The Devil's Queen: A Novel of Catherine De Medici (56 page)

I put my hand to the pearl beneath my bodice and closed my eyes. My memory traveled to the moment, a dozen years past, when Ruggieri had last sat with me in my cabinet.

The stars have changed since the day I gave you the pearl.

The time
will
come, Catherine. And if you fail to do what is necessary, there will be unspeakable carnage.

The letter bore no return address. I slipped the ring on the middle finger of my left hand and stared out at the courtyard, at the future ghosts of Piled-Up Corpses. Intuition told me Ruggieri was not far away. He was lurking, waiting, watching to see if I had the courage to avert the coming bloody tide.

The next morning, I asked Jeanne to join me in my antechamber. When she arrived, I invited her to sit by the fire. Tense and wary, flushed from a recent coughing spell, she settled stiffly in the chair next to mine and looked askance at my smile. During her visit, she had lost even more weight; her eyes were fever-bright.

“These negotiations have grown too unpleasant,” I said kindly. “They’ve made us forget we are, despite everything, friends. Let us dispense with them.”

“Dispense with them?” Her brows lifted in dismay. Was I quashing the marriage?

“The King asks for only two things,” I said. “One, that Margot remain a Catholic, and two, that Henri come to Paris to be wed
outside
Notre-Dame. Your son need never set foot inside a cathedral; a proxy will accompany Margot inside for the Catholic ceremony.”

She frowned, unable to entirely believe what I was saying. “And the couple will spend several months of the year in Navarre?”

“As many as you like. If you wish, the couple can be wed afterward in a Protestant ceremony.”

Her features softened, revealing a glimpse of her old sense of humor. “You’re too sly, Catherine. There’s something you’re hiding.”

“There is,” I admitted. “The wedding must take place on the eighteenth of August.” I did not want the ceremony to fall even a day closer to Algol’s influence. Before the evil star rose, I wanted to solidify the peace between Huguenot and Catholic.

“August? But it will be beastly hot in Paris then. May is a much better month for a wedding, or June.”

“We haven’t time,” I said softly.

“
This
August?” She gasped so hard that she fell into a fit of coughing. When she could speak again, she said, “It would be impossible to make all the arrangements! A royal wedding—with only four months to prepare?”

“I’ll take care of everything. You need only bring yourself and your son to Paris.”

“Why such haste?” Jeanne pressed.

“Because I fear another war between your people and mine. Because I believe this marriage will bring an end to bloodshed, and therefore cannot take place quickly enough.”

The deal was struck. We stood and kissed each other on the lips to seal the bargain; I prayed she did not sense my desperation.

Soon after the marriage contract was signed, Jeanne left Blois. Although she spoke eagerly of buying wedding gifts, she looked desperately ill. By the time she reached the Paris château of her Bourbon relative, her health was failing. Nonetheless, she persisted in preparing for the upcoming wedding throughout the month of May. The overexertion proved fatal; she took to her bed the first week of June and never rose from it again.

I expected her son to ask that the wedding be delayed. To my surprise, Henri never made the request; he attended his mother’s funeral on the first of July and appeared in Paris on the eighth with an entourage of almost three hundred Huguenots, among them the Prince of Condé, his young cousin.

The King privately welcomed Henri of Navarre to the Louvre on the tenth of July. Charles sat flanked by me on his left hand and Edouard on his right as Navarre, accompanied by his cousin, entered. At eighteen, Henri sported powerful shoulders, a narrow waist, and the muscular legs of horseman. His curls had been tamed into dark waves about his face, and he wore a goatee and thin mustache after the current fashion. Though he dressed in the drab
black doublet of the Huguenot and wore no jewelry, his grin was dazzling and his expression relaxed, as if he had been separated from us by mere days, not years of enmity and blood.

In stark contrast to his cousin’s genuine warmth, young Condé’s manner exuded distrust. He was slighter than Navarre, with a blandly attractive face, but his smile was reserved and faintly sour.

