“My friends,” he began, “tonight we celebrate Anet.”
Applause broke out around the room, and Henry began to smile. “Anet is truly the crowning achievement of my reign. Now, after six years, it is finally complete. This palace, full of beautiful art, classical sculpture and every modern luxury known, is a tribute to one woman without whose trust, support and love I would surely not be King.”
Again there was applause before Henri continued.
“These goblets, which you now hold, were made to commemorate this evening, and this woman. Small and gentle, they are fashioned in the exact shape of the most elegant breasts in all of France.”
The startled rumble of whispered voices rose like a wave amid more applause. Henri leaned over to kiss Diane’s cheek, and the surprise on her face was missed by no one.
It had been a whim, a passing comment between the two of them in a private moment long ago, she thought. And now, like everything else he had promised, Henri had made even this thing. . .this minor thing between them, into reality. She was completely overcome.
“Now please, join me in a toast, everyone, to my goddess, the woman of my heart. . .to Madame Diane!”
“To Madame Diane!”
“COME, LET’S TAKE A WALK. I want to see you in the moonlight and have you all to myself for a while,” Henri whispered to Diane as the rest of their guests sat nibbling at the silver trays of candied fruit, and listening to a selection played on the harp and flute.
They walked down the long hall from the library and outside into the crisp night air. Henri held her hand as they descended the stone stairway that had been fashioned into the shape of a crescent. Each of them was still holding their near-empty goblets of brandy. They walked beneath the gallery, both of them gazing out at the brilliant night sky full of stars. The rest of their guests, those not invited to his small party, would be at dinner in the grand dining hall for at least another hour. So for a time, Henri had the peace and quiet with Diane that he craved.
They strolled past the staircase where the gardens were enclosed on three sides by a long open gallery supported by pillars. The gardens themselves were a masterpiece, cut into formal squares accented with two large marble fountains at the intersections of the paths. They were composed of hedges cut down into the shape of their two monograms.
“Do you know what we need here?” he asked wistfully, feeling the effects of the wine and the fatigue of the day’s exercise. Diane looked at him. “We need a lake! And a private island in the center!”
“Oh, indeed!” She laughed as they came to the point where there was a small pavilion. It was composed of an open temple of columns and a dome covered by crescent moons.
“I am quite serious about this, m’amie. Anet has everything else: baths, stables, fountains, a moat. But I want to be able to see you in the moonlight. Yes, right here!” he declared, motioning to a knoll before them as the ideas danced in his head. “We can take water from the river, which is very near, and then at night when everyone else is sleeping. . .”
“But, Henri, the cost.”
“That shall be the least of our worries. I am swimming in loans from the war, and just waiting to give my very restless men something to do, now that there is no one for them to fight. I can think of nothing better. Oh yes, it is perfect. And I will make an island in the center where the two of us alone shall go. It will be our private place where no one else shall be permitted. Oh, tell me that you like the idea, please!”
He was pleading in that wide-eyed, childlike way that seemed impossible to refuse. Diane gave in to a smile, and then leaned over to kiss his cheek.
“I think it is a charming idea,” she finally conceded. “Only if we can afford it.”
“Will you please cease your worries about money. You forget I am the King!” he said and then laughed at the sound of it. “The only thing that gives me real joy in this world, is pleasing you. That is the only reason I shall do it, you know; if it pleases you.” He turned back toward the knoll. “Oh, yes. This is splendid! I shall set Philibert de L’Orme to work on it at once!”
Diane said nothing further, but she knew that he did not have as much money as he professed. Their daughter’s wedding the previous month to the Pope’s nephew had depleted the royal coffers substantially. Henri had insisted that the event be equally grand as any he would accord to any of his other children. That point had never been open for discussion; not even with Diane.
“Do you suppose she is happy?” he asked, certain she would know what he meant.
“I think she did her duty to her King and to her country. I know our daughter finds great comfort in that.”
“So you think I did the wrong thing by marrying her to Farnese?” he asked with a keen smile, knowing the tone of her voice better than she did.
“The Duke of Castro is a highly decorated officer who showed great valor at Metz. His family is also very powerful. I think he is a good match for the eldest child of a King.”
“Judicious reply,” he smiled. They walked a few paces further. “She wanted to marry someone else, you know.”
“She knew that it was not possible, chéri, as you always knew it would not be possible to marry me.”
Again he smiled. “Your instinct does you credit. You always did know just the right thing to say to me.”
He stopped again and turned to her. “But perhaps, m’amie, without knowing it, I have committed she whom I love most dearly to this same life of purgatory that I endure for my love of you.”
“Diane is a wise child. She sees in your eyes what loving me has cost you; what price we all pay for it, even the Queen. She will learn by our mistake.”
Henri put his arm around her as they strolled in the shimmering glow of the spring moon, and their bodies cast shadows on the rolling lawn. He tried desperately to think of something else, but his mind was full of the past; old decisions, old regrets.
“I wonder what would have become of me if you had married Montgommery,” he said, as he led their way up another flight of stone stairs.
“I suspect the history that is yet to be written of us both would have been much kinder.”
