The Rival Queens

by Nancy Goldstone

  It was a huge mistake. The moment he entered the room the mignons went after him, not with swords but with insults. Secure in the knowledge of their own physical superiority, they taunted François about his clothes, his pockmarks, his misshapen features, and “other allusions to the meanness of his figure and the smallness of his stature,” Marguerite affirmed. It was the worst kind of bullying, especially inappropriate given the victim’s rank as a member of the royal family and heir to the throne. The duke of Anjou was well aware of his blemished countenance and had been tormented by his looks since childhood. What had been painful as a boy was downright intolerable as a young man in his early twenties. He was the ugly swain in a court that worshipped male beauty, and every quip landed with the precision of an executioner’s ax. He turned pale and fled the room; he sought out Catherine, and by the time he found her he was in tears. He informed his mother of his humiliation at the hands of the mignons and the impossibility of his staying at court. He didn’t care what anyone said, he told her; he was leaving Paris to go hunting. Catherine, perhaps feeling a trifle guilty, agreed that he should get away for a bit and sent word to the king that his younger brother would embark the next morning on the chase, “as it would put a stop to the disputes which had arisen betwixt him and the young men, Maugiron, Saint-Luc, Quélus, and the rest,” said Margot, naming the worst of the offending mignons. Her recollection of these events was confirmed by the envoy from Florence. “The quarrels of Bussy are bound to lead to a new row between the king and Monsieur, his brother,” the ambassador wrote. “The latter is… resolved to withdraw from court… together with all of his followers.”

  At first Henri, also somewhat penitent, approved his brother’s decision. But that was before he referred the matter to his mignons, who sensed a chance to rid themselves of their highborn rival once and for all. “The King, however, staying in his closet… with his council of five or six young men, they suggested suspicions in his mind respecting my brother’s departure from Court,” Marguerite clarified. “In short, they worked upon his fears and apprehensions so greatly, that he took one of the most rash and inconsiderate steps that was ever decided upon in our time; which was to put my brother and all of his principal servants under arrest.”

  To officially arrest a member of the royal family was no small affair; the action implied treason of the highest order. Catherine, who had gone to bed believing all was well and that François would be leaving in the morning with royal permission, was astonished to be woken in the middle of the night by an enraged Henri accompanied by the captain of the royal guard and a number of soldiers. The king did everything but accuse his mother of complicity in a plot against his life. “How could you, Madame, think of asking me to let my brother go hence?” Henri spat. “Do you not perceive how dangerous his going will prove to my kingdom? Depend upon it, that this hunting is merely a pretense to cover some treacherous design. I am going to put him and his people under arrest, and have his papers examined. I am sure we shall make some great discoveries.” So saying, he left with his band of armed guards to personally confront his brother. Fifty-eight-year-old Catherine was obliged to heave herself out of bed and run after him in her dressing gown down the cold corridors to ensure that he did not do irreparable harm to her youngest son.

  From there, events spun out of control in a manner not unlike a droll stage play or the comic burlesques for which France is so well known. A startled and much confused François was subsequently awakened in the middle of the night by his brother’s banging furiously on his door. Having no idea what was the matter, he sat up in bed and ordered his chamberlain to let the king in. The next thing he knew the room was filled with armed men and Henri was standing over him, bellowing, “I will show you what it is to plot against your sovereign!” The guards were ordered to remove any papers or boxes that might provide evidence while the king searched his brother’s bed for incriminating communiqués. A well-thumbed piece of parchment caught his attention. “The King endeavored to force it from him,” Margot reported. François “refused to part with it, and earnestly entreated the King would not insist upon seeing it. This only excited the King’s anxiety the more to have it in his possession, as he now supposed it to be the key to the whole plot, and the very document which would at once bring conviction home to him. At length, the King having got it into his hands, he opened it in the presence of the Queen my mother and they were both… confounded when they read the contents.” It was a love letter from Madame de Sauve.