“Monsieur le Roi,”
Henri proclaimed cheerfully; he did not bow, as he was himself a king. “I’m overjoyed to see you and your family again, and to enter the Louvre as a friend.”

Charles did not smile. “So you’ve come, Cousin. You’d best treat our sister well; we have methods for dealing with heretics who test us too sorely.”

Navarre laughed graciously. “I’ll treat her like the princess she is, and the queen she’ll soon become. I’m aware that I stand on enemy soil—and, more frighteningly, that I stand before my intended bride’s brothers—and that my every act must prove my honorable intent.”

Charles grunted, satisfied. Admiral Coligny had the highest regard for Navarre and had spent the past several weeks regaling the King with stories of his intelligence, courage, and honesty.

Edouard rose and greeted his cousin with a proper kiss. Navarre, half a head shorter, robust, and plain, was no match for the willowy Duke of Anjou, who had swathed himself in emerald Chinese silk embroidered with dozens of tiny, glittering gold carp.

“Welcome, Cousin,” Edouard said, smiling.

“I hear you are a formidable foe at tennis,” Navarre said. “I would far prefer opposing you in the gallery than on the battlefield.”

“Perhaps a match can be arranged.” Edouard put a hand upon Navarre’s shoulder, directing him to face me. “My mother, the Queen.”

Navarre turned his warm, open gaze on me.
“Madame la Reine.”
I hurried to him and threw my arms about him.

“I am so very sorry about the death of your mother,” I murmured into his ear. “She was a dear friend to me.”

He tightened the embrace at my words, and when he drew back, his eyes were shining. “My mother always loved you,
Madame la Reine.
”

“
Tante
Catherine,” I corrected him and kissed his lips.

He laughed, dispelling our shared grief. “
Tante
Catherine, I never had the
chance to thank you properly for the copy of
Rinaldo.
I loved it so much that I must have read it a hundred times.”

“After all this time,” I marveled, “you remembered.” I took his arm and gently turned his attention to the double doors. “But you didn’t come all this way simply to talk to your old aunt.”

Margot entered, a dark-haired, dark-eyed vision in deep blue satin overlaid by gossamer
cangiante
silk, which shimmered first blue, then violet. A talented coquette, she lifted her chin to make her neck as long as a swan’s, then tilted her head and gazed at Henri with a playful smile. He was honestly transfixed before looking down, a bit abashed to be caught leering.

“Monsieur le Roi,”
Margot said, with a small curtsy, and extended a hand as white and velvety as milk.

Navarre pressed his lips to it. As he rose, his composure regained, he said, “Your Royal Highness. Can you still run faster than I?”

She laughed. “Most likely, Your Majesty. Unfortunately, I am now impeded by these trappings.” She gestured at her heavy skirts.

“Ah.” He feigned disappointment. “I had so hoped for a contest after supper.”

She laughed and drew him to her for a chaste kiss upon the lips, as befitted cousins. We then welcomed the Prince of Condé; the greetings were more restrained on both sides. Afterward, we proceeded to the dining room.

Henri’s company was a delight; the conversation grew increasingly punctuated by laughter. After the meal, I led him to the balcony overlooking the Seine. In the last week, summer had descended upon the city with a vengeance, and the muddy river offered no breeze, only the faint odor of decay. Nonetheless, Henri leaned against the railing and looked out at the Seine and the city, with the yearning of a long-unrequited lover.

After a time, I spoke quietly. “Your mother said that you wrote me letters, but she would not send them.”

Henri’s expression did not change, but I sensed a sudden caution in him. He shrugged. “I suppose my . . . youthful imagination frightened her. I had questions about things she didn’t understand.”

“That day you were chasing a tennis ball,” I said, “it seemed you and I were possessed of that same imagination. Was I wrong?”

