In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  The competition at the rings was almost ended. The king arose and said, “I must to the lists for the joust.”

  Suddenly Queen Catherine arose and grasped his arm. “No! No! Husband, I beg of you, do not joust this day! My lord, I have had such dreams! There have been evil omens...” The queen, despite having lived in France for twenty-six years, still spoke in her low, dusky voice with a marked Italian accent.

  Henri removed his wife’s hand from his arm without even looking at her. He turned to Diane and said, “My love, might I have your favor?” It was a ritual; the king always jousted sporting Diane’s favor tied to his lance. Diane produced the silky ribbons of black and white, her heraldic colors, and pressed them into the king’s hand. “I joust in your honor, my dearest love,” he whispered, as he bent to kiss her cheek.

  The competition of the rings ended and the acrobats and tumblers came out to entertain the crowd while the contenders prepared for the joust. Finally the clarion call of the trumpets sounded, announcing the arrival of King Henri and the Duc de Guise. The king and the duc were to challenge all comers to four lances each.

  The sight of them was awe-inspiring; King Henri was mounted on a great white courser; as a foil, the duc’s horse was a shiny, midnight black. Both horse and rider wore intricately decorated armor. The king’s armor was gold with silver trim; the duc’s silver with golden trim. The caparison on the king’s horse was bright blue and sewn in golden thread with the fleur-de-lys that was the very symbol of France; the great plumes of Henri’s helmet were blue and white. The duc’s horse was trapped in the red and white, blue and gold of the House of Guise. Lances couched, the king and the duc made a ceremonial gallop, each on their own side of the bar. The thundering of the great horses’ hooves, the brilliant colors of their trappings flying in the wind, the dancing of the great plumes atop their shiny helmets, caused the spectators’ blood to race, their hearts to beat with breathless excitement.

  All the rest of that blue and golden afternoon, the king and the duc met the challenges of the flower of French and Scottish nobility. Finally came the last challenge; Henri had won all of his contests except this very last one, which had been taken by Gabriel, Comte de Montgomery, Seigneur de Lorges, a French nobleman, and captain of the Scots Guards.

  Queen Catherine breathed a sigh of relief; her belief in the occult was absolute, but mayhap this time the signs had been wrong. No harm had come to the king. She had come to form a mighty confidence in magic over the years. Her childlessness had been a scourge to which she had almost succumbed. Ironically, had it not been for Diane, she would have been put away long before she produced her first child. But the setting aside of queens was a nasty business; Diane said that it was better for all if the court were patient and the king and queen kept trying. And Henri always did what Diane said to do.

  Catherine had done her part; she had done everything her soothsayers, seers, and astrologers had bid her do to conceive a child. She had drunk mules’ urine; she had rubbed their feces on her womanhood. She had slept with a bat’s wing under her pillow. She had drunk concoctions, decoctions, infusions, brews, potions with unspeakable things in them. And then one brilliant day, after ten long years, the royal physicians confirmed what she had known for almost three months. She was with child at last. And she had not disappointed; the following year François had made his appearance, to the great delight of all. Even now she leaned down to stroke his hair. François loved his wife, the beautiful Queen of Scots, but he loved his doting Maman, too. He looked up at her and smiled; he took her hand and kissed it.

  Suddenly the crowd gave a great roar. The king was insisting on a rematch with the Comte. Montgomery seemed reluctant, but Henri was demanding satisfaction. The royal squire hurried out with another lance; it was blue, painted with a golden swirl, and to the end of it was tied Diane’s black and white favor. At a signal from the senior judge, the horses bolted forward and once again the thunder of hooves was so loud that Catherine could feel them in her chest.

  Then everything seemed to slow down; the challengers neared each other; all sound seemed to fade. The Comte’s lance seemed to disappear, to melt away. Where had it gone? The king had not been unseated all day, but now, slowly, slowly, or so it seemed, he slipped from his saddle; falling, falling, he hit the ground with a thud. The dust blew up around him in sand-colored clouds.

  And then everything, everyone, seemed to come to life again. But the only sound was a piercing, high-pitched scream, long, drawn out, never ending.

  Catherine did not realize that the horrific sound came from her own lips until she had run out of air and the sound stopped.

  All was silent for a split second, and then all was pandemonium. The stout men who stood by to retrieve fallen knights from the course came rushing to the king’s side. Already a pool of blood could be seen forming around his head, soaking into the dust. They were lifting him onto a gate.

  Catherine, Diane, Mary, without a word, lifted their skirts and ran. François, the Cardinal of Lorraine, the rest of the royal children, all followed, their unspoken destination the tent that was always set up to tend to any who were injured in the contests.

  Diane could not remember that headlong flight; she had been in the royal gallery and then somehow here she was, standing by Henri’s side. Her eyes met Catherine’s across the table on which the king lay. By the time the royal party had reached the tent, the blacksmith had removed Henri’s helmet. And now the petrified royal physicians stood, wringing their hands, uncertain of what to do.

