The Italian Woman Part 7

He tried to appear bluff as he had been coached, but it was no good. 'Fear not, my good men,' he said shyly; and he thought that by the sound of his voice it was they who should be telling him not to fear.

He gave them the money.

'Tell me, what were you doing in the forests?'

They smiled and exchanged glances. They liked his youth and his shyness. What was there to fear? If he was the King, he was only a poor, delicate boy.

'We came to rescue you, Sire,' they whispered. It was apparent that the boy was uneasy; it seemed obvious that he would be nothing loth to escape from the rule of the Guises. With his stammering shyness he had won their confidence, and in a little while they were telling him that they had been sent from Geneva and that very shortly their leaders would join them.

The King hoped they would succeed; it was a genuine hope, for he could imagine nothing worse than the captivity he now endured under the control of the Duke and the Cardinal.

'Fear not, Sire,' whispered the leader of the men. 'There are forty thousand men on the way to your help.'

They thanked him for his graciousness; they kissed his hand with affection, it seemed; and Francis was very sorry for them and longed to warn them that they had been overheard.

They were taken as they left the castle, and for weeks afterwards their heads with those of many others who had been rounded up in the forest adorned the crenellations of the castle.

All the children, except Hercule, were summoned to the balcony. They dared not refuse to obey the order. They must sit with the ladies and courtiers while they watched the ma.s.sacre of Huguenots in the courtyard.

Francis felt sick; he could not endure it. Mary covered her face with her hands. Charles watched in horror; later he would go back to his tutors, who would talk of what had happened until he would scream and fall into one of his fits. Margot turned pale; it hurt her to see young and handsome men cruelly pinioned, pale from the dungeons, bleeding from the torture chambers. Margot could not bear to look at the blood, and there was blood everywhere. She wanted to scream: 'Stop! Stop!' Her brother Henry looked on with indifference; he did not care about anyone but himself and his pretty friends. But Henry of Guise was thrilled by the spectacle; he always took his cue from his father, and the ma.s.sacre of Huguenots was organised by the Guises; therefore it was right.

Francis of Guise exchanged approving glances with his son, the hope of his house. Henry's eyes showed how he adored his father, and there was contentment and understanding between those two. But the d.u.c.h.ess, Henry's mother, disgraced them all by covering her face with her hands and weeping.

'What ails you?' asked the Queen Mother, herself calmly watching the spectacle.

'This piteous tragedy!' cried the d.u.c.h.ess of Guise hysterically. 'This shedding of innocent blood ... the blood of the King's subjects. Oh, G.o.d in Heaven, terrible days are before us. I have no doubt that a great disaster will fall upon our house.'

Duke Francis angrily led his wife away, and Henry was ashamed of his mother.

Later, as the ma.s.sacres continued day after day, the Duke grew more cruel, as though in defiance of anything Fate could do to him. Everywhere was the sickening stench of blood and decaying flesh; when the children went about the grounds they would be faced with the sight of men's bodies hanging from the battlements. They watched men, fresh from the torture dungeons, tied in sacks and thrown into the Loire.

Neither Catherine nor the Guises attempted to stop the children's witnessing these terrible sights. Duke Francis knew that his son Henry would be hardened by them as he wished him to be hardened; Catherine knew that her Henry was quite as indifferent to the sufferings of others as she was herself. As for the rest of the children, it was to the Guises' advantage as well as that of Catherine that the King and his brother Charles should be weak, and it was in fact Francis and Charles whose nerves were racked by the horrors.

The b.l.o.o.d.y days went on and it seemed to the children that their beloved Amboise had taken on a new aspect. They thought of the dismal dungeons in which foul things were done; the beautiful battlements could not be dissociated from ghastly corpses which had once been men; the sparkling river was now the grave of many.

Francis cried when he was alone. It hurt him to go out and see how people shrank from him. When he approached he saw startled village women hustle the children into the safety of their cottages.

'Here comes the King!' they cried. 'He is sick, they say, and only keeps himself alive by drinking the blood of babies.'

'They hate me! They hate me!' sobbed Francis. 'They should be told that it is not I who do these terrible things.'

Once, with a sudden spurt of courage, he threw himself against the Cardinal and, when he felt the suit of mail beneath the Cardinal's robes, he knew that this man, too, was afraid.

