Dark Eminence Catherine De Medici And Her Children (14 page)

The Queen Mother had acted unwisely in prolonging her absence from Paris where high taxes and famine in the face of the vast expenditures for the King of Poland's farewell festivities had once more roused the populace to anger. Whichever way she turned she found wariness and uncertainty. Paris seemed to have lost its heart (and its head) to the handsome young Duke of Guise who apparently had inherited his late father's knack for making himself popular; Marguerite, her husband, Henry of Navarre, and her brother, Alengon, were obviously leagued in a triumvirate of plotting; and Alengon, always a devout Catholic, was making

strangely congenial observations about his recent archenemies, the Huguenots. Marguerite remained irritatingly withdrawn and noncommittal

Then on the 30th of May, 1547, just a month before his twenty-fourth birthday, Charles IX, King of France, died. His young wife, looking at their baby daughter, said quietly, "I thank God our little one is a girl. So is she spared the agony of wearing the crown." How little this young mother realized that had her child been a son, means would have been found by his grandmother for preventing him from wearing the crown which she would reserve for her beloved Henry at all costs.

There was something unspeakably sad about the last years and death of Charles of Valois. He wanted so very much to be a kingly king. He was shy and sensitive, violent, and often unmanageable in his rages. But he did love beauty as expressed in music and poetry; he did love manly sports; and if his mother's preference for Henry had not been a corroding acid on his boyish spirit, Charles might have been all and more than Catherine's soaring ambition could have asked of a son.

Of all her children Charles alone had inherited his grandfather Francis Fs resoluteness. Francis II had not wanted the crown and had wept in dismay when he found he actually was King. Henry of Anjou certainly was not interested in kingship beyond its dramatic aspects—a jeweled cloak to wear picturesquely in procession. Alengon, the little egomaniac who saw himself the successful suitor for the hand of Queen Elizabeth of England, twenty-one years his senior,

Alengon believed himself not only a king but the great king of all time, the conqueror, the new Charlemagne.

Now Charles, his young tody destroyed by tuberculosis, his mind shattered by frustration and bitterness, was at peace. Word of his death had been sent to Henry in Poland and meanwhile a strange custom must be followed. For forty days the King s effigy in wax, fully clothed in ceremonial robes, lay upon his bed while his embalmed body rested in the adjoining chapel Twice daily an elaborate meal, such as would have been served him in life, was set out before the effigy and

later was distributed among the poor. But all the pomp, all the wildly extravagant mummery was finished long before the King of Poland arrived.

Envy and ambition form a dangerous combination. Al-engon, a victim of both, hating his brother, Henry, and now in the good graces of his sister, Marguerite, and her husband, Henry of Navarre, plotted to put himself at the head of the combined Huguenot armies. Marguerite s main objective was to manage by any means possible to replace Henry with Alengon on the throne of France. That she planned to have Henry assassinated seems likely since she and Alengon constantly at this time referred to Navarre as his, Alen^on's, next of blood and so his heir to the throne. It was a wretched plot, clumsily conceived, and in the end it failed.

The news of Charles's death reached Henry at a time when he was sunk in the deepest depths of homesickness and despair. He hated Poland and its barbaric glitter, its language which, try as he would, he could not master, its lack of finesse. France, his homeland, he knew had paid heavily for his unwelcome Polish crown, and now all he wanted was to be rid of it, to be back home in surroundings he loved.

Henry may have suspected how unsuited was his head to wear a crown. Given an army to command he had acquitted himself magnificently, but to assume the responsibility of ruling a nation, this was almost more than he could face. In Poland, among strangers who understood him no better than he did them, he was at a complete loss. After ten months in Cracow he felt he knew less about the Polish people than he had before he arrived. Henry was thoroughly bewildered,

out in turbulent waters far, far beyond his depth and longing for his mother's advice.

Then had come the dispatch from France with its sad news. For moments Henry could not seem to grasp the fact that Charles was dead. His mother had warned him when he left Paris that his brother was failing fast; but, as with most warnings, he had paid little heed to it. Now Charles was gone, and with all the irrational agony of mind which a fundamentally shallow character can attain, Henry gave himself up to haunting, soul-searching grief. Charles had been such an amusing little warrior when they were children, playing in the shady garden court at the old palace of Vincennes east of Paris. He was remembering how Charles in their games of war always had insisted, "I am older so I am wiser. Follow me!" So long ago that seemed now, with so much bitterness in the years between. Why had he taken such delight in irritating Charles? And his mother's letter had said—he opened it again, smoothing the pages on the table before him:

"Never did man die in better possession of his understanding . . . commanding his brothers and all those who served him to obey me as yourself till you came, confident that you would wish it so, speaking constantly of your goodness and that you have always loved and obey him so well and never given him a moment's pain, only great services/'

Henry crushed the paper in his fist, staring before him. "Always loved and obeyed . . /* Charles had said. Dear God, what a cad he, Henry, had been! How he had gloried in his mother's favoritism, preening himself when he saw the look

of hurt darken his brother's eyes. And now Charles was gone and it was too late to make amends. But—he smoothed out the crumpled pages—there was more. "I am dying of longing to see you," Catherine had written, "for one thing that can console me and make me forget what I have lost is your presence. . . ."

He was to go back, back to France, to the country he loved. Belatedly the thought came zigzagging through his mind: he was King! Yes, of course, the ambassador himself had brought the dispatch and had hailed him as "Henry III, by the Grace of God King of France." But that had been hours ago and it had left him numb. Only now with his mother's words before him did the full impact of the fact strike him. And Henry knew well what his next move would be though his better judgment and the wiser gentlemen in his suite all advised against it: he was leaving Poland at once—he was free!

