by Diane Haeger
“Oh, splendid, Vouté is going to play!” Jacques declared, sliding his arm down from Caroline’s shoulder, and planting it on her thigh.
Diane turned her attention to the center of the room. A small man with stringy black hair came forward. He took a chair that had been placed in the center of the dining tables. Everyone applauded as he positioned the lute on his lap and brushed away the strands of hair which fell limply into his eyes. Diane leaned back and took a lingering sip of wine. The evening is nearly over, she thought. It would not be long now before she would be safely tucked in bed.
The lute player had a strange nasal voice, not at all pleasing, but the others seemed so enraptured by his words that Diane tried vainly to focus on him. The little man sang flowery lyrics about love and devotion, peppering each phrase with a myriad of double entendres. After each song, he was applauded wildly, which necessitated his launching into another even more wicked verse. Diane leaned back in her chair trying to block out the view of the unscrupulous attendant who now was fondling Jacques de Montgommery beneath the table cover.
“Sing your newest verse!” a woman’s voice implored, and the shrill tone of it jolted Diane from a state of comfort, back to a harsh reality. It was the voice of Anne d’Heilly beckoning another song. Diane’s heart began to race again as she caught a glimpse of the fiery emerald eyes.
“THE WRINKLED ONE”
This is the tale of an old and toothless coquette,
Nothing is lacking. . .
The poet chuckled as he sang, and a sea of muffled laughter filled the room. There were sideways glances toward Diane.
Wrinkles,
white hair,
falling teeth,
A state of alarming decrepitude.
But she is one who will never obtain
the lover she desires, no matter what she does,
for painted bait, catches no game!
Diane’s skin turned to gooseflesh. Now it was completely clear. The poetry left in her room. The guest list tonight of adolescents. She sat completely still, unable to move. As Vouté sang his cryptic verse, Diane turned her gaze slowly, hypnotically toward the fire. There, Anne d’Heilly raised a small glass goblet in salute to Diane and smiled her Cheshire-cat grin.
Nearly everyone saw the exchange between the two women so, by custom, their gazes were now forced upon Diane. She was not the champion but the challenger, and it would be up to her to respond. To Diane, the echo of their pregnant whispers and their wry snickers was deafening.
My God, I am not a woman of the world after all, I am only a helpless child! I am cub to her lioness. I am completely defenseless against her wrath. She rules this Court. The look on the faces of everyone here shows me that. They want her to win. They want me to lose. She is the champion! Yet I cannot leave here. I cannot, God help me, risk insulting the King!
Once Vouté had finished singing the final lines, he stood to take a long lingering bow toward Anne d’Heilly. Then he turned to face Diane, removed his toque and, with it, took one last, long sustained bow.
She wanted to choke. She wanted to die. Her face was hot with the flush of embarrassment. Her throat was dry. She turned to Jacques to rescue her; to take her away from these rooms. What she saw was the last thing she would have expected. Jacques de Montgommery was laughing as loudly as all the rest.
“Traitor,” she muttered as the blood drained from her face.
She felt ill and could feel the dinner that she had just eaten rising in her throat. But she could not leave. She was frozen in her seat. Racing from the room as she longed to do would be tantamount to an admission of defeat. It would be admitting to everyone that Anne d’Heilly’s elaborate plan had worked.
“Just laugh it off,” Jacques whispered to her from the side of his mouth, as he clapped his applause for Vouté. “Next month she will find someone else on whom to prey.”
“I will not be sick. . .I will not be sick.” Over and over she whispered it to herself like a litany as the sour taste seeped from her throat up into the sides of her mouth.
After what seemed an eternity, Admiral Chabot called for a brisk Galliard to be commenced while Jean Vouté received his congratulations from the hostess. As the various couples who wished to dance shuffled their way to the dancing area, Diane was able to slip undetected between them. She staggered out the side chamber door into the fresh evening air.
SHE VOMITED IN the snow behind a thick of evergreens outside the corridor behind Anne d’Heilly’s apartments. Diane was weak and could barely stand as she leaned back against the cold trunk of an elm.
“Are you all right, Madame?”
She heard a man’s voice behind her. She did not recognize it, and in that there was some comfort. She took a small silk handkerchief from a pocket in her gown and wiped her mouth, then the sweat from her brow.
“Mademoiselle d’Heilly is far more cruel than she is beautiful,” the young man continued. He moved toward her from the shadows near the apartments from which she had just come. “No wonder Henri despises her.”
“Henri?” she asked as she looked up at him and then blew her nose.
“Oh, forgive me, Madame. I have forgotten my manners again. I speak of His Highness, Prince Henri, His Majesty’s second son. My father is his tutor and I, his companion. Well at least when it pleases the King, I am. Jacques d’Albon de Saint-André, at your service,” he said and bowed to her. Diane looked at him closely, studying his firmly sculpted chin, the cropped blond hair and the sensitive eyes.
“Oh, yes, I remember you. You were talking to the pretty redheaded girl near the fireplace earlier in the evening; Captain Montgommery’s girl.”
“Everyone is Montgommery’s girl at one time or another.”
