Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (19 page)

“That sounds like her.”

“I also made clear to her the complete trust that Cecil had in me. She approved of women who could get into the political arena with men and be appreciated for their skills.”

“That sounds like her too.”

“I told her about the effectiveness with which I completed my mission and my dab hand with a potion. That really won her respect.”

“I can readily understand that, Douglas, rumor having lain more than one covert poisoning at Catherine’s door.”

“And then I told Catherine de’ Medici about my undying devotion to Elizabeth and how I would do anything to ensure
that she lived out her royal destiny. Family first! Catherine practically had tears in her eyes once I’d finished sharing.”

“I’m not surprised, Douglas, given the devotion with which Catherine machinated for the benefit of those sons of hers, no matter how awful they were and no matter how dirty the deed. She could have invented the term ‘family first’!”

Douglas drained her goblet of the last of its wine and drew and let out a deep breath. “Well, yes, some of those tears were about family matters. Some, though, were tears of—I don’t know—relief, I suppose, at finding a kindred spirit in a world where she had so few of those. Machinations are hard on a girl, Dolly. There is so much to keep in, such a feeling of isolation as one protects one’s secrets. My confession emboldened Catherine to confess one of her own machinating secrets to me.”

“From what I’ve read about Catherine de’ Medici, Douglas, she did not hold ambition of ‘so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.’ I’m not surprised that her considerable machinating weighed heavy on her. She must have just about wanted to bust out with it all, at least once in a while.”

“Especially,” Douglas said, “when she could bust out with someone whose machinations, at least in one small arena, were so identical to her own. You see, neither one of us realized that we were playing such identical games with Robert Dudley’s fate.”

“Catherine de’ Medici was machinating about Robert Dudley? Long-distance machinating, surely, since she never made her way to England from the court of France. However did she manage it? Did she, like the ladies of England, call upon Cecil for aid and assistance?”

“No, she did not, Dolly,” said Lettice; “she called upon me.”

Chapter Fifty-Two

Circumspection and Escaping Detection

This time, I headed over to the old wine pitcher myself and filled my goblet to the brim. Lettice Knollys in cahoots with Catherine de’ Medici? I hoped the wine would stop my scholarly head from exploding as I awaited details.

Lettice looked happy enough to finally have center stage. She arose and went over to the fireplace, where the fire was burning quite low. She leaned her back carefully against the outer edge of the fireplace mantel and draped an arm over the shelf above the fireplace. Amy brought a goblet of wine to her, placing it on the mantel shelf.

The light from the fire did wonders for Lettice’s outfit and complexion, touching both from just the right angles, with light here and shadow there. A 1930s film star or modern-day fashion model could not have been more aware of lighting effects than Lettice was. Once positioned and illuminated to her satisfaction, she quaffed a bit of wine and set about telling her tale.

“No one was more surprised than I was when a messenger surreptitiously appeared at my door bearing a message from the queen mother of France herself,” Lettice said. “It was early in 1578. Rumors of my having a liaison with Robert Dudley had been bruited about in England for some time and had made their way to France.”

“What was going on with you and Dudley at that point, Lettice?” I asked. “History has indeed been rife with rumors about the two of you.”

That was putting it mildly. There were those who said that the two were an item while her husband, Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford, was still alive. Said husband’s death after a disastrous military foray was, according to some, actually death by poisoning, orchestrated by his wife and her lover. Hereford’s dying words, lamenting the frailness of women, added fuel to the speculative fire. A year or two after her husband’s death, Lettice married Dudley “in a loose gown,” Elizabethan-speak for pregnant. The marriage was reported to be a happy one despite Elizabeth’s banishing the bride from court.

“Dudley and I had always been attracted to each other,” Lettice confessed. “Of course, he was the property of my cousin, the queen, and that kept me on the sunny side of circumspection. His treatment of my other relation, Douglas,” she said, nodding toward that lady, “made me stay on the sunny side of it. I had no idea that Douglas was involved in any kind of plot. I saw her as the rest of the world did.”

“You saw her as used, abused, and losed,” I said. “But only in the eyes of the larger world, of course,” I added, raising my glass to Douglas, who saluted me back in kind.

