Виктория Холт - Madame Serpent

‘My dear,’ she said, gently and caressingly, ‘there is no need to be sad. You went away, but now you are back. That, it would seem to me, is a matter for rejoicing.’

‘You will forgive me?’ he pleaded. ‘You will understand? It was a passing fancy― quick to demand satisfaction, and satisfied, I found that it had gone. It grew out of my longing for you.’

‘I always knew that,’ she told him. ‘For me and for you, there is one love and one love only.’ She turned towards him, took him into her arms. ‘There is no talk of forgiveness, love,’ she went on. ‘They whispered; they jeered.

Madame d’Etampes, you know. It might have been humiliating― for some.’

‘How I hate that woman! That they should dare to humiliate you, and that I should be the cause of it, grieves me deeply. It makes me hate myself. I wish I had been killed in battle before that happened.’

She kissed him tenderly, as she had done in the beginning of their relationship. Henry’s love for her was fierce and passionate; hers for him held in it a good deal that was maternal.

‘Then would it have been my turn to be desolate,’ she said. ‘There is one thing I could not have borne― and that that you did not come back to me.’

They sat down with their arms about each other. ‘Diane― it is forgiveness, then? It is as though― that never happened?’

‘There is nothing to forgive. It is, as I always knew, and have just explained, a nothing― a bagatelle. You were lonely and she was there, this pretty little girl, to amuse you. I am grateful to her because she made you happy for a time. Tell me this, you would not like her brought here― to Paris?’

‘ No! ‘

‘You no longer love her?’

‘I love only one; I shall always love only one.’

‘Then you no longer desire her?’

‘When I realized what I had done, I never wanted to see her again. Oh Diane, my only love, can we not forget it happened?’

‘We cannot do that, for I have heard that there is to be a child.’

He flushed a deeper red.

She laughed. ‘You were ever one to forget your status. That child will be the son― or daughter― of the King of France. Had you forgotten that?’

‘I am filled with shame. You are so good, so beautiful. You understand this wickedness of mine just as you understood my weakness, my folly, my shyness, and my shame. When I am with you, I cannot help but be happy, even though I have soiled this beautiful union of ours by my infidelity.’

Diane snapped her fingers. Her eyes were brilliant; her mouth smiled, for she was thinking that the court would soon be thinking it had laughed too soon.

She was going to take charge of this matter. It pleased her that the court should see her as Henry’s beloved friend rather than his mistress; the first and most important person in his life, his spiritual love.

‘My darling‚’ she said, ‘the child must be looked after; it must be educated in accordance with its rank.’

‘It’s rank!’

‘My dear, it is your child. That alone makes it of the utmost importance in my eyes. Henry, have I your permission to take charge of this matter? When the child is born, I wish to have it brought to France. I wish, personally, to superintend its education.’

‘Diane, you are wonderful!’

‘No,’ she smiled lightly. ‘I love you and would see you respecting yourself, taking to yourself that honour which is your due.’

He put his arms about her. ‘I dreamed about you,’ he said. ‘I thought of you continually, even when I was with her.’

Diane had slid into his arms. She had put aside the practical Frenchwoman now; she was ready to receive his adoration, which, from experience, she knew would quickly change to passion.

* * *

Catherine did not see her husband until the next day. Madalenna had managed to slip out of Diane’s apartment when the lovers were sleeping, so Catherine knew what had taken place.

She spent the night weeping silently. She knew that she been wrong to hope.

The clever witch had only to smile on him to cast her spell over him.

He appeared next day, flushed and triumphant, the forgiven lover who understands that his peccadillo is to be forgotten; he was wearing the black-and-white colours of Diane.

The court admired the Sénéchale more than ever; Catherine’s hatred for her was greater. Madame d’Etampes was disappointed; more, she was worried.

When the little Piedmontese gave birth to Henry’s baby, the Sénéchale kept her word; she had the child brought to her and made arrangements for its upbringing.

It was a girl, and, to the amazement and admiration of many, the Sénéchale had the child christened Diane.

