To Serve a King (24 page)

“And, and?” the voices rang out, as if the chorus to Lisette’s solo.

“And the dock collapsed. Each and every one dropped into the water like a stone!”

Hands flew to mouths stunned into silence. But only for a moment. The laughter, when it came, rang from the rafters, trembled the tapestries on the walls and the glass in the windows. Such a vision her words created … resplendently attired royals flaying and sputtering in the water, the queen floundering like a fish.

“You jest?” Anne laughed as hard as the others did, unable to lower her hand from her drop-jawed mouth. “Surely, you jest?”

Lisette shook her head, her shoulders quivering with unabated laughter. Geneviève turned, quaking with suppressed mirth. She stared out the window as if to see the humiliated nobility far to the south.

“Was anyone injured? Was the queen hurt?”

“No, madame, though it took many soldiers to fish her out of the sea. Of course, everyone made quite the fuss over her, concerned over her delicate sensibilities, worried she would become ill from a little dousing.”

“And the emperor. What of him?” Anne asked.

“He was not injured, either, except for his pride. It is said he roared with rage, calling everyone imbeciles—the mayor, the governor, all of them—for not insuring his safety and that of the queen of France.”

“Mon Dieu,”
Anne whispered as she pushed herself to her feet and came to stand beside Geneviève near the sun-saturated windows, as if she could see the comedic scene in the distance beyond. “What will the king say? He will be so angry.” Though she
spoke of doom, her smile grew wide and her eyes glinted with satisfaction.

“She is returning in four days. Who knows what else will happen when next they meet,” Lisette said, enjoying her fame as messenger.

Anne spun as if struck. “What’s that you say?”

Lisette cowered; perhaps she had said too much. “The queen, madame. She is to meet with her brother once more.”

Anne’s green eyes narrowed and their spark of pure delight dimmed appreciatively. The room held its collective breath as the women waited to see how the mistress would take this news. Ever so slowly, the duchesse began to shake her head, and a glimmer of a grin once more tickled her rosy lips. Geneviève watched in wonder as the woman threw off the despondency as if she discarded an old soiled gown.

Anne threw back her head, auburn curls dancing against her back, and laughed riotously. “Oh, but for all the gold in the kingdom, would I have been there.”

16

You have no enemys except yourselves.

—Francis of Assisi (1181–1226)

“T
he king is playing tennis with the duc de Montrichard, but we will not attend the match. His rooms will be empty, and I wish to surprise him.” Anne held the white silk garment out to Geneviève. “Bring this to his privy chamber, and lay it out on the bed. Display it prettily, would you?”

Geneviève accepted the shirt and recognized it as the one the duchesse had worked on for the past fortnight. Sewing was not her strong suit, and Anne had anguished over each stitch in the silky fabric, the intricacy of each full, flouncy sleeve, and the detail of lace at collar and cuff. The king was a man of fashion, and his mistress’s gift would appeal to his distinct sense of style.

“Put this on top once it is all arranged.” Anne handed her an aromatic lily, dappled pink flesh edged in white and centered by golden stigma. “He will know from whence it came.”

With a curtsy, Geneviève took the bloom by the stem, unable to keep her nose from inhaling the powerful fragrance.

The aroma followed her like an invisible tendril as she hiked through the vast château. Geneviève approached the king’s chambers, inured to the sight of the halberd-brandishing gentlemen of
the guard resplendent in blue and gold, who stood forever at the double gilded doors.

“From the duchesse.” Geneviève held up the shirt and flower as explanation for her presence, but she need not have bothered; her face had become a part of the court tapestry and the men presented her with a nod of recognition as they turned the brass handle and allowed her entry without question.

Geneviève tiptoed across the colorful tile flooring of the audience chamber, each little step loud in the vast empty suite. Never had she seen it so deserted, so vacant of roisterous courtiers and obsequious servants. How different it looked, the beauty of its architecture and décor especially striking without competition from any inhabitants.

