The Huntress

by Susan Carroll

  Ariane had been deeply aggrieved, but she minded the loss for her husband far more than he did himself.

  Justice shrugged at her words. “Bah, you know how little I valued my grandfather’s estates and title. Gabrielle was right when she accused me of being a peasant at heart. And you seem to forget you are not the only one guilty of being versed in the ancient knowledge. I learned quite a bit from my own wicked old grandmother.”

  Slinging his arm about her shoulders to guide her back toward the house, Justice continued, “Chérie, you are far too wise and clever of a woman to ever be ordinary and content with ignorance. And from what I have heard of this petite fille of the Wolfe, I suspect young Margaret may be the same.”

  “I fear you are right,” Ariane said. “Cat intends to remain in London and guard the child until I order her to do otherwise. But I can tell she longs to be delivered from a city that, to quote Cat, ‘reeks of Englishmen.’”

  As Justice chuckled, Ariane added, “And to own the truth, I miss my gallowglass.”

  “Until Wolfe can be persuaded, I do not see what else there is to be done. I am astonished he would put his daughter at risk this way.”

  “Martin does not see that Faire Isle would be any safer.”

  “Then you must write and tell him of all the precautions we have taken,” Justice said. “I have posted sentries at the causeway leading from the mainland and have men patrolling every secluded cove including the far side of the isle. No one will make a landing unseen. And we have friends along the coast of Brittany prepared to light signal fires should any of the Dark Queen’s soldiers be spotted approaching. Faire Isle is safer than it has ever been.”

  “I will certainly inform Martin of that, but I fear it will do little good. He believes we might have overestimated the danger and refuses to be panicked into abandoning his life in London.”

  “He could be right, ma chère. You must admit it has been very quiet and peaceful since the night Gautier broke up the coven’s meeting. If the Dark Queen had learned anything, she would have surely descended upon us by now like an avenging fury.”

  Ariane wished she could comfort herself with the thought of Catherine’s ignorance, but she shook her head. “The queen might be quietly biding her time. That woman has always had the most subtle and tortuous mind.”

  “But by all reports she has enough trouble managing her half-mad son and preventing the duc de Guise from completely assuming all power in France.” Justice gave Ariane’s shoulders a bracing squeeze. “If things remain this calm, if we hear no more reports of the coven, I see no reason why Cat should not return to us by Christmastide.”

  “I worry more about Catherine than those witches.”

  “She is getting old, ma chère, and she is not immortal.” Justice brightened, adding cheerfully. “Even the Dark Queen cannot live forever.”

  CATHERINE DE MEDICI SWEPT INTO THE AUDIENCE CHAMBER, head held high. The black silk of her gown, the veil trailing from her bon grace cap, lent a severity to her appearance. Her thinning silver hair, heavy jowls, and lined countenance revealed every one of her sixty-seven years.

  Nonetheless, she moved majestically to the throne, acknowledging the curtsies and bows of her courtiers with a regal nod. None but she knew what the effort cost her. Her joints, inflamed and swollen with rheumatism, throbbed with pain that would have confined a lesser woman to her bed.

  The strength of her will alone kept Catherine on her feet, that plus a grim determination to display no weakness in front of an enemy. And Catherine had few enemies greater than Henry of Lorraine, the third duc de Guise.

  Her sight had grown dimmer with the passing years, but she would have had to be near blind to overlook the duke’s presence. He stood out from all the other courtiers, a tall handsome man, his dark hair waving back from a high forehead, his lean face sporting a neat mustache and beard. A scar bisected one cheek, a souvenir from battle that only enhanced his reputation as France’s premier warrior.

  His costly attire was elegant but simple, reflecting his desire ever to present himself as a soldier, the champion of the Catholic cause. At the age of thirty-seven, he was in the prime of his life. His very health and vigor seemed an affront to Catherine’s aging and aching bones.

