Courtesan

by Diane Haeger

  “I am an old man now. My lies have brought me to this place. Perhaps my honesty shall one day set me free. I ask only to die with my son knowing that he has a father whose life was not a complete disgrace.”

  “A son?”

  “Before I met you, many years ago I had a wife who, on the way to her grave, delivered me a son. His name is Gabriel.”

  “I had no idea that. . .that you were married.”

  “And I wanted it that way. I kept a great many truths from you, all in the name of my own ambition. After my one disastrous confession to you back then, I saw no reason to tell you anything that might make you think I was less than perfect. That judgment cost me your love.”

  “Gabriel.” She repeated the boy’s name as though it was familiar to her.

  “He is at Court now; an infantryman in the Scots Guard. There would be no reason for you to have known of him.”

  “Please, Jacques, let me free you.”

  “If only you could. The orders that hold me are to be overturned by no one but the King himself. I heard them whispered among the guards when I was first brought here.”

  “Guard!” she cried out. The heavy studded door swung open once again and a huge bear of a man stood in the doorway holding another candle. “Guard, I want this man released!”

  “I am sorry, Madame. That is against my orders.”

  “Monsieur, do you know who I am?”

  “Of course, Madame. You are the Duchesse de Valentinois.”

  “Then, as you also know, the King is at present in the north. You must know that, in His Majesty’s absence, I have the authority to act in his stead. Free this man now on my order and I alone shall answer to the King.”

  “Please understand, Madame, I have no wish to go against you. It is only that His Majesty was very specific. He said that this prisoner was to be released to no one’s custody but his own.”

  The guard’s words were like daggers to her heart, confirming what Jacques de Montgommery had said. She pressed on for his freedom.

  “Monsieur, if I am required to write to His Majesty over such a trivial matter as this, when he is busy defending our country, how do you suppose he will react to the jailor who challenged my authority?”

  “It is no use, Diane,” Montgommery conceded. “He is only doing what he has been commanded by King Henri to do. We cannot fault him for that.”

  “Well this is far from over,” she said. “I will get you out of here, Jacques, one way or another!”

  DIANE LEFT HER HOUSE in Paris the morning after she had gone to the Conciergerie. The construction crews and scaffolding had completely taken over at Anet so she could not go there, and she could not bring herself to go to Chenonceaux. Rouen, her family seat, was the farthest point from Paris and from her life with Henri that she knew. If she could have left France, she would have. She wanted to get as far from Jacques de Montgommery and the pain of his words as possible. But before she left, she had seen to it that Gabriel de Montgommery would receive his father’s commission as Captain of the Scots Guard. It was the least she could do if what Jacques had said was true.

  Her heart ached without ceasing, and finally she surrendered herself to a dull haze that no amount of sleep or wine could conquer. So she swam. Every day she cut through the cool surface of the river, stroke after powerful stroke until she could barely breathe. Only then did she turn onto her back and float on the surface, gasping between her tears for enough air to continue. When she stopped, even for a moment, the thoughts flooded back. There must be some mistake. She refused to believe that after all these years, she did not really know Henri at all. The man she loved was a fair and a gentle man. When the last of the two dogs she had given him had died, he had wept in her arms like a child. How could it be that there was a side of him this heinous that he had kept from her? A side motivated by such unrelenting jealousy that he was moved secretly to imprison a man for nothing more than the crime of having loved her.

  She had seen his jealousy before with Montgommery, and earlier with his father, but never once had she considered him capable of such cruelty. Theirs had been an enduring relationship of trust, and if this were true, everything between them was lost.

  She came up out of the water and sank naked into the wet sand that ran along the shore. Her chest was heaving from the exertion and beads of water danced on her skin and then faded away in the hot summer sun. The warm wind rushed at her and made her shiver. In a few minutes she was dry. Another letter had come for her that morning and had set off the anger again. Like the others that had come by special messenger from the King, she had instructed Clothilde to burn it unopened. She could not bear to read his poetic words of love or his protestations of fidelity. Hurt, anger and pain all converged on her at once. But one thing she knew without question, Jacques de Montgommery was right; he had not deserved so cruel a fate.

  “MADAME, YOU HAVE a visitor,” Clothilde, the former pastry-cook, announced as she padded, heavy-footed, into the drawing room where Diane sat with a book of verse. She had read the first page again and again without the slightest idea of what it had said. She was sitting motionless in a chair near the window, her skin sticking to her sleeveless white chemise. Her hair was not done into a headdress, but was long around her shoulders. The ends were still wet from her swim.

  “I am expecting no one. Tell them to go away.”

  “Yes, Madame,” Clothilde persevered, “but this one. . .well it is the King’s daughter, Mademoiselle Diane, and she has come all this way without an escort. Only two guards are waiting for her in the courtyard.”

  “Diane?” she gasped, springing to her feet and tossing the book to the floor. “Well, of course, show her in!” She wiped a hand across her face. It was wet. She loathed perspiring, but in the middle of August it could not be helped. She pushed back a loose strand of blond hair and straightened her thin chemise. It was the first time in days that she regretted not tending to her toilette.

