Fortunes of France 4: League of Spies

by Robert Merle

  †† “Girl.”

  ‡‡ “Play with her puppet.”

  §§ “Silence means consent.”

  ¶¶ “Elegant plays on words.”

  15

  IT WAS AT SEVEN O’CLOCK the next morning, Wednesday, 21st December, that I was able to see the king and report what I’d heard as he was removing his earrings. He was astonished at my account; then, having glanced at Du Halde, he looked at me with total incredulity.

  “Well, my son! This is unexpected! But it’s so imprudent that I can’t believe it! Even from Guise! In any case, I’ll see him at Mass at eight o’clock in the Saint-Calais chapel, and afterwards, and if he speaks to me, I’ll have a clear heart, or, if your man is correct, a very confused one. Du Halde,” he continued, “since my lazy secretary hasn’t arrived yet, may I ask you to write a note to Madame de Sauves?”

  “Happily, sire!” replied Du Halde, before going to fetch an escritoire and settling it on his knees.

  “Here it is,” said the king.

  Madame, I would be most unhappy if you were not to consent to the prayer that I make you in these sad lines, that you be willing to forgive me for having dared to speak ill of your ears, which, I remember, are the prettiest in the kingdom—and would be even more so if you were to oblige me by accepting these jewels from me. Your humble and devoted and affectionate servant, Henri.

  “Sire,” objected Du Halde, his austere face becoming even longer, “you’re being too delicate with a creature, who, on orders from the queen mother, consorts with the Magnificent. These people are already too quick to find you soft, timid and infinitely forgiving.”

  “Let them believe that! I wouldn’t be a bit sorry if they did right now,” said the king, throwing me a conspiratorial look. “My son, please wait in the old oratory; I’ll see you after Mass.”

  This old oratory was situated to the left of his chamber as you looked out of the windows, and to reach it you had to pass through a very low door, like most of those in this wing of the chateau, which is all the more strange in that this part of the chateau was built by François I, who was unusually tall, and must have had to bend over a lot. This door was adorned with a tapestry, no doubt to keep out the cold.

  The oratory itself was a small rectangular room, empty of any furniture since it was no longer used for Mass, and lit by a large and beautiful window that opened onto an Italian loggia. Opposite this window was another low door, which gave onto the “old cabinet”, a square room with a large table and five or six stools in it. A fireplace was set into the walls in the old cabinet, which were covered with wooden carvings, some of which opened by a secret mechanism that was hidden in the skirting board to reveal hiding places, where I imagined that the king kept his most precious documents. Du Halde told me later that the cabinet of the queen mother on the second floor was likewise adorned with fine wooden panels that hid cupboards, but that hers were on the exterior side of the room, whereas his were on the courtyard side. I’ll take his word for it since I was never able to put the tip of my toe in Jezebel’s den.

  I spent more than an hour waiting for the king in the old oratory, biting my nails and shivering, since the room wasn’t heated, finally seeking refuge in the old cabinet, where I found, thank God, a blazing fire and six of the Forty-five, whom I knew pretty well and asked in Provençal if I could join them, to which they agreed very politely. But seeing them happily occupied in a game of cards, I went over to the window that looked out on the courtyard and the Louis XII wing, which I loved, since both walls and adjoining tower were constructed with a pleasing mixture of brick and stone. Although the use of brick is unknown in my native Périgord, since we have such beautiful ochre stone to work with, the noble rusticity of this wing somehow reminded me of my crenellated nest at Mespech. This association turned quickly from pleasurable to melancholic, since I found myself pining for the countryside of my youth, all the more so given the perpetual rain falling outside, so typical of the Sarlat region in winter, and whose dank odour is still in my nostrils now, mingled with the smell of chestnuts, which were always roasting in the fireplace.

