Queen Jezebel Read online

  Still, the marriage had been arranged and it was as good a marriage as any could be. Margot had always been antagonistic towards him, but what did he care? What did he want of a wife when he could so effortlessly find so many women to give him what he desired? He would be quite content to leave Margot to her affairs, and he would see that she left him to his.

  As soon as it had become known that he was to go to Paris he had had to listen to many warnings. ‘Remember what happened to your mother,’ he was told. “She went to Paris and never returned.’ They did not understand that he was not seriously perturbed by the thought of danger, and that he looked forward with eagerness to being at that court of intrigues. His mother had died and that had shocked him; bitterly he had wept when the news was brought to him, but he had soon discovered that, even while he wept most bitterly, he was thinking of the freedom which he would consequently enjoy. His mother he had always known to be a good woman, and he was ashamed that he could not love her more. She was a saint, he supposed; and he was, at heart, a pagan. She would have been disappointed in him if she had lived, for he could never have been the pious Huguenot she had tried to make of him. And her death brought with it more than his freedom; he had become of great importance—no longer merely a Prince, but a King of Navarre. There were no longer irksome restrictions, no more sermons from his mother; he was gloriously free, his own master, and that was a good thing to be at nineteen years of age when a man was virile, full of health and effortlessly attractive to all women.

  So as he rode he sang a song of Gascony; and although now and then a friend would whisper to him a word of warning, that could only excite him the more. He was eager for adventure, eager for intrigue.

  And when, with his numerous followers, he was but a short distance from Paris, King Charles himself rode out to meet him The young King of Navarre was gratified to be embraced by the King of France, to be called brother, to receive such a show of friendship.

  The Queen Mother had ridden with the royal party, and she too made much of the newcomer, embracing him, telling him how she rejoiced to see him again, tenderly touching his black sleeve, while she lowered her eyes in assumed regret for his mother.

  But what delighted Navarre more than the royal welcome were the ladies who rode with the Queen Mother. He had never before seen so much beauty, for every one of these ladies, seen singly, would have dazzled him with her charms. His half-veiled eyes studied them and from one of them—it seemed to him the most beautiful of them all—he received a smile of what he considered to be definite promise. She was a beautiful creature with fair hair and blue eyes. No other woman, he realized, had the grace and the elegance of these court beauties; and what a delightful change they made after the more homely charms of his dear little friends in Béam! The King of France rode beside him as they made their way into the capital.

  ‘It pleases me,’ said Charles, ‘to think that you will soon be my brother in truth.’

  ‘Your Majesty is gracious indeed:

  ‘You will find the city full of my subjects who have come from the four corners of France to see you married to my sister. Do not be afraid that we shall delay the wedding. The Cardinal of Bourbon is making difficulties. He is an old bigot. But I shall not allow him to waste much more of that time which belongs to you and my sister Margot.’

  ‘Thank you, Sire.’

  ‘You look well and sturdy,’ said the King enviously.

  ‘Ah, it is the life I lead. I spend much time on pleasure, so they say, but it would seem that it agrees with me.’

  The King laughed. ‘My sister will be pleased with you.

  ‘I trust so, Sire.’

  ‘I hear,’ said Charles, ‘that you have little difficulty in pleasing women.’

  ‘I see that rumour concerning me has reached Paris.’ ‘Never fear. Parisians love such as you, brother.’

  Was that true? Navarre was aware of glowering faces in the crowds that surged close to the cavalcade as it went through the streets.

  ‘Vive le Roi Charles!’ cried the people. And some added: ‘Vive le Roi Henri de Navarre!’ But not many, and there was a hiss or two to counteract the cheers.

  ‘There are many Guisards in the streets today,’ said Navarre.

  ‘There are all sorts,’ answered the King. ‘The followers of the Guise and the followers of my dear friend the Admiral mingle together now that you and my sister are to marry.’

  ‘It would seem as though the whole of France were gathered here . . . Huguenot and Catholic.

