I managed to do all the occasion required: Kiss the pope’s ring; curtsy deeply to the king; accept his kiss; steal a glance at the nervous boy who, nudged by his father, stepped forward to kiss me as well. I looked for some sign that the young Duke of Orléans found me appealing, that I pleased him. But there was no such sign. It was as though his thoughts were elsewhere and he didn’t see me at all.
We moved to the banquet hall. I could not have said what dishes were served, except that there was an endless parade of them, each presented with a flourish of trumpets. I dutifully tasted a bite here and there. I had no appetite.
Afterward, my ladies complained that the fare was quite different from what we were used to. “What barbarians the French are!” Giulietta complained. “No one uses forks. Do they even have them here?”
DURING FOUR DAYS of feasting and dancing and entertainments, I had an opportunity to observe my bridegroom. Henri was the same age I was, fourteen. He was tall and well built, his hair dark and straight, his features regular—maybe not handsome, most would say, but certainly not displeasing. He spoke hardly at all—not to his father, to his brothers, to anyone. I saw him glancing uneasily around the huge banquet hall, but his eyes never came to rest on me. I remembered stories Aunt Clarissa had told me of my parents, who had been introduced at the christening of Henri’s older brother. The very first time they met, Madeleine fell madly in love with Lorenzo, and he with her, Clarissa often said. Watching Henri now, I knew without a doubt that this would not happen to us. Henri would never look at me the way Ippolito once did, never lift my hand to his lips, never call me “my dearest Duchessina.” A bleakness settled over me.
Four days of celebration, and we still weren’t married. The wedding night still loomed ahead of me. I dreaded it.
On the day before the wedding was to take place, King François and Pope Clement signed the final marriage contract, and Henri and I met formally for the first time. We were led into a vast hall, where we were blessed by the French cardinal who’d once sat next to me at Clement’s dinner. In front of a huge crowd, Henri stepped forward and kissed me first on one cheek, then the other. His cold lips barely grazed my skin. He smelled of horses and wine.
The kiss prompted another of those deafening trumpet fanfares. A group of musicians struck up a stately piece, and everyone began to dance. Everyone, that is, but Henri and me. Perhaps, I thought, we won’t dance until after we’re married. I wasn’t sure. We sat down and watched, side by side, without exchanging a single word. Henri stared morosely into space. Occasionally his glance came to rest on a beautiful older woman strikingly gowned in black and white, widow’s colors. She had long fingers, thick hair, a flawless complexion, a dainty mouth. She caught his eye and smiled alluringly. The color rose in his pale cheek as he returned her smile.
Who is she? I wondered. And why doesn’t he look at me?
I had been taught by Suor Paolina in her lessons on the virtues that a well-bred lady did not initiate a conversation with a gentleman; it was up to him to make the first move. But Suor Paolina had obviously never met the likes of Henri, Duke of Orléans. I would have to break the rule.
“Henri,” I began rather desperately, “we are fortunate to have such lovely weather for our wedding tomorrow, are we not?”
“Oui,” said Henri, when he realized that I had spoken. “Quite fortunate.”
I endured another dense silence. “The French style of dancing is greatly to be admired,” I said. “Very graceful.”
Henri sighed. “Oui,” he said, drawn unwillingly back from wherever his thoughts had taken him. “Quite graceful.”
The silence resumed. As the dancers passed by, I managed to smile and nod and to give the impression that I was enjoying myself, which I was not—especially when I observed Ippolito dancing with a succession of young ladies and clearly having a fine time of it.
The beautiful woman in black and white disappeared, and Henri’s interest in the ball seemed to vanish with her. The one thing that pulled my bridegroom from his torpor were the antics of the court dwarf, who performed acrobatic feats mimicking the dancers. That made him laugh out loud. I tried to appear amused.
Will this never end?
At last it did. Henri’s suite of gentlemen and my ladies gathered to escort us back to our separate lodgings. “Good night, mademoiselle,” Henri said with a bow.
Doesn’t he remember my name? I dropped him a graceful curtsy. “Good night, my lord,” I said, smiling, always smiling, although I was ready to weep.
