The Nostradamus Prophecy

by Theresa Breslin

  ‘Ignore these foolish beings, o Paladin, proud warrior,’ Melchior said softly. ‘Noble prince, swift son of mighty hunters, thy spirit is like the wind, free and unfettered. Thou art more royal than the churls who try to make thee submit to their will.’

  Head held erect, the leopard stood quietly by his side.

  ‘Look.’ Chantelle tugged my sleeve. ‘There is Armand.’

  I felt her tremble as Armand Vescault rode in under the entrance archway with his master, the Count de Ferignay.

  ‘My dogs!’ the Count de Ferignay cried out. ‘They will be terrorized and useless for tomorrow’s hunt!’ He leaped from his horse and ran forward. ‘You fool! Get that animal out of here!’ And he raised his whip, intending to strike the boy across the back of the head.

  Behind its muzzle the leopard opened its mouth in a snarl, showing huge, sharp teeth in pink gums.

  ‘Hold your hand, Ferignay!’ King Charles shouted from his window. ‘I ordered the leopard to be brought near that I might view it.’

  ‘Your majesty’ – the Count de Ferignay composed himself – ‘I was unaware of your presence.’ He glared venomously at the boy and then strode on into the palace.

  A vague mood of disquiet came over me as I watched him depart. Once she was wedded to Armand, my sister Chantelle would enter the household of this man.

  I thought to myself that I did not care much for the Count de Ferignay.

  Chapter Four

  AS HE LED his master’s horse away, Armand contrived to come close to the wall of the garden where we stood. He glanced up to my sister. Such a look of adoration was on his face as made me catch my breath.

  My sister plucked one of the wild flowers, the pink-petalled artema, that grew among the stones on the wall. She let the bloom fall from her hand. Armand caught it, kissed it and tucked it inside his tunic. If my father noticed he said nothing. I knew that his own life story was a romance – he had often told us of how he’d wooed my mother with little hope, being only a minstrel, but in the end had won her love.

  We passed the rest of the day in the palace gardens with the intention of rehearsing our repertoire of songs. But the murmured words of the leopard-keeper to his animal had insinuated themselves into my head. They now moved in my mind like fish in a deep pond, making their own eddies and currents, occasionally flicking a tail to disturb the calm surface. Eventually I conceded their presence and, taking my mandolin, I began to pluck at the strings to seek out the tune that best accommodated the spirit of the lyrics.

  My father smiled as he watched me. ‘Another new song, Mélisande?’

  I nodded, but I did not tell him the source of my inspiration. That, I decided, would be my secret.

  The business of the court went on about us. The purpose of this royal tour of France was to show the young king to his people in all parts of his kingdom. His mother, the queen regent, was hoping that such an overwhelming display of splendour and power would enhance the monarchy and quell the warring Catholics and Protestants. The king was enjoying his new status, meeting with local magistrates, hearing grievances and dispensing justice. Lords of the regions presented themselves as ambassadors of goodwill and pledged him fealty.

  However, messengers also arrived bearing unwelcome tidings: the previous week in a monastery not five leagues away sixty monks had their throats cut while hearing Mass. In retaliation a group of Huguenot families meeting to pray in a barn had the roof set alight over their heads. All were slaughtered as they tried to run to freedom. This last atrocity was thought to be the work of members of the powerful Guise family. Of royal blood and influential enough to attempt to take the throne of France, the Guise were also rigidly Catholic and had objected vehemently to the terms of the recent royal Edict of Amboise giving freedoms to those of the Protestant faith, in particular the Huguenots. Their actions in attacking Protestant church gatherings and putting to death well-known Huguenots on any pretext was interpreted as deliberately flouting the king’s rule. The Huguenots, now growing in number and strength, retaliated with their own killings and assassinations.

  Although the king himself seemed less ruffled by these threats, his mother, the queen regent, constantly strove to keep both factions in check. Firmly believing it was by divine purpose that her family was chosen to rule France, she actively sought out mystic signs to show her the way forward.

