The Devil's Queen: A Novel of Catherine de Medici

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  “I was there at Saint-Quentin,” Coligny muttered, indignant.

  Gonzaga’s tone was deprecating. “Yes, you were there—responsible for the city’s defense, as I recall. Why, then, should we trust you to take more of our soldiers to war, when five thousand have already died as a result of stupidity?”

  All the other men in the room began speaking at once. Gonzaga offered the Admiral another insult, while the Duke of Montpensier railed about the damage another war would inflict upon the economy. In the end, old Tavannes shouted them down and, when the room was silent, asked:

  “Admiral Coligny, have you anything else to offer?”

  “Yes,” Coligny said. “When His Majesty King Henri II listened to the advice of his privy councillors, he was obliged to consider it carefully—but he was not required to obey it. Such is not the case with King Charles; he is obliged by law to follow this Council’s bidding.

  “This was understandable when the King ascended the throne as a boy of ten, but he is a man now, twenty-two years old. It is an insult to him to force him to accept the rule of his elders, even when it goes against his judgment.”

  Coligny continued. “I am a Huguenot, speaking before a group of Catholics. Yet I know every one of us would agree that Charles is King because God set him on the throne. Is that not so, gentlemen?”

  Tavannes and Montpensier allowed that it was; Edouard and I exchanged dark glances, while Gonzaga refused to reply to a question whose answer was known.

  “If Charles’s will is thwarted by this Council,” Coligny said, “then God’s will is thwarted. And it is Charles’s will to go to war with Spain.”

  I gasped at the man’s audacity, at his wild reasoning.

  Coligny directed a pointed look at me. “Her Majesty gasps. Yet I tell you now that government is the business of men, not women; such is the rule of Salic law. And I ask you: Who rules France? Who rules this Council? And who rules Charles?

  “Each man sitting here must look into his own heart for the truth: Listen to the small, still voice of God within you. Is it right that the will of our King should be foiled by a womanish fear of war?”

  My face burned. Beside me, Edouard muttered a barely audible curse.

  “By God, you are a lunatic,” Tavannes said, “and a mannerless cur to speak so of our Queen.”

  I did not look at him, or my fellow councillors; I could only stare at the bright piety in Coligny’s eyes, at the beatific self-righteousness that glowed upon his face, stoked by the internal fires of madness.

  “It is a holy war,” the Admiral said; his voice paled to a whisper. “A war to free men who wish to worship in freedom. I tell you, it is God’s own war; only the Devil would bid you not to wage it.”

  The room was silent until I gathered myself and asked coldly: “Is that all, Admiral? Have you finished your presentation?”

  “I have,” he said, with an air that said he was most pleased with it, and with himself.

  The Duke of Montpensier interjected, “Your Highness, Your Majesty, I should like to move that we dispense with any further discussion. Admiral Coligny has presented his viewpoint sufficiently and heard the major objections to it. I see little point in revisiting these in an exchange that is likely to grow heated. I suggest a vote be taken immediately.”

  “Point well taken,” I said. “Gentlemen, are there any objections?”

  There were not. Coligny—confident that his appeal had swayed hearts—was asked to wait in the corridor. He went happily, though he paused on the threshold to direct a smug, triumphant look at me.

  What followed did not take long. The members were in such obvious agreement that the paper ballots went unused and a voice vote was taken.

  I rose and put a hand up to stay my fellow councillors from their impulse to spring to their feet with me. “I should like to tell Admiral Coligny myself.”

  I went alone into the corridor. Aside from a pair of bodyguards, there was no one within earshot. Coligny leaned against the opposite wall, hands folded, head bowed in prayer; at the sound of the door opening, he looked up eagerly.

  At the sight of my face, his own went slack with surprise, then slowly hardened.

  “So,” he said. “I should have realized their ears were closed. After all, you chose them because they were loyal.”

  “I chose them because they were wise,” I retaliated, “and loyal to my son—who was born without the temperament needed to rule. Should you persist in taking advantage of this fact, Admiral, I will banish you from Court.”