Oh, Akasma, I thought as I lay sleepless in the huge bed, if only you were here to tell me what to do!
ON MY WEDDING DAY, the morning of October twenty-eighth, my ladies and maidservants helped me into a gown of the palest rose-colored silk with embroidered sleeves. They fastened over my shoulders a gold brocade robe trimmed with velvet and precious stones and edged with ermine. Giulietta clasped the diamond and sapphire pendant around my neck. The maidservant who’d taken Akasma’s place arranged my hair and settled on my head a ducal crown of gold, another gift from the king. I was ready—as ready as I would ever be.
Is this how a girl should feel on her wedding day? I wondered, gazing into the mirror that my maidservants held up for me. Neither happy nor sad but nothing at all?
Then King François arrived to escort me to the chapel, looking exactly the way a king should, resplendent in white satin embroidered all over in gold. A cloak of cloth-of-gold covered with pearls and precious stones swirled around him.
A dozen musicians led us to the chapel, my hand resting on the arm of King François, my high-heeled chopines making me seem taller. Still, the king towered over me and had to lean down to whisper, “My dear little Catherine, you are a lovely bride.”
My bridegroom waited at the chapel. I scarcely remember what Henri looked like or how he was dressed, except that he was swathed in ermine. We repeated our vows, and Henri placed a gold ring on my right hand. Pope Clement celebrated the nuptial mass. I was no longer Caterina de’ Medici, la duchessina. I was now Catherine, Duchess of Orléans, wife of Henri, Duke of Orléans. My new husband had not yet called me by any name at all.
We next had to endure an elaborate exchange of gifts. The presentations were interminable. The pope gave François a horn, said to be from a unicorn, mounted in gold, to protect the king from poisoning. François gave the pope a Flemish tapestry depicting the Last Supper. Clement gave the king a rock-crystal box incised with twenty-four scenes from the life of Christ. François gave me three unusually large, perfect teardrop pearls. But the gift that drew gasps from all who witnessed it was a live lion, straining at the leashes held by four muscular Ethiopian servants, presented to the pope by the king.
Another banquet followed, and another masked ball at which I believe the king kissed the hand of every lady present and danced every dance, most often with one particularly lovely woman—his mistress, Anne d’Heilly, radiant in yellow silk with a circlet of emeralds in her fair hair. Once more, it was the mysterious woman, again gowned in elegant black and white, who held Henri’s attention.
Then came the moment I’d been dreading: The king declared the banquet at an end, the signal for me to prepare for what was to come.
With a faint smile Queen Eleanor took me by the hand, and several high-ranking ladies of the French court led the way to the bedchamber, which had been specially prepared with herbs and perfumes for this moment. The bed itself was enormous, lavishly carved and decorated and hung with embroidered damask curtains. The ladies undressed me and placed me naked between the silk sheets, where I lay shivering with cold and fear.
Henri arrived, accompanied by his father and brothers, Pope Clement, several musicians with pipes and tabors, and a number of boisterous gentlemen who’d clearly indulged in too much wine. When the gentlemen began noisily undressing the duke, I closed my eyes until I felt Henri lie down beside me. I expected him to be as frightened as I was, but he seemed detached, disinterested.
After pray
ers from the pope, the company withdrew—all but King François. Surely my father-in-law isn’t going to stay!
But apparently he was. “It is my duty to see that the marriage is consummated this night,” he announced from the foot of the bed. “Touch her, Henri.”
I don’t remember what happened next. I did as Akasma had recommended: I willed my thoughts away from this nightmarish scene to a place of sweet-scented flowers, warm sunshine, laughter . . .
It was over quickly, and when it was, I slept.
14
Marriage
THE MORNING AFTER my wedding night the pope, the king, and members of their suites burst into the bedchamber. They appeared delighted to find us still in bed. The pope blessed us, and then the queen’s ladies arrived and draped me in a silk robe and took me away to dress me. I assume the king’s courtiers did the same for Henri, although I didn’t look back to see. My husband and I had not yet exchanged a half-dozen words.
