Judith Merkle Riley (8 page)

“Beware the House of Guise! They will strip your children to their waistcoats and your poor subjects to their shirts.”

King Francis I on his deathbed

to his son and heir, Henri II

It is time, my lords, to join the ladies.” Henri II, King of France, tall and grave, led his courtiers to the queen’s chambers. The king was a man of great courtesy and permanent gloom. A childhood spent as a hostage in a Spanish prison had left him forever joyless. Around him spun the farces, practical jokes, and intrigues of a pleasure-bent court, but he never took notice. High wit and low humor had no hold on him. Music, drink, ribaldry all passed him by. He diverted himself with hunting, combat, and his aged mistress, who reminded him vaguely of his long-dead mother. He scheduled his days like a clock wound up by duty. No one had ever seen him laugh.

On his left hand, slightly behind him, strode his chief advisor, the Old Constable, Anne de Montmorency, Grand Master and Constable of France, who held in addition, either within his own hands or those of his family, the Colonelcy of the French Infantry, the Admiralship of France, and the four great Governorships of Provence, Languedoc, Picardy, and the Isle of France. Square-set and gray haired, the Constable walked with the confidence of one who had known King Henri in the cradle, who had been advisor and friend to his father the great King Francis, and to whom no human treachery was surprising.

On the king’s right walked the Old Constable’s chief rival, the Duc de Guise, head of the second great family of the realm. Tall, hard-eyed, elegant and remote, one side of his face had been smashed in by a lance, causing him to be known as “The Scar.” His permanent favor in the royal court was assured by his alliance through marriage to the king’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, as well as by his link to the Dauphin himself through the boy’s betrothal to his niece Mary, who had inherited the crown of Scotland in her infancy. Behind The Scar walked his younger brother, Charles, the Cardinal of Lorraine, in the full red silk robes and pectoral cross of a cardinal of the Church of Rome. The Guise brothers had a great enterprise in the making: the unification of the Kingdoms of France, Scotland, and England under their power, to be followed by the purging of the Protestant heresy from all of these realms by fire, sword, and the noose.

The cards were already in play: Mary, the girl queen of Scots, was, through her mother, the eldest sister of the Duke and the Cardinal, a Guise. But through her dead royal father, the King of Scots, Mary was a direct descendant from Henry VII of England. This made her the last legitimate Catholic heir to the throne of England once Edward, the sickly son of Henry VIII, and Mary, the childless daughter of Henry VIII’s first, Catholic queen, were dead. The English Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, was the darling of the English Protestant faction. But to the Catholic faction she was a bastard who had no claim, since Henry VIII’s divorce and remarriage to Mistress Boleyn had no standing in the Catholic Church. To the French then, the Guises’ Mary was the legitimate heiress, born to bring England back to the Catholic fold. Her uncles, the Guise brothers, dazzled the king with her claims, and the possibility that his oldest son, the Dauphin, through marriage to their niece, could be king of three realms.

But the actual moment of the Queen of Scots’s marriage to the Dauphin would seal the Guises’ supreme power permanently. For this reason, the shrewd Old Constable, Montmorency, was doing his best to delay or undermine the wedding, for the sake of his own family.

The Guises were patient and brilliant; they did not play for short-term gains. They had smuggled little Mary out of Scotland at six, and seen to it that for all these years she was raised with the Dauphin, and trained by Diane de Poitiers in the graces that would charm the king and control his sickly, simpleminded son. The girl herself was encouraged in uselessness, vanity, and feminine frivolity, and to turn for any serious advice to her dear uncles, the Duc and the Cardinal. Their puppets were almost in place. Someday, through Mary, they would rule. She would be queen of beauty, and they, in all but the crown, kings of France, of Scotland, and of England.

Behind these scheming rivals and supports of the throne came a throng of courtiers, the highest lords and military commanders and landholders in the realm, dressed in satin and gold-embroidered velvet, tight silk hose with shining garters, codpieces as puffed and embroidered as their padded doublets. The Dauphin, ill-grown and bad tempered, also accompanied his father. Shorter, with goggle eyes, bulbous nose, and a receding chin that resembled his mother’s, his face was marred with great patches of angry red, and his mouth hung slightly open with adenoids. He had none of dignity of the king, whose somber, long-nosed profile gave him an air of great seriousness and gravity of purpose. Still, parents must work with what they have, and the king, now at the height of his powers, intended for his son, someday, to be an even greater king than he had been.

