The Nostradamus Prophecy

by Theresa Breslin

  Henri put his hand on his sword.

  ‘You have brought me to a trap!’ he exclaimed.

  I shook my head.

  ‘My word is true.’ I crossed the room and touched a tapestry. ‘Behind this is a hidden door.’

  I ran my fingers over the wood carvings, until I found what I sought. A soft click and a small door opened. We clambered inside, down some stairs and into a low-roofed alcove. In front of us was another door. I opened it and encountered a heavy curtain which I drew aside.

  We stepped into the private study of the King of France.

  Chapter Seventy-one

  CHARLES SAT WEEPING in a chair by the window.

  ‘Your majesty!’ Henri of Navarre announced his presence.

  So distraught was King Charles that he did not remark on it being strange that his cousin with several other people should appear from behind a curtain in his room in the middle of the night.

  ‘Are you aware of what is happening in your palace,’ Henri asked him, ‘and in your city?’

  ‘I did not wish it!’ cried Charles, rocking backwards and forwards. ‘They bullied and harangued me until I could no longer think sensibly. They have murdered Gaspard Coligny, whom I loved as a father. I did not want anyone to die.’

  ‘Then, sire,’ said Henri of Navarre, ‘you must give the order to stop the slaughter.’

  ‘I cannot,’ the king sobbed. ‘Look down there and you will see that nothing can stop it now!’

  We crowded to the window and looked down.

  Unspeakable horror met our eyes. Terrified fleeing Huguenots, the survivors of the first wave of the massacre, had been rounded up and herded into the main courtyard. There, archers fired on them as the guards pressed forward, stabbing and impaling them on their pikes. Piles of dead bodies were mounting up as the soldiers, in uncontrolled mania, stripped and mutilated the corpses.

  Henri of Navarre recoiled. I leaned for support against the window frame. Melchior put his arm around me and pulled me away. I held my father close.

  ‘What to do now?’ said Henri, addressing Melchior. ‘Who is this girl and why did you trust her enough to allow her to lead us here where we may be worse off than before?’

  Melchior explained to Henri of Navarre about my presence there, and how we came to be in a position to save his life.

  ‘And I would ask for my freedom, sire,’ Melchior said when he’d finished his story, ‘and that we all may leave this place tonight.’

  ‘Your freedom I grant you.’ Henri nodded. ‘But as to how you or I might safely quit Paris, I do not know.’

  As he was speaking, the door of the room opened and Catherine de’ Medici entered. Despite it being after three in the morning she was fully dressed in her customary robes of black. Her hair was carefully coifed with all her jewellery in place. It was clear that she had not just arisen from her bed but had been awake and dressed for some time, if not planning the massacre then certainly not unaware of it happening.

  Although she must have been astounded to see Henri of Navarre in a completely different part of the palace from where she believed him to be, she held her ground. ‘It is most improper for anyone to be with the king without the knowledge of his chamberlain,’ she said. She took a step back towards the door she had just entered, no doubt to summon help.

  Henri brought forward the sword he still held. ‘Madame,’ he said, gesturing at the king.

  Catherine de’ Medici stayed calm. Without haste she inspected us all in turn. When she looked at me I saw recognition in her face.

  In an abrupt movement Henri cast down his sword. ‘Now I am unarmed,’ he told the queen regent. ‘I wish neither you nor your son any harm. In fact, I came to warn him that the men of the house of Guise have begun an armed rebellion and are killing Huguenots indiscriminately.’

  Catherine de’ Medici stared at the man whom she considered an upstart yet who had just outmanoeuvred her in diplomatic skill.

  ‘I concur,’ she replied after a small hesitation. ‘We must rein in these soldiers,’ she addressed her son. Then she turned quickly to me and said, ‘I know you for who you are. The captain of my guard brought me the pass given to you by Nostradamus. Where is the man known as Giorgio who swore he would bring me something of interest that he had obtained from the seer before he died?’

