The Italian Woman Read online

  Francis was waiting. The palms of his hands were clammy; he was frightened; he fingered the dagger at his belt; he licked his lips. He knew he was going to fail.

  He could not forget that they were watching him, despising him. He knew that his lips would tremble and that he would forget what he had to say to Antoine. He would falter, and he would not sound in the least angry or cuttingly cynical. Why did not Mary’s uncles carry out their own diabolical plots?

  Henry of Guise might look upon this as an exciting adventure if his father had called upon him to play the part Francis had to play. But Francis hated bloodshed; hated death. He wanted to be happy, playing his lute, reading to Mary, making love. That was living a good life. But they would not let him live a good life.

  ‘Sire, the King of Navarre is without and begs an audience.’

  ‘Send him in,’ said Francis, and was appalled by the tremor in his voice.

  But he must do as he was bid. He dared do nothing else.

  And here was Antoine, with a strange, cold glitter in his eyes as though he knew what was about to happen. He approached, and surely there was caution in his manner, surely his eyes were looking round the room for concealed assassins. He was solemn, lacking his usual gaiety; Francis became obsessed by the idea that Antoine knew.

  One of Antoine’s attendants remained stationed at the door.

  Francis said: ‘You may go. What I have to say to the King of Navarre is for his ears alone.’

  The man went, but Francis believed he waited on the other side of the door, ready to run to his master’s assistance.

  Antoine stood, calm yet alert. He was ready and waiting, for Catherine had warned him of the plot; she had advised him what to do, and the Queen Mother’s advice was worth having. If he escaped alive from this trap, he would be ready to throw in his lot with Catherine, he would accept the Lieutenant-Generalship and agree to her becoming the Regent of France on the death of Francis. She must be his friend, for if all happened as she had warned him it would, and he emerged from this room with his life, he would owe it to her.

  Francis began to shout in a nervous voice: ‘You coward! You traitor! You with your brother have schemed against us. You would set yourself on the throne. You are traitors, both of you … vacillating traitors; and you deserve to die.’

  Francis waited for the expected indignation, for the protests; but none came, and Francis never knew how to deal with unexpected situations.

  He swallowed and began again. ‘You traitor! How dare you …?’

  But Antoine kept his distance; he did not approach the King, but stood midway between him and the door.

  ‘Why don’t you speak?’ cried Francis. ‘Speak! Speak! Why don’t you defend yourself?’

  Then Antoine spoke. ‘There is nothing I would gainsay if my King declared it to be so.’

  ‘You mean … you mean …’ spluttered Francis. He half turned towards the door which led to the antechamber. They were waiting in there for the signal, for the cry he was to give: ‘Help! Help! Assassin!’ But how could he give it while Antoine kept so far away? It would so obviously be a trick. The man waiting outside the door – Antoine’s man – would come in and see what had happened. He must lure him on. But he did not know how.

  ‘Sire,’ said Antoine quietly, ‘you are distraught. Have I your leave to retire that you may send for me when you are feeling better?’

  ‘Yes … yes …’ cried Francis. And then: ‘No, no. You coward! You traitor …’

  But Antoine had slipped through the door.

  ‘Come back! Come back!’ screamed Francis. ‘I … I didn’t get a chance.’

  A door was opened, but it was not the one through which Antoine had departed. It was that of the antechamber.

  On one side of the King stood the Duke, the terrible scar standing out on his livid face, and the eye above it watering, as it did when he was angry. On the other side of the King stood the Cardinal.

  They both carried daggers, and for the moment Francis thought they were going to use them on him, as they could not on the King of Navarre.

  The Duke did not speak, but Francis heard the words which came through the Cardinal’s thin lips.

  ‘Behold the most lily-livered King that ever sat upon the throne of France!’

  Antoine had agreed to accept the Lieutenant-Generalship and that Catherine should be Regent of France. Mary Stuart was a spy who was watching every action of the Queen Mother and reporting it to her uncles. So there seemed nothing to be done but wait for the death of Francis; and the sooner it came, the sooner would that power for which she longed be Catherine’s.

