‘It would seem as though the whole of France were gathered here . . . Huguenot and Catholic.

‘It would indeed seem so. I have heard that so many are in Paris that there is no room for them to sleep. The inns are full and at night they sprawl on the cobbles of the streets. It is all for love of you and Margot. My dear friend, the Admiral, will be filled with delight to see you here. He has a right good welcome waiting for you.’

Navarre smiled his pleasure while he glanced sideways at the King. Was the King, with his continual references to his dear friend the Admiral, trying to tell him that he was favouring the Huguenot cause after all? What of Catherine de’ Medici, who many believed had been responsible for the death of his mother? What did she intend for him?

He rarely concentrated on anything for long at a time, and as he saw the Louvre with its one arm stretching along the quay and the other at right angles, he looked up at its tower and narrow windows and remembered the young woman he had seen riding with the Queen Mother.

He said: ‘I noticed a very beautiful lady riding with Her Majesty, the Queen Mother. Her eyes were of a most dazzling blue, more blue than any eyes I have ever seen.’

The King laughed. ‘My sister’s eyes are black,’ he said.

‘The most beautiful eyes in France, so I have heard,’ said the bridgegroom. ‘Yet I wonder to whom the blue ones belonged.’

‘There is a lady in my mother’s Escadron who is remarkable for the colour of her eyes, and they are blue. I think, brother, that you refer to Charlotte de Sauves.’

‘Charlotte de Sauves,’ repeated Navarre.

‘My mother’s woman, and wife to the Baron de Sauves—our Secretary of State.’

Navarre smiled happily. He hoped to see a good deal of the owner of the blue eyes in the weeks to come, and it was rather pleasant to learn that she had a husband. Unmarried ladies sometimes made difficulties which it would be trying for a young bridegroom to overcome.

And as he came into the great hall and idly gazed through the windows at the Seine flowing peacefully by, as he mounted the great staircase of Henry the Second, he thought with extreme pleasure of Madame de Sauves.


* * *

On a Turkey rug in his apartments the King lay biting his fists.

He was greatly troubled and none dared approach him. Even his favourite falcons on their perches set up in this room could not delight him. His dogs slunk away from him; they, no less than his servants, detected the brooding madness in him. He was worried, and when he was worried it was usually because he was afraid. Sometimes when he stood at his window he seemed to hear a murmur of warning in the cries of the people which floated up to him. He felt that mischief was brewing and that he was threatened.

He could not trust his mother. What mischief did she plan? He watched the thickening body of his young wife with disquietude. His mother would never let the child live to stand in the way of her beloved Henry’s coming to the throne. And if she longed to see Anjou on the throne, what did she plot for her son Charles?

There were horrible silences in the streets, broken by sudden tumult. Of what did the huddled groups of people talk so earnestly? What did they mean—those skirmishes in taverns? It had been madness to bring Huguenots and Catholics into Paris; it was inviting trouble; it was preparing for bloodshed. He saw pictures of himself, a prisoner; he smelt the evil smell of dungeons; he saw his body tortured and his head severed from his body. He wanted to see blood flow then; he wanted his whips so that he could attack his dogs; and yet because some sanity remained to him he must remember the remorse which would follow such actions; he remembered the horror that was his when he looked on a beloved dog which he had beaten to death.

Someone had come into the room, and he was afraid to look up in case he should encounter his mother’s smile. They said she had secret keys to all the rooms in the palaces of France, and that often she would silently open a door and stand behind curtains, listening to state secrets, watching the women of her Escadron making love with the men she had chosen for them. In all his dreams, in all his fears, his mother played a prominent part.

‘Chariot, my little love.’

He gave a sob of joy, for it was not his mother who stood close to him, but Madeleine, his old nurse.

‘Madelon!’ he cried, as he used to when he was a little boy.

She took him into her arms. ‘My little one. What ails you, then? Tell Madelon.’

He grew calmer after a while. ‘It is all these people in the streets, Madelon. They should not be there. Not Huguenots and Catholics together. And it is I who have brought them here. That is what frightens me.’

‘It was not you. It was the others.’