THERE was a tension at Loches. Everyone felt it, from Anne to the humblest worker in the kitchens. Diane, in continual conference with her young friends, the de Guises, seemed to have grown an inch taller and a good deal more haughty. She saw herself clearly now as the power behind the throne. Catherine, outwardly meek, felt a new strength within her. But for her, these two women who believed themselves to be so far above her in wit and intelligence would not be in their present position! It was stimulating to shape the destinies of others, even while, because one worked in shadow, one must be treated as though of no account.

Icy December winds were whistling through the bare branches of the trees in the palace gardens, and the snow was falling.

The King lay ill; and many believed he would never leave his bed.

It was not only the court that was uneasy; It was the whole of France. And it was not only this illness of the King’s that gave rise to tension. The Dauphin, with Charles of Orléans, and a retinue of noblemen, was travelling south to welcome Charles V of Spain into France. And the illness of Francis, together with the friendly invasion of Francis’s perennial enemy was sufficient to set tongues clacking, while speculation as to the wisdom of this unprecedented visit was offered in all the wine-shops from Paris to Le Havre and from Le Havre to Marseilles.

It was that stern Catholic, Anne de Montmorency, who was responsible for the friendly overture to Charles V. He had, on the illness of the King, taken over the reins of government, and when he had done this, he acted promptly. He had broken off friendly relations with the English and the German Princes, the Turks and the Duke of Cleves. He had persuaded Francis that alliance with Spain might mean the acquisition of Milan― which the death of Clement had snatched from the King just when he had thought the marriage of the Medici girl and Henry had brought it to him― and Francis could always be dazzled by the very name of Milan. And when Charles V had to journey from Spain to Flanders to subdue his rebellious subjects in the latter country, what better gesture of friendship to offer him safe passage through France, which would mean such saving of Charles’s time and pocket!

The invitation given was accepted― with a lack of ease on both sides; and so, Henry had ridden off rather sullenly much as he admired and respected his friend Montmorency could not relish the idea of welcoming as a guest of France, the man who had once held him a prisoner.

Courtiers huddled round the great fireplaces at Loches cussing the coming of the King of Spain and the possible departure of the King of France. There was a gloom about the palace. Loches, set on the top of a lofty rock, with a dark history of misery and pain that seemed to cling to it, with its underground dungeons, its torture-rooms, its noisome pits and its oubliettes, was hardly the pleasantest of French châteaux. There was scarcely a member of the court who did not long to return to Fontainebleau. The fact of the King’s being sick meant that lavish entertainments ceased, and that young ladies who taken on airs with royal favour, now seemed to shrink as they moped in corners. The court of France lost half its vitality when its King lay sick.

Catherine sat on a stool stretching her hands to the blaze while she listened to the conversation of those about her.

Young Guy de Chabot, the son of the Seigneur de Jarnac was a gay and dashing fellow, reckless in the extreme, a young man who gave himself up to the pleasures of love-making as fervently as men like Montmorency gave themselves to soldiering. He was talking now to a handsome captain of the Guards, Christian de Nançay, another such as himself. Idly Catherine listened to their conversation.

‘The King,’ said de Chabot, ‘should choose his women with greater care.

Depend upon it, La Feronnière has brought this sickness on him.

‘My friend,’ whispered de Nançay, ‘there you speak truth. The woman is herself suffering at this very time.’

‘Our King has his enemies,’ went on de Chabot. ‘One understands that the husbands and fathers of those whom he seduces cannot find it in their hearts to love him as easily as do the wives and daughters. Odd, is it not, and can at times be inconvenient. I have heard that the husband of La Feronnière the woman should pass this little trouble on to our Lord King.

De Nançay snapped his fingers. ‘My God! The King has suffered from the disease for many years. This is merely a reoccurrence of an old malady, depend upon it.’

They knew Catherine heard them, but what did they care? The quiet little mouse was of no consequence.

Anne d’Etampes strolled up to the two young men. They were once alert; rumour had named them both as her lovers. They bowed, they kissed her hands; they were, thought Catherine, rather ridiculous in their efforts to outdo each other. Anne had that quick smile, which held so much promise, for both of them.