  ‘It would indeed seem so. I have heard that so many are in Paris that there is no room for them to sleep. The inns are full and at night they sprawl on the cobbles of the streets. It is all for love of you and Margot. My dear friend, the Admiral, will be filled with delight to see you here. He has a right good welcome waiting for you.’

  Navarre smiled his pleasure while he glanced sideways at the King. Was the King, with his continual references to his dear friend the Admiral, trying to tell him that he was favouring the Huguenot cause after all? What of Catherine de’ Medici, who many believed had been responsible for the death of his mother? What did she intend for him?

  He rarely concentrated on anything for long at a time, and as he saw the Louvre with its one arm stretching along the quay and the other at right angles, he looked up at its tower and narrow windows and remembered the young woman he had seen riding with the Queen Mother.

  He said: ‘I noticed a very beautiful lady riding with Her Majesty, the Queen Mother. Her eyes were of a most dazzling blue, more blue than any eyes I have ever seen.’

  The King laughed. ‘My sister’s eyes are black,’ he said.

  ‘The most beautiful eyes in France, so I have heard,’ said the bridgegroom. ‘Yet I wonder to whom the blue ones belonged.’

  ‘There is a lady in my mother’s Escadron who is remarkable for the colour of her eyes, and they are blue. I think, brother, that you refer to Charlotte de Sauves.’

  ‘Charlotte de Sauves,’ repeated Navarre.

  ‘My mother’s woman, and wife to the Baron de Sauves—our Secretary of State.’

  Navarre smiled happily. He hoped to see a good deal of the owner of the blue eyes in the weeks to come, and it was rather pleasant to learn that she had a husband. Unmarried ladies sometimes made difficulties which it would be trying for a young bridegroom to overcome.

  And as he came into the great hall and idly gazed through the windows at the Seine flowing peacefully by, as he mounted the great staircase of Henry the Second, he thought with extreme pleasure of Madame de Sauves.

  On a Turkey rug in his apartments the King lay biting his fists.

  He was greatly troubled and none dared approach him. Even his favourite falcons on their perches set up in this room could not delight him. His dogs slunk away from him; they, no less than his servants, detected the brooding madness in him. He was worried, and when he was worried it was usually because he was afraid. Sometimes when he stood at his window he seemed to hear a murmur of warning in the cries of the people which floated up to him. He felt that mischief was brewing and that he was threatened.

  He could not trust his mother. What mischief did she plan? He watched the thickening body of his young wife with disquietude. His mother would never let the child live to stand in the way of her beloved Henry’s coming to the throne. And if she longed to see Anjou on the throne, what did she plot for her son Charles?

  There were horrible silences in the streets, broken by sudden tumult. Of what did the huddled groups of people talk so earnestly? What did they mean—those skirmishes in taverns? It had been madness to bring Huguenots and Catholics into Paris; it was inviting trouble; it was preparing for bloodshed. He saw pictures of himself, a prisoner; he smelt the evil smell of dungeons; he saw his body tortured and his head severed from his body. He wanted to see blood flow then; he wanted his whips so that he could attack his dogs; and yet because some sanity remained to him he must remember the remorse which would follow such actions
; he remembered the horror that was his when he looked on a beloved dog which he had beaten to death.

  Someone had come into the room, and he was afraid to look up in case he should encounter his mother’s smile. They said she had secret keys to all the rooms in the palaces of France, and that often she would silently open a door and stand behind curtains, listening to state secrets, watching the women of her Escadron making love with the men she had chosen for them. In all his dreams, in all his fears, his mother played a prominent part.

  ‘Chariot, my little love.’

  He gave a sob of joy, for it was not his mother who stood close to him, but Madeleine, his old nurse.

  ‘Madelon!’ he cried, as he used to when he was a little boy.

  She took him into her arms. ‘My little one. What ails you, then? Tell Madelon.’

  He grew calmer after a while. ‘It is all these people in the streets, Madelon. They should not be there. Not Huguenots and Catholics together. And it is I who have brought them here. That is what frightens me.’

