Reluctant Queen

by Freda Lightfoot

  Mademoiselle de Rebours thought the King might ultimately learn that it was she who had betrayed the Queen, and decided it best to break this news to him herself. She went to him in tears begging his forgiveness. ‘Did Monsieur Pin tell Your Majesty that it was I who brought him word of the Catholics attending Mass?’

  ‘Ah, was it indeed?’ Henry was intrigued. ‘No, he said nothing about his source.’

  She glanced up at him with frightened eyes, damp with false tears. ‘Oh, dear! Have I then condemned myself? I did it for the best. I was thinking only that it seemed a dangerous thing for the Queen to do. I was but mindful of her safety. You will not tell her it was I? You will protect me, Sire?’

  Navarre narrowed his eyes and considered the woman with interest. She was pale and rather thin, not at all the voluptuous beauty which normally attracted him, although not unhandsome, and there was a fragility about her which reminded him a little of Dayelle. But this woman was no innocent. He knew that Mademoiselle de Rebours had enjoyed two previous admirers, the Comte de Frontenac and his old friend and general, Damville. But he so hated to see a lady in distress.

  Besides, it would surely be highly appropriate to find consolation with a lady from his wife’s suite, since he was vexed with her.

  He put an arm about the woman’s shoulders and drew her close to press a kiss upon her brow. ‘Fear not, your secret is safe with me. Come, why don’t we walk a little in the gardens.’

  And so it began.

  Margot was no fool, and soon discovered that the secretary Pin had learned of the presence of the people in the chapel from one of her own ladies, and how that woman was now occupying her husband’s bed. Furious at being doubly betrayed she called Xaintes, another of her maids-of-honour, a woman who was both voluptuous and experienced, and particularly attractive to men.

  ‘I dare say you have heard the gossip.’

  Xaintes lowered her gaze. ‘It is rife, Madame.’

  ‘Indeed! Rebours is a malicious girl who has done me a great disservice. She spies on everything I do and I would have you do the same with her. Report to me everything she does, everywhere she goes.’

  Xaintes willingly complied, but the result was that she too caught Navarre’s eye. Margot was highly amused and gave the King every encouragement. Rebours was furious, believing, quite rightly, that Margot had deliberately planted this rival for the King’s affections in order to make her jealous, and had succeeded.

  Margot had been barred by her gender from ruling France, although she felt quite certain she could have done far better than any of her brothers: François II who had died at just sixteen, Charles IX whom she had loved dearly but the poor boy had carried a fatal flaw of madness, and now Henri Trois who surrounded himself with pretty boys, lap dogs, monkeys and a doll-like, obedient queen. Margot had made the decision long since to devote herself to Alençon, her younger brother, instead, although he too had his flaws, being somewhat deceitful and cowardly. The relationship had created much jealousy and soured relations with Henri still further.

  But now she was done with all of that and hoped instead to support her husband. She wanted to be his helpmeet, be indispensable to him, even if fidelity was not part of the deal. One day, perhaps, she might be Queen of France at his side.

  For that reason, if no other, Margot told herself she should stifle her bruised pride and stop caring who her husband took to his bed. She should banish any hope of finding love in this marriage and be satisfied with friendship. It surely mattered only that these women didn’t cause trouble for her.

  Unfortunately, Xaintes created as many problems as did Rebours, constantly spreading gossip; some of which she acquired by spying on the correspondence Margot received from Guise and the French Court. This would not do at all. Above all things, Margot loathed having people about her that she could not trust.

  She began to wonder if perhaps she could find a girl as young and pretty and innocent as Dayelle to amuse the King; one who would also be compliant and obedient to his Queen. Having some control over whom he took for a mistress might be no bad thing. A great deal of mischief could be manufactured in the bed chamber.

  With all pleasure in Pau now gone, Margot dubbing it her Little Geneva as it was at least as Puritan, she suggested they leave and return to Nérac. Navarre agreed, and, more fortunate still, so far as Margot was concerned, Rebours was taken ill and obliged to stay behind until she was fully recovered.