  The poor little King was growing gradually weaker. Catherine herself prepared many potions for him, but these did not seem to improve his health, but rather to make him more feeble. She herself spent much time in his apartment, braving, as she said to some, the jealousy of her little daughter-in-law. ‘But,’ she would quickly add, ‘I understand that. They are lovers, but when a boy is sick it is his mother who should be at his side, and the King is but a boy.’

  One day Francis complained of a pain in his ear. He cried out in agony, and then only his mother’s herbs and drugs could soothe him. These sent him into deep sleeps which gave him the appearance of a dead man, but it was better that he should be thus, all agreed, than that he should be conscious and suffer such pain.

  Mary, frightened, her pretty face marred with the signs of weeping, cried out: ‘This cannot go on. These doctors are fools. I will send for Monsieur Paré. He is the greatest doctor of all.’

  Catherine took her daughter-in-law by the shoulders and smiled into her face. ‘No doctor can help him. All we can do is ease his pain.’

  ‘We must save him,’ said Mary. ‘We must do everything possible to save him.’

  ‘I will not have Monsieur Paré here. The man is a Huguenot. There will be those to say we plot in the palace.’

  ‘But something must be done. We cannot let him die.’

  ‘If it be God’s will, then, my daughter, we must accept it.’

  ‘I will not accept it!’ sobbed Mary. ‘I will not!’

  ‘You must learn to bear misfortune like a Queen, my daughter. Ah, do not think I cannot understand your sufferings. I know full well how you feel. Did I not suffer so myself? Did I not see the husband I loved – as you love Francis – did I not see him die in agony?’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Yet I loved him as you love Francis, but I would not have had him kept beside me to suffer.’

  Frightened, and angry at the same time, Mary flashed out: ‘He would not have suffered beside you, Madame, but beside Madame de Valentinois.’

  Catherine smiled. ‘You are right. You see, I suffered far more than you, my child, for your husband has been a faithful husband. I suffered in so many ways.’

  Mary looked with horror into the face of the Queen Mother, realising what, in her anguish, she had said. She dropped on her knees and wept. ‘Madame, forgive me. I knew not what I was saying.’

  ‘There,’ said Catherine. ‘Do not fret. It is your anguish as a wife that makes you forget the bearing of a Queen. You need rest. I shall give you something to drink. It will help you to sleep. Wait. I will get it myself, and then I shall hand you over to your women. Rest … and perhaps when you wake, our dearest little Francis will be a little better.’

  ‘You are good to me, Madame,’ muttered Mary.

  And obediently she drank the warm, sweet liquid. Catherine called Mary’s women and said: ‘See that she rests. She is overwrought. She suffers deeply.’

  Catherine sat by the bed and watched her son in his drugged sleep, and as she sat her thoughts moved onwards.

  Little Charles on the throne! A boy of ten! Her fingers were ready now to seize the power for which they had been itching during the humiliating years.

  How long would Francis live? Another day? Two days?

  His ear was puffed and swollen; he was moaning softly. That meant that her drugs were loosening their hold upon him.

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nbsp; Catherine seemed calm, but inwardly she was furiously angry.

  Mary had arranged with her uncles that Ambroise Paré should be brought to the bedside of Francis. The Guises were very ready to give their sanction to this request. Paré was a Huguenot, but he was reckoned to be the greatest surgeon in France since he had performed a clever operation on the Count d’Aumale by extracting a piece of lance which had entered beneath the eye and gone through to the back of the neck. This had happened before Boulogne during the war with the English; the Count had lived and regained full health after the operation, and the cure had seemed something like a miracle. The Catholic Guises were ready to overlook Paré’s faith, for it mattered not who saved Francis as long as he was saved.

  Paré had examined the King’s ear.

  Catherine said: ‘Monsieur Paré, I have the utmost faith in your judgement. I beg of you to tell me privately what you have found.’

  ‘I will know also,’ said Mary imperiously.

  ‘My daughter, I am his mother.’

  ‘But I,’ said Mary, ‘am his wife.’

