Aidez-nous! “Help us!”
They almost collided with my young Scot, who drew his sword and bellowed, “Make way for the Queen!”
The wild-eyed victims seemed not to hear him, or to see me at all; they fled shrieking down the stairs that led out of the palace to the courtyard.
Ignoring the frantic footfall behind us as others fled down the stairs, we continued on, and made our way into the hallways of the new wing. Soon we were at the entrance to Navarre’s antechamber. Across its open threshold, a naked man lay on his side—pale-haired, with the handsome, sculpted muscles of youth and a bloody gash at the juncture of his neck and shoulder; dark rivulets coursed across his hairless chest and ribs onto the marble floor. From beyond him, in the antechamber, came the shouts and groans of the battlefield.
“Madame la Reine!” my young Scot ordered. “Put your hands upon my hips, and cling to me! Do not lift your head!”
I obeyed without a blush, pressing myself against his sweat-soaked back. We took two staggering steps forward into the chamber, dark save for lamplight coming from the open door of the bedchamber beyond. I glimpsed movement in the dimness, the flailing of limbs, the whistling sweep of swords, the lurching of torsos, all accompanied by grunts, screams, curses. The room had becoming a writhing mass of bodies, but I did not try to interpret them. I ducked my head and held fast to the thick leather belt encircling my savior’s narrow hips. The muscles in his back bunched as he hefted his weapon; I winced as it crashed against another’s sword.
Death to the Huguenots! a man cried out, and was answered hoarsely:
Death to Catholic assassins!
“Navarre!” I cried, my words swallowed by the young Scot’s flesh. “Navarre, it is Catherine!”
“We come in peace!” my Scot bellowed, as he struck out, again and again. “Make way for the Queen!”
A horrid gurgling came from in front of us; my man’s muscles suddenly relaxed as he lowered his sword and we advanced two steps. On the second, I nearly stumbled over a body and was forced to let go of the leather belt for an instant in order to lift my tangled skirts and hop clear.
Everywhere around us, innocents screamed for help. The Scot collided with one of his own and spoke frantically in Gaelic; I made out the word Navarre. The leather belt pulled me along as he turned toward the door to the bedchamber. I stumbled again over a sprawling limb and lost my grip. My man quickly turned to offer me his hand.
As he did, I glimpsed up. Limned by the window, a man’s black form stood; a tiny flame, smaller than that of a lamp, floated in front of his shoulder. I caught the smell of burning match cord just as my Scot cried out.
A deafening boom followed, accompanied by the tang of gunpowder. My guardian fell backward onto me, knocking me to my knees. I struggled from underneath his limp weight; in the dimness, I made out his open eyes and reached for his chest. My fingers fumbled, searching for the rise and fall of breath, for a beat, and found neither; they slipped into a warm, hot chasm near his heart and recoiled instantly.
I pushed myself up just as the arquebusier was reloading his weapon and staggered into the bedchamber. It was brighter there, given the bedside lamp, but no less chaotic: a dozen bodies—of Huguenots, naked or in thin nightshirts, of Swiss soldiers, of Scottish royal guards—sprawled on the floor, while the survivors fought on.
On the far side of the bed, the captain of the guards, his sword wielded in battle against a bald, cursing Huguenot, caught sight of me.
“Madame la Reine! My God!”
He dared not disengage to rush to me but returned his attention to his combatant. Nearby, at the foot of the bed—five fighting men away—stood Navarre.
He was still in his white undershirt and black leggings, as though he had not dared to undress completely. His damp shirt clung to his chest and back, his hair to his scalp. He was grimacing, his eyes ablaze, his face gleaming with perspiration as he wielded his sword against that of an equally fierce Swiss soldier. At the captain’s cry, he glanced up quickly at me, and his face went slack with shock.
I ducked my head at the whizzing blades. “Navarre!” I scrabbled past another pair of fighting men, and another. I held my hand out to him, not knowing whether he would grasp it or cut it off. As I did, a figure stepped into my path.