  ‘It was not you. It was the others.’

  He laughed. ‘That was what you always said when there was trouble and 4 was accused. “Oh, it was not my Charlot; it was Margot or one of his brothers.” ‘

  ‘But you were never one for mischief. You were my good boy.’

  ‘I am a King now, Nurse. How I wish I were a boy again, and that I could slip out of the Louvre, out of Paris, to some quiet spot with you and Marie and the dogs and my falcons and my little pied hawk to bring down the small birds for me. To escape from this . . . with you all. How happy I should be!’

  ‘But you have nothing to fear, my love.’

  ‘I do not know, Nurse. Why cannot my subjects be at peace? I care for them all, be they Huguenots or Catholics. Why, you yourself are a Huguenot.’

  ‘I wish that you would pray with me, Chariot. There would be great comfort for you in that.’

  ‘Perhaps I will one day, Madelon. But it is all this hate about me that frightens me. Monsieur de Guise hating my dear Admiral, and the Admiral cold and haughty with Monsieur de Guise. That is not good, Madelon. They should be friends. If those two were friends, then all the Huguenots and all the Catholics in Paris would be friends, for the Catholics follow the Duke, and the Huguenots the Admiral. That is it! That is what I must do. I must make them friends. I will insist. I will demand it. I am the King. By the good God, if they will not give each other the kiss of friendship, I will . . . I will . .

  Madeleine wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘There! You are right, my little King. You are right, my Chariot. You will insist, but now you will rest awhile.’

  He touched her cheek lightly with his lips. ‘Why are not all the people in Paris gentle like you, dearest Nurse? Why are they not all like Marie and my wife?’

  ‘It might be a dull world made up of such as I,’ she said.

  ‘A dull world, you say. Then it would be a happy one. No fears . . . no death . no blood. Go, Nurse darling, go and tell Marie to come, and I will talk to her and see what she has to say about a friendship between Monsieur de Guise and Monsieur l’Amiral.’

  Catherine’s benign expression hid the cynicism she felt as she witnessed the farce which was now being enacted before her.

  The kiss of peace which Henry of Guise was giving Coligny! Her mind went back to a similar scene which had taken place six years before in the château at Blois. She herself had organized that scene and with the two same actors. Of course, at that time Guise had been a boy, completely without subtlety, unable to hide the blushes which rose to his cheeks, unable to quell the fire in his eyes. Then he had said: ‘I could not give the kiss of friendship to a man who has been called my father’s murderer.’

  How the years change us! she thought. Now this. Duke—no longer a boy—was ready to take the Admiral in his arms and plant on his cheeks the kisses of friendship, even while he was plotting to kill him.

  ‘How good it is,’ murmured Catherine ‘when old enemies become friends!’

  Madame de Sauves, who happened to be near her, whispered: ‘Indeed yes, Madame.’

  Catherine allowed herself to smile graciously on the woman. She was playing her part well with the bridegroom, playing both the seductress and the virtuous wife. Catherine had said: ‘The Baron de Sauves would be proud of his wife if he could see the way in which she repulses that young rake of Navarre.’ At which the woman had smiled demurely and lifted those wonderful blue eyes of hers to the face of the Queen Mother, as though asking for fresh instructions. But there were no further instructions . . . yet.

  Catherine was seriously worried. That old fool, the Cardinal of Bourbon, was hedging. He could not, he declared, perform the ceremony until he had the Pope’s consent. And how could he receive word from the Pope when Catherine herself had arranged that no mail should come from Rome! She and Charles would have seriously to threaten the old man if he held out much longer.

  He could be coerced, she was sure. He was getting old now, and, after all, he was a Bourbon. His brothers had not been noted for their strength. Both Antoine de Bourbon and Louis de Condé, brothers of the Cardinal, had been successfully tempted from the path of duty by members of Catherine’s. Escadron. Not that the Cardinal could be seduced in that way; but there were other methods.

