Written on Silk (16 page)

Charles stopped before a door at the top, removed a golden key, and
entered. Andelot stepped up into a laboratory with a bunk, a chair, and a
desk, upon which lay an ancient manuscript. The writing was in Latin
with zodiac chart illustrations. To one side was a drawing of a woman
named Semerimus and a ziggurat that wound up into the clouds.

“What say the stars, peasant? Can you read them?” Charles mocked.

Andelot stared at a cabinet against the wall. He saw many vials and
sealed packets, dried herbs and powders. On one of the sealed packets was
written
: For Her Majesty. White powder. Very strong. Sprinkle on flowers, book pages, and inside gloves. Death within days.

Suddenly Charles wore a mask of fear. “
Maman
is coming. Flee!”

Andelot bolted for the door and darted with Charles down the outer steps
and onto a ledge. The wind lashed and rain whipped his face. A blinding
streak lit up the gray, rushing Loire flowing beneath him crammed with
Huguenot bodies choking the dam. He was losing his balance on the ledge,
as the martyrs beneath him made room for him to follow —

“Saints preserve me!”

A
NDELOT
SAT UP, HIS
heart thudding, sweat upon his neck, his hands grasping at the bunk frame.

Poison.

The sun had set, and only a vestige of twilight peered in through the window.

From the corner of his eye he caught a movement at the doorway. He turned his head. It was Romier.

“My madame sends word. You are to see her now.”

Andelot rushed behind a curtain to pour a bucket of water over himself. Shivering, he proceeded to dry off and change into the fresh garments from a pack roll that Romier must have laid out for him. Andelot expressed his gratitude to the page while he hurriedly dressed to keep his meeting with the duchesse.

Torchlights blazed at the entrances to the palais as Andelot crossed the courtyard. Guards stood with plumed helmets, shining silver and bronze, their boots polished and gleaming.

Reaching Comte Sebastien Dangeau’s chambers, Andelot was met by Duchesse Dushane. Her face was strained.

“Andelot, I report grievous news. Le docteur is with my cousine, Madame Henriette, now. He tells me she is dying and he cannot save her.” Her voice cracked and she turned
—
quickly, holding a handkerchief to her mouth.

Andelot saw her shoulders shaking beneath her gown.

He was at a loss to know what to do in the presence of so great a titled lady, overcome by sorrow. Should he try to comfort her? Put an arm around her shoulder? Lead her to a chair?

He merely stood with head bent. Suddenly he thought of Rachelle and her sister Idelette, and the Macquinet family at the Château de Silk. How bitter this news would be for them. Grandmère was beloved, and her death would be a severe loss to the family.

Duchesse Dushane was in control of herself again, dabbing her handkerchief at her eyes and cheeks. The thought was pressed that sorrow, death, and loss came to all, both poor and great. In the end, whether peasant or king, death came. Watching Madame-Duchesse weeping, helpless against the grim reaper, with jewels twinkling on hands growing old, caused his soul to cry,
Who then can gain the victory over death
and the grave?

“Is there nothing then, Madame, that can be done?”

She shook her silver head slowly. “Non.”

Andelot could not explain the agony that seemed to come to him from nowhere, stooping his youthful shoulders.

Is there nothing then, O my soul? Nothing but death and loss? Oh! Pity
then the moment that gives the crying enfant life!

“If only Henriette’s daughter, Clair, and her granddaughters, especially Idelette and Rachelle, could be here to say their au revoir. How dismaying that they are not,” the duchesse said. “Even Madeleine — in the very next bedchamber, is too ill to rise and go to her grandmère’s bedside.”

Andelot paced around the chamber as her words broke through his concerns. The duchesse was now sitting and seemed to be struggling to bring her feelings under her usual firm grip.

Dare he suggest what was on his mind? Why not? It was fair to
Rachelle, a granddaughter so firmly attached to her beloved grandmère.

“Madame? I would ask that you send me at once to the Château de Silk. I will bring the Macquinet mesdemoiselles here.”

“Yes, I thought of that, but there is not time enough, Andelot — she is most ill.”

“S’il vousplaît, Madame. I have a horse, the marquis’ horse! He races like the wind. If the marquis knew the urgency, he would have me use his stallion to accomplish this feat. It would mean much to the Macquinets, I assure you, if they but knew the shortness of time, Madame.”

She looked at him with a sympathetic expression. “And what is your determined interest in all of this?”

Andelot hastened: “You see, I was raised at the Château de Silk in Lyon by a nurse until mon oncle Sebastien came and brought me to Paris where I was placed in a monastery school. I remember well the dignified woman the Macquinet Daughters of Silk so affectionately called Grandmère. I should feel it my duty to do my utmost to see Mademoiselle Rachelle has one last meeting with her grandmère — to kneel beside her bed and pray.”

She appeared to take control of her emotions once more and walked over to the desk using her walking stick.

She was now the Duchesse Xenia Dushane, in command by right of blood title. “Yes, you must try to bring Rachelle, at least, to say
adieu
. It is appropriate and most telling of you, Andelot.”

He felt the color rise up his neck to warm him. This great lady approved of him.

“I will send my chief page with you.” She rang a small gong and Romier, who had waited outside the door, entered.

He bowed. “Your Grace?”

“Prepare my fastest horse. You will ride with Andelot to Lyon tonight.”

“
Tout de suite
, Madame-Duchesse!”