It was the white-haired giant of a Huguenot who had threatened me two nights before, at my public supper; he gripped a short sword at the level of his waist. He leered down at me, baring his great yellow teeth, and drew it back, the better to plunge it forward and run me through. I staggered backward; my foot caught on a prone body, and I went down, arms flailing.
The grinning giant bent over me, then just as suddenly toppled sideways, encouraged by the flat of a sword against his skull. Navarre appeared beside me, his eyes wild with rage, confusion, and despair. I looked on him with infinite hope: He had not killed me.
“Catherine!” His voice was barely audible over the roar.
“I’ve come to help! Follow me to safety,” I shouted, but he shook his head, unable to hear, and gave me his hand.
As he pulled me to my feet, I glanced over the slope of his shoulder to see a white equal-armed cross looming; as the Swiss swordsman lunged toward him, I cried out. Navarre turned swiftly to him and reared backward from the waist in an effort to avoid the oncoming blade. He failed; the tip split his brow with a thud and he dropped to the floor.
I fell to my knees beside him as his eyelids fluttered.
“Help us,” he whispered and fell still.
Bright blood welled up from his forehead and spilled onto the carpet. Gasping, I unfastened my dressing gown, gathered up what I could of the hem, and pressed it hard against the wound. Above us, the Swiss soldier bent his elbow and pulled his weapon back, ready to deliver the final blow.
I crawled atop Navarre and lay my body atop his.
“Kill him,” I shouted, “and you kill the Queen!”
Beneath me, Navarre stirred and groaned. The stunned soldier lowered his weapon and stepped back. He, too, fell suddenly away, and I looked up to see the young Prince of Condé, his features slack, his eyes very wide. At the sight of Navarre bloodied, he let go a short cry, then pulled off his nightshirt and flung it at me. I pulled my sodden dressing gown away; the wound was still bleeding, and the victim’s brow swelling, but the skull had not been split. I tied the shirt around Navarre’s head and looked up at Condé, who leaned his ear toward me.
“Help me get him to safety!” I cried.
Condé did not hesitate. He pulled me up, and together we dragged Henri to his feet. Navarre was dazed, unsteady, but he understood enough to wrap his arms about my shoulder and stagger with me behind Condé, who raised his sword and slashed his way past the Swiss and Scots—some of whom drew back, chastened and confused, at the sight of me.
“Why?” Henri sobbed as we lurched into the antechamber, where the fighting had abruptly stopped. A score of his comrades lay slaughtered on the marble. “Why?”
I did not answer as we headed into the corridor but addressed Condé, whose eyes were guarded but free from the rancor that I had always encountered before. “This way.” I pointed east.
We passed the staircase—quiet now—and entered the deserted gallery. A humid breeze had found the drapes and softly stirred them. Two floors below us, out in the courtyard, victims cringed in Vulcan’s colossal shadow. Henri let go a wail and stopped to stare through the window, his eyes stark with horror.
More than a hundred terrified Huguenots had fled from the palace into the courtyard, only to discover the Swiss waiting with their crossbows and halberds. Mounds of bodies were heaped along the western wall; in the glare of torches, a dozen screaming men huddled together as the crossbowmen forced them, step by step, back over the blood-slicked cobblestones onto the waiting blades of the halberdiers. I pressed a fist to my lips, to stifle bitter nausea and grief. I had ordered this because I feared war, because I had not wanted men to die.
Condé watched darkly, t
oo stricken for words.
“Why?” Henri moaned again; he turned to me. “Why do you do this to us?”
“We must not stop here like this,” I said. “If we do, they will find us and kill both of you. Come.”
I stole a lamp from its sconce and guided them to a small door at the midpoint at the gallery, which hid a narrow, spiraling staircase—an escape route known only to the royal family. The stale air inside was wilting, and Navarre swaying, but we managed to make our way down three flights to the blessedly cool cellars. I led them past great, ancient wine barrels to a prison cell and took the rusted key hanging from the wall to open it. Condé helped his cousin to one of the hanging planks that served as a bed; Henri sat down and leaned heavily against the earthen wall while I lingered outside—then closed the bars and locked them. Both men started as the metal clanged shut.
Condé flared. “What do you mean to do with us? A public execution?”