The Cardinal lived in terror of a.s.sa.s.sination. He had altered the fas.h.i.+on in men's clothes that it might not be easy to hide weapons about their persons. Cloaks were no longer wide, boots were smaller, that daggers might not be secreted in them.

He is a coward, thought Francis; and he cried: 'It is because of you my people hate me. Would to G.o.d you would take yourself away from here!'

The Cardinal only smiled, for if he was afraid of an a.s.sa.s.sin, he was not afraid of the King.

In the little court at Nerac there was great consternation. A letter had arrived for the King of Navarre from the King of France. Antoine opened it and read: MY UNCLE, You doubtless will remember the letters which I wrote to you touching the rising which lately happened at Amboise, and also concerning my uncle, the Prince of Conde, your brother, whom many prisoners accuse vehemently; a belief which I could not entertain against one of my blood.

Antoine's eyes skimmed the page, his hands trembling. He read on: ... I have decided to investigate the matter, having resolved not to pa.s.s my life in trouble through the mad ambition of any of my subjects. I charge you, my uncle, to bring your brother, the Prince of Conde, to Orleans whether he should be willing or not, and should the said Prince refuse obedience, I a.s.sure you, my uncle, that I shall soon make it clear that I am your King ...'

Jeanne watched her husband as he read, saw the change of colour in his face, and she was afraid for him.

So much had happened during the last year that she had been forced to adjust her picture of him, but he was still her beloved husband, in spite of the occasional bickering between them. Their personalities were quite opposed, one to the other; he was so weak, and he could never make up his mind; she was strong, and once she had made up her mind, for good or ill, she found it difficult to swerve.

She had made him King of Navarre, but she was bold and independent and herself ruled the province. She had sharply reproved him for what had happened when he had gone to court and had been so rudely treated by the Guises. She had explained to him the peril in which he had put himself, herself, their children and their kingdom. She had seen that the Prince who could work with the Queen Mother was the one who would have the largest say in state affairs. He had hesitated, and the Guises had got there before him.

There had been coolness between them for a short while, but the heat of Jeanne's temper always faded quickly; and Antoine, though he changed his mind again and again, was still her beloved husband. They were lovers yet, and if he needed guidance from her, her help in his career, she must only thank G.o.d that she had the strength to give it.

Now, as she watched him, she thought of the happiness of their life together here in their own province. She, with her beloved children, teaching them herself, delighting in their precocity at their lessons, could have been completely happy. She drew great contentment from the Huguenot faith, though she had not professed her acceptance of it publicly; yet it was known throughout the land of France and Spain that there was refuge for Huguenots in Jeanne's kingdom.

'Antoine,' she said. 'What is it, my love?'

He brought the letter to her and put an arm about her shoulder while they read it together.

Jeanne said promptly: 'You must not go, and certainly Louis must not go.'

'This, dearest Jeanne, is a command. Do you not see that? A command from the King!'

'The King! A sickly boy without a mind of his own. It is a command from the Duke of Guise and his wicked Cardinal brother a call from the Queen Mother. It means: "Come. Walk into the trap we have prepared for you." '

'You may be right. No. Certainly I shall not go. I shall tell Louis nothing of this, for he is foolhardy enough for anything.'

But Antoine could not remain of the same mind for long at a time.

'A command from the King must be obeyed. I think, Jeanne, that I should go. They would not dare harm us Princes of the Blood!'

'Princes of the Blood have been murdered ere this,' she reminded him.

The Count of Crussol, the messenger who had brought the letter, a.s.sured Antoine that he had nothing to fear. He could give the word of the King on that.

'But the King,' pointed out Jeanne, 'is not allowed to give his word.'

'You have the word of the Queen Mother.'

'Ah!' cried Jeanne, hot and imprudent. 'Might not the Queen Mother keep this promise as she did that other ... to meet our ministers at Rheims?'

'There are also the words of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine.'

'Never trust the words of brigands!' cried Jeanne.

And it was Antoine's turn to reprove her.

How impossible it was to continue with the happy life! If they could only live humbly, simply, if they were not of royal blood, how happy they would be! But she must fret against Antoine's indecision and lie against her brusque frankness, and all because they must fear for the children and their kingdom; so they grew angry with each other on account of faults which in a lowlier household would merely have given rise to amus.e.m.e.nt.

Antoine decided that it was necessary to warn Conde of the King's letter and, on receiving his message, Conde, with his wife, the Princess Eleonore, came to Nerac to discuss the matter.