  It was evident now where the Comte’s lance had gone when it disappeared. A great wooden splinter from his shattered lance had entered a space in Henri’s visor and pierced his left eye. The loss of an eye was not a tragedy; one had two eyes and such wounds were known to happen in battle. And what else was the joust but a constant honing of the skills a knight needed to be successful in war? The consternation of the physicians was in the fact that this shaft of wood was over a foot in length and two inches in diameter. And the other end of it was sticking out of the king’s ear. Bright red blood seeped from the wound, down the shaft that protruded sickeningly from the side of the king’s head, and fell to the floor, making little plop-plop sounds. No one spoke.

  Finally Catherine said, “Does His Majesty yet live?”

  “Aye,” responded the royal surgeon, Ambroise Paré, wringing his hands. “But we are not decided upon what to do…with…”

  Suddenly a commotion at the entrance to the tent could be heard and in strode the Comte de Montgomery. At the sight of the king, his face went a sickly green under the dust of the tourney ground. He had been divested of his armor.

  “Please,” he cried chokingly. “Take my hand, take the hand that has done this awful thing to the king! Where is a block? Bring me an axe! I shall perform the deed with mine own hand!”

  The queen cocked her head at the Cardinal of Lorraine, who understood instantly.

  “Come,” said Charles de Guise. “It was no one’s fault.” Or if truth be told, it was the king’s own, for insisting on a fifth course. Ungracious loser! Had he taken his lumps, Henri would not now be in such a plight. Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Was ever a proverb so apt? “Come, My Lord, let the leeches and surgeons do their work.” He led the distraught knight out of the tent.

  A sound came from the king; all heads turned from Montgomery’s retreating back to the mangled thing that lay on the table. Paré leaned forward and put his ear to the king’s lips.

  “The king says that the Comte is not to be harmed,” said Paré. He had for a few moments been as one in a dream; but now the decision must be made. “The fragments must be removed,” he said. In addition to the fearful shard that had pierced the king’s eye, there were others that had pierced his head and throat. “And then His Grace must be bled.”

  Diane suddenly came to life. “Bled? Are you mad, sir? How much blood do you think is in a man?” She waved an expansive hand at the poo
ls already on floor. Ever since the awful moment of realization that Henri had been so grievously wounded, part of her mind had been grappling with a most vexing issue; what would become of her if the king died? It was not supposed to be this way. She was twenty years older than the king. He was forty; she was three months shy of her sixtieth birthday. Surely, though the matter had never been spoken of between them, they must expect that she should die first? There would be no life without Henri, for she was under no illusions as to what would become of her without his protection. The king must live.

  Standing back a bit from the table stood the Dauphin and Dauphine. Mary and François clutched each other; they were too stunned to cry. Neither of them made a sound; their faces were as white as chalk. Despite the difference in their ages and their height, they were of one mind on many things. It would not have surprised them to know that the same thoughts were racing through their brains. Neither was prepared to rule a kingdom; indeed the thought of it appalled them. They were surrounded by adults who were strong, powerful, in charge; their role had always been to be appreciated, adored, just by virtue of being alive. Becoming king and queen of France and having to reign was an occurrence that had always been far away in some misty future. But now that future was staring them in the face and they were frightened, more frightened than either of them had thought it possible to be. The king must live.

  The Duc de Guise had also had to be divested of his armor, which had taken some little time. But finally he had been freed, and on his way to the hospital tent, he had encountered the distraught Comte and had heard the worst. But to see such a fearsome injury with his own eyes! His brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, had come back with him, and they arrived just in time to see the bloody wooden fragment being pulled from the king’s eye. The eye had come with it, and the sight that greeted them was the staring, empty socket, oozing blood. The king had mercifully lost consciousness during the procedure. The fact that the wound still bled was proof of life; but could anyone survive such a grievous wound? They had been planning for years what they would be able to accomplish when their niece finally became Queen of France, but Henri had always enjoyed excellent health, and they had conceded with many sighs that they would be old men before that day finally came. But when it finally did…! France…and Scotland…and perhaps even England! …would be theirs. François could live to be a hundred and never be anything but a timid, spoiled child. Their niece would do as she was bid. The power, the actual authority, would be theirs. It was a pity, but the king must die.

  Catherine had been silently watching as the surgeons removed the wooden shafts from her husband’s eye, neck and face, bound up his wounds, and finally, just as they had threatened to do, bled him from the arm. She had lived in France for twenty-nine miserable years, patiently biding her time. The only hope that she had been able to cherish was that Diane, so much older than both she and Henri, would either die or at least lose those extraordinary looks, and the king would finally tire of her. Henri dying had never once entered her mind. But now it did. She would be the Queen Mother. And she had not waited so patiently all these years, she had not suffered in silence for so long, to allow the Guises to step in and make her wait some more. No, if Henri died, she would, at last, come into her own. Her son would be king; she was his mother. Who else should a boy trust but his own mother? Mary was an obstacle, but she had no doubt that she could handle Mary and her ambitious uncles. She watched as her husband’s life blood flowed out of eye, ear, and incredibly, from his arm, where Paré was overseeing the bleeding into a white porcelain bowl. The king would die. So why wait to seize the power that was now all but hers?

