by Robert Merle
“Well, My Lady!” I said in English (since I suspected Alizon had her ear at the keyhole). “What are you doing here? Can the Moor and your mistress do without you in London? And don’t you have a house and husband in Shropshire?”
“Must you remind me?” she laughed. “When I’m trying so hard to forget it, especially when I see you dressed as you are, and covered with all that make-up. But, thank God, your eyes are still the same, which so agreeably devour my feminine charms. My Lark, I can’t hold out any longer. Your lips, I beg you!”
“Ah, My Lady, nothing would please me more, but it’s not possible. We’re being watched.”
“And by whom, other than this little brown Fury on the other side of the door who let me in?” asked Lady Markby bursting out laughing. “My Lark, I might have known that there would be some roses hidden among the thorns of your life in hiding!”
“No, My Lady, against all appearances, you’re mistaken. But please sit down, I’m dying to know what’s brought you to Paris!”
“Sono qui una persona nuova,”‡ she explained (having the tendency, common to Windsor and the Louvre, to break into Italian for no good reason). “Lord Stafford’s house is now surrounded by so many spies, both from the League and from Spain, that no one can go in or out
without being followed by at least two of them. I’m not staying at Lord Stafford’s and no one in Paris has ever seen me—so at least for a while I can move about freely.”
“So, My Lady, I’m listening.”
“Picardy,” she said, arranging the folds of her hoop skirt, which were emerging on every side from her chair, “is the reason I’m here.”
“Aha!” I said, pricking up my ears. And in the sudden interest I took in her words, I momentarily forgot her bewitching beauty, adding, “I heard yesterday that my master is very worried about the events there.”
“And no less so my queen, but for very different reasons. My Lark,” she continued, “I’m going to shed new light on this situation as long as you’ll sing my song to your king.”
“My Lady, may your heart be ever assured of this: I will never stop singing ad maximam gloriam Henrici et Elizabethae reginae.”§
“Here’s my new light: Aumale and Guise are taking one after another the king’s cities in Picardy and putting the royal garrisons to flight, disobeying his orders and refusing to accept his governor.”
“We knew that already, beautiful dawn.”
“But did you know why? Primo: in Picardy, lots of money can flow from nearby Flanders to help Guise and his rebellion. Secundo: in a sign of reciprocity, Guise will try to take Calais, Boulogne or Dieppe, to provide Felipe II with a harbour and base for his ‘Invincible Armada’.”
“Calais is too big a morsel for Guise’s throat. And Aumale already failed to take Boulogne.”
“Which leaves Dieppe,” answered Lady Markby with shining eyes. “And if Guise takes Dieppe, and gives it to Spain, my mistress will be very displeased.”
“Dieppe? I’d never really thought about Dieppe.”
“Guise has. Otherwise would Aumale have taken Abbeville? It’s only a skip and a jump from Abbeville to Dieppe.”
“Well, I thank you, my dawn! You’re bringing welcome light to the situation. Now I understand why the king is so worried!”
“But stay!” said My Lady, separating each of her words like so many arrows that she was letting fly towards a target. “It would be enough if the king of France were to throw some troops into Rouen to lock up Normandy and prevent Guise’s garrison at Abbeville from taking Dieppe.”
“The king,” I conceded after ruminating on her suggestion, “will hesitate to take troops out of Paris to reinforce Rouen, since his capital is already practically under siege.”
“On the other hand,” Lady Markby pointed out, “Guise will hardly want to dispatch troops that are in Picardy to march on Paris, if there’s a royal presence in Rouen that could cut him down from behind.”
“Ah, that’s very well thought out! But this must be weighed by much finer and wiser royal scales than the ones I have here.”
“But will you suggest it to your master?”
“That I will, and wholeheartedly.”
“We have reason to believe,” Lady Markby continued gravely, “that Felipe II will launch Guise against Paris on the day he launches his Invincible Armada against us. That day is coming very soon. God save the king of France if Elizabeth falls under the assault of this immense fleet.”