  ‘Giorgio remained at the house of Viscount Lebrand,’ I answered her very carefully. ‘For it was in me that the seer confided. I have the paper with the prophecy written in his own handwriting.’

  Catherine de’ Medici held out her hand. ‘You will now give to me this prophecy of Master Nostradamus and tell me what you know of its meaning.’

  Very slowly and carefully I took from my tunic only the paper on which was written the two quatrains relating to my destiny and tonight’s events. I presented them to Catherine de’ Medici and said, ‘This is the paper Nostradamus wrote out for me and all I know is that it pertains to the King of France.’

  Catherine de’ Medici unfurled the parchment and read out the first one of the two quatrains.

  ‘With fire and heartless hangings

  The treachery of royal line holds sway

  Deeds done by stealth will come to light and all but one consumed

  Safe from the sword, saved only by the word.’

  She paused. ‘Are these first four lines not the words Nostradamus spoke in Cherboucy when he came to warn us that the king’s life might be in danger?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Nostradamus foresaw this night of bloodshed in Paris.’

  ‘These clearly refer to the actions of the house of Guise,’ said Catherine de’ Medici firmly. ‘They are of the royal line and have treacherously betrayed us all tonight.’ She turned to her son, the king. ‘We must stop the slaughter.’

  ‘We must stop the slaughter. We must stop the slaughter.’ In distress and repeating his mother’s words over and over, King Charles rose and opened up the window and began to call out to his archers to leave off their firing.

  ‘Close the window!’ Catherine de’ Medici snapped out.

  King Charles jumped back at the sound of his mother’s angry voice, and I, who was nearest the window, obeyed her order. As I closed over the casement a quantity of arrows struck the glass, for in the darkness the marksmen below saw what they thought was a Huguenot attempting to escape.

  Catherine de’ Medici shouted in alarm and rushed to her son. King Charles fell upon his mother’s neck, sobbing. She cuddled him and soothed him as if he were a four-year-old child. Then she guided him to a chair and settled him. She straightened up and looked at me intently and said, ‘You are Mélisande, the minstrel’s daughter. The one who ran away on the day her sister fell from the tower at Cherboucy.’

  ‘I am, your majesty,’ I replied, ‘and if I may be so bold, I would like to present to you this testament.’ I brought out the letter written by the magistrate of Carcassonne stating that they had found the murdered body of Armand Vescault with evidence of the involvement of the Count de Ferignay.

  ‘I know all of that.’ Catherine de’ Medici waved her hand in irritation as I tried to explain. ‘My own spies eventually discovered the truth of the matter. The Count de Ferignay is a known liar and philanderer. I did not believe one word of the tale he told me.’

  I could not quite comprehend what the queen regent had just said. Had she really kept my father for years without trial although she knew of his innocence?

  Noticing my look of incredulity, the queen regent said, ‘It was necessary. My son, the king, suffers frequent headaches. He finds your father’s music soothing, therefore I decided the minstrel should not leave the court. It was the simplest way to ensure that he remained here. Had the truth come out then he would have gone off to look for you.’

  How little the happiness of ordinary lives matters to those who rule, I thought.

  ‘And I did it for the good of France,’ she added enigmatically.

  Nothing was ever straightforward with this woman. A mem
ory came to me of Cherboucy. In the great hall as the queen regent listened to my plea for justice, I’d seen her eyes searching the room, counting the number of soldiers belonging to the house of Guise and those of her own. Perhaps she did not dare to arrest the Count de Ferignay, connected as he was to the powerful house of Guise, without endangering the stability of the crown. It was always said of her that she was so devious that she did not even tell herself the truth.

  ‘And it has been so decreed by mystical signs that I was guided to do this,’ the queen regent continued. ‘For as you have come to save your father and bring me this letter you also saved the life of my son, your king. This is the other verse that Nostradamus has written here in which he foretells the deed that has just come to pass.’

  Catherine de’ Medici held up the paper I had given her and read out the second quatrain of the prophecy:

  ‘This is your destiny, Mélisande.

  You are the one who,

  In the way known to you, can save

  The king who must be saved.’

