Courtesan

  “No, Madame, you mustn’t say such a thing! You are kind and generous. It is easy to see why he loves you. It is no more difficult to see why you love him.”

  “But he is married!”

  “You loved one another long before that.”

  “Then you do not think me awful? Oh, he is so young. He has a wife. Such a thing would be a sin!”

  Diane turned to Hélène with pleading blue eyes. Her gold hair shimmered in the light from the sun. Hélène took in a breath to give her strength.

  “Once, a long time ago. . .I loved someone.” There was a pause; a painful break in her voice. “But I cast it away, choosing to listen to others instead of to the words of my own heart. . .Madame, that has been, and will remain, the most profound regret of my life.”

  The two women looked at one another. It was the first time either had shared their greatest secrets. Now between them, there was no class; no distinction by which they were divided. They were just women with love and pain and loss. Diane took in a breath, one that almost made her heart stop. Then she uttered the words which would soon come to change not only her life, but the entire history of France.

  “Very well, then. You may go and tell the messenger that I have a reply. He is to tell His Highness that I have recovered from my wounds. . .” Again a breath. “. . .and that if it is still his desire, I gladly await his arrival.”

  HENRI’S ELEGANT WHITE MARE cantered ahead of six guardsmen. He rode down the causeway, shaded by the arch of plane trees, to where the two stone lions loomed at the entrance to Chenonceaux. As he neared them, he stopped. Henri leaned on the pommel of his saddle and gazed out at the chateau before him. She was there, just ahead of him, and she had asked him to come. Finally, she wanted him. Yes, finally.

  He was disheveled and fatigued from the two-day ride, but he did not care. He had stopped only long enough to eat and to take a few hours rest. He had left camp the moment her message had arrived.

  When the royal guards came up beside him, Henri nudged his horse onward into a gallop and headed toward the large stables beside the chateau. As he stepped from his mare, he clutched Diane’s note in his leather-gloved hand to give him courage, and walked on toward the two carved entrance doors. The King’s physician came out and headed toward him.

  “Your Highness,” he said with a short polite bow.

  “How is she? Is she all right?”

  Bourges, a sour-looking man with an even more ill-tempered disposition when it did not suit him, studied the young Prince with one eyebrow raised. He was lovesick. That was obvious. He cursed the thought of so sinful a union, but replied.

  “Her wounds are healing properly, Your Highness. If she continues to use the dressing I prescribe, there will be only a slight scar.”

  One of Henri’s guardsmen took his horse as they walked on toward the open door to the chateau.

  “Please show me to her chamber.”

  The doctor stiffened. His two bushy black brows arched in a marked look of contempt. Imagine it, he thought. That woman and the King’s son. He is but a boy! She no doubt wants only one thing from the likes of him. But he managed to keep his sentiments to himself. Bourges walked on silently beside the Prince. Three of the guards who had ridden with Henri followed the two men into the house. When they all came to the top of the stairs, the doctor pointed toward the closed chamber door directly before them. Two of the guards scanned the halls as they always did when accompanying the Prince. The other positioned himself before the closed door and drew his sword by which to stand guard.

  “Open it.”

  “Should we not knock first, Your Highness?” Bourges objected.

  Henri shot him a look that required no further question.

  Diane and Hélène were sitting at a small tapestry loom by the open window when the doctor opened the door. The breeze from the river rippled the edge of the fabric and the edges of their gowns. Diane looked up with surprise at Henri who stood in the arch of the doorway, a rapier at his belt. His shoes were caked with dried mud and his dark hair was windblown. He bowed to her. After a moment, she gently set down the needle and rose.

  “Please leave us,” she said.

  Even when the door was closed and they were completely alone, neither one moved toward the other. It had been so long. Henri wanted to rush at her, but he could not move. He could only stand there, looking at her; her beautiful milk-white skin in the jet-black gown; her long pale throat rising out of the low, square bodice laced with a heavy gold chain. Finally, Diane moved toward him.