“Amen!” I said, tears suddenly streaming from my eyes, so abhorrent to my imagination was the frightful thought of the Spanish mercenaries sowing brutal desolation across our two countries, on whose heels would come the greatest scourge of all—the Inquisition! I could easily see and conceive how this predicament would go far beyond France. The fate of the entire world would be at stake the minute the sails of the Invincible Armada filled with wind: if they were not repulsed by the bastion of England, all of Christianity would be subjected to the fanatical zeal of the monks, who would everywhere extirpate, with slow, meticulous and methodical cruelty, the nerves and tender roots of freedom of conscience.
“And is this day,” I managed to say when I’d overcome my emotion, but still trembling, “so near?”
“We believe so,” replied Lady Markby, seizing my two hands and squeezing them hard. “My Lark, these are the oats that have nourished us on this occasion. I’m giving them to you, so that your master can make good use of them in his turn.”
“I hear you.”
“We know that in the first days of April, Felipe II sent to Guise, in Soissons, Moreo from Aragon, who urged Guise to march on Paris in the first days of May, promising him 300,000 écus, 6,000 German foot soldiers and 1,200 lancers.”
“Guise knows the Spaniard, and knows what his promises are worth.”
“They will be kept if, at the same time, Felipe II launches his fleet against us. My Lark, time is passing, and I must away. Your little Fury behind the door must have her ears ringing with our English. I’ll be back to visit you if necessary.”
“My Lady,” I said, kissing her hands, “I am so happy for myself and for my king that we have had this talk, and doubly happy that Elizabeth sends on her missions a woman of such amiable beauty as yourself.”
“Is she not a woman herself?” said Lady Markby proudly. “Are we necessarily stupider than you just because we don’t have a fencing foil behind our flies?”
“Fie then!” I laughed. “I neither said that nor thought it. Quite the contrary, I think there’s more diplomacy in your little finger than in the large member that you mentioned.”
“A beautiful lie from an able tongue!”
“Which is all yours…”
“I shall remember that promise,” smiled My Lady, “if we ever get out of this storm, you and I. My Lark, I’ve got you in my net and I’m going to pluck you!”
“Ah, My Lady, nothing would please me more than to be slow-roasted on your fire.”
“Well, Monsieur,” she replied in French, “don’t make me laugh! I can scarcely don my mask. Are you so light-hearted? Can you laugh and still laugh when the apocalypse is upon us? Did you know that each of the ships of the Armada will be carrying in its hold monks, torturers and instruments of torment to return the people of England to the Pope’s religion?”
“Madame,” I replied, “laughter is also a weapon against fanaticism. May I give you a kiss?”
“You’re too late! I’ve already put on my mask.”
“But there’s a little place for my lips just behind your little ear.”
“Ah, Monsieur, you’re going to take that from me?!”
“Madame, every kiss that I steal is stolen from the priests who are our common enemies.”
But as comforting as I found this banter, I who’d been living for months far from the diversions and luminaries of the court in a dark little house and wearing sad clothes, as soon as this lady had departed (a devil in angel’s clothes?) I felt very lonely and ver
y worried; and my worries increased that night, when I received word that, in Paris, the League had dispatched a fellow named Brigart to Guise in Soissons practically to order Guise to come to Paris with the greatest urgency, since the members of the League there were losing heart as they saw the king well fortified in the Louvre, and the Bastille and the Arsenal reinforced and impregnable. They were so discouraged that they imagined themselves arrested and hanged, and they threatened to abandon the League if the duc didn’t come as he’d promised to do so many times. Let him come! Let his presence re-establish their dominance! Let him be the yeast that will raise the crust!
“Épernon, did you hear?” said the king to his arch-favourite when I repeated to him the next day all I’d learnt from Lady Markby. “The terrible storm is coming that will carry off both the throne of Elizabeth and mine. What do you think?”
“Sire,” replied Épernon with a derisive laugh, “this man Guise in Soissons is only asking for a few little favours: the title of lieutenant general of the kingdom, the establishment of the Inquisition in France, the extermination of all of your Huguenot subjects and the designation of the Cardinal de Bourbon as the heir apparent.”
