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

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  Charles remained darkly silent, refusing to look at his brother or me, though we tried several times to draw him into our conversation.

  Exasperated, I finally demanded, “What, precisely, did Admiral Coligny say to you that has upset you so?”

  He lowered his face, taut with rage. “Only that I cannot trust either of you. Only that you wish to subvert my will, to use me as it suits your purposes.”

  Edouard flared. “Have you considered, my brother, that he says such things because he cannot be trusted? Because he means to subvert your will, by using you to further his insane war? He speaks ill of us because he knows we want to protect you from his cold-blooded manipulation.”

  “Enough!” Charles shouted. “Enough lies, lies, lies!” He clapped his hands over his ears.

  By then we were slowing on our approach to the palace. Suddenly, one of the horses shrieked; I heard the drivers’ curses, followed by a furious, deafening clatter of hail on the carriage walls and roof.

  Outside the window, a hundred black-clad protesters stood at the northern gate, some pelting rocks at us, others waving swords and screaming at the Swiss soldiers who now stood, two men deep and armed with arquebuses, around the Louvre’s walls. A fresh contingent of Swiss had marched into the street to form a human barricade. Just beyond them, a few dozen peasants—ragged, starving men with pitchforks, shovels, stones—had gathered.

  Death to heretics! the distant peasants screamed, while the Huguenots at the gate cried out:

  Murderers! Assassins!

  We are striking back, and will kill!

  Another volley of rocks struck the carriage; one sailed in through the window like a shot and buried itself in the padded seat beside Charles, abruptly checking his anger.

  “Jesus,” he whispered.

  “So it begins,” I said, staring out at the raging crowds, remembering Ruggieri’s final words to me.

  It may already be too late.

  Forty-four

  Under a hail of projectiles—stones, bricks, rotting garbage—our carriage dashed inside the palace gates, thanks to the guards who held back the onrush of angry Huguenots. We were met immediately by one of Edouard’s commanders, who reported that “disturbances” had erupted in several neighborhoods, provoked not only by outraged Huguenots but by fearful Catholics convinced that they must rid themselves of a growing threat. Edouard responded by deploying more troops to key locations throughout the city, ostensibly to keep peace.

  I was shaking when I returned to my apartments but insisted on going down that evening for a public supper an hour after the sun had set. The Duke of Anjou was preoccupied with his commanders, and Charles so distraught he took to his bed; Margot had joined her husband at Coligny’s bedside. I went to dine alone.

  It was a tense affair. In light of the Admiral’s misfortune, no entertainment was offered that evening; the dozen nobles who had gathered were intense, brooding, silent. In the absence of conversation, the clatter of the spoon and knife, the clink of the glass, echoed in the still chamber. I forced myself to chew, to swallow, to appear as though I enjoyed a meal grown bitter.

  As I stared down hopelessly at a pair of freshly delivered roasted doves, a shout shattered the silence.

  “Madame la Reine!”

  A noble I had often seen at Court but whose name I could not recall—he was a baron, I believe, and a Huguenot—stood three arms’ lengths away from my table. My solitary guard had caught his elbow, but the baron—a giant, tall and broad as an oak, with a great long face framed by a streaming cloud of white hair—would not be moved. He did not genuflect; he did not bow. His large yellow teeth were bared, but not in a smile. He shouted my name as though it were an accusation.

  “We will not rest, do you understand?” His face was very red against his white hair. “We will not rest until the murderers are brought to justice. We will not rest until they hang!”

  My guard tried vainly to push him back. “Show the Queen respect, you cur!”

  “I do not bow,” the baron announced, “to a bloodstained Crown! Enjoy your supper while you can, Madame!”

  He shook off the guard’s grip at last and, turning his back rudely to me, stalked out of the dining chamber. No one followed him; no one rushed to my defense or offered apologies. The few nobles standing in attendance murmured among themselves, then turned their eyes to me.

  I stared down at the little corpses on my plate and pushed them away. I rose and left the chamber slowly, regally, on unsteady legs.

