Aghast, I said, “I love only Henri. I will forever love only Henri.”
His face was taut with grief, his voice shatteringly mournful.
“I know, Madame la Dauphine. I have read your stars.”
Twenty-three
The rain did not last long. Numbed, I rode back to the palace, stopping a short distance away to hand over the horse’s reins to Madame Gondi, who returned it to the stables. I said nothing to her, but even in the darkness, she must have read the horror in my bearing.
I went directly to my chamber, and did not go down for supper; I was still too shocked to be charming and talkative. I fastened the pearl pendant around my neck with trembling fingers.
Despite my disquiet, I needed to lie with Henri that night. I made a chambermaid wait while I penned a note urging my husband to come to my chambers immediately after supper, implying that some emergency had occurred.
One of the ladies undressed me to my chemise, then left while Madame Gondi brushed out my hair, still damp from the drizzle on my ride home. Her eyes held many questions, but she came and went in silence.
After a time, Henri knocked on my bedchamber door; I opened it myself. He hesitated on the threshold, his face sun-browned from the hunt, a slash of concern separating his brows. His eyes were easily read: He had not wanted to come, but Diane had sent him.
“Are you unwell, Madame la Dauphine?” he asked formally. He held his brown velvet cap a bit nervously in both hands.
Before his arrival, I had thought that my nerves would fail, that I would be unable lure him into a liaison. But at the sight of him, a surge of feral heat swept over me—wild and foreign, from someplace far outside me—carrying away with it all my notions of propriety and dignity. I wanted to devour him alive.
I put a finger to my lips and reached past him to close the chamber door.
He was embarrassed by my forwardness and eager to leave; I would not let him. Like the imbecile prostitute, I snaked my hand beneath the waistband of his leggings, found the flesh between his legs, and closed my fingers around it; with my other hand, I pulled his leggings down to the middle of his thighs.
I knelt before him and did something I had never done: I lowered my head and took his swelling flesh into my mouth, at the same time glimpsing a veil of waving golden hair where my own mousy brown should have been.
My actions caught him off guard. At first he tried to push me away, then held very still, and finally seized my skull and groaned as his cap fell to the floor, forgotten. His shaft was veined and purple and more swollen than I had ever seen it—like me, hardened by blood and ready to burst. I moved my mouth up and down, so fast that I cut my upper lip and tasted blood. I rose quickly on my toes, seizing Henri’s shoulders and pulling him down to kiss his mouth and tongue, to make him taste blood, too.
This time, he did not pull away. My madness infected him, and he lifted me off my feet into his arms, our tongues entwined, our bodies pressed so fast together that the effort made us tremble; so tightly, Ruggieri’s pearl burrowed painfully between my breasts.
I pulled back with a mighty sigh, then caught Henri’s hands and led him shuffling to the bed, his erect shaft an arrow pointing upward to lift the hem of his doublet. He waited for me to lie down as I always had; instead, I pushed him onto the bed and stripped away his leggings, then pulled off my chemise. I spread him like Montecuculli waiting for the final crack of the whip, then straddled him. I was wet and he slipped in easily; the emphatic pleasure of it made us both gasp.
The power that seized me was white-hot and inhuman; its sway allowed no resistance, no thought, no emotion save desire. It was coarse and ugly and beautiful; it bloomed with life and stunk of death. I was no longer Catherine, no longer in my chamber. The breath of a hundred men warmed my face, the touch of a hundred hands groped my breasts, my vulva; I was ablaze, unashamed. I wanted them all to pierce me. I desired the entire world.
I pinned Henri’s legs and pressed my mouth hard against his to taste death and iron. I ground my body against his; I sank my teeth into his shoulder and laughed when he cried out. I laughed, too, when he pulled me from the bed and pressed my face and breasts against the cherry paneling on the wall to impale me from behind.
