The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

by C. W. Gortner

  As soon as they were gone, Henri flung the scroll aside, abandoning the dais to stride to the casement window. From where I stood, I could hear the people’s renewed cries of “Vive Guise! Vive le duc!” as Guise and his men emerged from the Louvre.

  I went to him. “Be patient,” I said. “Your hour will come.”

  He did not look at me. “When?” he asked in a taut whisper.

  “Soon,” I said, and I touched his shoulder. “He has set his own trap. All we need do now is wait and let him step into it.”

  Storm clouds converged in the leaden sky, crackling without rain. The air was humid, sulfuric. In my apartments, I missed Birago desperately as I received hourly reports from his informants, who still worked for me. While Guise waited for my son to deliver the signed scroll, symbol of his capitulation, he’d wasted no time in bringing his family to join him in their Parisian house. And as the populace gathered outside his doors in reverential patience, waiting for him to appear, his retainers infiltrated the city.

  Paris, seat of the monarchy for centuries, had become his stronghold.

  At dawn on the third day, I was awoken by the sound of pulsating drum rolls. I dressed hurriedly. As I reached for my shawl, Lucrezia entered, carrying something wrapped in black cloth. She handed it to me.

  “Use this,” she said. “Plunge it into Guise’s black heart. No man has earned it more.”

  I unraveled the cloth to reveal a dagger with silver chains interlocked on its hilt: I hadn’t seen it since Guast’s death, but it was the same one my son Hercule had used to kill Henri’s lover.

  I rewrapped it and nodded at Lucrezia, making my way through the hushed corridors.

  Henri sat in his apartments. I took a seat beside him and we waited, hearing the roar building outside like some savage cry.

  Information came to us sporadically; we learned that most of our palace officials had fled when they learned Guise had roused the populace to drag planks across the streets, impeding any escape through our front gates. Except for the gardens of the Tuileries, which were enclosed by gated walls and unpatrolled, every other path to and from the palace was manned by Guise’s retainers, as they’d been during the massacre.

  All was ready for our defeat. We had not delivered the League’s terms, so Guise would bring us down by force and set Henri’s nephew, my grandson, on the throne.

  At last, Guise had declared himself a traitor. Whatever we did next would be justified.

  When word came, it was brought by one of his retainers. Handing the folded note to Henri, the man waited fearfully, glancing repeatedly at the Forty-five stationed at the walls. My son opened the note, scanned it, and let it fall at his feet. He waved the messenger out.

  “Guise orders me to submit.” He lifted his eyes to me.

  I felt as if I’d lived my entire life in rehearsal for this moment. I went to his table, inked the quill. “Then you must sign their agreement. Sign it and leave it here. I’ll deliver it. Pack what you can carry, take Louise, Valette, and your Forty-five, and make haste for the Château of Blois. You can ride out through the Tuileries, disguised as servants. No one will notice you among the crowd, seeing as they abandon us like vermin.” I reached for the cloth-shrouded dagger. “When the hour comes, use this in memory of your Guast.”

  He gazed for a long moment at the dagger before he leaned over the desk and scrawled his signature on the scroll. “What about you?” he said, gnawing at his lip. “How can I leave when I do not know if you’ll be safe?”

  “Guise will not dare harm me,” I said softly. “Go. And no matter what, do not turn back.”

  Guise didn’t assault the Louvre, though he would have encountered little resistance. Our remaining courtiers, servants, most of our hired guards—they had all deserted us, leaving me alone with only my women, to face whatever fate held in store.

  As I sat in my rooms, sleepless before my fire, my women around me on pallets in case I had need of them, I thought for the first time of the night when I gave Guise and Henri permission to murder Coligny. Had he waited in that house as I did now, knowing his end was near? Had he prayed to his passionless god in his bed of pain or let himself wander among the scorched recesses of his memories, back to a time in an enchanted palace called Fontainebleau, where he had come upon a young bride, alone and in need of someone to believe in? And if he had thought of me in those final minutes before the door crashed in, did he smile, if only for a moment, knowing that in the end we all meet our reckoning in the same place?

