Daughter of Silk

by Linda Lee Chaikin

  “Ah, but how galant is Monsieur Henry,” Marguerite crooned. “Look

  how tall he is. And that golden beard, look how it curls just so and shines with just enough auburn to make him look angelic.”

  Rachelle pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. Angelic!

  That varlet?

  “See how Monsieur Henry looks up toward your chambers?” Louise de Fontaine told Marguerite.

  She is trying to please the princesse.

  Marguerite, clasping her bejeweled white hands together in exagger- ated happiness to make her ladies laugh, sighed deeply and dropped a f lower over the rail. Henry doffed his hat, and a page ran to retrieve the f lower and take it to him. He lifted it to his nose and held it high toward Marguerite. Rachelle wondered what the Queen Mother would do if she saw this forbidden display?

  “Look, ladies — Marquis Fabien de Vendôme. But how beau he is

  appearing this day,” Louise said.

  “He is always so,” another replied.

  Rachelle’s heart tripped for the first time at the mention of Marquis de Vendôme. Her gaze sought him across the way where he stood on the opposite balustrade, but he was not looking in their direction.

  It was true, Fabien de Vendôme was by far the handsomest man at court, exceeding Henry de Guise. The marquis had captured Rachelle’s interest from the first moment she saw him. Yes, his savoir faire had been, and was, impeccable. But then, after the death of his father, he had been raised for some years at court with the present King Francis II and Mary of Scotland.

  Marquis de Vendôme appeared oblivious to the ladies watching him, including Princesse Marguerite, and instead stared below into the courtyard.

  Rachelle took in Fabien’s virile build, housed in velvet and rubies, the handsome features, and fair hair. It was no marvel to her that most every woman at court was aware of him. Someone of high title such as he would surely marry a future duchesse. Perhaps a princesse? Rachelle was related to a dowager duchesse, but she was not in line to inherit. The title would rightly go to a blooded niece.

  “Athenais has already conquered the marquis’s heart,” Louise said with an exaggerated sigh.

  Athenais? Rachelle wondered. She had heard her name before, but

  not her family name, nor the region of France from whence she came.

  Charlotte de Presney clicked her fan open and swished it rapidly.

  Rachelle glanced at her and saw that her painted mouth was tight.

  “If Athenais is spreading such lies as you have just spoken, Louise, then she deserves Marquis de Vendôme’s scorn, and so do you for repeat- ing such rubbish,” Charlotte said. “I did not see Monsieur Fabien paying Athenais any undue attention last night at the play, I assure you.”

  The play! Rachelle recalled thiswith renewed disappointment. She had thought Marquis Fabien would attend, and she had been right, he had.

  When the invitation arrived for the Macquinets, Rachelle had sug- gested the three don their silk gowns and go, but Grandmère had gently refused Rachelle’s plea.

  “Such plays are oft immoral,” Grandmère had stated.

  “But Grandmère, after all we have seen here at court of the escadron volant? I am no longer an enfant, I know of these vices.”

  “It is one thing to know of them, ma petite, but quite another to laugh and be entertained by them. How can one find amusement in what offends the holiness of God? Surely you understand the difference?”

  Rachelle had no experience with French plays by which to judge, but she had suffered more disappointment over the denial than had her sister Idelette, who had not protested. It was not that Rachelle had wished to see the play as much as she had wanted to make an appearance magnifi- cently gowned in hopes of being noticed by the marquis. But she dare not admit such a thing.

  Madame Clair, theirmaman, beforesendingthemoffwith Grandmère to Paris, had warned them not to become enamored with the galantes of high title — “Because they must, and will, of necessity, marry titled mademoiselles. You will be pained by the outcome of folly, I promise you.”

  Rachelle’s père had also warned of these matters when learning his two daughters would be journeying with Grandmère to court to work as grisettes. The “wisest” husbands were to be found in Reformational Geneva, not in Paris.