  Instinctively I went in search of Edouard. He was just leaving the war room, on the ground floor beneath the King’s apartments, after a meeting with Marshals Tavannes and Cossé, and the city’s Provost of Marchands. As my son crossed the threshold, our gazes met; his expression was as mine must have been—stricken—and I knew at that instant that we had finally arrived at the same conclusion.

  He stopped in the doorway and, when I approached, took my hand and guided me inside the chamber, then closed the door softly behind us. The lamp had been snuffed; he gestured in the darkness for me to take a chair at the long conference table. I sat and watched as he struck the match and held it to the wick, which caught with a flare.

  “It is worse than I thought,” I said huskily. “I have been called a murderess to my face, here, in the palace. We aren’t safe, Edouard.”

  “Maman,” he said. He was trying to gather himself, to voice difficult words. “Maman . . .”

  In the end, he could not utter them but set a piece of paper in my hands—a missive penned in an unfamiliar masculine script.

  Strike at dawn Monday, it began, when Notre-Dame first marks the hour. We will strike inside the palace at the same instant, sparing Charles—as a public abdication would serve us—but not his mother and brother, as they are a danger to—

  I let go a soft cry and pressed my fingertips to my lips. The letter fluttered to the table and stayed there. I turned my face from it; I wanted suddenly to retch.

  Edouard brought his face close to mine. “Written by Navarre, Maman, to his commander in the field. The provost intercepted it at the city gate. Our scouts say that five thousand Huguenots are on the march toward Paris and will encamp outside her city walls on Sunday night.”

  “No,” I said and closed my eyes.

  He said nothing more, only hovered next me; like the lamp, his unseen face emanated warmth. In the room’s heat, the smell of orange blossoms grew suffocating. Reason abandoned me. I had loved Navarre since his birth, and trusted him as I would a son; now, he had betrayed me. Whose blood had he seen in his visions? Had it been my children’s, and my own?

  I opened my eyes to stare down at my hands, at the ring infused with the power of the Gorgon’s Head. The star Algol, which the Arabs call ra’s al-Ghul, the Demon’s Head, and the Chinese call the Piled-Up Corpses.

  Two hours before dawn on the twenty-fourth of August, the star Algol will rise in the sign of Taurus . . . and precisely oppose warlike Mars. . . . France has never been in greater danger; nor have you.

  This was Friday night, the twenty-second.

  I thought of the huge entourage Navarre had brought with him to the wedding—most of them housed here, at the Louvre. Military commanders, captains, generals, all of his former comrades-in-arms—three hundred men.

  “I welcomed him into my home,” I whispered, “and he brought his army with him, in open daylight. Coligny may truly want his war in the Spanish Netherlands, but Navarre sent him here only to distract us. They are lying in wait for us. They mean to kill us in our beds.”

  “We must stop them,” my son said softly.

  I looked up at him. Edouard’s eyes, infinitely black, glittered in the lamplight. I had worked so hard for peace, not knowing that we were already at war.

  “We must strike first,” I said.

  I spent the next few hours with Edouard in the Council chamber, planning the attack. I recruited him to send a discreet messenger to the young Duke of Guise, directing him to gather me
n for an attack on Coligny’s lodgings at the Hôtel de Béthizy. Coligny must be assassinated, and every one of his commanders killed. With my guidance, Edouard wrote the secret orders for the Swiss troops who protected the palace and the Scots who guarded the King: At the same instant that Guise moved against Coligny, our soldiers would attack the Huguenots sleeping at the Louvre.

  To avoid mass slaughter, Edouard and I wrote down the names of those fated to die, all of them military commanders or strategists. I wanted no revenge, only the swift, if ruthless, execution of those who could bring war. With their leaders gone, the Huguenots would be crippled, unable to threaten the Crown or the city.

  It was all to begin before dawn’s light on Sunday, the twenty-fourth of August, when Saint-Germain’s cathedral bell struck the third hour after midnight—one hour before the demon star, Algol, moved into precise opposition to warlike Mars.