  I was in the midst of these thoughts about my youth when I saw a group of men emerge from the Saint-Calais chapel across the courtyard, two of whom broke away and strolled off together: the Duc de Guise, in his grey satin doublet, and the king, dressed in black velvet with the Order of the Holy Spirit attached to his collar and his head coiffed under his plumed hat. The two began to walk along under the covered gallery of the Louis XII wing, the columns obscuring their faces every now and then, which I would have wanted to study, knowing as I did the subject of their conversation. They talked for more than an hour, but I was unable (as were, no doubt, the group of men watching them) to discern whether their discussion was angry or animated. The only thing I noticed was that, at several different moments, Guise removed his great plumed hat, whereupon the king begged him to put it back on with a gesture from which I could conclude nothing, the duc being so prone to doffing his cap at all times, and the king so courteous.

  Ultimately, the two men parted ways, and the king crossed the courtyard under driving rain dressed only in his doublet. But, strangely, when Du Halde ran up to him brandishing his Italian ombrello, the king spun around impatiently and scolded him furiously, whereupon poor Du Halde had to conclude that his services weren’t needed. The king had begun to climb the staircase, and, since the door between the oratory and the king’s chamber was open, I raised the tapestry and waited in the doorway, ready to respond to the king’s call, sensing from his treatment of Du Halde that he was in one of his angry moods. But this one surpassed any I’d previously witnessed, for as soon as he’d entered his chamber, and the door having scarcely closed behind him, he ripped off his plumed hat and threw it furiously on the floor. This gesture reminded me of his brother, Charles IX, who, sixteen years before, as he was playing tennis with Guise, Téligny and me, was suddenly beside himself with rage when he heard Yolet tell him that there’d just been an attempt on the life of Coligny, and threw his racquet on the ground.

  “Sire!” Du Halde said reproachfully as he picked up the hat. “Look! You’ve broken the crest irreparably!”

  “’Tis a symbol, Du Halde!” screamed the king at the top of his lungs. “A symbol! And you know very well of what!”

  “Sire,” said Du Halde reproachfully, “you’re going to awaken Madame the queen mother, who is in a very bad way and took some medicine this morning.”

  “Bah!” snarled the king, grinding his teeth. “Women have seven lives like cats! Madame my mother will bury me and follow my funeral cortège, her arm resting on her ‘old woman’s walking stick’, as she likes to call him. Du Halde,” he continued, holding his hand up to his ear and looking very bewildered, “where are my earrings?”

  “But sire, you made Madame de Sauves a present of them this morning!”

  “Heavens!” roared the king. “Should I despoil myself while I’m still alive? Make the Magnificent constable! And give my earrings to his whore! Ah, my son,” he choked, seeing me standing there in the doorway, “your man wasn’t lying!”

  “Sire,” cautioned Du Halde, “the walls have ears!”

  “No, they don’t, my Du Halde,” said the king, his voice falling by several decibels. “This entire chateau is one immense ear, so fine that even my heartbeats can be heard. And one minute, Du Halde, one minute after my great anger, the Magnificent will know all about it. Du Halde,” he continued, speaking more softly and more rapidly, his teeth clenched, “I want to see d’Aumont, Revol, Rambouillet, Bellegarde, François d’O and my Corsican immediately in my old cabinet. Right away, do you hear?”

