So then I related to Giorgio the full details of my family history, exactly how Chantelle died, and how I was parted from my father and had to flee to Salon.
‘Ah, yes,’ he said when I had finished. ‘It’s all much clearer now.’ He leaned forward and stroked my forehead. ‘Yet I sense there is more, Mélisande. You have not told me all.’
But after having seen my father in person I was now so focused on reuniting with my beloved papa that I did not care about the prophecy or want any attention given to the papers of Nostradamus. ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘There is no more. That is the tale I have to tell and I only want to speak to my father again.’
Giorgio stood up. ‘There must be something that can be done about this situation.’
‘But now Queen Jeanne has died we might be sent back to Navarre,’ I said. ‘There is so little time.’
‘I agree.’ Giorgio spoke slowly. ‘There is not much time. But it would make you happy to see your father again?’
‘It would!’ I clasped my hands together.
‘And if it proves impossible for you to actually speak to him, is there any message you might want to give your father, or anyone at court?’ Giorgio asked casually.
‘I would like to let Papa know that I am safe and well,’ I replied.
‘Nothing else?’ He hesitated. ‘No written word of any kind?’
‘I could write out something if you think that might be appropriate,’ I offered.
‘No, no,’ said Giorgio. ‘I thought perhaps you already had some piece of paper, a letter perhaps . .?’ His voice tailed off.
‘I will make one now.’ I began to rise from my bed.
‘No, better not to.’ Giorgio seemed disconcerted. He went towards the door. ‘I will try to ensure that you meet once again with your father, Mélisande. You deserve that at least.’
Following the royal wedding there were four days of celebrations: all kinds of parties, ornate spectacles, masked balls, concerts and lavish feasts, both public and private. But despite the bountiful distribution of food the mood of the city was charged with resentment. The house servants gossiped about this but I barely noticed. Mainly I kept to our rooms for I was sick with nervous tremors at the thought that I might soon see my father.
Would he recognize me? I found a mirror and stared at my reflection. I was shocked at my appearance. My face was thin, my complexion white, my eyes circled with fatigue. With my short hair and cap pulled down I could pass for a boy, but surely my own father would not be fooled by this disguise?
Over the next few days Giorgio went out in the evenings, not returning until late. Each night when he did return he seemed more careworn and disinclined to talk. He explained that this was because he was frustrated that he could not secure a pass for me to go with him inside the palace of the Louvre. And all the while, as I fretted, he was very solicitous of my health and sat with me as I drank my nightly medicine.
But then towards noon on Friday, which was the twenty-second of August, a messenger came with summons for him to attend the Louvre immediately. The new bridegroom, Henri of Navarre, when about to play tennis with King Charles, had fallen and injured his ankle.
Giorgio glanced to where I sat on a stool, listlessly stirring a pot of alum.
‘This small emergency means that both of us will be permitted to enter the Louvre,’ he said. He looked at me with compassion. ‘It could be your one chance to see your father, Mélisande.’
I stood up, swaying.
‘I am ready,’ I said.
In the few days since I had been out, the streets of the city had deteriorated. I was taken aback at how unsafe and filthy they had become. Raw sewage was heaped in stinking mounds and passers-by gave us suspicious looks as we passed. Giorgio kept tight hold of my arm as we hurried along. Arriving at the main gate with the messenger sent to escort us meant that we were both allowed inside.
Henri of Navarre sat by the side of the tennis court in an inner courtyard with his ankle resting on a cushion. Gaspard Coligny stood beside him and the queen regent, Catherine de’ Medici, was also there. She stepped to one side as we approached without acknowledging our presence. Henri’s ankle was swollen but he was joking with King Charles.
‘Had I known this was how you treated your opponents, I never would have agreed to play a game with you,’ he joked.
‘You should be glad that it’s only a torn ankle muscle you suffer,’ came a distinct murmur from the ranks of the courtiers present. ‘Much worse could be done to a heretic.’
It was a voice I recognized. The Count de Ferignay! I felt a sickening cramp of fear in my stomach but I kept my head down and face averted.