It was tainted and impure and intoxicating. I reared against him, groaning, reaching behind me to dig my nails into his hips, to bring him deeper inside me. And when I could take no more—when desire had reached its loveliest, ugliest peak, he convulsed, crushing me against the wall, and roared in my ear. I screamed, high and shrill with unbearable pleasure, unbearable horror. For buried within this surfeit of mindless, pulsating heat was a tiny cold black center, one that contained the glistening purple skull of an unborn child.
Thought returned, in the guise of Ruggieri’s silent whisper:
Only ever out of love.
Henri pulled out his shriveling flesh. I felt the weight of liquid dropping inside me and realized it was his seed. For a moment, I considered letting it flow out and away, but its loss would have healed nothing. I staggered to the bed and lay down, protective of the fluid within my womb and repulsed by it.
Henri fell beside me on his stomach, his expression one of wonder and disbelief.
“Catherine,” he whispered. “My shy, innocent wife, what has taken hold of you?”
“The Devil,” I said flatly and did not smile.
He recoiled faintly at the darkness in my tone. He was unsettled, rightly so, but also entranced, and the next evening found him again in my arms. By then, I had given the charged onyx to Madame Gondi and instructed her to hide it beneath Diane’s mattress.
Three weeks passed, during which my husband visited my bedchamber nightly. Voracious, I flung myself at Henri every time he passed over my threshold. My appetite knew no bounds; I demanded that he penetrate every orifice, examine with his fingers and tongue every inch of my flesh, and I did the same to him. Alone with any man—Ruggieri, or a groom or page or diplomat—I would find myself suddenly overcome by blazing desire.
One morning, Madame Gondi was reading aloud my list of appointments for the day while Annette, one of the ladies of the chamber, was lacing my bodice. I was exhausted from my antics with Henri the night before. He had paid a great deal of attention to my breasts, and they ached so much that I scolded Annette to be gentler. The words had scarcely left my lips when I felt a surge of heat, followed by a chill and urgent nausea. I pressed my hand to my mouth and lurched toward my basin, but in midstep I stopped and retched violently. Just when I thought I was recovered, a fresh wave seized me and brought me to my knees.
A basin appeared near me, and I maneuvered myself over it to vomit repeatedly. Eyes and nose streaming, I looked up to see Madame Gondi crouching beside me. Her expression held no concern; to the contrary, she was grinning broadly, and it took me, stupid girl, long seconds to understand and smile back at her.
Our first son was born at Fontainebleau on the nineteenth of January 1544. It was late afternoon when he appeared; the winter sun had already set, and the lamps were lit, casting long shadows. His first wail was high and weak. I was not comforted until he was placed in my arms and I saw for myself that he was a normal infant, if frail. We named him after the late Dauphin and the King, who was pleased beyond description.
Such a strange and wondrous thing, to be a mother! With Clarice, Ippolito, King François, and Henri, I had never received constant affection. But nestling my tiny son against my bosom, I was filled with urgent tenderness, a love that defied all restraint, and knew that it was requited.
“Ma fils,” I whispered into the translucent little shell of his ear. “M’ami, je t’adore . . .” The words of endearment in a foreign tongue came easily to my lips, though I had never heard them uttered—only seen them written on parchment, in Cosimo Ruggieri’s hand.
Little François was beset by fevers and colic, though the French astrologers claimed that he would be a long-lived monarch, greatly loved by his subjects, and would have many siblings. I d
id not ask Ruggieri to cast his nativity; I knew he wouldn’t lie to please me.
I was deeply relieved. With my son’s birth, I had purchased the King’s loyalty and Henri’s gratitude; I had also hoped this would win his love, but he turned increasingly to Diane.
I swallowed my pride and took pleasure in my infant son and in the company of the King, who now lavished gifts on me as if I were his paramour. I spent most of my hours with His Majesty, learning all that I could of government.
I also met daily with Ruggieri, who presented me with a tiny silver talisman of Jupiter to put beneath the baby’s crib to bring good health. We never mentioned the murders or his earlier confession of love. At times I would laugh at his dry wit or smile, and the veil of his composure would lift fleetingly to reveal tenderness, but I always pretended not to see it.
