Courtesan

by Diane Haeger

  “YOUR HIGHNESS, the King is gravely ill.” The messenger removed his toque and stepped into the room as he made the announcement.

  “Ah well, he has been ill many times before. I am certain that the old dog will recover once again.”

  “It is the abscess, Your Highness. It has spread. I am sorry to inform you that the royal physicians do not expect him to last till month’s end.”

  The room of courtiers fell silent. Henri moved to speak. He wanted to say something else trite like, “The King be damned!” or “The devil take him!”. . .or that “Surely his whoring has gotten him into this!” He had begun to form the words on his lips. It was a reaction. Those kind of comments had defined their relationship for more years than he could recall. But what he found as he stood there among his friends, his wife and his mistress, now surprised him. After everything François had done to him, after every harsh word between them, Henri could say nothing. Love mixed inside him with what he thought was hate. It swelled up until he thought he would choke.

  “He is installed at Rambouillet, Your Highness,” said the messenger, “and he is. . .well, he is asking for you. He knew that you might not come. He asked me. . .this is difficult, Your Highness, he asked me to beg if necessary. ‘A dying man’s last wish,’ he said to say.” Then the messenger hung his head.

  “Thank you, Captain,” he said in a steady voice. Diane looked at him with concern, but she did not speak. The only sound in the room came from Catherine, whose fat jeweled fingers covered her face, as she sobbed into them.

  Henri looked around the room. Such sad faces. Everyone was looking at him; all of them waiting for him to respond. When no appropriate words came, he handed the full silver wine goblet to Saint-André, and walked out through the arched doorway. He walked the length of the coved vestibule and went alone up the stone staircase to his bedchamber. When he knew that he was alone, he slammed the door and leaned against it. His eyes began to fill with tears, so he closed them. When he opened them again, he saw her. It was the image of his mother.

  IT WAS QUITE PLAIN. Not a faded, willowy apparition at all. She wore a white gown, the front of which was braided with gold embroidery. Her head was covered with a soft white hood and flowing veil. It was a costume long outdated at the French Court but one he recalled vividly from his childhood. He saw the delicate face, the beautiful eyes, and he knew that it was her. Henri passed his hand over his eyes, but when he opened them again, the image was still there.

  “Maman?” he whispered in disbelief. His hands and legs began to tremble as he moved a few careful steps closer. The image began to fade with his nearness. He knew then that he was to move no closer. He missed her desperately. He had loved her, and she had loved him. She was the only one, until Diane. Now, gazing at her image, the wound from her loss felt open and raw again. He stood completely still near the door, not wanting her to disappear, filled with every boyhood emotion he had ever felt for her. The talks beside the bed, the sensation of brushing her hair, the smell of it.

  After a moment, he began to see what looked like sadness in her eyes. Two tiny glistening tears fell onto her cheeks. Then he knew why she had come. The moment that the realization came to him, the image began to fade. Slowly, steadily, like a dwindling fire. . .the image dulled, and then in an instant, expired. She was gone. But Henri was filled with her. He understood. It was the most extraordinary thing that had ever happened to him and he knew that it would change his life. She wanted him to forgive his father. She wanted him to let go of the past so that he could rule the future. She wanted him to be a great King. To forgive was the measure of that greatness. Then, as effortlessly as if she had asked him, he did.

  THE ROOM WAS DARK AND MOIST, and choked with the smell of death. All around the small, rectangular bedchamber in the chateau Rambouillet, the last bastion of the King’s faithful held vigil. Princess Marguerite, Annebault, Sourdis and Barre all stood at the periphery of the room, whispering prayers for his immortal soul.

  Henri looked at his father motionless on the bed. He was draped with a heavy tapestried blanket of blue and gold. His head rested on a blue silk pillow. His face was white as wax and he looked as if he were already dead. Catherine walked behind Henri. She had not ceased her sobbing since the King’s message had come to Chenonceaux, but Henri had long ago lost awareness of it.