  Henri of Navarre caught his breath. I did not need to meet his gaze to know that he understood the full meaning of the quatrain. Avoiding his eyes, I looked to the queen regent.

  Catherine de’ Medici nodded her head a few times. ‘Even from beyond the grave Master Nostradamus has not failed me. My contrivance has brought you to this room. Thus you, Mélisande, were at the window and able to close it over as the archers fired. And so my beloved son, Charles, King of France, was saved from death.’

  I glanced at Melchior, who made the slightest movement of his head. And I understood him to indicate to me to say nothing.

  The queen regent had a satisfied look upon her face. As the Lord Thierry had once told me, Catherine de’ Medici thought that her children were destined by divine decree to rule France. Thus she believed totally that fate had conspired to save Charles from dying this night.

  But I knew my true destiny and I had to ensure the safety of the king who would be great. I found courage and I spoke out. ‘Your majesty, if I may be so bold, the wise seer, Nostradamus, still strives to assist you—’

  ‘Yes.’ Catherine de’ Medici spoke impatiently. ‘What else do you have to say, girl?’

  I looked beyond the queen regent to where a mirror hung on the wall. And fixing my gaze upon it, I intoned,

  ‘Two persons joined in holy bond

  Two realms . . .’

  Catherine de’ Medici half closed her eyes. ‘I recall those words. They were indeed also spoken at Cherboucy by the seer Nostradamus. I interpreted it to be a union between my son, King Charles, and Elizabeth of England. But that did not transpire.’

  I pointed to Henri of Navarre. ‘Majesty, perhaps you did interpret the prophet’s words correctly.’

  The eyes of the queen regent opened very wide. ‘Now I see that I did!’ she exclaimed. ‘It was hidden, yet I was given the gift to determine the right path to take.’

  ‘You arranged the marriage of Prince Henri and Princess Margot,’ I prompted her.

  ‘And this union must be preserved,’ she agreed. She clasped her hands to her bosom. ‘Nostradamus speaks to me from beyond the grave.’

  The queen regent turned a more benign look upon Henri of Navarre, and I knew then that I had completely fulfilled my destiny as charged by Nostradamus.

  ‘My son.’ Catherine de’ Medici spoke to King Charles. ‘We will make a royal warrant to declare that Henri of Navarre should live.’

  ‘And Mélisande and her father and Melchior must be allowed to go free,’ said Henri of Navarre.

  Such were King Henri’s skills of diplomacy and authority that Catherine de’ Medici went to sit down at the king’s writing desk. And she wrote out an order for a safe passage that my father, Melchior and I might go unharmed from Paris that night.

  Chapter Seventy-two

  EVEN WHEN THAT heinous night was over the killings did not stop.

  For, although the king issued instructions for all men to lay down their arms, he was ignored. The mob ruled the stricken city of Paris and inevitably the people began to turn on each other.

  As word seeped out to the provinces, the violence began to spread throughout France. In many cities known criminals roamed the streets plundering premises and committing murder. In the countryside, downtrodden peasants formed large gangs wreaking havoc wherever they went. Houses were set on fire with the doors barricaded and the occupants still inside. Hangings took place without trial or mercy. Neither Protestant nor Catholic was safe. Amid scenes of wild carnage old scores were settled and personal vendettas carried out by those mad with blood lust.

  My father was very weak and not fit to travel far. Once clear of the city Melchior led us to an abandoned woodsman’s hut in one of the forests where he had hunted with King Charles. We burned fallen branches to keep warm and Melchior trapped animals to feed us. At night, as we sat by our fire, he grieved for the loss of his companion and fellow hunter, Paladin, the noble leopard who had died to save his master’s life. Papa and I joined him in his lamentations, and we recounted many stories of the goodness of Chantelle and used the time to properly mourn my sister. And I told them of the things Nostradamus had seen in his visions, and of his last prophecy, and what he had asked me to do.

