The day was warm, and more snow was melting. As she now walked, her black damask gown caught the sunlight and warmed her skin through the rich fabric. It was soothing, and with each pace she became more entranced by the intricate stucco figurines poised around the paintings that lined the walls above her. She was unaware of anyone else in the path.
“They say she is a witch. How else could she maintain her youth at her age?” The voice was shrill and haunting. “I say she is the goddess Diana come down to earth as evil Hecate. Perhaps she means to cast a spell on the King!”
A retinue of courtiers chuckled and whispered to one another as they looked over at Diane and watched her jolted back from the meditative state. Of all the barbs that had been hurled her way over the past weeks, this was the most heinous. To have one’s character defamed or one’s loyalties questioned was a tolerable nuisance to retain a place at Court, but to be accused of witchcraft meant a certain trial and perhaps even public execution. This animosity had reached serious proportions.
“Are you referring to me?” Diane called to the voices in the darkened corridor. Anne d’Heilly stepped forward, her face alive with a vicious smile.
“Madame Diane, what a surprise.” She looked around at her companions who shook their heads in agreement. “My friends here and I were just discussing the origin of your puzzling youth. For one who is no longer young, you still manage to maintain the appearance of it. It is most remarkable.”
“What is it that you really mean to say, Mademoiselle?” she asked with a pointed tone.
Anne looked around at the others once again with the mock expression of surprise. “Why Madame, you wound me. I simply desire to know what potion you use. I thought I might find it useful when I am your age.”
“The potion is cold water!”
“I think it is not the water so much as what you do to it,” returned Anne. “An incantation perhaps?”
“If she is truly a witch, I, for one, should relish an opportunity to be bewitched by her,” came a voice from the shadows.
Anne d’Heilly stopped in mid-sentence and let her eyes trail away from Diane. All eyes followed hers and turned to face the darkened corridor from which the voice had come. As he stepped forward, Prince Henri bowed to Diane and removed his toque in a sweeping motion. As he rose, his ink black eyes were still upon her. His hair in color matched his eyes, and fell in sensual curls around his face. It was the sweet face of a boy; but beneath it was the powerful and well-defined body of a man.
“How good to see you again, Madame Diane,” he said and then turned toward Anne. “Mademoiselle d’Heilly, if you have any serious proof of witchcraft, I am certain the King would be grateful to know it. Witchcraft is, after all, a sin against God. . .but do remember,” he admonished, “what a heavy price one can pay for gossip of the like. It is often turned on the accuser rather than the accused.”
Anne d’Heilly stood motionless, nostrils flared. The blood which had flushed into her face mirrored the color of the Prince’s shirt. “Pay heed how you speak to me, boy! You are not in so well with the King these days.”
“And are you so certain that you are?”
He had struck just the right chord. Without benefit of further argument, she turned on her heels and strutted down the hall, her entourage following obediently behind her.
Diane’s lips parted in a smile of amazement. Under the strain of the moment she did not know whether to laugh or to cry. “How can I ever thank you. . .Your Highness?”
He lowered his eyes, and then, fighting for words, he said, “Walk with me in the garden?”
SHE HAD FORGOTTEN the strong features of his face and the impish grin when he smiled. Those things about him had not changed. But now he was nearly a man. Thick neck. Broad shoulders. Legs already begun to muscle from excessive exercise. Still he was so young. . .
She looked at his eyes. Black and bottomless. Despite the smile which rested beneath them now, there was an angry, tortured fierceness in their depths; an anger edged by loneliness that he did not hide so well as he might have thought. There was no trace at all of the charming little boy who had worn her scarf in his first tournament all those years ago.
Henri led Diane into the King’s private garden before she said a word. There, she took a deep breath and put her hand to her chest. “I really cannot thank Your Highness enough,” she repeated.
“It was my pleasure to get the better of her. And please, I do insist that you call me Henri.”
“Oh, I could not possibly. It would not be proper.”
“Would you feel better if I commanded you?” he asked with a smile and then blushed for having said it as they strolled amid the new spring greenery, the dormant rose bushes, and little pockets of unmelted snow.
“If it is any consolation, Madame, my father’s mistress finds great pleasure in being rude to everyone who cannot serve her in some way.”
“Well, I thank you, Your Highness, Henri. . .but in this case I think it is much more than that between us.” She hesitated to go on, having wanted very much to put the past behind her. But she felt a strange camaraderie with this lonesome boy; one which craved honesty between them.
“I fear that she has decided to believe the rumors concerning my father’s pardon and my relationship to the King.”
Like everyone else, Henri had heard the stories; but he had loved her as a boy in a way that would allow no stain to mar her. Looking at her now, he still could not bring himself to alter that opinion.
Diane’s father, Jean de Poitiers, had held an honored position at Court. It was in fact this position which had paved the way for Diane’s marriage to the highly placed Jacques de Brézé, Grand Sénéchal de Normandie. But during the battle of Pavia, Poitiers had conspired with the King’s traitorous Constable, Charles de Bourbon, the King’s most powerful and trusted aide.
