Courtesan

by Diane Haeger

  DIANE WAS NOT SURPRISED to have been refused an audience with the King. He, like everyone else now, knew about her liaison with Henri and disapproved. But this matter of her home was far too grave to avoid confrontation simply because he did not choose to deal with her. She would go to his chapel. He would be forced to listen to her there. She would tell him what the Duchesse had done. He may be angry with both her and Henri, but Diane could not believe that he had known anything about his mistress’s plan to steal her home. No matter what His Majesty thought of her relationship with his son, even he could not be that cruel. And after all, her husband, Louis, had been the King’s friend. Le Grand Sénéchal de Normandie. Yes, of course His Majesty would see to it that she did not lose Anet. . .if she could find the courage to ask him.

  WHEN HE WAS AT AMBOISE the King always took his morning prayer alone in the Chapel Saint-Hubert. He found solace there. It was in this exquisite chapel as a boy that François had heard Mass each day. It was an elegant stone oratory in flamboyant Gothic design with stained-glass windows shooting shafts of light past elegant gables. It was warmed in winter by the uncommon luxury of two stone fireplaces. He closed his eyes, made the sign of the cross and knelt upon the red velvet prie-dieu. Images of his own childhood in this place crossed his mind and calmed his raging discontent.

  He saw an image of himself as a little boy, playing with his sister, Marguerite, behind the great bastions in the courtyard that loomed high over the Loire. Each day they had watched over the walls at life below, a common life of which they knew nothing. They watched the town and its people beyond the river, a waterway teeming with an endless procession of barges and ships. When he was ten, they had pretended to have a ship of their own. François was captain; Marguerite first mate. Each day they sailed off to some new and exotic port, he at the helm. Trees tied with silk scarves became their mast and sails. The bushes that blew around them were the waves. He was not a King then; just a boy, like any other boy. And happy.

  Diane knelt beside him and made the sign of the cross. The King did not see her at first, but as she drew forth the edict, the rustling of the paper caught his eye. When he saw that it was she, he tried to stand. Diane put a gentle hand to his arm to stop him.

  “How did you get past my guards?”

  “I am not completely without my influence, Your Majesty. If you please, I ask only for a moment.”

  “I would not hear you yesterday. What makes you think simply because you bribe my guards that I shall hear you now?”

  She shoved the parchment at him.

  “Whatever Your Majesty thinks of me, for the sake of Louis’ memory, you cannot agree that this is fair!”

  The King’s eyes were clouded. He squinted to read the words. After a moment, he tossed it onto the floor with a deliberate thrust.

  “And just what would you have me do about it? Perhaps you think I should help you.” His words were sudden and raw. They echoed in the empty stone chapel. “How fitting that you should come to me, and I to reject you! Or have you become so caught up in your sordid interlude that you have forgotten all about your promise to the King of France?!”

  He lumbered to his feet with a low, huffing sound. “You said you were not ready. Do you not recall? You said that you needed time, when all the while you were lusting after a child! I believed you then. I will not be so foolish now. If you seek assistance, Madame, I suggest you ask your neophyte lover!”

  The blood slowly drained from her face. It was much worse than she had thought. She stood slowly, straightened the folds of her skirt and leaned against the King’s prie-dieu to steady herself. He saw her weakness and seized ruthlessly upon it.

  “What?” he asked with a savage laugh. “You did not think I knew you were bedding my son? Madame, I have known about your dirty little affair from the first, and if he were not to be King, I would have taken great pleasure in doing away with you myself!”

  He moved away from her, a step at a time, in the direction of the door. Diane was unable to move. When he reached the door, he paused and turned around to face her. Once again, he was in command.

  “You have lied and prostituted yourself, Madame. You have used me to get to my son. All in the name of your own endless greed.”

  “Your Majesty, please! It was not like that at all.”

  “But, it was exactly like that!” he declared, his voice booming across the cold stone chapel, his long nose pinched white with rage. The fury rose in his eyes, kindling an anger that frightened her. She took a step back from him and lowered her head.