Conde, fearless, longing for adventure, declared there was nothing they could do but answer the summons. No one should say that Conde was afraid. Jeanne was furious with both brothers.

'It is for your own salvation, Louis,' she cried, 'that I advise you and Antoine to remain here.'

'Dear Jeanne, we cannot stay. It would be said that we were afraid to face the charge.'

Jeanne bit her lips in anger, while the Princess Eleonore, as wise in her way as Jeanne was in hers, added her prayers to those of her sister-in-law; but though the two men agreed to stay, both women knew their husbands well enough to recognise their instability.

'If you do go,' said Jeanne at length, 'you must at least appear before the Princes of Lorraine supported by a force which should compel them to respect the blood of the Bourbons.'

'Louis,' cried the Princess of Conde, 'do you not see that every step you take towards the court will bring you nearer to destruction? In the King's letter there is no attempt to hide their threats. Take men. Take arms. And if you are determined to die, die at the head of an army, not on a scaffold.'

'They are right, Louis,' said Antoine. 'I will go alone to the court. The chief accusation is against you. Let me go alone, test the climate there, and then ... send you word.'

And while they hesitated, there came another messenger to the court of Nerac with letters from Catherine.

'Advance with fearless courage,' advised Catherine. 'You have nothing to fear if you come with courage. Come humbly, without much state; that will proclaim your innocence.'

'She is right,' said Antoine. 'If we go with an armed force we shall look like guilty men.'

'If the Queen Mother says, "Come humbly," ' said Jeanne, 'then you can be sure it would be wise for you to go fully armed.'

There were more letters. Those from the Huguenot d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier warned Antoine and Conde not to leave Nerac. Catherine wrote asking Jeanne to accompany her husband to Orleans. 'Bring your little son and daughter,' wrote Catherine. 'I long for a sight of their bright little faces.'

'They at least shall not be exposed to Madame le Serpent,' declared Jeanne.

And when, at last, Antoine and Conde set out for Orleans, Jeanne left Nerac for Pau and began to make arrangements for the defence of her realm.

Antoine, King of Navarre, and Louis de Bourbon, the Prince of Conde, were on their way to Orleans. They had sent their chamberlains ahead to announce their approach.

Catherine in her apartments pondered this. She was going to have need of all her subtlety in the next few weeks; she was going to discover whether she had learned her lessons well, whether that self-control, that craft, that method of fabricating miracles, which she had nourished for so long, would work as she had always believed they would.

She remembered well the words of Machiavelli, that protege of Lorenzo de' Medici: 'A prudent Prince cannot and ought not to keep his word, except when he can do it without injury to himself; or when the circ.u.mstances under which he contracted the engagement still exist. It is necessary, however, to disguise the appearance of craft and thoroughly to understand the art of feigning or dissembling; for men are generally so simple and weak that he who wishes to deceive, easily finds dupes.'

That was her policy. She had learned the lesson in her home, the home of her ancestors, in the Medici Palace and the Convent of the Murate, in Clement's Rome; and she would apply it in France. She had not yet enjoyed the full force of her power, she had not yet tried her wings, but she was confident. There was no one in this country who knew her for what she was. There had, it was true, been certain rumours about her from time to time; when the Dauphin Francis, eldest son of Francis the First, had died suddenly, many had believed she had had a hand in his death. But to most she was mild and patient, the woman who had endured over twenty years of humiliation through Diane de Poitiers with such meekness as only a poor, humble creature could show. She had duped them all, and they had been easy dupes.

She went into the little closet adjoining her apartment, locking herself in and then unlocking the door of a secret compartment. Here there were several speaking tubes, and one of these she held to her ear.

Sometimes it was necessary to wait for a long time, but usually she heard what was worth waiting for. These tubes had been, through the ingenuity of Rene and the Ruggieri brothers, made invisible and inserted into certain apartments of the palace; all were connected with and led to her little room. The one she held so patiently now was that connected with the private apartments of the Duke of Guise.

She knew this would be worth waiting for, since her woman Madalenna had discovered that the Duke had invited young Mary, the Queen, to his apartments.

Catherine thought of the Queen of France as her bete noire of the moment. It was infuriating to know that that foolish girl, still in her teens, was the real source of power in France, since, but for her, there would have been no need for the Queen Mother to endure those frequent slights from the intolerable Guises. The foolish Francis and the coquettish Mary were far too important in the land, even though they were merely the puppets and mouthpieces of the House of Lorraine.