“What do you suppose they shall write of my reign when I am gone?”
Diane stopped and turned toward him on the steps. The full face of the moon reflected on her tireless eyes as they shimmered.
“They shall say that you were a kind and a good King. But perhaps they shall add that you were far more ruled by your mysterious passion for an old widow, much as an ordinary man, not a Sovereign should have been.”
“Yes, I hope they shall say that. I should like it if they did. As I grow older, as I see so clearly my own mortality now, those things, history, seem somehow more important to me. Along with that is the memory of you. I should like history to remember you as I know you; for your kind and good heart, your beauty and your grace. But Anet, Chenonceaux, the paintings and sculptures of you, shall certainly speak for themselves if I cannot.”
“Talk of mortality in so young a man?” she asked with a smile.
“It is just that it could happen anytime, and the older I get the more aware of it I become. An accident. An unexpected illness, like the fatal ones to which both of my brothers succumbed. I just need to see my things in order. I want you to know, and the world to know, what you have meant to me.”
“What is it, Henri? What has upset you like this? Have you been listening to Catherine’s orations again about that man from Provence whom they claim is a prophet?”
Even though they had never spoken of it, he knew that she meant Michel Nostradamus. His name was in all polite conversation at Court, and his almanacs had so captivated the Queen that she was rarely without them or the opportunity to quote from them. Out of deference to Diane and her staunch opposition to mysticism, Henri had remained silent. He had also refused to read the profusion of available literature. But more each day, he felt himself drawn toward the possibility. Perhaps, just perhaps, they really could truly
predict the future. At the root of it was the afternoon he had spent with Catherine and Luc Gauier. He had never forgotten the prophecy of the Queen’s mystic.
There is danger to you in single combat, on an enclosed field. . .
“If anything should happen to me, unexpectedly you know, I want you to know that I would change nothing about my life, about our life together. It is very important, no matter what people whisper about us as the years pass, that you know I adore you more now than ever.”
“Well, I have heard just about enough!” she declared, poising her hands on her hips. “If anyone shall be called home to God in the near future, it surely shall be me.”
“Jésu! Do not say such a thing! Do not even think it!”
“But it is true, Henri, and we both know it. My time shall come long before yours, and it is I who should say that I regret nothing in my life.”
He paused a moment. Finally, the stricken expression on his face changed to a little half smile. “Nothing? Not even those early years under the wrath of my father’s mistress, and the fear of his own recriminations?”
“Nothing. Not even that. Because they were years filled with you and that would have been worth enduring anything.”
Henri reached out and touched a strand of hair near her face. “God, I shall be sad when we are gone. Never again to touch this beautiful face, or to see your smile.”
He sounded so melancholy. They had spent a lifetime together and she could no longer recall what life had been like without him. She broke the tense silence by taking the last bit of anise brandy into her mouth and holding it there until it began to burn. Then she kissed him. Lips on his, she trickled liquid fire down his throat. He opened his eyes in astonished delight.
“How you always manage to enchant me,” he whispered. “Diane de Poitiers, you are an amazing woman.”
Then she held up the empty crystal goblet to the light of the moon to examine it. A smile broke across her own lips as she looked back at him.
“The exact shape, hmm?”
HOW IS HE TODAY?”
Gabriel de Montgommery, the Captain of the Scots Guard, asked the question still half out of breath from the ride to Auxerre. He pulled off the heavy leather gloves and tossed his cape across a simple straw chair, barely looking at her. Tall and blond and in the full bloom of youth, Gabriel was handsome and bore the countenance of privilege. What he did not possess was the easy grace that had so endeared his father to the Court of François I a generation before.
The woman who faced him cared for Jacques de Montgommery now that he was out of prison. She was a former lady’s maid to Anne d’Heilly named Caroline d’Estillac, a woman Diane de Poitiers had once pleaded with him to marry. But Gabriel knew only that she was a tired-looking spinster with white straw hair and tragic blue eyes whom his father had known in some capacity at the Court of the previous King.
“He is not well, I am afraid,” she whispered through pale lips. “When he coughs now it is full of blood, and both of his legs are swollen. When he speaks, he rambles on as though it was another time and another place.” She lowered her head. “I pray God will soon be merciful with him.”
Gabriel removed his toque and lowered his own head to pass through the doorway into the small, musty enclosure that served as living area and bedroom. The furnishings were simple. In the center of the room was a scarred oak trestle table. Against one wall was a cupboard full of crockery. A fire blazed from the soot-stained hearth. Beside it was a cot in which Jacques lay. It took longer than it had in the past for father to recognize son. Gabriel knelt by his father’s side and took his hand.
“I have brought something for you, Papa. I’ve given them to Caroline. There are all your favorites: sweetmeats, and jams and some fresh apricots from Fontainebleau.”
“I do not want them!” he growled with his last ounce of breath. “I do not want anything from him! Take them away.”
“But you must eat something, or you shall never get strong again.”
“I am not going to get strong again, Gabriel. I am going to die.”
