“Very well, Montmorency,” he finally muttered resignedly. “Arrange it.”
HENRI SAT UP and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He opened the bedcurtains and gazed into the golden light of the fire. The rest of the room was dark. It was still the middle of the night but already his head was throbbing. He buried his head in his hands and let out a heavy sigh. He did not need to turn around to know that she was still there with him.
“Dear God, what have I done?” he murmured as he looked down at his own naked body, still bathed in glistening sweat.
He had waited until she had begun to doze, hoping to sneak quietly away. But he must have done something to rouse her. All at once she was behind him, her hands on his shoulders, and she was kissing his neck. He could feel the press of her full breasts against his back; smell the heavy scent of her perfume. When he did not respond, she pulled away.
“What is it, Your Majesty? You’re not going to be sick again, are you?”
Henri moaned and lowered his face again into his hands. When they had first arrived in his bedchamber, before he had touched her, the wine had taken its toll and he had been violently ill. But the retching had done nothing to dissuade her and she had, after a time, finally had her way.
“Was it all that bad between us?” she asked in the same thickly accented Scottish that had once made him cringe.
“No. No, it was not. I suppose that is precisely the problem.” The muffled words came from between his fingers. Lady Flemming ran her own fingers through his thick hair at the back of his head, pressing her breasts deeper into him. He arched his back, responding to her touch. It felt good to have a woman want him again, and yet, what he had done was forbidden. He had betrayed Diane yet again.
“I have never done this before,” he said. When she did not reply he added, “. . .been unfaithful.”
“What about your favourite?”
Henri took his hands from his face and forced himself to look at her. “It is from her that I have never strayed. No matter where I was or how long we were apart, there has never been, in all those years. . .another woman.”
“Well, there is always a first time for everything!” she chuckled and ran the tips of her fingers down his broad back and along the contours of his arms.
It had been different with her than it had ever been with Diane; with her he was always caring. There was a deep tenderness between them. This had been more furious; nearly violent. That dark need, buried deep inside him since his youth, had finally overpowered him. There had been nothing else but his own need, and in it, there had been no choice. He had not cared about this woman; her pleasure or her pain. He moaned again as her hands made their way down to the thick of moist black hair between his legs. Her pink tongue caressed the place behind his ear.
“Please do not. . .I beg you,” he whispered helplessly, as she wrapped her slender fingers around his penis and began to move them in a slow even rhythm. “Please,” he said again. “I love her, I love Diane.”
“Yes, Your Majesty, I know. But you are lonely and alone. . .and she is not here with you now. . .I am.”
HENRI’S INDISCRETION with Janet Stuart did not end with his sobriety the following morning. In Diane’s absence they seemed quite peculiarly thrown together at every turn, ever increasing the ease and the temptation to fall again from grace. When he rode, she rode with his party. When he dined, he found that she had been invited and was seated next to him. All the while, Henri was completely unaware of the plot against him that had been instigated by his wife and his own best friend.
For her part, Lady Flemming played it like a champion. When they were together she was loud and demanding, making it impossible for those close to the King to remain unaware of what had passed between them. When they were alone, she seduced him shamelessly with the bawdy expertise of a common street whore. But after a fortnight of submission in his bed and hers, trapped between his loneliness and her unrelenting advances, the emptiness returned. The longing for the only woman who could ever truly make him happy descended upon him with a vengeance. It filled him with overwhelming guilt. Then despair. He began to make attempts to avoid her; first subtle, and then more blatant. But as his desire to avoid her increased, her determination to capture him became obsessive. He panicked. He wrote feverish and impassioned letters to Diane, begging her to return to him. When she wrote that she was not yet ready, he pleaded with her to let him come there. But it was to no avail.
“Mother Mary, what am I doing? I must be mad!” Henri rolled over off of Janet Stuart’s fleshy wet body, his chest still heaving.
