her religion, must come out wholeheartedly for the Catholic faith in which she was born. Only first—and here was that persistent instability again which gave Catherine de Medici the reputation which Philip of Spain once called "her untrustworthy word''—she must see to the marriage of Marguerite and Henry of Navarre. Nothing must stand in the way of that even though Henry was the acknowledged titular head of the Huguenots! Time enough to worry about that unfortunate factor once the marriage had taken place.
In her great preoccupation with her children's marriages did this sixteenth-century matriarch give any thought to their characters? Did Charles's hysterical outbursts worry her or the fact that at eighteen he still frequently threw himself on the floor when angered, to beat his head, rolling and clawing like a wild animal? What did she think of Marguerite's shocking behavior? She was known to her children as a strict mother, but strict in what sense? Did their morals, honesty, generosity, kindness, and self-control (or lack of it) concern her? No one knows, though probably not, since her sole interest in them seems to have been centered on using them to maintain the supremacy of the house of Valois.
Among the children two were her favorites: Elizabeth and Henry, Duke of Anjou. The gentle, beautiful Elizabeth represented something far beyond Catherine's spiritual reach, something she did not quite understand. It was of Elizabeth she thought so much during those long nights when dyspepsia brought her sitting up among her pillows, gasping for breath, and her legs twitched in rheumatic spasms* "Elizabeth, my best beloved!" Sometimes she spoke the words
aloud, knowing as she did that they were not quite true. 'Well beloved" would have heen better, for in her heart she knew Anjou was and always would be the one living being she adored.
So, one morning late in October, 1568, after the Court had sent suitable condolences to Philip on the death of Don Carlos and the Council was preparing to convene in the great Council Chamber at the Louvre, there came an interruption. A page, ashen-faced and trembling, knelt beside the King s chair and tendered a message bearing the royal seal of Spain,
Charles ripped the seal and opened the letter, then his own face blanched. Without a word he passed the missive to his mother. Catherine stared at it as though unable to grasp what she read. Then, clutching the table with both hands, she got to her feet. The Council rose with a subdued clatter of accouterments.
"My lords, Gentlemen of the Council," she said in a voice that was firm, though her eyes seemed to be staring unseeing at the sea of faces before her, "our daughter, Elizabeth of Valois, Her most Catholic Majesty, Queen of Spain, died in childbed on October third. She died in the Catholic faith, shriven, and imploring the intercessions of the Blessed Virgin and of her guardian angel. Pray for the repose of her soul." Leaning on the arm of the King, Catherine quitted the Chamber. The Council adjourned.
No grief however profound was able to swerve the Queen Mother for long from her inflexible course. Inconsistent, shameless in her vaulting ambition, she forfeited all pretense
of good taste. She wrote PKilip a tearful letter in which she wailed, "My grief is so great that without the help of God I do not think it would he possible for me to carry the sorrow and weariness which I feel/' In less than a month, however, she was urging him, through her ambassadors, to marry Marguerite. This in the face of grave suspicions that Philip, in a jealous rage over her kindness to Don Carlos, had had Elizabeth poisoned.
That there was no truth in the ugly rumors, that they were clumsy fabrications of Huguenots in the Netherlands where Philip was especially hated was proved later. But Catherine did not wait for proof. She must strengthen her position in Spain. Elizabeth was gone, Dona Juana did not want Anjou, nor the Hapsburg princess the King. Philip was a widower, and here providentially was merry, dimpled Marguerite. Perfect!
Her excitement over her new project did much to heal her grief, and over and over again she congratulated herself for not having pressed the match between Henry of Navarre and Marguerite too enthusiastically. Now she would have a second daughter Queen of Spain! With Marguerite acting as stepmother to the little Infantas and urging them to do their grandmother s bidding, what was to prevent a betrothal between one of them and young Hercules? After all, he was now thirteen. Why not?