“Henrikins,” said Chicot, “Épernon is right. The Magnificent one only wants the throne. So let’s give it to him. Her Majesty the queen mother would be delighted, and she could nickname him her ‘walking stick’!”
“A stick with which she could beat her son,” smiled the king sourly. “Épernon,” he continued, turning serious and his black eyes shining, “the more we cede to Guise, the more he demands. This is not a moment to trim our sails—it’s time to go full sheets to the wind! Elizabeth is right, and I thought of it even before she did: we must throw reinforcements into Rouen, in order to seal off Dieppe and cut off Guise from the rear if he presumes to march on Paris. Monsieur colonel general of the French infantry, I hereby name you governor of Normandy, and you will command our forces in Rouen.”
“Sire,” replied Épernon, kneeling before his king, and looking up at him with his beautiful, strong face, “I will obey you.”
“At the same time I will dispatch Monsieur Pomponne de Bellièvre to Soissons to ask Guise not to come to Paris unless I expressly require it; and to tell him that if he does come, things being what they are here, his arrival might cause an uprising, for which I would hold him forever guilty.”
“There’s little evidence,” Chicot noted, “that the Pompous Pomponne would speak that way to the duc, since he shits in his pants at the very sound of the man’s name.”
“Pomponne,” observed Du Halde, “belongs to the queen mother. He’ll say to Guise, ‘No, no! Yes, yes!’ That will be ‘No, no’ from the king and ‘Yes, yes’ from the queen mother.”
“Who wants her ‘walking stick’ right here,” added Chicot. “Henri, the only sure way to handle this is to send the Bloodletter.”
“Most assuredly not!” replied the king. “Siorac wouldn’t last an hour in Soissons, if he got there at all! I’ll write a letter to Guise that Pomponne will deliver to him. And Monsieur colonel general,” he said to Épernon, “order Lagny to move my Swiss Guards towards Paris, and billet them in the faubourgs of Saint-Denis and Montmartre. That will give our Parisian rebels and rabble-rousers something to think about!”
Épernon in Rouen, Bellièvre in Soissons and his Swiss Guards at the gates of Paris: excellent measures, all well conceived, promptly taken and well executed, and that would demonstrate, contrary to what L’Étoile and De Thou were saying, that the king was neither soft nor indolent, and that he knew how to act, and act decisively when he judged the moment opportune.
Sparing no expense, he gave Épernon the lion’s share of his army: four companies of heavy cavalry and twenty-two squadrons of foot soldiers, keeping for himself only the 4,000 Swiss Guards billeted in the faubourgs of Paris. Moreover, to give Épernon’s departure more importance, he himself accompanied the army out to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he took his leave of his general, and went to enter the monastery of the Hieronymites at Vincennes, saying that he wished to do seven days of penitence and that, during that time, he would not speak to anyone.
This was a strange decision to be sure, given the troubled times and the precarious predicament that, normally, he would have wished to follow hour by hour. But then, every man has his weaknesses, and this was the king’s particular foible. He went on pilgrimages; he processed; he flagellated himself; he mortified himself in cold cells without heat, endlessly praying with his rosary of death’s heads, asking a thousand thousand pardons from his Creator for the pleasures he could not resist and that overwhelmed his conscience with an insufferable weight. At this price, for one whole week, his poor soul seemed to find some peace. And subsequently, the memory of this quietude being so powerful, he ended up almost falling in love with monasteries, calm cloisters and his hair shirt, so much so that the sight of a monk, perceived by chance at court, excited him. And, as everyone knows, he died because of it.
I saw Mosca twice during the week that the king spent in penitence, which I spent as a recluse (though not sanctimoniously) with my little fly from hell, and each time he told me that the reinforcements of the king in and around Paris had so struck terror into the hearts of the League that they had disbanded, and debauched themselves to the point that if Guise didn’t appear in the capital, or if the king decided to deal severely with them, the League would collapse.
“But Mosca,” I said, “do you think he’ll come?”
