by Jean Plaidy
The hammering on her door persisted: it was accompanied by loud cries. She listened. ‘Open . . . Open . . . For the love of God. Navarre! Navarre!’
‘Who is there?’ cried Margot. She called to one of her women who came running in from the ante-chamber. ‘Someone knocks. Unlock the door.’
The woman stumbled to the door. Margot, her bed-curtains parted, saw a man rush into the room. His face was deathly pale, his clothes spattered with blood; the blood dripped on to the carpet.
He saw the bed. He saw Margot. He staggered towards her with his arms outstretched.
Margot had leaped out of bed, and the intruder, flinging his arms about her knelt and, lifting his agonized face to hers, cried: ‘Save me . . . Navarre . . . Navarre . . .’
Margot, for once, was completely bewildered. She had no idea who this man was, why he should be in such a condition and why he should thus break into her bedchamber; but even as he knelt there, his blood staining her nightgown, four men rushed into the room, their bloodstained swords in their hands, their eyes like those of wild animals lusting for the kill.
Ever emotional in the extreme, Margot was roused to pity, anger and indignation all at once. With a quick gesture she released herself from the clinging hands of the man and stood in front of him; her black hair in disorder, her black eyes flashing, she faced those bloodthirsty men in such a manner that even in their present mood they were aware that they stood in the presence of a Queen.
‘How dare you!’ she cried. ‘How dare you come thus into my chamber!’
The men fell back, but only a pace. Margot felt a twinge of fear, but only enough to stimulate her. She called to her women: ‘Bring the Captain of the Guard to me immediately. As for you, cowards . . . bullies . . . murderers . . . for I see you are all three . . . stay where you are or you will suffer.’
But on this night of bloodshed, such killers as these were not going to be over-impressed by nobility or even royalty. One of them had, ten minutes before, stained his sword with the blood of a Duke. And who was this . . . but the wife of a Huguenot!
She saw the fanatical gleam in their eyes and haughtily she held up her hand.
‘If you dare come a step nearer, I will have you beaten, tortured . . . and put to death. Down on your knees! I am the Queen, and you shall answer for this unless you give me immediate obedience.’
But they did not fall on their knees, and she saw now, in those four pairs of eyes, lust for herself mingled with their lust for blood. She realized that terrible things were happening about her; and she knew that she was in great danger, that these men were of the mob and that on nights such as this, a Queen meant nothing more than a woman.
How long could she hold them off? How long before they dispatched the poor half-dead creature who lay behind her? How long before they dealt with her?
But here, thank God, was Monsieur de Nançay, the Captain of the Guard, handsome, charming, a man on whom Margot had bestowed smiles of warm regard and promise.
‘Monsieur de Nançay!’ she cried. ‘See what indignity these rogues put me to!’
She noticed that he, like the intruders, wore a white cross in his hat.
He shouted to the men: ‘What do you here? How dare you enter the apartments of our Most Catholic Princess?’
One of them pointed to the man whom Margot was trying to hide in the folds of her nightgown.
‘He ran in here, sir, and we but followed. He escaped after we had. caught him.’
‘You followed him here! Into the apartments of Her Majesty! It will be well for you if you make yourself scarce at once before Her Majesty has time to note your evil faces.’
‘Shall we take the heretic, sir? He is making a mess in the lady’s bedchamber.’
Margot said haughtily: ‘I will deal with him. You have heard what Monsieur de Nançay said. You will be wise to go at once.’
When they had gone, reluctant and almost sheepish, de Nançay’s lips began to twitch.
‘You will help me to get this man into my ruelle, Monsieur,’ said Margot coldly. ‘And while you do so perhaps you will tell me why you are amused at your low soldiers’ daring to insult me.’
‘Madame, Your Majesty’s pardon,’ said de Nançay, lifting the semi-conscious man in his arms, ‘but Your Majesty’s kindness is well known, and if I seemed to smile, it was because I was thinking that this man might have heard of it.’
‘Take him to my ruelle at once.’