  She and her sisters had grown up in a warm, loving Huguenot home where Arnaut Macquinet made yearly visits to John Calvin’s Reformational Geneva. On his return home to Lyon, Arnaut always brought two or three scholars from the theological academy to the cha- teau with him. For a few days there would be nightly discussions on the politics of France, followed by Bible studies and discussions of impor- tant Christian doctrines. Other Huguenots came quietly to the Dushane- Macquinet Chateau de Silk from as far away as Moulins to learn. After a tearful adieu, Arnaut traveled with the scholars to other areas of France, especially Languedoc and La Rochelle, Huguenot strongholds. There, these same Geneva scholars taught and encouraged Huguenots in their house-churches.

  Rachelle knew too well the consequences if ever it became known that her family was aiding the propagation of “the religion,” as it was often called.

  Rachelle wondered about Charlotte’s curt remark concerning Athenais. Her obvious jealousy told Rachelle she was casting eyes toward the marquis. It was troubling that Charlotte was one of the most belle-

  looking women at court, with her golden hair and blue eyes. She was a member of the infamous escadron volant, a clique of some forty com- promising belle dames, married and unmarried, who served the Queen Mother’s political intrigues with all manner of vice, sparing no scruple. Rachelle had struggled to like Charlotte from the moment they first met in Paris, and now, months later, she was losing the battle.

  “Never mind the marquis,” Louise de Fontaine said. “What of the masked stranger? Did you see him?”

  “He is gone now,” Charlotte said.

  “I can see for myself he is gone, but I was asking if you might know him.”

  “How should I?” With shimmering skirts, Charlotte brushed past Louise, pride in every gilded step.

  Rachelle wondered at this odd exchange. Was Louise questioning Charlotte for some reason? Why? Could Charlotte know the identity of the rider wearing the mask after all?

  “Do you suppose, ladies,” Louise said sweetly, “that the masked rider is but one more bel ami of Madame Charlotte? Perhaps to avoid her, he chose this desperate way to slip past her lest she capture him at once?”

  Several of the younger ladies snickered, but Rachelle suspected Louise’s original intent when she asked Charlotte if she knew the man had been more serious than the suggestion of amour.

  In all of this Charlotte showed no rise of emotion over her rival’s remark. She merely surveyed the less attractive Louise with a languid dip of her feather fan, as a sprinkling of sapphire chips ref lected the sunlight.

  “That you would recognize any possible bel ami, in or out of the pal- ais, is a wonder to me, I assure you, Louise. You have been at court now for a year and have failed to attract the attention of even a page.”

  Louise de Fontaine turned a ruddy color which appeared to please Charlotte, whose lips formed a faint smile as she turned her attention back onto the courtyard.

  Rachelle glanced in sympathy toward Louise. The daughter of Comte de Fontaine was a pleasant girl who had showed friendliness to Rachelle when first arriving to serve Princesse Marguerite. Rachelle disliked see- ing needless embarrassment.

  She wished to say that it was wiser to wait and attract one man of character than to collect a pack of drooling wolves, but Rachelle knew her position at court. Already Charlotte de Presney did not look upon her with favor. Any ill-chosen remark to defend Louise would turn Charlotte into an enemy. She was powerful at court and could do harm to Rachelle if she wished. Rachelle was relieved when Marguerite turned her atten- tion from Henry de Guise to what was happening around her.

  “Espèce de pestes!” Marguerite snapped her jewe
led fingers at

  Charlotte and Louise. “Have I not worries enough that you must yowl like two discontented cats?”

  Marguerite left the balustrade and stepped firmly back onto the stool, leaving Rachelle to claim her own position of kneeling before her, her knees on a pillow. She turned her gaze with deliberation back to the burgundy silk. Now that she had finished pinning the hem on the inner cloth of gold, she began gauging seven widths of Brugesse lace to be tacked three inches above the hemline.

  “Have none of my ladies any affection for me?” Marguerite scolded in an injured voice. “I am most unhappy, and do any of you care? You make jest with one another and speak in excited words about plays and balls. Is there not one loyal amie among you who feels sympathy for my plight?”

  Her ladies again assured her with soothing words that they were most sympathetic. Charlotte brought her a Viennese glass plate with dainty bonbons.