  Henry no sooner lost sight of the woman than he forgot her entirely, largely because Margot had cleverly found a most suitable substitute.

  The girl was young, barely thirteen, beautiful, bright, cheerful and obligingly willing to do whatever Margot asked of her. She would sit on the King’s knee while he laughingly fed her sweetmeats and comfits, tease and play with her as he might a kitten. He would give her pretty gifts of earrings and ribbons, spoiling her as a father would his own daughter, except that Henry did not feel in the least paternal towards this girl. He had other things in mind for her, once she was old enough.

  ‘Does it not concern you that they might grow too friendly?’ Madame de Curton asked, ever fearful for her mistress.

  Margot laughed, hugging the old lady whom she still kept by her side out of love, although her duties had been reduced with respect for her great age. ‘Why should I, and what would it signify if they did? She is but a child, and knows her place. She keeps the King from dallying with other, less biddable ladies.’

  Pretty little Françoise de Montmorency, affectionately known as Fosseuse, seemed to be no threat at all.

  They reached a little town called Eause where, in the night, the King suddenly fell ill with a high fever and violent pains in his head. Margot was alarmed and for more than two weeks she nursed him, partly out of wifely duty and affection, but also because she was terrified of what would happen to herself should he die. Death was never far away in these dangerous times. Sickness, disease, poisonings, murder; with Catherine de Medici for a mother and Henri III for a brother, Margot had reason to fear. She certainly had no wish to return to Paris and be once more at the mercy of a brother she loathed.

  Margot never left her husband’s side, only allowing herself to snatch a few quiet moments of sleep in the chair by his bed. She never went to her own bed, nor even took off her clothes, guarding his bedchamber day and night from all-comers, save for the maid. Thankfully, he made a good recovery, and was deeply touched by her tenderness.

  ‘You protected and nursed me. I am most grateful.’

  ‘I did only what a good wife should,’ she said, as she urged him to sip some beef broth. ‘Who else would have done it? Not that silly girl Fosseuse, although I dare say she has other uses.’

  He laughed. ‘Were ever a husband and wife better suited?’ Their friendship, it seemed, had been strengthened as a result.

  Margot had visited Nérac only once as a young girl on her way back from Bayonne. She’d been thirteen at the time and fearful of being married off to Don Carlos, the mad son of King Philip II of Spain. She’d been vastly relieved when the match had come to nothing. But as she’d sparred with a young Navarre, not for a moment had she imagined himself married to this country bumpkin, or becoming queen of this realm. Now Henry made a point of ensuring her that she was welcomed back with a fine feast of pigeon pie, sausage, ham, chicken and good Gascon wine.

  Margot had forgotten how very pretty the small town was with its cluster of honey stone houses topped by red tiled roofs. Above the wide river that ran through its heart stood the Palace, small by comparison with the Louvre, but pleasant enough. It was built on four sides of a courtyard, with delightful gardens stretching down to the River Baïse where she could bathe on hot days, should she choose, changing in a bathhouse built for the purpose. Not only that, the weather was a great improvement on Paris, and the rolling landscape with its many forests, perfect for riding.

  Each morning, Navarre and his sister Catherine would go to Prêches, while Margot and her retinue attended Mas
s in the little chapel in the park.

  After that, she felt free to walk through the narrow streets with her ladies without fear of being molested, although the people looked at her as if she were a being from another universe. She liked to visit the boulangerie and watch the baker make his famous baguettes with their twisted, pointed ends. She might order a delicious pastry made from goose fat, soaked in Armagnac, and filled with prunes as big as plums, or one of apples called a Croustarde de pomme. She’d persuade him to make café, and he would smile and bow and enjoy the kudos of serving a beautiful Princess of France in his shop.

  In the afternoons, Margot would amuse herself with tilting at the ring, plying her crossbow, or taking a stroll through the beautiful gardens, along the avenues of laurel and cypress that grew by the river bank. She gave instructions for further work to be done on these gardens, which stern Jeanne d’Albret, the woman she’d dreaded having for a mother-in-law, had begun. She called it the walk of the three thousand paces. Later, there would be dinner and a ball, poetry readings and lively discussions.

