Donna Russo Morin

by To Serve A King

  Montmorency stepped behind her like a lover snuggling close to kiss the back of her neck. With rough hands, he pretended to adjust her stave hand in one direction while pushing the elbow of her string arm higher. “You have learned something?” he hissed in her ear.

  Geneviève shrugged, a small, meager motion. “I have seen something, monsieur, though I am not sure if it is at all helpful.” With a low whisper and an economy of words, Geneviève described to the constable the early morning scene.

  “If there is any perfidy in the man, I am sure Lisette is an innocent victim of his charms.”

  Montmorency must know, above all else, that her friend was no more than a puppet in the scenario she had concocted.

  “And yet you say she was intimate with him, this stranger?” Monty grumbled, and then raised his voice. “Take your shot, mademoiselle.”

  Geneviève loosed the arrow, aiming to the left of the target, exactly where the projectile landed.

  “Young women are often used as tools by men who are up to no good,” she insisted with a potent direct stare at the older man, who stepped closer once again to adjust her already perfect form. “Lisette is the most faithful and devoted of servants, to the duchesse and to the king.”

  “We shall see. You may leave the rest to those who know of such things.” He pulled her arm back, a tad roughly perhaps. “Another shot, if you please.”

  Geneviève had had enough of this man and his obnoxious superiority; the one he sought stood inches from him and he had not a clue. So much for his preeminent intellect. She launched her arrow, striking the plaster target dead center, shattering it to pieces.

  “I have spent near to every day and night since my arrival with Lisette. She is guilty of nothing more than loving pleasure.” Her voice was as sharp as her arrow’s tip, and Montmorency frowned at its barb.

  “We shall see,” he sniped back again as she pulled another arrow from her quiver and set it to the string. “I thank you for the information.”

  He turned and strode away, eliminating any opportunity for her to plead the case of Lisette’s innocence. Geneviève armed her weapon, her eyes on the statesman’s back with lustful desire. She turned with a soldier’s quickness and launched the arrow into the target, dead center.

  24

  Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

  —Petrarch (1304–1374)

  It had been months since the king took part in a game of jeu de paume and hundreds of courtiers turned out to watch the match. François stood on the opposite side of the net from the baron de Florennes, a noble of a like age, though both moved at a much slower pace than in years gone by. But as was his wont, the king relished physical activity, preferring to reinvigorate his day with some midafternoon sport.

  The morning’s rain had dried up, its foreboding clouds scudding across the sky, revealing a deep blue expanse. With its brilliant appearance, the sun had brought a bitter wind, knocking away the colorful dried leaves clinging tenaciously to the trees and sending them scuttering across the lawns and gardens, rustling together as the wind caught them up into little eddies swirling along dusty lanes.

  The biting chill forced the king’s afternoon match indoors to the large great hall of the old wing. The king and the baron wore identical costumes, flounced shirts of ecru cambic that allowed for ease of movement, worn atop silk stockings and trunk hose of the same fabric and color. Each man brandished a wooden racket, volleying the small leather ball across the string net.

  The boisterous crowd at each end of the court cheered as the king sent the ball skimming across the wall on his left to land with precision on the baron’s square, skipping off and away before the huffing, lunging nobleman’s racket could reach it. The king had forged ahead by two points; the momentum was on his side, and those who laid bets against him were now regretting their decision.

  “Come on, Florennes,” someone cried scathingly from amidst the rowdy spectators. The king turned toward the voice with a thunderous expression—one adopted in exaggerated jest—and the audience laughed and clapped in enjoyment. So loud was their applause and acclaim that few heard the clanking of the halberdiers as they marched into the vast chamber, led by Constable Montmorency himself.

  The baron tossed up the ball, raising his racket to serve, but let the ball and his arm drop, paying no mind as the small sphere hit the ground and rolled away.

  “What, monsieur, do you concede?” the king taunted him, a smile spreading his wide lips. But Florennes shook his head and used his racket to point at a spot behind François.