  Diane waited in the hall outside of the bedchamber with François de Guise and Jacques de Saint-André. Anne d’Heilly stood in a corner with no one but her sister, Louise, to comfort her. She was no longer permitted to see the King. Just as he was to receive extreme unction, he waved her away. “Do not let her see me dying,” the King had said, and they obeyed him.

  Henri moved cautiously toward the side of the enormous carved bed. The heavy crimson bedcurtains were drawn back and the room was thick with the smoke of incense. He was surrounded by clerics and his confessor. As Henri drew nearer, he could hear the shallow resonance of his father’s labored breath. He had been this way, they said, for four days. Henri’s sister, Marguerite, sat on a small stool beside the bed. She reached up and took his hand. Henri squeezed it and could feel her trembling. When he looked back down again, the King opened his eyes. Marguerite nodded to her brother and stood so that Henri might sit.

  “So then, you’ve come,” the King whispered, gasping between each breath. Henri nodded and took the King’s spotted, blue-veined hand. It was cold. Henri squeezed it hard and then sat down in the room lit with glowing tallow candles. He said nothing about the visitation, which was the primary reason he had come to Rambouillet at all. He believed it to have been a personal message between his mother and himself. It was something to help him deal with what he knew was about to happen. He tried desperately to fight back the tears; tears that marked a lifetime of regret. The King saw it

  “Don’t, boy,” he whispered. “I am the least in this world who is worthy of your tears. . .” Henri squeezed the King’s cold hand again and looked up, still fighting his tears. He brushed the back of his arm across his face and looked back down into his father’s dim eyes.

  “God, how many mistakes I have made, and how much I have hurt you,” said the King. “Perhaps it is death that makes one look back with such clarity on the errors of a life. Henri. . .my son. . .I must speak to you plainly. I have little time to do otherwise. I must speak to you about the Queen; not Eleanor, but my Claude, the true Queen.”

  The sound of his mother’s name coursed through him. The King could not have known, Henri thought, about the apparition, and yet this was the first time since her death that they had spoken of her. It must be the illness. Death was clouding his mind with reflections. He let the King continue.

  “She was the most beautiful woman I have ever known. Not in the same way as Anne, but in her soul. It was her soul that was beautiful. Eternal. I was just too young. . .too foolish to see it then. I did not see her beauty. I did not deserve her.”

  Henri longed to interrupt his confession, but a greater power urged him to silence. “You, my son, had the grave misfortune of being the very image of the Queen. You were her favorite, and each time I looked upon you I saw the injustices done to her mirrored back on me tenfold. That was unbearable. I blamed you for being like her. I blamed you for reminding me of my weakness.” Tears now fell from his gray, tired eyes. “I will not ask you to forgive me, for I do not deserve it. I will ask you only, my son, to believe that for what I have done to you, for all of it, I am truly, humbly. . .sorry.”

  Henri could contain his sobs no longer. He cast himself onto his father’s chest and clutched his neck. Two tears streamed down the gray waxen face of the dying King, as he began to stroke his son’s dark curls of hair.

  THEY HAD TWO DAYS TOGETHER as father and son. During that time, Henri did not leave his side. The words between them were tender and forgiving. They spoke of many things; of the future, of heresy in France, of leniency for Anne d’Heilly. The King also warned him about the ambitions of the Guises, and of Madame Diane. Tog
ether they heard Mass and took communion. The King blessed the son, and the son forgave the father for a lifetime of betrayal. They embraced. Then, at two o’clock on March 31, 1547, the King of France took a last shallow breath and whispered, “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum,” called out, “Jésu”. . .and closed his eyes for the last time.

  I CANNOT DO THIS! I do not know how to be a King!”