‘Madame, he is a Huguenot.’
‘What of that?’
‘The King’s orders are that no Huguenot shall survive this night.’
She stared at him in horror. ‘My . . . husband? His . . . friends?’
‘Your husband will be safe, together with the Prince of Condé.’
Now she understood the meaning of the terrible noises in the streets below. She was nauseated. She hated bloodshed. They were all concerned in this—her mother, her brothers . . . her lover.
De Nancay spoke gently to her. ‘I will take this man away, Madame. He shall not defile, your chamber further with his blood.’
But Margot shook her head. ‘You will obey me, Monsieur, and take him to my ruelle.’
‘But, Madame, I beg of you to remember the King’s orders.’
‘I am not accustomed to having my orders disobeyed,’ she said. ‘Take him in there at once. And, Monsieur de Nancay, you will tell none that he is here. And you will obey me, or I will never forgive your insolence of this night.’
De Nançay very gallant and Margot was very charming. What, he asked himself, was, one Huguenot among thousands?
‘I promise you, Madame,’ he said, ‘that none shall know you keep him here.’
He laid the man on the black satin-covered couch, while Margot called to her women to bring her ointments and bandages; she had been a pupil of Paré’s was more skilled than most in the use of these things. Tenderly she bathed and bandaged the wounds, and, as She did so, determined that here was at least one Huguenot who should not die.
The Duc de la Rochefoucauld had been sleeping soundly, a smile on his fresh young face; but he had awakened suddenly, and was not sure what had awakened him. He had dreamed he was at a masque, the noisiest masque he had ever known, and the King was calling to him not to leave his side. He heard the voice distinctly: “Foucauld. ‘Foucauld, do not go tonight.’
What noise there must be in the streets tonight! It was as bad as it had been during the wedding celebrations. It would be well when all the visitors had gone back to their homes. But these were strange noises. Bells at this hour? Screams? Shouts? Cries?
He turned over and tried to stop up his ears.
But the noise would not be shut out. It came nearer. It seemed as though it were in his own house.
He was right. It was. The door was flung suddenly open. Someone was in his room; several people seemed to have called on him.
He was fully awake now that they had parted his bed-curtains.
He grinned. He thought he understood. This was why the King had advised him to stay in the palace. Here was the King with his merry followers prepared to play that game of beating his friends. In a moment he would hear the voice of the King. ‘Your turn tonight, ‘Foucauld. Do not blame me. I asked you to stay in the palace.’
‘Come on!’ he cried. ‘I am ready.’
A dark figure with a white cross in his hat had darted forward and de la Rochefoucauld felt the sharp pain of a dagger. Others closed in on him and he saw the gleam of their weapons.
‘Die . . . heretic!’ said one; and Rochefoucauld, the favourite of the King, lay back moaning, while his life-blood stained the bedclothes a vivid scarlet.
Now that the massacre was in full swing, Catherine’s fear had left her. It was apparent that the Huguenots had been taken completely by surprise and that there was no danger of serious retaliation. She was safe; her family was safe; and she would have the best possible news for Philip of Spain, to counterbalance that unpleasant pill, the Huguenot m
arriage of her daughter; and this marriage, the gloomy monarch would readily see, had been a necessity, a bait to catch his enemies in one big trap. She had kept her word; the promise she had made to Alva at Bayonne was fulfilled. Now she could rest, assured of her temporary safety in an unsafe world; for temporary safety was the best for which she could hope.
The head of Coligny had been brought to her, and she, surrounded by members of her Flying Squadron, had gloated over it.
‘How different the Admiral looks without his body!’ said one of those cynical young women.
‘But death has somewhat impaired his beauty!’ tempered another.
‘Ah, my big salmon!’ cried Catherine exultantly. ‘You were hard to catch, but now you will give us no further trouble.’
She was laughing, and her women noticed that the excitement made her look years younger. She was as energetic as ever, remembering those who must die tonight, mentally ticking them off as news of their deaths was brought to her. ‘Ah, another name to cross off my list!’ she would cry. ‘My red list!’
