Courtesan

  A wave of fear passed through Diane as she looked at him. Time had only served to sharpen his features. The full dark hair that was once only touched with gray had now been consumed by silver waves. His appearance was cold and hard, like steel. He was the great unmoving General.

  Jacques and François took the small flight of steps two at a time and came out into the courtyard, but Montmorency maintained his place beside the door. Henri took Diane into his arms to help her down. He was gentle with her; tender well past the point of friendship. The exchange between them was not lost on Montmorency.

  So it has begun again, he thought, looking out at them. Scandalous! It was not so much that he minded the boy taking a paramour; that was inevitable. It was simply the particular paramour of whom he disapproved. She was too beautiful, too ambitious and far too bright to really care for a morose young man like Henri. But what was worse, when Montmorency was so inclined to admit it to himself, he believed that she threatened his own standing with the Dauphin, a position that had taken him a lifetime to cultivate.

  He looked at her again, standing in the courtyard, whispering something to Hélène, who was once again holding the child. He thought that Diane de Poitiers looked almost regal in her black velvet gown, the décolletage low and pressed flat against her breasts, her neck draped with elegant pearls. Imagine, a courtesan accompanying her lover with another woman’s child! She was shameless! Would she stop at nothing to possess the Dauphin completely? Montmorency stifled an urge to throttle her to death. Instead, he pushed forth an uncomfortable smile and moved on down the three stone stairs into the courtyard with the others. Henri advanced toward Montmorency at a half-running pace.

  “Welcome home, Your Highness,” Montmorency offered, in an appropriately humble tone. The two old friends embraced. Henri held the General close to his chest and slapped his back affectionately.

  “Oh, it is good to see you!” he said with a jubilant smile. He pulled Montmorency out at arm’s length to look at him and the two men smiled at one another. After a moment, Henri turned toward Hélène, who stood behind him with the child.

  “Monty, my friend, may I present to you my daughter,” he asked, and offered up the tightly bound infant. Montmorency faltered. He had eleven children of his own; four sons and seven daughters, but still he was awkward with them. His function had always been to beget them, not to handle them. Nurturing made him uncomfortable. It was women’s work. Masking his reluctance, Montmorency leaned over and pulled back the blanket from around the child’s face, as one might peer at a delicate piece of art. He was met by a blond wave of hair and deep blue eyes. The smile began to form on his lean lips before he looked up. When he did, he found Diane standing back discreetly beside Hélène and Saint-André, but her face was full of tender concern.

  “She is a beauty, Your Highness,” he finally said to Henri, and then took the infant into his own arms with such swiftness that it made Diane flinch. He brought the baby to his lips and kissed her head. Again he looked up at Diane to see if it had affected her. “Do you not think she is beautiful, Madame?” he asked with half a smile.

  “I think she is exquisite. . .General.”

  Between them it was always a contest. A subtle matching of wills. To Diane’s dismay, it was never anything that Henri could see. Or wanted to see.

  “And have you a name for the child?”

  Henri smiled, his body straightened with pride as he put his hand to his chest.

  “Her name is Diane. I have named her after my good friend. . .Madame Diane.”

  Montmorency’s smile became a sneer before the words were fully spoken. “Such a grand tribute,” he said. The sneer widened.

  “It was at the Dauphin’s insistence,” said Diane.

  “I am certain that it was. . .Madame.” As he said the last word, his eyes met with hers. They were the cold evil eyes of knowing. Henri broke the tension by pushing Montmorency inside with a tender arm across his back.

  “Come,” he said with a smile of contentment that Montmorency had rarely seen. “The child needs to get inside out of the cold.”

  They walked through the double doors and down the first long corridor before either of them said another word. Diane dallied behind with Hélène and Jacques, intentionally distancing herself from them.

  “So tell me, Monty, did you and the Cardinal de Lorraine bring news of a truce with your return to Court?”