  Henri gazed out an oriel window at the palace in Rheims, where later that morning he was to be crowned. Rheims was steeped with the history of France. The souls of Clovis, Charles VII and Joan of Arc echoed in the great hollow of the Cathedral. Beside its mighty oak doors a scaffold had been erected between two carved pillars. On the dais, draped with blue and gold fleurs-de-lys, were three seats covered in black velvet. One for the King’s sister, Marguerite, one for the new Queen of France and the third for the officially acknowledged favourite, Diane de Poitiers. Henri turned back around and looked at her with a face drawn from worry and lack of sleep.

  “I am not prepared. I do not know the first thing about what it takes to rule a country.” He shook his head dejectedly and walked away from the window.

  “Chéri, you need only know that you are King. Whatever you do, however you do it, that shall be the truest measure.”

  “But, where do I begin?”

  “Begin by believing,” she said with a confidence that was his sole source of strength. “Believe that you alone are King.”

  Since the death of François I, four months before, Henri had shielded himself from this day beneath the cloak of an official period of mourning. Tradition set it at ninety days.

  Until now he had been safe. After today, his life and Diane’s would be forever changed. Henri turned back around, his eyes full of fear. He drew nearer to her.

  “You must help me. You must promise to help me, for I shall not be able to do it without you.”

  “Then I shall be there.”

  Her assurances calmed him and she stepped back to give his garments a final inspection. They were newly prepared ceremonial vestments. The old ones, which his father had worn thirty-two years before, had faded.

  The tunic that he now wore was azure blue satin sewn with gold fleurs-de-lys. The sleeves were trimmed with crimson. In fabric and design they were exactly like the previous coronation vestments, in all but two bold details. On the front of the tunic, boldly embroidered in pearl-colored satin, was the intertwined D and H symbol that Diane had created for him. Beside it, there was fashioned a new emblem. Three crescent moons were worked together, each with its own meaning. One crescent symbolized the pendant which she had given him fourteen years before. That had become for him a symbol of fortune. Another crescent symbolized Diana, the goddess of the moon, and the last crescent was the heraldic mark of a second son. These alterations to the ceremonial vestments were a major break with tradition and they both knew it.

  Diane ran her fingers along the satin symbols and then looked up at him. “Are you certain this is what you want to do? It is, after all, a very public declaration.”

  “I am certain of nothing more than I am of this,” he replied. “And could it have been more, I swear to you, I would have done it.”

  And he had wished to do more to honor Diane and his love for her. She did not know that since his father’s death, he had repeatedly requested an amendment to his coronation that would have included her participation in the actual ceremony. But he was told with great vehemence that centuries of tradition had not even permitted the participation of the Queen, much less a mistress in so important an event. So, when his father’s coronation vestments were found to be in poor condition, Henri had taken the opportunity of declaring his allegiance to Diane in this more subtle way.

  “It is time, Your Majesty,” said Saint-André, coming up behind them.

  Henri turned and waited as four pages advanced. Each was dressed in a doublet of black and white velvet, the same D and H emblem sewn onto the fabric. They draped the long gold and ermine cape around his shoulders and then Henri reached out and offered his arm to Diane. As they strode together down the corridor, she saw the newest measure of his love for the first time. There was a row of guards positioned on each side of the corridor. All of them stood at attention dressed in new livery. Gone was the red and blue of the old regime. Their shirts were now black with white satin slashes. Their stockings were white, and on the breast of each black doublet were the same interlaced D and H, and the three crescents shaped into a ring.

  “Well, m’amie, are we ready then?” he asked as they strode arm in arm down the corridor.

  “Never more.” Diane smiled.

  DIANE AND HENRI went first to the private chapel at the palace in Rheims after the first coronation banquet. There were to be many festivities tonight and over the succeeding days and he wanted to spend this first night alone with her. But first, in the chapel, on a crimson prie-dieu with Diane beside him, the new King privately prayed for God to help him be a good man and a good ruler. Only then could he proceed unencumbered to her apartments. There in his presence, she was undressed and bathed by Hélène and Clothilde. At his instruction, her eyes were then covered with a long silk blindfold. Then they were left alone. Still clothed himself in the ceremonial tunic that honored his love of her, Henri held her close to his chest and kissed her.

