Madame Serpent Read online

  With a madly beating heart, she went down to the court of the Bastille where the King would ceremoniously receive his son.

  The walls were hung with the loveliest of French tapestry for this occasion, and the hall was illumined by a thousand torches. There was to be a banquet, followed by a ball.

  Francis, who loved such occasions, looked younger than he had for some

  weeks and his magnificence outshone that of all others.

  Henry came into the court on a flourish of trumpets; he went at once to the King, who embraced him warmly and kissed him on both cheeks. Then Henry

  received the Queen’s embrace.

  ‘And here,’ said Francis, putting an arm about Catherine and bringing her forward, ‘is our dear daughter and your beloved wife, who‚ I need not tell you, has been living for this day since you left her side.’

  Catherine, her heart hammering under her elaborate corsage, lifted her eyes shyly to her husband’s face. He embraced her formally. She saw in him no

  delight at seeing her again. She told herself that he was hiding his pleasure, that he was ashamed‚ because of the scandal which he would know to court. Yet she knew that she was deceiving herself.

  ‘Henry,’ she whispered, so softly that none but he could have heard.

  He stepped back, prepared to greet others who came forward to kneel and

  kiss the hand of their future ruler.

  Soon it would be the turn of the Grande Sénéchale to kneel to the Dauphin; and not only was Catherine watching, but she knew that, all about her, sly eyes would be turned towards those two, that jewelled fingers would preparing to nudge silk-clad ribs; the whole court, not the King and Madame d’Etampes, would be waiting to see the greeting between these two.

  And now― Diane. To Catherine, she had never seemed so beautiful as she

  did at this moment. Her black-and-white gown was decorated with pearls; there were pearls in her raven-black hair. Serene, and completely sure of herself, she did not betray for a moment that she was aware of the interest she was creating, although, of course, she knew that everyone in the hall was watching her.

  If Diane was capable of hiding her feelings, the Dauphin was not. He

  flushed and his eyes shone, so that it seemed to those close observers that he was no less in love with her than before. But into his eyes had crept a certain misery, a wretchedness and shame. There was a faint titter, which the King’s sharp glance immediately suppressed, though he himself was laughing inwardly.

  Henry looked like a remorseful husband, he thought.

  Diane rose, smiling; she said her words of welcome as everyone else had,

  and then she turned and gave her attention to the eldest son of the Duke of Guise. The Dauphin’s miserable eyes followed her.

  The King commanded his son to sit beside him as he had much to say to him concerning military affairs.

  The comedy was ended.

  At the banquet which followed, Henry must, for courtesy’s sake, sit next to his wife, while Diane took her place with the Queen’s ladies. But everyone―

  and Catherine more than any― noticed that his eyes kept straying towards that regal figure in black and white, and that Diane seemed very happy talking to the Queen and her ladies of the charitable schemes they intended to carry out.

  After the banquet Diane seemed to avoid the Dauphin, and kept at her side those redoubtable allies of hers, the young de Guises.

  Catherine took an opportunity to slip away from the festivities. She called Madalenna to her. The girl’s eyes were round with fear; she had been dreading the return of the Dauphin; she knew, before she was told, what would be

  expected of her.

  ‘Go,’ said Catherine, her eyes glittering in her pale face, ‘go to the

  apartments of the Sénéchale. Make sure that you are hidden. I wish to know everything that takes place between them.’

  ―――――――

  When Diane retired to her apartments, Henry followed her after a short

  interval.

  Diane was smiling serenely while her women asked her if they should help

  her disrobe.

  ‘Not yet, Marie. I think I may have a visitor.’

  She had hardly spoken when there was a tap on the door.

  ‘Marie,’ she said, ‘should it be the Dauphin, tell him I will see him. Bring him in and leave us.’

  Henry came shyly into the room, and she was reminded vividly of the boy

  whom she had met in the gardens on the first occasion they talked of horses.