  This was to be no sober Puritan household, but a court as joyous and fashionable as the one she had left behind in France. Margot gathered about her poets and artists, writers and philosophers, with whom she could debate the works of Plato. She possessed a French adaptation of Banquet, which she kept by her bed for night-time reading.

  ‘Should not physical beauty reflect the spiritual beauty of the mind?’ she would ask.

  ‘Such perfection is surely impossible to attain, my lady,’ they would argue.

  ‘Plato thinks it possible, and is not platonic love the most ideal of all love?’

  Coming from a woman who could claim to having enjoyed many lovers, this seemed unanswerable. They might also discuss the value of practising modesty in all things, of not seeking novelty and unusual experiences simply for the sake of it; but no one expected this queen, with her passion for devising new ideas and fashions, who believed in equality between the sexes and refused to accept the mundane, to follow such dictums. Her new friends applauded her intelligence and wit, wrote sonnets to her beauty, even as the Calvinists reviled it.

  Beguiled as they may be by their new queen’s beauty, her glorious gowns, her majesty and joie de vivre, the pastors were nevertheless outraged by her behaviour. The elders disapproved of her style of dress which so exposed her bosom, her fondness for wearing make-up, and they were horrified by the moral laxity of her court.

  In return, Margot saw them as crabbed, peevish, sanctimonious old men, wearied by long years of civil war. She paid them little heed and every day set out to dazzle them, dressed in white satin sparkling with sequins, azure blue, the colour of the southern skies, or else a robe of Spanish carnation velvet. Her plumed caps, the glittering pendants and diamonds she wore in her ears were all meant to impress and show off her brilliant beauty. Nothing pleased her vanity more than to see their faded old eyes light up when they saw her pass by, or smile when she danced the pavan. They might even tap their feet as she sang a love ballad while strumming a tune on her lute.

  The dancing became so popular that even the Baron de Rosny, who as a rising star in Navarre’s council was generally thought of as being one of its more austere members, was soon taking lessons from the King’s sister, the Princess Catherine. Rosny had accompanied Navarre to Paris as a boy, studied at the College of Bourgogne, and was reputed to have escaped the St Bartholomew massacre by cleverly carrying a Catholic Book of Hours under his arm. Margot admired both his style and his spirit.

  She set about improving the Palace with great enthusiasm, ordered fine furniture and tapestries to be made, pictures to be painted to grace the stark walls which her late mother-in-law had favoured.

  Her sternest critic was Agrippa Aubigné, the King’s chamberlain. He openly criticized Margot’s extravagance and the pair took an instant dislike to each other. Margot thought that his mean spirit was written all too plain in his thin face, with its beady black eyes and sharp nose. She made a few enquiries and discovered that despite the airs and graces he gave himself, as if he were of noble birth, he came from humble Huguenot stock. He’d evidently devised for himself an impressive family tree which was entirely fictitious, and his resentment against all genuine nobility, particularly those of the Catholic faith, was strong.

  Margot’s frankness with regard to the many love affairs that now flourished in the once Puritan court, shocked him. Even the King’s sister imagined herself in love when, as a royal princess, she would be expected to make a good dynastic marriage. She would certainly not be allowed to follow her heart, a most unreliable vessel and of far less importance than the immortal soul, in Aubigné’s opinion. The chamberlain believed there were far more important tasks requiring a gentleman’s attention than love, such as spreading the word of the New Religion, and defending the realm.

  And he knew who to blame for this dissolute behaviour.

  ‘The woman takes the rust from men’s minds and casts it upon their swords.’

  Margot thought differently.

  ‘A chevalier has no soul if he is not in love,’ she would say to her husband, and Henry would laugh and all too willingly agree. How could he not? He fell in and out of love all the time.