Another set of guards stood at the single door separating the public room from the king’s privy chamber. Geneviève stood at the aperture, and though once more afforded unquestioned entry, she hesitated at the threshold. To enter a king’s private rooms, or anyone’s for that matter, was to peel back layers of armor, to see beneath that which the person chooses the world to see and to peer deep within them, to their very truth. Geneviève did not want to look so closely at this man; she wanted only to see him for what she knew him to be. She admitted her fear and wanted nothing more than to spin on her heels and run.

“Mademoiselle?” The tall guard who held the door open beckoned quizzically.

Geneviève shook off the apprehension.
“Excusez-moi.”
She dipped her head and stepped through.

The door clicked to a close behind her, but she did not move. Her astonished gaze rose from the marbled floor to the gilded frescoed ceiling above, to rest, in the end, upon the crowning glory of the room … the artwork hanging upon the limestone walls.

Geneviève circled the room, studying each breathtaking painting in its gilded and scrolled frame.

From the inauguration of his reign, François had used every
treasure at his disposal to tempt the world’s greatest artists to his court. Michelangelo and Raphael had turned him down but had sent many of their works in their stead, canvases now forming the centerpieces of France’s growing collection. Here the most cherished were displayed; in one bearing Raphael’s name, St. Michael slayed a demon; in another, a most delicate beauty in magnificent maroon velvet stroked her long locks.

Raised for a time in his father’s home, a man who took food from his own plate to give to artists who found sponsorship under his roof, François had inherited this artistic passion and made it his own. It was rumored the king of France had threatened to choke Benvenuto Cellini with gold, and that his warning had worked; the artist had answered the call and would soon make his way to the court, following the footsteps of Primaticcio, Andrea del Sarto, and, of course, Leonardo da Vinci.

Geneviève arrived at the far wall, against which stood the king’s mammoth bed, royal blue and gold curtains hanging from the golden columns at each corner. One—and only one—intriguing painting held the place of honor above the head of the bed. Not as large as the others, this was a portrait of a woman who smiled amidst the earth-toned landscape with the most captivating and curious of expressions.

“He called her
La Gioconda
.”

“Merd—!”
Geneviève yelped, spinning round, losing her balance, and falling upon the bed.

The king stood in the threshold, his large silhouette outlined in the bright light of the presence chamber at his back.

“Your Majesty”—Geneviève dropped into a curtsy like a felled bird—“please forgive me.”

“Fear not, mademoiselle. Rise up,” François said blithely. “The guards alerted me to your presence. And I can see by the possession you clutch so tightly that you have come upon an errand.”

Geneviève remembered the shirt and flower in her grasp, both a bit crumpled by her stumble. She straightened her shaky legs,
took a step toward the door, remembered her errand, turned back to the bed, but hesitated under the king’s scrutiny.

“Do you like the painting?” he asked casually, but there was a note of such deep sadness in his voice it startled her, and she did not hear the words for the anguish of it. “I saw how you looked at her. You think it fine,
oui?
”

“Yes, Sire, I do,” Geneviève answered honestly, turning back to gaze once more at the small portrait at the head of the bed.

With his long strides, François crossed the room.

“What is it that speaks to you?”

Again, that note of bleakness in his voice. Geneviève turned to look up at his face. His hollow eyes had grown more so since she had first seen him, and more frown lines punctuated each side of his wide mouth. In the slanted sunlight of late afternoon, he looked like someone else altogether, an older and disheartened version of the once young, hubristic king. As if he felt her scrutiny, he looked down at her, one brow rising expectantly.

“I … um …” she floundered, tilting her head to one side. “I am sure most say it is her mouth that captures their attention. But for me it is her hands. They are so very graceful and lifelike, and her eyes. They seem to hold me in their sway.”

François chuckled. “You have a keen eye, mademoiselle. I feel her eyes on me often, but they do not condemn me. And for that I am grateful.”

Did he bear a heavy burden of harsh public opinion? Geneviève found it hard to believe a man of such noted arrogance would allow civil judgment to affect him. Many alleged that he never said a foolish thing yet never did a wise one, but Geneviève struggled to think he would feel the sting of such barbed arrows. And yet so much of what she had seen of this man in these past weeks spoke of humble defeat.