  Reader, I have drawn a plan of the second floor of the Château de Blois that will be essential in understanding what follows. S designates the marvellous staircase that leads from the courtyard to the various floors, but it is doubled by two others: s, which connects the chamber of the queen mother on the first floor with the king’s chamber on the secon
d—this is the spiral staircase that we’ve already seen, since it was on this staircase that Monsieur de Nambu and three of Larchant’s guards repulsed Madame de Sauves and her ears; and s’, which links the old cabinet (A) to the outdoors and allowed the Forty-five to have access to the king’s apartments without using the central staircase. H is the old oratory, next to the king’s chamber, where Henri told me to wait while he went to Mass that Wednesday; as for I and J (of which J was in a tower called, God knows why, the “Mill Tower”), they were rooms that served as guards’ rooms for the Forty-five, when the king wanted them to assemble nearby. The door in the old cabinet that opened onto B (the council room) had been walled up by the king on his arrival in Blois, no doubt to isolate his “cut-throats” (as the Leaguers injuriously labelled them) from the rest of his apartments. When you came from the council room (B) into the king’s chamber (G) you had on your right the great fireplace (which Henri complained was too far away from his throne); opposite the door were two trunks in the window alcoves, on which one could sit while waiting for the king to call one and present his hand. To the left was the king’s bed, whose blue velvet curtains, covered with gold fleurs-de-lis, were always drawn. The king didn’t like this bed and never slept in it, claiming it was puny, preferring his queen’s bed and the warmth of her body since he was so susceptible to the cold. To the left of the bed was a sort of alcove in which the throne—a simple armchair with armrests—was placed. To the right of this chair was a stool, on which the king would invite you to sit—or, depending on the consideration he wanted to show you, not invite you to sit—during an audience with him. On the other side of the room, to the left of the great fireplace, was a door that opened into F, the “new cabinet”. In fact, the king also received visitors on the other side of his apartments in the old cabinet, but he preferred to work in the new cabinet since it was a small room, and especially because it was well heated by the great fireplace.

  Two doors opened into the new cabinet: one from E, the king’s wardrobe, and another from D, the new oratory.

  I never set foot in C or C’, and so can’t describe their layout; these large rooms were the queen’s apartments and so it’s possible she had them subdivided…

  In the king’s new oratory was a small, very pretty altar, which was surmounted by a large crucifix; opposite the altar was a wooden prayer stool covered in gold leaf and cushioned with blue velvet, on which the king knelt for morning prayer and later for a Mass said by his chaplain, unless he decided to go out, cross the courtyard and attend Mass at the Saint-Calais chapel—as he had done this Wednesday morning, 21st December—where he encountered Guise and “was to have his heart cleared or excessively confused”.

  And that the said heart was pushed beyond all tolerable limits was clearly what this sudden outburst on his return from his conversation with Guise had demonstrated; and, even though the king had finally calmed down, I saw clearly when he came out of his wardrobe, from the worry in his eyes and the twist of his lips, that he had taken the duc’s threat to quit the Estates and leave Blois very hard. He was wearing, in the place of his damaged plumes, a pale-blue doublet; on his head was a hat of the same colour but devoid of any feathers, and even though his attire was much more gay and lively than the black velvet he’d been wearing, I could see that he was struggling with very dark thoughts from the anguish in his face.

  “My son,” he said when he caught sight of me, “run and see if my friends are waiting for me in the old cabinet.”

  I returned to him with news that all were there save Revol, but that Du Halde had gone to fetch him, according to the others; so the king hurried in, only to find that there were also five or six of his Forty-five there, smoking and playing cards, who, when the king suddenly appeared, were very embarrassed to be so engaged. But the king, speaking to them with his usual benevolence and calling them “my children”, sent them off into his chamber to prevent anyone from coming in. Once there they set about their cards again in front of the great fireplace, but were careful to abstain from smoking since the king abhorred tobacco.

  Revol arrived, running, preceded by Du Halde, who, on a sign from the king, opened wide one of the windows to clear the awful odour that had filled the room (and which wasn’t just from the tobacco!). The king invited us to be seated on the stools and, after having spoken quite a while very softly in Bellegarde’s ear, withdrew from our circle and went to stand in front of the fire until the air was clear and the windows could be closed.

  Bellegarde was a very handsome gentleman who was fond of petticoats—or, rather, they seemed uncommonly fond of him—but he was of a serious and quiet disposition, entirely faithful to the king, and would have been perfect in every aspect if he not had, like Chicot, a runny nose that continually threatened his ruff and doublet, an infirmity that was the reason the king (who was excessively annoyed by this trait) chided him ceaselessly, despite loving and esteeming him very much.

  “Messieurs,” said Bellegarde in the raspy voice of one who does not speak much (and without ever naming Guise except by the designation of the tertium quid, a strange expression he’d borrowed from mathematics and that means the “third element”), “here is a sketch of the plan that concerns us, and for which, since he’d like it to be fleshed out in greater detail, His Majesty wants your enlightened opinions.”