Trophies were brought to her. ‘A finger of Monsieur de Téligny, which was all the mob would let us have, Madame.’
‘A little part of Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld . . . for one of your ladies who did so admire him.’
There was ribald laughter and many a joke between the women, for some had known the victims very well indeed. There was great hilarity when the mutilated body of a certain Soubise was brought in, for this gentleman’s wife had sued him for a divorce on account of his impotency. The Escadron Volant amused its mistress with its clowning over his body.
Catherine, watching them, burst into loud laughter which was largely the laughter of relief.
Through the streets rode the Duke of Guise accompanied by Angoulême, Montpensier and Tavannes, urging the excited Catholics to fresh slaughter. They were determined that no Huguenot should survive.
‘It is the wish of the King!’ cried Guise. ‘It is the command of the King. Kill all heretics. Let not one of these vipers live another hour.’
Not that such exhortation was necessary. The bloodlust was rampant. How simple to wipe off old scores; for who would doubt that Monsieur So-and-So—a business rival—was a Huguenot in secret, or that the too-fascinating Mademoiselle Such-and-Such who had been receiving the attention of another’s husband, had been a convert to ‘The Religion’?
Ramus, the famous Greek scholar and teacher, was dragged from his bed and put to lingering death. ‘He is a heretic. He has been practising heresy in secret!’ was the cry of the jealous scholar who had long coveted the professorial chair of Ramus.
There was rape and brutality in plenty that night. It was so simple to commit the crime and kill afterwards, to leave no evidence of villainy. Bewildered Huguenots, running for shelter to the Admiral’s house or the Hôtel de Bourbon, were shot down or run through with swords. They lay where they fell, dead and dying heaped together.
Tavannes cried: let them bleed, my friends. The doctors say that bleeding is as beneficial in August as in May.’
Priests walked the streets, carrying swords in one hand, crucifixes in the other, making it a solemn duty to visit those quarters where there was a falling-off of bloodshed, a lack of enthusiasm to kill.
‘The Virgin and the saints watch you, my friends. Your victims are an offering to Our Lady who receives it with joy. Kill . . . and win eternal joy. Death to the heretic!’
The trunk of Coligny was being dragged through the streets, naked and mutilated. No obscenity was too vile, no insult too degraded to be played on the greatest man of his times. Finally, the remains of the Admiral were roasted over a slow fire, and the mob surrounding the spectacle, screaming and shouting at each other like the savages they had become, laughed at the sight of the distorted flesh, jocularly commented on its odour as it burned.
Men and women were murdered in their beds during that night of terror; heads and limbs severed from their bodies, fell from the windows. Nor were babies spared.
Lambon, the Catholic reader to the King, as great a bigot as lived in Paris at that time, on witnessing the horrible death of Ramus the scholar, was overcome by horror and died of the shock.
‘I cannot tell you what happened on that night,’ said an old Catholic in writing to another. ‘The very paper itself would weep, if I wrote upon it all I have seen.’
The poor King was lost in his madness. He could smell blood; he could see it flow. He stood at the windows of his apartments, shouting to the murderers, urging them to commit more horrible atrocities.
When he saw men and women trying to get into a boat which had been overlooked and was moored on the banks of the Seine, he himself fired at them and, missing, was in a raging frenzy lest they should escape; he called his guards and ordered them to shoot the people, and he laughed with glee when he saw the boat capsize and heard the cries of the victims as they sank in the bloodstained water.
Madness had come to Paris, and the light of morning showed up in hideous clarity the terror of the night before. Bodies were piled high in the streets; the walls were splashed with the blood and remains of what had been human beings; everywhere was the stench of the night’s carnage; and all through the day the horror continued, for that which it had been so easy to start, it was found impossible to stop.
The King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé stood before the King. The King’s eyes were bloodshot; there were flecks of foam on his clothes and his hands twitched.
The Queen Mother was with the King; several guards stood close by and all attendants were armed.