  Diane, smiling graciously, held out both her hands. Her women went out

  discreetly and shut the door.

  ‘I am so happy that you are returned,’ said Diane.

  ‘And I― am wretched,’ he answered.

  ‘Henry, that must not be. Please do not kneel to me. Why, it is I who should kneel to you. Come, sit beside me, as you used to do, and tell me what it is that makes you so wretched.’

  ‘You know, Diane.’

  ‘You mean the young Italian girl at Piedmont?’

  He burst out: ‘It is true, Diane. All they say is true. I cannot understand myself. It was as though some devil possessed me.’

  ‘Please, do not distress yourself, Henry. You love this girl?’

  ‘Love? There is only one I love, only one I shall ever love in my life. I knew that all the time. But I was lonely, longing for you so much. Her hair was raven black, and it grew like yours, in ripples. You were not there, Diane, and I tried to grasp at what seemed like your shadow.’

  She smiled at him, and, looking at her, he wondered how he could ever have thought the little Piedmontese could have resembled her. There was no one on Earth who could compare with Diane.

  ‘My dear,’ she said, gently and caressingly, ‘there is no need to be sad. You went away, but now you are back. That, it would seem to me, is a matter for rejoicing.’

  ‘You will forgive me?’ he pleaded. ‘You will understand? It was a passing fancy― quick to demand satisfaction, and satisfied, I found that it had gone. It grew out of my longing for you.’

  ‘I always knew that,’ she told him. ‘For me and for you, there is one love and one love only.’ She turned towards him, took him into her arms. ‘There is no talk of forgiveness, love,’ she went on. ‘They whispered; they jeered.

  Madame d’Etampes, you know. It might have been humiliating― for some.’

  ‘How I hate that woman! That they should dare to humiliate you, and that I should be the cause of it, grieves me deeply. It makes me hate myself. I wish I had been killed in battle before that happened.’

  She kissed him tenderly, as she had done in the beginning of their

  relationship. Henry’s love for her was fierce and passionate; hers for him held in it a good deal that was maternal.

  ‘Then would it have been my turn to be desolate,’ she said. ‘There is one thing I could not have borne― and that that you did not come back to me.’

  They sat down with their arms about each other. ‘Diane― it is forgiveness, then? It is as though― that never happened?’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive. It is, as I always knew, and have just explained, a nothing― a bagatelle. You were lonely and she was there, this pretty little girl, to amuse you. I am grateful to her because she made you happy for a time. Tell me this, you would not like her brought here― to Paris?’

  ‘ No! ’

  ‘You no longer love her?’

  ‘I love only one; I shall always love only one.’

  ‘Then you no longer desire her?’

  ‘When I realized what I had done, I never wanted to see her again. Oh

  Diane, my only love, can we not forget it happened?’

  ‘We cannot do that, for I have heard that there is to be a child.’

  He flushed a deeper red.

  She laughed. ‘You were ever one to forget your status. That child will be the son― or daughter― of the King of France. Had yo
u forgotten that?’

  ‘I am filled with shame. You are so good, so beautiful. You understand this wickedness of mine just as you understood my weakness, my folly, my shyness, and my shame. When I am with you, I cannot help but be happy, even though I have soiled this beautiful union of ours by my infidelity.’

  Diane snapped her fingers. Her eyes were brilliant; her mouth smiled, for she was thinking that the court would soon be thinking it had laughed too soon.

  She was going to take charge of this matter. It pleased her that the court should see her as Henry’s beloved friend rather than his mistress; the first and most important person in his life, his spiritual love.

  ‘My darling‚’ she said, ‘the child must be looked after; it must be educated in accordance with its rank.’

  ‘It’s rank!’

  ‘My dear, it is your child. That alone makes it of the utmost importance in my eyes. Henry, have I your permission to take charge of this matter? When the child is born, I wish to have it brought to France. I wish, personally, to superintend its education.’