The Summons from Paris

D
HE DAY AFTER MARQUIS
VENDÔME’S
DEPARTURE,
RACHELLE
WAS
convinced her life was over. The future that lay before her was arid and hopeless. She wished she had never seen Fabien, and forgetting her own willful part in what had happened, blamed him for her troubles. She forgot that she had eagerly wanted him, and instead she hated him for leaving her and for his failure to commit himself to marriage. She refused to accept his reasoning that time was needed, or that her family would resent her marriage to a Catholic. Why had he not seen fit to discuss this before? Why had not she?

Rachelle mulled over her problems. Added to her sorrow was grief over the death of her petite sister, Avril, and the violation of Idelette. There seemed no solution to her misery. Even so, her thoughts returned too often to Fabien.

I was a fool to fall in love with him
, she thought again.

As time passed, however, she began to awaken to her own accountability. Perhaps she had tried too hard with him? She recalled what her eldest sister Madeleine had once advised her when discussing the mar-quis: “Men can be elusive creatures when you try to catch them. Doing so may take the relationship to an early grave, especially before they have fully made up their own mind about a woman. If she moves in quickly to stake her claim, a man may reconsider — and even step back. Dealing honorably requires your patience, but this will enable you to tell the difference between a man who will not commit himself to you, and the one who will take his commitment to you seriously — for a lifetime — but will not do so hastily. The marquis has been taking his time and has avoided many potential traps. He is, however, a most problematic
galant
. He wishes to possess — but does not wish to be possessed. I would strongly advise you to not pursue him until he chooses to be caught.”

“You seem to know much about him.”

Madeleine had shrugged. “Do not forget I have seen him grow up at Court. He is Sebastien’s neveu by marriage. I have seen the belle mesdemoiselles — many of them from high nobility — trying to capture him. They all have made the same mistake; selling themselves too cheaply, making themselves too easily caught — and probably not worth having.”

“Is it all but a game then?” Rachelle had asked ruefully.

“Not a game, but the prelude for a most serious relationship that must endure through every joy and tribulation. I advise, chère sister, that you make yourself a desirable treasure he struggles to win, not the other way around.”

Thinking of the last scene with him, Rachelle’s frown deepened. She winced, remembering how she had pleaded and run after him, literally holding on to his sleeves. She felt a hot blush stain her cheeks.
How could
I have acted so? Because I love him!
But that love, her sister would say, must be tempered with wisdom and dignity.

It was awful to think that she might appear to Fabien to have fallen into the footsteps of Madame Charlotte de Presney, who had plotted to corner Fabien in the garden.

Rachelle thought about her tendency to ignore obstacles and risks that stood in the way of her desires. She preferred to avoid thinking of them, or if she did acknowledge their presence, she would tell herself that they would be easier to deal with if left for the distant future. And now she had surely set her heart upon Marquis Fabien de Vendôme while ignoring some serious obstacles. Though his place in her heart was as solid as the architecture of the Louvre, she began to wonder if he might have been but a secret dream of a wide-eyed damsel desiring a prince of her own.

Rachelle forced her mind, as well as her heart, to confront the staggering issues that stood between her and the marquis, and they were more numerous than she had previously thought. First, his religious loyalties disturbed her family. In practice he was not blindly loyal to Rome, but was that enough for her parents and Grandmère? He attended daily Mass at noon when at Court; whereas true Huguenots went to the Bastille dungeon and then the fiery stake before compromising the greatest truth recovered from Scripture: of justification from all unrigh teousness and every sin by faith alone in Christ’s finished work on the cross once for all.

Secondly, there was his royal Bourbon bloodline. No matter what Fabien told her of his freedom to choose the woman he wanted, was that truly so? She knew so little of what his Bourbon relatives expected of him, though she was most certain that the Bourbon princes fully expected him to marry a princesse from one of the royal houses of Europe, or at least a woman of high nobility. Rachelle’s own heritage was far from peasantry, and she was proud of the reputation of the Macquinets among other couturier families on the continent, but she did not have the blood of kings’ daughters. Grandmère’s cousine was Duchesse Xenia Dushane, but that did little for Rachelle, who would not inherit the title. In contrast, the Bourbons were in line for the throne of France after the Valois, and it was no secret that Valois sons were in weak health. What would a marriage alliance with Rachelle Macquinet bring the Bourbons other than a name in silk?

Fabien would most assuredly have a light and debonair retort, but the serious truth remained: if Fabien must win over her Huguenot family, Rachelle must win over the princes of the blood!

She wondered seriously for the first time how far he would be willing to go in denying obligations to his bloodline. Fabien’s near relatives, Prince Louis de Condé and Antoine de Bourbon, the King of Navarre, would have great sway over him. Thus far, they had not meddled. Perhaps that was due to his youth. Strange, how she often thought of Fabien as mature. As for wisdom, he did seem to have his share. He had avoided a mistress and an illegitimate child, the sinful bane that touched the indulgent nobles like a plague. It was so common that something must be said for a young man, of his virility and status, to have avoided it. Did that not speak eloquently for his self-discipline, his spiritual convictions? As for the Bourbons’ show of apparent indifference to his marriage, that could change as quickly as an announced engagement.

As she stared into the icy reality confronting her, Rachelle wondered how she could have possibly been so naive. For all practical purposes, it was not even possible for their relationship to become more than a brief romantic interlude.