  “You were a grand woman once, Madame. If you can imagine it, I even admired you. But, I did not understand you. I did not know what it was that you truly wanted from me. I thought you were a lady. I was wrong. In the future if I want you, I shall offer to pay for your services like I do with any of the other courtesans who inflict themselves on this Court. Then we shall see how faithful you are to my son!”

  The words fresh on his lips, the King left the chapel and slammed the carved-oak door behind him. The echoed sound, once again, shattered the chapel’s calm. Tears streamed down her cheeks faster than she could wipe them away. She clutched herself around the waist as her body jerked in a fit of uncontrollable sobs.

  “You are wrong. . .It is not like that,” she muttered, and shook her head from side to side. “I am not like that. . .I am not a courtesan!”

  NEGOTIATIONS TOWARD A TRUCE continued over the next two months. Pope Paul III lobbied tirelessly for peace. By May, as the spring began to warm the chill from the heavy stones at Saint Germain-en-Laye, he had arranged a meeting between the two powers to take place at the medieval port city of Aigues-Mortes. Queen Eleanora was called from her self-imposed exile to mediate the meeting between her husband and her brother, one a King, the other Emperor.

  Montmorency encouraged negotiations while Chabot openly opposed them. Henri, now grudgingly accepted as Dauphin, became a factor in this latest bid for peace. He hoped, along with Montmorency, for a resolution of the war that had drained the coffers of the state, and the spirit of its people.

  By every indication, the meeting was judged a success. Amid a great deal of pomp, ceremonial handshaking and gift giving on both sides, the meeting had produced an entente. There was to be an informal understanding based on three key points. First they would wage war against the Turkish Sultan, Suleiman. They would also combat heresy, which threatened Christianity in both of their countries. Finally, they agreed to break off relations with Henry VIII so that he could no longer be used as a weapon for either of them. But still, through all of the negotiations, nothing was said about Milan.

  The prognosis for the King of France was even less hopeful than the prospect of a lasting treaty. Montmorency informed Henri by letter, in early September, that the King was ill once again. As it had in previous years, the return of autumn signaled the return of his malady. It manifested itself in an abscess of his lower parts. Whispers in the royal household was that the King had once again contracted the French disease. The royal physicians had cauterized the infection and prescribed a course of Chinese wood, allowing him to return home. He would be returning to Fontainebleau, not on horseback as he had gone, but now like an old man, in a litter.

  “HAVE YOU HEARD what that bastard has done? Well, you simply cannot allow it! I will not let you!”

  Anne d’Heilly strode through the arched doors and into the King’s bedchamber just as the pale pink sun had begun to rise. Barre was startled by the sound of her voice and rose to his feet from a chair near the King’s bed.

  “Please, Madame, His Majesty is still asleep.”

  “Well then, wake him!”

  She pushed past the First Gentleman-of-the-Bedchamber, and on toward the bed, around which the heavy gold and red bedcurtains were still drawn.

  “François, you cannot allow this! That old war monger will bring us all to ruin if you do not act!”

  As she raged, Anne tore back the bedcurtains and lunged toward the sleeping
King. Blankets drawn back, the stench of his disease overwhelmed her. Not even the constantly burning juniper in the fire and the wall sconces could quell it. She brought her hand quickly to her mouth to stop the reflex action, the need to vomit. He opened his eyes. He lumbered to prop himself onto his elbows. He squinted, struggling to see who had disturbed him. His large eyes were still thick with a white crust, so that he was forced to rub them furiously to see her. Again he faltered as he tried to sit up. Sourdis, the First Valet, rushed to his side with pillows. A spray of gold velvet and green silk was fanned out behind him. He washed a hand across his face, still squinting from the new bright light of morning.

  “What. . .what is it?” he muttered through the dry cracked corners of his mouth.

