Judith Merkle Riley

by The Master of All Desires

  “—poetry, Sibille—who’d have ever thought it would get you a royal audience?” laughed her brother.

  “I am certain I should esteem your sister’s poetry at first sight almost as much as I esteemed her person,” said the smooth-tongued young officer. Sibille blushed with pleasure.

  “I have only a poor copy, besides the presentation copy, and that will be gone tomorrow.”

  “—and what a coincidence, finding you here at Saint-Germain, exactly when we were required to escort the Constable and M. de Damville here from Ecouen. You could be a great success at court here, you know, perhaps even get a royal allowance. Who’d have ever thought your scribbling would bring so much? When I got the letter from Laurette, I did laugh. You could almost hear her scream of rage all the way from the farm! Of course, I never wished you anything but well—but you can’t blame Laurette for being jealous when Aunt Pauline wanted you for a companion instead of her.”

  “I’m glad, Annibal, that it didn’t change anything between us. You’re the only one who seems to rejoice in my good fortune.”

  “And I,” added Philippe d’Estouville, his voice agreeably flattering. “Never was good fortune better deserved.”

  “How goes Villasse?” asked Annibal. “Laurette says a hunting accident has put him at death’s door.”

  “Well, Auntie is determined to sever the engagement, whether he is well or ill. She’s found a lawyer who can prove that he’s related to grandfather through a distant cousin. Kin can’t marry, you know, so that invalidates everything. She says she can’t stand the thought of him having the least chance of trying to put a claim on her estate.” So engaged was she in talking to the charming officer on her left that she did not notice the slight hesitation in her brother’s walk, or the way he suddenly stared off into the distance at the word “estate.”

  “I’ve met the man once. He’s too ill-favored for a beautiful young lady—Annibal tells me he’s greedy, too.”

  “For a vineyard that’s my dowry,” said Sibille.

  “And only for a vineyard—what a petty man,” sniffed d’Estouville. Sibille’s eyes froze for an instant. D’Estouville quickly added, “What I mean to say is that a man should only choose beauty, for the sake of true love. Don’t you agree?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” answered Sibille, sounding relieved.

  That evening, there was a knock at the door of the rooms that the Abbé had rented in the little town that lay beneath the castle. A little page said, “For the Demoiselle de La Roque,” and thrust a sealed letter into the astonished Abbé’s hand.

  “So what is in it?” he said, as Auntie tried to read over Sibille’s shoulder.

  “It’s a rondeau—from Monsieur d’Estouville—and it’s dedicated to me,” answered Sibille, her olive complexion growing pinker and her eyes shining with the pleasure of one who sees a secret dream unexpectedly fulfilled.

  “I never heard he wrote poetry,” said Aunt Pauline.

  “But he does, because here it is, and it’s very nice, too. Just hear this: ‘Rose, thy blush is envy at my Sibille’s shining eyes—”

  “He probably paid to have it written,” sniffed Aunt Pauline.

  “Nicely put, the line balances well,” said the Abbé.

  “The interest seems rather sudden,” said the old lady.

  “He’s been away with Annibal. Besides, it’s only natural to make new friends at court,” replied Sibille.

  “Exactly so,” said a muffled, sarcastic voice from the box on the end table. “And of course, he doesn’t think at all about how much money you may come into.” But Sibille was so happy, she didn’t even hear it.

  ***

  It was the wife of Catherine’s Italian maître d’hôtel, Madame d’Alamanni, who introduced the tall young lady to the queen as she sat in the midst of the ladies of the court. On a chair near the center of the room, she recognized the Duchess of Valentinois by her signature black-and-white gown; her face no longer young, but pinched and distinctly preserved looking, she was deeply engaged in conversation with one of her ladies-in-waiting. Apart from her, only the two queens present had chairs, the redheaded girl who was Queen of Scots, and the Queen of France, who sat in a carved, cushioned armchair next to an ornate table with several attractive volumes on it. Well coached, the Demoiselle de La Roque approached and curtsied deeply, then offered the Queen of France first two thin, bound quarto volumes, in beautifully tooled-leather covers, and after that an exquisite silver-gilt box of antique design.