  I am not going to reproduce this sketch here, since it was greatly modified in the debate that followed. Nor do I believe that I should identify those who made amendments to the plan, since there would obviously be some danger for them, even today, in being named as the authors of suggestions that contributed to the success of the venture. Hot coals still smoulder beneath the cinders of this civil discord, and proud as one might be to have been among the king’s faithful servants in those times, one might also feel alarmed to have one’s name exposed to the ongoing vindictiveness of our adversaries, if one were to be credited with the conception of a ruse that our foes might libellously term atrocious or Machiavellian. And, certainly, our plan might well deserve to be so described by a mother, a brother or a wife of one of our enemies, and I would agree to such a designation if there had been any way at all, other than death, of stopping Guise’s march towards the throne, the subsequent extermination of “politicals” and Huguenots, and ultimately the subjection of the entire kingdom to the Inquisition.

  It was quickly apparent in our debate, conducted in lowered voices and whispers, with Guise referred to only as the tertium quid, that the principal difficulty was to isolate him from his followers, since a confrontation between his gentlemen and ours, with all the hazards of combat, might well lead to many casualties, except perhaps the very person whose death would be useful to the state. This was not least because this tertium quid (who sensed that he had reason to be constantly on the alert) usually had himself accompanied by all his men right up to the king’s door, except on the days the council met, when the hangers-on of all the great men in attendance were so numerous that they waited in the courtyard outside. It was therefore decided that the attempt on his life must made be on a day the council would be meeting (in the room marked B on the drawing), and that, in addition, this meeting should be called early in the morning in the hope of reducing his entourage to a very few gentlemen, most of whom would still be in their beds.

  Meanwhile, as we were trying vainly to find some justification for holding a meeting at seven o’clock in the morning—an hour at which in December the sun wouldn’t yet have risen—the king, who was standing facing the fire, proposed, without even turning round and speaking in nearly a whisper, that the reason could be that he needed to leave for his house in la Noue for a retreat, and hoped the council could meet before he left. Hearing this, one of our number added that the king could use this pretext the night before to demand the keys to the chateau from the tertium quid, which he held as grand master of France, in order to close the doors of the chateau after the council had arrived. This would have the effect of closing the trap once the fish was
inside.

  This precaution was adopted, but wasn’t judged to be sufficient to ensure that the tertium quid would be separated from his followers, which we resolved to make sure of by having our men block the three staircases that led to the king’s apartments (indicated by S, s and s’ on the floor plan).

  But then we encountered another difficulty that took us a long time to resolve, for though there was no problem in having the Forty-five take over the staircases s and s’, since they’d be hidden from view there, if they were to occupy the grand staircase of honour (S) as the tertium quid arrived, they would no doubt alert him to the danger of the situation, since he well knew how much the Forty-five hated him and that they had very good reason.

  The king overcame this objection immediately by proposing that Larchant could occupy the grand staircase with a few of his men on the pretext of demanding from the council the back pay that they were owed. Moreover, Larchant could warn the tertium quid the night before that he intended to take this action, so that the latter wouldn’t be alarmed at seeing them there. There followed a debate about where the tertium quid would be dispatched, but the king interrupted it, saying that he’d already decided this privately and that there was no point in raising it and discussing it on this occasion, especially since he hadn’t yet decided on the date for the council’s meeting. He thanked us for our views and repeated his most strenuous insistence that our discussion remain absolutely secret—“even from God in our prayers”, a qualification that astonished me coming from the mouth of a prince who was so devout.

  I remember that, when I came back to the Two Pigeons Inn that evening, I had an attack of dizziness and vertigo that lasted only a moment but felt as if the world were spinning out of control. But as it was over so quickly and never recurred, I concluded that this dizzy spell was moral rather than physical and had its source in the feeling that had been needling me ever since the meeting I’ve just described: that events were now spinning out of control with no possibility of being stopped, and that destiny was advancing so quickly because blood was about to be spilt.