  The king spun round, on sudden alert, and found the sight of his chief minister in the company of five stern and serious soldiers. His smile faded with painful rapidity; there could be no good bringing such an auspicious panoply of authority here now.

  With a few quick strides, the king arrived at Montmorency’s side, leaning down for the minister to whisper in his ear. All eyes watched in deathly silence as the king’s face twitched and splotched with heinous fury.

  Like the women around her, Geneviève gasped as the king’s murderous gaze slid their way, but none of the queen’s ladies were as terrified as she. The king gave no order, for none was needed. With a nod from Montmorency, the guards marched across the floor, their hard leather heels beating out an executioner’s cadence. Geneviève felt a moment’s gratitude that Sebastien was not among them, that her lover would not be one of those to bring her to prison and, perhaps, her death.

  The panicked women trembled like an aviary of frightened birds; hands reached out for other hands; heads turned, desperate to find hope or another’s guilt in the faces around them. Geneviève watched the guards approach with relieved fatality; days and nights of living a lie were over, gone would be the incessant apprehension haunting her every moment. Such release might well come at the end of the hangman’s rope, and yet there was liberation in death, if God was indeed as merciful and forgiving as professed.

  “Mon Dieu, Geney,” Arabelle whispered as her fingertips dug into her friend’s arm.

  Geneviève turned soulful eyes to this woman she had attempted to avoid but now could not imagine a life without. “Fear not, chérie, they do not come for you.” She gave Arabelle’s hand a fortifying squeeze, unsuccessful in silencing the quake of emotion from her voice.

  The soldiers were upon them. Geneviève closed her eyes, one last prayer given up to God for her safekeeping.

  “What are you doing? I’ve done nothing wrong.” Lisette’s squeaky, childish voice screamed with anger and fear.

  Geneviève’s eyes snapped open. She leaned forward, gaping down the row of women to where Lisette stood on the other side of the duchesse. The halberdiers captured the tiny Lisette by the upper arms; she looked more like an adolescent than an adult in their mountainous midst. Their size was inconsequential to her spirit, and she struggled against them, her enormous efforts lifting her feet off the floor as she pulled and kicked, her full skirts snapping like sheets drying in a heavy wind, looking no more substantial than a rag doll torn in half by two bullies.

  Geneviève raised her hand in protest, stepping forward to impede them, but it was as if she moved underwater, her motion heavy, slow, and unaffecting.

  “No, stop!” she yelled, but her voice was lost in the chaos of the moment, in the guards’ clanking armor, in the crowd’s exclamations of shock.

  As the soldiers marched Lisette past the constable, he looked down at her with ill-disguised contempt. “You are under arrest, mademoiselle.”

  “Arrest?” Her voice squealed higher with righteous indignation. “For what?”

  “Treason!” Montmorency screamed, and the crowd roared with mass hysteria, half of them calling for her head, the other pleading for her life.

  Lisette pedaled the floor with her tiny feet, their movements meaningless in the face of such commanding opposition. She craned her neck over her shoulder, pulling against the hands imprisoning her in their constraining grasp, her tear-filled e
yes seeking out her mistress.

  “I’ve done nothing, madame, I swear!” she vowed, her proclamation a defense and a cry for mercy. “You must believe me. I would do nothing to hurt you. Not ever.”

  Anne’s face crumbled with anguish and heartbreak, but she turned away.

  They dragged Lisette across the floor, as if parading her in front of the king whom she had served so loyally. Geneviève thrust forward, but Arabelle pulled her back.

  “Let go, Arabelle. I cannot let them take her,” Geneviève cried, but Arabelle would not release her and Sybille clung to her now as well.

  “You will only endanger yourself,” Sybille hissed at her.

  “But Lisette is innocent!” She fought them, her entreaties falling on deaf ears.

  “Your Majesty, it’s not true. You must not believe them,” Lisette implored of him, her words bleating through a strangled throat as she looked up into his tormented face.