“Ah, the garden of delights,” breathed the King of Navarre, first of the princes of the blood, as the courtiers entered the queen’s tapestried reception chamber. Musicians were playing in a gallery, games and food were laid out here and there on little tables. The queen herself sat on a low, cushioned chair, with a slightly grander and higher one empty at her side. The colored tile floor was covered with rare carpets and soft, embroidered silk cushions, on which the gloriously dressed ladies of the court sat around her on the floor, their bright skirts spread about them. After making their formal greetings to the queen, the gentlemen joined the little groups of women to play cards, tell stories, and hear the latest gossip and songs. The evenings with the queen were something no gentleman would willingly miss: there one could carry on flirtations, make assignations, and trade an old mistress for a new. Harmless diversion, they thought, as they looked over the ladies of honor assigned to the duchess’s and the queen’s households. Women, so light-headed, so delicious, so easy.

But these women were pledged in loyalty either to the queen or the royal mistress, who clothed them, financed them, and ruled their lives like a pair of generals. They assigned them their lovers, controlled their affairs, and required the reporting of their pillow talk. Yet so subtle and perfumed was this rule that the gentlemen of the court never understood that they were in the hands of two rival espionage services, deployed with all the brilliance of two military commanders in the field.

The king, with a half dozen of his lords standing behind him, joined the queen, making polite conversation with her. “My lord,” she said, trying to find a place where their disparate interests might join, “have you read this strange new book of prophecies by this Doctor Nostradamus? There are many curiosities there, about the future of the realm.”

“I do not take political advice from soothsayers,” said the king. “That was sufficient for the pagan emperors of Rome, and led them into misery. We are fortunate to be a Christian kingdom.”

“Still, I have here the book, and it might be considered a curiosity,” she said, showing him an open page. Slowly, the king read the verse to which she had pointed.

Le lion jeune le vieux surmontera

En champ bellique par singulier duel:

Dans cage d’or les yeux lui crèvera:

Deux classes une, puis mourir, mort cruelle.

Behind him, the courtiers shifted. “The young lion will overcome the old in single combat—” The lion was a king, no doubt of that. Books of prophecy were quite the vogue these days, and this one was something of a scandal. There were those on the street who said this very verse prophesied the death of Henri II. Yet wasn’t prophesying a king’s death treason? “This doesn’t mean anything,” said the king. “If a man’s going to be a prophet, he should say it straight out. Look at these verses. Mixed up Latin and French, with anagrams and dialect stirred in for good measure. He just wants to be cryptic so he can claim he was right after the fact. And who can say no? Nobody can figure out a word he’s said.”

“My Cosmo says it prophesies danger which you must avoid.”

“Your Cosmo?” said the king, his voice scornful. “That ghastly quack magician you brought with you?”

“The Ruggieri have served the Medici well for generations,” said the queen.

“Ever since they took up pawnbroking and peddling,” whispered Diane de Poitiers to her little protégée, the Queen of Scots, who snickered. Catherine heard, but the only sign was a brief flicker of her eyes sideways toward the source of the comment.

“Still, how does he propose to interpret this verse? It is far too cryptic for
me
,” said the Old Constable, an ally of Queen Catherine’s in the secret struggle against the Guise, trying to smooth over the situation.

“He says that the king bears great danger of being killed in single combat. My lord, this verse has troubled me so much that I sent to the celebrated Guaricus in Rome to inspect your horoscope.” The king sighed. Horoscopes, diviners, cards, anything foolish and superstitious diverted his wife. That and those horrible Italian comedies everybody else laughed at. Didn’t she have any normal interests?

“Very well, did he inspect it thoroughly?”

“He sent this letter, which M. de l’Aubespine has put from Latin into French. He says in particular to ‘avoid all single combat in enclosed spaces, particularly around the forty-first year, because in this epoch of the king’s life, he is threatened with a head wound that will lead rapidly to blindness or death.’” The queen handed the king the translation of the letter from Italy, and the monarch’s somber gaze rested a moment on the offending passage. He was silent for a long time before he spoke, not to the queen, but with a turn of his head to the Old Constable.