  After a moment, the young girl strode into Diane’s drawing room. It took her by surprise how much the child had come to look like Henri. She had that same purposeful gait and strong nose beneath the same tousle of ink-black hair. Diane moved to greet her.

  “Well, this is a surprise, chérie. Why did you not tell me you were coming? I would have had your room prepared for you.” She smiled and extended her arms, but the younger Diane stood stone-faced beneath the arch that led in from the entrance.

  “I want to know, Madame, and you must tell me the truth. Are you my real mother?”

  Diane’s mouth went dry before she felt the blood leave her face. She looked at the child. Someone had told her. It was obvious that she knew. She had always known one day that they would face this, and yet with each passing year, she had come to wish for it less and less.

  “Thank you, Clothilde,” Diane said to the servant who stood, open-mouthed, behind the King’s daughter. “You may leave us now.”

  Clothilde closed the tall double doors leaving them alone.

  “Well then,” the child pressed. “Are you?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Where?” she scoffed. “It matters not where, Madame! Servants gossip. Courtiers whisper things. Did you not suppose I was bound to hear the truth sooner or later?”

  “Please, child, come here and sit down.”

  Diane walked to a long embroidered sofa and indicated the seat beside her, but the child did not follow. Instead, she gripped her forehead and closed her eyes.

  “Oh, God. . .God, then you are! I knew it. Just look at you! You cannot even bear to face me!” She covered her face with her hands and began to cry. After a moment she looked up again, her eyes full of tears. “Just tell me one thing. Were you so ashamed of a bastard child? Is that why you did it?”

  “Please sit down, mon coeur. Let me explain.”

  “Do not call me that! I am not your heart! I am nothing to you. . .I never was anything to you but an inconvenience!”

  “Diane, pleas
e.”

  “God in His Heaven, even your name! How could you have had the audacity to give me your name when you did not even want me?”

  “It was—”

  “It was horrid of you!”

  “It was at your father’s insistence.”

  “And was it his idea as well to save your precious reputation by passing me off in a lie?”

  “No!” Diane sprang from the couch. “No, you must never think that. Your father never wanted any of this hidden.”

  “Then how could you do it? How? All of my life I wanted nothing more than to be your daughter, and now that I am, all I feel for you is contempt!”

  “You have that right. But if you are old enough to come here and confront me like an adult, then you are old enough to grant me the courtesy of hearing me out. Please.”

  Once again she admonished her daughter to sit beside her, but again she refused. Instead, she took a small carved chair near the door. She looked over at her mother, her face filled with contempt. Diane saw the anger behind the tears and took in a deep breath.

  “The year that you were conceived, your father was not King. There was a great deal of displeasure over our liaison because it was thought that I was a distraction who would prevent the conception of a rightful heir. It was a very hostile time then, Diane, and there was a great deal of cruelty directed toward me. There was never a time nor a place where I was truly safe. I do not tell you this now to gain your sympathy. I tell you only so that you shall have an accurate basis on which to judge my actions when you come away from here. The final decision, of course, shall be your own.

  “Your father was young and he was under a great deal of pressure from the former King to produce an heir with his wife. When I became pregnant before Catherine, he wanted to leave her and legitimize us both.”

  “Why did he not?”

  “You know that I was married before I met your father; that I am older than he, and that I have other children. Even if he had left her, I would never have been considered a suitable wife for him.”

  “But even if Papa could not marry you, I still do not understand how you could have denied me. You never even told me in private that you were my mother!”

  “Diane, you may not believe me right now, but I did it to protect you. One word carelessly uttered by you when you were small, and the danger would have been immense. The King was very angry at both your father and myself for what he considered a flaunting of our relationship before him. My position was tenuous. He wanted me away from Court, and if I had thrown you up as an obstacle to his legitimate grandchildren to try to remain, there was no predicting what would have become of you. At that time, neither I nor your father had the power to protect you.”

  Diane de France had stopped crying. She studied her mother’s face trying to read it for signs of the truth.

  “I know it is difficult for you to understand, and you may not agree with the choices we made back then, but your father and I did what we had to do to protect you. For that, my penance has been to live with you near me, never once hearing you call me maman; never once having you know that there was a bond between us that no one could sever. No matter what you believe, you must never doubt that the King and I have always loved you.”

  “That is just what Papa said.”

  “Then you have spoken to your father about this?”

  “No. He was explaining why one day I would have to marry the Duke of Castro instead of the boy I love. He used his love for you, and his inability to marry you, as an example of royal duty that he says I too now must follow.”

  Diane leaned back in the couch as the color rushed into her cheeks. “I see,” she said in a carefully modulated tone and then went a step further. “Would you stay and have supper with me? We could speak further, if you like. I can have the kitchen prepare your favorite capon pie.”

  “There is no need to bribe me,” she snapped, still not ready entirely to forgive.

  “I am sorry, I did not think that was what I was doing. It was only my hope that you would stay a while; that perhaps we could. . .”

  “Things will be different now between us.”

  “Yes, I expect they will.” Mother and daughter both stood and drew a tentative step nearer to one another. “But that does not have to mean that they need to be worse.”

