, which authorized “both His Most Christian Majesty and Her Serene Highness the Queen to contract other alliances.” The very next day, a grateful Henry wrote to his former wife: “My Sister—The persons delegated by our very holy father to decide upon the nullity of our marriage, having at length pronounced their decision to our common desire and satisfaction, I did not wish to defer longer… to inform you of it on my part, and to renew the assurances of my affection for you… I desire you also to believe that I do not intend to cherish and love you the less, on account of what has taken place, than I did heretofore,” Henry continued, apparently without irony. “But, on the contrary, that I intend to exercise more solicitude than ever in regard to everything which concerns you, and to make you recognize, on all occasions, that I do not intend to be henceforth your brother merely in name, but also in deed… Further, I am very satisfied with the frankness and candor of your prudence, and I trust that God will bless the rest of our days, by a fraternal friendship accompanied by a public felicity, which will render them very happy.”
And this time he meant what he said, for less than two weeks later, on December 29, 1599, by letters patent, Marguerite was granted the honorary title of queen as well as duchess of Valois, and her entire dowry returned to her along with the rest of Henry’s settlement. She was forty-six years old and wealthy in her own right. And with wealth came independence.
But more important, against all the odds, she had survived the murderous brutality of her family and her times. She was free of a marriage that she had never wanted, that had been arranged under false pretenses, and that should never have taken place. In this she embodied
France itself.
ALTHOUGH AS PART OF her compensation Henry had offered his former wife her choice of a number of stately homes in which to reside (the château of Usson was too important a stronghold to remain in her possession indefinitely), Marguerite at first elected to stay where she was. At least initially, this was likely because after so many death threats and scares the queen wished to ensure that political conditions remained stable and the king’s attitude toward her benign before venturing out of the safety of her fortress. But there was also the difficulty that Henry, worried about the effect she might have on the capital—she was, after all, the last surviving member of her family and could easily have allowed herself to be used as a figurehead by those who sought to oppose his rule—had denied her Paris. And it was clearly to Paris that Margot wished most to return.
So she took her time and planned her strategy well, paving the way for her eventual departure. From her vantage point in the south of France she kept a close watch on both regional affairs and matters of state. When in October 1600, Henry chose Marie de’ Medici as his new wife—not out of respect for Catherine but because he owed the bride’s father, Francesco de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had helped support his war effort, a whopping 1,174,000 écus and this was the only means Henry could find to pay back the debt—Marguerite immediately wrote to Marie, proffering her congratulations as well as her “good will dedicated to serving and honoring” her and graciously signing the note “your very humble and obedient servant, sister, and subject.”* When soon thereafter Marie became pregnant, Margot resolutely put aside what were surely feelings of regret to celebrate the event. “The happy news that the Queen is with child will be received nowhere with more joy than by me,” she wrote bravely to Henry in a letter of March 17, 1601.
Having taken pains to place herself on an affectionate footing with her former husband and his new family, Marguerite then sought to further reassure Henry of her good intentions by proving her absolute loyalty to the Crown. This she managed to do by providing the king with information concerning a clandestine revolt against his government formulated by her nephew Charles de Valois, count of Auvergne, who lived nearby. (Charles de Valois was Charles IX’s illegitimate son by Marie Touchet, his Protestant mistress.) Margot wrote to Henry that she knew that the conspirators coveted the stronghold of Usson but that she was determined not to let it fall into their hands. “The chief care that I have in preserving this place is that when I quit it I may make a gift thereof to Your Majesty, to whom I had dedicated it,” she apprised him. “This ill-advised boy [Charles de Valois] holds many places in this country, houses which he usurped from the late Queen my mother. But with the aid of God, your Majesty may be assured that he will never set foot here.”
Finally, in 1605, she felt sure enough of herself and her position to make an attempt (despite Henry’s stated restriction) to return to Paris. The previous year Marguerite had started a lawsuit against Charles de Valois, who had been the beneficiary of her mother’s largess when Catherine had seen fit to disinherit her, and Margot used the necessity of following up on this legal action as her excuse for wishing to visit the capital. She wrote to Henry in March, asking for formal permission to travel to the château of Madrid, in the Bois de Boulogne, six miles west of the center of Paris. She was not dissuaded when she received no reply but packed up anyway and left the citadel—“my ark of refuge,” Marguerite called it—the first week in July. She had not been outside the immediate vicinity in nearly nineteen years—not since she had first arrived at the château as a prisoner in November 1586. As a final gesture of goodwill, to forestall against any possible objection from Henry to her returning to Paris, she formally left the mighty castle to the Crown. “From your Majesty I received it, and to your Majesty I return it,” she said simply.