If Henri heard this jibe he ignored it, but his friend Denis Durac bent close and whispered in his ear, ‘Mark well, sire, you were tripped up by one of the men of the house of Guise as you entered the courtyard. The blow was deliberate, so now they have you hobbled.’
‘You must take my new brother-in-law’s place.’ King Charles addressed Gaspard Coligny petulantly. ‘It is my royal wish to play tennis at this moment and you can be my partner.’
‘I beg pardon, sire,’ Coligny excused himself, ‘but after the State Council meeting this morning I must go and prepare orders to allow more of our troops to muster in the face of Spanish aggression in the Netherlands near our borders.’ Coligny smiled openly at the queen regent in an insulting manner. It was well known that Catherine felt that any confrontation with Spain should be avoided.
‘You may go.’ King Charles glanced defiantly at his mother and waved his hand in dismissal to Coligny.
Catherine de’ Medici looked away as Coligny quitted the room.
‘I will play tennis with you, sire, if you would do me the honour.’
The Duke of Guise had stepped forward from among his supporters grouped around him. The king nodded impatiently and returned to the tennis court as the Duke of Guise took up a racket. My eyes searched the rows of spectators and courtiers ranked in the gallery and milling about the doors. There was no sign of my father. The duke walked lazily to the court. The king was becoming more irked at the delay to his game.
‘Let us commence then,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve had to put off my morning’s sport long enough while my so-called advisers, Coligny and the rest, argue over whether we should be at war with Spain.’
Catherine de’ Medici drew in her breath. ‘May I remind you, sire, that to provoke war with Spain would be disaster for France.’
‘I do not care!’ King Charles’s voice was shrill. ‘I will not discuss that matter any more. I want to play my game of tennis now!’ And he flung the ball and hit it wildly with his racket.
The Duke of Guise, despite obviously trying to allow the king to score, took the first point.
Charles flushed with anger, struck the ball viciously in return. The duke gave it a soft pat. The king ran forward in glee. He drew back his arm to make the stroke that would certainly have resulted in his gaining a point, when suddenly a furious commotion was heard in the corridor. Several men-at-arms rushed into the courtyard.
‘Assassination! Assassination!’
Charles screamed in alarm and fled to hide behind his mother. She remained completely still, smoothed her dress, and demanded, ‘What is the meaning of this outrage?’
The first soldier went down on one knee before her. ‘The Admiral Gaspard Coligny has been shot.’
‘What!’ King Charles threw his tennis racket on the ground. ‘Am I to have no peace?’ he shouted in fury. ‘Can I not play one game without constant interruption?’
At the news Henri of Navarre had tried to rise to his feet.
A babble of voices broke out and men began to rush towards the doors.
‘Stop!’ commanded Catherine de’ Medici. The courtiers shuffled to a standstill. ‘Secure all entrances and exits to this place,’ she ordered her personal guard. ‘We are sad to hear of the death of Gaspard Coligny but we must safeguard the presence of the king.’
During
the upset, another man, by his dress a Huguenot, ran in and conferred with Henri of Navarre. Helped by Denis Durac, Henri now stood up. He then spoke, commanding those present to listen without raising his voice. ‘I have just been informed that Admiral Gaspard Coligny is not dead, but has suffered injury after being shot.’ There were audible sighs of regret from the house of Guise. ‘We should be grateful that the Lord has seen fit to spare his life.’
Charles turned a look of irritation on his brother-in-law. ‘Grateful? Grateful? ’ he screeched. ‘My tennis game is disrupted. It is now completely spoiled. And I was about to make a point,’ he added sulkily.
The comparison between these two men could not have been more obvious. The kingly attributes of Henri contrasted with the temper tantrum of Charles when contemplating losing a tennis match.
On hearing that Coligny was only wounded Catherine de’ Medici’s disappointment was palpable but she recovered quickly. She made the slightest movement of her head.
‘Is there a doctor who might attend to Admiral Coligny?’
Giorgio stepped forward.
At once Henri of Navarre said to him, ‘Giorgio, be good enough to take your assistant and go now to the house of Admiral Gaspard Coligny and give him your best attention.’