  “I was afraid you had died,” he whispered.

  She extended her long fingers toward him and cupped her hand beside his cheek. They both knew what his coming meant. He raised his own hand to hers and kissed it.

  “If anything had happened to you, I could not bear it.”

  Diane drew nearer as he whispered to her. She tenderly kissed his cheek just above the line of his jaw. The feel of her soft lips against his flesh unleashed a long dormant passion between them. It overtook his gentleness, and he enveloped her in his solid arms.

  As Henri drowned her in a myriad of passionate kisses, he pulled at her headdress. Her gold mane of hair tumbled down around her, and he buried his face in its sweet softness. Wanting her so badly, he rushed at her a little too quickly at first, but tenderly, she guided him. She could feel his hands tremble as she led his fingers to the hooks in back of her gown. The rich velvet fell from her and dropped to the floor beneath them. When she was bare to him, he saw the wound on her leg. He dropped to his knees and reached out to gently touch it with his fingertips.

  “Dear God,” he whispered, then lightly kissed the healing wound, breathless.

  After a moment, she pulled him back up. He pressed her against the post of the bed, kissing her throat, her face, then her lips once again. “Oh, please. . .” Diane whispered as she trembled beneath his passion. Her legs were weak but she worked to free him from his chest plate, doublet, then his trunk hose. She gasped, as she finally drew his shirt over the sculpted muscles of his arms and saw how his body had changed. When he too was bare, he pressed himself against the warm flesh of her breasts. Her nipples were hard and pointed. Her mouth, moist and open to him.

  “Oh, tell me we shall never be apart like that again. . .” he whispered into the sweet softness of her hair.

  “No. . .we never shall.”

  He moaned at the feel of them pressed together as he forcefully covered her lips once again. They fell together onto the floor, with the velvet and satin of her gown and petticoats to cushion them. In his ecstasy, he felt her hands gently touching him; caressing, guiding him inside of her.

  With her, it was as if it was the first time. All else was forgotten. That one forced time with Catherine had been a performance of state. To him, it had been a bestial groping. Like the horses in the field. Like his brother behind the hedgerow. He had not forsaken his love of Diane by that. Now, as they moved together on the floor, every curve of her body molded to his, and he was bathed once again in love. There was nothing else but the feel of her beneath him, the gentle arching of her back as he entered her, and the feel of her warm tongue deep inside his mouth. He felt her cool thin legs wrapped around his buttocks, binding them together as he thrust rhythmically inside of her. The mystery of that secret place; the warm, moist folds beneath the golden patch of hair; the deep musky smell of her skin and the touch of it, drove him deeper into his own passion.

  “Tu es si belle. . .” he whispered. “Je t’adore. . .Comme je t’adore. . .”

  Their movements were no longer fluid, but frenzied. He lost all control, and the primal feel of it excited her. Shafts of sensation began to run down from her stomach to her legs, bursting like bolts of lightning, as he drove himself deeper, deeper, inside of her. Pushing. Straining. He moved his powerful body on top of hers with a motion as forceful and violent as an ocean storm; waves surging forward, crashing, pulling back. She was blinded. She began to feel herself spiraling down,
as though toward the end of some long dark tunnel. There was nothing but the darkness, and a ray of hot, white light at the end, then, a violent shudder as they moved toward one unity. . .one desperate peak.

  THE FIRST RAYS OF SUN burst through the stained-glass window and washed their two blended bodies in hues of deep red and blue. They had not moved nor parted from one another. They had made love again later, on top of her bed, and it had been completely different. Almost as though they had been two different people. Henri had been slower. More patient. Diane had been free. More full of abandon. Again she had felt herself in the same dark tunnel, saw the end, the light, reached for it, and felt the indescribable burst of pleasure. Then, when they were both exhausted, they had fallen asleep just as they had made love; joined, as if one flesh.