“I think it is called fornicating, Your Majesty,” she replied with a devilish, throaty laugh. She lay her head back on the pillows, her mouth wide with a satisfied smile and her red hair fanned out like the petals of a flower.
“I am horrid, absolutely horrid. . .and this! This is unforgivable!”
“I didn’t see you complaining an hour ago.”
“An hour ago I was drunk!”
“Your Majesty’s been drunk every time and yet that hasn’t stopped you from calling me to your bed, that I can see!”
Henri raised himself up and tossed a red silk robe across his shoulders, shooting his large muscular arms into the sleeves. He ran his fingers nervously through his matted black hair. His face tightened as he began to pace.
“Oh, what a fool I’ve been. What a selfish fool! If she leaves me over this, there will be no point in anything. . .”
“Well thank you, indeed!” said Janet, not bothering any longer to use her broken French. “Take what you want from me because you are a King. Well, I am not a whore, Your Majesty, no matter what you think of me!”
Henri turned slowly back around. He could barely look at her for what they had just done together. He went back to her and sat beside her on the bed. Her simplicity at times had reminded him of a child’s. It had drawn him. But he no longer found it attractive, and he was at a loss to believe that he ever had.
“If I have offended you, I am sorry; truly I am. You must know that was never my intention.”
“No? Then what, precisely, was your intention?” she asked, sitting up and not bothering to cover herself.
“If I only knew,” he whispered.
Henri looked at her now, knowing that he had committed with Janet Stuart a far worse sin than betrayal. He had cut away at the foundation of the only relationship in his life that had been built entirely on trust, love and loyalty. He had meant what he had said; without Diane there would be no purpose in any of it. Yet, the moment she was away, he had taken refuge with another woman in his bed. This could not go on. The torrid desire had passed with the novelty. He needed Diane with him, now and always. If she was not ready to return to Court or to him, then he would go to her and bring her back.
“So then, I suppose you are about to tell me that we are through; that you are going back to the Duchesse de Valentinois,” she said, bringing him back from the depths of his own despair with her ruddy peasant voice.
“I never left her, really. Not in my heart.”
“I will not make it easy for you, you know.”
“Very well, then. How much do you want?”
At the sound of his question she laughed. “I do not want your money.”
“Then what is it you want from me?”
Janet Stuart touched her own milk-white breasts at the nipples and then lay back on the bedcovers. “Oh, poor dear Henri,” she said with a triumphant laugh, “what I want from you, I am afraid I’ve already got!”
DIANE KNEW WHY Henri was coming to Anet. Secrets were not easily kept in so dynamic a society as the French Court. Hélène had reluctantly told her of the affair several weeks ago, after she had overheard two of the chambermaids speaking in whispers in the corridor.
At first, after she had seen Montgommery, Diane had been overwhelmed with anger, then with disappointment. She had needed to leave. But after his prompt release from the Conciergerie and her own reflection, she beg
an to feel more tolerant. She knew that, in his heart, Henri believed he had done it out of love for her. She had finally decided to return to him, when she had heard about the affair with Lady Flemming.
Diane was wise enough to know that this changed everything. Henri would not have jumped blindly into bed with another woman. He must have come to care for her. In spite of everything that they had built together and everything she stood to lose, she could not go rushing back and remind him of his promises. Such a liaison, if she had half a hope of conquering it, must run its course. If it did not end, she must accept the outcome with the grace and dignity she had always tried to show. After all, she reminded herself that she was now fifty years old. Henri was only thirty-four. She had had him to herself far longer than she could have hoped. If it had not been the Scottish woman, one day it would have been someone else.
She did not blame him. He had become her lover at so young an age, and she knew, in only a way one lover can know another, that before this he had never strayed. Loneliness and curiosity; they were easy enough to understand. She could accept that. But if she and Henri had a future together, it would be because he still wanted her there. She would not use guilt or the past to keep him. She stood in the courtyard approving the newly installed stained-glass windows. They were a masterpiece; the work of the renowned artisan Jean Cousin, glistening black and white in the light from the sun.
