The Hostage Queen (32 page)

One morning, Henriette came running into the privy chamber in a highly nervous state. ‘You won’t believe what I have heard. It has been noticed that the heads are gone, and it is being whispered that we have them here, that you keep La Molle’s head in a silver casket under your bed, so that you can kiss his lips whenever you wish.’

Margot looked at her friend in horror. ‘Dear God, can I not even mourn my lover in peace? When will the rumour-mongers let me be?’

The King was dying. As the scents of spring and May blossom drifted over the Palace gardens where the courtiers strolled, the windows of the royal bedchamber remained fast shut against any inclement chill. The threatened plot, the rush to Vincennes, had all been too much for Charles’s weakened state. He lay swamped in apathy and despair, unable to summon the strength to rise, uncaring of day or hour, or of what was going on around him.

Relieved as Catherine was that she’d successfully quelled this latest plot, yet she still saw dangerous waters ahead. Her beloved Anjou was many miles distant in Poland, far from the throne he was about to inherit. Alençon, on the other hand, was dangerously close, as was Navarre. She didn’t trust either, and, secretly calling her most trusted messenger, urged him to ride with all speed to Poland to warn her son that the King’s death was imminent.

Charles looked so frail and thin. He was but a month from his twenty-fourth birthday yet he looked like a wizened old man with scarcely any hair left on his head, his cheeks hollowed, the skin grey and pallid. It was as if the death mask were already upon him.

Elisabeth of Austria, Charles’s Queen, sat opposite her husband, weeping and never taking her eyes from his face. She had always loved him, and he returned her adoring gaze with gratitude, but also sent for his beloved Marie Touchet. His mistress came at once to make her farewells and sit by his side, holding his hand.

Nearby hovered his loyal old nurse, constantly wiping his brow or changing the bed sheets as he continued to cough up blood. He gazed up into her face, looking with love upon this woman who had brought him up, been as a mother to him, and, since she was Huguenot, whose life he had saved.

He cried out in his despair. ‘What blood and what murders! What an evil counsel was given me. Oh, my God, forgive me all that, and have mercy upon me. What will become of this country, and what will become of me, into whose hands God commended it? I am lost! Full well I know it.’

His nurse leaned close to whisper to Charles under her breath, loyal to her beloved charge to the last. ‘May the murders and the bloodshed be upon the head of those who compelled you to them, and upon your evil counsellors.’

The King’s confession was heard and the last rites given. Charles asked for the prayer of Sainte Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, to be said to him, as if by this means he could gain absolution for the atrocities he’d sanctioned against the capital.

The next day he slept fitfully and, when he woke, cried out, ‘Call my brother.’

But when Alençon was summoned and came to stand by the bed, Charles shook his head, and said again, ‘No, no, let my brother be fetched.’

‘It is Navarre he wants,’ Catherine murmured with dismay. ‘Well, let him be brought. He and my younger son can act as witnesses for this document.’

Navarre came in fear and trembling. Under strict orders from the Queen Mother he was taken to the King’s bedchamber not through the open passages or via the other Palace apartments, but up a secret staircase lined with arquebusiers. He trod with extreme caution, keeping a wary eye on the guards who accompanied him, half expecting at any moment that one might turn and stab him through the heart, or finish him off with a bullet in the head.

By the time he reached the King he could hardly believe he’d been spared, and almost fell to his knees at the foot of the bed in gratitude, so great had been the strain.

Catherine presented the dying King with a document to sign, one which placed the regency in her safe hands until Anjou arrived from Poland to take his rightful place on the throne. She insisted that Navarre and Alençon act as witnesses, and that they agree it had been drawn up at their request, and not hers.

Charles then called for Navarre to come close, whereupon he embraced him.

‘Brother, you are losing a good friend.’ Charles’s voice was so feeble it was barely above a whisper, and he was obliged to pause frequently in order to catch his breath. ‘Had I believed all that I was told, you would not be alive. But I always loved you. Do not trust—’

Catherine stepped hastily forward to interrupt. ‘Do not say that!’

‘Madame, I do say it, for it is the truth.’ A fit of coughing took him and his nurse hurried forward to soothe him and wipe the blood and spittle from his mouth. But even in the hour of his death, Charles found the strength to rail against his mother, still determined to hold on to some small degree of independence.

He gathered his failing strength and again addressed Navarre. ‘Believe me, brother, and love me. I trust in you alone to look after my wife and daughter. Pray God for me. Farewell. I rejoice that I leave no male child to wear the crown after me.’

And on these last words, poor mad Charles IX finally escaped his mother and found peace with his maker.

Before the end of the day Catherine dispatched a second messenger in the wake of the first, calling for her favourite son to come and claim his crown.

***

ESCAPE

1574–1578

August 1574

MARGOT WAITED with something like dread for the arrival home of her brother, the King of Poland. Where once she had been flattered by his attention, now she felt only loathing and fear. Knowing the sorry state of their relationship, of his petty jealousies and the way he had always tried to control her, she could not imagine his becoming King of France would improve relations between them. On the contrary, she rather thought all the worst excesses of his nature would come to the fore once he held the reins of power in his hands.