  François stared at her as he would a rabid animal, and yet Geneviève saw compassion and fear for his subject, one for whom he cared. They all saw it, Lisette most of all. As they rushed her away and down the long corridor, her pleas echoed back to them.

  “Never believe it, Your Majesty!”

  Her pitiful cries fell away, leaving the room in a vacuum of turbulent silence. In it, the king stared at Montmorency, lips white in a snarl.

  “There are other ways to have done this.” His words slithered through his clenched teeth.

  Montmorency tipped his head ever so slightly at the king’s mistress, at his unstated enemy. “I thought to set an example, Your Highness.”

  François shook his head in disgust. His gaze found Anne’s and they shared their heartache in the single glance. He bowed, perhaps in apology, and quit the room, Montmorency and his other advisers fast upon his heels.

  “Please, help me away,” Anne whispered to Béatrice, who gathered the other ladies in a circle around their mistress, a shield to the poignant and poisonous glances cast her way, and rushed her off.

  Geneviève entered the darkened room. Miniscule rays of an orange sun, rushing toward the seclusion of the horizon, snuck their way through the cracks between the curtains, bringing ethereal form to the interior of Anne’s privy chamber. Dust danced in their glow, but nothing else stirred. She found the indistinguishable shape of the duchesse in her bed, curled up like a ball and hidden by the silk counterpane, as if she had crawled into a hole and buried herself beneath the earth.

  “Madame?” Geneviève whispered, not knowing if her mistress slept. It had been hours since Anne had retreated into this sanctuary, refusing to speak with anyone, refusing to come out. But her audience chamber began to fill with the evening’s visitors, and her absence became more telling with each passing moment.

  Geneviève crept up to the bedside. Anne’s blank gaze stared at the brocade tester overhead.

  “Your friends are eager to see you, madame,” Geneviève said softly.

  “They are not my friends.” Anne spoke with a voice rough and scarred with tears. “They come to gawk and to berate me.”

  Geneviève sat on the edge of the bed, a familiarity dared because of the woman’s suffering. “No, I assure you. Only those who are loyal to you, who love you, are here. Sybille and Béatrice have ensured it. They stand at the door this very minute, turning any away who would disturb you. They are quite the guardsmen.”

  A tiny flash of amusement crossed Anne’s decimated features, and at last she turned her gaze toward Geneviève. “They will see me imprisoned.”

  Geneviève blenched. “Who will?”

  “Montmorency and La Sénéchale,” Anne hissed. “They have finally found a way to be rid of me. He will follow this line of treachery back to me.”

  “It cannot be, madame.” Geneviève shook her head, her own fear rearing its ugly head, for the path to Anne could only lead her way. “Lisette is innocent.”

  Anne laughed bitterly. “Innocence makes no difference. Connecting me to this debacle is all they need to bring me down. Using an innocent is nothing to these people. It is how things work at court, how it has always worked.”

  Geneviève could not argue with her; Anne knew better than anyone the extent of the machinations plied to rule a kingdom. That Diane de Poitiers would want the duchesse gone from court was a foregone fact; she craved to rule the royal retinue, to be the most glittering jewel in the crown, and yet she was forever compared ignominiously to the duchesse.

  “He hates me, you know. As much as she.” Anne pushed herself up against the bolster, sliding her legs beneath her body as she leaned anxiously forward. “Because the king loves me more. Because he is Poitiers’s puppet. Because Montmorency loves the queen and blames me for her pain. For this and more, he detests me. It is all a tangled, sticky web and I am embedded in it without hope of escape.” Her hands flayed with each reason she recounted, the gestures wider and more fearsome with every accusation.

  Geneviève reached out to the duchesse, capturing the erratic hands in her own and trapping them down upon the bed. “The king loves you, madame. Have faith in that love.” Geneviève pitched forward, her face inches away from Anne’s, the violet gaze piercing the green. “You must not let them triumph.”