Both Henri of Navarre and Catherine de’ Medici ordered an armed guard to protect us on our way. The streets were seething with men, shouting the news to each other and jostling the soldiers as they pushed their way through with us in the centre of their formation. The calls between the various groups let us know that the shot had been fired from a house owned by the Duke of Guise.
‘Was this planned, do you think?’ I asked Giorgio.
He gripped my shoulder so hard that I cried out in pain. ‘Say nothing,’ he hissed at me. ‘Do you understand? Say nothing.’
We were ushered upstairs in Gaspard Coligny’s house. His friends, who were clustered around his bedside, stepped aside upon hearing that we had been sent by Henri of Navarre. Giorgio looked at the wound on Coligny’s left arm.
‘If I may, I could apply a poultice,’ he suggested.
‘I do not recommend that course of action,’ a voice interrupted him.
Ambroise Paré, the king’s surgeon, had arrived, sent by the king, who now regretted his lack of concern at Coligny’s injuries. Paré’s integrity was above reproach and Giorgio immediately deferred to the more experienced doctor’s opinion. He glanced at me as he passed but his face showed no recognition. We had only met once briefly when he had gone to attend my sister Chantelle and declared her dead.
‘First we must remove the musket ball, else the wound will fester,’ Paré stated after conducting his own careful examination of Coligny’s broken arm.
‘And afterwards we should take Admiral Coligny to the Louvre for safety,’ added Giorgio.
‘No!’ There was a grumbling from the Huguenot men at the door. ‘If we let him be taken to the Louvre it would give them the chance to finish off their botched attempt to murder him!’
Paré gave Giorgio a curious look, saying, ‘It is my belief that moving Admiral Coligny would kill him most effectively. His wound would have a better chance to heal if he remained in bed.’
Giorgio drew me towards the window as Ambroise Paré began to probe for the bullet.
‘We must get away from here,’ he said in a strained voice. ‘For soon no one will be able to gain access to or exit from this house.’
I looked down. The alleyway below us was crowded with Huguenots who had hastened there from all parts of the city. They made a dark heaving mass as they crushed closer to find out what was happening.
We found our escort stationed at the front door and Giorgio persuaded them to conduct us safely to the house of Viscount Lebrand. In order to gain passage the soldiers had to walk with halberds extended out before them.
‘There will be a riot before the night is out,’ I commented.
‘Or worse,’ said Giorgio tersely.
The house of Viscount Lebrand was also in turmoil. He had heard the news but could not go to aid his Huguenot brethren as his abscessed leg was suppurating. He asked Giorgio to change the dressing.
‘To lose Gaspard Coligny so soon after the death of our queen would badly damage the Huguenot cause,’ he told Giorgio.
Viscount Lebrand had taken the death of Queen Jeanne hard, feeling that it reflected badly on him as she had succumbed while in his house.
‘Queen Jeanne was exhausted by the visit of King Charles and Catherine de’ Medici during that day,’ the viscount went on. ‘Perhaps if I’d sat with her that night I would have seen her weaken and sought aid and she might not have died.’
‘You should not berate yourself,’ Giorgio told the viscount as he began to drain the wound into the bowl that I held close to the infected leg. ‘Time would have brought the same conclusion.’
I felt the floor of the room slide away as the pus oozed out.
‘Take the bowl away now and rinse it out,’ Giorgio ordered me kindly, ‘then go and rest. And be sure to take your medicine before lying down.’
‘Your assistant is unwell?’ I heard the viscount enquire politely as I went towards the door.
‘I believe it may be the first stages of querain,’ Giorgio said in a very low voice.
The viscount tutted in sympathy. ‘Such a pity. Good assistants are hard to find.’
Querain? In Salon we had treated patients who had contracted that fatal illness and I knew that I did not have it. As Giorgio must also know. Why would he say such a thing? I did have a headache though. A tearing fierce burning behind my eyes.
The bowl shattered as it slipped from my grasp and fell into the sink. I stared at it stupidly. I had no energy to clear up the mess. A throbbing sensation pressed from behind my eyelids.