He didn’t answer for a time. “My mother was obsessed with God and sin.
But unlike my fellow Huguenots, I’m not a religious man; I fought beside them because I believe in their cause. As for me, I believe in what I see: the earth, the sky, men and beasts . . .”

“And visions of blood?” I asked.

He turned his face away. “And visions of my comrades dying horribly.”

“I don’t see their faces, but my dreams and visions have grown worse of late. I’ve always taken them to represent a warning, a glimpse of a future that can be averted. But if you don’t believe in God, perhaps you believe them to be without meaning.”

He met my gaze soberly. “I believe,
Madame la Reine,
that this marriage presents us with an opportunity—to ruin France, or to save her.”

“How startling,” I said, “that we should both have come to the same conclusion.”

His stare grew unsettlingly intense. “I came here against the advice of my advisers and friends, who fear this wedding is an elaborate trap meant to destroy us. I have come because I trust you,
Tante
Catherine—because I believe, most irrationally, that we have seen the same evil coming and intend to avert it.”

I lifted my hand, heavy with the iron Head of the Gorgon, and set it upon his shoulder.

“Together, we will stop it,” I said and turned at the footfall of the Prince of Condé and his attendant, who had come to fetch their king.

The first days of August were stifling; beyond the ancient walls of the Louvre, heat hung like black, writhing specters above the pavement. The door to my windowless cabinet was always open, not only in the hope of catching the breeze but also to admit a constant stream of guests, advisers, seamstresses, and others. One morning found me sitting at my desk across from the Cardinal de Bourbon—the groom’s uncle and brother of the spineless Antoine de Bourbon, whom the Cardinal had long ago disavowed. The Cardinal’s disposition was admirably steady and his health sound: At the age of fifty, he had not a single grey hair.

We were discussing the steps involved in the wedding ritual—both inside and outside the cathedral—when a guard knocked on the lintel.

“Madame la Reine,”
he said. “The Spanish ambassador waits outside. He requests a private audience immediately.”

I frowned. I didn’t know the new ambasssador, Diego de Zuñiga, well, but his predecessor had been given to overly dramatic proclamations. Perhaps Don Diego was similarly inclined.

I rose and went out into the corridor, where Zuñiga waited, cap in hand, at the entrance to my apartments. He was a small man, middle-aged and severe. His hair, slicked back with pomade, was very black and thin at the temples.

I faced him without smiling. “What matter, Don Diego, is so dire that it requires me to abandon the Cardinal de Bourbon?”

He responded with the most cursory of bows; his manner was outraged, as if he were the offended party. “Only a deliberate act of war,
Madame la Reine,
committed by France against Spain.”

I stared at him; he stared back, combative. Beyond the entrance to my apartments, the Louvre’s narrow corridor bustled with servants, courtiers, and Navarre’s guests.

I put a hand on Zuñiga’s forearm. “Come.”

I led him to the council chamber and settled into the King’s chair at the head of the long oval table.

“Speak, Don Diego,” I said. “How has Charles offended his former brother-in-law?”

Zuñiga’s brows lifted in surprise as he realized I truly did not know what event he referred to.

He drew a long breath. “On the seventeenth of July, five thousand French soldiers—Huguenots—trespassed onto the soil of the Spanish Netherlands. Their commander was your Lord of Genlis. Fortunately, King Philip’s commanders learned of the coming attack and intercepted your forces. Only a handful survived, among them Genlis.

“Forgive my candor, but I suggest you have a frank discussion with His Majesty, considering that his action was a violation of his treaty with Spain, and an act of war.”

I pressed my hand to my lips in an effort contain the invective that threatened to spill from them. Coligny: The deceitful, arrogant bastard had over-reached himself, had dared to send troops to the Netherlands in secret, hoping for a victory that might convince Charles to support an insane war.

“This is the work of a traitor,” I said, my voice shaking. “France would never encroach on the sovereignty of Spain. I assure you, Don Diego, that Charles neither knew of this incursion nor approved it. We shall see that the responsible party—”