Fortunes of France 4: League of Spies

by Robert Merle

  “‘Ah, my son,’ she replied, ‘how can you say that since you’ve signed the Edict of Union with the Duc de Guise?’

  “‘In which I’ve ceded everything to him.’

  “‘Well,’ she cried, ‘that’s nothing! If we’d had to give him half the kingdom to preserve the other half, wouldn’t we have done it?’

  “‘Madame,’ objected the king, with a very unhappy glance around the room, as if he were ashamed that such words, so unworthy of a queen, should have been spoken in front of so many people who might repeat them. ‘Madame, a kingdom is a whole. He who has only half has nothing.’

  “‘Well, thank God it hasn’t come to that,’ rejoined Catherine, ‘since the duc has sworn to obey you.’

  “‘As he has and will always do,’ snarled the king through clenched teeth.” (And Quéribus, pivoting on his heels to emphasize his wasp-like figure, added, as if to show off what excellent hearing he had, “And I heard him quite well, even though he scarcely murmured this last sentence.”)

  “‘And as for you, my son,’ continued the queen mother, ‘you display too little confidence in Guise by refusing to return to Paris. Your presence here makes it seem as though you harbour some resentment for what happened on the twelfth and thirteenth of May!’

  “‘Madame,’ replied the king, his eyes shining with particular brilliance, ‘I’ve never held a grudge against anyone: you know my natural goodness.’

  “‘Ah, Monsieur, I know it well!’ replied the queen mother, who had completely missed Henri’s derisive tone. ‘Of course, I know it for having often profited from it myself, and have always known you to be benevolent and extremely forgiving.’

  “‘Extremely well said, Madame. Sometimes I have trouble forgiving myself for being so accommodating. Perhaps I would have had fewer failures if I’d been more demanding.’

  “‘Well, my son!’ she said, her head bobbing with age and infirmity, her heavy eyelids half closed over her large protruding eyes. ‘You shouldn’t be ashamed of your good qualities!’

  “‘I thank you, Madame. And I thank you for asking me, in the name of my natural benevolence, to return to Paris and to my Louvre. But I must ask you: what would I be doing if I agreed to return, other than putting myself back in the hands of the very people who, on the twelfth and thirteenth, chased me out of Paris?’

  “‘But you’ve made peace with these people since then!’

  “‘True,’ agreed the king, but turned away to hide his face from the queen mother and from the rest of us looking on, and went to stand in the window bay (as he’d done in their previous meeting), where, making a sign to Bellièvre to give her his arm, the queen mother followed him, puffing at the effort, her fat lips gaping like those of a fish out of water.

  “‘My son,’ she insisted, ‘I cannot but beg you, with the greatest urgency, to return to Paris, since I gave my word that you would do so and I would lose my credit and my authority if you refused.’

  “‘I understand you well,’ said the king, his back obstinately turned and throwing her a frigid look over his shoulder, ‘and also understand that the duc is speaking through your mouth. Assuredly, he could not find a better interpreter than you. But, Madame, hear me well. Anything you could ask of me, I would grant you instantly… except this that you are asking of me now, and I beg you humbly, Madame, not to trouble me further. You would make me very angry.’

  “‘Ah, Monsieur!’ cried the queen mother, bursting into tears (but you know very well, Pierre, that to a hard heart tears come easily). ‘How cruel your words are! What will people think of me if you reject me? What respect will I ever have then? How will people care about me if you throw me out? Denied and rejected by you—me, whom God chose to be your mother!’

  “‘Madame, the entire world knows how much I love and have obeyed you, but in this present business, it will not be so. I will not—I repeat not—go to Paris.’

  “‘Oh, Monsieur my son!’ cried the queen mother, tears flowing down her fat cheeks. ‘I see what the problem is! It’s all about the barricades, which have blinded you and caused you to lose your reason!’

  “‘Reason for you is pure folly for me!’ snapped the king without turning to face her.

  “‘Ah, my son! Have you suddenly lost your natural benevolence? I’ve always known you to be such an accommodating, sweet person, with an easy and forgiving disposition.’

  “‘What you say is true, Madame,’ agreed the king, now turning to face her and smiling wryly, ‘but what can I do? Others have changed me! That is also true.’