  Catherine shrugged her shoulders and had the room cleared until only she, Mary and Paré remained.

  ‘Mesdames,’ said Paré, ‘the King’s condition is grave. I do not think he can last the night.’

  Mary covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

  He continued: ‘There is a malignant abscess in the ear. It is full of evil humours that are entering his blood and poisoning it.’

  ‘Oh, my son, my little King!’ moaned Catherine. ‘Only a few hours then, Monsieur? Only a few hours of life left to my little son?’

  ‘Madame, if the abscess were lanced …’

  Mary stared at him wildly; Catherine’s eyes glittered.

  She said sharply: ‘I will not have my son tortured, Monsieur, with your lancings. I will not hear him scream in pain. He has suffered too much in his short life. I would have him die quietly and in perfect peace.’

  ‘I was about to say, Madame, that if the abscess were lanced …’

  Mary flung herself at the feet of the surgeon and kissed his hand. ‘There is a chance? Monsieur Paré, there is a chance to save him?’

  ‘I cannot assure your Majesty of that. I do not know, but it may be …’

  ‘You do not know!’ cried Catherine. ‘You would subject my son to pain when you do not know!’

  ‘It would be a chance, Madame, but it would need to be done at once. Each passing minute carries the poison deeper into his blood.’

  ‘I will not have him tortured,’ said Catherine.

  ‘Monsieur,’ cried Mary hysterically, ‘you must save him. You are the greatest surgeon in France … in the world … and you can save him.’

  ‘I will try, Madame.’

  ‘Yes. Now! Lose not a minute … since every second is precious.’

  ‘Stay awhile,’ said Catherine. She began to pace up and down the apartment. ‘This needs thought.’

  ‘There is no time for thought!’ cried Mary angrily.

  ‘There must always be time for thought.’

  ‘Madame,’ said Paré, ‘you remember that our great good King, Francis the First, suffered from a similar abscess. Each year it grew big until it burst and let forth its evils. When it did not open, King Francis died.’

  ‘Open it, I beg of you,’ said Mary. ‘I am his wife. I am the Queen. I demand it.’

  Catherine laid a hand on Paré’s arm. ‘It will be necessary for me to give my consent. I cannot do this in a hurry, and I cannot put my son’s life in danger.’

  ‘Your son’s life is in danger now, Madame.’

  ‘I cannot bear to have him hurt. If you but knew how he has suffered already!’

  ‘Heed her not,’ begged Mary. ‘Go and do it … now!’

  The surgeon looked from the Queen to the Queen Mother. How calm was Catherine; how distrait Mary! Naturally, he must give his attention to the calm Queen Mother.

  He began to talk to her persuasively, explaining the nature of the operation. But would he, Catherine wanted to know, take responsibility for the life of the King? Were he allowed to perform this operation and the King died, there would be many to ask if he had intended he should not recover. He was a Huguenot; the King was a Catholic. Would he perform the operation knowing that, if he failed, mighty reverberations might occur throughout the realm? The war between the Protestants and the Catholics was ever ready to break out anew. An operation by a Huguenot surgeon on a Catholic King! Oh, indeed it needed the deepest consideration.

  Catherine walked up and down with the surgeon. Mary had flung herself on to a couch and was sobbing in helpless rage against the Queen Mother.

  ‘Passions run high in these times,’ said Catherine. ‘You are a Huguenot, Monsieur. Oh, do not hesitate to confess it to me. You have my sympathy. Do you not know that? I would not care that you should run the risk of facing such an accusation.’

  ‘Madame, you are too kind, too considerate. When men are sick, I think of all I can do for them … of consequences later.’

  ‘But, Monsieur, you are too useful a subject to be lightly lost. Tell me truthfully. You can see that I am a woman who knows how to bear her troubles. I have had enough, I can assure you, during my life. I can bear a little more. My son is sick, is he not?’

  ‘Very sick, Madame.’

  ‘And death is near.’

  ‘Death is very near.’

  ‘And the chances of success?’