In an upsurge of optimism Catherine sent off a huge box of toys to the little girls—let them leam what a generous grandmamma they had! There were dolls of carved wood with painted rosy cheeks and hair of silk floss, dressed in
finest brocade and wearing tiny velvet slippers. There were nests of little painted boxes fitting one inside the other, and gold-rimmed mugs of holly wood to ward off whooping cough. And at the last moment the messenger was handed a basket containing two puppies to amuse their small Highnesses! Oh, Catherine was in high spirits.
Her chagrin must have been devastating when word reached her a few months later that Philip had married his niece, Anne of Austria! So even with Don Carlos gone/her Charles was not to have the elder Hapsburg princess after all —nor Marguerite the Spanish Icing. Catherine may have wondered whether, looking back over the failures, the great disappointments and griefs that had defaced the last few years, possibly her luck was beginning to run thin.
Charles was growing older and more assertive. He and his mother disagreed violently over and over again, their arguments usually ending with the King thrashing on the floor and his mother in tears . . . and Catherine seldom wept. Again, and more or less on his own, he had married little Elizabeth of Austria, Philips new sister-in-law, a princess without importance in the dynastic scheme.
And Charles had gone even further. An undisciplined, hysterical young man, uncertain of his own convictions, and brooding darkly over his doubts, he had from childhood loved that great warrior, the Admiral, Gaspard de CMtillon, Lord of Coligny—and Coligny and Jeanne of Navarre were the two remaining heads of the Huguenot movement. The sect itself had grown, had mushroomed all over France, Flanders, the Netherlands, but most of its strongest leaders had been
either killed in battle, ambushed on tteir own estates or poisoned at presumably friendly dinner tables.
Charles's devotion to Coligny was the hero worship of an impressionable boy for a great soldier who found time to listen to his boyish dreams of glory outranking his brother Henry on the battlefield. More than that, Charles sensed that here was a man of excellent judgment in diplomatic matters, essentially a man of good will who, given the support of the Crown, was capable of bringing France out of her perilous gales of religious wars into the safe harbor of arbitration where all men might worship according to the dictates of their conscience. This made sense to the lad who never had known the security of peacetime existence; it brought refreshment, a breath of clean air. Secretly Charles called his hero Father.
Catherine was beside herself with rage and jealousy. Her son, the King, going over to the enemy! Henry of Anjou was giving a good account of himself on the battlefield, leading his Catholic forces along the Loire; the Huguenots under Coligny pillaged and destroyed in nearby Perigord. Both sides, it seemed, tried to outdo each other in barbaric outrages, but finally Catherine directed Charles to send messengers to the Huguenot stronghold at La Rochelle to open peace negotiations, and a trace was signed at Saint-Germain. Hostilities stopped, at least for the time being, and at the young King s invitation Coligny came to Court.
There were good men, men of valor and the highest ideals, on both sides of the conflict, but among them all the name of Coligny rose like a clear white light, for here was a man
without ulterior motives, a man of singular nobility. His retainers implored him not to go to Blois where the Court was in residence, warning him that treachery and death awaited him there. The warning was unnecessary for Coligny was fully aware of his danger. But he loved his country and his young King, and deep within him was the conviction that with his help, Charles could reconstruct his whole national policy, strengthen his nation and his throne.
Coligny was accorded the spectacular welcome always given
a great national figure; his position as Charles's councilor was accepted by the Court and his safety against assassination was guaranteed. Never in his twenty-one years had Charles been so happy or felt such confidence in himself. For once he was discussing national affairs with a man instead of with his mother; at last he was expressing views that were his own, certain of an interested listener. And between Charles and Catherine the rift, barely perceptible at first, was beginning to widen.
The Queen Mother was in a highly nervous state, close to panic. If Charles continued shutting her out of his councils, if he persisted in listening to Coligny regarding his foreign policy, she might as well—the thought struck her and she would use it against him—return to her native Italy. Let him try to manage without her! Wait until she faced him with the possibility!