“Exactly, Dolly,” Lettice went on. “I was interested in Dudley, perhaps even tempted by him, but prudent. I was a countess and the queen’s cousin. I respected my dignity and my family obligations. I was not about to make an ass of myself with Dudley, as I thought Douglas had done. And then came that surprise, to say the least, from France.”

With that, Lettice turned to the door, and my gaze automatically followed hers. A stout, somberly dressed woman had
entered the room, seated herself beside the door, and helped herself to a goblet of wine. At least I assumed she had helped herself, as I’d certainly not served her and had not seen Amy, Douglas, or Lettice, who were all within my sight, give her any such assistance. A black cat sat contentedly in the stout lady’s lap, although I did not notice him at first as he blended so completely into the inky blackness of the lady’s ensemble. I knew I was in a world where my companions were shadows, but this woman was more shadowy than most if she’d been able to set herself up so comfortably in the room, undetected. Her ability to do so despite the ampleness of her proportions, and with a cat no less, added to the mystery of the whole thing.

“I like to think of myself as a surprise from Italy via my adopted country of France,” the stout lady said, rising and moving toward me, much to the consternation of that black cat. “Allow me to introduce myself, Dolly: Catherine de’ Medici, queen mother of France, at your service!”

Chapter Fifty-Three

By Dint of Madame Serpent

The only ladies I had met here on my last visit who were imported from outside of England were Mary, Queen of Scots, and her four Maries—brought to you by Scotland via France via Scotland—Katharine of Aragon, and Anne of Cleves.

“I am here, Dolly, for a brief, ad hoc visit only. I am not in residence like the rest of these fine ladies are,” she said, bowing to Amy, Douglas, and Lettice. “Word does get around in the afterlife, you know. I was granted permission by the powers that be to visit for a spell while you were here, Dolly. I’ve wanted to meet you ever since hearing about your apologia for Henry VIII’s six wives.”

“I made no apologies on behalf of the six wives, Catherine. No excuses, either, and very short shrift to tragedy, if I do say so myself. My contribution to their history was just the facts, ma’am, from a new perspective. But anyway—what has that to do with you?”

I was talking, as I so often do, off the top of my head, and the words were hardly out of my mouth when I realized that I had, yet again, said something very silly indeed. Of course, resizing the facts had everything to do with Catherine de’ Medici. When you are known, in your own life and times, as Madame Serpent, your reputation likely needs all the help it can get. Catherine de’ Medici was, by this time, staring at me pointedly.

“All right, Catherine,” I began. “So it’s out there, in the afterlife, anyway, that I do reputation rehab for Rennies like nobody
else does. And you need reputation rehab for Rennies like no one else does. I take it you wanted to meet me to see if I could do something for you along those lines?”

“Well, as you get to know me a little better, Dolly, who knows…” Catherine de’ Medici’s words trailed off as she headed for the wine setup. With her back to me, she refilled her own goblet and then filled another. Then she turned to face me.

“Drink, Dolly?” she said, proffering me a goblet. The goblets were starting to pile up, I noticed; the cleanup crew was going to think that we’d had one heck of a party.

“No thank you, Catherine; two is my limit for any good given night,” I said, telling—as anyone who has partied with me would know—one whopper of a lie. I just did not have it in me to accept a drink on short notice from the woman who was known in her time as Europe’s poisoner-in-chief.

Catherine sighed as she put down the glass. “Well, it’s not as if I’m not used to this sort of thing,” she said resignedly. Actually, she said it more than resignedly; she said it with misty eyes and a hint of a sniffle. I felt badly, especially when Amy Robsart grabbed the goblet and quaffed the wine with nary an ill effect. I reminded myself that Amy was already dead, and I was not, and felt a little less guilty.

“You will pardon me, Lettice, if I do not join you by the fireside,” Catherine said, returning to her chair in the shadow of the door. “Firelight does not do the same things for my looks that it does for yours.”

Even in the shadows in which she was hiding, a life of wear and tear was manifest in the face of Catherine de’ Medici.