  Despite the absence of any indication of intrigue, Henri had gone too far to back down. He knew he already looked ridiculous, but he decided to bluff his way through rather than concede an error in judgment. When François demanded to know the charges against him, the king regally refused to answer and instead commanded the captain of the guard and his archers to remain in the room and guard the prisoner. Then he went back to bed.

  Anxious and afraid, François considered his position. There was no approaching his mother, who had been in the room and accepted the king’s decision. Henri had already announced that François’s entourage was also under arrest, so there would be no help from that quarter. That left Marguerite.

  He began tentatively by questioning the captain of the guard. François “feared some fatal event might succeed these violent proceedings, and he was under the greatest concern on my account, supposing me to be under like arrest,” Margot attested. The captain replied that, on the contrary, the queen of Navarre had not been detained. Upon further reflection, this did not seem quite fair to François. After all, what was the good of being a member of a team if he was the only one to bear the burden of adversity? Accordingly, he begged the captain to go get his sister to keep him company, “as I know she loves me so entirely that she would rather be confined with me than have her liberty whilst I was in confinement.” So the captain went and woke up Marguerite and had her escorted through the Louvre like a common criminal in the presence of all the courtiers—by this time half the castle was awake—to share her brother’s imprisonment. “Though I have received many particular favors since from him [François], this has always held the foremost place in my grateful remembrance,” she commented drily.

  She was thoroughly frightened by the time she arrived, having, like François himself, no inkling of what had occurred to set the king off in this way. By this time the guard originally assigned to watch over the duke of Anjou had been relieved and replaced by new men, including an older captain who had known Marguerite since childhood. Seeing her distress, he approached her out of hearing of the other soldiers to reassure her. “There is not a good Frenchman living who does not bleed at his heart to see what we see,” whispered the captain. “I expect to have the guard of the Prince your brother, wherever he shall chance to be confined; and depend upon it, at the hazard of my life, I will restore him to his liberty.”

  From this and her younger brother’s violent protestations of innocence, the queen of Navarre inferred that in fact nothing of significance had occurred during the previous evening and that the dramatic arrest of François represented just another of Henri’s attempts at harassment. Briskly, she took over. “I observed to my brother that we ought not to remain there without knowing for what reason we were detained, as if we were in the Inquisition; and that to treat us in such a manner was to consider us as persons of no account,” she reasoned logically. “I then begged M. de l’Oste [the older captain] to entreat the King, in our name… to send someone to acquaint us with the crime for which we were kept in confinement.” The guardsman did as he was told, and eventually one of the mignons appeared. “With a great deal of gravity, he informed us that he came from the King to inquire what it was we wished to communicate to his Majesty,” reported Marguerite. “We answered that we wished to speak to someone near the King’s person, in order to our being informed what we were kept in confinement for, as we were unable to assign any reason for it ourselves. He answered, with great solemnity, that we ought not to ask of God or
the King reasons for what they did; as all their actions emanated from wisdom and justice.” At this, François laughed outright, but his sister, who did not appreciate having been awakened on a cold night in February, dragged out of bed, and humiliated once again in front of the court over what she now understood was a completely specious accusation, “could scarcely refrain from talking to this messenger as he deserved.”

  Of course she was right. In the cold light of day even Henri understood that he could not keep his brother under arrest without cause and was forced to remove the guard. Rather than apologizing, though, he sent his mother to smooth over any lingering unpleasantness resulting from the events of the previous evening. Catherine took the rather disingenuous approach of blaming François for the episode. “The Queen my mother, coming to his apartment, told him he ought to return thanks to God for his deliverance, for that there had been a moment when even she herself despaired of saving his life; that since he must now have discovered that the King’s temper of mind was such that he took the alarm at the very imagination of danger, and that, when once he was resolved upon a measure, no advice that she or any other could give would prevent him from putting it into execution, she would recommend it to him to submit himself to the King’s pleasure in everything, in order to prevent the like in future,” Marguerite reported.