He laughed. ‘That was what you always said when there was trouble and 4 was accused. “Oh, it was not my Charlot; it was Margot or one of his brothers.” ‘

‘But you were never one for mischief. You were my good boy.’

‘I am a King now, Nurse. How I wish I were a boy again, and that I could slip out of the Louvre, out of Paris, to some quiet spot with you and Marie and the dogs and my falcons and my little pied hawk to bring down the small birds for me. To escape from this . . . with you all. How happy I should be!’

‘But you have nothing to fear, my love.’

‘I do not know, Nurse. Why cannot my subjects be at peace? I care for them all, be they Huguenots or Catholics. Why, you yourself are a Huguenot.’

‘I wish that you would pray with me, Chariot. There would be great comfort for you in that.’

‘Perhaps I will one day, Madelon. But it is all this hate about me that frightens me. Monsieur de Guise hating my dear Admiral, and the Admiral cold and haughty with Monsieur de Guise. That is not good, Madelon. They should be friends. If those two were friends, then all the Huguenots and all the Catholics in Paris would be friends, for the Catholics follow the Duke, and the Huguenots the Admiral. That is it! That is what I must do. I must make them friends. I will insist. I will demand it. I am the King. By the good God, if they will not give each other the kiss of friendship, I will . . . I will . .

Madeleine wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘There! You are right, my little King. You are right, my Chariot. You will insist, but now you will rest awhile.’

He touched her cheek lightly with his lips. ‘Why are not all the people in Paris gentle like you, dearest Nurse? Why are they not all like Marie and my wife?’

‘It might be a dull world made up of such as I,’ she said.

‘A dull world, you say. Then it would be a happy one. No fears . . . no death . no blood. Go, Nurse darling, go and tell Marie to come, and I will talk to her and see what she has to say about a friendship between Monsieur de Guise and Monsieur l’Amiral.’


* * *

Catherine’s benign expression hid the cynicism she felt as she witnessed the farce which was now being enacted before her.

The kiss of peace which Henry of Guise was giving Coligny! Her mind went back to a similar scene which had taken place six years before in the château at Blois. She herself had organized that scene and with the two same actors. Of course, at that time Guise had been a boy, completely without subtlety, unable to hide the blushes which rose to his cheeks, unable to quell the fire in his eyes. Then he had said: ‘I could not give the kiss of friendship to a man who has been called my father’s murderer.’

How the years change us! she thought. Now this. Duke—no longer a boy—was ready to take the Admiral in his arms and plant on his cheeks the kisses of friendship, even while he was plotting to kill him.

‘How good it is,’ murmured Catherine ‘when old enemies become friends!’

Madame de Sauves, who happened to be near her, whispered: ‘Indeed yes, Madame.’

Catherine allowed herself to smile graciously on the woman. She was playing her part well with the bridegroom, playing both the seductress and the virtuous wife. Catherine had said: ‘The Baron de Sauves would be proud of his wife if he could see the way in which she repulses that young rake of Navarre.’ At which the woman had smiled demurely and lifted those wonderful blue eyes of hers to the face of the Queen Mother, as though asking for fresh instructions. But there were no further instructions . . . yet.

Catherine was seriously worried. That old fool, the Cardinal of Bourbon, was hedging. He could not, he declared, perform the ceremony until he had the Pope’s consent. And how could he receive word from the Pope when Catherine herself had arranged that no mail should come from Rome! She and Charles would have seriously to threaten the old man if he held out much longer.

He could be coerced, she was sure. He was getting old now, and, after all, he was a Bourbon. His brothers had not been noted for their strength. Both Antoine de Bourbon and Louis de Condé, brothers of the Cardinal, had been successfully tempted from the path of duty by members of Catherine’s. Escadron. Not that the Cardinal could be seduced in that way; but there were other methods.

And when he had consented, it would be necessary to let the people of Paris believe that the Pope had agreed to allow the marriage to take place. That would be simple.

But still she was worried. The grey shadow which haunted her life seemed more ominous than ever—that man who had been her son-in-law. In his gloomy Escorial he would be aware of all that was happening in France, and if he did not like what happened he would blame the Queen Mother. His ambassadors were spies and she was well aware that they sent long accounts of her, activities to their master.