The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (36 page)

At Diane’s request, Henri allowed her to pass on property that had no known heirs, to those she wished to reward. She had a fascination with the treasury and wanted to understand the financial workings of the kingdom. Diane installed her own candidate as treasurer, and through him learned about the movement of funds, whether due to business transactions or wills or lawsuits. She was especially interested in those dealing with confiscation of property, and anything else from which she might derive a benefit. But this was just the beginning.

From early June, the king, queen, and court resided at Anet, where Henri drew up documents giving Diane de Poitiers the revenues of her husband’s estates for the duration of the court case settling their ownership.
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Following the death of Louis de Brézé, Diane had been forced into a prolonged battle in the law courts to hold on to her inheritance. The case dragged on for almost fifteen years, and she had lived in fear of losing even Anet to the machinations of Anne d’Etampes. At last Henri was able to reward her for the many years she had spent as his mentor, guide, and lover. In return for all she had done for him, and as
further proof of his love, the king presented Diane with the most beautiful of his father’s châteaux in the Loire, perhaps the loveliest Renaissance castle in all of France: Chenonceau in the Touraine, roughly a two-hour gallop from Bois or Amboise.

François I had always coveted the little château of Chenonceau in its charming setting on the banks of the Cher river. In 1535, the king had engineered a bad debt against the castle’s owner and claimed his house in lieu of payment. Thus Chenonceau became royal domain, and as such, inalienable. It took Diane three years to complete the complicated legal process to ensure it would not revert to the crown with Henri’s death. Officially, the king made the gift to the Grand Sénéchal of Normandy, Louis de Brézé, for “services he had rendered the crown.” Legally, therefore, ownership passed to his widow, Diane. Before Henri could accomplish this transfer, an act was passed to say that François I had claimed the property unfairly, and it was reinstated as belonging to the original owner’s heirs. However, this ruling also stipulated that the heirs must immediately sell Chenonceau to Diane de Poitiers. Naturally, Henri gave her the necessary funds.

Diane received a number of benefices of property confiscated from Protestants and Jews, and several valuable tax revenues. Among others, she received a part of a tax imposed on every church bell in France, which prompted the poet Rabelais to remark that the king had hung the bells of his kingdom around the neck of his riding mare. The tax was so rewarding that it enabled Diane to pay for much of the construction work and decoration at Chenonceau.

Diane de Poitiers was not alone in appreciating this château. Catherine de’ Medici yearned to own it; indeed, she claimed furiously that François I, who surprisingly was not so taken with Chenonceau once he had acquired it, had promised it to her. On July 3, Diane was installed as the new châtelaine and received the homage of the citizens of her town. She had always admired the whitestone turreted castle perched on the edge of the river, with its idle swans and green banks, and she longed to hunt in its deep forests. Diane saw Chenonceau as the perfect romantic setting for herself and Henri, an enchanted place to further enthrall her lover. No matter how grateful and how devoted Henri might be, she knew that to hold the love of a handsome, virile
young man who was also the king of France, she would need all the magic powers she had been accused of possessing, and more.

Throughout her life, Diane’s aims never changed: acquire, consolidate, secure. She spent fortunes extending and improving Chenonceau with the help of the great French Renaissance architect Philibert de l’Orme, who designed the elegant arched bridge over the river, planned by the original owner. The work began even though the estate was not legally hers until 1553. The king donated fifty trees “to our very dear and well beloved cousin, Diane de Poitiers, to build and construct a bridge she intends to make at her house at Chenonceau on the River Cher.” To pay Philibert de l’Orme for his work, Diane gave him three abbeys. She purchased some nearby land to double not only the size of the estate but also its value and income. Chenonceau was not just a magnificent château and home; the number of farms that made up the
seigneurie
was a valuable source of income.

Large sums were spent on the gardens at Chenonceau. A century later, the great French landscape gardener Lenôtre was to study Chenonceau and work there as a prelude to his creations for Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles. Diane de Poitiers commissioned Benoît Guy, sieur des Carroys, to create a parterre on the right bank of the Cher, at the northeast corner of the estate. The parterre was in the Italian style and covered over two acres with a combination of flowers, vegetables, and an orchard. It still bears her name today. Benoît Guy installed a wide, sandy avenue lined with one hundred and fifty elms leading to the château, and shady trellised walks with cool meeting places surrounding fountains.

