Catholic against Protestant, thought Catherine. The d’Etampes party against Diane’s party. De Vivonne against de Chabot. The fools, thought Catherine, to take sides in somebody else’s quarrel. The wise worked for themselves.
The King noticed the silence of his daughter-in.law and drawing her to him, whispered: ‘Why, Catherine, who you favour― my charming Count or that handsome rogue de Guise?’
‘I favour the winner, Sire,’ said Catherine, ‘for he will be the better man.’
Francis held her wrist and looked into her eyes. ‘Methinks there is great wisdom behind these charming dark eyes. I say, let them fight this out with snowballs― fit weapons for such a quarrel.’
The fight went on. It was too amusing to be stopped. Even the King forgot his melancholy.
Catherine laughed aloud to see dashing de Guise sprawling in the snow; and when Diane turned cold eyes upon her, she laughed equally loudly to see to young d’Enghien go headfirst into a snowdrift. Catherine’s eyes met those of Henry’s mistress, and Diane smiled.
You suppose Diane, thought Catherine, that I am of no account. I am too humble to take part in your petty quarrels. To a simpleton such as I am, this is but a snow-fight― nothing more. Diane said: ‘Good fun, this snow-fight, is it not, Madame?’
‘Most excellent fun,’ replied Catherine.
And she thought: nothing is forgiven. Every pin-prick, every small humiliation is noted; and one day you will be asked to pay for them all, Sénéchale. The battle had taken on a new turn. One man found a stone and threw it; another discovered a goblet which had been left in the courtyard and aimed it at the head of a man in the opposing party. The first blood was then shed. It brought laughter and applause from the onlookers.
Now, some of the fighters had come inside the castle and were throwing cushions at one another. The King and the watchers were so overcome with laughter that they encouraged the fight to grow wilder and wilder.
A stool came crashing through a window; it was followed by others.
‘Come!’ said Francis. ‘Attack, men!’
Catherine noticed Francis de Guise disappear from the fight. She only knew that something significant was about to happen. If she could but slip away, send a command to one of her women to follow Monsieur de Guise!
All manner of articles were flying out of the windows now. A china bowl splintered on the head of one young man, who staggered, looked startled and then fell unconscious on the ‘Carry in the wounded!’ cried Francis.
Even as he spoke, pots and pans were flying out of the windows, followed by chairs and small tables.
The King roared with laughter.
‘What a merry turn to a snow battle!’ cried Anne.
And the comedy was suddenly turned to tragedy. Catherine need no longer wonder as to the disappearance of Monsieur de Guise.
Suddenly, crashing down from an upper window came a heavy chest.
The Count was standing immediately beneath the window from which it fell.
There was a warning shout of horror which the King joined, but it was too late.
D’Enghien, startled, looked up, but he could not escape in time. The chest fell on top of him; and his blood gushed startlingly red over the whiteness of the snow.
* * *
That sad year sped by quickly for the King of France. There seemed little left to live for.
‘I have but to love, and misfortune overtakes my loved ones!’ he said.
‘When I love my son Francis, he died suddenly and mysteriously. My beloved Charles was a victim of the plague. And this handsome boy, who in some small measure took their place in my heart, has been cruelly done to death in a sham battle.’
He sought to forget his grief in gaiety. There was a long meandering from castle to castle. The tempo must be speeded up; there must be richer food at his tables; stronger wine-flow; the women surrounding him must be more beautiful; the morals of his court the more depraved. His dress was more extravagantly jewelled. The sparkle of diamonds must make up for the lack-lustre of his eyes, the red of rubies for the pallor which had touched his face. Wit and wine, women and love, music and poetry― they must be his to enjoy. His must still be the most luxurious and the most intellectual court in Europe.
It was February, exactly a year after the death of the Count; a cold and snowy February to remind him of the tragedy.
The Court was at Saint-Germain-en-Laye; and at the head of his banqueting table, Francis sat― his Queen on his right, Anne on his left.