“You mustn’t say such things. Of course you shall recover. I am making a good wage now in your old position as Captain, and soon I shall be able to buy us a house; a proper house, with servants and your own apartments, and even a garden if you like.”
“It is foolish for you to wish such things, Gabriel. I will die right here. I am ready to die now. It does not frighten me and it should not frighten you. I am so tired of the pain, of the disgrace. I am ready to rest.”
Gabriel’s eyes filled with tears as he looked at the shell of the man. Justice. It all came down to that. Once great, the Montgommerys were a family in disgrace. All of their money and their estates had been confiscated with his father’s arrest. Although his life was eventually returned to him, it was only at a point so weak and frail that he was nearly at death’s door. But things would not go unavenged. Having been made Captain of the Scots Guard, Gabriel was now in a position of just enough power to do something about it. Without benefit of knowing it, Gabriel de Montgommery had become his father’s son; tall, elegant and ruthless. He would not forget. He had only one purpose and one motive now.
“The King did this to you,” he whispered through his tears. “And that woman too.”
“They played their parts.”
“I shall avenge you, Father. I swear it! Your life has been snuffed out so senselessly, and by God in his Heaven, I do promise you, His Majesty shall pay for it!”
Jacques patted his son’s hand with his last remaining bit of strength. “You are a good boy, Gabriel. You always were. You shall do as you must, I know that. But take care when you do, for one thing I have learned in this life is that no matter how long it takes, vengeance turned outward always returns home to rest.”
“Never mind the words of wisdom, Papa. They are lost on me. Nothing matters now so much as seeing you avenged!”
A STRANGE COMBINATION of curiosity and fear captivated Henri as he lay Nostradamus’s book on the night table. He had finally read it. He glanced over at Diane, glad that she was asleep. The dedication of Centuries to the King of France had served its purpose. It had so taken the rest of the Court, everyone having read it, that the King himself, late at night in his bed, had finally surrendered to his own curiosity.
It appeared that Nostradamus’s cryptic quatrains were predicting doom for France, and possibly even his own demise. Henri recalled the passage that was thought to pertain to himself. . .
The young lion will overcome the older one
On the field of combat in single battle
He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage
Two wounds made one, then he dies a cruel death.
His instinct was to cast it aside as rubbish, work of the devil, and to throw himself on his prie-dieu to beg forgiveness simply for having read it. The future was the arena of God, not man. But since the day he had sat across the table from the Queen’s mystic, something inside Henri had changed. The staunch objection had gradually turned to reasonable skepticism; then to sincere interest. He loathed to admit it, but Catherine’s passion for the dark realm of mysticism had influenced him. Now this work, which echoed Gauier’s warning, turned his skin to ice.
He had heard the whispers about the forewarning quatrain. As with Gauier’s admonition, it too predicted his death in combat. But as he now lay in Diane’s canopied black oak bed in the dark of night, his concerns were of things greater than his own mortality. If the man was truly a prophet, and if he could see the future as he claimed, it opened up a wealth of avenues to a King with the fate of an entire country on his shoulders. Religion. The Emperor’s son, Philip II. The return of Milan and Calais to France.
Henri reached across the covers and brushed a hand along her velvet cheek. He listened to her breathe then kissed the nape of her neck where her hair fell away. Diane did not stir. Her sweet face was reassuring to him. He still had not decided how he would tell her that he was going to meet
with the prophet. He knew that she would not approve. But something so great in him had been moved by this man’s writings that he would not rest until he had pursued it as far as he could.
A WHITE-HAIRED MAN was pushed past the throngs of people by two royal guards, and ushered into the audience chamber. Henri’s first view of the great prophet, Michel Nostradamus, was a surprising one. He was short and inconsequential-looking, with opalescent eyes and the frailty of age etched deep on his face. Henri had not expected the great man of vision to be so old, nor so average in appearance. With a flip of his jeweled hand, the room was cleared by two other guardsmen, and the great double doors were sealed. The two men were alone. Nostradamus had been granted a private audience.
“Welcome!” Henri said as he stood on the dais of his throne, hands on hips, suppressing a look of surprise. He advanced alone and let the old man, clad in a four-pointed hat and the austere black physicians’ robes, bow to him.
“As you can see, your visit to Paris has caused quite a stir,” said Henri, referring to the maze of people who had gathered within the palace walls and around the great iron gates facing the rue Saint-Antoine.
“I have grown accustomed to their stares because I understand them,” Nostradamus replied with a resonating tone of dignity that Henri immediately admired. “It is a privilege, at any price, to be given such an audience with Your Majesty.”
“Pretty words,” Henri said with a weak smile, “but you shall entertain Us far more fully with the substance of your insights than with their dressing.”
“Then Your Majesty does not oppose such things as running in opposition to God?”
Henri sank back in his throne and indicated the chair that faced his own. When he snapped his fingers, two stewards advanced from a false-fronted door at the end of the room. One bore a silver tray with a crystal wine decanter, the other a similar tray with two rare crystal goblets. He wished to give himself time to consider the prophet’s question. They first handed the King a goblet, and then one was offered to Nostradamus. Henri waited to speak until they were once again alone.