  ‘Diane, you are wonderful!’

  ‘No,’ she smiled lightly. ‘I love you and would see you respecting yourself, taking to yourself that honour which is your due.’

  He put his arms about her. ‘I dreamed about you,’ he said. ‘I thought of you continually, even when I was with her.’

  Diane had slid into his arms. She had put aside the practical Frenchwoman now; she was ready to receive his adoration, which, from experience, she knew would quickly change to passion.

  ―――――――

  Catherine did not see her husband until the next day. Madalenna had

  managed to slip out of Diane’s apartment when the lovers were sleeping, so Catherine knew what had taken place.

  She spent the night weeping silently. She knew that she been wrong to hope.

  The clever witch had only to smile on him to cast her spell over him.

  He appeared next day, flushed and triumphant, the forgiven lover who

  understands that his peccadillo is to be forgotten; he was wearing the black-and-white colours of Diane.

  The court admired the Sénéchale more than ever; Catherine’s hatred for her was greater. Madame d’Etampes was disappointed; more, she was worried.

  When the little Piedmontese gave birth to Henry’s baby, the Sénéchale kept her word; she had the child brought to her and made arrangements for its

  upbringing.

  It was a girl, and, to the amazement and admiration of many, the Sénéchale had the child christened Diane.

  THE FRIGHTENED DAUPHINE

  THERE was a tension at Loches. Everyone felt it, from Anne to the humblest worker in the kitchens. Diane, in continual conference with her young friends, the de Guises, seemed to have grown an inch taller and a good deal more

  haughty. She saw herself clearly now as the power behind the throne. Catherine, outwardly meek, felt a new strength within her. But for her, these two women who believed themselves to be so far above her in wit and intelligence would not be in their present position! It was stimulating to shape the destinies of others, even while, because one worked in shadow, one must be treated as

  though of no account.

  Icy December winds were whistling through the bare branches of the trees in the palace gardens, and the snow was falling.

  The King lay ill; and many believed he would never leave his bed.

  It was not only the court that was uneasy; It was the whole of France. And it was not only this illness of the King’s that gave rise to tension. The Dauphin, with Charles of Orléans, and a retinue of noblemen, was travelling south to welcome Charles V of Spain into France. And the illness of Francis, together with the friendly invasion of Francis’s perennial enemy was sufficient to set tongues clacking, while speculation as to the wisdom of this unprecedented visit was offered in all the wine-shops from Paris to Le Havre and from Le Havre to Marseilles.

  It was that stern Catholic, Anne de Montmorency, who was responsible for

  the friendly overture to Charles V. He had, on the illness of the King, taken over the reins of government, and when he had done this, he acted promptly. He had broken off friendly relations with the English and the German Princes, the Turks and the Duke of Cleves. He had persuaded Francis that alliance with Spain might mean the acquisition of Milan― which the death of Clement had snatched from the King just when he had thought the marriage of the Medici girl and Henry had brought it to him― and Francis could always be dazzled by the very name of Milan. And when Charles V had to journey from Spain to Flanders to subdue his rebellious subjects in the latter country, what better gesture of friendship to offer him safe passage through France, which would mean such saving of Charles’s time and pocket!

  The invitation given was accepted― with a lack of ease on both sides; and so, Henry had ridden off rather sullenly much as he admired and respected his friend Montmorency could not relish the idea of welcoming as a guest of

  France, the man who had once held him a prisoner.

  Courtiers huddled round the great fireplaces at Loches cussing the coming of the King of Spain and the possible departure of the King of France. There was a gloom about the palace. Loches, set on the top of a lofty rock, with a dark history of misery and pain that seemed to cling to it, with its underground dungeons, its torture-rooms, its noisome pits and its oubliettes, was hardly the pleasantest of French châteaux. There was scarcely a member of the court who did not long to return to Fontainebleau. The fact of the King’s being sick meant that lavish entertainments ceased, and that young ladies who taken on airs with royal favour, now seemed to shrink as they moped in corners. The court of France lost half its vitality when its King lay sick.