“Oh, surely you exaggerate,” she said, taking his arm and letting him lead her to a cold stone bench nearby.
“I wish that were true. But it is all part of the game.”
His words reminded her of what Jacques had told her on her first night back. But now the last thing Diane wished to speak about, or even think about, was Jacques de Montgommery. He was now her enemy, as was nearly everyone else at Court. Then the image of Prince Henri returned to her mind. It had been years since she had seen him.
“Little Henri. Such a dear boy,” she said, changing the subject after a moment with a retrospective sigh. “I have not seen him since before. . .well, since before. . .his time in Spain. How is he?”
“If you will pardon me for saying so, hardly the little boy it appears that you recall, Madame. Life has been difficult for His Highness. I do what I can but if you ask me, he never did quite recover from those years in that dreadful Spanish prison.”
“But he was such a happy child.”
“That may well be true, Madame, but there is barely a trace now of that happy child whom you recall. He is a young man just barely out of boyhood; and a very angry young man at that. He seems to resist everyone and everything just for the sheer pleasure of it. But please, you will keep that between us. He would never forgive me for saying so.”
There was a pause between them as Diane leaned back against the ivy-covered wall behind the bench and took a breath. Then it occurred to her.
“If you are companion to His Highness, then why are you not with him at Fontainebleau?”
“I have said too much already. But then, perhaps the risk is worth it. You have a kind face, Madame. My father has always said, you may see the true nature of a person’s heart through the window of his eyes.”
Diane smiled, having heard the same thing and having had it ring true on more than one occasion.
“The King forbade me to go with him, as His Highness’s punishment.”
“Punishment?! Why, he is practically a grown man! What could he have done to deserve punishment by the King?”
“Madame, I take my life in my hands for saying so, for the King forbids anyone to speak of it. But in his anger, the Prince tossed one of his tutors into the well for making him recite Latin.�
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A smile broadened on her face and Diane began to chuckle. Perhaps it was the way he described it. Perhaps it was the image of a small dotty man being dragged, legs dangling, screaming Latin profanities. Whatever it was, the thought of this young Prince in the sea of such viciousness and amid so many games began to warm her heart.
THE CANDLES IN THEIR sconces sputtered and the fire dwindled to a small red glow in Anne d’Heilly’s apartments. Still at the dining table where they had spent the evening, Jacques de Montgom mery sat tangled in the arms of Caroline d’Estillac. He was kissing her face and neck as she fondled him beneath the table covers. François de Guise, the King’s newest page, lay passed out beneath a window. A full tankard of wine in his hand tipped small droplets of red liquid onto his doublet as his chest rose and fell.
Pinned against a door frame, Anne d’Heilly looked hungrily into Captain de Nançay’s powerful blue eyes and whispered breathless seductions to him. The sound of another man’s voice intruded upon them.
“All right then. Vouté has helped me fill my part of the bargain. Are you now ready to fill yours?”
It was Chabot who whispered anxiously behind Anne. Her face flushed, and without turning around she said in a low tone, “If you will excuse me, Captain, I have business to which I must attend. But I shall return.” She followed the Admiral a few paces and then softened her look of irritation. “I always pay my debts, Philippe. I will meet you in your chamber at half past midnight. Do not expect me to stay. Do not even ask. I shall be quick with you but it will be well worth your efforts.”
“It always is, mon amour,” he muttered through foul breath and then stole quickly from the room.
“What was that about?” Christian asked when she returned.
“Just business, my pet. Nothing for you to worry about.”
“Well, are you ready to quit this party for the evening? I was hoping to take advantage of the King’s absence. That is of course, if it pleases you,” he added, humility now consuming him; a result of their earlier exchange.
“There is nothing I would like better, believe me. But first I have a small debt to settle. I will be no longer than is absolute necessary, of that you may be certain. You may wait here for me, but if anyone comes. . .”
“I know where to hide,” he said. They smiled at one another, the past anger having been forgotten.
“Oh, I do adore you,” he muttered.
“Of course you do, chéri,” she replied, kissing him on the cheek, and then hurried alone to the Admiral’s apartments.
THE ROYAL UPHOLSTERERS had left Blois several days early.
Their destination was Orléans, a town in which the King and his entrouage were likely to sojourn on their way to Fontainebleau.
It was not easy to tolerate the descending of the King’s massive entourage on their small towns and villages, so that even the craftsmen were given soldiers to accompany them should a town unwisely refuse or impede their passage. They were, except for large towns like Orléans, meager villages with high taxation and little profit. At best they were managing a living on the land. They knew what the presence of the upholsterers foretold.
When His Majesty later descended upon one of them, it was in the company of hundreds of hungry, raucous, lusty courtiers, soldiers, clergy, ambassadors and servants. Most of his companions, like the King, were oblivious to anything but their own enjoyment. It often took months to recover the livestock and remedy the damage that the royal party left behind. Entire stables were killed for dinner, gardens ruined and houses plundered.
Once the King’s journey had begun, the roads running across Touraine were clogged with the steady stream of courtiers. Strong stallions heavily laden with His Majesty’s nécessités and with his best friends groped their way, inch by steady inch, ambling through the forests and along the streams. Leading the train were the King and his petite bande. His little band was a group of the most well-placed and beautiful ladies at Court. Anne d’Heilly and the King’s two daughters, Marguerite and Madeleine, reigned over several of the other noble wives and daughters on whose company the King insisted.
