Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici (28 page)

The fall knocked me breathless. Before I could cover myself properly and scramble to my feet, the king had circled back and dismounted and now bent over me. “Catherine, my dear, are you all right?”

“I am. Your Majesty,” I gasped. “Or I will be in a moment.”

Gallantly the king lifted me to my feet. I saw him glancing curiously at my underbreeches, now plastered with mud. “Designed to deprive a gallant gentleman of a glimpse of heaven,” I explained, smoothing my petticoats and taking a quick look at the king to see if he'd caught my little joke.

The king stared at me for a moment and then threw back his head and burst into unrestrained laughter. Hearing the hilarity, the rest of
La Petite Bande
rode up and surrounded me, asking eager questions about my sidesaddle.

“Show them what's beneath your petticoat, Catherine,” ordered the king.

I felt myself blush, but I realized that this was no time to lose courage. Slowly I raised my skirt, higher and higher, revealing my lower legs until the linen underbreeches appeared. The ladies drew surprised breaths, and King François loudly proclaimed, “‘Designed to deprive a gallant gentleman of a glimpse of heaven.'”

I curtsied, letting my skirts fall to their proper place, and remounted without assistance. “Shall we continue, my lord?” I asked.

The next day I was told that I was now a member of
La Petite Bande,
by order of Anne, Duchess d'Étampes. The ladies ordered their saddlers to copy the unusual Italian sidesaddle and their seamstresses to stitch them short underbreeches gathered at the knee. From then on, wherever
La Petite Bande
went, so did I. The king clearly enjoyed my company. And if there were still members of the court who would rather have their legs broken than to bend their knees to the Italian merchant's daughter, so be it—I didn't care.

T
HE KING AND HIS
court moved from chateau to chateau, never staying in one place more than fifteen days. Up and down we went through the lovely Loire Valley, now bursting with the colors of spring. No sooner had I learned my way around one beautiful chateau than it was time to move to another. Most often we returned to Fontainebleau, the king's favorite.

I might have been satisfied with this life, but I was not. All the wild rides and intellectual conversation and feigned appreciation of bawdy tales didn't make up for the fact that providing an heir was my principal duty and my biggest challenge, and I had not yet conceived a child. My husband was in love with a woman old enough to be his mother and rarely came to my bed. In public Henri continued to ignore me; I simply didn't exist. Yet, in spite of his neglect and indifference, something deep inside me responded to something I sensed in Henri, and I found myself falling in love with the man I imagined him to be beneath his cold exterior. I had known only two other young men in my fifteen years: Alessandro, who was cruel and loutish and treated me badly, and Ippolito, tender and loving but beyond my reach. Henri was different from both of them in a singularly important way: He was my husband, and I wanted him to care for me. I prayed that he would someday find some small thing in me to love.

O
N THE TWENTY-FIFTH
of September in 1534, less than a year after my marriage, Fate once again intervened and brought my world crashing down around me: Pope Clement VII was dead. My uncle had died without paying the larger part of my dowry still owed to François and without keeping his promise to secure the Italian cities he had guaranteed for the king of France. Clement's successor, Pope Paul III, had no use for the Medici and refused to honor Clement's promises. I heard that the new pope demanded that Filippo Strozzi return the Vatican jewels Clement had pledged as collateral for the loan to finance my wedding.

With Clement dead, I no longer had any political value to François, nor had I brought him the fortune he'd been promised. Worse yet, I had not become pregnant. The king had every right to send me back to Florence in disgrace, and it was rumored that nearly everyone in France believed it was exactly what he should—and would—do.

I faced another winter painfully aware of the precariousness of my position as Henri's wife. I tried to imagine ways to awaken his interest, to make myself more desirable to him. But I could think of nothing, and I had no one in whom to confide, no one whose advice I trusted.