Soon she heard the Duke's voice: 'My dear niece, it is good of you to come to my call ...'

Good of her, indeed! thought Catherine. For was she not the Queen of France? And who was this Duke to summon a Queen in such a manner to his apartment? But he was Le Balafre, a man whom many found irresistible, the embodiment of virile French manhood handsome, das.h.i.+ng, swaggering, with that rare quality in a Frenchman, a calm, cool manner in an emergency. Oh yes, he had fascinated his charming niece as he had fascinated others.

It was not easy to hear through the tube, for it was only possible to catch a word here and there. This was far from satisfactory, but it had sufficed to teach her much, and, until some better method could be found, she would have to be content with a tube.

'The Bourbons are on their way, Mary.'

Then came Mary's high voice: 'Uncle, what is it you wish Francis to do?'

'They threaten our house ... these Bourbon Princes. They cannot be allowed to live ...'

Catherine nodded grimly. 'But they shall live, Monsieur le Duc,' she murmured, 'for without our little Bourbons, our Princes of Lorraine would be even more arrogant, more intolerable than they are now.'

Then she heard the words which made her face grow pale with anger.

'Continue, Mary, to watch the Queen Mother. Report all her actions ... however insignificant they may seem. You have done well so far. But continue ... Contrive to be at her side as much as possible.'

Catherine's eyes had gone blank, her mouth slack. There was about her that look which people must have noticed when they had likened her to the serpent.

So the Queen of France had been set to spy on the Queen Mother!

There could be no greater indignation than that of the spy who knew herself to be spied upon.

Catherine was in the audience chamber when Antoine and Conde came to pay their respects to the King. The Guises were lounging against the wall, and Mary was with them.

Antoine bowed low over the King's hand; he was too humble. Francis, in accordance with his orders, and aware all the time of the fierce eyes of the Duke and the sneer of the Cardinal, ignored Antoine, though he was very sorry for him and hated to be churlish to the uncle of whom he was fond.

Then came Conde.

If the Guises despised Antoine, they feared Conde. Conde was cool and arrogant, showing by his demeanour that, although his life was in danger, he did not forget that he was a royal Prince.

The newcomers went through the traditional address while all courtiers and attendants stood by, tense and waiting.

Then Catherine spoke to Conde. It was an uncharacteristic and impetuous action, but some hidden emotion which she had not fully examined forced her to take it. They were planning to murder Conde, and she wanted to help him to escape; and this was not merely because she wished to use him against the Guises. It was something more, something inexplicable. Was there just a faint tenderness in her eyes as they rested on the gallant Prince?

Conde, alert, knowing himself to be in acute danger, turned to the Queen Mother. Had he one friend, he wondered, in this nest of vipers?

'Monsieur de Conde,' said Catherine, 'there are matters which I would discuss with you before the investigation as to your guilt in the Amboise plot takes place. Pray step along to my privy chamber now.'

The Guises were alert, regarding the Queen Mother with suspicion.

Conde bowed low, his charming face creased in a smile; his eyes said that his journey, his fears, his dangers were worth while if they brought him an interview with the Queen Mother, whom, while he respected her as a Queen, he admired as a woman.

The Guises made no attempt to stop this strange and sudden action of the Queen Mother, and they allowed her to lead Conde to her apartments; but once they had left, quick action was decided on, and it was in the private apartments of the Queen Mother that Conde was arrested.

Conde looked startled when they took him. He was not sure what the friendliness of the Queen Mother meant, and Catherine felt a thrill of triumph. She had the Prince guessing as to her intentions towards him; and that was a position into which she liked to thrust all those with whom she came into contact.

So Conde was in the dungeons and Antoine was confined to the palace, more or less a prisoner.

How ridiculous she had been, thought Catherine, to contemplate any man with tenderness when the struggle for power was more intense than it had yet been!

Conde had been removed from the dungeons of Orleans to those of Amboise and condemned to death.

His sorrowing wife had journeyed to Orleans, and she had begged the Cardinal of Lorraine to let her see her husband; but this request the Cardinal had brusquely refused. He and his brother did not like the wives of Conde and Navarre. They were strong women, both of them; upright, moral women, not the kind to interest the Cardinal. He knew what havoc such women could cause. He dismissed Eleonore with threats.