Sex with Kings (22 page)

The groom's family was equally pleased at such a close connection to the king, though they insisted that sex wait. Madame de Caylus wrote, “The nuptials were celebrated at Versailles in the King's state apartments…with a glorious illumination of the gardens and with all that magnificence of which the King was capable. The Grand Condé [the groom's grandfather] and his son left nothing undone to signal their delight in the consummation of the betrothal which they had made every effort to bring about.”
¹¹

The oddest case on record of a royal bastard was that of Don Antonio de Medici, the son—and yet not the son—of Archduke Francesco de Medici of Tuscany and his mistress Bianca Cappello.
In 1576 Bianca had been a royal mistress for a full decade but had never conceived. Archduchess Johanna had provided her husband with several useless girls, and Francesco promised his mistress that if she gave him a son he would marry her and make her archduchess as soon as his unloved wife, always in precarious health, breathed her last. This longed-for son, legitimized through marriage, might very well inherit the throne.

Not one to accept defeat, Bianca seized on a bold measure to give Francesco the son he wanted. She sent an accomplice to choose three unmarried pregnant women in need, believing that surely one of the three would have a son, and housed them at her expense in different parts of the city. Bianca then proudly announced to a delighted Francesco that she was finally pregnant. She began padding her gowns and would not let her lover touch her for fear of disturbing her pregnancy.

Two of the women produced girls, much to Bianca's dismay, and were paid off. The third woman, Lucia, chosen for her health and beauty, gave birth to a boy. Immediately upon hearing this, Bianca pretended to go into labor, rending the air with cries of pretended pain. Francesco, hearing the news, raced to comfort her and brought with him his court physician. The baby, who had been unceremoniously nabbed from his mother and brought to Bianca's house in a basket of goods, remained hidden until he could be smuggled into the safety of her four-poster bed with curtains drawn.

The labor lasted many hours until Francesco gave up and returned to the palace. His doctor, however, remained to assist with the birth. When the doctor, who had not been permitted to touch or examine Bianca during her gut-wrenching performance, saw her old serving woman Santi bring in the basket through the garden, he understood what was happening. He tactfully obliged when Bianca instructed him to bring her wine. Upon returning, he was presented with Bianca's newborn child.

And the real mother? Lucia, deprived of her child and still bleeding, was forced to go on horseback on a long journey to Bologna with Gazzi, Bianca's humpbacked doctor, who had cared for her during her pregnancy. Gazzi obtained a position
for her as wet nurse to a wealthy family under an assumed name and told her the whole story. Her son, whom Bianca and Francesco named Antonio, would have a brilliant life. But Lucia feared the Medicis would not hesitate to silence her to protect the secret of Antonio's birth. For twelve years she wandered around Italy using false names, always looking over her shoulder for a Medici dagger.

Soon after Antonio's birth, Archduchess Johanna finally gave her husband a son and heir, and temporarily at least, Antonio's importance shrank. Meanwhile Santi, Bianca's accomplice in the phony birth, began to blackmail Bianca. While on a journey with other servants, Santi was attacked and knifed by mysterious bandits who ignored the others in her party. Santi died—we must conclude she was murdered at Bianca's instigation—but not before confessing the whole story to a priest.

Archduchess Johanna died in 1578, and as she lay cooling in the grave, Francesco married Bianca. Rumors about Antonio's strange birth flew on swift wings, even as Europe reeled from the news that the archduke had married his mistress and crowned her. Francesco, Bianca, and Antonio became the butt of sneering jokes across Europe.

When the boy was two years old, Bianca knew that stories of his birth had reached Francesco's ears. Since he had a legitimate son, there seemed little reason to keep the lie about Antonio alive. And so she disclosed her secret as an amusing joke she had played to make him happy. Francesco, content in his legitimate son, accepted her explanation. However, he continued to raise Antonio as his son. He must have grown to love the boy, and moreover, he didn't want to become the laughingstock of Europe by admitting that his mistress had foisted a stranger's bastard upon him as his son.

When Francesco's only legitimate son died at the age of four in 1582, Bianca pushed to have Antonio created heir to the throne. Francesco asked permission from King Philip II of Spain, who wielded great power over the Italian states. It was a shocking request, especially as most of the world knew the child's unique history. With great diplomacy, Philip consented to having
the child elevated to prince of Capestrano of the kingdom of Naples, but not heir to the throne of Tuscany.