But always there remained Marguerite to think about. Marguerite at nineteen was still a spinster, a thoroughly unmanageable spinster who loved to shock the Court by appearing half naked at one Court function and like a shy postulant
at the next; who openly flirted with every male human being who passed by; who lied in unabashed glee when it suited her and wept enchantingly to get her way.
Henry of Navarre, after all, seemed the only reasonable candidate for the unenviable role of bridegroom. Navarre was an excellent little buffer state between France and Spain and though Henry was the titular head of the Huguenots, Catherine felt certain he was enough like his vacillating father, Antoine, to turn Catholic when she pointed out to him the advantages of such a move.
Wretched child, that Marguerite—so ran the Queen Mother's thoughts—with the morals of a tree sparrow and the will of Satan, she probably will defy me when it comes to Navarre. However, when next Anjou is home on leave 111 have him suggest the match to her, tell her he wishes it. That will do what months of lectures from her own mother could not accomplish! Queen of Navarre, a good title for the minx, and between us Anjou and I will see that she keeps the crown firmly on her silly head!
Catherine's rosy dreams had a mysterious way of evaporating and here again she was defeated most unexpectedly. Henry of Anjou, on his brief leave, went first to pay his respects to his brother, the King. Charles was smarting under the praise he heard on all sides for the soldiers of the Crown under the command of his brother Henry, and his greeting to the returned warrior was extremely cool, so cool in fact that Anjou did not tarry long in the royal presence. Instead, he sought out his beloved sister, Marguerite.
She had not expected him and when she looked up from
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her lute and saw Kim standing in the doorway of her chamber her whole being was flooded with a joy she had not known since his departure for the front months earlier. She flung the lute aside and sped across the room to throw herself into his
arms.
"Henry, you are back! Oh, this is too good to be true! Come, sit here beside me and tell me how you are!"
Anjou let himself be drawn across to the deep window seat Marguerite had quitted, thinking how exquisitely lovely she was, this strange sister of his, how very dear to him, When he was King—as he knew he would be some day-he must plan something very special for her, give her a castle where she could live and laugh and dance her merry life away if she so chose without hindrance or criticism. And the thought of his kingship brought another less pleasant consideration.
Charles's chilly reception had been disquieting in that day of sudden extinction. With his arm still around Marguerite, her head on his shoulder, he spoke quietly against her hair.
"Margot, yetite" he said, "we are the closest, the Lest friends, aren't we?"
Startled, she looked up, drew away, nodding. "But yes, of course. Why do you ask? Why do you look so serious?"
For a moment he twisted the chain of her pomander, lifted the jeweled hall to sniff its perfume, then, "Because I have just come from His Majesty, our brother, and . . ."
"Charles? Oh"—Marguerite giggled and patted his cheek —"don't worry about Charles. What did he do? What did he say? You know that one is always in a mood when dispatches come in praising you, and many have been coming lately. Her Grace, our mother, does nothing but sing your praises
and that infuriates Charles. Tell me, what did he say to make you look so like a chief mourner wearing hood and liripipe?"
"Not very much"—Anjou twisted about to face his sister— "but the unmasked hatred I saw in his face gave me pause. He could so easily decide to relieve me of my command and our mother might not be able to stop him before the deed was done. That is why I have come to you."
"But what could I do, cherie? I of all people whom Charles dislikes almost as much as Her Grace does. . . ."
Anjou took her hands in his, tilted up her chin until she was looking into his eyes. "You can do this, little sister, you who are my other self: you can watch and listen when I am away and you can let me know the instant you feel my command, in fact my interests at Court, are in danger. Will you swear to do that? Will you, unafraid if necessary, face our mother, speak out for me until I return?"
And Marguerite, overcome with emotion at the realization of the trust that was being put in her, buried her face in her brother's shoulder and sobbed her vow of loyalty and devotion.