In all, the gardens comprised four acres, surrounded either by moats or by stone walls with terraces above. In the midst of the terraces stood a fountain with a water jet. The grounds also boasted an orangery and an aviary, and yielded a sumptuous feast of peaches, apricots, strawberries, gooseberries, artichokes, cucumbers, and melons, as well as the usual French vegetables. Gifts of plants and trees were sent by the hopeful and grateful. The archbishop of Tours sent musk roses, lily bulbs, rare melons, and artichokes. Hazelnut trees arrived to be planted as leafy hedges; apple, peach, and other fruit trees were meant for the shady maze and to supply the house. Admirers sent rare plants and vegetables,
including thirteen thousand aubergine plants, many varieties of currants, nine thousand strawberry plants, and carpets of violets.

Diane planted one hundred and fifty white mulberry trees. Since she wore no other fabric but silk, she established her own silkworm industry, and soon all the black and white silken cloth for her clothes came from Chenonceau.
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The original owner of Chenonceau had imported grapevines from all over France, and the new châtelaine tended these carefully for her own cellar. The wine from the Cher was much in demand: Diane sent hers from Chenonceau by barge to Anet. The châtelaine also received live game for the hunt. From Navarre, Antoine de Bourbon, husband of Jeanne d’Albret, sent her a Pyrenean chamois. For exercise, there was a
paille-maille
yard,
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also used for tennis and tilting.

Diane oversaw the work of gardeners, horticulturists, designers, and architects, whose efforts combined to create the perfect union between the castle and nature. Chenonceau—with its slender stone arches spanning the Cher, seemingly neither completely on land nor on water
⁹
—came in time to symbolize its enigmatic châtelaine, who appeared to be part woman, part goddess. Chenonceau developed into one of the court’s main residences, with Diane its undisputed sovereign.

O
NE of Henri’s first acts on his accession was to legitimize his natural daughter, Diane de France, and grant her the prerogatives of a royal princess, making over to her the duchy of Angoulême.
¹⁰
Diane de France inherited her father’s skill on horseback as well as his
grace on the dance floor. On June 30, 1547, a marriage contract
¹¹
was signed between the relevant official parties guaranteeing that Henri’s daughter Diane would marry Orazio Farnese, grandson of the reigning pope, Paul III. The pope had sent Orazio to the French court as a child to be educated there with the intention that he would marry Henri’s firstborn. As Orazio was twelve years older than the nine-year-old Diane, it was decided that the generous marriage contract would only be paid once the union was consummated. The pope bestowed large incomes on his grandson, as well as the duchy and patrimony of the boy’s family, creating him Duke of Castro. Pope Paul III gave Catherine a golden rose he had blessed, and to Henri’s mistress, the real power behind the throne, he sent a string of perfect Oriental pearls. This union between
Diane, Legitimée de France
and Orazio Farnese was seen as the living symbol of France’s pledge to renew hostilities against the imperialists’ stronghold in Italy.

To further unite France with Italy, the pope elevated Diane’s charming favorite, the Guise archbishop of Rheims, Charles de Lorraine, to the cardinal’s hat on the day of Henri’s coronation, July 26. The new cardinal wrote to Diane: “I cannot refrain from thanking you again for the special favor you have shown me, and for the great happiness it has given me. I will use every effort to serve you more and more, and I hope from these efforts to reap good fruits for you as well as for myself, since my interests henceforth cannot be separated from yours.” How Diane would learn to regret those words. It is also highly likely that the cardinal encouraged his niece, Mary, Queen of Scots, to be subservient to Diane.

One month later, Orazio Farnese’s father was assassinated on the orders of the emperor, a gesture calculated to show his displeasure at the pope’s alliance with France. Henri II installed his future son-in-law into the Order of Saint-Michel, and the young bridegroom left for Italy to take up his inheritance.

H
ENRI had already begun cleaning up the morality of the court with the dismissal of the
Petite Bande
, and, with Diane’s encouragement, he introduced sumptuary laws on entertainments and luxuries, with large fines for any breaches.
¹²
The court was dramatically reduced in number, with far fewer attendants on the king, queen, and royal family. Henceforth Catherine would have only four ladies-in-waiting, who were to be more “serious and honest.” Naturally, Diane was the first one appointed. Dances and concerts at court were to be held only once a week. Henri loved to dance, but it is unlikely that Diane, a widow, would take part except in the more solemn, slow, parading dances. Henri stopped some of the more louche practices—for example, gentlemen of the court were no longer permitted to be present when the
filles d’honneur
rose in the morning or went to bed at night. The new chancellor proclaimed severe penalties for blasphemers, murderers, and ambushers.