Without waiting for Philip's response, Francesco legitimized Antonio in a completely illegal maneuver, presented him to his legislative advisory group, the Council of two hundred, as his son, and ordered that he should be addressed as His Highness. He sent the child out in a coach accompanied by an escort of the German Guard, a privilege reserved for princes. The Tuscan people were appalled. Legitimate Medicis had become bad enough, but to foist on them as their prince a commoner's bastard—without a drop of Medici blood—was to foment rebellion.

Francesco's brother Ferdinando, the legitimate heir to the throne, was afraid that Francesco would convince King Philip to recognize Antonio and support him with Spanish firepower. He kept a watchful eye on Bianca and loathed her more than ever.

Both Francesco and Bianca died within a few hours of each other in 1587, apparently from a malarial infection, though many whispered of poison. Ferdinando, the new archduke, immediately stripped eleven-year-old Antonio of all titles and possessions and refused to acknowledge him as his nephew. But the next day Ferdinando, having flexed his muscle and shown the boy's true position, returned all his magnificent estates. He promised to protect and honor him as long as he remained a faithful subject. A loving guardian, Ferdinando personally arranged an excellent education for the boy.

Hearing of the deaths of Bianca and Francesco, Antonio's mother, Lucia, ventured back to Florence and, at archduke Ferdinando's instigation, was reunited with her son. Ferdinando, seeking to avoid a future generation of spurious heirs claiming the Medici throne, forced Antonio to become a Knight of Malta, an order whose members were unable to contract a legally valid marriage. Antonio lived rich and successful and died in 1626, so ending the story of the royal bastard who almost inherited a throne—without a single drop of royal blood.

D
EATH IN HIS BLACK ROBES WAS A FREQUENT VISITOR TO
royal palaces in centuries past. The highest in the land were often struck down at the peak of their youth and power. A member of the court or royal family could be dancing one night, dead the next.

Even kings must die. Inevitably, the day came when Death, gaunt and hollow-eyed, began to pluck with clawlike fingers at the monarch's soul, patiently plucking until in shrieking agony it tore through bone and sinew. Now indeed was no time for fond memories of candlelit lovemaking, of hazy wine-filled nights, of women's lips and breasts and thighs. Not now, as the king prepared to walk into the gulf alone. For the first time in
his life he would be truly alone, with no retinue of fawning courtiers or mincing ministers to strew rose petals in his path. In the end he was crownless, reduced in stature to that of the scurviest beggar, worth no more than any other human soul fleeing rancid human flesh.

Looking Death in the face after a reign of seventy years, Louis XIV soberly reflected, “We do what we choose while we are alive, but when we are dead we have less power than the lowliest individual.”
¹

The king's protection of his mistress ceased with the beating of his heart; sometimes, in a desperate fit of repentance, earlier. The mistress was often barred entrance into his sick chamber by angry relatives, unless of course the king had a contagious disease such as smallpox, in which case she would be expected to nurse him. Even if she did make it to the deathbed to bid her lover farewell, she was sent away before the priest came to administer last rites. To the dying monarch, his mistress had become a living accusation of mortal sin, and he was not permitted to sully his newly cleansed soul by even looking at her.

There was no one less pitied than the courtesan of a dead king. Her carefully constructed position—which had been upheld only at the king's insistence—suddenly collapsed, flinging her far below ordinary mortals. She was rarely permitted the right of the poorest citizen to participate in her lover's funeral obsequies or visit the body lying in state.

Retribution from the royal family for perceived insults was often swift and merciless. While former mistresses, long since dismissed by the deceased monarch, were forgotten and permitted to rusticate gracefully, it was the king's final mistress who bore the full resentment of the royal family, courtiers, and commoners. In 1350 when Alfonso XI of Castile died of the black plague, his mistress Leonor de Guzman was imprisoned by Alfonso's long-ignored wife Queen Maria and murdered in her cell by the queen's express order.

The following century was only slightly more civilized. After the death of Edward IV of England in 1483, court and public
opinion were so violently hostile to his final mistress, Jane Shore, that she was forced to march through London wearing the white shroud and dunce cap of a penitent, holding a candle. Though there is evidence that she survived another forty years, a legend sprung up that she died on a dunghill, pelted by stones, and many subsequent royal mistresses were heartily wished the death of Jane Shore.

The new king, usually the son of the former monarch, often ached to punish the woman who had hurt his mother the queen. Charles VII's son and heir Louis often bristled at the insults offered his long-suffering mother by his father's mistress Agnes Sorel. One day in 1444, Louis, running into Agnes, cried, “By our Lord's passion, this woman is the cause of all our misfortunes,” and punched her in the face.
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Perhaps it was lucky for Agnes that she predeceased her royal lover; one cannot imagine a peaceful existence for her under Louis XI.