  Marguerite touched her hand to her forehead. “To think my brother the king wishes me to marry that boorish Huguenot prince from Navarre. Non! I will not marry a heretic.”

  Heretic. Rachelle stole a glance upward at Princesse Marguerite. Does she know I too am a Huguenot? The crown prince of Navarre was also of the Protestant belief. Marguerite and the Navarre prince were too young to marry, but marriage contracts among royalty were oft settled during childhood or even at birth! Rachelle could hardly imagine such a fate. Why, a princesse might become the bride of an old man in another coun- try, or a man looking like King Henry VIII of England, who was known as a food glutton with a passion for easily tiring of his wives. Rachelle wondered what she would do if, like Marguerite’s sister Elisabeth, she had been sent to Spain to marry Philip II.

  King Philip, that unsmiling religious fanatic, called himself the Sword of the Lord so as to render the Inquisition against all who ques- tioned the traditions of Rome.

  Marguerite oft moaned she had heard discussion of her coming marriage to the future King of Navarre, which she considered an insig- nificant kingdom, and a Protestant one at that — located in the south of France near Spain.

  “And I will not marry him,” she said again.

  Marguerite, called Margo by her friends at court, was plumpish, attractive, and sensuous, though some called her licentious. Her hair was full and dark, her black eyes yielded to mischief, and she sought relationships with men as though motivated by an inner need to be val- ued. Though reckless, she had not inherited her mother’s propensity for cruelty or the occult. Marguerite was considered to be one of the most learned young women in France, but her lack of wisdom in moral deci- sions was pointing to a future downfall, and this concerned Rachelle.

  Rachelle kept herself aloof during conversations that somehow seemed to always turn sensual. She did not know why, but these women at court seemed worse than the men in their discussions of bed cham- ber interests — but then, how would she know if they were as ribald as men?

  She therefore found herself an outsider, a pilgrim in a strange and foreign city. Her two months here at court proved startling, many times, embarrassing. She had no desire to follow their wayward steps, but after sharing company with them she was also affectionately attached and sympathetic with their burdens, though often those burdens seemed shallow and devoid of eternal value.

  Rachelle was especially sympathetic toward Princesse Marguerite. It was easy to see that she was frightened of her mother. When the Queen Mother sent her maid Madalenna to call Marguerite to her royal cham- bers, Marguerite visibly trembled. Louise had told Rachelle the Queen Mother beat Marguerite until she fainted. “Licentious harlot,” the Queen Mother was known to call her when she was angry. Rachelle could not imagine such abuse, having such a gracious maman of her own, but she believed these tales of Marguerite’s treatment to be true. On one occa- sion Rachelle had seen bruises on Marguerite. If Catherine discovered

  the affaire d’ amour Marguerite was now indulging in with Henry de Guise, Rachelle shuddered to think what would befall her.

  Marguerite stood like a statue in the sunlight, the folds of burgundy silk and the cloth of gold catching the sun and gleaming. But with the breeze continually moving the cloth, Rachelle sighed and again ceased her work. She requested they work inside the chamber but Marguerite would have none of it.

  “I feel imprisoned here at Chambord. Oh, that I were in the garden now with Monsieur Henry. Oh, I must be outdoors to breathe.”

  Charlotte drifted back to the balustrade. “Marquis de Vendôme knows Monsieur Henry de Guise well.” She was looking toward his bal- cony again. “It may be, Princesse, that he can arrange a meeting for you both tonight in the garden. Then you shall be happy again. Shall I ask the marquis?”

  Rachelle pricked up her ears. She glanced across the terrace at Charlotte. Scheming again, the minx.

  Louise laughed coldly. “How unselfish of you, Charlotte, to risk the ire of the Queen Mother by arranging such a meeting. What will you tell her Majesty the next time you report to her?”

  Princesse Marguerite shivered at the mention of her mother. Charlotte ignored Louise. “Now there is a man for you, I assure you.” She could only be speaking of Marquis Fabien.

  Charlotte breezed on with calm confidence: “I shall have him for my own before the season is over.”