“Ah, Monsieur,” Mosca replied, “who will ever understand Guise? He has so many different faces that he doesn’t even know himself which is the real one. Moreover, having decided to march towards the throne by imperceptible degrees, and not straight on, but sideways like a crab, he must feel very uncomfortable to have to cross the Rubicon in one fell swoop and appear within our walls. What’s worse is that he faces a difficult choice. He has too few forces to maintain an army in Picardy while attempting to occupy Paris. And it would be awkward to pretend he’s here in friendship after having stripped the king of so many cities in Picardy. However, if the Spaniard and the League push him hard enough I think he’ll end up coming, though in very bad grace, and timidly. But even then, God save the king! For the Paris mob will rise up against him.”
* “No one wants to kill me or is threatening me.”
† “That’s well thought out!”
‡ “I’m a new person here.”
§ “To the greater glory of Henri and Elizabeth Regina.”
13
ON 9TH MAY, finding myself in the king’s apartments a little later than usual, and the king having some affairs to attend to but having asked me to await his pleasure, I sat down on a trunk that was in a dark corner, my hat pulled down over my eyes, since there were quite a few people there besides Chicot and Du Halde. These included François d’O, Pomponne de Bellièvre, the venerable Dr Marc Miron, Fogacer (who pretended not to know me), Monsieur de Merle (the king’s butler), Alphonse d’Ornano, whom they called “the Corsican” since he commanded His Majesty’s troop from that island, and the little abbot d’Elbène, who was very welcome in His Majesty’s presence since he was a royalist and anti-League. As such, Henri had sent him in Épernon’s retinue to Angoulême, a city in which the abbot had been besieged in his house by an uprising fomented by the League, in which he almost lost his life.
He was a lively little fellow, with sparkling eyes, not without some resemblance to a squirrel, and a man who had no faults other than his stinginess and appetite for hoarding money. Otherwise, he was a very tidy abbot of the court, soft-spoken, making frequent reference to Scripture, and very fond of Alphonse the Corsican, who was at least two heads taller than he—he was a giant of a man: square-shouldered, rough-skinned and loud-voiced, as well as haughty and arrogant in his behaviour.
About eleven o’clock, the Cardinal de Bourbon asked to be presented to the king, who received him thinking that he had some news to impart about the arrival or the non-arrival o
f Guise in Paris; however, it was immediately apparent that the Great Halfwit knew nothing about it, and that he had come in his capacity of prelate to gain acceptance for his point of view that the death of Condé was a good thing since he’d been excommunicated by the Pope at the same time as Navarre, both being considered heretics.
“There now, sire,” he said, shaking his head and spreading his arms unctuously as if he were speaking from the pulpit, “that’s what it is to be excommunicated!”
“But my cousin,” observed the king, feigning naivety, “I heard tell that Condé was poisoned by his page.”
“Assuredly so, sire,” said the Great Halfwit, “but who put the page up to it?”
“They say,” said the king, “that it was Condé’s wife.”
“Assuredly so, sire, but what inspired the Demoiselle de La Trémoille to commit this murder?”
“Her adultery, from what I’ve heard,” said the king ingenuously.
“Possibly,” admitted the cardinal. “But, sire, we have to look higher than all these contingent causes and search out the necessary cause.”
“Which is?”
“The will of God.”
“But wait, my cousin! Are you claiming that God ordered Mademoiselle de La Trémoille to commit adultery, and ordered the page to assassinate Condé?”
“Well, sire,” said the Halfwit, “we have to look at causes as originating in a much higher place. As for me, I don’t attribute the death of Condé to anything but the lightning bolt of excommunication by which he was struck down.”
“’Tis doubtless true, my cousin,” said the king, taking the cardinal by the arm and leading him by degrees towards the door. “It is true that that a lightning bolt is to be feared, and yet all those who have incurred God’s wrath must not necessarily die! There would be an awful lot of people dying!”
“Nevertheless,” said the cardinal (whom the king was, step by step, pushing out of the door with every appearance of courtesy), “Condé is dead as a result of it.”