  “Then, with a sudden burst of laughter right in her face, he cried:

  “‘It’s that wicked Épernon, as everyone knows, who ruined my natural goodness! Which is why he has earned my disgrace!’

  “And this said, he laughed in her face with the greatest derision, made a deep bow and, abandoning her there, strode rapidly from the room.”

  Having heard this report, I complimented Quéribus on the pretty tale he’d recounted for me. And, of course, having heard these compliments and lapped them up, he attempted to go one better, as was his wont:

  “Did you observe,” he cooed, “how I used a clever alliteration: ‘baseless and bumbling’? Wasn’t that rather cute? I am able to do these without study and scarcely trying. How did you like it?”

  “Very sweet.”

  “The king adored it! As preoccupied as he was by affairs of state, he deigned to smile at it. And it’s no mean compliment when Henri, who speaks so exquisitely, admires your words! I made an account of this while we were at dinner with his gentlemen, and, seeing the king looking sombre, I wanted to cheer him up, and so I said, ‘Sire, do you think we could now refer to things inconsequential as “baseless and bumbling?”’ And at that moment, my brother—”

  “He smiled.”

  “Yes! He smiled!”

  “It’s abundantly clear,” I said, “that you are very solidly in the king’s favour and I’m very pleased that your credit at court is equal to mine.”

  “Well, my brother,” he replied pretending to speak with some modesty, “I do indeed believe that the king loves me well enough. And as for me, you know very well that I would give my life for him.”

  This statement, unlike many of those self-satisfied phrases that preceded it, did not make me want to laugh, because it was true, as true as the Gospels. Quéribus’s foibles may have floated too often to the surface, but his heart was loyal, unlike those of some noblemen I could name, whose beautiful bark of obedience hid a very corrupt sap.

  “This break between Catherine and the king,” Quéribus continued, “took place on Saturday, the thirtieth of July. Guise arrived in Chartres on the second of August, and, my brother, you can imagine, knowing him as you do, the doffing of the hat and the genuflections of the Magnificent before the king, who raised him to his feet, embraced him warmly—oh! that he had suffocated him!—kissed him on both cheeks and invited him to his table. When the cup-bearer had poured each of them a goblet of wine, the king turned to Guise and said, quite playfully:

  “‘My cousin, whom should we toast?’

  “‘Well, sire,’ the duc replied, ‘whomever you please! It’s for you to propose the toast. I’d be very happy to obey.’

  “‘Well, then!’ said the king with a sly smile. ‘Let’s drink to our friends the Huguenots!’

  “‘Very well, then!’ agreed the duc, understanding the mischievousness of the king’s proposal.

  “‘But let’s also toast,’ said the king, ‘our good barricaders in Paris. Let’s drink to them as well, and let’s not forget them!’

  “Guise managed to laugh at this, but it was a laugh that didn’t come easily, for he was quite confused by the king’s mixing together Huguenots and barricaders, who were thrown into a common sack as rebels to his throne, whereas Guise considered the first his enemies and the second his friends.”

  Having spoken so long, and having now spoken of wine, Quéribus had got thirsty, and told me so, whereu
pon I signalled to Miroul, and he left the library to ask that we be served a bottle of wine, but returned immediately, since he didn’t want to miss any of Quéribus’s story, especially since the fate of the world was hanging in the balance at this moment when Guise and the Armada were threatening to destroy two kingdoms. Fixing his varicoloured eyes on Quéribus, who’d fallen silent as he waited to be served, Miroul seemed to be counting his heartbeats, as was I, to measure the minutes that separated us from an uncertain and dangerous future.

  During this pause in the narration, I realized how astonished I was that the queen mother had asked her son to return to Paris. And as I thought about it I couldn’t decide—and have never really resolved to this day—whether the queen mother, had this request been consented to, would have put her son’s life and liberty in the utmost danger. Was it a monstrous act or a completely naive one? In the latter case, I can at least imagine that perhaps she thought that if she served Guise’s interests, she would acquire so much credit with him that she could protect the king if the worst came to worst.