  “May I look now?” she asked.

  Henri smiled and led her with her arms outstretched, slowly toward the bed. “Very well then, you may look now.”

  As she tore the cloth from her eyes, the playful smile faded. There, behind the half closed bedcurtain, on a white silk pillow, lay the Crown Jewels. They were a glittering array of gold, diamonds, emeralds, rubies and pearls. There were eight pieces in all. Among them were two triangular brooches, both set with diamonds, and each with a pendant black pearl. There were two rubies and a large square-cut emerald which was mounted in gold.

  “Oh, Henri. . .” she gasped, “but these are. . .Anne’s jewels.”

  “They were Anne’s. Now they are yours,” he said simply. He reached out and, from the collection, took a long rope of pearls, rubies and diamonds. He slipped them onto her bare neck. It was a heavy piece with eleven diamonds cut in tables and points. “This one was my mother’s. My father presented it to her before I was born. She wore it for her last official portrait.”

  Diane looked down at the string of jewels that lay glittering in the cleft between the rise of her bare breasts. She fingered them delicately as if she did not believe they were real. But they were. She had seen this piece many times on Anne d’Heilly. She knew the history. Henri took nothing away from his country’s heritage by the presentation of this gift to her. Although they were indeed part of the Crown Jewels, this collection was only part of a larger assemblage established by his father twenty years earlier. At that time, François had chosen to present part of the jewels to the Crown and to keep the others for his personal use. The portion that lay before Diane now was the King’s private collection.

  “But why?” she muttered.

  Henri took her hands in his own and held them together. “Many years ago, I gave you my heart when it was all that I had to give. I promised you then that one day I would lay the world at your feet. These, m’amie,” he said, pointing to the jewels, “are only the beginning.”

  “But what of Anne? They were given to her by your father.”

  “Oh, I suspect she was only too glad to surrender them to Guise. He told me, when he returned from her estate, that she thought he had come to kill her. I spared her life, you know; I suppose returning these without objection is the least that she could do in return.”

  “But the charges against her, the treason, will they not stand?”

  This time she could not help but ask. Since the King’s death, evidence had been uncovered implicating the Duchesse d’Etampes in a plot against the King. A messenger had confessed to carrying secret letters from Anne to the Emperor during his trip through France. The letters were said
to detail what she knew about French military tactics and strategic points of defense. Fortunately for security’s sake, the plot had been uncovered quickly and all covert strategy altered. But the evidence of treason against Anne d’Heilly remained.

  “I made a promise to His Majesty that I would be merciful with her,” he said and then looked at Diane. “And so I have decided to keep my word.” He waited for her to object. He expected it. Anne d’Heilly’s treason was a scandal that now rocked the entire Court of France, and the decision to free her from prosecution already tormented him. She had done so much to Diane; all of the plotting. The malice. Vouté. Marot. But to his surprise, Diane did not object. She took in a deep breath and, after a moment, smiled.

  “Then it is as Your Majesty wishes,” she said simply.

  “After all,” he added, as if he were trying to convince himself. “The Duchesse d’Etampes is receiving her punishment from a much higher source. I am told that her husband has rejected her and she is in danger from the townspeople who dwell around her and know of her crimes. Fading into anonymity, along with fear for her life, shall be punishment enough. I have taken back the jewels and all but one of her houses. Montmorency always admired her accommodations best.”

  It was the first time his name had been mentioned between them in several months. Diane lowered her eyes.

  “I want him back, m’amie. I should like you to go with me to Chantilly to persuade him to return.”

  “When?”

  “I have sent a messenger already. We shall leave tomorrow to speak with him personally, if you approve.”

  She had always known that this turn of events was only a matter of time. Diane had been given six long years without the complication of Montmorency but she had known from the beginning that it would not last. When she looked into Henri’s eyes she saw the need there. Montmorency had been forgotten by everyone but him.