  She would have enjoyed ignoring his presence, keeping him waiting until she had dealt with even the humblest of the petitioners, but that was not possible with de Guise. The other courtiers fell back like a flock of witless sheep scattering before a sleek mastiff.

  His blue cape swirling off one shoulder, the duke dropped to one knee before her, a grand gesture, merely for protocol’s sake. She no longer had the power to bring this arrogant nobleman to his knees, and what was worse, everyone present knew that.

  She kept him kneeling before her as long as she dared. A petty victory, but the only one she seemed able to gain over the haughty duke.

  “Your Majesty.”

  “Monsieur le duc.” Catherine summoned a taut smile that he affected to return. They might well have been figures in a masque, their false smiles but a thin disguise for their mutual loathing.

  Catherine had been in a struggle for power with the upstart de Guise family ever since the death of her husband. The present duke had once thought to advance himself by marrying Catherine’s own daughter, the Princess Margot. Catherine had thwarted that ambition by wedding Margot to the King of Navarre. De Guise had never forgiven Catherine for that.

  Not deigning to offer him her hand to kiss, she touched his shoulder and bid him rise. “This is an unexpected pleasure. I did not know you had returned to Paris.”

  A lie and they both knew it. Catherine made sure that her spies kept her well informed of this dangerous man’s every movement.

  “I returned only yesterday and made all haste to wait upon Your Grace.”

  “Pining for my presence all that much, were you?” Catherine drawled.

  “I am sure Your Grace knows full well how much I delight in your company,” de Guise replied in an equally silky tone. “But actually it was the king I hoped to address on a matter of some concern to me.”

  “Indeed?” Catherine wished that her eyes still had their old power to peer into a man’s gaze and strip his mind bare.

  What could possibly be of such concern to him that he would seek audience with a king he despised? De Guise had already wrested control of the army from Catherine’s weak son. He had won the adoration of the people of Paris and was acclaimed a hero wherever he went. He had wealth, vast estates, power. What more could the man possibly desire?

  The answer rested behind her, the gilt-trimmed throne beneath its canopy of state.

  Not while there is any breath left in my body, Catherine vowed. She deliberately lowered herself onto the seat, a painful process, her knee joints protesting, her hip flaring with a spasm of pain. She gave no indication of it beyond a tightening of her lips.

  “Regrettably, the king is indisposed this morning.” Catherine suppressed a scowl as she thought of Henry still lolling abed, groggy with the aftereffects of too much carousing with his mignons. But that was preferable to those times when the king suffered from a fit of religious zeal, flagellating himself to the point of collapse.

  She continued smoothly, “Rest assured that any petition you present to me will immediately be laid before the king.”

  A flicker of annoyance crossed the duke’s face. Clearly he had hoped to deal with her far more weak-willed son. But he had to know well that any request of his would reach her ears anyway. There had been a time when Catherine’s son had attempted to rebel and shake off her influence. But with his kingdom torn apart by civil war and on the verge of ruin from his extravagance, Henry had grown more dependent upon his maman, ready to hide behind her skirts at any hint of approaching disaster.

  The duke frowned for a moment and then gave a fatalistic shrug. “My concern is for Thomas Morgan, the man who acts as agent here in Paris for my cousin, the unfortunate queen of Scotland.”

  “
I know full well who the man he is.”

  “Then why has he been thrown into the Bastille?”

  “Because Monsieur Morgan has been a very busy little man, weaving plots, seeking French support for a scheme to free Mary and to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.”

  “Surely that is something that all devout Catholics should wish for.” The duke crossed himself, assuming that look of false piety that always made Catherine want to slap him. She was further annoyed when agreement rippled amongst some of the courtiers present.

  “The Tudor witch has falsely imprisoned my poor cousin for over ten years.” The duke added sternly, “I hardly need remind Your Grace that our pretty little Mary was once your daughter-in-law.”