  Those who sat nearby, on the velvet cushions spread out on the colorful oriental carpet, heard snatches of conversation, but nothing unusual enough to distract them from the main business of the afternoon; the flirtations, the music, the cards, and in the corner, a neglected poet reading from a work in praise of the fourteen-year-old Queen of Scots’s goddess-like beauty. The teenager in the chair was a tall girl—taller than many a Frenchman and still growing; the court poets had lately abandoned sprites and fairies when praising her, and taken up the larger sorts of deities. Several of the Italian wives of Catherine’s court favorites were chatting together in Italian—the subject was infant teething fevers—and at the far-right-hand edge of the carpet, a young courtier, urged on by his friends, was quietly insinuating his hand beneath the skirts of a young demoiselle engaged in animated conversation with two of her cousins newly arrived from the country.

  “I am honored to offer it to Your Majesty—” said Sibille, and the queen nodded, her mouth pursed up in a small, but definitely triumphant smile.

  “—he turned quite red, and screamed all night, and I gave orders to the nurse—” one of the Italian ladies was saying.

  “—you say it has a problem? Nothing serious, I hope—” The queen’s voice could be heard over the babble.

  “—teeth that gleam like pearls of orient—” came the faded voice of the poet from the corner.

  “—it fades out; it seems to follow me about. I hope that the honor of being possessed by a person of your rank will cause it to remain with you—” The queen leaned forward, her shrewd eyes sizing up the young woman before her.

  “—ha! Queen of Cups! I win! My prize, Demoiselle!”

  “—well then, if it returns to you, then we must just arrange for you to follow the court. An appointment, perhaps, a suitable and pliant husband—you said this second volume is not poetry?”

  “—only a very little work, entitled A Dialogue of the Virtues.”

  “—I said, only one! Just because you won the game doesn’t give you the right to more than one kiss—”

  “—as your patroness. A reading here, and a publisher—” the Queen’s voice was indulgent.

  “—cold compresses for the fever—”

  “Your Majesty, I—I am overwhelmed with the honor—”

  “—luminous as a young Athena, she makes her way among her worshipers, who drown in her radiance—” the poet read on, ignored in the chatter.

  “Gratitude and silence. Our own little confidence—” murmured the Queen of France. There was a scream from the far-right-hand edge of the carpet, and the demoiselle who had been seated too close to the courtier stood up suddenly, her face crimson, crying with rage and embarrassment.

  “How dare you, in my presence,” said the queen, shooting a hard glance. “From this moment, both of you are banished from court.”

  “But, but he did it—” sniffed the woman.

  “You should be whipped,” said the queen to the little lady-in-waiting, and then turned back to the tall, dark-haired petitioner. “And now, oh yes, your Dialogue of the Virtues. Exactly the sort of thing I wish to encourage. How unusual, a woman, to write such an ambitious work. You have studied the classics?”

  “A bit. And also natural history.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the queen, her voice knowing. The occult. How charmingly she disguises it under an innocuous term. “Yes, unusual studies. I may want to consult you from time to time on your natural history.” As the young lady
withdrew, to be joined by her duenna, a very large, gaudy woman, the queen turned to Madame Gondi, and said in Italian, “I never thought it would be so easy. Of course, she is concealing a great deal, but it is clear that she sensed my own spiritual powers. We who command The Beyond know each other. It is a feeling—a sort of tingling one cannot mistake. And how simple; she just wanted a place at court and a patron for her poetry. That’s why she plays tricks with my lovely new coffer. A writer. Who would have thought that? Writers are always so vain, so easy to win over. A bit of praise; a purse or a medal every so often; the whip concealed—they crave praise the way infants crave sweets. So uncomplicated to control.” She sighed, thinking of Cosmo Ruggieri. Now if only he wrote poetry, she’d have him firmly on the leash.