  Diane felt the wonderful throbbing between her legs as she stretched beneath the bedcovers. She looked down at herself transformed by the colors from the window as she lay with him. She ran a finger against the deep curved line of his chest. The skin was smooth and bare of hair, his body more firm, his buttocks small and round, his shoulders more broad than that first time, two years before. His breathing now was slow and rhythmic as he slept. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, there, next to her like that. She had taken him inside herself, taken all of him; all of the rage and all of the pain with which he had loved her for the past two years. Now that she had finally given in to it, she could not recall a time that she had felt so complete. Here, now, she had no regrets. No doubts. For the first time in her life, she had followed her heart. She had given in to what she now knew was her destiny. After a moment, as though he could feel her gazing at him, he opened his eyes.

  “Am I dreaming?” he asked in a whisper, his dark eyes still clouded with sleep.

  “Ah, you must touch me and see.”

  “I am afraid to move; afraid that I shall really wake and that you shall be gone.”

  She leaned over to kiss him and as she did, he pulled her on top of him.

  “Thank God,” he said with a sleepy smile. He kissed her again. His mouth was warm and demanding, and she felt herself sink into it. But after a moment in his arms, she broke away. She pulled herself from the bed and stood before him.

  “You are not leaving. . .”

  “Then come with me!” She stood before him completely bare, free and unashamed in her nakedness. As he gazed at her body, he was in awe of it.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the river.”

  “But it is barely dawn!”

  “That is the best time. Come!”

  She pulled him toward her and coaxed him out of the bed. He laughed at her playfulness, a side of her he had never seen. She found his shirt and silk stockings and her robe, and the two lovers crept silently down the stairs and outside into the crisp spring morning.

  It was just past dawn and the ground was covered with crystal drops of dew. There was no sound. They ran down to the water’s edge holding hands as a heavy white mist rose from the river. Henri watched her cast off the robe and, oblivious to the icy water, plunge in. After a moment, he doffed his own garments and followed her. Henri was surprised how the rush of cold water invigorated him. He swam toward her and encircled her with his arms. After a moment, sylphlike, she laughed and broke free, diving away from him beneath the frigid, rushing currents. He swam after her and as they caught their breath in the shallow water near the shore, Henri pressed himself against her and kissed the cold skin of her breasts. Then her neck. He wanted her again. He knew he would always want her like this. Free and natural.

  After another moment with her arms around him, he picked her up and carried her beneath a thick collection of willow trees on the sloping banks. There, he lay her beneath him, and they made love once again in the wet sand, where it touched the river’s edge.

  HE WOKE FIRST. His stirring woke her. It was sunset. They were still wrapped in one another, legs entwined, arms around one another. Diane opened her eyes as Henri pulled away, but she did not move. The candle beside her head sputtered in a pool of liquid wax. She watched as he rose and blew it out. The crimson color from the last rays of sun came through the window and then melted into gold as he tossed a fresh log on the fire.

  She smiled with an infinite sense of contentment, as she watched him walk to the basin at the end of the room. She thought the movement of his firmly muscled body almost elegant. Henri filled the basin with water from the silver ewer beside it, and brought a cloth and the basin back to their bed. He climbed back onto the bed beside her, onto his knees, and twisted the cloth through the water. Without speaking, he moved the wet towel around her breasts, washing clean her flesh, so heavily laced with the scent of his own. She lay still as the cloth moved down the area of her stomach and thighs; past the cap of her knee, down to her toes.

  “Do you know,” Henri whispered and closed his eyes, “that I know every curve and every part of your body?”

  “Hmm,” she said with a calm smile as the cloth moved up again toward her breasts.

  “I committed it all to memory when we were apart. For instance, if I move down here,” he said, dropping the cloth to her navel, “there is a small indentation just down from here.”

  Diane’s smile broadened. “And here, a little patch of hair, fine as a baby’s.”