The woman had the Italianate complexion, thought sallow by the French court, which history has attributed to her. It actually
looked quite dramatic against her hair, a warm brownish-black streaked with ribbons of white. Her eyes were large, piercing, and black. They suited the stout, dignified lady of a certain age that I saw before me. I could see, though, that in the face of a younger and slimmer Catherine, those same eyes might have indeed appeared the bulging, protuberant organs described by contemporaries. It took some nerve to look past her piercing gaze and into the eyes themselves. There was strength there, as well as pain; enough pain to have done an average person in, emotionally speaking.

There were no crow’s-feet around Catherine’s eyes, a gift, possibly, of her Mediterranean genes. There were no laugh lines about her lips either; not surprising, given that life had brought her precious little to laugh about. Around her neck and jaw, however, deep and numerous lines were visible in her skin. Here was indisputable evidence of a lifetime spent with jaw set firmly against the outside world. Words and the emotions that went with them, pent up in self-defense, had, like a junkie’s needle, left tracks. I could see why letting it all go for a while with Douglas had been so comforting to Catherine.

“I must say, I approve of your dress sense,” Catherine said to me, gesturing with her hands to include the totality of my outfit. “Those rich colors suit you. And the fluid lines of the ensemble—understated without being dull. They knew nothing about ‘understated’ at the French court, Dolly. There were times during my sojourn there when I felt, in my basic black, like the sole voice of fashion dignity at a circus of Harlequins! You, though, have taste that is in keeping with my own leanings. Elegant indeed, my dear! With your looks and coloring, Dolly,
you couldn’t have made a better choice than to pay tribute to an Italian classic.”

I like to return one compliment with another but was not sure what to say. Catherine’s somber outfit was black mourning, which she is said to have worn in perpetuity after the death of her cheating husband. The potential comments struck me as a minefield, and I trod accordingly.

“Thank you, Catherine! Your approbation is a compliment indeed, coming from someone as cosmopolitan as you are, versed in the worlds of both Italian and French fashion.”

Catherine smiled and bowed forward a bit in acknowledgment of my compliment. Her movement made the candlelight in the room play onto her bosom, and I noticed that she was wearing a remarkable brooch. It was a single diamond; even bigger, I thought, than the Mirror of Naples that I had seen adorning Mary Tudor on my last visit here. It was cut in an impressive fashion, with what seemed like literally dozens of individual reflective surfaces; I had never seen anything quite like it.

“Your brooch is breathtaking! The way it reflects the candlelight against the background of your gown! It looks like the aurora borealis shining in the night sky.”

“Thank you, Dolly!” Catherine said. “Come and take a closer look at the brooch. It was known in my time as the Briolette of India.”

I didn’t have to be invited twice. As an antiquarian, I leaped at my only chance, probably, to see the oldest diamond known to man. The fact that it had also once been in the possession of the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine only added to its fascination.

“I’ve read about this jewel and so appreciate the opportunity to inspect it close up!” I said. “I never realized a jewel could be cut with such precision as this one is. I guess you could say it is multifaceted—just like I believe you must be.”

“Thank you, Dolly, for that compliment,” Catherine said. “My detractors at the French court used to say that I had many faces—too many. It is nice to meet someone who knows the difference between two-facedness and multisidedness.”

“Survival in the French politics of your day pretty much demanded multiple facets and diamond hardness, Catherine. Take Henry IV, for example—the man who assumed the leadership of France after your death. A Catholic turned Calvinist who turned coat and went Catholic again when the need arose—you know, the famous ‘Paris is worth a mass.’”

“The man had a talent for insouciance. The French appreciate insouciance. Which is why, I suppose, they did not appreciate me,” Catherine said. “Certainly, the man’s demeanor allowed him to get away with a volte-face in a way that I could not.”

“Henry IV is doing volte-faces to this day. During the French revolution, his remains were disinterred and his body separated from his head, which was lost to history until the twentieth century, when a mummified Renaissance head turned up. It was eventually but tentatively identified by forensic science as belonging to Henry IV. DNA evidence, however, has been interpreted both as supporting and disputing that the head is Henry’s.”