Diane continued to make good on her promise to me: Henri visited my bedchamber faithfully. By then my wild ardor had cooled, but that did not stop me from conceiving again.
I was heavily pregnant when my dear friend, Jeanne, returned to Court. Her marriage to the German Duke had been annulled, in part because Jeanne had failed to conceive, but mostly because King François had failed to deliver on promises of military support. I was glad to see Jeanne again; she remained my constant companion and was at my side when I gave birth the following year to my daughter Elisabeth.
Elisabeth was sickly, like little François, and it was some time before we were certain of her survival. She was a docile, content infant who rarely cried; I held her in my arms as she slept and looked down on her sweet, placid face, finally able to believe that my crime was justified.
But the joy brought by Elisabeth’s arrival was dimmed by tragedy. The English had invaded the French region of Boulogne, and in the autumn of 1545, Henri’s younger brother had joined the battle. During a respite in the fighting, Charles and his companions had come upon a dwelling whose inhabitants had died of plague. Believing himself to be immortal, like so many youths, Charles entered the house fearlessly, mocked the piteous corpses, and used their pillows to playfully beat his men. Within three days he was dead.
His death stole the last of the King’s physical reserves. For many years, François had suffered from an abscess in his privates and infections of the kidneys and lungs; now he worsened dramatically, though grief did not permit him rest. For two years, he traveled compulsively through the countryside, hunting despite his illness; I rode with him. Near the end, he could no longer bear the pain of sitting in the saddle but followed the hunt in a litter. I ignored the chase and trotted slowly alongside, chatting with him while Anne and his band of fair ladies galloped ahead after the prey. Henri had gone to visit Diane in her château at Anet, leaving me to look after his ailing father, but there was nothing I would rather have done.
We moved from lodge to lodge. At Rambouillet, I was riding alongside François when he fainted in his litter. I instructed the pages to take him to his chamber and summon the physician. I expected him to rally; he had fallen desperately sick several times over the past year but had always recovered.
While the doctor was examining His Majesty, the Duchess d’Etampes stormed into the antechamber where I waited.
“What has happened?” she demanded. “Let me go to him!”
Anne was quivering, imperious, still enviably beautiful, but her indignance was born not of honest concern for François but of a selfish desire to ensure her protector still lived. Over the past several months, she and Diane had begun to exchange public insults while secretly lobbying against each other. The courtiers’ loyalties were shifting from the ailing King to the Dauphin, with the result that Anne’s influence had lessened. Rather than accept the inevitable change, she had grown frantically demanding.
The physician emerged from the King’s bedroom. The hair beneath his black velvet skullcap was white; bags of shadowed flesh hung under his eyes. I rose to my feet when he entered, but at the sight of his grief-dulled gaze, I sank back into my chair.
His voice broke as he relayed to me the results of his examination: François’s body could bear no more. Although the King was only fifty-two, infections had overwhelmed him. He was rotting from the inside out.
“You lie!” Anne hissed. “He has always recovered. You underestimate his strength!”
I turned to her. “Get out,” I said softly. “Get out, Your Grace, and do not set foot into this room until you are called for, else I will summon the guards.”
She gasped as though I had struck her. “How dare you,” she said, her jaw slack with outrage, but I heard uncertainty in her tone. “How dare you . . .”
“Get out,” I repeated.
She retreated as far as the corridor, muttering curses beneath her breath.
I ignored her and turned back to the sorrowful, rheumy-eyed doctor. “Are you certain?”
He nodded gravely. “I do not expect him to survive more than a few days.”
I steepled my hands, pressed them to my lips, and closed my eyes. “My husband must be sent for at once. He is at Madame de Poitiers’s château at Anet . . .”
“I will see that the Dauphin is notified, Madame,” the doctor responded kindly. “In the meantime, His Majesty has asked for you.”
I banished imminent tears and eased my taut, vacant expression into one more pleasant, then rose and went into the bedchamber.