Their aim had been to unseat the King and turn France over to the bloodthirsty Emperor Charles V, whose intention it was to take France under the Spanish Crown. To protect his own position and his good name, Diane’s husband had been the one to reveal the plot of her father. The offense was high treason, punishable by execution. But, at the very moment that his head was to be severed from his body, a mysterious pardon arrived that had been personally sent down from His Majesty.
Diane’s father was not to be beheaded after all; but rather, by the good grace of His Majesty the King of France, Jean de Poitiers would spend the rest of his life in prison. The story at Court, and in all the noble houses of France, was that his young nubile daughter, Diane, had paid with her body the debt he owed to France.
“If you told me it was not true, I would believe you,” Henri said quietly, a childlike innocence borne out on his handsome face.
“They say I bedded your father. Why else would he have pardoned a traitor?”
“Clemency is the privilege of the King. Doubtless your husband served His Majesty well.”
The two strolled on among the mazed paths of hedges in spite of a mild spring mist which began to fall when the sun hid behind the clouds.
“You know,” she said, eager to change the subject, “I really cannot believe how much you have changed since I have been away from Court.”
“Not really so much.”
“Indeed. It is only your eyes which tell me that you are even the same person.”
“And yet you have changed scarcely at all since Saint Germain-en-Laye.”
“Ah, yes. Your first tourney.”
“You granted me your colors.”
“I remember. You wore them with honor.”
They stopped as they came to the place where the King’s garden ended and the kitchen gardens began. He had not been aware until he smelled the familiar aroma of basil and thyme that they had come so far. He had not meant to bring her here, to his secret place. She was the first woman with whom he had let down his guard.
Despite his father’s example, and perhaps because of it, Henri had cut himself off from all substantiv
e contact with women. He had meant what he had said to Jacques. He despised their perfumes and their games. More exactly, he feared them. Diane’s manner was different. Subtle. Effortless. It awakened within him the same childhood attraction that he had felt for her all those years before.
“Oh, Your Highness!” Clothilde called out as she hobbled toward him from the open kitchen doors. “The tarts are ready; just come from the oven. I’ve got your favorites. . .” It was not until then that she saw that the Prince was with a woman. “Oh, your humble pardon, please!” She bowed repeatedly in Henri’s direction, then toward Diane.
“Please do not apologize. Diane de Poitiers, may I present Clothilde Renard, the finest pastry cook in all of France.”
When he spoke, his voice gained a new confidence. The servant blushed and averted her gaze in the manner of a young girl.
“It is a pleasure, Madame Renard,” Diane said as she extended her hand. Clothilde wiped the grease from her hands on her dirty apron which rode beneath her sagging breasts. She took Diane’s hand reluctantly in her own and squeezed it.
“I would be honored, Madame, if you would sample one of my tarts,” she said nervously. “I am told that the Banbury are the tastiest.” Clothilde looked at the Prince and then back at the woman. She saw a spark of something between them but she was not at all certain what. Without waiting for a reply, she began to bow, then step backward, heading steadily in the direction of the open kitchen doors.
“That would be very nice, Clothilde,” Diane called out as she disappeared through the double oak doors. She looked back at Henri. “What a lovely woman.”
“The best. Perhaps it will sound strange, but I believe that she is my touch with reality. If it were not for Clothilde, I sometimes think I would not likely be here at all,” he replied, still gazing at the door, a smile lingering on his face.
Now, for the first time, there was a silence between them. Also for the first time, Henri began to feel awkward. “Well, I. . .perhaps I shall see you more often now that you have returned to Court.”
“I would like that,” she smiled. “It would be nice to finally have a real friend here.”
THE KING OF FRANCE was a man tormented.
He wanted the return of Milan. He wanted all of Italy under the French Crown, and the longing he continued to feel grew stronger, more consuming, every day. Italy was an ambition that would not rest.
He sat in the tall carved chair near his bed and watched Marie de Sancerre sleep. For a while she helped to stave off the yearning, but she was only a child. Anne had not looked much older when he had first taken her to his bed; and this one had been almost as good. Or perhaps it was just that his own age made him savor this new conquest more than he might have in his youth.
The girl, the daughter of the Comte and Comtesse de Sancerre, stirred beneath the heavy tapestried bedcovers. François watched as she turned onto her back. The movement exposed tiny round breasts dotted with small pink nipples. Ah, innocence! She had it. He wanted to have his own again. This one had been worth keeping her irritatingly ambitious parents around.
But would she be worth losing Anne? Could he start over with her? Her innocence to give him strength? No. He did not want her as badly as he wanted back those early days of carefree abandon; before he had become King. That was what he thought when he looked into her wide violet eyes. What he knew was that she was younger than his youngest son.
What an old fool I am, he thought. She stretched again, opened her eyes and pushed her cascading yellow mane from her face. François bolted from the chair and dove back between the bedcovers with her.
“Tell me how it was? I must know,” he urged.
“Sire?” she asked, wiping the sleep from her eyes.
“How was it between us this time? How, I mean, was I?” He encircled her head with his large hand and began to stroke her hair. “Do I. . .do I excite you yet, even in the least?” He tried not to sound as though he was pleading.