In 1760, as King George II of England lay dying, his beloved mistress was nowhere near his deathbed. Lady Yarmouth, who knew the future George III was no admirer of hers, was quietly stuffing ten thousand pounds into a strongbox to take back to her native land of Hanover, where young George couldn't get her.

Upon hearing of a monarch's serious illness, friends deserted his mistress in waves in an effort to ingratiate themselves with the future king. Madame de Pompadour experienced this in 1757, when a madman stabbed Louis XV as he entered his carriage at Versailles. Though superficial, the wound in his side was bloody, and Louis thought death was imminent. Madame de Pompadour, whose rooms were always filled with simpering courtiers, suddenly found fewer visitors, and those with gloating faces. “They came to see how she took it,” wrote her lady's maid.
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Her enemy the marquis d'Argenson could not conceal his glee when he reported, “She pretends not to feel her disgrace, but little by little people are forsaking her.”
⁴

Crying, deserted, the royal mistress packed her bags and prepared to flee to her safe haven in Paris in the event of the king's death. But after several days Louis, rallying, grabbed a cane,
called “Don't you come” to his son, and hobbled down the private staircase to her rooms.
⁵
Madame de Pompadour's position was once more secure, and the obsequious courtiers once again waited in her antechamber for an audience.

Death was a friend of sorts to a long-betrayed queen, serving up her husband cold on a platter, all hers for the first time since their honeymoon. She knew where he was, and he was in no position to escape her clutches to visit a mistress. The few days between the king's death and his burial were often sacred to his neglected wife, and the last thing she wanted was his mistress to soil the sanctity.

Shortly after Edward VII's death in 1910, his widow Queen Alexandra invited her friend Lord Esher to take one last look at the king's body before the funeral. He was perplexed by her smiling gaiety until he realized this was the first time in nearly fifty years of marriage that Alexandra completely possessed her husband with no competition in sight. “After all,” she said over the corpse, “he always loved me best.”
⁶

In 1559 Diane de Poitiers, the most powerful woman in France, lost everything in an instant when a wooden lance shattered the visor and pierced the eye of her lover Henri II in a joust. Both Diane and Queen Catherine had been cheering in the stands for the king when the accident occurred. As Henri's limp body was carried away, blood gushing from his smashed visor and splinters driven deeply into his brain, his unloved queen became monarch in name and fact, ruling for her young son.

Diane tried to push her way through the crowds to see Henri but could not. He was carried on a litter to the palace, where she was barred admittance. Inconsolable, she returned to her house in Paris and tried desperately to get word of the king's condition. None was brought to her. She could not know that her dying lover called out her name unceasingly, but Queen Catherine refused to send for her. Finally, fate had delivered full possession
of the wayward king to his neglected wife, and she was not about to share it with the detested Diane.

The king endured several days of agony as surgeons probed his shattered eye socket. The queen coldly had four condemned criminals beheaded so their skulls could be probed in a fruitless effort to save her husband.

Ten days after the accident the queen sent a messenger to Diane demanding the crown jewels Henri had given her. Diane asked quietly, “Is the King dead?” The messenger replied that death was not far off. Diane responded, “So long as there remains a breath of life in him I wish my enemies to know that I do not fear them. As yet there is no one who can command me. I am still of good courage. But when he is dead I do not want to live after him, and all the bitterness that one could wish me will be but sweetness beside my great loss.”
⁷

Two days later the king died, and another messenger was sent to Diane to retrieve the crown jewels and the keys to the king's cabinets and desk. Diane returned a box containing the jewels and keys, as well as an inventory of its contents and a personal letter to the queen asking her pardon.

Diane was not permitted to attend Henri's funeral but watched the procession pass under the window of her Paris house. Then she sat down and waited to be arrested. But the guards never came for her. Diane had ruled France prudently for the twelve years of Henri's reign and could not be accused of treason. Perhaps more important, she had married her two daughters into families that were powerful allies of the queen. Catherine satisfied herself with claiming Chenonceaux, the fairy-tale castle Henri had given Diane, and defacing the countless “HD” ciphers Henri had placed all over his many châteaus. She either had them removed and burned or hired a wood carver to turn them into an “HC.”