Henry loved drama. In the lusty harlequinades performed at Court he was always present in some role involving elegance and a certain effete beauty, and like any prima donna he took a jealous pride in his acting. Now he was faced with drama of a very realistic sort, and though he recognized his danger, he gloried in the spectacular part he was called upon to play. The Polish Senate, on receiving word of Charles's death, made it very clear that Henry, their recently elected King, was not to feel free to return to France, He was the King o£ Poland and in Poland he should remain. He was watched day and night by Tenczynski, the Grand Master of the Household, and whatever plans for escape he might

make must be made with superhuman secrecy under the very nose of his guard. Nevertheless, within twenty-four hours he had packed his jewels and given them to the messenger who had brought his mother's letter and was returning the following day to France. The next move would not be so simple, hut its very challenge fascinated him and, though well aware of the risks involved, he planned it with something very close to glee. Dark eyes flashing, color staining his delicate, girlish cheeks, he paced about his apartment like a dancer practicing his steps, long slender hands nervously plucking at the lace on his cuffs, the full Medici lips curved in a secret smile.

Two nights later Tenczynski respectfully stood by while His Majesty, the King of Poland, was disrobed for the night and escorted to his mammoth bed and the curtains drawn. For another half-hour he waited until the sound of deep, rhythmic breathing came from behind the curtains; a peep through them showed His Majesty curled into a cocoonlike ball, apparently fast asleep. The Grand Master tiptoed from the apartment and was soon on his way to a ball.

From the opposite side of the bed the King's first gentleman swiftly handed in doublet, hose, great cloak, sword and dagger; then a quick sortie by a little-used stairway to a court opening on a meadow. Here coins changed hands and a gate swung open to allow a party of four cloaked figures to slip out into the darkness and go racing off to a point almost a mile away. Horses were waiting and now began a dash for the border more than a hundred miles away. Henry loved every second of that wild ride during which he stopped only

long enougK to change horses and press on. He crossed the Polish border only minutes ahead of Tenczynski; then, traveling by way of Vienna, he entered Italy and so on to Venice, the glorious city of waterways.

Though his first frantic burst of speed had carried him a great distance to safety in a very short time, characteristically enough, once arrived in Italy Henry found that his love of all things aesthetic blurred somewhat his glow of anticipation of homecoming. He lingered, relaxed, began to enjoy the life along the canals. More than two months passed, while in Venice the uncrowned King of France poured gifts of money and jewels beyond price into the laps of his beautiful hostesses and spent still other fortunes on little white poodles to add to his collection. Meanwhile in Paris Catherine watched the calendar and the clock and finally on a day in late summer, overcome with joy, she held her son, Henry, the best beloved, in her arms.

France hailed the young King with something close to adoration. Twenty-three years old, he was the average Frenchman's ideal monarch—handsome, charming, affable. If his natural arrogance was tempered with a strange humility hinting at imminent fanaticism, it was put down as a passing phase. But it was not long before those who had welcomed him most joyously saw to their horror signs of decadence and degeneracy.

Before going to Poland he had fallen in love with Marie de Cleves, the young wife of the Prince of Conde. Both

young people were Huguenots who had been forced to change their religion at the time of Saint Bartholomew's. Conde, however, returned to his Protestant faith and left the country. Marie became a devout Catholic. As a Catholic she would not have divorced her husband even though Henry, soon to be her King, had written her a passionate letter from Poland in which he promised, "You shall be Queen of France if you so choose/* What her answer was never will be known. She may not have received the letter; her answer, if there was one, may have been intercepted and destroyed, for Henry received none.

A week after his return to France the young Princess of Conde died suddenly and there were rumors that her husband had had her poisoned. Perhaps Henry had not realized how deeply he loved her, for the shock of her death threw him into a spasm of grief from which it was thought he would not recover. Every facet of his specious, hypersensitive nature revolted against this outrage to his deepest desire.

He adopted an appalling costume of black, including his hats, and from collar, cuffs, shoelaces and hat brims dangled tiny ivory death's-heads. When this first phase of his grief was spent he went to another extreme, appearing in scarlet satin doublet with jeweled buttons from which the little death's-heads clattered on gay ribbons. He twined pearls and rubies in his hair, wore exquisite rings and bracelets; and when he tired of all this, he gave himself up to the most grotesque spectacle of all. Garbed as a monk, he joined a sect of fanatical flagellants and twice a week marched with them through the streets, two by two, his shoulders bared and

j50 Dark Eminence

Heeding under the lashes of the devotees behind him while he administered stripes as cruel to the man ahead of him.

This mockery of religion was frowned upon by the clergy and laity alike. Where, they demanded, was their King, their hope for the future of France"? This effeminate young man with his alternating morbid religiosity and his unabashed sybaritism had little of sovereignty about him. Catherine saw the gathering storm and as usual, where one of her children was concerned, she felt she must do what she could to temper the wind.

She faced Henry and without any preamble and very like any modern mother, she spoke her mind. He must stop all his hysterical nonsense; he must marry and have an heir. Only so could he expect to keep his throne. She had several eligible princesses in mind and in businesslike fashion counted them off on her fingers for him to consider. But Henry shook his head; he wanted none of them. He had recently been attracted by a lovely young girl who reminded him of Marie de Cleves, Louise de Vaudemont, of the House of Lorraine. If she would have him he would marry her, but no one else.

Catherine faced the disappointment as best she could. Louise de Vaudemont, of the House of Lorraine and therefore a Guise! Still, the girl was beautiful, highly intelligent and modest in a day that knew so little of modesty. If she bore Henry sons the match might still bring glory to the House of Valois; so Catherine, aging now and growing very tired, smiled benignly on the marriage and prayed for a happy fulfillment of her hopes. Henry's coronation at