  Catherine sat on a stool stretching her hands to the blaze while she listened to the conversation of those about her.

  Young Guy de Chabot, the son of the Seigneur de Jarnac was a gay and

  dashing fellow, reckless in the extreme, a young man who gave himself up to the pleasures of love-making as fervently as men like Montmorency gave

  themselves to soldiering. He was talking now to a handsome captain of the Guards, Christian de Nançay, another such as himself. Idly Catherine listened to their conversation.

  ‘The King,’ said de Chabot, ‘should choose his women with greater care.

  Depend upon it, La Feronnière has brought this sickness on him.

  ‘My friend,’ whispered de Nançay, ‘there you speak truth. The woman is

  herself suffering at this very time.’

  ‘Our King has his enemies,’ went on de Chabot. ‘One understands that the

  husbands and fathers of those whom he seduces cannot find it in their hearts to love him as easily as do the wives and daughters. Odd, is it not, and can at times be inconvenient. I have heard that the husband of La Feronnière the woman should pass this little trouble on to our Lord King.

  De Nançay snapped his fingers. ‘My God! The King has suffered from the

  disease for many years. This is merely a reoccurrence of an old malady, depend upon it.’

  They knew Catherine heard them, but what did they care? The quiet little

  mouse was of no consequence.

  Anne d’Etampes strolled up to the two young men. They were once alert; rumour had named them both as her lovers. They bowed, they kissed her hands; they were, thought Catherine, rather ridiculous in their efforts to outdo each other. Anne had that quick smile, which held so much promise, for both of them.

  They were two of the most handsome men at court, and Anne was very fond of handsome men.

  Catherine watched them, joking, laughing, gaily flirting. Anne was

  beautiful, and only the closest observer, such as Catherine, saw how very worried she was.

  Diane came to the fireplace and with her was Francis de Guise and Merot

  the poet. Princess Marguerite, the King’s daughter, joined them; and as they settled themselves about the fire, Cat
herine found herself drawn into the group.

  The tension had heightened. It always did when these two women on whom

  the court looked as rival queens found themselves together.

  Diane, very lovely in black and white, wearing on her finger the great ruby which Henry had given her, showed that she saw herself as the rising queen.

  Anne, in blue that matched her eyes and her lovely fair hair to perfection, was more beautiful, more gay than Diane. The setting sun, thought Catherine,

  watching avidly that she might not miss a gesture, is often more magnificent than when it rides the sky.

  ‘What gallant courtiers you must find Monsieur da Nançay and Monsieur de

  Chabot,’ said Diane slyly. ‘They are always at your side.’

  ‘Indeed they are,’ retorted Anne. ‘I fear there are some who envy me the

  smiles that come my way.’

  ‘Then that is wrong of them!’ cried Diane. ‘I always say Madame la

  Duchesse d’Etampes has earned well her favours.’

  ‘Madame la Grande Sénéchale is kind indeed. I myself said the same of her.’

  The little circle was uneasy. In a moment they would called upon to take

  sides, always a dangerous matter, Chabot nervously turned the subject to the coming of Charles V. He declared himself eager for a sight of the ogre.

  ‘A strange thing,’ said Princess Marguerite, ‘that he should be coming as my father’s guest― the man who imprisoned my father and my brothers. It is

  beyond my understanding.’

  ‘But it all happened long ago!’ said de Guise. ‘It is one of those things best forgotten.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anne; ‘it happened long ago. Sénéchale, you will remember more clearly than any of us. You were a wife and mother at the time; I was but a child.’

  Diane said: ‘You must have been very talented, Madame d’Etampes. I believe, at the time of the King’s imprisonment, Madame de Chateaubriand was jealous of you on the King account.’

  ‘An uneasy matter for Frenchmen,’ said de Guise quickly, ‘to have the