  “If you can imagine it, Montmorency has taken it upon himself to warn the Emperor of an uprising among his own people. Then he has informed him, your most evil enemy, that he may use France as a shortcut to get to Flanders. He plans to do this to stave off a revolt that, if successful, could only bring you more power!”

  François shook his head, hearing only half of what she had said, and comprehending far less. He had been confined to his sickbed since his return from Aigues-Mortes. The disease, always insidious, this time had been so fierce that it had attacked not only his body, but his mind. Since he was for a time not in complete control of his faculties, the King’s advisors feared for the security of France. They had been forced to confer the direction of the country over to the second in command, Constable Montmorency.

  He wiped more of the white crust from his eyes as the enormity of what she had said began to come clear to him. Anne sat on the comer of his bed trying to ignore the sour smell of his infection. The King had trusted his old friend, and news of this defiance spurred the old thunder. Anne saw it and seized it. She described Montmorency’s plan in detail.

  “Mon amour, there is an insurrectionist movement in the Imperial territory of Ghent, and not long ago a collection of their leaders came here hoping to ally with us against the Emperor. Well, not only did Montmorency warn the evil Emperor of the unrest, but he offered swift passage through our territory so that he could handle the matter!”

  François struggled to sit up and strained to see his Anne in the glaring light of day. After a moment’s consideration, he swung his bare legs to the side of the bed with a heavy sigh. His legs were long and thin with a network of purple veins now around his calves.

  “Bring him to me,” was all he said.

  HATE.

  It was not too strong a word for what Anne d’Heilly felt for the Constable. As she waited in the King’s bedchamber for him to wake once again and to complete his lever, her mind was filled with the tainted image of Montmorency.

  She had never liked him; even in the beginning. As the years passed, she had come to detest him with the same violent passion that most people reserve for love. It was her great desire to witness the Constable’s downfall. To that end, she chiseled away at his standing with the King on a daily basis. Montmorency was too rude; too arrogant. He had never given her the respect to which, as the official favourite of the King of France, she was entitled. But the quality that she found most unforgivable in this contemptuous noble was his single-minded ambition. It had been the instrument of his ascension. Now, if she had her way with the King, it would become his downfall.

  When he had been dressed by his staff, François came to her at the chair beside his bed, the same chair in which she had begun to spend a great deal of time nursing him through his illnesses. He walked slowly, straining with each step as valets supported him on each side.

  As he stood before her, even in his most grand blue silk doublet slashed with gold, he still looked ill. The pervasive stench from his open, oozing lesions confirmed it. The features, once majestic, were now drawn over a ghostly pallor of gray. The eyes, once brilliant, were now shot with red and rimmed with dark circles. She despised him like this, because his malaise was a sign of his mortality. A sign of her own dwindling power. Anne was thankful that he no longer wanted to touch her. She watched him ease into a chair, heavily padded beneath brocade, and take a goblet of wine. As he drank it, the liquid dribbled down his beard and onto his blue silk shirt. When he made no attempt to wipe it away, another servant advanced with a cloth. The young man daubed at his chin until the King swatted at him like a persistent fly.

  “How did you come by this information?” he asked. He looked at Anne as though there had been no break at all between her telling of the tale and his reply now.

  “I make it my business to secure your interests, mon amour. It is my duty.”

  As the King slouched in his chair, a heavy silver tray was set before him. It was neatly covered with a white cloth and held small meat pies in various shapes, lark pâté, and a dish of candied plums. François sniffed at the display as though the rich aroma was as pestilent as the most foul odor.

  “Take it away!” he snarled.

  A steward removed the tray from the King’s reach as quickly as it had been presented. A long line of gentlemen-of-the-chamber passed it from one hand to the next, and saw it secured back down to the royal kitchens without a sound.

  Outfitted in a sumptuous ermine cape with a jeweled chain slashed across his chest, Montmorency paraded into the King’s apartment almost a full hour after he had been summoned. His toque was red velvet and plumed with the feather of an ostrich. He looked at the King from beneath it with impatient eyes.