  By dawn, bonfires smoked and the barricaders lay sprawled in heaps, sated on the free wine distributed by Guise. I rose, dressed, and ordered my sedan chair set out in the courtyard. I emerged, blinking, into the cold morning light. Two fishwives lingered outside the palace’s front gates. As I moved toward my chair I heard one of them snarl, “There she is, Queen Jezebel.”

  My hand froze on the sedan chair’s latch.

  “Jezebel,” the other woman shrieked. “Reine de la mort!”

  I gazed impassively at those twisted faces glaring at me between the wrought-iron gates through which so much of my life had passed, and I was thrust back to that dreadful day in my childhood, when a mob had come for me at my family palazzo.

  Down with the Medici! Death to the tyrants!

  Then I turned away, tucked my hood about my head. Anna-Maria wrung her hands; she feared I’d be taken captive, though I had Guise’s word that once I delivered the scroll he would let me go. I smiled at her as Lucrezia helped work my bloated fingers into my gloves.

  We embraced. “Godspeed,” she whispered. “We’ll see you at Blois.”

  “Remember,” I chided, “my jewel coffer and a decent gown or two will do. The rest can stay here. Let Guise’s family melt down the plate to strike commemorative coins.”

  A tear dripped down Anna-Maria’s cheek. Lucrezia drew her close as I went to my chair.

  The rising sun cracked through the white sky. I paused. I was leaving the Louvre, scene of my greatest triumphs and worst blunders, exiled in the end by the family that, for all my wiles, I had not succeeded in vanquishing. In Paris, the people defamed my name, and my son galloped to the Loire with his queen and intimates, leaving behind a swinging postern gate.

  And as I took one final look at the old stone palace, transformed to ash rose in dawn’s forgiving light, I said good-bye without tears and without regret.

  After all, I was a Medici.

  THIRTY-NINE

  THERE IS AN ARABIC MYTH THAT THE DAY AND MANNER OF OUR death is preordained and nothing we do can change it. I have never placed much belief in infidel credos nor even in my own church’s promise of an everlasting life. I’ve witnessed too much treachery in the name of religion.

  Nonetheless, I’ve had ample opportunity to reflect on this unseen entity who guides our path and to ponder why he has seen fit to test me so. Have I not struggled as much as any other for my blood? Others live fewer years; accomplish a mere fraction of what I have; and yet they sit enthroned with halos about their brows, while I sink like a villain in my own calumny.

  As I await the inevitable, I see the dead. The first duc de Guise, the dangerous Balafré; Jeanne de Navarre; Coligny; and Mary Stuart—my sometime enemies and accomplices, each martyrs to their cause. Important as they were in life, through death they have become legend.

  And I ask myself, What epitaph will history inscribe for me?

  • • •

  In the great hall of Blois, with its gilded pilasters and violet arches, the assembly of the Catholic League gathered to gloat over my son’s capitulation. My embassy to Guise was successful; as I’d anticipated, he did not restrain me. He accepted the treaty and let me come here to join my son, though the journey from Paris, after so many months of anxiety, sapped the last of my strength.

  So, I was not in the hall, but I sent Lucrezia and she told me everything. They were all there, all those who’d conspired without cease for our downfall: the Catholic nobles, governors, and officials
, the conniving ambassadors and inevitable spies. And on the dais stood Henri, clad in ermine, his voice calm as he paid me tribute.

  “We cannot forget the trials that the queen my mother has undergone for this realm. I think it right to render during this assembly, in the name of France, our gratitude. What labors has she not undertaken to appease our troubles? When has age or poor health induced her to spare herself? Has she not sacrificed her well-being? From her, I learned how to be king.”

  I wish I could have beheld the lords’ expressions, seen for myself their discomfort over this praise for the Italian Jezebel. But I am confined to my bed, the pain like a vise in my chest every time I draw breath, my body racked by fever and my legs tumescent with fluid. My ailments have finally shackled me. My doctors force their foul potions down my throat and wrap bandages soaked in herbal plasters about my swollen calves. They assure me I’ll recover, that this is a temporary setback.

  I smile. They dare not say aloud what I already know.