  She lifted her eyes to Diane’s. “Get out,” she said.

  Diane, her face haunted by despair, cried, “I will not! Henri wants me here. The king needs me.”

  Catherine’s expression did not change; she did not raise her voice. She simply repeated the order. “Get out.”

  The acrid, coppery smell of so much blood filled the tent and was becoming oppressive; unbearable. On the floor, ground into the dust underfoot, torn, dirty and bloody, Diane spied the ribbons of the favor that she had so recently bestowed upon the king. The favor had been handy, seized and used in an attempt to staunch the profuse bleeding of the king’s wounds. Their vanquishment was terribly symbolic.

  Diane looked down at Henri and back at Catherine. Without a word, she turned and walked away.

  Chapter 4

  “Princes are set as it were upon stages in the sight and view of the world.”

  – Queen Elizabeth I

  Windsor Castle, August 1559

  T he sun was setting and its golden glow lent a magical light to the scene on the river. Boats and barges of all description rowed up and down, back and forth, bobbing in the gentle current. All afternoon the people in their hundreds had thronged the banks of the Thames, hoping to catch a glimpse of their celebrated new queen. On the royal barge the trumpets blew their clarion call every few minutes to announce the presence of the queen on the river. Drums beat; flutes, shawms and rebecs played merry tunes. And when the royal barge passed the Tower, the guns discharged to the wonder and amusement of all.

  Robert’s first water pageant had been so popular, not only with the queen but with the entire court, that it had become a favorite pastime. This time enough food had been brought along to allow for the enjoyment of a picnic whilst the boats wandered aimlessly on the water. It was great fun, and even the people on the riverbanks enjoyed themselves, impressing their fellows by pointing out this or that important personage, and cheering wildly whenever the royal barge happened by with its colorful royal standard flying in the breeze.

  The purple twilight turned the water to lavender, and the last rays of the sun shone golden on the horizon for just a moment; as it disappeared and the gloaming set in, the boatmen began to light their lanterns, fore and aft. In the warm, flower-scented dusk, the Thames seemed as if it held a swarm of fireflies. From the banks of the river the sounds of doves roosting for the night could be heard; their mournful cooing was peaceful and comforting.

  Elizabeth lay back on the satin cushions, idly strumming her lute, her face turned up to the sky. The first stars were appearing, adding their twinkle to the magic of the firelight. It had been a glorious summer so far, her first as queen. There had been garden parties, water pageants, mock battles, tourneys and jousts; she had even launched her first new ship, the Elizabeth, from Woolwich. Despite the cares of ruling, she could not remember ever being so happy, or feeling so safe. She had set off on her first progress late in June, and everywhere she went the people greeted her enthusiastically and cheered. By making herself accessible, visible, she had, in a very short time, endeared herself to her subjects.

  Everywhere they went, Robert was by her side; golden sunny days when they hunted and hawked, black velvet nights when they sat at table and reminisced about the days when neither of them knew if they would live to see the morrow.

  Even the weather had been kind; not too hot, not too cold, just enough rain. The New Ague had all but disappeared, and there had been only a few cases of plague in the stews of London.

  The hated Spaniards who had descended upon London like a plague of locusts during her sister’s reign had all departed. With the establishment of the religious settlement, a certain peace seemed to have settled upon the realm, and with it the hope of a new prosperity and plenty. This was her dream for England. It was true that there was still a host of evils to be dealt with, and not everyone was content with things the way they were. But there would always be those who were dissatisfied, or simply could not be pleased.

  Elizabeth was brought out of her reverie by the hissing, whistling sound of squibs being hurled into the air. Each one burned with an entrancing sparkle until it burned itself out. It was a dazzling, magical display. She turned her head languidly and looked at Robert.

  “My dear Sweet Robin,” she said, placing a hand on his cheek. “You think of everything.”
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br />   Robert smiled. “I hoped they would amuse you,” he replied. He had seen to it that all the boats in the royal party had been given a good supply of the little fireworks, with instructions that they were to be set off as soon as it was dark.

  Elizabeth closed her eyes and gave herself up to thought; the rhythmic swaying of the barge, the steady swish-and-dip sound of the oars in the water, the warm breeze washing over her, all conduced to a pleasant half-drowse.

  News had reached England that the French king was dead after ten days of suffering excruciating agony following his accident at the joust. France’s attention was thankfully diverted for now, in the power struggle taking place between the Queen Mother and Mary of Scotland’s Guise uncles. But the confusion would not last forever; in anticipation of order being restored at the French court, Elizabeth and Cecil were concocting a plan to aid the Protestant rebels in Scotland. Certain members of the Scottish nobility had banded into a powerful faction calling itself the Lords of the Congregation of Jesus Christ. These men sought to depose the Catholic regent, Marie de Guise, and her oppressive French rule, putting an end to her regency on behalf of her daughter. For England to interfere in such a foreign quarrel held risks; but the rewards of success should far outweigh them. It would mean the end of the Auld Alliance between Scotland, her near neighbor, and France, her greatest enemy.