  “I am afraid that God has not, as yet, seen fit to grant it.”

  “What is at issue?”

  “Your brother’s marriage. The Emperor has agreed to offer his daughter as part of the deal, with Milan as a dowry.”

  “But that is exactly what the King has wanted.”

  “Yes, but now it has become a matter of semantics. It would seem that they cannot agree on when Milan shall be handed over to France in your brother’s name. The Emperor offers three years.”

  “And the King does not agree?”

  “Through the claim of his Grandmother, Valentina Visconti, as you know, His Majesty considers Milan his own. He does not feel he should be made to wait for what he believes is rightfully his. The Emperor knows what a point of contention it is for his rival. I suspect at the moment it is a war of wills between them.”

  “And so the King would lose it all to a detail so minor as time?”

  “It is more than a minor detail to the King, Your Highness. It is his honor that is challenged. You must remember he has lost the dream of Italy once before to the same arrangement; by the terms of your own marriage.”

  “He also lost a son by those terms. But then that has never mattered much to him, except when the son was my elder brother, François.”

  They climbed a wide flight of stone stairs that curved into another hall. They reached the end of another endless tapestry-lined corridor. Diane’s apartments were here. She wished they were anywhere but here now that she would be forced to leave her child for the first time with the suspicious General looking on. After an uncertain moment, Saint-André gently took the child from Hélène.

  “I shall see her installed in the nursery, Your Highness,” he said to the Dauphin. Henri nodded. Diane reached a tentative arm toward the child; then drew back. It was a reflex. She would learn. She must. For the good of the child. After a moment, Saint-André turned away and walked on down the corridor with the wet nurse and the baby. For Diane, as for Henri, after this moment things would never be the same. Now, there could be no turning back.

  “AH! SO THEN, you find the courage to return once again!”

  Anne d’Heilly said the words to herself. She smiled her Cheshire-cat smile and then lay back on the green velvet-covered daybed inside her apartments. Beside her, on a small inlaid table, lay a tooled-leather volume of Latin verse; the first element of her strategy. She reached over and ran her fingers along the smooth grain of leather.

  “Dear Vouté, you are such a genius,” she purred. “Oh, my dear, dear Madame, what a collection of surprises await your return!”

  Diane de Poitiers had misjudged her competition. Returning here was an open act of defiance. Ah, but then she had been warned. Anne reeled with the poison of anger at the thought of her rival. The ever-present breeding. The haughty air. As though merely by the fact of her birth, she was entitled to anything she desired. She could not have the King by direct means, so now she was using his son to get to him. Opportunist! Calculating courtesan! Well, my dear, not in my Court!

  Her sister Louise and her other attendants would soon be here to dress her. Anne pulled herself from the daybed and advanced to a carved armoire. Her nightdress whispered along the floor, and her heart beat wildly with excitement. She pulled back one of the ivory inlaid doors, and from a drawer she took a slip of paper. It was a document in the hand of the Chancellor of France; a lettre de cachet, an order under the King’s private seal. She need only skim the words, which by now she knew by heart, for this was her ace.

  “Royal Order. . .confiscate. . .Chateau d’Anet.
. .property of the Crown. . .”

  She tipped her head back and laughed a shrill biting laugh. Yes, it was all so perfect. She had only to wait. It would not be long now.

  DAMN HER!” Diane raged as she tossed the order to the floor. “She has tricked me, insulted me and slandered my name. But in this she goes too far!”

  It was just past dawn. Diane had returned to her apartments from her swim in the icy river below the chateau. The sky’s colors came in through the window in a breeze of pale pink and orange. The muted light cast a shadow on Diane as she stood, hair dripping, clad in a black dressing gown. The message that had been left beneath her door now drifted across the floor on the wings of a breeze through the open window. Hélène bent down to pick it up. She glanced at it discreetly, catching only a few words. “Anet. Property of the Crown.” She did not need to read more. Anne d’Heilly was trying to take away Diane’s home.