  Princesse Marguerite laughed scornfully. “Do not imagine you will prevail. You will never have him. He is too shrewd for even you, Charlotte. Even I could not capture him. Now he is my ami.”

  “It is Athenais who has his interest,” Louise said, “no matter what you say, Charlotte.”

  Charlotte lounged seductively against the pillar on the balustrade, hands behind her. Her blue satin dress with Oriental pearls showed her curvaceous body. Her décolletage continued to get lower with each gown she wore. It would not trouble her to run about naked, Rachelle thought wrathfully.

  “Athenais is a mere child, and she will not hold his interest. There are ways to end even that,” Charlotte said.

  Rachelle blew away the strand of hair that tickled her cheek, and once again, would like to have jabbed a well-spoken word into Charlotte’s pride. Charlotte was older than the rest of Marguerite’s ladies. Perhaps she thought her experience would appeal to the marquis? Rachelle felt confident the belle dame would not suffer a wounded conscience for tempting a man. She did so deliberately. She’s had too much experience, she thought, then was ashamed of her own gaucherie. After all, except for court gossip, what did she truly know about Charlotte?

  “Ouch.”

  Princesse Marguerite looked down at Rachelle, who put her finger to her lips.

  “Pricked yourself, m’amie? Do not get any blood on my hemline, or I shall give you two pricks.”

  “Fear not, Princesse, I should sooner leap from the balustrade as to spoil this silk from my own home in Lyon. Only I know the labor my family went through to bring it here to you, an honor I assure you,” Rachelle hastened.

  Marguerite laughed and reached over to playfully tug at a strand of Rachelle’s hair.

  “And such wondrous silk,” Louise said with a renewed sigh, and the others agreed there was none like Macquinet silk.

  “Mademoiselle-Princesse, you shall show yourself the most belle of all your ladies when you wear this gown, for there is none like it, I assure you.” Rachelle gave the princesse a tired smile, taking refuge for the moment in the praise of her work.

  Marguerite stepped down from the stool. “Enough for today, Rachelle. I have grown restless. Come back in the morning.” She wandered across the terrace, allowing the breeze to lift the material like butterfly wings. “I am expected to wear this gown for the King of Portugal at the banquet in his honor when he comes to Chambord this summer, but I will not. I shall wear it only for Monsieur Henry, I swear it.”

  Her ladies helped Marguerite remove the gown and fold it carefully for Rachelle to take with her to the Macquinet chambers where the final work would be done.

  Marguerite now seemed interested in nothing more than send
ing a secret message to Monsieur Henry de Guise to meet her in the garden that evening.

  “I will send my message through Fabien and—” she turned and fixed her vibrant gaze on Rachelle —“and you, m’amie, will deliver my message to him.”

  Rachelle’s heart thundered. At last . . . a reason to meet him —

  Charlotte moved closer. “I shudder to think what Madame Henriette Dushane would say to her youngest granddaughter wandering about the corridors unchaperoned, Princesse. I shall see your message is securely delivered, as always, if it please la Princesse.”

  “Oh, as you wish . . . come then, while I write it. Deliver it at once.” “Of course, my lady.”

  Charlotte walked past Rachelle without a glance in her direction and followed Marguerite into her chambers.

  That notorious cat!

  Louisecaughthereyewithalookofsympathy, and Rachelle felt herself f lush. She did not wish for even a friend to realize her disappointment.

  Louise walked closer as Rachelle gathered her sewing goods and placed them inside her case.

  “Madame de Presney is jealous of you. Be careful of her,” Louise said, then joined the other ladies to prepare for Princesse’s déjeuner.

  Rachelle snatched up her case and left the terrace calling adieu to the ladies.

  “Adieu, Rachelle,” they called in return.

  Out in the corridor, Rachelle hesitated, tempted to wait until Charlotte came out and burn her ears with what she thought of her. Non! She would not give Charlotte the satisfaction to see her f lushed of face and in an irritated mood.

  Rachelle lifted her chin with practiced elegance and walked down the corridor with her skirts swishing, her eyes straight ahead, pretend- ing not to notice the approving glances thrown her way by guards stroll- ing the gilded halls.

  Chapter Two

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