Виктория Холт - Madame Serpent

Again that quick movement to the sword-hilt, that sharp pace forward.

My God, thought the King. I am liking this boorish son of mine the better when he shows anger.

‘It― is easy to see people laughing at others,’ said Henry, ‘but we do not always see them laughing at ourselves.’

‘Ah! There’s subtlety here. Pray explain your meaning.’

‘I care not if people laugh at me. Who are these people to laugh at a pure love? The morals of this court― set by yourself― are a matter to make the angels weep.’

Diane, thought the King. You have done your work well. ‘You are insolent, Monsieur,’ he said. ‘Take care that you do not arouse my anger as well as my contempt.’

‘I care not for your anger, Sire.’

‘What!’ cried the King in mock anger. I will put you in a dungeon― and there your mistress cannot visit you.’

‘You are amusing yourself at my expense.’

The King went to his son and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Listen to me, my son. Do what you will. Have twenty mistresses. Why not? It is sometimes safer to have twenty than to be faithful to one. I no longer doubt that if any dare laugh in your face, you would know how to deal with him. But there is a serious outcome of all this flitting back and forth to Anet. What of the little Duchess, your wife?’

‘What of her?’

She is young; she is not without charm; get her with child, and then think of the months you might, with a free conscience, happily spend at Anet or wherever the fancy took you. None drank more freely of the fountain of love than I; yet however sparkling the drink, never did I forget my duty to my house and country.’

Henry was silent.

‘Think of these matters,’ said Francis more gently. ‘I would not keep you from your pleasure. The good God knows I am glad to see you growing up at last, for in faith I thought you never would. Women are a complement to the life of a man. Do they not give us birth, pleasure, children? I rejoice to see your inclinations take a natural turn, and I leave you to deal with any that should mock you. But I do ask this of you: remember your duty to your wife and to your line.’

Francis smiled at the sullen face before him and gave the boy’s shoulder a not unkindly slap. Let us be friends, Francis was saying. After all, you are my son. The long bright eyes were even a little wistful. He was rather big strong-looking boy.

But Henry looked away from his father, back into his childhood and there he saw the gloomy shadow of a Spanish prison.

It was Francis’s nature to forget what was unpleasant; but Henry forgot his friends― nor his enemies. He turned from the affection his father was offering him. There was one person in the world― and only one― whom he could love and trust.

At the jousts next day, he rode into combat, defiantly and proudly displaying the black-and-white colours of Diane de Poitiers.

THE ENTIRE court was laughing at Henry’s passion for Diane. He, with a wife of his own delectable age, to fly from her to the bed of a woman more than twenty years his senior! It was like the opening of one of Boccaccio’s tales or something from the Queen of Navarre’s Heptameron.

When Catherine heard it, she was so moved that it was necessary for her to shut herself into her own apartments, She felt furiously angry. The humiliation of it! The whole court laughing at Henry, his mistress, and his poor, neglected wife!

When she looked at herself in the mirror she scarcely recognized herself.

Her face was the colour of a tallow candle, and the only brightness was the blood where her sharp teeth had bitten the flesh of her lips. Her eyes were cruel with hatred. She was an older Catherine now.

She walked up and down her room, murmuring angry words to Henry, to Diane. She was imploring the King to send her back to Italy. ‘Sire, I will not stay here to suffer this humiliation.’

Then she laughed aloud at her folly, laughing bitterly until she flung herself on to her bed weeping.

It is the humiliation of it, she told herself.

She kept repeating that with a vehemence which shook her.

I should not otherwise care. And why should she care? Many a Queen had suffered similar humiliation before her. Why should she care?

It is because she is so old. That is what makes it so humiliating. There was a voice within her that mocked her. But, Catherine, why should you care? You have no children. Perhaps now you will have none. There will surely be a divorce and you will be sent back to Rome. Ippolito is in Rome, Catherine. Ippolito is a Cardinal.