From the time of our first meeting, I'd been bothered by the king's attitude toward Henri. François showered all his affection on Henri's older brother, the dauphin. Their younger brother, Charles, was most like his father in his easy manner and delight in dancing, feasting, and women. But Henri was generally silent and withdrawn, often dour, not at all jovial. He disliked feasting and dancing and preferred hunting, jousting, wrestling, and other rough sports. His smiles were rare, his laughter unheard of, and his conversation was always brief, unadorned, and to the point.

All of these qualities exasperated his father. “The mark of a Frenchman is to be always lively and gay,” King François declared for all to hear at a festive dinner before the start of Lent, when Henri had been even more silent and withdrawn than usual. “What ails the boy?”

The king's mistress could have told him what ailed his son, for it was Anne who explained it to me when we once found ourselves separated from the others while out riding with
La Petite Bande.
“Henri surely resents his father for turning him over to Emperor Charles in order to secure his own release. And he harbors a burning hatred of the emperor, who held him hostage for four years under the most wretched conditions.”

Who could blame him? Although my months shut up in a convent couldn't be compared to Henri's years in a harsh Spanish prison, I did know what it was to be cut off from all that was familiar. Perhaps it was because of this shared experience of isolation that I felt I understood Henri, although I could not seem to find a way to reach him. And even as my love for him grew—who can explain why?—he still didn't show me the slightest affection.

W
ITH THE COURT
constantly on the move, Diane de Poitiers often traveled with us. When she didn't, Henri stayed with her at Chateau d'Anet for days at a time. He seemed completely devoted to her. The entire court witnessed my humiliation. Most of them scorned me. Although the ladies of
La Petite Bande
accepted me as one of them, I felt they were as likely as anyone else to laugh at me behind my back. The exception was the Duchess d'Étampes. Anne remained my ally because she despised Diane de Poitiers and would have gone to almost any length to outdo her.

Sometimes as
La Petite Bande
rode together or gathered to dine with the king, Anne entertained us with cruel comments about Diane. “Nothing but old baggage,” she said disdainfully “She must be thirty-five, if she's a day. Her bones are surely creaking by now.”

Anne was eight years younger than Diane, just as beautiful, and she had the king's love. What more could she want? I could see no reason for her jealousy, but I hungered for her bitter jibes and devoured her cutting remarks. “What a cold fish Diane is! She has ice in her veins, anyone can see that, and a stone lodges where the rest of us have a heart.”

Members of
La Petite Bande
speculated on Diane's beauty secrets.

“She believes that exercise is good for the complexion,” observed one lady. “And she gets plenty of sleep.”

“She bathes in cold water to stimulate her skin, and she doesn't paint her face, because she believes that whatever is in those substances can be harmful.”

But none of that could account for the hold she had over Henri. No one seemed to know, though, if they were actually lovers. Diane had always maintained a spotless reputation, both before and after the death of the Grand Sénéchal. But even if my husband was not enjoying the delights of her body, he was obviously madly in love with her. When she chose to welcome him into her bed, I had no doubt that he would go to her without hesitation. The power was completely in her hands.

E
ARLY IN THE SUMMER
of 1535, I received a letter from Giulietta, describing Niccolà's wedding and her own betrothal, sending news of Tomassa's decision to become a nun, and ending with an odd message: “We have found the artist about whom you inquired. The small painting was completed a year ago and has been donated to a chapel.”

I reread the message twice more before it struck me that she was writing about Akasma in a sort of code: Akasma was the artist; the small painting must be the infant she had conceived by horrid Alessandro. She must have left it on the wheel at a convent.

A month or so later one of the pages at Fontainebleau came to my apartment, delivering a message and a bowl of pudding: A girl had come to the kitchen, speaking Italian mixed with a few words of French and claiming that she had once worked in the Medici kitchen in Florence. She asked to see
la duchessina.
She was refused. Then she told the cook that she knew how to make a certain kind of orange-flavored pudding that was
la duchessina's
favorite. The cook let her try, watching carefully to be sure this was not a poison plot. The pudding had been tasted and was declared both safe and delicious.

I accepted the pudding. One spoonful and I knew. “Send her to me at once,” I ordered.