  Nostradamus stayed all day in the apartments of Catherine de’ Medici and in the evening she summoned her son and insisted that he attend while they discussed matters of state. The Count de Ferignay was one of the lords of the chamber and Armand told us later what had happened.

  Nostradamus had shown the king’s mother, Queen Catherine, his book known as The Prophecies, which he had published years earlier. It contained a quatrain where he had correctly predicted that Charles’s elder brother, Francis, married to Mary, Queen of Scots, would die before reaching his eighteenth birthday. There was documented evidence that the four lines had been written prior to the event. The printer who had made the book testified to the truth of this. By evening everyone in the Cherboucy Palace had it by word of mouth.

  The first son of the widow, of an unexpected illness

  Will leave the monarchy without any children

  But with two Isles in strife,

  And before the age of eighteen will die.

  So now here was proof of the soothsayer’s accuracy in foretelling the future. King Charles’s elder brother’s death had been accurately predicted. He had come back from hunting one day complaining of a pain behind his ear. A strange tumour had been found to be growing there and he had died just before his seventeenth birthday. He was his mother’s first son, she was a widow, and his death had caused a deal of strife. Even I, who did not pay much heed to prophecies, felt an unaccustomed thrill as this was told to me. Perhaps the king should be concerned about this new prophecy of Nostradamus?

  ‘No one is safe!

  ‘Murder most foul!

  ‘The king’s life is forfeit!’

  When he had concluded his audience with his mother, the king returned to his own apartments in high bad temper.

  ‘She does not wish me to take part in the hunt tomorrow,’ he was heard to complain loudly. ‘I agreed to this royal procession, dragging the whole court halfway round France to encourage support from minor nobles. And to what end? None that I can see, apart from putting our own anointed personage in danger from religious factions who would murder each other on the slightest whim. We are away from Paris, from our châteaux on the Loire, from civilization. But I say, I will hunt tomorrow.’ Charles threw a chair across the room and tore the curtains from his royal bed and trampled them on the floor.

  In a fit of pique, King Charles went to have dinner in the rooms of the scandalous Duchess Marie-Christine. His musicians were summoned to entertain them, so my sister and I dressed with care and went with our father to play as they ate.

  The leopard was there. Unmoving as a statue, it sat on its haunches, long tail curled around its feet. The boy, Melchior, stood beside it, staring straight ahead, his gaze fixed.

  I saw his lips move as he stroked the animal’s head, but this time he was too far away for me to hear his speech.

  Suddenly the words I’d heard him crooning to his leopard earlier in the day rearranged themselves inside my head. The notes of the tune slid into their proper place. I lifted the mandolin and as I played I sang,

  ‘Proud prince of royal blood art thou,

  Paladin, so nobly named,

  Prisoner of others, yet

  Thy spirit, like the wind, untamed.

  ‘Swift son of a mighty hunting race

  Conquest falls to thee,

  Silent shadow, fleet among the chase

  Chained now, yet thou shall be free.’

  Melchior did not turn his head but the posture of his body altered.

  I glanced up, and our eyes met.

  Between us there was a flash of recognition.

  More than the wo
rds. More than the music. I saw something naked in his soul.

  Then a veil dropped over his eyes and his face became impassive.

  I bent my own head.

  ‘I like that song.’ King Charles lolled back in his chair. He had drunk too much wine. ‘I fancy the words are about me. I am a prince chained to do the bidding of others. My mother bade me pay the soothsayer one hundred gold coins. She believes utterly in his prophecies. But can anyone truly see into the future?’

  ‘Of course they can, my lord.’ The duchess, dressed in a gown that exposed most of her breasts, leaned forward provocatively. ‘I too have the gift of foresight. I prophesy that I will put this grape into my mouth.’ She reached into the fruit bowl and plucked out a fat green grape. ‘See?’ She held it up and popped it between her lips. Then she rolled it on her tongue and said in a throbbing voice, ‘Now, I prophesy that the King of France will eat this grape!’ She opened her mouth again to smile at the king and everyone could see that she held the fruit firmly between her teeth.