  I confess that this question still troubles me today and makes me doubt the intelligence that is often attributed to Catherine de’ Medici, this great Machiavellian. Adding to my doubts about her, Pierre de L’Étoile told me that he’d seen a copy of a letter she’d sent years previously to Queen Elizabeth, in which she proposed to marry one of her sons to Mary Stuart, who was at that time already a prisoner of her queen! I repeat: she suggested that the Catholic Mary Stuart, ex-queen of Scotland and pretender, even in her jail, to the English throne, in whom Elizabeth placed as much trust as she would have in the tooth of the most viperous viper (which is why she kept her in jail), should marry the son of the French queen mother, who would then have been able, if the situation presented itself, to uphold her pretensions to Elizabeth’s throne! Can one possibly imagine a proposal less likely to seduce the sovereign, to whom Catherine, with a candour that approached the most block-headed stupidity, had the gall to suggest this? On this occasion, and on the one I just mentioned, involving the return of the king to Paris (a disastrous request that the king, despite his benevolent nature, could never forgive), I can’t decide whether one should attribute Catherine’s behaviour to the perfidy of a hateful mother or to a degree of credulousness that, in this aged weaver of innumerable intrigues, might seem hard to believe. I confess that, ever since the St Bartholomew’s day massacre, I’ve held Catherine in such profound abhorrence that I don’t trust my judgement and wouldn’t want, even in her case, to be unfair.

  “My brother,” said Quéribus as he put down his goblet to launch back into his report on Guise’s reaction to the king’s toast, “the Magnificent looked confused and saddened when he heard the king put Huguenots and barricaders under the same banner, but that was nothing compared to the ugly face he made when he heard the news three weeks later.”

  “What news?”

  “The defeat of the Invincible Armada…”

  “Did I hear you correctly?” I shouted, jumping to my feet (along with Miroul). “The Armada defeated? The Invincible Armada vanquished! Are you sure?”

  “Entirely!”

  “’Sblood! Is it true? Has it really happened? Are you in your right mind, my brother?”

  “Completely!” laughed Quéribus. “Do you think I’m a madman? A babe in arms? A raving lunatic?”

  “Heavens!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, my arms and head shaking as if I’d lost my mind. “I’m the lunatic! The Armada defeated! Miroul, did you hear? The Armada defeated! My brother, why didn’t you tell us straightaway?”

  “Pierre,” laughed Quéribus, “a good storyteller has to arrange the parts of his story carefully, like a cook a good meal, and keep the best for last!”

  “But the Armada—good God! The Armada defeated! Ah, you English, what a great country! Valiant people! A sublime kingdom! And forever blessed by the Lord!”

  I jumped up, grabbed Quéribus and pulled him into a victory dance, giving him a hug and another to Miroul and then another to Quéribus, who, to my considerable surprise, embraced Miroul, commoner that he was.

  “Heavens!” I cried, throwing myself into an armchair, worn out by my excitement and the excessive joy I felt. “What an immense weight has been lifted from our hearts by the bad fortune of the Armada! May the Lord be praised throughout the centuries!”

  “Amen!” agreed Miroul. And looking at each other, each of us with tears in his eyes, we suddenly fell on our knees and said a fervent prayer to the Almighty.

  “Ah, you Huguenots,” observed Quéribus when we’d done. “It’s a strange thing to go praying just anywhere, outside a church, chapel or oratory!”

  “God is everywhere,” observed Miroul.

  “Certainly! Certainly!” agreed Quéribus, using this adverb in jest since it was reputed to be in great usage among those of the reformed faith. And at this, we all had a good laugh.

  “My brother,” I said when we had all calmed down after such unexpected joy, “tell us about this stunning victory, which cuts the heads off the hydra that is the Inquisition for the time being!”

  “Well, not all of them, alas!” replied Quéribus. “We still have some in France! But in truth, I don’t know very much about the defeat of the Armada except that Admiral Drake, with a navy of much smaller, lighter and more mobile ships than the heavy Spanish galleons, and better armed with cannon, threw his ships, one against ten, towards this enormous fleet, and made terrible ravages on the first day, and on the second caused even more terrible damage, and then used the tides to send eight burning ships into the harbour where the Spanish had taken refuge. Forced to flee the harbour, the Armada was exposed to a violent storm that finished the work Drake had begun. But, my brother, the best news of all is that Mendoza has gone to see the king.”