  When the list of the victims had been written, I looked somberly up at Edouard. “We must tell Charles,” I said. Without the king’s signature upon such a gruesome order, the guards would not obey it; and once the killing began, it would no longer be secret.

  Edouard nodded. “It will be safer for him. We will have to reconcile him to our viewpoint.”

  “But not tonight,” I said, sighing, and fell silent as Saint-Germain’s bell signaled midnight and the first seconds of the Eve of Saint Bartholomew.

  We parted then. Both of us were exhausted by the strain and retired to our separate apartments.

  I did not dream that night; my long nightmare had grown waking now. I abandoned my bed and pulled a chair to the window to stare out at the brooding darkness and listen to the occasional faint shouts of angry men in Paris streets. I thought of Aunt Clarice’s strength in those awful hours before we escaped the Palazzo Medici; I thought of Ruggieri’s cruel words during our final conversation, and my response:

  The impact of one child upon the future was, I thought, safe, but three . . .

  What are you saying? That I should blame my sons? That I should lift my hand against them?

  The veil will tear, Nostradamus had whispered, and blood be loosed . . .

  I answered them silently with Clarice’s words. Sometimes, to protect one’s own blood, it is necessary to let the blood of others. The House of Valois must survive at all costs.

  I had made my choice; I would not sacrifice my own.

  Outside the Louvre’s gates, the shouting began in earnest at sunrise and grew steadily in volume throughout the day. As soon as it was light, I dressed and went to find Edouard. He was in the Council room with Marshals Tavannes and Cossé, commanders of the Paris militia, and the city provost; the guards at the door insisted they were not to be disturbed. I left word for the Duke of Anjou to come to my chambers after his meeting and went to my cabinet to write a message to Anna d’Este about the specifics of our plan. I did not dare write her son the Duke of Guise directly but instead trusted Anna to relay the information to him; she would no doubt be delighted to tell her son that he had been chosen to lead the strike against Coligny. I instructed her to send his confirmation as soon as possible.

  Edouard arrived an hour later in my antechamber looking haggard. He had not slept at all either but had roused Tavannes and Cossé and read them Navarre’s letter. Both men heartily approved of our decision to strike first. At dawn, Edouard was visited by the provost and militia commanders, who revealed that street fighting had increased. Gangs of armed Huguenots were roving the city, alarming citizens. Merchants had boarded up their shops, innkeepers their taverns. Members of the militia were quietly distributing arms to Catholics eager to protect themselves from the growing threat.

  We agreed that Charles should be told that evening, after supper. The King was fond of crusty old Tavannes and, of all our confidants, trusted him best; I insisted that Tavannes be the one to tell Charles the truth. Once he had time to recover from the shock, Edouard and I would appear with the fateful royal order and its list of victims, for the King’s signature.

  At midday, when Navarre and his cousin Condé returned from their vigil at Coligny’s bedside, a scuffle broke out between his Huguenot bodyguards and the King’s Scotsmen, fueled by incendiary comments on both sides. I did not witness the fighting, which quickly broke up—though not before one of Charles’s senior guards lost an ear.

  I saw Charles briefly after lunch. His conversation with Navarre and Condé had left him elated; he revealed eagerly that Doctor Paré was very pleased with the patient’s progress. Coligny’s wound showed no signs of infection and was already beginning to heal.

  “As soon as he is well enough,” Charles said cheerfully, “I will move him to the Louvre and care for him myself.” His features suddenly went cold with anger. “Did they tell you, Maman, that they found the man who led the assassin onto the Guise’s property? He has confessed that the shooter was Maurevert. It’s only a matter of time before we apprehend him.

  “But it was Guise after all who ordered the killing—what nerve, playing tennis with me that very morning and smiling at the Admiral!”

  I shook my head and feigned shock but said nothing.

  By late afternoon, my nerves were utterly frayed. For appearances’ sake, Edouard and I were required to separate and attend to our usual business—he to discuss the matter of military pensions with his advisers and treasurers, I to hear petitions and, afterward, to take Margot to my chambers for an hour of embroidery. Despite the palpable tension at the Louvre, my daughter was obliviously cheerful. At my mild statement that she appeared in good spirits, Margot blushed and smiled primly.