I needed to take something to ease this. There was a remedy Giorgio used for migraines that was very effective. I groped my way to the shelf but the bottle was empty. The pain was now an iron band around my temples. I must have relief. I knew that Giorgio had some of his most popular remedies in his doctor’s bag. It was always kept beside his sleeping mattress, but I reckoned he would not mind if I took something from it.
I opened Giorgio’s doctor’s bag to find the tincture and rummaged all the way to the bottom. A small soft parcel was lodged in one corner, roughly wrapped in paper. Might the remedy lie beneath it? I pulled the parcel out, and as I did so the paper wrapping tore and the contents dropped onto the floor at my feet.
A pair of gloves.
White gloves.
Why would Giorgio keep gloves in here? He never wore gloves of any sort. These were ladies’ gloves. I had seen them before somewhere . . .
I bent to pick them up. Then I stopped. A fruity scent wafted from the open parcel. And this time I recognized the smell for what it was.
Cherries.
And with stunning clarity all else crashed into my mind.
I sat down upon the floor. The door from the house opened and Giorgio walked in. He looked at me and the open bag. He saw what lay on the floor beside me.
‘Ah, Queen Jeanne’s gloves,’ he said. ‘I should have burned those accurséd gloves.’
Chapter Sixty-seven
GIORGIO CLOSED THE door and locked it behind him.
I stared at him. My friend. My protector. Giorgio.
He had killed Queen Jeanne.
Using the Medici poison he’d once told me about in Salon, he had murdered the Queen of Navarre. I recalled now the symptoms Giorgio had described: the smell of cherry, the yellowing of the skin on the backs of the hands. My mind jerked back to the night of Queen Jeanne’s death. When we had entered the bedroom her hands on the bedspread had been white. She must have been trying on the gloves, as urged by Catherine de’ Medici who had sent them as a gift that day. Giorgio had gone to the bedside, ordering all others to go away. He had taken the opportunity to remove the gloves and hide them in his doctor’s bag. I remembered that later, when her lady-in-waiting
had rushed forward, the queen’s hand had been ungloved, the skin brown-spotted with age but also yellowed with poison.
I raised a stricken face to him.
‘You killed Queen Jeanne of Navarre.’
‘The Medici poison was delivered here and I made it up into a cream that was rubbed into the inside of the gloves,’ Giorgio said quietly. ‘And I ensured then that after Queen Jeanne died the gloves disappeared so that there should be no evidence. But Queen Jeanne was very ill. She would have died in any case. Time would have done the job had they had the patience to wait.’
‘That is what you just told the Viscount Lebrand,’ I said. ‘Time would have brought the same conclusion. The same words you said to someone who visited here late one night some weeks ago.’
‘Ah, so you were awake that night.’ Giorgio tilted his head and regarded me. ‘So I was right then to start to use the sleeping draught on you.’ He came towards me and demanded abruptly, ‘What is the message that you carry, Mélisande?’
‘I do not know what you mean.’
‘We both know what I mean.’
He was standing over me. Suddenly I was very frightened. I got to my feet and pushed him in the chest. He allowed me a little space and then said in a friendly manner, ‘We can trade secrets if you will.’
‘What secret do you know that I might want from you?’ I asked him.
‘Information that would help your father. Proof of how Armand Vescault died.’
‘How could you possibly have that information?’
‘The Lord Thierry truly loved you.’ Giorgio shook his head in wonder. ‘You inspired such devotion in him that he gave his life that you might live and did this thing for you.’
‘What thing?’
‘Lord Thierry paid for a private investigation into the disappearance of Armand Vescault. As you would be travelling in disguise he arranged for the results to be sent to me to give to you. Before we left Navarre I received a letter from the magistrate of Carcassonne. His officials thoroughly searched the palace of Cherboucy. In a deep well they found the body of Armand Vescault stabbed to death with a dagger bearing the coat of arms of the Count de Ferignay. This shows that the Count de Ferignay lied when he said that he had spoken to Armand and had seen him riding away. It is enough to clear you and your father of any wrongdoing. So that letter would be very useful to you, I think.’
The Nostradamus Prophecy Page 30