During the days that followed, the celebrations continued in an endless round of banqueting, drinking, and dancing, with the antics of the dwarf for relief. King François evidently enjoyed himself enormously. Queen Eleanor smiled steadily, and Henri’s sisters and brothers seemed to be having a fine time. At some point each night, when I thought I couldn’t endure another minute of revelry in which I seemed to have no part, I was escorted back to the matrimonial chamber.
It was my misfortune during one of those banquets to overhear a conversation among several members of the king’s court. I suppose they thought I was deaf, or that the music and laughter concealed their voices, or that I didn’t know enough French to understand them. Possibly they wanted me to hear. In any event, their words were painfully clear.
“What can King François have been thinking?” asked one. “To marry his son to that Italian girl!”
“He was thinking of her wealth, no doubt,” replied a second drily “Certainly not of her beauty!”
The men laughed. I clenched my hands in my lap and felt my face flush.
“She’s said to be among the richest women in Europe,” another put in.
“But scarcely a drop of royal blood runs in her veins! I would rather have both my knees broken than bend them to that Italian merchant’s daughter,” the first rejoined haughtily.
Must I really sit here and listen to this? I thought miserably. I wanted to leave, to sweep by them and speak to them in excellent French, letting them know that I had understood them perfectly and would not forget their cruel words. But at that moment the ladies arrived to escort me back to the royal bedchamber. Numbly, I followed them.
Henri did not return that night—or any of the nights after—to the bed I’d expected to share with him. I didn’t know whether to feel relief or disappointment. Mostly I was puzzled. Maybe he feels the same as those courtiers, I thought, that he’s married far beneath him to an Italian merchant’s daughter with no royal blood in her veins. Before that moment, it had never occurred to me that I was inferior to anyone.
After two weeks, King François and his court bid an elaborate farewell to Pope Clement and departed for one of the royal castles, taking Henri and his brothers with him. I wasn’t unhappy to see my husband leave, but I did wonder if things might change the next time I saw him and he’d had time to get used to the idea that I was his wife. In the meantime I would stay behind in Marseilles with Queen Eleanor and Henri’s sisters, Madeleine and Marguerite, until the pope sailed for Rome.
Rough seas delayed Clement’s departure for two more weeks, until the end of November. Before he boarded The Servant of God, Pope Clement took me aside for a private farewell. As I had so many times before, I knelt and kissed the Ring of the Fisherman. I was still on my knees when the Holy Father leaned close and laid a hand on my head for a blessing. “A spirited girl will always conceive children,” he whispered.
Not if Henri doesn’t come to my bed, I thought, but said nothing.
GIULIETTA, NICCOLÀ, and Tomassa prepared to return to Florence with the others. They had no regrets about leaving.
“The food here is terrible,” Giulietta remarked. “Maybe you can teach these people about our lasagne and ravioli. And manners, too,” she sniffed.
But Niccolà had other objections. “The French are haughty. They don’t really like Italians, have you noticed? I’m afraid you’re going to be miserable here. If I were you, Duchessina, I’d pack up and come home to Florence with us right now. From the look of it, I’m not sure your husband will even notice that you’re gone.”
So they’ve seen how Henri ignores me. Probably everyone else has, too.
“You know I can’t go back,” I reminded her. “The Holy Father would surely disown me. And what would I do in Florence? Throw myself on the mercy of Alessandro? Fate has been cruel to me in the past, but I’ve survived, and I will survive this, too. King François favors me. I’ll be able to count on him.” My words were much braver than I felt. I would have given almost anything to leave with my friends, find Akasma, and stay at Le Murate. But that was impossible.
Tomassa pulled a face. “King François flirted with me,” she said, blushing. “We were dancing. He was wearing a mask, but anyone could recognize who he was. And he whispered something about going to bed with him.”
“You don’t even understand French,” Niccolà pointed out. “So how do you know what he said?”
“I don’t need to know French to understand that!” she insisted.
“Did you accept his invitation?” I asked slyly.