Having learned of the death of his brother, Charles IX, from the Emperor Maximilian, whose messenger reached him before those of Catherine, he’d been so anxious to escape Poland that he’d apparently galloped off in the dead of night.

‘Not only that, but he took with him the Polish crown jewels: pearls, rubies and diamonds,’ Henriette said, savouring the telling of this convoluted tale to Margot.

‘He’s like a greedy jackdaw,’ Margot scathingly remarked.

‘Lost in the forests and pursued by the ambassadors of his court, Henri’s men forced a poor woodcutter at sword point to lead them safely to the frontier.’

‘He must have thought he was the hero in some romantic ballad.’ The scorn she felt for her elder brother was all too evident in her tone.

Madame de Curton pursed her mouth in that disapproving way she had when one of her charges had displeased her. ‘Why must Henri forever over-dramatise?’

They were once more travelling in Margot’s coach, a capacious, handsome vehicle lined with beautiful yellow velvet trimmed with silver brocade; large enough to accommodate not only Madame, who was always with her, but her friend the Duchess of Nevers, the Duchess of Retz and Madame de Thorigny. The journey was again taking place in the heat of August, but this time she was not heading for Bayonne and a possible betrothal to a madman, but to Lyon to herald the arrival of a new King.

‘And did the courtiers catch up with him?’

‘Apparently so. They begged him to return to Krakow but Henri swore that he must first save France from the Huguenots, promising to return at the very first opportunity. All lies! Once back home, we all know that he will never set so much as a toe out of France ever again.’

‘Am I the only one who mourns my brother’s death?’ Margot asked on a sigh.

Madame de Curton put an arm about her young mistress to hold her close, as she always did when this rebellious, over-affectionate girl was suffering. ‘His little Queen still weeps for him.’

‘Oh, Elisabeth is my dearest friend. I love her dearly and hope it will ever be so between us.’

‘Charles is in a better place now, my lady. Do not weep for him. The burden of his distress and pain has been lifted.’

‘And he is safe from my mother at last,’ Margot agreed, drying her eyes with a silk kerchief, a useful fashion accessory imported from Italy by Catherine when she first came to France as a young girl. ‘I cannot see Henri bowing to our mother’s whims, as did poor Charles. The battle of wills between those two might prove to be most entertaining,’ she said, smiling suddenly with mischievous delight.

‘The Queen Mother will ever indulge his fantasies.’

‘My mother has been making herself quite ill, continually celebrating this momentous event by gorging herself on all sorts of delicacies, like cockscombs and artichokes, which do her no good at all.’

‘It is the rheumatism which plagues Her Majesty that drives her to such folly, my lady. Have some sympathy for her aging years.’

‘Why do you always see the best in everyone, Lottie?’

‘Only where appropriate, my lady. I see no malice in overeating. The Queen Mother harms only herself with such indulgence.’

‘Well, that makes a change. Her malice has done enough harm already.’

‘The weakness of over-indulgence is in us all,’ scolded Madame, ever the stern governess.

‘It is certainly a fault in Henri, together with indolence and pure selfishness,’ Margot sharply responded. She had no intention of defending her own weakness, although she was only too aware of the silent accusation that she had indulged in an inappropriate love affair, one which had resulted in dreadful consequences.

She met the Duchess of Nevers’ troubled gaze with a poignant smile, both ladies still haunted by the tragic loss of their lovers. Anxious to protect her friend from further scolding, Henriette leaned forward to continue her story in hushed tones.

‘But having left Poland, the King did not rush straight home to France. Tales have reached us of His Majesty being feted in Vienna, and while in Venice, when he should have been attending a state banquet held at great expense for his benefit, he was lounging in a gondola decked out in gold. The rumour-mongers have it that he roamed abroad at night visiting certain ladies of disrepute, and that he spent his time buying perfume and jewels, which he showered upon everyone he met, along with cash and other gifts. He is said to have spent thousands of écus and is already in debt.’

Margot rolled her eyes heavenwards in despair. ‘Can France afford such munificence? It is long past time he came home and took up his responsibilities, before he bankrupts us all. Why has he delayed so long? It is months since Charles died.’

‘Because he likes the idea of the glory of a crown, but not the work or the responsibility that goes with it,’ Madame dryly remarked. ‘Yet he is here now, and you will see him soon enough, my lady. The Queen Mother is eager to welcome home her . . .’

‘. . . favourite son and see him fulfil her long-held ambition for him,’ Margot finished for her, a bitterness creeping into her voice. ‘I know that full well. Would I not make a better king than all of my brothers?’

‘Indeed you would, my lady, were it not for salic law.’

‘And a better queen than the King of Poland,’ giggled Henriette.

The tension in the carriage eased as all the ladies indulged in merry laughter at the joke.

Margot said, ‘Come, we must not be too gloomy. There will be balls for us to enjoy in Lyon, Henriette; parties and entertainments. Perhaps the bitterness and the rivalry will end, and we can be free again, free to enjoy a new reign, a new beginning. Life may take a turn for the better, do you not think?’