  His eyes—starkly blue inside a fringe of golden lashes—narrowed with the same sullen, bitter obstinacy I had so often seen in Charles. He took a menacing step closer, to remind me that he was a large man and I a small woman.

  With the slow, emphatic delivery of a bully, he said, “Madame, I cannot oppose what you have done, but I can assure you that you will regret it. For if His Majesty decides against this war, he will soon find himself in another from which he will not be able to escape.”

  Though he loomed in my face, I refused to take a single step backward. Imperious, unafraid, I scowled up at him.

  “We welcomed you as a guest. And you dare threaten us—under the King’s own roof—with another civil war?”

  “You would not be fighting me,” he said, “but God.”

  He turned his back to me without taking his leave and strode away. When he had moved out of view, I closed my eyes and let go a sigh as I leaned back against the wall.

  Under the jaw, like this, Aunt Clarice whispered and closed her hand over mine, around the hilt of the stiletto.

  Forty-one

  I charged the fearless Tavannes with reporting the results of the Privy Council’s vote to the King. I then took Edouard aside to tell him of the Admiral’s threat.

  I convinced the Duke of Anjou to accompany me to our estate at Montceaux, a day’s hard ride from Paris. We left immediately without informing the King, so that he would be surprised by our departure and assume I had made good on my threat to abandon him. I prayed that Charles would rush to Montceaux to beg me to return—thus allowing me to keep him out of Coligny’s clutches, at least until the wedding celebrations commenced.

  Within three hours of the Council meeting, Edouard and I were in a carriage moving south out of the crowded city. The rain had ended, and the wind chased slate clouds away to reveal a scalding August sun; the streets were once again crowded with merchants, nobles, clerics, beggars, and the black-and-white garb of Huguenots, strangers to this Catholic city, come to celebrate the marriage of their leader, Navarre.

  I leaned back against the wall of the carriage and stared out the window, too pensive to acknowledge Edouard’s lengthy diatribe against the Admiral or the whining of his dog, a spaniel perched in a jeweled basket that hung from the Duke of Anjou’s neck by a long velvet cord. I remained silent as the air grew sweeter, and the clatter of the wheels was muted by the mud of country roads. Stone buildings gave way to the dark green, trembling leaves of late summer; mist rose from the road ahead like vaporous souls streaming heavenward.

  I could not yet digest my final conversation with Coligny. As the carriage rocked, I closed my eyes and imagined Aunt Clarice beside me, shaken to the core yet fearless, in her tattered, glorious gown.

  “Such hubris!” Edouard railed; the little dog in his lap cringed, and he began to stroke it carelessly. “He thinks he is Moses, and we Pharaoh!”

  I opened my eyes. “He thinks he is Jesus,” I said, then fell silent at the implications of my own analogy.

  My son stared across the carriage at me. “He will not stop, Maman. You saw his eyes: He is a lunatic. We must stop him.”

  I shook my head. “What can we do? We cannot arrest him now, before the wedding. Think of the outcry: He is an honored member of the wedding party. Think of the embarrassment to Navarre, to us . . .”

  I had not permitted myself to reflect on Navarre for days. I had loved him as a son; I was going to marry my daughter to him. No
w I looked on him with distrust. Had he come here knowing what Coligny was planning?

  “Coligny is sincere in his desire to see our troops sent to the Netherlands,” I added, as though trying to convince myself. “He has spent a great deal of time ingratiating himself with the King. It would not make sense for him to attack us now.”

  “Attack us?” Edouard leaned forward abruptly. “Are you saying that everything he has done is simply a distraction? That he means us harm?”

  I stared out at the changing countryside and thought of Paris’s streets, flooded with Huguenots, and of the Louvre, its corridors brimming with black-and-white crows.

  “No,” I answered. “No, of course not, unless . . .”

  . . . you will regret it. For if His Majesty decides against this war, he will soon find himself in another.

  “Unless this is part of a greater plot,” Edouard finished. “Unless Coligny and Navarre and the rest of them came here with the thought of capturing the Crown. Henri brought an entourage of hundreds, and thousands of his followers have descended on the city. Every inn in Paris is overflowing with Huguenots; they have even opened the churches to house them all.”