  Her words struck a chord. Anne’s agitation ebbed like the outgoing tide, and composure descended about the woman like a regal cape. Pulling her hands away, the duchesse squared her shoulders.

  “Bring me my emerald gown, Geneviève,” she instructed, pushing the vagrant strands of strawberry blond curls off her face. “And my finest jewels. I must look my best for my guests.”

  Geneviève smiled and turned to her chore, the grin fading from her face like dusk’s last light. To Anne she spoke with conviction, but her own thoughts could not be more irresolute. Her plan had traveled so very awry; Lisette arrested, Anne in turmoil, and she to blame. She had ventured to distract any condemning finger from pointing her way, and she had brought destruction upon those she would least wish to harm.

  They had held their heads high for hours—the king and his mistress—presiding over a subdued evening’s salon. But now all their guests had departed, words of encouragement spoken, uncertain glances denied. In word and deed, François and Anne had assured their closest confidants that there was no truth to the outrageous charges, and that all would be put to rights. Though certain in their own truth, the efforts had wearied them, none more than the king, and age had rampaged across his face through the long, horrifying hours of this day, leaving it ashen and flaccid.

  Anne sat on her couch, her eyes encircled by plum-colored sockets of exhaustion, and stared out into nothing. The king lay with his head in her lap, accepting the succor that she so often offered him, as servants tidied the remnants of the evening with their guests, gathering up the half-empty goblets and the crumb-covered plates strewn haphazardly about the room. The cleaning women went about their chores in unobtrusive silence, nothing more than the clanking of silver and the swish of a broom revealing their presence.

  Anne’s ladies sat in a circle around the king and the duchess—silent, vigilant, splendidly dressed guards on watchful duty.

  “Did you ever suspect …” The king’s tremulous voice broached the question, all façade of strength surrendered in the safety of their intimacy, his niggling fear unable and unwilling to remain silent.

  “No, never.” Anne was quick to slap at the suggestion, and her undeniable certainty slayed the dragon that was his trepidation. He reached a hand up into the air and hers found it. François clasped her hand to his chest, holding it dear to his heart with both of his.

  In their unity against disaster, they formed a more perfect coupling, for that was indeed where true love lived—not in the moments of great passion and bursting joy, but in the strength with which it weathered any storm, no matter how harsh or violent.

  Geneviève looked upon them with envy and wonder. How could these two of such notorious reputation find such love together? François may have strayed,
taking lovers while having a wife and a mistress, but he always returned to her, his Hely. And if she had found forbidden passion in the arms of another, it was the king she craved, to whose heart she belonged. Did they possess a deserving nature she herself did not, that King Henry must not, for what this man and woman relished remained elusive to them both.

  “I must allow the court to treat this situation as decisively as they would any other,” François croaked. “I cannot impose any sort of intervention, though she may be one of your ladies.”

  Anne nodded silently, a balled fist pushed hard against her lips. The Swiss Guards had transported Lisette to Paris that very afternoon, delivering her to the dungeon of the royal palace on the Île de la Cité, where the Parlement of Paris would hear her case. It was a thickly layered judicial conglomeration presiding over, among other indictments, all those brought against any persons on behalf of the king. They were his voice in court, though they did not often speak for him.

  “There may be action I can take once they have completed their case,” François continued. “I will have some of my inner council looking into things as well, should it be required.”

  “I pray such action will not be necessary,” Anne said from behind her hand. “Her innocence will win out. I am sure of it.”

  “As am I,” François agreed. “In the meantime, you … we … must do all we can to dispel any notions of our own impropriety.”

  Though he spoke of them both, there was no doubt he meant Anne. She looked down at him, finding his amber eyes intent upon her. “What do you propose?”

  He pushed himself up with a stiff, achy movement, and shifted over to sit close by her side. “You must keep your appointment with King Henry. There can be n—”

  “I cannot leave until I know she is free,” Anne argued doggedly, shaking her head with agitation. “I must be here should—”