  “What? Mendoza in Chartres? I thought that he was the only foreign ambassador who’d remained in Paris with Guise.”

  “That’s true enough. But having heard a false rumour that the Armada was victorious, he galloped all the way to Chartres to make this triumphant announcement to the king. Mendoza—the zealous, twisted, arrogant Mendoza, who, before being Felipe’s ambassador to France, held the post in England, where he hatched so many vile plots against Elizabeth that England finally threw him out of the country like a doctor puncturing a boil to rid it of pus.”

  “What an image, Quéribus!” I laughed. “Will you tell it to the king?”

  “I thought of it myself! But I must continue. Mendoza arrived in Chartres, jumped right out of his carriage and ran to the cathedral to thank the Blessed Virgin for this wonderful victory—who, if she’d not been made of stone, would have shivered to see such a wicked man addressing her.”

  “That’s a phrase worthy of a Huguenot!” observed Miroul sotto voce.

  “From the cathedral he rushed to the bishop’s palace, where the king is lodging, brandishing a letter he had received in Dieppe, and with true Spanish bombast yelled at the top of his lungs, ‘Victoria! Victoria!’ The king received him with a quiet, suave and benevolent air, and said, in the most exquisitely polite tone:

  “‘Alas, Monsieur, alas! I fear that my beloved cousin the king of Spain is going to be excessively disappointed to learn, as I’ve just done, through a courier from Dieppe, that Drake sank twelve of his vessels and killed 5,000 men.’

  “‘Sire, that’s not possible!’ cried Mendoza, turning ashen.

  “‘Alas, Monsieur,’ soothed the king in honeyed tones, ‘I regret that it’s not only possible, but has actually happened. I have in my court 300 Turkish galley slaves from a vessel that went aground off of Calais. Would you like to see them?’

  “‘Those Turks,’ snarled Mendoza, ‘belong to the king my master. I demand that they be returned to us!’

  “‘Monsieur, my council will certainly consider your request,’ replied the king with utter calm; and he presented Mendoza his hand, which the Spaniard would have bitten if he’d dared. But not daring to do so, he hurrie
d back to see Guise, who assured him of his support and went to plead his case with the council.

  “‘France,’ replied the king gently, ‘does not recognize the condition of slavery. Whoever steps onto French soil is a free man. I say, therefore, that we return to the sultan, who is our ally, those poor Turks.’”

  This opinion, despite being eminently just, only carried the day in the council after a most bitter debate, at which one could judge which of the members of the council were Guisards by the way they openly opposed the king’s recommendation.

  “The king,” continued Quéribus, “from what I heard from François d’O, made some reflections at the council about those of his disenfranchised ministers who were favouring Spain, and about the remedy that it would ultimately be necessary to bring to bear against their partiality.”

  My Angelina did not welcome Quéribus with much warmth, suspecting as she did that he had come, on the king’s orders, to whisk me away from her, and as soon as she learnt that she had not been mistaken in her conjectures, she threw herself into my arms and burst into tears. This offered me an exquisite excuse to comfort her, moved as I was not only by her beauty, but also by her emotion and by our mutual tenderness, which the years had not dulled. On the contrary, it seemed to me that our feelings had become more acute over the years and penetrated more easily into our hearts—after all the trials they had endured—than in our first years together, when we were less assured of each other and a misunderstanding was more likely to cause some distance.

  Although Angelina had borne me six children, she had lost none of the freshness of her youth. Of course, she was older, but she was still beautiful, although possessing another kind of beauty, without any thickening of her girth, her bosom high and vigorous, and her face, though showing some wrinkles, more serene and soft than in the first bloom of her youth. She had wonderful, wide eyes that communicated her gift of always anticipating and enjoying my needs. In a word, she was infinitely more touching than when I’d first met her and my senses had galloped out ahead of my heart, but now the latter had taken the lead, nourishing the lifeblood of the former. For, as soon as she was in my arms, her nightdress flowing in the evening breeze, undone by her tears and by her appearance, I experienced a tenderness that made me tremble from my neck to my heels, and I felt myself melting into a kind of pity and limitless love that fortified my thirst for her and, once satisfied, only multiplied.