  We spent the autumn and winter there in safety while the terror took hold of France. In an orgy of hatred thousands upon thousands of people, innocent men, women and children, died, and the words of Nostradamus came true. Rivers ran red with blood.

  The royal family became virtual prisoners in the Louvre and, in a horrible irony, the Duke of Guise, seeing that all control of the country might be lost, used his own soldiers to try to restore order on behalf of the king.

  Wildly varying stories of congratulations and censure were reported from the other courts in Europe. It was said that, upon hearing the news of the murder of so many leading Protestants, the King of Spain had joyfully thrown his hat in the air, but the Queen of England had at once put on a black veil.

  Catherine de’ Medici denied that there was a Catholic conspiracy to exterminate all Protestants. She made a declaration that a Huguenot plot to kill the king had been uncovered and swift action, as undertaken by the Duke of Guise in killing Gaspard Coligny, had been necessary. Thus she blamed the Guise family, while they in turn insisted the order had come from the king.

  The old year spent itself and the new year had begun before gradually peace was restored to all parts of the country. As the nobles bickered over responsibility the people were left to carry the burden of recrimination and bitterness.

  Isolated as we were, away from all other habitation, we heard none of these happenings until we arrived eventually at the Isle of Bressay.

  We had waited until the spring following the massacre before we left our forest shelter. We travelled very cautiously and in easy stages, therefore it was May of that new year before we saw our own land again. The soldiers of the Count de Ferignay had gone, disappearing, our tenants told us, when news came of their master’s death and of the events in Paris.

  My father’s health was not robust, but when summer arrived in glorious beauty his mind and body began to heal enough for us to go walking out together.

  So it was that one evening in late June I went with him and Melchior to the hill of the Standing Stones overlooking the Isle of Bressay. I had wrapped the last prophecy of Nostradamus in a package of oiled leather and brought it with me on this day of the summer solstice.

  ‘There is something I must do,’ I told Melchior, and, leaving my father, we went together into the circle of the standing stones.

  I thought of the prophecy contained in the package. I remembered what Nostradamus had said when giving it to me:

  ‘I charge you with finding a safe place to keep my last prophecy until the time comes for it to be revealed. We can only hope that those who come after us are alert and listen to the warning therein.’

  ‘This circle has been here a thousand years,’ said Me
lchior.

  ‘And will survive a thousand more,’ I said. ‘There is a place here where the last prophecy may be hidden.’

  ‘It is a good choice,’ said Melchior, ‘for men will not move these stones.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘though metal beasts roam the fields and metal fish swim in the sky, mankind will always respect the standing stones.’

  Melchior touched my forehead. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I do not know if you are quoting the prophet or if it is your own prophecies you utter.’

  ‘I know not myself,’ I replied.

  The sun was going down, sitting low along the western sky, its rays spreading upon the New World on the other side of this planet, and out to others that spin among the mighty oceans of darkness in the skies. For the terrifying truth, obscured for so long, was that we were not, and never could be, the centre of this universe. We are one among many, but there are some things so enormous in their construct that our frail minds cannot encompass them. Nostradamus was himself, in the end, overwhelmed by his own visions.

  He wrote what he knew to warn those who will come after us. So I will hide his quatrain of doom in the hope that the people of a future time will discover it and avert the apocalyptic catastrophe as predicted by the Seer of Salon:

  A shaft of sunlight reaches out and blazes onto the central cairn.

  As if in a trance I walk there, and I touch the keystone. The great slab pivots. Inside the secret chamber is where I put the last prophecy of Nostradamus.

  And there it lies, waiting.

  I tell my story now for those who come after me so that they may find the last prophecy and pay heed to the warning.

  It was only given to me to do one thing. It is up to others to avert the disasters to come.

  I walk with Melchior back down the hill. Above our heads the stars throb in the firmament. And as we walk, for the first time since my mandolin was destroyed, music, clear as starlight, stirs within me. I think of the ballad I will compose that will tell our story, Melchior and I. Of how we met and were parted, how we came together again, and the manner in which the leopard, Paladin, saved our lives.