  My fingers found the heavy iron ring of the Gorgon’s Head and began to worry it. “They could not be so foolish,” I murmured.

  “We are speaking of Coligny, who is fool enough to admit he thinks God has sent him here,” Edouard reminded me, a look of sickened distrust settling over his long, handsome features. “And he will do whatever ‘God’ bids him. Even if he is not guilty of plotting a revolution—even if he means us no real harm—he will continue to manipulate Charles. We must do something.”

  “If we do something now, in a city crowded with Huguenots and their resentful Catholic hosts,” I said slowly, “there will be a full-scale riot.”

  “Maman”—Edouard clicked his tongue in exasperation—“we cannot sit back and let a madman drag us into war.”

  “We will discuss it at Montceaux,” I said. “I don’t want to think about it now.”

  I closed my eyes again, lulled by the rocking carriage, and saw the prophet’s round full-moon face.

  Beware of tenderness, he said. Beware of mercy.

  Charles arrived at Montceaux in the middle of the night. I feigned mute, sulking anger when I was summoned from my bed by a desperate King, but I could scarcely hide my gratification when Charles fell to his knees and, wrapping his arms about my legs, swore to abide by the Privy Council’s vote and begged me to return with him to Paris.

  I insisted Charles stay with us at Montceaux for four full days. During that time, Edouard and I spent endless hours trying to convince the King that Coligny had coldheartedly manipulated him. At many points, Charles sobbed like a child or let loose venomous, spittle-laced rage, but by the third day, he was spent and began to listen to our point of view. I made him agree to avoid Coligny until after the celebrations.

  Only then did we return to the city—on the fifteenth of August, the day before the betrothal ceremony. Since the tenth, the withering sun had hung unobscured in a faded blue sky; our carriage kicked up clouds of dust on the return journey.

  I climbed from the carriage exhausted. At Montceaux, I had spent long days with Charles and long evenings discussing Coligny with Edouard; we had resolved nothing, only that we should wait to take action until after the wedding.

  As I climbed the stairs to my apartments, I spied Madame Gondi—still beautiful, but worn and in failing health—waiting for me at the top of the landing. She did not smile when she caught my gaze but tightened her grip on something in her hands: a letter.

  When I arrived at the landing, I held out my hand for the letter. Once I had it, I broke the seal, unfolded it, and, walking alongside Madame Gondi and her lamp, began to read.

  The handwriting was masculine but not Zuñiga’s. It belonged to the Duke of Alba, that dastardly persecutor of Huguenots, and it was dated the thirteenth of August.

  To the most highly esteemed Queen Catherine of France

  Your Royal Majesty,

  I understand that King Philip’s ambassador to France, Don Diego de Zuñiga, has informed you of the incursion of French soldiers into the Netherlands under the command of one of your Huguenot generals, and that this said Huguenot general is a confidant of your son, King Charles.

  You might wish to ask your son whether he or his Huguenot friend has any knowledge of the three thousand armed French troops who arrived at our shared border early this morning. And you would do well to consider the fact that my own sources—who are very knowledgeable about this Admiral Coligny and his activities—informed me within the last hour that he is actively mustering an army of no fewer than fourteen thousand troops.

  It is said that most of these heretics are now in Paris to attend the wedding of their leader to your daughter, King Charles’s sister, and they have brought with them arms so that they might leave immediately afterward for the Netherlands.

  Don Diego also reports that you claim to be entirely unaware of this situation—that in fact, Charles’s own Council has voted against Admiral Coligny’s invasion. If that is true, then your family is in no small amount of danger; perhaps I should lend Your Majesty a few of my own reliable spies, who say that the metalsmiths in Paris are working day and night to produce swords and armor for the Huguenots and that, shortly after the Council vote, Monsieur Coligny publicly bragged that he does not recognize its authority and that he will come to the Netherlands, with or without his King’s approval, and defeat me with his army of fourteen thousand Frenchmen.