  “I suppose I understand why you did it. I can accept that it was a different world than the one I know now. You are not the only one to have told me of the Duchesse d’Etampes’ cruelty toward you. Since I have no children of my own, I cannot say what I would have done in your place. But I cannot acknowledge you as my mother, and you must not ask me to.”

  “I will accept what you can give, Diane,” she gently replied. “I would settle for you to go on acknowledging me as your special friend, if that would suit you.” She moved a few steps closer to her daughter. “You may leave if you like. But I would very much like it if you would stay. No inducements.”

  “We have much to discuss. . .”

  “That we do.”

  THROUGHOUT THE FALL and winter of 1549, both England and France pressed on toward war, Henri sparing nothing to see Boulogne returned to France. As Montmorency had predicted, Ambleteuse, which had been garrisoned by only 500 men, fell easily to the King’s troops.

  Ambleteuse was key because this was the harbor through which the English received all of their supplies for Boulogne. Once the port had fallen, and with the advent of winter, the King and the Constable contented themselves with a blockade.

  By February, despite the fervor with which both England and France had begun the battle, negotiations commenced. Henri’s enthusiasm for the war had been stayed by the death of Pope Paul III and his desire for a new French Pope. The Emperor too was lobbying for his own choice, and Henri knew that whoever was elected, it would mean tension with the Imperial Court and possibly even renewed war. Despite the promise of victory at Boulogne, he was not prepared to go to war with England and the Emperor at the same time. For the moment, he contented himself with the quiet insertion of several of his best commanders in the region.

  A truce was finally concluded in March with discussions begun on a possible marriage between England’s boy King Edward VI and Henri’s eldest daughter, the four-year-old Princess Elizabeth. In April, the Constable’s eldest son, François de Montmorency, finally took back Boulogne in the name of the King. Before he returned home, Henri made his triumphal entry into the town that had been lost to France. He then returned to Court in a blaze of triumphant glory. He had won back Boulogne. Julius III, a malleable Pope, had been elected as a compromise candidate, and he was desperate to see Diane. It could not have been more perfect, until he returned home to find that she was gone. In his study at Fontainebleau, in a stack of documents and letters, he discovered the reason.

  “She knows! Damn!” he whispered to himself and then tossed the document onto the cold tile floor. It was a formal appeal for the release of prisoner 5012, Jacques de Montgommery, from the Conciergerie. It had been instituted and signed by the Duchesse de Valentinois.

  “Where is she?” he raged and then charged at Jacques de Saint-André who stood behind him.

  “I am afraid I have no idea, Your Majesty.”

  “Do not tell me that!” he seethed. “You follow the movements of that lady of hers like a dog in heat!”

  Jacques did not reply to the King’s ravings, and after a moment, Henri collapsed into a chair at the long conference table near his desk.

  “Forgive me, mon vieux, I am just so worried. I never expected this, but she knows about Montgommery.”

  “It is what I feared would happen if Your Majesty insisted on keeping it from her.”

  “I do not need your reproach, Jacques! The damage is done. Now you must find out where she is for me, and send word that I will come to her at once. If I can only explain why I did it, what my reasons were, then I know that she will forgive me. Dear God, she must!”

  “May I offer Your Majesty a sugges
tion?” The King looked up from his hands. “Your words would carry far more weight, Sire, if they were preceded by the release of the Captain.”

  “No!” he said, springing from the chair. “He has disgraced his country and he has disgraced Madame Diane. He is where he belongs!”

  Jacques said nothing further as he bowed to the King and left the room to attempt to locate Diane.

  Henri sat alone before the undraped window, his profile sharp against the light from the moon. He gazed down at his hands; the hands that had loved her, and held her. A fear stirred within him so deeply that his hands, now extended before him, began to tremble.

  “If I should lose her. . .” he whispered, and then shook his head before he could finish the words. But to release the man who, on every battlefield in Europe, had flaunted his affair with the favourite, who had explained in detail to everyone who would listen, the passion between them, calling her a common whore dressed as a highly placed courtesan; no, that was a sin he could not forgive.

  He knew that she had not heard the gossip. He had managed to keep it from her by threatening her servants and his own. But he had heard it, every harsh and dirty word. She deserved to be avenged. His desire to protect her had only grown more fierce since that first day when she had been confronted by Anne d’Heilly, and his interception had changed their lives.

  Diane was more than a mistress. She had made him who he was, and he idolized her. No other man must know his goddess as he did, and so he had taken the first opportunity to silence the man who had tried. He had done it for her. Surely she would understand that. She must.

  HENRI LEFT FONTAINEBLEAU at first light, two day after his triumphant return from Boulogne. He was as fearful as a boy again, and as urgent with the need to see Diane. He went on horseback rather than by barge because he knew it would be more swift. She had returned to Chenonceaux from Rouen. That was a good sign.

  He rode through the countryside oblivious to the speed, or the sweating of his black Turkish stallion. Saint-André and the royal guardsmen strained to keep pace with him. He pushed the mighty animal ever harder through the gloomy forests and past the russet vineyards that crossed the rolling countryside. When they reached the end of the long column of plane trees that lined the pathway to the chateau, he could see her in the terraced garden. The black of her gown was set off against the facade of pale yellow stone.