“I mean to keep you here,” I said, “until I can determine my next action. It is the one place you will be safe. Before God, I will not harm you.”
Henri pulled the blood-soaked undershirt from his head and stared down at it, disbelieving. “Why do you kill our fellows?” His tone was mournful, dazed.
“Because you meant to kill us,” I answered fiercely. “Because your army is marching on Paris even now. Because you meant to kill the Dauphin, and me, and steal my son’s throne.”
He and Condé stared at me as if I had suddenly stripped off my nightgown.
“You’re mad,” Condé whispered. “There is no army.”
Navarre put a hand gingerly to his swelling brow and squinted as though the feeble light of the lamp pained him. “Whose lies are these?”
“I have your letter to your commander in the field,” I said, “revealing the plot to make war on Paris and force Charles’s abdication.”
“You lie!” Condé said. “You lie to make war on us! Pardaillan, Rochefoucauld, all my gentlemen—you have killed them for a lie!” He began suddenly, bitterly, to weep into his hands. Navarre put a hand upon his shoulder and turned to me.
“Bring this letter to me,” he said, “and I will show you a forgery. We have committed no crime, save to tolerate Coligny’s boorishness on the matter of the Spanish Netherlands. Madame la Reine, for the love of God you must stop this. All my men”—his voice broke—“fifty of them came from their own quarters to sleep upon my floor, because they feared for me after the attempt on the Admiral’s life. And now they are dead . . .” He let go a gulping sob, and lowered his face.
“What of your army?” I demanded. “Edouard’s scouts say that it is on its way and will encamp outside our walls tonight.”
“There is no army!” Condé cried out. “Anjou and his scouts lie! Madame, your younger son is as crazy as his brother—but more dangerously so!”
“Don’t insult him!” I cried, but my anger was tinged with growing confusion. I gripped the bars separating us. “You came here armed for war. You came here ready to fight.”
Henri lifted his face, so contorted by grief that he could not open his eyes to look on me. “We came here afraid for our lives,” he said and bowed his head.
Muted by stone and earth, Saint-Germain’s bells marked the fourth hour after midnight. Up in the heavens, the star Algol moved opposite Mars: Coligny and some two hundred Huguenots who had patrolled the area around the Hôtel de Béthizy were dead. My grip on the bars loosened; my palms slid against the cool metal as the weight of my actions forced me to my knees. I was the author of this—I, and my fierce love for my misbegotten sons.
“God help me,” I whispered. “God help us all.”
Forty-six
I found the back stairs leading up from the cellar to the second floor of the south wing and the secret passageway to the Duke of Anjou’s apartments; several times, my knees buckled, and I was obliged to lean against the wall and rest. I arrived, trembling, in the closet off Edouard’s bedroom. Lignerolles was dozing on the small bed there and sat up with a gasp as I pushed open the creaking door. He lit the lamp at once and, at the sight of Henri’s blood on my gown, shrieked.
“Who goes there?” Edouard called from the bedchamber. Dressed in a thin nightshirt, Lignerolles jumped up and took my elbow; by then, I was shaking so much I could hardly stand.
Edouard appeared in the archway, wrapping a silk robe over his bare flesh. I looked on him as if for the first time: His face was not, like mine, drawn and tortured and dazed by guilt, but he gaped at the sight of me and caught my arm. We hurried from the bedroom—where the yellow-headed Robert-Louis sat wide-eyed and naked, the covers pulled up to his chest—to the antechamber, where my son sat me in a chair.
“My God,” he cried. “Maman, you are bleeding!” He wheeled on Lignerolles, and the guards and valets who suddenly appeared. “For God’s sake, get her a doctor! And fetch a basin and linens at once!” He turned back and crouched beside my chair. “Where did they hurt you?”
I rested a violently trembling hand on his forearm. “No doctor,” I said. “I’m not hurt.”
“But the blood—” He touched my hair; I looked down at the braid falling over my shoulder and saw that it, too, was stained with Henri’s blood.
“I was foolish,” I said heavily. “I made the mistake of leaving my chambers. There were Huguenots . . . they stained me with their blood.”
“But how . . . Where did you come from?” He looked in the direction of the closet; I averted my eyes and did not answer.