  Catherine pursed her lips. No, she needed little reminder of the pert chit who had once been wed to her sickly first son, Francis. Mary Stuart had had all the hauteur of her French de Guise relations. Those had been bleak and frustrating days for Catherine. In the wake of her husband’s death, she had watched the de Guise family and Mary gain ascendancy over Francis, usurping the power and influence that should have fallen to Catherine as the boy’s mother and dowager queen of France.

  When Francis had died after his brief reign of two years, Catherine had been all too glad to send her impertinent daughter-in-law packing back to her native Scotland. What a willful, passionate creature the young woman had been, ruled by her emotions. It had little surprised Catherine when Mary had come to grief, not only losing her throne in Scotland, but ending up in an English prison.

  Masking her indifference behind a bland look of concern, Catherine said, “I am of course as aggrieved as you over our pretty Mary’s fate. Alas, I am told that she has grown quite old and fat in her captivity.”

  “A fate that has overtaken many of us,” the duke retorted, raking his gaze over Catherine’s corpulent form. One of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting gasped at his insolence.

  Catherine chose to ignore it, although her fingers tightened imperceptibly on the arms of the throne.

  “Monsieur Morgan is my cousin’s good and faithful servant. I must demand his immediate release,” the duke said.

  Catherine’s voice was a shade colder as she replied, “Regrettably, that is a request I am certain the king will deny. The arrest of Monsieur Morgan was necessary to placate the English.”

  “Since when does France need to placate English heretics?”

  “We cannot afford to offend any foreign power. Not while both our treasury and army are depleted by civil war.” Catherine leaned slightly forward. “A war that as yet you have failed to bring to a successful conclusion.”

  The duke scowled. “It will only be a matter of time until I crush the Huguenot rebels.”

  “So you have been assuring me for over a year. Forgive me if I don’t order up the fireworks in celebration anytime soon.”

  De Guise reddened. A low murmur of sympathy for him and indignation against Catherine buzzed about the chamber. Catherine ground her teeth, realizing she might have gone too far. In the eyes of many Frenchmen, de Guise was the hero and she had long been stigmatized as the villainess. The Dark Queen, the Italian witch, the Florentine upstart who had never been considered good enough to wed into the French royal family. How little had changed since she had come to France as a young bride so many years ago. Nothing except that she had grown older, weaker, and less able to hold her ground against her enemies.

  Although it nigh choked her to do so, Catherine assumed a placating tone. “I am sure you will soon triumph over the Huguenots. Then you may don your armor, sail to England, and rush to Mary’s aid yourself.”

  “Be assured that I shall do so,” de Guise snapped.

  Catherine smiled, entertaining a blissful picture of the duke being pierced by a hundred arrows fired by a troop of enraged English yeomen. There was the chance that he might succeed in putting Mary on the English throne and thus increase his own power and influence, but Catherine doubted it. She was confident that Elizabeth Tudor would never allow that to happen. Like Catherine herself, the Tudor woman was a survivor, tough, wily, and clever.

  Wiping the smile from her face, Catherine continued, “In the meantime, I can assure you that Monsieur Morgan is lodged most comfortably in the Bastille and can receive what visitors he pleases. His confinement appears to have in no way curtailed his intrigues on your cousin’s behalf.”

  The duke frowned, not pleased by her response to his demand, but he did not press her further. He had not yet grown powerful enough to entirely bend Catherine and the king of France to his will.

  But as the duke made his bow and strode arrogantly from the chamber, Catherine feared that it was only a matter of time.

  She heard a few more petitions, but scarce paid heed to what was being said. She’d once had remarkable powers of concentration, but exhaustion seemed to claim her far too easily these days. When she was informed that the English ambassador had arrived, pleading for an audience, Catherine refused, knowing what Sir Edward Stafford wanted. Not satisfied with Thomas Morgan’s arrest, the ambassador was insisting that the Scottish queen’s agent be turned over to the English government for trial.

  Catherine was heartily sick of the entire situation. She wished she could have dispatched the entire lot of them, the troublesome Morgan, the importunate ambassador, and the arrogant de Guise.