  And when he had consented, it would be necessary to let the people of Paris believe that the Pope had agreed to allow the marriage to take place. That would be simple.

  But still she was worried. The grey shadow which haunted her life seemed more ominous than ever—that man who had been her son-in-law. In his gloomy Escorial he would be aware of all that was happening in France, and if he did not like what happened he would blame the Queen Mother. His ambassadors were spies and she was well aware that they sent long accounts of her, activities to their master.

  Alva had sent a special agent to inquire into her intentions. She admitted that in Spain’s eyes she must appear as an enemy. There was an alliance with England, recently signed; she was trying hard to bring about the marriage of her son Alençon with Elizabeth of England.; there were signs that Coligny had almost .persuaded the King to keep his word and support the Netherlands against Spain and now there was the marriage of the Princess of France with the Huguenot Navarre. She doubted not that Philip of Spain was thinking of war . . . war with France; and a war, with Spain’s powerful armies and mighty armadas, was the bogey which haunted Catherine’s days and nights. She saw in it disaster—disaster to herself and her sons, and that which she dreaded more than anything on Earth, the fall of the House of Valois. To keep her sons on the throne she had followed a devious policy, twisting this way and that in order to seize every advantage, never sure today which way she would go tomorrow, supporting Catholics, favouring Huguenots, so that with good reason they likened her to a snake, with poisonous fangs, since, when she schemed for the sake of the House of Valois, she did not hesitate to kill.

  She remembered a conversation which she had had at Bayonne, whither she had gone in great state to meet her daughter, the Queen of Spain; but more important than her encounter with her daughter had been that with the Duke of Alva, deputy for Philip, with whom she had had that important conversation.

  Then it had been necessary to make promises, to declare herself a staunch Catholic, and she had begged Alva not to be misled when for purposes of policy she appeared to support their enemies. She had offered Alva the heads of all the Huguenot chiefs—but at the right moment. ‘It must happen,’ she had said, ‘as though by accident, when they are gathered in Paris; for what reason, as yet we cannot say.’

  She wanted this marriage between the King of Navarre and her daughter because she knew that any power she enjoyed in France must come to her through her children. In the event of a civil war, resulting in a victory for the Huguenots, the crown of France might be placed on the head of the Bourbon King of Navarre; the daughter of Catherine de’ Medici would then be the Queen of France. Catherine need not, therefore, lose her position as
Queen Mother. She would, naturally, do all in her power to prevent such a calamity overtaking the House of Valois; she would not hesitate to use assassins or the deadly morceaux. But it was well to consider all eventualities. Margot would not be so easy to control as Charles had been and as she hoped her beloved Henry would be; but she would still be Catherine’s daughter. This marriage then was an insurance against possible future mishap, for Catherine had seen great Huguenot victories in her time; and the sight of all those followers of Coligny—Téligny, Rochefoucauld, Condé, and young Navarre—confirmed her opinion that she was wise in changing her course as it suited her.

  The marriage must take place soon, although afterwards it would be imperative and urgent to pacify Philip of Spain; and if she were fortunate it might be that the murder of Coligny, whose death His Most Catholic Majesty had long desired, would be sufficient to satisfy him. And if not? Vividly there came to her memories of that conversation with Alva at Bayonne. the right moment . . . when all the Huguenots are gathered in Paris on some pretext or other . . .

  Was this the pretext? Was this the right moment?

  The King was being dressed for the wedding, and there was a certain dismay among his friends and attendants, for his mouth was working in a way which all had seen before, and the whites of his eyes were shot with red. What would be the result of this wedding which was the talk of Paris, the talk of France?

  ‘This wedding will be blood-red,’ said the people of Paris. And the King knew that they whispered those words.

  The Cardinal of Bourbon had been persuaded to perform the ceremony; he had been shown that he would find extreme disfavour in the eyes of the King and, what was more serious, in those of the Queen Mother if he did not comply with their wishes. Charles and his mother had had the news spread through Paris that the Pope’s dispensation was in their hands. So there was nothing now to delay the ceremony.