Catherine, in her place at the table, was thinking now would she change places with the King of France. His day was fast ending and it was the turn of others to enjoy great power. Henry. Diane. And Catherine de’ Medici?
When the banquet was over and the company danced, Catherine assured herself that hers would be the brightest destiny. She had learned to hide her light under a bushel until time came for her to show it; then should its brightness only dazzle, not only the men and women of France, but of all Europe.
Outside, the snow was falling fast; inside the castle, the heat was unbearable.
Bodices slipped from shoulders; eyes gleamed in torchlight. Anne sat beside the King and with her was Catherine. Neither cared to dance. Catherine, her hands meekly folded in her lap, knew that Henry was whispering to Diane as they sat among their friends and supporters; Catherine gave no sign that she as much as saw them. Anne was watching de Chabot with a red-headed beauty, and there was smouldering jealousy in her eyes; the King was aware of Anne’s jealousy. It gave Catherine a feeling of comfort to know that for once the his mistress were experiencing the same bitter emotion as she did herself. It gave her a feeling of satisfaction to realize that long endurance had taught her to hide her feelings far better than they could.
A messenger came while the dance was in progress. He craved the King’s permission to speak, and on receiving it, he announced the death of the King of England.
Francis stared before him. ‘Dead!’ he said. ‘So he is dead then.’
He beckoned to an attendant and bid him look after the messenger and feed him well.
‘I had been expecting this,’ said Francis. ‘He has been long sick.’
‘The end of an old enemy,’ said Anne. ‘I wonder how he will face his Judge.
We must do a masque: The King of England at the Judgment Seat. What think you?’
But Francis was silent.
Anne pressed his hand and said: ‘This saddens you, my love.’
The King smiled. ‘We were of an age,’ he said. ‘My old friend; my old enemy. He has gone whither I shortly must follow.’
Catherine said: ‘I beg of you, Sire, say not so.’
‘There, my little one. Do not be distressed. It is something we must all come to, and I but happen to be a step or two nearer than you and Anne here.’
Anne’s lips were tight. ‘I beg of you not to speak of it,’ she said.
‘And I beg of you, my darlings, not to be distressed,’ he said lightly.
‘Catherine, you are safe now, my child. You have a son and a daughter. Get you more of them. I will speak to Henry of you, sweet Anne. He is a good and honest fellow. He will see no harm comes to you.’
Anne’s lips twisted wryly. Ah, thought Catherine, it is not Henry she fears. This is ironic justice. For long she has guided the King’s hand to the disgrace of many; now she herself must be disgraced because there will be a new woman to guide a new King’s hand. And that new King is my husband. Anne’s years of plenty would be paid for. And one day, so should Diane’s. A shadow had fallen over the merry-making because the King of England was dead.
‘I remember him well,’ mused Francis. ‘At Guisnes and Ardres. Big and red and blustering― a fine figure of a man― a handsomer it would have been hard to find, if you liked the type. I threw him in a wrestling match; and never seen such anger. We were like the bull and the panther. One morning I went to him before breakfast and I had him at my mercy. I called him “My prisoner” and I gave him
his shirt with my own hands. You should have seen his face, my darlings. When my dear boy Charles mounted the Emperor’s horse to tease him, the expression on the Imperial countenance took me back in years, and I remembered the King of England.’
‘You should not be sorry at this man’s death, Francis,’ said Anne. ‘He was no friend to you.’
‘It is a strange feeling. Our lives seemed intwined. And he is dead. The same disease took him as will take me, was much we had in common. Each in his country the supreme ruler. Each with his love of women. Though I fancy I am more lenient to the women I love than he ever was. He took them to church and took them to bed, and from bed to block. I dispensed with church and block.’
‘He was a monster,’ said Anne. ‘Let us waste no sorrow on him. His poor wife is rejoicing, I’ll warrant. She still carries her head on her shoulders, thanks to the timely death of her lord husband.’
‘They say,’ put in Catherine quietly, ‘that she was happy to be a nurse to him. They say it was safer in England to be the King’s nurse than the King’s wife.’