But the voice within was mocking her. Think of it, Catherine. Think of the joy of it. Reunion with handsome Ippolito! I will not think of it. It is wrong to think of it. She was pacing up and down again; she was at her mirror; she was laughing; she was weeping.

Courage, said her lips. You must go among the people of this court; you must smile at Diane; you must never show by a look or a gesture how much you hate her, how easy it would be to take a dagger and plunge it into her heart, to drop a poisoned draught into her cup. She hardly knew the sad and cruel face which looked back at her. They thought her cold, these fools. She― cold! She was white-hot with hatred, maddened by jealousy.

She was a fool to her eyes to the truth.

“What do I care for Ippolito?’ she asked of her reflection. ‘What was my love for him? A pleasant girl-and-boy affair, without passion, without jealousy; while in me these two now burn. No, not Ippolito. It is not he whom I love.’

She laughed suddenly and loudly.

‘I could kill her,’ she murmured. ‘She has taken him from me.’

How many jealous women had said those words, she wondered; and looking into those passionate Italian eyes, she answered herself: ‘Many. But few have really meant them. I love Henry. He is mine. I did not ask to marry him. I was forced to it. And now, I love him. Many women have felt this jealousy, and many have said: I could kill her. But they have said it different. I mean it. I would kill her.’

Her mouth twisted grimly. ‘If she were dead,’ she whispered close to the mirror so that her breath made a mist on the glass, ‘I would make him wholly mine. I would show him love and passion such as he never dreamed of, for in me a furnace of desire is smouldering. If she were dead, he would be with me.

We should have children to the honour of the land― his land and mine.’

She pressed the palms of her hands together, and in the mirror she saw a woman with murder in her eyes and a prayer on her lips.

It had needed this tragic sorrow to awaken her, to bring to life the real Catherine. In this moment of revelation, she knew herself as she never had before. How pale the face, how set the features! Only the blazing eyes spoke of murder. The world should see those eyes as mild, expressionless. The true Catherine should hide behind shutters, while the false smiled on the world.

* * *

How easy it was to make resolutions; how difficult to keep them! Often she must shut herself away, feigning a headache so that she might be alone with her tears. People were saying: ‘Poor little Italian! She is not strong. Perhaps this accounts― with Diane― for her inability to get children.’

One day, having heard some light remark concerning her husband and his mistress, she felt her emotions too strong for her. She made her way to her apartments, told her women to leave her as she wished to rest, and when she was alone, she lay on her bed and sobbed quietly like a child.

What could she do? Good Cosmo and Lorenzo Ruggieri had given her perfumes and cosmetics; she had taken a love potion.

They were no use. Diane had more potent magic. And when Henry did come to her, he was awkward and apologetic. ‘My father insists that we should get a child,’ he had said, as though it were necessary to make excuses for his presence.

Why did she love him? He was slow-witted and by no means amusing. It was incomprehensible that he should be in her thoughts all day and haunt her dreams by night. He was certainly courteous and kind, so anxious that she should not know their intercourse was distasteful to him that he could not help showing quite clearly that it was. By all the laws of human nature she ought to have hated him.

What could she, who was young and untutored in the ways of love, do to win him from the experienced woman who had taken had no friends whose advice she could ask. What if, as she rode out with the Petite Bande, she told her troubles to the King? How sympathetic he would be! How gracious! How angry his son for his lack of courtesy! And then, doubtless, he would, with embellishments, tell the story to Madame d’Etampes; and the two of them would be very witty at her expense.

There was no one to look after Catherine’s welfare but Catherine herself.

She must never forget that. That was why she must hide these bitter tears, and no one must ever know how passionately, how possessively she loved the shy young boy who was her husband.

Alarmed, she sat up an her bed, for she could hear footsteps approaching the room. There was a timid knock on the door.

She said in a cold and steady voice: ‘Did I not say I was not disturbed?’

‘Yes, Madame la Duchesse, but there is a young man here― Count Sebastiano di Montecuccoli― who begs to be allowed to see you. He is very distressed.’