Though still not complete, Anet had already been transformed from a barren old keep into a shining Renaissance palace. At Henri’s command, it had been fashioned in the classical tradition, not in the tired Italian mode. All of the feudal walls had eventually been surrendered, and in their place, the most opulent palace in all of Europe had begun to emerge. All of Henri’s dreams, the sketches that he had shown to Diane three years earlier, were becoming a reality before her eyes. Even during their estrangement, the King had closely supervised all the plans and designs. Much to Catherine’s chagrin, he had continued to show the work there far more attention than that which was taking place at his own palaces of Saint Germain-en-Laye or Fontainebleau. He had always seen Anet as the greatest contribution of his reign.
A host of young French talent had been given an opportunity for fame under the King’s patronage and Anet would be their path to distinction. Philibert de L’Orme, to whom the overall architecture had been entrusted, worked the new Anet in white Normandy stone. To this he added black silex, so that even the very structure would honor the colors she favored.
He incorporated ample use of Doric columns from antiquity, and a vast open colonnade that ran the length of the three-sided building. This open area faced one of three grand courtyards. The final wing was a massive entrance. Above the gateway was a clock and below it a representation in bronze of Actaeon, a hunter who turned into a stag and was killed by his own hounds. Although it appeared immovable, at the stroke of each hour, the hounds leapt forward and the stag turned to run.
Fabulous fountains and bas-reliefs worked in black and white marble ornamented the grounds. Exquisite chimney pieces, fashioned by Benvenuto Cellini during his stay in France, now found their place at Anet. Everywhere was the royal emblem. It had been emblazoned on the tops of the columns, and worked into the pavement. It was prominent in the doors, the ceilings and already had been woven into the carpets that lined the still-bare rooms of the sprawling chateau.
The goddess Diana was depicted everywhere. But nowhere was it more magnificently displayed than in the west courtyard where there stood a huge fountain by Jean Goujon. Commissioned by the King, it was called Diane Chasseresse, depicting the goddess, lying nude, with her dogs Sirius and Procyon, one arm draped around the neck of a stag and holding a bow in the other.
The chateau was vast and although bare and unfinished, Diane had already begun collecting furnishings to make it a home. In Henri’s absence, Catherine had once again begun making overtures for Chenonceaux. She grumbled that, as property of the Crown, the chateau was rightfully hers before it could belong to the Duchesse de Valentinois. Diane wanted to know that there was one home, above all the others, which could never be taken from her. Anet was to be that place.
After she approved the magnificent windows that had been installed along the first floor, she retired. She strolled alone, back into the old part of the house in which she would live until her new wing was complete. She walked down a long covered hallway lined with huge tapestries, each of which recorded episodes in the life of the goddess Diana. Henri would be pleased, she thought.
She cast a glance through one of the long windows down into the courtyard at the workmen below. She and Henri had come a long way toward his dream. Nowhere in France was there such splendor; perhaps nowhere in the world, yet there would be little meaning in it all, if he left her now for Lady Flemming. When she turned the corner that housed her apartments, she was taken up by thoughts of the past, and the future. She was looking down, her hands joined like a temple. She did not see Henri sitting alone beside the fire.
“They have done a remarkable job,” he began, his voice tentative and unsure. Diane turned swiftly and saw him sitting there, his legs covered by black silk stockings and crossed at the knee, his muscular body caped in ermine and black velvet. Even at a distance she could see that he had changed. His face was drawn, and for the first time, just the way the sun came through the window behind him, she could see tiny flecks of gray in his dark hair and beard. She moved a few steps closer.
“The entrance is magnificent. So much better than I expected,” he said. “I arrived just on the hour to see the clock work. I tell you I thought it had come to life! I knew we were right to trust that craftsman.”
Now he was standing and swaying back and forth like an unsure adolescent. “I know that you asked me to wait until you felt ready. . .” he stammered. “But I had to come. We must talk.”