  “Your Majesty wished to see me.”

  “Sit,” commanded the King.

  Anne d’Heilly leered at the Constable with a look that could almost have been construed as a sneer. After a moment, he acquiesced and poised himself on the edge of a small wooden stool that had been placed across from the King’s own chair. François did not like anyone to have the advantage of looming over him.

  “Tell me about your dealings with the Emperor.”

  Montmorency’s eyes widened. “What specifically does Your Majesty wish to know?” His tone was direct, almost insolent.

  “I wish to know, my dear Constable Montmorency, how you could see your way clear to betraying your King?”

  Montmorency looked at Anne. She was still leering. He snapped his fingers for a goblet of wine to be brought. It was a movement that bought him enough time to collect not only his thoughts, but his words. When he had received the wine and taken a long sip, he set the goblet down and said, “Your Majesty has been unwell. It has been my duty, as Constable, to act in your stead. My actions in this case, as always, have been for the good and future glory of France.” He stared directly at the King with steel-eyed conviction and then added, “I have done nothing, Sire, to betray either you, or my country.”

  “Pretty speech, but a faithful servant to the King does not give a free hand to his enemy!” Anne harped.

  “If Your Majesty would consent to let me explain. . .”

  “It is all very clear. You deceive the King to your own ends!”

  This time, François shot her a disapproving glare, then turned his attention back to Montmorency. The Constable cleared his throat. He had a speech prepared.

  “Sire, I believe we can achieve our objective through peaceful means. The objective of course is, and always has been, Milan. Certainly that cannot have changed. And, after our meeting in Aigues-Mortes, I was given to believe that you, most of all, had every hope of obtaining it. When the German princes came to me with the news, I felt that warning the Emperor about his own domestic unrest was a show of good faith. It was a strengthening of the new alliance that you and I sought together, not two months ago.”

  “But, Your Majesty forgets,” Anne interrupted. “What about Henry VIII? He will be furious at such an alliance. He is bound to see it as a venture that will lead to war against him! And what of those princes in the Netherlands whom he has already alienated?”

  “Silence!” the King bellowed. “Let Montmorency be heard.”

  “Well, Your Majesty, now with the ma
rriage of your son, Charles, to the Emperor’s daughter agreed upon, and Milan as the probable dowry, I believed that good will between our two sides could only serve to facilitate this process. I humbly pray that you will forgive me if I have overstepped my bounds, but I envisioned a great opportunity in this event. I did not only suggest that the Emperor pass through our lands, apparently Madame has neglected to tell you the rest of my plan. I propose to Your Majesty that we actually host the Emperor on his passage through France; organize a number of banquets, fétes, even jousting matches. This shall serve to enforce the good will of France and the mangnanimity of its grand, its most Sovereign King. But more importantly than that, with your great show of generosity, I feel certain the Emperor would be hard pressed to refuse you the alliance, the marriage or, most especially, the return of Milan! You would have everything that you desire without the shedding of another drop of blood.”

  When he had finished his speech, Montmorency leaned back in his chair. He had listened to the words coming from his own mouth, timed their delivery and watched the reaction on the face of the King. Pleased with their effect, he reached for his goblet and took another sip of wine. “And you would advise this means, rather than another offensive, to gain Milan?”

  “Your Majesty, please forgive my candor, but we have taxed the people to capacity for this war. Many lives have been lost. No, I do not believe that we should attempt another campaign. Not now.”

  The King brushed his hand across his face at the point of his graying beard. He studied Montmorency for several moments.

  “It is rather a good idea. . .hmm. . .an invitation to our Court! Such a thing would allow me to appear magnanimous, indeed!” he declared, and then with a smile added, “Chambord is nearly complete. We could step up construction and host him there. Now that would be splendid!”

  “I have taken the liberty of extending the invitation to the Imperial Court already. In Your Majesty’s name of course. Word has already been returned through the Imperial Ambassador that he is most receptive to the notion.”