As her entourage wound its way northward, she met one of Henry’s ministers on the road near Orléans. He tried to get the queen to change her destination, even offering her the exquisite castle of Chenonceaux, which had been Henri II’s adoring gift to Diane de Poitiers before Catherine had jealously snatched it back after his death, but Marguerite was not to be deterred. She had evidently expected something like this, because she had come armed with a further peace offering: she had information, she advised the minister, regarding a new conspiracy against the king. The official did not believe her—her intelligence “contained as much falseness as truth,” he snorted to Henry—but he passed it along anyway. To his great surprise it was discovered to be accurate.
This last expedient proved decisive. Although clearly it was not Henry’s first choice that his former wife take up residence so near to his government, she had made such a show of devotion that he could not reasonably find an excuse to turn her away. Accordingly, he made the best of it. When Marguerite finally arrived at the Bois de Boulogne on August 2, 1605, she found the seigneur de Champvallon, the only one of her previous lovers to survive, and the eleven-year-old duke of Vendôme, Henry’s cherished eldest son by the deceased Gabrielle, waiting for her—the equivalent of a welcome home gift from the king.
SO BEGAN THE MOST peaceful and congenial years of Marguerite’s life. The day after her arrival she wrote to Henry to thank him for his thoughtfulness in sending his son to greet her. “It is easy to see that he is of royal birth, since he is as beautiful in person as he is in advance of his age in intelligence,” she pronounced. “I was never more enchanted than whilst admiring this marvel of childhood, so full of wisdom and serious conversation.” Such affectionate flattery could obviously not go unrewarded. A few days after receiving her letter, the king himself appeared at her door for an official visit.
If Henry was apprehensive about meeting Marguerite after the passage of so much time, she quickly put him at his ease. She knew, at fifty-two, that she was not the striking beauty she once was. As so often happens with age, she had put on weight, and her complexion was no longer creamy. “If I ever were possessed of the graces you have assigned to me, trouble and vexation render them no longer visible, and have even effaced them from my own recollection,” she sighed in a letter to Brantôme. “So that I view myself in your Memoirs, and say, with old Madame de Rendan, who, not having consulted her glass since her husband’s death, on seeing her own face in the mirror of another lady, exclaimed, ‘Who is this?’ ” Once svelte, Margot’s fuller figure in later life was considerably amplified by the curious, old-fashioned metal plates she insisted on wearing tucked beneath the yards of material that comprised her sweeping skirts, an oddity in the capital. “There were many doors through which she could not pass,” sniggered one of Henry’s courtiers, who couldn’t understand why the queen clung to a look so outmoded—but then again, he had never been shot at point-blank range and survived.
Perhaps it was precisely the absence of any flicker of physical attraction between Henry and Margot—or, rather, the relief of no longer needing to pretend to try to create a sexual spark—that freed them from a repetition of their past mistakes and allowed them to approach each other with a civility that by degrees broadened into genuine warmth. As soon as it became clear that there were going to be no more scenes or recriminations, Henry relaxed. He stayed chatting for three hours on that first visit and even kidded her, as he took his leave, that she should think about not spending so much money and keeping more reasonable hours, to which she lightly replied that, alas, these traits ran in her family and she was far too old to change them now.
When the king finally departed, it was with a promise to introduce her to the not-quite-four-year-old dauphin, Louis, his eldest son by Marie de’ Medici. True to his word, he sent the child in a carriage the next day; Marguerite spotted the royal insignia and went out to greet him. Louis had evidently been drilled in the etiquette demanded by the occasion, for he stopped short in front of her, lifted his hat solemnly, and piped up, “Vous soyez la bien venue, maman ma fille!” (You are very welcome, mama my girl!) His princely duty accomplished, he ran to give her a hug. Charmed, Margot retu
rned his affection and praised his effort, pronouncing admiringly, “How handsome you are! You have certainly the royal air of commanding,” and the next day sent him an exquisite diamond-and-emerald figurine of a boy with a sword sitting on a dolphin, not neglecting to include a jeweled hair ornament for his younger sister, two-year-old Elizabeth.
Her success was complete when, on August 28, less than a month after her arrival, she was received in state at the Louvre by the king and queen of France. Marie de’ Medici, jealous of her position, at first refused to move forward to greet her husband’s first wife until she was publicly reprimanded by Henry, who informed his current spouse that Marguerite was the last of the ruling family of Valois and was therefore entitled to every courtesy by virtue of her rank and blood.
After this Margot was accepted as a member in good standing of the royal dynasty, a sort of favorite family aunt. Henry called her My Sister, and, despite the initial awkwardness, she and Marie de’ Medici became good friends. With no children of her own, Marguerite gravitated toward the royal offspring. A chronicler related that he once witnessed the king, the dauphin, and the former queen of Navarre in the bedroom of Marie de’ Medici, Henry and his son sitting on the couch with Marguerite on her knees in front of them, all three of them playing with a little dog.
The Rival Queens Page 39