  ‘There is just a chance, Madame, a frail chance. As you remember in the case of your father-in-law …’

  ‘Ah yes, tell me about the case of my father-in-law. I would hear it all. I must decide whether I can allow my son to face this ordeal.’

  Paré talked; and Catherine, hurrying to ask questions whenever he showed signs of stopping, kept him talking. Outside, the December wind howled through the trees, and on the couch Mary Queen of France and Scotland lay sobbing as if her heart were broken.

  At length Catherine said: ‘I cannot decide. It is too big a thing for me. Oh, Monsieur, was ever mother presented with such a problem? If my husband were only here! Oh, Monsieur Paré, bear with me. Remember I am a widow left with little children to care for. I want what is best for them, for they are more to me than my life.’

  Mary had risen from the couch and rushed past them, and Catherine knew immediately whose help she intended to enlist.

  ‘Monsieur,’ said Catherine to Paré, ‘return with me to the King’s chamber, and pray with me that God and the Virgin may lead us to the right decision.’

  They were kneeling by the bed when Mary came in with her uncles.

  Catherine stood up. She looked at the face of her son and she knew that the intervention had come too late.

  The Duke said: ‘Monsieur Paré, you can save the King’s life?’

  Paré went to the bed and looked at the young King. ‘Nothing, my lord Duke, can save the King’s life now, for there are only a few minutes of it left to him.’

  Mary flung herself on her knees, calling to her husband, to look at her, to smile at her, to live for her. But although Francis turned his head towards her, he did not seem to be aware of her.

  The Cardinal was bending over him, and briefly Francis appeared to recognise the man who had overshadowed and spoilt the last years of his life. In Francis’s eyes that terror with which he had been wont to look at the Cardinal showed itself for a second or so; and it might have been that, seeing the boy was about to leave this life, the Cardinal was suddenly conscience-stricken; and perhaps he realised that in Francis’s mind were lurking the horrors which he had witnessed during the massacre of Amboise and which had, ostensibly, been perpetrated at his commands.

  The Cardinal murmured in an urgent whisper: ‘Pray, Sire, and say this: “Lord, pardon my sins and impute not to me, Thy servant, the sins committed by my ministers under my name and authority.”’

  Francis’s lips moved; he tried to follow the lifelong habit of obedience; but it may have been th
at the Cardinal’s words bewildered him as they did those others who heard them, for it was the first and only time in his life that the Cardinal of Lorraine had shown that he possessed a conscience.

  Francis’s head sank back on the pillow, and there was no sound in the room but the moaning of the wind through the leafless trees and Mary Stuart’s heartbroken sobbing.

  In his dungeon under the Castle of Amboise, Condé sat disconsolately at table, contemplating his fate. The stale stench of the dungeon nauseated him. He thought tenderly of his wife, their two sons and his dear little daughter. Perhaps he would never see them again. What a fool he had been to ignore the advice of Eléonore and Jeanne and to have made the journey to Orléans, to have walked straight into that trap which had been prepared for himself and his brother!

  What was the meaning of the Queen Mother’s strange friendship? Was she in love with him? Condé shrugged his shoulders. Many women had been in love with him. He smiled reminiscently. Sometimes he wished – as he knew Antoine did – that he had not been blessed with such a saintly woman for a wife. What gaiety there had been in the days before his marriage; always there had seemed to be the light adventure, romance, some different woman to enchant him with some novelty of passion. And yet, how could they – he and his brother, so alike in looks and character – ever be unfaithful to two such women as Jeanne and Eléonore!

  He sighed. This was not the time for such thoughts. What was the motive of the Queen Mother? Could she really have him in mind as her lover-to-be? God forbid! That woman! There were occasions when the very thought of her sent shivers even down this brave man’s spine. Her way of entering his cell often startled him; one minute she was not there and the next she would be standing quietly in the shadows, so that he had the impression that she had been standing outside, listening to his conversation with his jailers, and had silently glided in like the snake to which some people had compared her.

  Oh, he had been gallant; he had been charming. How could it have been otherwise? She could save him, if anyone could. But for what?