  With the queen mother, as ever, insisting on the outward appearance of harmony, a meeting was held later that day in Catherine’s rooms attended by all the highest-ranking members of the court. In yet another scene straight out of a French farce, François was formally required to repledge his allegiance to the king; the king munificently replied that he never had any doubt of his brother’s innocence, and the two exchanged the kiss of peace, which was Catherine’s favorite form of reconciliation. Bussy and Quélus were also present, and upon being commanded by Henri to take the example of the two royal brothers and leave off all feuding in the future, Bussy, demonstrating the insouciant wit for which he was known, neatly skewered the hypocrisy of the entire episode. “Sire, if it is your pleasure that we kiss and are friends again, I am ready to obey your command,” he replied smoothly, then wrapped his arms theatrically around Quélus and kissed him thoroughly, as though he were a woman, much to the amusement of the onlookers.

  If this had been a stage play, the curtain would then have dropped, the audience would have applauded enthusiastically, and everybody would have gone out to dinner. But this was not a performance that either Marguerite or François wished to repeat. Henri’s midnight arrest of his brother, and Catherine’s inability to stop him and subsequent condoning of the king’s behavior, had removed the mask of indulgence the pair had worn since the siblings’ arrival and made manifest to the queen of Navarre and the duke of Anjou the danger they had placed themselves in by returning to court. In the cold hours before dawn, under the stern gaze of the royal archers, they had huddled together in François’s room and laid their plans.

  THEY BOTH KNEW THEY had to move quickly. They were still being watched, but it was critical for at least François to get away so that he could raise an army and honor his commitment to his Flemish partisans. As usual, this meant that Marguerite would stay behind and face the danger—and the punishment—for her younger brother’s conduct. But the alternative was to remain a hostage to Henri’s mignons and his moods, and this had recently been proved to be just as perilous.

  The problem was how to organize her brother’s escape. She couldn’t just have him throw on a big cloak and slink away in a borrowed carriage this time; Henri was prepared for that artifice and had increased security at all the portals. It took a few days, but the queen of Navarre eventually formulated a possible exit strategy. “When we consulted upon the means of its accomplishment, we could find no other than his descending from my window, which was on the second story and opened to the ditch, for the gates were so closely watched that it was impossible to pass them, the face of everyone going out of the Louvre being curiously examined,” Margot explained. “He begged of me, therefore, to procure for him a rope of sufficient strength and long enough for the purpose. This I set about immediately, for, having the sacking of a bed that wanted mending, I sent it out of the palace by a lad whom I could trust, with orders to bring it back repaired, and to wrap up the proper length of rope inside.”

  With Catherine and Henri’s spies everywhere, the success of the rope-out-the-window method was obviously predicated on the ability of the participants to feign equanimity and go about their business as though nothing out of the ordinary was being contemplated. Alas, François made a terrible conspirator. On the evening of February 14, 1578, just a few days after the fiasco at Saint-Luc’s wedding, “when all was prepared… at supper time, I went to the Queen my mother, who supped alone in her own apartment, it being a fast-day and the King eating no supper. My brother… anxious to extricate himself from danger and regain his liberty, came to me as I was rising from table, and whispered to me to make haste and come to him in my own apartment,” Margot remembered. “M. de Matignon… whether he had some knowledge of his design from someone who could not keep a secret, or only guessed at it, observed to the Queen my mother as she left the room (which I overheard, being near her, and circumspectly watching every word and motion, as may well be imagined, situated as I was betwixt fear and hope, and involved in perplexity) that my brother had undoubtedly an intention of withdrawing himself, and would not be there the next day; adding that he was assured of it, and she might take her measures accordingly.”* So their machinations were known and had been betrayed to Catherine. The queen of Navarre could not disguise her dismay. “I observed that she [Catherine] was much disconcerted by this observation, and I had my fears lest we should be discovered,” she admitted.