François was propped up on the pillows, his face grey against the white linens. It was the end of a cold, damp March, and a fire roared in the hearth, leaving the room oppressively warm, yet the King shivered beneath many blankets. The curtains had been drawn and the lamps left unlit, to avoid paining his eyes, which cast the room in twilight. The lines in his brow conveyed misery, but he was altogether lucid, and when he saw me, he managed a wan smile.
I did my best to smile back, but he was not fooled.
“Ah, Catherine,” he said, his voice wavering and reedy. “Always so brave. There’s no need to dissemble; I know I’m dying. Cry if you wish, my darling. I won’t be frightened by your tears.”
“Oh, Your Majesty . . .” I clasped his hand. “I’ve sent for Henri.”
“Do not tell Eléonore.” He sighed. “I regret that I’ve treated her badly, especially when I see what you’ve endured.”
I averted my eyes. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh, but it is. Perhaps . . .” His face crumpled—in physical pain, I thought, until he opened eyes gleaming with tears. “Had I not sent him away to be the Emperor’s hostage, perhaps he would have grown to be a different man. But he is weak . . .”
His teeth began to chatter. I tucked the blankets tightly about him, then wrung out a towel from a basin of water and set the damp cloth upon his forehead. He sighed with relief.
“That woman . . .” His lip curled. “She rules him, and so will rule France. Henri has made the same mistake I did. Mark my words: She’ll seize all the power she can; she’s ruthless, and Henri too much a fool to see it.”
The speech exhausted him; he broke off, panting, until he could catch his breath.
“Don’t let Anne in here,” he said finally. “I have been such a fool.” He squeezed my hand. “You and I are alike. I see it in you. You’re strong enough to do what is best for the nation, even if it breaks your heart.”
“Yes,” I said, very softly.
He looked at me with wan affection. “Promise me, then. Promise me that you’ll do what is best for France. Promise me that you’ll keep the throne safe for my son.”
“I promise,” I whispered.
“I love you more than my own child,” he said.
At that, my composure broke and I sobbed openly.
The physicians bled the King with leeches and dosed him with quicksilver, but he worsened markedly. By morning, he did not know me. Toward the afternoon he grew lucid again and asked for a priest.
Henri arrived late that night. He and his father wished to be alone, without witness to their grief or final words to each other. The Duchess d’E
tampes hovered silently in the corridor, her eyes wide with shock.
I sat on the floor in the King’s antechamber, my back pressed to the wall, and wept into my hands. François had been my protector and dearest friend. I remained huddled on the floor throughout the long night, listening to the rise and fall of Henri’s voice on the other side of the closed door. In the morning, the King’s confessor, the Bishop of Mâcon, arrived. I tried to see past the door as it opened, and glimpsed Henri’s haggard face, his black eyes raw with grief.
The King never called for me again.
When Madame Gondi came for me at noon, I was too weak to resist but let myself be guided to my room and washed and dressed in clean clothes. I could not rest, but returned to the King’s apartments and settled again on the floor near the entrance to his bedchamber. The Duchess d’Etampes again appeared, dazed and carelessly dressed and minus her white face paint and rouge. She did not dare speak to me, but held vigil in the corridor.
In the next room, Henri let go a heartbroken wail; I lowered my face into my hands and wept. The Duchess seemed strangely unmoved until the door to the King’s bedchamber opened and the red-eyed Bishop of Mâcon emerged. He turned to me, his head bowed.
“His Majesty the Most Christian King François is dead.”
I could not speak, but in the hallway, the Duchess d’Etampes let go a scream.
“May the earth swallow me up!” she wailed—not in grief but in terror. She had abused her power as the King’s mistress to harm many and insult all. Apparently she had thought that François would never die, that retribution from her enemies would never come—and now she was unprepared. I remember her dry-eyed panic well—how she clutched first her cheeks, then her head, as if to keep it from suddenly flying off, how she seized her skirts and ran away, her progress hobbled by her fine high-heeled slippers. It was the last time I ever saw her.
I sat down upon the cold floor a princess and rose from it a queen, but took no joy in the fact. As it would the Duchess, change would bring me catastrophe.
The Devil's Queen: A Novel of Catherine de Medici Page 24