  My King would say that this is Your Majesty’s reward for allowing heretics to dine at her table.

  I have not retaliated because Don Diego is certain that King Charles will wish to deal with this matter internally, and has urged me not to take up arms against France but to advise Your Majesty of this grievous offense against Spain.

  I have sent this by my fastest messenger, who is with you now, awaiting your reply.

  Your servant, by God’s grace,

  Fernando Alvarez de Toledo

  Duke of Alba

  Governor of the Netherlands

  I had reached my antechamber by the time I finished reading Alba’s letter; I sank into the chair at my desk and glanced up as Madame Gondi set the lamp down beside me.

  “Please,” I said, “invite the Duke of Anjou to visit me at once, in my chambers. Tell him it is a matter of pressing urgency.”

  When she had left, I laid my head wearily upon the desk, my cheek resting against the cool wood. The lamp flickered, casting my leaping shadow against the far wall; I thought suddenly of my aunt at her desk, writing letters late into the night despite her injured wrist, on the day we had fled Florence.

  No more blood, I had told Ruggieri. No more blood, but the House of Valois—my blood—was now at risk.

  I thought of the stableboy’s eyes, wide with shock and mute reproach, and hardened.

  The next morning, a Saturday, the betrothal ceremony took place in the Louvre’s great ballroom, officiated by the groom’s uncle, the Cardinal de Bourbon. In full view of some three hundred guests, Navarre and Margot prepared to sign the thick marriage contract.

  As Margot hovered over the final page of the contract, quill in hand, she let go a wrenching sob, then threw down the quill and covered her face with her hands. I moved forward and put my arms about her, then smiled up at the Cardinal.

  “Nerves,” I said to him, then whispered in Margot’s ear: “Do not think—simply do it. Now.”

  I placed the quill in her fingers and closed my hand over hers. Her shoulders shook with repressed tears, but she lowered her hand and scrawled her signature.

  Navarre kept his pleasant, dignified gaze focused on the Cardinal, politely ignoring the incident. Like the reluctant bride, I could not bear to look at him: At the same time, I reminded myself I had no real evidence that he was abetting the Admiral and his war. If I called off the wedding, I would quash any real hope for lasting peace, and
signal my intent to act against Coligny.

  Instead, I wrapped my arm around Margot and stood beside her as the Cardinal made the sign of the cross over the couple and intoned a blessing. When it was done, I kissed my daughter, then Henri, and welcomed him into the family.

  “You are my son now,” I told him.

  During the reception afterward, I caught the arm of the Duchess of Nemours, an old friend. “Will you come to see me tonight, in my cabinet?” I whispered into her ear.

  She bowed graciously in assent. She had spent her entire adulthood at the French Court and was known for her scrupulous discretion—a quality on which I planned to rely heavily.

  Night found us alone in my cabinet, with the door closed and barred, despite the stifling heat; I had not invited Edouard, for if the conversation went awry, I did not want him implicated.

  The Duchess sat smiling placidly across the desk from me, fanning herself. She was forty-one years old, soft and plump, a woman who possessed no natural beauty and therefore appeared to change little as she aged. Her eyes were large and her nose and lips small; folds gathered easily beneath her receding chin, a gift from her grandmother, Lucrezia Borgia. Her eyebrows were so heavily plucked as to be invisible.

  She had been born Anna d’Este and raised in her native Ferrara until she was married at the age of sixteen to François, Duke of Guise. She quickly mastered the subtleties of courtly life and proved an able helpmeet to her ambitious husband. When François was assassinated by Coligny’s spy, the Duchess did not retire quietly into widowhood. Seething with outrage, she demanded that Coligny be prosecuted for the murder and brought so many petitions before the King that an exasperated Charles declared the Admiral innocent and forbade her to bring up the matter again. But like her son Henri of Guise, who had inherited the title of Duke from his late father, she continued to despise Coligny and to denounce him vehemently whenever she could. Six years ago, she had married Jacques de Savoie, the Duke of Nemours, a staunch Catholic who had fought bravely against the Huguenots.