  I sleep too much. As snow flutters outside, within my rooms my women keep the braziers lit. My tapestries and plate, my favorite portraits and portable desk—everything from the Louvre is here. Lucrezia is incorrigible. I told her not to overpack and what did she do? She transported my entire chamber, strapped to carts and mules.

  Sometimes I wake at night and hear my women in the antechamber. Anna-Maria wanted to sleep at the foot of my bed, but I refused. She is old. She needs her own bed, not a pillow at my feet. Lucrezia scolded, “Besides, my lady will never get any rest with all that snoring you do.”

  Anna-Maria snores. I never noticed.

  In the deepest night, when I am alone with my thoughts, I light my candle, set it on the ink-stained blotter of my portable desk, and pull out my notebooks. I caress the worn pages upon which have fallen the rains of the Loire, the sun of Bayonne, and sleet of Navarre. I read them with love, retracing my life. From Florence to Fontainebleau, from Chenonceau to the Louvre; duchess and dauphine, queen and queen mother—I have played every role.

  I sometimes drift off with the books piled about me and awake to find them gone, hidden again in their niche. Lucrezia always rises before me. She has borne witness to my secret and never said a word. I know that when the time comes, I can trust her to fulfill my bequest.

  What day is it? I can’t recall. It must be nearing Christmas. Once, time had seemed so precious, so inconstant, evanescent, and ever elusive. Now the hours weave like the threads of Penelope’s loom, turning back on each other to stave off finality.

  Henri comes to me, trailing musk. He is too thin again, dressed in mulberry velvet with his dark hair loose about his shoulders, and so agitated, pausing to finger the vials on my dressing table, my brushes and hand mirror. I can see he admires the hand mirror; he eyes it covetously, the way he did when he was a boy.

  “Why is he still alive?” I ask.

  He shrugs, his supple fingers fondling the embossed mirror. “I’m waiting.”

  “Waiting? For what?”

  He sets the mirror down and comes to my bed, his face flushed but not with anger. It is pleasure. Something has happened. “Shall I tell you a secret?” He leans to my ear. “Philip of Spain sent an armada to invade England. The Tudor smashed it to pieces. All Paris now laughs at Guise, who took Philip’s coin to fund his League. They’ve posted placards in the city: ‘Lost, an invincible armada! If found, please inform my lord the duke.’”

  He draws back, laughter pealing. “Isn’t it delightful? The heretic Tudor triumphs and Philip II is ruined. Guise has lost his Spanish alliance.”

  I long to rise from the bed, to call for Birago to dissect the dispatches for information we might wield. But Birago is dead and I cannot move. I can only stare as my son leaves the room, chanting under his breath, “Lost, lost: an armada at sea …”

  And I know soon he will reap his vengeance.

  The fever returned last night. Shadows came and went; whispers: “Fluid in her lungs … she should be bled.” I can feel their fear. They are afraid for me. They think I will die. I want to die. I long to sink into blessed oblivion forever. But not yet.

  France clutches at me: she will not let me rest.

  The sign is here. It has come.

  Early this morning sudden shouting and a loud thump overhead wakes me, as if an argument had broken out in the room above. My son’s apartments are above mine; as my ladies stumble in, sandy-eyed from sleep, I see a crimson bead seep through the rafters. It lingers, clinging to the emerald and gold-painted eaves, before it falls to spatter my sheets, next to my right hand.

  I gasp. Lucrezia quickly moves to me; I see by her worried expression, in the quiver of the hand she reaches out to my brow, that she and Anna-Maria don’t see it. They don’t see the drops as they fall one by one, striking my bed with hollow plops. But I do. I see blood. Blood dripping from my ceiling, just as I once saw it in a dream, before Hercule’s death.

  Only this time, I am awake.

  Lucrezia reaches for the vial of poppy at my bedside. As she moves to prepare a draft, thinking I am in pain, I resist. “No. Go. Find out what is happening.”

  But even as she gazes at Anna-Maria in bewilderment, Henri walks in. In his hand, he brandishes the dagger, its blade stained red. He tosses it on my bed. My women recoil at the smear of blood it leaves on the sheet.

  “It is done,” he says. “He fought like a caged beast, but I carved him out of my heart.”