  Her anxiety deepened when, a few moments later, her mother turned and confronted her. “You know,” Catherine warned, “I have pledged myself to the King that your brother shall not depart hence, and Matignon has declared that he knows very well he will not be here tomorrow.”

  Her mother’s accusation put Marguerite in an extremely awkward position. She couldn’t very well tell the truth and give François away, as then she would be guilty of “proving unfaithful to my brother, and thereby bringing his life into jeopardy.” But nor did she wish to engage in the act of telling an outright lie, as this was behavior she “would have died rather than be guilty of.”

  Her solution was to feign ignorance and try to distract her mother by casting blame and substituting a half-truth for candor. “You cannot, Madame, but be sensible the M. de Matignon is not one of my brother’s friends,” Marguerite began severely, “and that he is, besides, a busy, meddling kind of man, who is sorry to find a reconciliation has taken place with us.” Then she proceeded to choose her words very carefully. “As to my brother, I will answer for him with my life in case he goes hence, of which, if he had any design, I should, as I am well assured, not be ignorant, he never having yet concealed anything he meant to do from me.” So saying, she offered her life for her brother’s. She did not believe it would come to that—“all this was said by me with the assurance that, after my brother’s escape, they would not dare to do me any injury”—but in case it did, “I had much rather pledge my life than… endanger my brother’s.” And that is exactly how Catherine construed her daughter’s reply. “Remember what you now say,” the queen mother interjected curtly, taking the deal. “You will be bound for him on the penalty of your life.”

  On this happy note, Marguerite bade her mother good night and retired to her own rooms. Committed to the escape plan—although with the stakes raised slightly more than she had originally expected—she shrugged hurriedly out of her court dress and into bed, dismissing her entourage of ladies-in-waiting. Left with only a skeleton crew of handmaids, she awaited her brother. François had been keeping watch and stole in soon afterward, accompanied by two of his most trusted servants, Simier and Cangé.

  They wasted no time. “Rising from my bed, we made the cord fas
t, and having looked out at the window to discover if anyone was in the ditch, with the assistance of three of my women, who slept in my room, and the lad who had brought in the rope, we let down my brother, who laughed and joked upon the occasion without the least apprehension, notwithstanding the height was considerable,” Marguerite related, impressed. Not everyone in François’s small band of fugitives was as sanguine as their high-spirited young master was about the prospect of vaulting down a tall stone tower in the dead of night, however. “We next lowered Simier into the ditch, who was in such a fright that he had scarcely the strength to hold the rope fast; and lastly descended my brother’s valet de chambre, Cangé,” Marguerite concluded.

  Cangé was still in midair when to her great consternation Marguerite perceived a figure suddenly emerge from the ditch and take off in the general direction of the palace guard. “I was almost dead with alarm, supposing that this might be a spy placed there by M. de Matignon, and that my brother would be taken,” she declared. In a panic, the chambermaids, believing they were about to be arrested, sought to destroy the evidence and threw the rope into the fire. Unfortunately, it was very stout rope, highly flammable. A great blaze leaped up from the hearth and caused the chimney to catch fire, sending billowing waves of smoke into the air. If they had hired heralds to blow trumpets or exploded fireworks they could not have attracted more attention. The royal guard came running. They pounded “violently at the door, calling for it to be opened,” Margot recalled. “I now concluded that my brother was stopped, and that we were both undone.”

  Again she thought quickly. She could not let the soldiers in without giving the entire scheme away. The rope was only half burned, and they would easily deduce what had occurred. She would have to bluff. “I told my women to go to the door, and speaking softly, as if I was asleep, to ask the men what they wanted,” Marguerite instructed. “They did so, and the archers replied that the chimney was on fire, and they came to extinguish it. My women answered it was of no consequence, and they could put it out themselves, begging them not to awake me.” This explanation satisfied the guard and “they went away,” Margot reported with evident relief.