  She watched his strong fingers weave their way gently along her body with surprising deftness. She shivered, and the gooseflesh rose up. When he opened his eyes, he saw that she was aroused. It made him want her yet again. He pressed her head back into the pillows and moved onto her. Again they kissed, tender at first, then more desirous. He wound his arms around her back, taking her into his powerful grip.

  “You know that I worship you. You, m’amie are my world,” he said, whispering the ancient phrase that meant “my love.”

  “And you are mine.”

  “What will you tell Montgommery?”

  “There is nothing between us any longer. I need tell him nothing,” she said with a little half smile.

  “Then you do not mean to marry him?”

  She gazed up at him and ran her fingers through the tufts of his coarse dark hair. “How could I ever. . .now?” she softly asked, and then lay her head on his chest.

  “Oh, how I envied and hated that man! I wanted to kill him for touching you when I could not. You are the only thing that has ever mattered to me; the only thing, and it was like watching a part of myself being torn away.” He lifted her chin from his chest, so that she would look at him. “I told you this long ago, and it is still true. I am a man with but one heart to give, and it has been given to you. You must take great care with the knowledge of that.”

  She raised a finger to his lips. “Please,” she whispered. “Do not make promises that would not be possible to keep.”

  “I know what I feel.”

  “You are young, chéri, and life is long. We have each other now, here, in this place. Do not try to promise me forever.”

  Henri pulled himself from her and rose onto his knees. He took her hands in his own. For the first time in his life, he sat bared to another person and yet it was as natural as if he had done it a thousand times before.

  “I prayed for the day when you would want me, though it seemed an eternity. And then, through the grace of God, finally you were given to me. Without you I am nothing; I am only empty and alone. Madame. . .m’amie, I am your humble servant for as long as you will consent to have me.”

  Diane looked into his eyes, which were no longer deep and brooding, but filled with the sensitivity she had seen in Cauterets. They blazed with the fire of new passion. Diane felt mute. He was a Prince; Duc d’Orléans, kneeling and humbled before her. It was not just, as she had led herself to believe, an adolescent infatuation. For the first time, she realized the magnitude of his passion for her. It was also now, gazing into those eyes, that she finally felt secure enough to give her own heart to him in return. As though he knew it, or could sense the change in her,
he leaned toward her, still clutching her hands.

  “I love you,” he said, as he parted her lips with his own and then kissed her. After a moment he added, “I love you with everything I have, and with all that I am.”

  “And with all of my heart. . .I love you.”

  Tears welled in his eyes and masked his surprise as he brought her to his chest and kissed her. For two years he had longed to hear her say it; imagined her saying it to him. But somehow, when it happened, it still caught him by surprise. He could not remember another human being ever telling him that he was loved. Not even his mother. Diane de Poitiers changed all of that pain, all of that loss, with the uttering of three simple words. With her in his arms like this, the shackles that had bound his life with hate and misery were now cast off as easily as silk from fresh skin. He was not a prince with her, he was just a man. A man in love. She had done more for him than she could ever know, and he would fight for the rest of his life to make her happy.

  ONE DAY PASSED into two, and three became four that they were alone together in their walled garden of Chenonceaux. The rest of the world and its complications lay beyond. They spent their days riding beside one another in the woods and along the river banks. They picnicked across the river where the trees were lush and gave more shade beneath which to make love.

  Like children, they scratched one another’s names into the bark of a tree. They talked for endless hours about their dreams and their hopes. They planned their future, oblivious to the realities of his responsibilities. They did not speak of the King, or of Catherine, whose images they could scarcely recall.

  They found that they loved all of the same things: riding, jeu de paume, swimming, reading to one another. With each day, the bond they had sanctioned in the special chateau on the water deepened. He taught her how to play chess, a game she had never quite mastered. In their chamber at night, they would curl up on a thick tapestry beside the fire, with a marble board between them, and covered only in loose dressing gowns and bedding, they would play. She learned quickly under his tutelage and fast became a worthy opponent.