“To be truthful, Your Majesty, I am afraid there is still not much pleasure in it.” She cast her eyes away. “I hope that I have not displeased you by my honesty.”
“How old are you, mon ange?” he asked, then propped himself on his elbow beside her. He could see her hesitate before she replied.
“Nearly thirteen, Sire.”
François gasped and rolled onto his back. “And your mother. . .your parents, do they know you are here with me?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, they do.”
“What did they tell you, Marie?”
The girl returned his gaze and then sighed as though her reply was a great struggle. “They told me to give you whatever you desired and to ask nothing in return.”
“Guard! Guard!”
An army of guards rushed into the bedchamber, their rapiers drawn. “Captain, take this child back to her parents and inform them that they will be required to leave Court before the sun has set. I cannot stand the thought a moment more!”
The little girl screamed, terror stricken, as she was plucked naked from the King’s bed. “No! No! Please! They will kill me!”
François watched her thrashing limbs. Great God, a child of thirteen! He turned from her as the guard covered her mouth with his hand to stifle her screams.
“Let her at least have a gown, for Lord’s sake!” he ordered and covered his own face with his hands to avoid further sight of the pleading girl.
Chabot and Montmorency both sprinted down the hall and into the King’s bedchamber in just enough time to see the child being dragged, kicking and screaming, out of sight.
“What is it, Your Majesty?” the Grand Master panted.
François’ sigh was heavy. “Oh, nothing a dose of reality has not cured.”
HENRI HAD DECIDED to attend the ball that his father was giving that evening. It had not been an easy decision since he had not attended any of the functions in over two years. But there was the thought, the possibility, of once again seeing Diane de Poitiers. For a moment, Henri let his anger pass.
“What will Your Highness wear?”
“What?” Henri turned to the sound of his valet’s voice.
“To the banquet, Your Highness. What will you wear? I shall need to prepare it. I thought perhaps you might select from the maroon satin doublet with the topaz and pearls or perhaps the teal blue. If I may say, both are exceptionally smart on you.”
“Choose whatever you like.”
Henri stood still as his valet draped a white muslin riding shirt around his back and then pulled each arm in through the sleeves. As he began to cover the shirt with a brown leather doublet, another servant was dispatched to answer a knock at the door. Henri turned to see the face of Roland, his cap in his large hands and his head lowered.
“I am sorry to come to you like this, Your Highness. I know it’s not proper, but Clothilde has sent me.”
At the grave look on Roland’s face, Henri pushed past his valet and cast the doublet onto the floor. “What is it? Is she ill?”
“No. I am afraid it’s the pup. He’s dead, Your Highness. Just gave up, not an hour ago.”
Before Roland could utter the last few words, Henri raced out of the room past him and down the long corridor toward the kitchens. His leather soles pounded against the tiled floors as he broke into a run. Roland hobbled behind him but, having been born with an uneven leg, he was no match for the furious speed of the Prince.
Henri fought back tears as he ran down the long staircase, and through the Grand Gallery then past the library and past the tapestry maker’s shop. He ran down the dark winding stone kitchen stairs two at a time so that he lost his balance and tripped at the bottom. Clothilde sat by the fire and looked up when he came in. The other servants stopped what they were doing and bowed to Henri.
“Where is he?”
Clothilde looked toward the little makeshift bed he had made and then motioned for him to advance. After a moment, he knelt and stroked the pup’s tiny face with the back of his finger. The skin w
as still warm.
“We will bury him for Your Highness,” Clothilde said.
“No!. . .I will do it!”
With trembling hands, Henri lifted the rich yellow shirt with the dead animal wound inside. Clothilde and Roland followed grim-faced out into the garden behind the kitchens.
“At least let Roland dig the grave.”
After it was done, Roland stood aside as Henri lowered the silk shirt into the hole. “Oh, Your Highness, not the shirt as well. It is such a fine thing,” Clothilde whispered.
“Leave it with him! It was the only thing he had in this wretched world.”
Honoring his wishes, Roland and Clothilde stood by as Henri himself shoveled the last heap of dirt. Then when he asked, they left him alone, a silhouette in pink sun, standing over the small makeshift grave.
BY THE TIME his friends had coaxed Henri out of his apartments and they walked the chateau’s labyrinth of corridors, the vast banquet hall was already filled to capacity. It bowed with the sound of raucous chattering courtiers and the noxious scent of mingling perfumes. Ambergris, Tibetan musk, and damascene rosewater; all of it fought the rancorous odor of unwashed flesh and soiled garments too fragile to clean. Music and laughter were everywhere.
Flanked by Brissac and Bourbon, Henri took a goblet of wine from a steward’s tray and swiftly emptied it. After their reunion, he and Madame de Poitiers had arranged to play a game of jeu de paume. Although they had spent much of the following afternoon on the courts, now, only one day past, the prospect of seeing her again made his heart race with fear.
“Henri!” Jacques de Saint-André came up behind the Prince and slapped him across the back as the collection of noble young men rallied around one another. “So good to see you here! What a surprise!”
“With any luck, the King shall not have occasion to say the same,” he replied, motioning across the room toward his father and then emptying the second cup of wine. “Let’s get a drink, shall we?”