‘Yet she― good nurse though she was, poor lady― has, I understand, been hard put to it to keep her head upon her shoulders,’ Anne smiled at the King.
‘Come, Sire, away with your grief. Let us do the play we did last week. How it made you laugh! I warrant I can freshen it up a bit and give you one or two surprises.’
‘Yes, do it, my darling. And let Catherine help you.’
So they did the play, and the King laughed merrily; but it was noticed that he retired to his apartments earlier than was his wont. And when he was there, his prayers were longer than usual; and it seemed that the death of the King of England had cast a prophetic gloom over his mind.
* * *
Catherine was planning her dress for the fancy dress masque.
‘Let us be masked,’ she had begged Anne. ‘It is so much more amusing.
You dance with― you know not whom.’
Anne had agreed. She let Catherine make arrangements now. Poor Anne!
She was growing more and more sick at heart; the King was visibly weaker.
It was his suggestion that there should be a masque. ‘A carnival!’ he had cried. ‘The gayest we have ever had!’
Thus he thought to snap his fingers at death.
Planning her costume, Catherine thought of him, thought of what his passing would mean to her. Queen of France― in name. The real queen would be Diane.
She could continue to hope. There was hope in every stitch she put into her costume.― gay and bold. She would discover what Henry’s costume would be.
There were plenty of spies to bring that news to her. She would go to him, not as Catherine, but as Circe, and she would try to make him desire her. She laughed at herself. As if that were possible! But why not? Once, a little Piedmontese had made him love her. A love potion in his wine? Oh, she had lost her faith in love potions. But as she stitched and thought of the masked ball that would take place when they reached Saint-Germain, she continued to hope.
She was feverishly impatient for Saint-Germain. They had travelled through Chevreuse and Lirnours to Rochefort. How restless was the King in his determination to throw off pursuing death.
He talked continually of death, if not to Anne, to Catherine.
He talked of his achievements. He told his daughter-in-law how he had changed the face of France. He spoke of the palaces he had created and those he had altered. He had, he reminded Catherine, brought a new and intellectual life to his country.
‘Catherine,’ he said pathetically, ‘I have done much that was wrong, but a few things that were good. It was I who aroused new interest in learning― an interest, my darling, which was stifled to death in the years before me. I am the father of the new life. I fertilized the seed; I cherished the young child. Will the world remember that when I am gone? Catherine, what do you think: will they forget Pavia, my mad pranks, all that France lost; will they forget the mirrored baths of which they love to whisper, the black satin sheets that made such a delightful background for the whitest limbs in France? Oh, little daughter, shall I be remembered as the man who loved learning or lechery?’
Catherine wept with him; she thought of him in all his magnificence when she had first seen him, but even then he was an ageing man. Poor, sad King! But old kings must go to make way for new ones; and as she knelt and let her tears fall on to his hands she was thinking of Henry in a costume as yet unknown to her, his eyes burning through his mask sudden passionate love for Circe.
But as the cavalcade travelled on, with one of those sudden fits of restlessness, the King decided that before going to Saint-Germain for the carnival, he wished to turn aside and stay for awhile at the castle of Rambouillet.
He would have a few days’ hunting there with his Petite Bande; and after that they would continue to Saint-Germain for the gayest carnival the court had ever known.
There were more days to dream, thought Catherine. She did not greatly care.
She guessed that Circe could never take the lover from Diane; but while they dallied at Rambouillet she believed this might come about.
Anne protested the delay. ‘Francis, there is more comfort at Saint-Germain.
Rambouillet is so rough. Little more than one of your hunting seats.’
‘Comfort?’ he had cried; for it was one of those days when he felt a little better. ‘It is not comfort I want. It is the hunt.’
But as they neared Rambouillet the King’s weariness was great indeed and it was necessary to carry him to his bed. Once there, he relapsed into melancholy.
Would he ever leave Rambouillet, he asked himself.
As he lay in his bed, he was frantic suddenly. He must be surrounded by his friends, the brightest and merriest in the court. Let Anne come to his bedside; let the Cardinal of Lorraine be there; all the young people, his son Henry and Catherine, the de Guises, Saint-Pol, Saint-André. Let the musicians come and play.