Diane moved to a small carved table near the fire that held several silver and crystal decanters of wine. She selected a silver one with a long thin neck that was filled with white wine from Anjou.
“About Lady Flemming,” she said as she poured the wine in two goblets. Her back was turned so that she could not see the expression on his face, but she knew by his silence that he was fighting for the words. Carefully she picked up both goblets and turned to face him.
“Yes, about her,” he finally replied, not surprised that she knew.
As she drew nearer and handed him the wine, she could see that his eyes were not only red from lack of sleep, but there were new tiny lines at the corners and along the sides of his mouth. She knew by the tangy smell of sweat and horseflesh that he had not bothered to bathe. She knew that he must have come directly from Paris, if not all the way from Saint Germain-en-Laye.
Diane sat on the edge of a small chair covered in black and white pourpoint. Henri took the goblet that she had offered him and, in the silence, emptied it in one swallow. Then he sat down again. It was awkward. She thought it curious how after so many years of intense intimacy, that they should behave like strangers now with one another. Diane sipped her wine. She knew that how she handled the next few moments would determine the rest of her life.
“And do you love her?”
They were her words. They had come from her mouth, and yet she scarcely knew how she had managed to say them for the pain that gripped her when she had.
“Love her? Great God, no, I do not love her!” Henri lunged from his chair and, in one long dancelike movement, came to rest on his knees at her feet. “My love has always, always belonged to you! Just look around you! You must know that by now!”
Diane could feel herself breathe an audible sigh of relief; her chest expand and contract beneath the tight black velvet bodice. She still had him. She still had her life.
Henri reached up and softly pressed his lips to hers for a single chaste kiss. Then he broke away. “I adore you,” he whispered. “That will never change. No matter what you come to think of me.”
Diane smiled. “I love you desperat
ely,” she said in reply. Then she grew more stoic. “I understand and I accept what has happened, now that I know how you feel.”
Instead of her words giving the comfort that she had intended, he seemed to become more troubled. He looked at her a moment more, his dark brows arching over tired eyes, before he stood and left her side. He walked toward the fire and braced his hands upon the mantel that bore their crest. Then he lowered his head.
“She is with child.”
Diane’s heart stopped. She felt the blood drain from her face. Then, like a volcano, it rushed back into her cheeks, burning red with hot, violent pain. She could not catch her breath. Her mouth went dry. She was glad he could not see her because she knew it would have been impossible to hide the look on her face. She had felt so prepared when he arrived and yet. . .she had not expected this. To be asked to deal with a permanent reminder of his infidelity. Catherine’s children she understood, encouraged, because he did not make love to the Queen; he filled her with heirs. Until now, her womb had borne the only fruit of the King’s passion: their daughter Diane.
She continued on, trying desperately to catch her breath and yet not show it. Tiny beads of perspiration crept onto her temples but she kept absolutely still. Finally he turned to her.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I did.”
“Oh, ma bien-aimée. How can I begin to tell you how truly sorry I am?” He moved toward her as he spoke, shaking his head from side to side. “For the hurt and the disappointment I see in your eyes just now I shall never, never be able to forgive myself. You are the only thing in my world. The only thing! And if I lost you for a dalliance; for a foolish mistake like that. . .”
Finally she gained the strength to look at him. Here was the man with whom she had built a life; by whom she had a child. This man who had displayed his love for her, and had honored her in ways too numerous to count. In that moment of silence between them, a myriad of thoughts raced through her mind. Diane had already forgiven him for the affair. She tried to tell herself that the child did not matter, but it did. She began to consider how it would feel if she raged at him. She wanted to, desperately. She tried to imagine herself screaming and beating his breast for the wrong he had done her, punishing him with her words and her actions. To her complete surprise, she could not see it. What she could see was a man who had worshipped her for twenty years, here before her, and full of regret. She would not reproach him now.