“Well, just see that, my friend, how they all predict my death,” said the king. It was said in a sardonic tone, but the Old Constable smelled the despair that lay beneath. The king did not need to be encouraged in his natural gloom and pessimism.

“Ah, sire! Do you want to believe these boasting, lying quacks? Throw that stupid letter in the fire.”

“My old friend,” said the king, his voice weary, “sometimes these folks tell the truth.” The King Who Never Laughed shrugged his shoulders and spoke again. “I don’t mind one kind of death more than another; but I’d prefer, no matter at whose hand I die, that the man be brave and valiant, and that the glory would be mine.”

Oh, that damned Diane de Poitiers, thought the queen. She’s poisoned his mind with all that romantic swill from old ballads. A king should be more practical. The purpose of a good fortune is to evade danger. Why, if my cousin Ippolito had listened to his fortune-teller, he would never have been poisoned by my cousin Alessandro. And in a great court, enemies are everywhere. And look how my husband rose to the throne when his own brother, who didn’t even keep an astrologer, was poisoned! For the good of his subjects, a king should struggle against the hand of Fate by keeping many magicians, as I do. Aloud, and well aware of her audience, she said, “Sire, you are king of a mighty realm. For the sake of your people and in thought of the youth of your son, to say nothing of myself and your other children who are devoted to you, I beg you to take care of yourself in your forty-first year. It is not such a long time, and after that the prophecy of Luc Gauric does not hold.”

The king looked at her as if she were the stupidest creature God had ever invented, and said, “Gauricus is only one of the doomsayers. Look at this other, this Nostradamus. Does he give a date? What is to keep these fortune-tellers from manufacturing another prophecy, and yet another, just to keep me from my glory, and your gold flowing into their purses?”

“Nostradamus, sire, is much more than a common fortune-teller. This book marks him as a great prophet, who sees farther than the others. Let me send for him, to clarify these words he has written, and read the future for the royal house. Then your mind will be put at ease.”

God, how the woman pushes, thought the king. What a stupid, ugly busybody. Still, it is best her hobbies keep her busy. Diane has said to encourage her preoccupations; it will leave us more time together. Distantly, soberly, the king nodded his assent. The following day, a royal messenger set out with dispatches for the Governor and Grand Seneschal of Provence. Among them was a royal command that Doctor Michel de Nostre-Dame appear at court as soon as possible. It was June of 1556, almost two years and a half after Nostradamus had noted the unpleasant conversation with the Spirit of History in his little green notebook.

***

“I knew it,” said Nostradamus, when the Seneschal’s servant dismounted at his doorway. He shaded his eyes with a hand against the midsummer southern sun, which was so fierce the very stones of the road seemed to shriek with the heat. July 1556, almost a year from the time the printer in Lyons had first taken the manuscript of the
Centuries
from his hand. As obvious as a boulder rolling downhill, one thing had followed another, exactly as predicted. Now this official messenger, trudging up his front steps. “It’s that damned royal command, arrived at last,” he addressed the dusty fellow with the high leather boots, who looked taken aback. “Paris indeed! With my gout? That’s more than a month away, even with royal post-horses!” Annoyed, Nostradamus did not invite the fellow in out of the sun, but stood in the doorway and opened the seals. “Never mind,” he said. “My bags are already packed. I knew this was coming.” The messenger turned pale.

“You are to leave as soon as possible,” he said.

“And what kind of a prophet would I be if I couldn’t prophesy that I’d have to shut down my practice for a month? I’ve already got someone to cover for me; just tell the Seneschal I’ll be off tomorrow for St.-Esprit. By the way, did he advance any funds for the trip?” Sheepishly, the messenger extracted a little purse from his pocket.

“Good,” said Nostradamus. “Never try to fool anybody with supernatural powers. Hmm. Light, this purse. It won’t even get me halfway there. What do they expect? That I’ll travel at my own expense?” Grumbling, he re-entered his shady house, malacca cane tapping on the tiled entry, while the messenger fled in superstitious terror.