He felt happier when they were there. He had turned his bedroom into a music-room.
But he was soon weary. He whispered to Anne: ‘I would my sister Marguerite would come to me. I do not see enough of my sweet sister.’
Anne’s voice was harsh with tears. ‘The Queen of Navarre herself is confined to a sick bed.’
‘Then tell her not that I asked for her, or she would leave it to come to me.
Beloved sister, my darling Marguerite, it is to be expected that when I am laid low, so should you also be. The saints preserve you, dear sister.’
‘Dearest,’ said Anne, ‘allow me to dismiss these people that you may try to sleep.’
He smiled and nodded.
In the morning he felt better. He was ready for the hunt, he declared.
Anne begged him not to go. Catherine joined her entreaties, as did other members of the Petite Bande. But he would not listen. He smiled jauntily at the bright and beautiful faces of his band; he caressed one and joked with another.
He must hunt today. He could not explain. He felt that Death was waiting for him behind the door, behind the hangings. Death had caught the English King; it should not catch Francis― yet.
His will was strong. Sickly pale, his eyes glazed, he kept his seat in the saddle. He commanded Anne to ride beside him, Catherine to keep close. The huntsman’s horn and the baying of hounds, he said, were the sweetest music in his ears. Catherine guessed that as he rode he felt himself to be not the aged man, but the young Francis.
The Petite Bande closed round him. They were afraid. Death was the swiftest hunter in the forest of Rambouillet that March afternoon, and each lovely woman, watching her leader, knew that this was the last ride of Francis’s Petite Bande.
Francis was delirious that night. He talked continually and it was as though ghosts from the past stood around his bead. Louise of Savoy, his adoring mother; Marguerite of his beloved sister; his meek Queens, Claude and Eleonore; the mistresses he had loved best― Frances of Chateaubriand and Anne d’Etampes; his
sons, Francis and Charles. He felt the walls of a prison in Madrid enclose him; he knew again the glory of victory, the humiliation of defeat.
He regained consciousness, and with a wry smile spoke of the scandals of his reign.
‘A scandalous life I have led, my friends. I will make amends by dying a good death.’
Prayers were said at his bedside, and he listened eagerly to them.
‘I must see my son,’ he said. ‘Bring the Dauphin to me.’
Henry came and awkwardly approached the death-bed of the father whose love he had longed to inspire, and, only succeeding in winning his dislike, had disliked him in return.
He knelt by his father’s bed and Francis smiled, all differences forgotten now.
‘My boy― my only son― my dearest Henry.’
Henry sought for the right words and could not find them. But there were tears in his eyes and they spoke more eloquently than any words. Francis was anxious. What advice should he offer his son? He prayed that he would not make the mistakes his father had made.
‘Henry, children should imitate the virtues, not the vices of their parents,’ he said.
‘Yes, my father.’
‘The French, my son are the best people in the world, and you ought to treat them with consideration and gentleness, for when their sovereign is in need they refuse him nothing. I recommend you therefore to relieve them as far as you can of burdensome taxation―’
The sweat was running down the King’s cheeks. The room seemed hazy to him. His son’s face grew dim. He thought of the dangers which would beset this young man. He saw those two factions which could split the country in two; the religious controversy that now, he realized, was but a young sprig in his reign, would grow to a mighty tree whose fruit was bloodshed and misery.
‘Holy Mother, protect my boy!’ he prayed incoherently. ‘Holy Mother, let those about him advise him for his good and that of France.’
He saw Diane― guiding his son. He remembered afresh that game of snowballing which had begun so innocently and had ended in heartbreak. It was symbolic. These women’s quarrels had amused him. Madame Diane against Madame Anne. But what would grow out of them? Horror and bloodshed. His beloved friend, the young Count d’Enghien, had been crushed to death in the first skirmishes of civil war which would rend his country. The chest was but a symbol. He saw that now. Why had he not seen it before?
Madame Serpent Page 22