  The King was, however, losing patience and growing weary of the game with la petite Tignonville. Fosseuse was little more than a child, too young yet for love, but surely he had waited long enough for sweet Mademoiselle Tignonville? She was most certainly old enough, virgin or no. They were sitting together on a grassy bank by the river and, reaching over, he tickled her cheek with a goose feather.

  ‘Smile at me, little one. Grant me one more kiss. Come to my bed. Can you not see how I grow faint for want of love for you?’

  Jeanne widened her eyes in all innocence and claimed not to understand. ‘Have I not told you, Sire, that I can never be yours – at least …’ She paused and Henry breathlessly waited for her to continue. Would she succumb? Was this the moment he had waited for so long?

  Picking at an embroidered rosebud on her gown, Jeanne pouted prettily. ‘Do you truly love me?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘More than Fosseuse?’

  ‘I swear it. You have no need to feel jealous.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  Henry hid a smile, knowing she lied.

  Jeanne let out a dramatic sigh. Her jealousy stemmed more from the loss of the King’s favour and all that might achieve, rather than pining for his love. She certainly had no wish to be ousted by another before she’d taken full advantage of her favour with the King. ‘It would be a different matter were I a married lady. There would be no fear then were I to fall enceinte, or of being soiled goods from losing my virginity, even to a king, if I already had a husband.’

  Henry looked at her in astonishment. ‘Is that the answer then? Is this what you have wished for all along? A husband. Why did you not say?’

  In truth, Jeanne had only recently reached this decision, prompted by her mother. Perhaps she’d secretly hoped that Henry would make her his queen, but now that Queen Margot was actually here, so beautiful and so regal, she’d come to see the impossibility of this dream.

  ‘He must be a man of distinction and wealth, a fine man.’ She dare not say handsome, in case the King took exception. ‘I feel I deserve some respectability.’

  Henry was on his feet in a second, almost as if he meant to dash away and find a candidate that instant. ‘It shall be done. You must have all your heart desires. If you wish for a husband, I will find you one.’

  The man chosen was Francois Leon Charles, Baron de Pardaillan and Count de Pangeas. Henry made him a councillor of state, a royal chamberlain, a knight of the King’s orders, a captain of fifty men-at-arms of the royal companies, commander of the regiment of Guienne and governor of Armagnac.

  ‘Is that respectable enough for you, little one?’

  Jeanne was shocked when first she saw her future husband, for he was fat and old with a grizzled bear
d, not at all what she had expected or hoped for. He was so big and ponderous that Princess Catherine nicknamed him the big buffalo.

  Fortunately, he was not expected to share her bed or behave as a husband to her, a task which was to be left entirely to the King. And la petite Tignonville proved to be far more accommodating now that she had become Countess de Pangeas, and slipped readily enough now into the King’s bed, where she let him do as he willed with her.

  Nor did her husband complain, for the new count appreciated that he was indebted to his wife for his rise in station. And the King would surely tire of her eventually. Pangeas was a patient man and willing to wait.

  Perhaps that day would come sooner than he’d hoped, as Henry felt just a little disappointed. Sad to say, once he’d tasted this much-longed for prize, la petite Tignonville seemed no different from any other woman. There was nothing Henry wanted more than what he couldn’t have, and in a very short time his visits to Jeanne’s bedchamber became less and less frequent, and his attention once more turned towards Fosseuse.

  The elders never dared to criticize their King for his affairs, accepting his infidelities as a natural weakness in a man. Even Aubigné remained passionately loyal to his sovereign. He said not a word as Navarre paid court to his many ladies – to Dayelle in Pau, to la petite Tignonville, and to Fosseuse – as he was well accustomed to the many amours he’d enjoyed in the past.

  He was less indulgent of the Queen of Navarre, who refused to adopt the patient fortitude expected in a wife, as the stoic Jeanne d’Albret had shown when faced with the same dilemma. He strongly disapproved of the fact that the new queen played her husband at his own game. The fact that she too acquired a lover was anathema to the Puritan elders of Nérac.