  “Can she do that, Madame?”

  “It appears she is going to try.” Diane paced the length of the large vaulted drawing room, wringing her hands.

  “What are we to do?”

  “We will fight her, of course. Her games are one thing, but Anet is my husband’s heritage! My children’s birthright! And I will not give it up easily to this hateful woman who seems so bent on revenge!”

  There was a knock at the door. Diane gathered her composure by brushing a hand across her face. Hélène helped her slip on a robe. She took several deep breaths to steady herself.

  “That will be the Dauphin,” Diane said. “You must not breathe a word of this to him.”

  “But Madame, surely he can help.”

  “No! He has his own problems with the King and the Dauphine. This is my responsibility and I alone shall see to it. Please, my friend, not a word.”

  Hélène slipped through one door as Henri came in another. He cast down his rapier and gloves and rushed toward Diane. As he held her, she felt the crush of velvet; the pounding of his heart. He smelled of sweat and Italian musk. She knew, because she knew him as she knew herself. He had finally done it. And she was glad of it. Catherine was his wife. He needed to give her a child. It was not easy for her to think of him with Catherine in that way; her fleshy, aromatic body rolling beneath his, but it needed to be done, and yes. . .she was relieved.

  “It is all right, chéri,” she whispered. “Truly, it is.”

  “But if I should ever lose you because of her. . .”

  “You shall lose me by your will alone; never any way but that.”

  “I shall never will it! So it will only be death that shall part us.”

  “Only death,” she repeated, sinking further into his grasp.

  Now she was glad of his obsession with her. And it had become an obsession. She was glad that someone had come to love and need her as much as he did. There was security here in his arms. For her own part, she loved him more than she dared admit to herself, especially to him. There were so many women eager to take her place in his heart, in his bed. And he was so very young that she could not risk telling him. She could not bear to be that vulnerable. But looking at him now, looking into his desperate eyes so full of need for her, she knew that he loved her.

  After another moment, he pulled away and flung himself into a chair near the fire. Diane watched as he rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and covered his face with his hand.

  “There is something more,” he said. Diane knelt at his feet.

  “Please tell me.”

  “In His Majesty’s effort to punish me, presumably for you, he has cut my personal annuity by nearly two thirds. I’ve only just discovered it.”

  “Apparently they had surprises in store for us both,” she whispered.

  “He says he will no longer pay for a staff separate from that of the Dauphine. If I want separate accommodations, I am to find separate funds. God! It is not bad enough that he commands me to lie with her, now he is hoping to force me to live with her as well!”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “What I want is to be with you!”

  “Then let me give you the amount of your annuity.”

  “That is out of the question! I could not take money from you.”

  “Then we shall call it a loan. Please, Henri, let me do this for you. For us. You have given me so much already; your love, your devotion, a friendship when everyone else was against me. Besides, Louis left me more than I shall ever need, and once you are King you can pay it back.”

  Henri pulled himself from the chair and knelt beside her. He took both of her hands in his own and raising them to his lips, kissed each of them in turn. Then he looked at her with eyes glowing with devotion.

  “Your kindness and love is a gift to me; a gift from a God who I thought despised me, until you came into my life.” He touched her cheek with his lips. “I shall never be able to repay you for all that you have given me. . .but I promise you, Diane, as God is my witness, once I am King, I shall spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of you.”

  NO MATTER HOW he shifted in his seat, the King could not stop the vague ache which plagued his bloated and beleaguered body. The velvet cushion beneath him was soft; too soft, and it pressed through to the chair’s oak frame beneath him, sending a shooting pain up his spine. He shifted again. A young page rushed in and slipped another cushion behind his back. Again the King shifted, this time to settle the cushion.