‘You are here, Messieurs,’ said Catherine, ‘for your own safety.’
The King shouted: ‘There must be one religion in France from now on. I will have only one religion in my kingdom. It is the Mass now . . . the Mass or death.’ He began to laugh. ‘You have perchance seen what is happening out there, eh? You have passed through the streets. The bodies are piled high. Men have been torn limb from limb . . . women too . . . babies . . . little girls, little boys. They were all heretics in my kingdom. The Mass . . . or death . . . Death or the Mass.’
Catherine said: ‘You, Messieurs, have been more fortunate than others who have not had the choice which is offered to you.’
Henry of Navarre looked shrewdly from the mad face of the King to the impenetrable one of the Queen Mother; he was aware of the guards who were posted, not only in the apartment, but in the corridors. He would be careful; he had no intention of losing his life over a mere matter of faith.
Condé had folded his arms. Poor Condé! thought his cousin of Navarre; he was emotional—sentimental—brave as a lion, and as stupid as an ass.
‘Sire,’ said Condé in a cold remote voice as though he faced death a hundred times a day and therefore to him such a situation was commonplace, ‘I will be faithful to my creed though I die for it.’
The King’s fingers closed about his dagger. He came close to Condé and held the weapon against the Prince’s throat. Condé stared up at the ornate hangings as though the King had merely asked him to admire them, and poor Charles lost his nerve before such a display of cool courage. His trembling hand fell to his side, and he turned to Navarre.
‘And you . . . you?’ he screamed.
‘Sire,’ said Navarre evasively, ‘I beg of you, do not tamper with my conscience.’
The King frowned. He suspected his uncouth kinsman of cunning; he had never understood him and he did not understand him now; but the look on Navarre’s face suggested that he was in fact ready to consider changing his religion, but that he did not wish to appear to do so readily. He needed time to consider how he might adjust his conscience.
Condé cried out: ‘Most diabolical things have been done. But I have five hundred gentlemen ready to avenge this most lamentable massacre.’
‘Do not be so sure of that,’ said Catherine. ‘Have you had a roll-call lately? I doubt not that many of those fine gentlemen will never again be in a condition to serve the Prince of Cond
é.’
The trembling King felt his frenzy passing; he was close to that mood of deep melancholy which often followed his more violent bouts. He said almost piteously to Navarre: ‘Show good faith and I may show you good cheer.’
At that moment there came hurrying into the room a beautiful girl with her dark hair loose about her shoulders. Margot knelt before the King, and taking his trembling hands in hers kissed them.
‘Forgive me, brother. Oh, Sire, forgive me. I heard that my husband was here, and I have come to ask you to spare his life.’
Catherine said: ‘Get up, Marguerite, and leave us. This affair is none of yours.’
But the King held his sister’s hands and the tears ran fast down his cheeks.
‘My husband is in danger,’ said Margot turning to her mother. ‘That, it seems, should be an affair of mine.’
Catherine was furious. She had no intention of letting Condé or Navarre die, but she was angry that her daughter as well as her son should dare to defy her; she was annoyed also by this display of what seemed to her yet another of Margot’s dramatic tricks. A little while ago the girl had hated that husband of hers; now she was making a spectacle of herself, as she said, to save his life. It was her love of drama not of Navarre that made her act so, Catherine was sure; but it was the effect on the King which was important.
‘I have offered him his life,’ said the King. ‘He only has to change his religion. “The Mass or death”, is what I said to him. “Death or the Mass . . .”’
‘And he has chosen the Mass,’ said Margot.
‘He will,’ said Catherine sardonically.
‘Then he is safe!’ cried Margot. ‘And, Sire, there are two gentlemen who have begged me to help them . . . gentlemen of my husband’s suite—De Mossans and Armagnac. You will give them this chance, Sire? Dearest brother, you will let them make this choice between death and the Mass?’
‘To please you,’ said Charles, embracing his sister hysterically. ‘To please my dearest Margot.’