  King Charles’s face flushed and he leaned across and put his lips clumsily to hers. She pretended to be compliant, but at the last moment she drew away. He moved closer. She rose up from her chair and made to run off. He chased after her and caught her easily. She laughed deep in her throat. Then King Charles put his mouth over hers. She sank against his chest, and with him supporting her they collapsed together on a couch.

  ‘Time to go, my sweets,’ my father said to us with a sigh.

  I wonder now if this display of lovemaking saddened him, as it reminded him of the loss of our mother. Or did he wish to protect us from the immoral ways of the court? It was not that my father did not have his faults – a lot of our money was lost to his gambling and he drank more than he should, but for all that he held against loose morals in love. He wasn’t particularly religious, being frequently absent from church, yet he would urge us always to say our night prayers and greet each new day with a song of praise to the Creator. Once upon a mountain he stood and spread his hands wide and laughed out loud in joy, saying, ‘Can anything be more wonderful? No palace or prince is equal to this.’ On another occasion he lifted a ladybird onto his finger and bade Chantelle and me watch as the insect opened its wings and flew away. ‘Look at how unique is the construction of this creature who can fly untrammelled by any care that we humans must suffer.’

  But this was a time in France when a person’s individual freedom was held in the control of others. My father’s nonattendance at formal worship could engender comment and his mode of life be viewed with suspicion.

  ‘Just when it was becoming interesting,’ grumbled my sister as we prepared ourselves for bed. ‘How am I supposed to learn the ways of love if I’m never to be allowed to watch how others conduct themselves when courting?’

  ‘It was not true love that was on display tonight.’ I was quoting my father. ‘The Duchess Marie-Christine is married. Her husband is away in Paris and she is seducing King Charles for her own ends.’

  ‘I will be ill-prepared for my marriage,’ Chantelle continued to complain as she helped me unlace my gown. ‘I don’t know any of the tricks a woman needs to know in order to beguile a man.’

  ‘I saw you drop the wild flower to Armand in the garden this morning,’ I told her as I put on my night shift. ‘You were as bold as any cunning courtesan.’

  Chantelle giggled as she pulled her own night shift over her head. ‘Did you see how he kissed it and placed it in his tunic next to his heart?’

  ‘Oh, Armand! I love you so much. I will die if I cannot lie with you soon,’ I gasped, making loud kissing noises to tease my sister.

  She replied by pulling my hair and we wrestled together, laughing. Then we jumped into our cot beds and settled down to sleep, whispering to each other in the dark.

  ‘Tomorrow will be a glorious day, Mélisande,’ said Chantelle. ‘When the hunt is over our father will present me to the Count de Ferignay and ask that Armand and I may be married. Imagine! I might be wed within the next few weeks.’

  Distantly the noise of the palace drifted into the room. Messengers came and went, their horses’ hooves clattering on the cobbles. We heard the rough voice of the captain of the guard checking the night watch as he made his rounds each hour.

  And as I listened to these sounds and my sister’s chatting I too looked forward to the morrow. Not because of the wedding arrangement to be made but because we would accompany the hunt. Earlier, when my father had begged leave for us to retire, the king had said that he would definitely hunt the next day, and that we could ride behind him for at least part of the chase.

  I lay in my cot that night and thought of the others who would be there.

  I thought of the leopard. And I thought of Melchior.

  Chapter Five

  MIST WAS RISING from the meadows on either side of the river as the royal hunt assembled the following morning.

  ‘It’s too early to be abroad.’ Chantelle shivered and drew her cloak closer round her shoulders as we stepped outside.

  Beside her I too shivered, but more from excitement than from cold. I gave my sister a quick hug. I knew she hated to rise early and did not care to take part in the hunt. She was only doing it because I had begged her to accompany me, for without her presence I would not have been allowed to go.