  “Just think, Maddalena, not only do I have my coffer, Cosmo will be considerably more pliable, now that he knows she is its keeper, and the powers of this strange creation will always be at my service.” Sitting on a low table next to a jeweled reliquary, an ivory statue of the Virgin and Child, and a bound copy of a manuscript on the sanctity of marriage, all of which had been offered to the queen that day, the silver-gilt box looked right at home. No one was seated close enough to feel the odd pulsating, sucking sensation, or to hear the vague humming sound coming from inside the box, the sound of a malicious mind, unbound by considerations of mortality or human ties, happily anticipating deeds of pure evil.

  ***

  Cosmo Ruggieri labored up the third flight of the outside staircase to his brother’s rooms, following his nine-year-old nephew. In the leather wallet at his waist was a distillation of aconite, quick acting and guaranteed to be fatal. The thunder was rumbling at lengthier intervals as the storm receded, but still the last of the rain soaked into the black leather of his doublet, and he was growing out of breath.

  “Father says, go in the back way, the man will be coming in the front any time now.” The boy scratched softly at the back door, and Lorenzo’s wife, in cap and apron, stealthily let her brother-in-law into the kitchen. The room was stifling, smelling of damp laundry and sausages. Beatrice offered Cosmo a seat, then put her finger across her lips as she pointed to the open door beyond one of the lines of diapers hanging to dry. The voices in the room beyond were clearly audible.

  “She is still coy, in spite of everything you told me to do.” Philippe d’Estouville’s voice sounded irritated.

  “Did you hire the poet I recommended?”

  “I have sent her a rondeau, three sonnets, and a villanella, all very costly, I might add, and she refuses to meet me alone.”

  “Did you cast the spell under the full moon that I gave you?” Lorenzo’s voice came from beyond the curtain of diapers. Stealthily, Cosmo took the little brown bottle of poison from his wallet and handed it to Beatrice.

  “Put this in one of those,” he whispered, pointing to several empty green glass vials on the table. All of them were engraved with the legend love potion in large, square letters. “But be careful not to touch it.” Beatrice nodded quietly.

  “I’ll need a funnel,” she whispered, and taking the brown bottle and one of the green bottles, she vanished beneath a sagging line of undershirts and children’s stockings hung up to dry.

  “Once under the full moon, and once under the new moon, for good measure,” came the voice of the visitor from the other room.

  “Oh, dear, then they’ve canceled each other out. Are you sure there’s no other way to get her to marry you?” Lorenzo sounded brusque, professional. Beatrice reappeared from behind the line of shirts and stockings, and silently handed Cosmo the refilled bottle, nodding conspiratorially. As Cosmo inspected the little green bottle labeled love potion the shadow of a smile crossed his face.

  “I need to be married quickly; we’re going on campaign and I need a new breastplate and helmet in keeping with my rank. Monsieur d’Andelot is demanding my gambling debts. My tailor is even holding back on the delivery of my new velvet-paned trunk hose. I swore I’d have him horsewhipped if he held back any longer. You have no idea of the troubles that beset me! Her guardian is a fountain of money. If I can send her wild with love, and compromise her, she’ll beg me to marry her, the quicker the better. I need that love potion. Have you mixed it up yet?”

  “I think I have—let me check in the back room. But first, I do require payment in advance. Have you the cash?”

  “I do indeed; what do you think of me?”

  “Only that you are a gentleman, but that I am a poor commoner, and cannot live on promises the way men of rank do.” Cosmo could hear the man jingle a purse, and then his brother appeared, ducking beneath the diapers.

  “Do you have it?” he whispered.

  “Here,” whispered Cosmo, handing him the deadly little dose of highly purified aconite which Beatrice had decanted into the Love Potion bottle. It was of his own manufacture, a specialty of his, guaranteed to bring death in seconds. His brother nodded, Cosmo nodded, and Lorenzo disappeared behind the diapers again. Voices floated through the doorway.

  “This will cause whoever drinks it to fall instantly and violently in love with the first person they see after waking up.”

  “Waking up? They fall asleep?”

  “In a deadly faint. The main thing is to guarantee you’re the one they see when they open their eyes again.”

  “I see, I see—but it might be difficult to manage. Her guardian is a ferocious old soul, and might lock her away from me if she faints.”