Diane retired to the château of Anet, which she had inherited from her long-dead husband. Devoting her last years to good works, she built a hospital and a home for unwed mothers, orphans, and widows. She left money to several convents for Masses to be said for her soul. In 1566, seven years after Henri's
death, she died quietly after a brief illness at the age of sixty-five, still lovely. One courtier wrote, “It is sad that earth should hide that beautiful body.”
⁸

Unlike most kings, who left behind a single declared mistress on their deaths, Charles II left behind a harem in 1685. His two principal mistresses met with very different fates.

As the fifty-five-year-old king lay dying of a stroke, possibly the result of syphilis, it was Louise de Kéroualle who provided Charles with a last great service. One of the few who knew him to be a secret Catholic who, for political reasons, had never officially converted, she wanted him to receive the sacrament and last rites according to the Catholic Church. He had refused the Protestant sacrament on his deathbed, and no one was certain why—except Louise and his brother James. But James was lost in the fog of thought that descends when one is about to become king.

Louise felt herself forbidden by decency to visit the king's chamber, where the unhappy queen kept vigil. She went instead to the French ambassador and requested that he speak with James and find a priest. According to the ambassador, she said, “Go and tell him that I have implored you to warn him to consider what can be done to save the King, his brother's, soul.”
⁹
James, recollecting his duty, visited Charles at once and asked him if he should send for a priest, to which the king replied, “For God's sake, brother, do, and lose no time!”
¹⁰

Shortly thereafter, up the secret staircase, the same way the prostitutes had crept to visit the king, came a priest, who administered the last rites. Afterward, Charles said of Louise, “I have always loved her, and I die loving her.”
¹¹

Upon hearing the news of Charles's death, a panicked Louise found sanctuary in the house of the French ambassador. Knowing she had never been popular, had meddled in politics, and was hated as a Whig, a papist, and a foreign spy, Louise feared
the new government as well as the mob. She tried to sail for France at once. King James, fearing the wrath of her powerful protector Louis XIV, ensured her safety and guaranteed her a pension of three thousand pounds a year. But he also demanded that she stay in England to pay her creditors and return certain of the crown jewels in her possession.

Smoothing down her ruffled feathers, Louise returned to court squawking for the pensions Charles had awarded her—nineteen thousand pounds yearly as his mistress as well as twenty-five thousand a year from the Irish revenue. James allowed her to keep the nineteen thousand but pocketed the twenty-five thousand himself. Six months after Charles's death, she sailed for France in an armada stuffed with her possessions—two hundred thousand gold francs, oaken chests of jewels and plate, furniture, coaches, sedan chairs, and works of art.

Used to living extravagantly and gambling wildly, Louise soon parted ways with her riches. Pressed by creditors, she bounced between London and Versailles, clamoring for pensions from both nations for services rendered, and usually obtaining them. But Charles's death had forced her from the stage; in one instant she went from leading lady to reluctant spectator. Much to her chagrin, for nearly fifty years she lived as an interesting artifact from a bygone reign, still attractive but indisputably irrelevant. The initial virulent bout of venereal disease she had caught from the king seems never to have returned. She died in 1734 at the age of eighty-five.

Unlike Louise de Kéroualle, Nell Gwynn's pensions were set up to end upon Charles's death. She had no ducal estates or income in perpetuity. As Charles lay dying, he must have wished he had rewarded her better for her seventeen years of faithful service. “Let not poor Nelly starve,” Charles implored his brother James shortly before he expired.
¹²

Nell suffered financial problems immediately after Charles's death. Her creditors, a variety of shopkeepers with whom she had kept large accounts, beat against her door demanding payment. Initially King James turned a deaf ear to her urgent pleas
for assistance. While Nell owned numerous valuable properties, they were entailed to her son with Charles and she was not permitted to sell them.

Finally, Nell mortgaged some of her properties and borrowed against her jewels and plate to obtain cash to pay the creditors. She believed that James would honor his brother's deathbed request. She was right—three months after Charles's death, James sent Nell cash for her most pressing needs and promises of additional help. By the end of the year he had paid numerous merchants' bills and given her an additional twenty-three hundred pounds in cash. Most important, in January 1686 James settled on Nell an annual pension of fifteen hundred pounds—a fraction of what she had received from Charles, but enough to live on comfortably as a private person.

In the two years after Charles's death, Nell enjoyed her life in London. She visited friends, gave dinner parties, and went to the theater. Over the years she had spells of illness but usually bounced back quickly. It is likely that Nell had caught from Charles the same venereal disease that Louise had, but in Nell's case it slowly hardened her arteries and increased her blood pressure.