“It is not for my pleasure alone that I gather these treasures.” François shuffled to the high-backed wing chair awaiting him in the corner. He lowered his large frame into the dented blue brocade
cushion. From this perch, he could view every piece in his collection or gaze out the leaded glass window to the front gardens and the rolling hills of the land beyond. He put his elbow in a depression in the chair’s arm and his head in his palm. “I want my people to open their minds to this genius, this beauty. Our artists mark the trail to enlightenment, if we can only learn how to read the signs.” He turned back to the woman’s portrait standing guard over the chamber. “Da Vinci taught me this.”

Geneviève knew not what to say; she felt as if she had never met the man before her, and she struggled with the awkwardness of unfamiliarity. “I have heard he was a very learned man, Sire. That he knew of many things besides art.”

“’Tis true,” François nodded. “I have never known a man as thirsty for knowledge as he, or as willing to share such with the world. The hours I spent with him I count as the most precious of my life. Never before or rarely since has my intellect felt so challenged, or my eyes opened so wide.” He shook his head and a deep furrow formed between his brows. “I will never forgive myself for not being there at the moment of his passing.”

Geneviève had heard the artist had died in his patron’s arms, but it seemed the story was no more than rumor, another myth surrounding this enigmatic king. The king’s own words dispelled it, and the naked anguish in his almond-shaped eyes could not be denied. It resonated deep within Geneviève, touching the pain of grief buried in her core.

“It was your bed upon which he lay? Your physicians who attended him?” Geneviève whispered, breaching protocol with such intimacy.

François dropped his hand into his lap and looked at her, perplexed.
“Oui.”

“Then you held him as tenderly as if it were with your own arms.”

The elderly man’s need for succor was compelling and she responded to it, in denial of all she had been taught. These days of
close proximity had revealed so many of this man’s cracks; despite herself she felt a sudden urge to fill them, perhaps because they mirrored her own fragmented existence.

The king rubbed at his forehead, seeing Geneviève’s perplexed pity as if she wore it on her sleeve. “Complete your task, mademoiselle, so that I may tell the duchesse how well you saw to your duty.”

With a quick dip, Geneviève turned to the high bed and laid the shirt upon it, fanning out the sleeves to display them at their best, and placing the flower at the end of one cuff as if an invisible hand held it.

She faced the king once more, gave a full curtsy—skirt opened wide—and made for the door. As she grasped and turned the cold gleaming knob, she heard his whisper.

“
Merci,
my child.”

The ladies stood like pretty flowers all in a row along the rail of the grandiose spiral staircase in Château Blois, an artistic architectural achievement renowned throughout all of France. An exterior spiral-shaped incline, at each floor a landing overlooked the courtyard below. It had become tradition for the courtiers and nobles to rest at the rail, as if from a balcony, and watch the jousts and plays in the common, another place to see and be seen. Looking up from below, the spiral rose up like a five-story monument, the exterior of the pale stone balustrade festooned with a sculpted garland of crowned salamanders.

Here the ladies awaited the duchesse as she spoke with the king on the landing above, the sun once more shining bright upon the hordes milling below them, multicolored sparks bouncing off jewels and swords. With so much to look at, the women chatted amiably as they bided their time.

“I hope it is not forward of me.” Arabelle reached out a tentative finger and touched the back of Geneviève’s hand resting on the railing, and the discoloration upon it. “But how did you come by this mark?”

Geneviève looked down at the stain upon her flesh; it had been there as long as she remembered. It was a splotch more than a scar and could have passed as a birthmark. “It is a burn,” she responded dispassionately. “Acquired the night of the fire that killed my parents.”

“Oh,
mon Dieu,
my poor Geney.” Arabelle’s fair face flushed behind a hand raised in shock. “I had no idea. Forgive me, it was wrong of me to ask.”

Geneviève reached out and lowered Arabelle’s finger with a small squeeze. “Not at all. I remember nothing of the event and never has the wound pained me.”