  “Oh, I see, you have to administer it in company—that will be difficult,” said Lorenzo. “Usually a lover—well—administers it alone—and then nature takes its course, if you know what I mean. Then, you see, you’ve had your will of her, and she awakens full of love.”

  “It’s a problem, but not an insoluble one; I must get an invitation to dinner, that’s all, and sit next to her.”

  “That’s it, that’s it. Good luck, my cavalier. Soon you will be rich.”

  Beautiful, thought Cosmo, from his perch on the stool in the kitchen. She’ll die, and he’ll take the blame. It amused him to think of the noble Philippe d’Estouville fanning and mooning over a corpse in the hopes she would revive with love. He had only to find out when the dinner invitation was, and he could seize the box the very instant she was dead. A tiny twinge of conscience made a brief appearance when he thought that his brother might be discovered and suffer for his role in the poisoning. No bother, he thought. When I have The Master of All Desires, I’ll just wish that Lorenzo won’t be found out. And, after all, what’s a brother for?

  Fourteen

  While Nostradamus was in bed tending his gout in the palace of the Cardinal de Bourbon, King Henri II was sitting in council at St.-Germain-en-Laye, and the question was war. The past summer’s famine and the shaky peace treaty with Philip II of Spain had kept the armies of France quiescent. But now King Philip’s battle chief, the Duke of Alba, had invaded the Papal States and the Pope had appealed to France to make good its pledges to him, break the treaty of peace, and send an army into Italy in his defense. But to honor France’s pledge and break the treaty with Spain meant war with Philip, who was not only King of Spain, but Holy Roman Emperor and King of England through marriage. France would enter the war outnumbered and entirely surrounded.

  Grave and polite, the king leaned forward in his tall, ornate chair that sat on a dais at the head of the council table. “My lord Constable, you have read the new report on the events in the Papal States, how do you counsel us to respond to the Holy Father’s appeal?”

  The Old Constable, that cunning old gray head, lord among lords, battle chief of two great kings, and a father with a not-so-secret need to get a Papal dispensation to wed his warrior son to Diane de Poitier’s daughter, spoke slowly and with consideration, offering a clever compromise. “If the Duke of Alba’s actions have broken the Truce of Vaucelles, then the honor of France requires that we send assistance. This will, however, throw us into a great war with Spain at a time of bad harvests and poor
levies. But if Your Majesty declares that the Duke of Alba’s actions do not constitute a violation of the treaty, then we are not obligated to go to war with the Emperor. This is the wisest course; we can then maintain the peace while sending the Holy Father financial aid to raise his own armies.”

  But the Guise brothers, the powerful Duke François and the Cardinal of Lorraine, whitened with fury at this suggestion. The great scar that ran across the Duke’s collapsed cheekbone grew livid against the pallor, and with a flaming glance at his brother, he signaled silently that one of them must speak.

  “Majesty,” said Lorraine, his voice sly and politic, his narrow face impassive, “your honor requires that you mount an immediate expedition in response to the request of the Holy Father.” So speaks the church, thought Montmorency, but he is first of all a Guise. Beneath a corner of the wide sleeves of the Cardinal’s scarlet robe, the Old Constable caught a glimpse of a fist tightly clenched.

  “If Alba does not withdraw immediately, Your Majesty must declare war or lose all honor in the eyes of the Holy Father, and of the world,” said The Scar.

  “Our honor is also pledged to keep the truce,” said the Old Constable. “While we must aid the Pope, we must do it in a way that does not violate the treaty. We must send funds, not armies. Otherwise the Empire will make war on our northern frontier as well as the south. A two-front war, after a time of famine—”

  “We must send an army,” urged the Duke of Brissac. “The English Queen Mary is an old woman, her kingdom shriveled and wasted. She will not dare to offer much aid to her husband, King Philip. Then what can he do in the north? Nothing.”

  Constable Montmorency watched the king’s face closely as the debate raged, and sensed the shifting of his opinion from the droop in the monarch’s heavy-lidded eyes as he stared at his old counselor. I have lost, thought the Old Constable, who could feel his influence waning as if it were wine draining from a broken cask.