Her friend looked doubtful. ‘We can but hope so.’

Madame de Curton said,’ Do not forget, my lady, that the King’s favourites – his mignons, including Louis du Guast – will also be present, and if he can find some way to make trouble for you, he will.’

Margot looked at her trusted governess wide-eyed with dismay, all her natural frivolity dissolving in a second. ‘Oh, I had quite forgotten du Guast. Then perhaps we should urge Henri to stay away forever.’

The reunion between mother and son took place at Bourgoin near Lyon on 5 September. It was a most moving scene, with both parties weeping and playing up to the high drama of the occasion, even if the courtiers watched with a more jaundiced eye. Henri threw himself into his mother’s arms in an extravagant display of affection, before kneeling to kiss her hand.

‘I owe my life to you, Madame and most dear mother, and now, moreover, liberty and my crown.’

Catherine had dispatched dozens of letters and money to her son in the months he had taken meandering home from Poland via Habsburg and Italy, a route she had recommended for safety’s sake. Henri must have found several missives waiting for him when he’d arrived at the home of the Emperor, and again in Venice, but not troubled to reply to any of them, no doubt being far too busy enjoying himself. Yet so pleased was she to have him in her arms at last, she could not bring herself to chastise him.

‘I have so long waited for your homecoming, my son. I know how well you loved Venice with its mystical, artistic ambience, which does not surprise me. You have always been more Italian than French, taking after your mother rather than your father. But now you are home at last.’

‘There is no country in the world to equal this Kingdom.’

‘My one consolation is to see you here in good health. You are my life, my all. If I were to lose you I would wish to be buried alive.’

Henri took a step back, his patience for effusive displays of maternal affection being strictly limited. Catherine smiled affectionately at her darling boy and summoned the Duke of Alençon and the King of Navarre to present them formally to the new King of France.

‘Sire,’ she said, addressing her son in low, soft tones, ‘pray deign to receive these two prisoners, whom I now resign to Your Majesty’s pleasure. I have informed you of their caprices and misdemeanours. It is for Your Majesty to decree their fate.’

They had been made to ride in the Queen Mother’s coach like naughty school boys – although even that had made a welcome change from being cooped up and constantly under guard, either in Vincennes or in the Louvre where their rooms were searched every day.

Catherine had done a great deal more than that.
Following the princes’ pardon, grudgingly given, the security surrounding them had been strengthened. The windows of the Louvre, all strongly barred, looked out over the river, taunting them with the reality of their confinement. It had been made clear to the King of Navarre and Alençon that they would not be permitted to leave without a pass signed by the Queen Mother, which she had no intention of ever granting. Swiss guards were posted at every entrance, and any visitor who passed over the drawbridge must sign their name upon a list, which was delivered to Catherine each morning by the officer in command. She even insisted that both ends of the Place du Louvre be walled up, leaving only one exit across the Rue des Poulies.

They had been constantly on the alert listening for the approach of her heavy footsteps, the sound of her master key turning in the lock. At any hour of the day or night she would march through Margot’s apartments, then on to those of Navarre and her youngest son, simply to reassure herself that they were not engaged in secret plotting.

‘By the help of God I know how to keep this kingdom safe and tranquil, and to rule all so well, that on the arrival of my son the King he will find everyone obedient and peaceable.’

They had had no choice but to be peaceable, Navarre thought, locked up as they all were with nothing to distract them. Now
Alençon eagerly grasped his brother’s proffered hand, and burst forth with a litany of excuses to justify the enterprise – how they had been shamefully treated by Charles, forced, to their very great regret, to plot an escape for their own protection.

‘But since his death, we have no other desire than to live and die your faithful subjects.’

‘Preferably live,’ added Navarre with dry good humour.

Henri pretended to laugh at the jest, and with carefully contrived graciousness embraced both princes. ‘Be it so, mes frères; the past is forgotten. I restore you both to liberty, and ask only in return that you will give me your love and fealty. If you cannot love me, love yourselves sufficiently to abstain from plots and intrigues which cannot but harm you, and which are unworthy of the dignity of your birth.’

Catherine stood fanning herself in the heat, watching this display of filial affection with pleasure. She did so like to see family unity.

It was Margot’s turn next to step forward and greet the King her brother, a chill of foreboding in her heart, remembering how, as the Duke of Anjou, Henri had made her life a complete misery by allowing his favourites to manufacture malicious lies against her. She thought he looked thinner than ever, deathly pale, and the fistula on his eye seemed worse. There was something in the way he stared so fixedly at her which caused all the fear she had so carefully suppressed to surge up again, block her throat and threaten to choke her. For once Margot was rendered speechless, quite unable to utter a single word of her practised welcome.

The occasion was made worse by the fact that not far behind him stood his favourites: Villequier, Cheverny, and the notorious du Guast. Margot guessed they had kept him fully informed of her own part in the La Molle scandal, of her alleged plotting against her beloved brother Charles, even though that was untrue. She had wanted only for her husband’s safe return to his homeland, and some independence for Alençon. She had made it plain from the start that she would do nothing to hurt Charles.