  His council, now seated around him, had been arguing for the better part of an hour; yet he had heard only a few random words of their heated debate. While they discussed the movement toward peace with the Emperor, François found himself strangely plunged into recollections of the past; recollections of his mother. Oh, how he still missed her. If it had not been for her ambitions, he certainly would not have become King. He had depended on her completely. She had been the only real woman in his life. She had ruled him with the single-minded power of a lover. Now she was dead. So too were the Dauphin François, and Madeleine; his pale beautiful lily. What would you say now, Mother. . .oh, I do so wonder. Would you still encourage me to keep up the fight? Is Milan worth what it has cost me? My son and my daughter. . .myself?

  Once, it had been his sole obsession. King of France. King of Italy. He had wanted to be Emperor. Charles V had stolen that dream from him by bribing the Pope with a larger sum. Stolen dreams. Dwindling fantasies. Now he wanted nothing more than to wall himself into the safety of his precious garden at Fontainebleau; to watch his roses bloom and to grow old beside his Anne. But while there was still a chance, the slightest hope. . .

  He gazed across the table. They were all there. All of the key players in this petty game of greed and ambition. Deceptively humble Annebault. Cunning Chabot. The ingratiating Cardinal de Lorraine. The Cardinal de Tournon. Montmorency, now elevated further to Constable Montmorency. The King’s mind wandered to the night before. The grand announcement naming his old friend Constable of France as a reward for his military victories. And then there was Montmorency’s face, almost contemptuous, as he sat beside the Dauphin and Diane de Poitiers.

  Already the King had begun to regret the decision. Monty’s allegiance had been swayed. He had seen it. The entire Court had seen it. His favor was with the Dauphin now. . .with that woman. But it was too late. He had proposed him. Parliament had approved him. No, he would not change his mind. Not now. But he would be watching.

  “What have we today, Monsieur Poyet?” the King suddenly asked the Chancellor. His tone was dry and it cut off all conversation of the military strategy, which at that moment was at the pinnacle of a heated debate quite likely to have turned violent. An echoed silence followed. Annebault gazed up at the tapestry near the door, studying it as though for the first time. Chabot shuffled a selection of papers. Montmorency poured himself a goblet of water as the Cardinal de Lorraine dipped his pen into the silver ink well. He made a note to himself as Bourg looked up at the King.

  “Your docket is full, Sire. You are set to discuss the issue of
trade with the Spanish Ambassador after you are finished here. You then have a portrait sitting with Monsieur Clouet in the throne room at three. Then Monsieur Bochetel, your Secretary of Finance, the Comte de Saint-Pol and Diane de Poitiers all wish private audiences with you.”

  The King’s look of indifference was replaced by a queer, almost evil smile.

  “Confirm the meeting with Bochetel. Tell Saint-Pol that I shall meet with him on the gaining court, and then send word to Diane de Poitiers that I am unable to give her audience today.”

  “But Your Majesty can fit them all in. You have an opening just after four, and I have already—”

  “I am unavailable to Madame La Sénéchale, Antoine!”

  The King’s words were sharp. The Chancellor lowered his head, silently chiding himself for his indiscretion. The members of the King’s council began to rise, talking among themselves. The meeting was over.

  So now it is she who wants something from me, the King considered. Imagine it. Now she would like me to be of some service to her. She has changed the rules of the game, but I refuse to play. Hearing her name as Poyet had said it was strangely reminiscent of the last time she had been given an audience. It had been five years already, when it seemed like only yesterday. She had just returned to Court. She had been so eager then. So fresh. Just newly widowed. Diane de Poitiers had seemed to him, then, almost untouched by life’s vulgarities, if such a thing were possible. Old Louis had kept her hidden and out of harm’s way at his country estate.

  God, how he had wanted to conquer her! Wanted to, then. But now, five long years had passed since she had paraded into his throne room at Blois in that black velvet mourning gown. Now, she was no longer so favored. She had rejected him and, instead, taken his young son to her bed. She had betrayed him, and he felt nothing for her. . .nothing except, perhaps, the glimmer of revenge.