  I gaze at him in silence. I see blood in his goatee, a splash down the side of his throat.

  “I invited him to share breakfast with me,” he adds, and his voice turns quiet, almost melancholic, as though he is thinking of something long in the past. “He came with his brother but no others; he actually thought I’d serve him with my own hands. And so I did. I stabbed him first before I let my Forty-five finish him off. Alas, his brother had to die too.”

  I lower my eyes. Guise is dead. My son has finally earned back his throne.

  Lucrezia lifts the stiletto by its hilt, and with her skirts she wipes it clean.

  I had the dream last night. In it, I saw people crying on their knees. And I saw the room, the black-draped bed—waiting for me. I awake gasping, tangled in my sheets. Anna-Maria and Lucrezia rush in. Not even the braziers can disperse the cold. Their breath issues in tiny puffs as they stand shivering at my bedside, staring at me when I say, “You must help me get up.”

  They try to dissuade me, citing the terrible chill, the fever and congestion in my lungs. They threaten to summon my doctors. I will have none of it. I start to rise on my own, fueled by a resolve as unexpected to me as it is to them.

  “I must,” I say. “I must.”

  They dress me in my black skirts and bodice, drape me in a cloak and hand me my gloves. I shake my head. “No, no gloves. My fingers were bare.”

  They look at me as if I’ve gone mad. Perhaps I have. But I must see it for myself. I must know that what I saw so many years ago, while still a child in Florence, has come to pass.

  Through frozen passageways we go, our slippers clacking on stone floors. The entire château is still, an icy labyrinth. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other. My legs feel like granite posts. My lungs wheeze. I can taste blood. Under any other circumstance I would collapse.

  I round a corner. There it is—the open door. I hear lamentations coming from inside. Lucrezia grips my arm, whispers that this is the servant quarters and we have no business here.

  I shake my head and move to the door with sluggish reluctance, as if I’ve drifted from the spirit world into an uncertain mortality. I pause, grip the door frame.

  Strangers turn to me, tears on their faces. I can’t hear them as I confront the hulking bed, its tester draped in black. I find myself moving soundlessly toward it, my nerveless feet treading on crushed winter flowers, inhaling but not smelling the acrid scent of rushes and incense, reaching out my hand to part the curtains and reveal—

  I sigh, in long-awaited recognition.


  Guise’s eyes are closed, his handsome face wiped clean of the blood that spattered him as he fought for his life. His muscled legs seem sculpted of ivory, monumental in their perfection. Dark wounds puncture his broad chest—the stigmata of forty-six daggers, plunged into his flesh. A silver crucifix rests in his veined hands. It seems impossible that this man, whose life has been interlinked with mine, from the time he first played with my children to the night I watched him lose his father, to the violence he unleashed on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, can be so still. He was the last of his kind; as powerful as they are, the Guise family will never recover.

  In the end, despite all odds, France has won.

  I step back. I turn away. The fever flares. My soul leaps in anticipation.

  There is only one task left to do.

  BLOIS, 1589

  IT IS OVER. AS THE OLD MAESTRO FORETOLD SO MANY YEARS AGO, I have fulfilled my destiny. Already the fever rises and I can feel my heart falter. Soon my household will come to bid me farewell; my son will sit at my side and hold my hand as my ladies weep. The vigil will begin.

  I have sealed my last letter to Henri. In it I remind him that the path to peace is now clear. If he seeks accord with his Bourbon cousin, Navarre will safeguard him and France’s future. He will let Henri rule, until the time comes for him to ascend the throne.

  Now I must close my books. Lucrezia knows what to do; it is my duty, my final sacrifice. I must carry my secrets to the grave. Yet how reluctantly I leave these leather volumes, bleached by the seasons of my life: to bid them farewell is to surrender all I have loved and lost.

  This is the final page of my confessions.

  I mix the remaining vestiges of the Maestro’s gift into my draft of poppy. The vial is clouded, fragile yet deceptively hard; as I scrape powder from its sides into my goblet, I think how odd it is that so tiny an object can hold such power. There is only a little left; it cannot kill me outright, weakened as it is by years of hibernation, but it might quicken my passage.