But Anjou was Catherine's most obedient child. Having confided his uneasiness to Marguerite, he probably felt he had shown a certain disloyalty to his mother, so he immediately told her what he had done. Catherine, far from being enraged or even annoyed, saw in the shared confidence a pleasant way for bringing Marguerite and her brother into closer harmony over the Navarre marriage. She told her that Anjou had "confessed" having confided in her, Marguerite, instead of in his mother first and suggested that they three
sit down cozily and discuss the Navarre pact. And Marguerite of the fiery temper, the idolatrous love for her Brother, Marguerite felt she had been betrayed by Anjou and from that hour despised him as a being unworthy of her slightest consideration,
"Traitor!" she screamed at him when he would have reasoned with her. "Get out of my sight and a pox on you all the days of your life!"
So Catherine must do her own diplomatic planning if she wanted Henry of Navarre for Marguerite. Henry of Anjou could be of no help.
Chapter 9 SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY
JEANNE D'ALBRET, Queen of Navarre, was in a grave quandary. Physically she was a frail little woman and through the years the strains of her religious leadership and the boorish behavior of her son Henry, the young King, had worn her strength to a fine transparency of numbing despair.
The small part of Navarre which she still held against the incursions of Spain was all that remained of the rich kingdom left her by her father. It was the Huguenot stronghold. Philip of Spain was a formidable Catholic enemy to the south; France, with Catherine temporizing (though the Court was Catholic) and eager for the marriage of Marguerite and Henry, was an excellent friend and neighbor to cultivate. But—here the tired little woman drew back—what of the Protestant faith for which she had suffered so much?
How could she sanction a marriage, however great its material advantages, if through it she sacrificed her son's spiritual welfare and herself deviated from the straight path of her own convictions?
Still, she rationalized, Catherine's ministers had promised Henry would be free to worship as he chose, and was it not entirely possible that Marguerite might be won over to the Huguenot cause? Understandably eager for an alliance with powerful France, willing to discuss the details of the marriage contract, Jeanne let herself be persuaded to make the journey to France. Catherine's invitation had been most cordial.
Arrived at Blois, however, where the Court was in residence, she was greeted by the Queen Mother with thinly disguised unfriendliness while she in turn held her head high and merely returned Catherine's icy kiss on the brow with one equally frigid. Then the two royal mothers sat down to discuss the marriage of their children.
Catherine, on her part, promised the marriage ceremony should be so wor
ded as not to give offense to the bridegroom and his followers. Jeanne, flinching at the thought of the dispensation from Rome required to make the marriage legal, promised that Marguerite should be allowed freedom to worship as she chose after the marriage. That seemed to cover the salient points and the contracts were signed for the marriage which French historians frequently have called Les Noces Vermeilles, The Scarlet Nuptials.
Catherine could have laughed aloud with satisfaction. With Marguerite safely married, the way would be open for
her to deal with Coligny as she chose. She would somehow rid herself of the mighty Huguenot and Charles would be hers again and the direction of the House of Valois safely in her hands. But the marriage must come first; any untoward move against the Bourbon House before that and Marguerite never would be Queen of Navarre.
One thing alone bothered her. Why had Jeanne come to France alone"? Why hadn't she brought the prospective bridegroom with her? Was there just the faintest chance that when he arrived a week hence, having had time to think over the prospects, he might defy his mother, refuse to go through with the marriage? And if this were the case, wouldn't he be very apt to win over his mother who in a frenzy of religious penitence might destroy the contract? The more Catherine thought of it the more uneasy she became.
"Why/* she suggested to her guest a few days later—it was late in May—"do you not come to Paris with me? Until after the wedding I shall be at the Louvre. Together we can see how plans there are progressing, and besides, I have shopping to do. Perhaps you have, too?"
The Queen of Navarre was delighted. Blois was damp and her cough seemed aggravated by its draughty corridors. So, established with her household, she looked forward to the "shopping" tour Catherine had organized. Stark and unadorned though her costumes might be, consistent with her religious beliefs, yet her natural feminine delight in seeing and handling beautiful fabrics and gems overcame some of her austerity and she gave herself over to a day of simple diversion.
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