“Duchessina!” Tomassa was shocked. “Of course not! How can you take this so calmly?”
“Because I must.” All at once my brave words gave way to the tears I’d been holding back. “You’ll write, won’t you?” I pleaded.
Before the Duke of Albany’s men arrived to escort my friends to their waiting ship, I gave a small silk purse filled with gold coins to each of my friends. “I have an enormous favor to ask of you: Find Akasma, my slave. She’s expecting a child. Give one of the purses to Suor Margherita and ask her to help you find Akasma. Use one of these purses to buy her freedom from Alessandro, and give the other to her in secret. Tell her where I am, and beg her to come to me if she can. Will you do that for me, dear friends?”
They promised to do as I asked, although Tomassa couldn’t resist saying that she thought it was a foolish idea. “You’ll never see either the slave or your money,” she said.
“It’s worth trying,” I said.
We kissed good-bye, shed more tears, and made more promises to write. Later, from an upper terrace of the palace, I watched their ship sail out of the harbor, growing smaller and smaller, until it finally disappeared.
ONLY THE LADIES of the king’s household stayed on in the south of France. All the visitors had gone home, including Ippolito, who had managed to avoid me entirely and sailed back to Rome with the pope. When my presence wasn’t required, I spent as much time alone as I could, reading and writing letters to friends in Rome and Florence. But as Christmas approached, the ladies prepared to join the king at Château de Fontainebleau.
The days grew shorter as we traveled northward, away from the Mediterranean coast and its sun-warmed breezes, and the air was as sharp as a knife blade. An early winter tightened its grip on the Loire Valley. Trees were swept bare, an icy mist veiled the hills, and the ground was hard beneath the horses’ hooves. We rode bundled in fur-lined cloaks. When darkness fell, we stopped at châteaux belonging to the king’s friends, warmed our bones and filled our stomachs, and continued on at first light. The journey lasted twelve days.
Queen Eleanor, a quiet, stolid woman, kept apart with her ladies, many of whom had moved with her from Spain some three years earlier when she married François. It must have been as hard for her as it was for me, leaving her native land to marry a man whose language she didn’t speak and scarcely understood. And it surely wasn’t easy for her to realize that her husband had so little regard for her and spent most of his time with Anne d’Heilly, sha
melessly flaunting his mistress in front of his patient wife.
Most days I rode with Henri’s two sisters and got to know them well. Madeleine de Valois was a year younger than Henri, delicately pretty and good natured. We quickly became friends. For all her apparent goodness, Madeleine was a shrewd observer and a clever gossip. I quickly began to see the French court through her eyes. Ten-year-old Marguerite, impish and hot-tempered, often protested loudly at being left out of the interesting conversations of us older girls.
As the days passed, my questions grew bolder. “Oh, you’ll get to know Anne d’Heilly soon enough,” said Madeleine when I asked about the beautiful lady. “Father behaves as though he’s madly in love with her, but he always behaves that way with a new mistress. Father married her off to one of his courtiers and made her husband Duke d’Étampes, to please her and to placate him. She’ll expect you to call her Madame d’Étampes, now that she’s a duchess. The poor old duke hardly ever sees his wife, because she’s always with Father.”
I wanted to ask Madeleine about the woman in black and white who had so captivated Henri’s attention during our wedding celebrations, but I could not quite bring myself to do it. I was determined to learn the truth about her, but for the moment I explored the subject of the king’s mistress.
“Doesn’t Queen Eleanor object to her presence?” I asked, although I knew well enough that men in Italy did as they pleased, just as Frenchmen did, and their wives had nothing to say about it.
Madeleine considered this. “Maybe, but it really doesn’t matter, does it? Father doesn’t like the queen much at all. He promised to marry her so Emperor Charles would let him out of the horrible Spanish prison. So here she is. She lives a quiet life with her ladies. Those Spanish women dress very badly,” Madeleine continued. “Have you noticed? Always out of date. Sometimes the queen’s gowns are encrusted with so many jewels that you can’t see the fabric underneath. It’s just as well—the color is sure to be something dreadful.”
Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici Page 16