Lignerolles arrived with a basin of orange blossom water and a towel; Edouard dabbed the towel in the basin and smoothed it over my face. It came away bloodied.
“Look at your lovely dressing gown,” he clucked soothingly. “It’s ruined . . . How did you come across so much blood? This is not like you, Maman, to be so reckless.” He set my dirty hand in the basin and gently washed it. “What in God’s name were you doing?”
I looked up at him. “Edouard . . . the letter from Navarre to his commander in the field. I must see it at once.”
He paused to wring out the towel. “Why?”
“Because it might be a forgery.”
His gaze, which had been so keenly focused on me, retreated subtly inward. “That would be impossible.”
“Why? It was the Provost of Marchands, was it not, who gave it to you? Can he be trusted? Can your scouts?”
“If he could not, I would not have him in charge of the city’s defenses. Of course he can be trusted—and the scouts, too! What kind of question is that?”
“I would like to see Navarre’s letter, please,” I said. “Certainly it is still in your possession.”
He scowled, incredulous, and loosed an exasperated gasp. “I have no idea where it is. I will ask my secretary to find it in the morning.”
“And I should like to speak to your scout,” I said. “The one who reported that the Huguenot army is on its way to Paris. I would be curious to learn where it is now.”
“You don’t believe me,” he said. He gave a short, nervous laugh, the way that my cousin Ippolito had when I had asked him about all the other girls.
“I only want to see the proof for myself,” I told him.
Just as Ippolito had, he grew abruptly furious. “What is the point of all this? What can be gained now from studying evidence that has already proved damning? They are all dead; nothing will bring them back to life! Even if we have made a terrible mistake, it is for the best—they can never again wage war against us, never!” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You have been talking to someone. Who?” His fingers dug into the tender flesh of my upper arms. “Who tells you these lies?”
I stared into his faithless eyes, and my heart broke; he had played me as easily as he had his innocent sister. I gazed beyond him then, at the windows overlooking the haunted courtyard. He knew, of course, that Charles was sickly and could not live much longer; Navarre and the Huguenots would have been the only real threat to his reign. Coligny had merely presented h
im with an opportunity to rid himself of his chief rivals.
I should not have been surprised by my son’s ruthlessness, knowing what I did of his mother.
“Cosimo Ruggieri,” I whispered. “He said that I would be betrayed.”
The bodies of the dead lay in the courtyard for more than a day, as the soldiers who had slaughtered them were needed to defend the palace. In the relentless sun, the stink grew intolerable; we shut the windows despite the heat, but the flies found their way inside along with the smell, which clung to our clothes and hair. I pulled the drapes and could not be coaxed outside.
The battle continued on the streets of Paris for five days while we fearful royals huddled inside the reinforced walls of the Louvre, listening to the screams and savage fighting outside the palace gates. The people misunderstood the assault on the rue de Béthizy and the dispensation of arms to Catholics for self-protection. A rumor began that the King had ordered citizens to attack the Huguenots, and it spread with a vengeance.
Over the course of a week, seventy thousand innocents died in Paris and the countryside. Responsibility for the attack was laid, rightfully, at my door: Madame la Serpente, they call me now, the Black Queen.
I will not stop them from telling the truth. But now my adopted countrymen believe that I had planned the attack from the very beginning, luring first Coligny, then Navarre, as part of my scheme to eradicate the Huguenot movement.
Guise’s attack on the Hôtel de Béthizy was a resounding success. Two of his common soldiers kicked down the door to the bedroom where Coligny lay with Doctor Paré at his bedside. When asked to identify himself, Coligny did so freely but looked on the soldiers with disdain, saying, “I should be killed by a gentleman, at least, and not these boors.” In answer, one of the boors ran his sword through the Admiral’s chest and flung him out the window. The body chanced to land right beside the delighted Duke of Guise.
By then, vengeful Catholics had taken to the streets; they castrated the body, dragged it through the city, and hurled the mutilated corpse into the Seine. Guise proudly delivered the head to me, in a silk pouch that failed to contain its overpowering stench. I turned away in horror and ordered it embalmed.
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