  “Henri is very kind,” she said. “You were right, Maman—it is not so terrible after all.”

  Had we been speaking about any other man, my smile would have been genuine. I waited until the subject shifted, then put my hand upon my daughter’s arm.

  “I’m troubled,” I said, “by the violence in the streets. Ever since the Admiral was shot, I worry that something else terrible will happen. It might be wise . . .” I paused. “Perhaps it would be better, Margot, if you slept in your own room tonight.”

  She looked up from her embroidery with a start. “You don’t really think Henri is in danger, do you?”

  I looked away quickly, casting about for words that warned but did not frighten. “Not that anyone is in danger, but that we should be cautious. Perhaps you heard that there was a fight between your husband’s guards and your brother’s today. I’m merely saying . . .” Anxiety stole my words, my breath. I stared down at my sewing, suddenly terrified for my daughter, and aware that I had no idea how to protect her. I dared not take her into my confidence; she would have been aghast, disgusted, she would have gone directly to Navarre.

  She saw my panic and dropped her sewing in midstitch. “Maman! Did you have a dream? Is something dreadful going to happen to Henri?”

  I looked up at her, for an instant speechless; then habit overcame me, and I managed a feeble smile. “Of course not,” I said. “Nothing bad is going to happen. I’m simply worried, as any mother would be, with all that has happened. Indulge me, Margot. Retire early tonight, to your own bed.”

  “All right, Maman,” she said, but her eyes were narrowed; she saw through my false cheer, with the result that I dared say nothing else to her about the matter.

  After supper, Edouard, Tavannes, and I went in search of Charles. Outside the guarded, half-ajar door of the King’s apartments, we stopped, and the Duke of Anjou handed Navarre’s incriminating letter to the Marshal. We had agreed that Tavannes would lead Charles to his office; after allowing time for the Marshal to break the news to the King, Edouard and I would present the list of those to be executed.

  Tavannes went inside while Edouard and I drew back, carefully out of the King’s sight; I glimpsed Charles as he and Tavannes passed through the corridor. As the old Marshal held open the door to the cabinet, I heard him murmur something to Charles, who stopped on the threshold and let go a panicked cry.

  “Dear G
od! Don’t tell me he is dead!”

  Tavannes murmured reassurances; the King went inside, and the Marshal closed the door behind them. Edouard and I scurried inside the apartment and—ignoring the King’s bodyguard who stood watch—lingered just outside the door, like the guilty conspirators we were. I strained my ears but heard little save for the calm, steady rumble of Tavannes’s voice.

  It was interrupted suddenly by a shrill howl, then an angry curse. Edouard abruptly dismissed the guard. As he did, something hard and heavy thudded loudly against the cabinet’s interior wall. Edouard moved to open the door, but I stayed his hand; I had thought that Charles would not dare strike old Tavannes, but I also knew the Marshal was rugged enough to handle the King’s physical outbursts.

  I knew the precise passage in Navarre’s letter that had prompted the violent reaction:

  Coligny’s injury complicates matters, but I, too, have earned the King’s trust and can guide him easily into our clutches and, once there, convince him to abdicate. Without his mother and brother, he will be quite helpless.

  There followed wracking sobs, and coughing, and finally, gentle weeping. At the last, I nodded to Edouard, and we entered quietly.

  Tavannes stood in front of the King’s desk, a dark, liquid slash across the breast and shoulder of his dull gold doublet. He was wiping his face with a handkerchief, and when he looked up at me, his blind, clouded eye roving wildly, he lowered the cloth to reveal a brown stain on his clean-shaven chin. Behind him, the far wall held a large, irregular splatter of the same dark brown liquid; on the floor just below, a silver inkwell lay on its side, bleeding onto the carpet.

  Charles was nowhere to be seen, but soft whimpers emanated from behind the desk. I hurried round to find my son huddled beneath it, rocking; I pushed the chair aside and knelt beside him.