The silk-covered horses and the carts balked and slipped beneath the weight of articles that the King required to make the journey pleasant. Tents with bright blue and gold fleurs-de-lys were fastened down with velvet-covered sacks of chaff, which would become beds for the royal entourage who would not be blessed with an inn or a barn. There were carts loaded with casks of wine to be distributed as good will among the townspeople on whom they would descend. Sharing their wine, to the King’s mind, made the gorging and pilfering on the towns somewhat easier to reconcile.
Then there were the chests. Hundreds of chests all covered in brocade or tooled in Spanish leather and stuffed onto the wheeled carts. Many contained Mademoiselle d’Heilly’s gowns, the newest from Paris and Venice, and her personal effects: gold-framed mirrors, silver hairbrushes and dozens of gold flagons of perfume. Others held His Majesty’s personal china, glassware, artwork and furniture stuffed in heavily packed hay. François loved to keep his beautiful things with him all the time, so down came the paintings; da Vinci, Raphäel, del Sarto, and the Flemish tapestries, the table covers, the silver and the gold. Down it all came as they set off, bound homeward. Bound for Fontainebleau.
DIANE SAT HIGH on her horse’s gold and black leather saddle amid mounds of black silk. She was draped in a brown marten fur cape whose soft tips whispered at the base of her black tapestried hood. Her elegant copper-colored horse cantered through the mire and splashed dollops of mud up onto the edge of her gown.
François rode beneath the drapes of his royal litter several horses ahead of Diane. Closed off from the elements, he was oblivious to the cold winter wind that whipped across the faces and into the costumes of all who had the ambition and the constitution to follow him.
Fanned out across the miles like a river made of brown and gold fur, the rest of the Court trod slowly behind their King. As they rode through the cold windswept valley, they were serenaded by the sounds of trumpets and lutes, and they told stories to help pass the time.
When they reached the forest, Diane had fallen back a few paces and could see Montgommery directly before her. As he rode, he conversed with Caroline d’Estillac and Madeleine de Montmorency, the Grand Master’s wife. Though he laughed and gossiped with both women, it was clear that his attention was directed openly toward Caroline.
Diane watched his easy smile. She heard his musical laugh. To even imagine an attraction to him! she thought, her pride having suffered more than she would admit. As she watched him, she did not notice the four horses that rode up from behind to surround her, and slid into the same easy cadence as her own steady mount. Jacques de Saint-André, the young man who had been kind to her in Anne d’Heilly’s garden, smiled and tipped his purple velvet toque.
“I was not certain you would be going on to Fontainebleau after what happened last evening,” he said.
“Nor was I,” she replied, matching him with her own warm smile. “But then, I never have been one to give up without at least a bit of a fight.”
“I might have known it by the look of you; and I, for one, am glad of it,” he said, then turned his head forward to the string of horses that they followed. “It was becoming awfully dull before you came around.” His words were simple and he had a kind face. She liked that, and she liked him. Then she turned to the other young men who had ridden up with him.
“I pray you have not brought me more of Mademoiselle d’Heilly’s allies with whom to deal,” she smiled.
The young men looked at one another and then laughed, having all been present at the festivities that final evening at Blois. “No, Madame, I assure you, these three are Prince Henri’s very best friends. Madame de Poitiers, may I present François de Guise, nephew of the Cardinal de Lorraine. He has been newly appointed as a page in the King’s chamber,” said Saint-André. Guise extended his gloved hand to her.
“I am a friend to all po
ssible, and an enemy only when necessary,” he judiciously replied.
She studied his gaunt face, hollow eyes and hooked nose and was put quickly at ease.
“This is Charles de Brissac,” Saint-André continued. “His parents are both tutors to the royal children. He has known His Highness for many years.”
“Madame,” said the coarse-featured young man as he smiled.
“And I believe you already know Antoine de Bourbon.”
This final young man was tall and husky, with honey-colored hair and wide violet eyes. She looked over at this young member of the prominent house of Bourbon, feeling a surge of empathy for him. His family had never quite recovered from the treason committed by Charles de Bourbon, the same act in which her father had been implicated.
“Antoine,” she nodded.
“Would you object if we rode with you a while?” Saint-André asked.
“I should be glad for the agreeable company.” She smiled. Then, after a moment, she looked back at Montgommery who continued ahead of them beside Caroline d’Estillac. Diane craned her neck as she watched him lean over to whisper something in the young lady’s ear.
“Be careful of that one,” urged Brissac, as he too looked ahead at Montgommery. “He will break your heart and a thousand others before he is through.”
“That sounds rather harsh,” she remarked, and tightened her grip on the reigns.
“I think not,” agreed Saint-André. “But whatever you may think of him now, I can promise you this. He shall try in every way to court you because you are a fine lady and because you have a great deal to offer someone like him. But all the while he shall be bedding her, or someone else like her, because only they can give him the something more that he craves, almost as much as money or position.”