  Before the main gates of Cherboucy Palace the king’s chief huntsman, the Grand Veneur, was assembling the hunters. Nobles and courtiers, men and women on horseback and on foot, horses, dog handlers and weapon carriers took their places according to his instructions.

  About a field away a number of peasants from the locality stood watching. Most had a sack or game bag over their shoulder. All forest land belonged to the king, although sometimes parts of it were gifted or leased to the aristocracy or senior clergy. No common man had a right to kill any forest animal or bird, but today they might follow in our train and take the leavings not gathered by the royal servants. Anything they found was deemed the king’s largesse and the food or furs used to sustain them through the winter.

  I heard Chantelle sigh as she caught sight of Armand Vescault.

  Immediately I felt better at having coaxed her from her warm bed. She smiled a happy smile and we mounted the horses that a groom had readied for us to ride. Chantelle sat tall in the saddle in the hope that Armand would see her. She’d said that he would contrive to be close to her at some point during the day. In the frenzy of the hunt all things were possible. But then maybe not, for now our father approached to ride with us. He was careful of our honour and had managed Chantelle and Armand’s courtship with prudence and care. It was over a year since they had met and fallen in love at the royal court in Paris, but Papa would not agree to my sister’s marriage or even allow Armand to speak to his own liege lord at that time. He’d insisted that Chantelle wait a while and took us away to England so that they could test their feelings for each other. But now we were back in France and it was plain that their love had not dimmed.

  The sous-lieutenant had a note of the order of the courtiers who would be grouped around the king. This was a matter of strict protocol according to rank and favour. We were ushered through the squires and the huntsmen, the various aides and weapon-carriers and a score or more of mounted and unmounted valets to our allotted place. King Charles’s mother, the queen regent, had chosen not to attend the hunt. Out of concern for her son she had, however, sent her own surgeon and an apothecary laden down with boxes containing instruments and medicines. When the king arrived he barely acknowledged their presence and they were assigned to the rear, with only the peasants trailing behind them. King Charles could not have made his irritation at their presence more plain.

  The king’s groom had just led his majesty’s horse to the centre of the line when a restless shifting rippled among the ranks of the assembled nobles. There was an angry murmur of voices. Then one, louder than the rest said, ‘How dare these Protestants approach the king without Queen Catherine’s permission
!’

  ‘It’s the Huguenot leader, Admiral Gaspard Coligny,’ my father told us. ‘He must mean to join the hunt today.’ Then he too gasped. ‘And he has brought young Prince Henri of Navarre with him!’

  I shook my reins to move my horse so that I might better see this prince, a cousin of the king, and distant heir to the French throne. Navarre was a small kingdom on the western border of France and its ruler, Queen Jeanne, had converted her country to be Huguenot. Their prince, Henri, was younger than King Charles, but with a more healthy, open look about his face. Admiral Gaspard Coligny was leading the way, guiding his horse to follow the master of the king’s kennels, who was bringing the king’s deerhounds that they might be loosed to begin the hunt. Prince Henri sat straight in his saddle. Coligny’s hair was streaked with grey and his face showed the scars of sword fights fought and won. In their dark clothes the Huguenots exuded an air of gravitas. Both were daring indeed to come among the Catholic lords, who were known to be violently jealous of their places next to the person of the king.

  I was not the only rider who tried to move forward. Ahead of me a handsome young man dug his heels into the flanks of his horse, intent on intercepting Admiral Coligny’s progress. This noble I knew by sight and reputation. At just fifteen years old the wilful and headstrong Duke of Guise had inherited his title when his father was treacherously assassinated by some Protestants. He blamed Gaspard Coligny and had declared himself sworn enemy of all Huguenots. Instantly, the duke’s uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, who was positioned alongside him, leaned over and pulled on his rein.

  ‘Not now!’ The command was low and urgent. ‘Not now! This is not the place. Our time will come, I promise you. Then we will strike these heretics down so that they will never rise again.’

  The Duke of Guise scowled but held his horse in check and we watched as Admiral Coligny presented Prince Henri to the king.