  Especially the duke. When she had been younger, at the height of her power, she would have known how to deal with such an insolent man after her own subtle fashion. A suitable accident arranged, a little morsel of something deadly slipped into his cup. Had the duke truly grown so powerful she did not dare lift a hand against him or had she merely declined into a weak, elderly woman afraid to act?

  How old age makes cowards of us all, she thought with a sigh. Refusing to hear any more petitions, Catherine left the audience chamber, her ladies trailing in her wake.

  Her footsteps lagged as she wound her way through the corridors of the Louvre, longing for the peace of her apartments, a comforting tisane to ease some of the pain in her joints.

  She encountered the king emerging from his own chamber, as usual surrounded by an entourage of his painted sycophants. She thought sourly that Henry was looking remarkably fit for a man who had declared himself far too weak to deal with any matters of state or petitions.

  Once Catherine had desired to have the reins of government entirely in her own hands, but Henry’s increasing avoidance of his duties as king was becoming a source of concern and aggravation.

  Henry looked little better pleased to see her than she was to see him. He strode toward her, his long black hair flowing back from his sallow complexion. He was attired in a saffron-colored doublet sharply nipped in at the waist, his ballooning trunk hose making his legs appear far too thin, almost effeminate. A painful contrast to the bold, vigorous duke who had so recently swaggered out of the audience chamber.

  Although he was younger than de Guise, Henry’s face was so carved by lines of dissipation, he appeared the far older of the two.

  Catherine forced her knees into a stiff painful curtsy as Henry dutifully saluted her cheek.

  “I’m glad to see you looking so well, my son,” she replied, making no effort to hide her sneer.

  “Well enough for a man with death hovering over his shoulder,” he replied peevishly.

  Catherine suppressed a wearied sigh. “What ails Your Grace now?”

  “What ails me? What ails me?” His voice rose a little with each syllable. “Have you not troubled to look outside this morning?”

  Not giving her a chance to reply, Henry gripped her arm and all but dragged her over to the nearest window. Catherine gritted her teeth as her bones protested in pain.

  “Look out there,” he insisted.

  Catherine’s heart skipped a beat in spite of herself. Conditions in France had grown so bad these past few years, a succession of droughts and poor harvests spreading famine and desperation. Many had been driven from their homes and taken to begging
upon the roads.

  She half dreaded to find a discontented mob converging upon the palace. But all she saw was the expansive lawn sloping down to the peaceful waters of the Seine, the lovely gardens and fountains that she had designed herself.

  Shrugging free of her son’s grip, she said, “I see nothing beyond the fact that the roses require pruning.”

  “Not there,” Henry snapped, seizing her chin, forcing her to gaze upward. “There. In the sky.”

  Catherine squinted until her eyes watered, but she could make out little beyond the faint streak set against the pale blue sky. But she well knew what was agitating her son, the same object that had been sending all other weak-minded fools across France into a panic. That damnable comet.

  She fought to curb her impatience. “I have told you before, Henry, it is nothing, only a comet.”

  “But it is getting closer, Maman.”

  “No, it is heading toward the sun and will soon disappear entirely.”

  “What will that matter? It has already delivered its terrible curse. You know what the comet means as well as I do. Some great man is going to die.”

  And what has that got to do with you, my son? Catherine thought, but she patted his arm. “Surely Your Grace is too clever to be troubled by such nonsense.”

  “Nonsense? It is a matter of historical fact that a comet appeared to herald the death of Julius Caesar.”

  “You are hardly a Caesar, Henry,” she said dryly, but in his agitation, he ignored her, drumming his fingers against the windowpane. His slender hand was so weighted down by costly rings Catherine often marveled that he was able to lift it.

  “And what of the Emperor Nero? From what I have been reading, he most certainly understood the dangerous significance of comets.”

  “Ah, yes, Nero. What a fine example of reason and sagacity he was.”