Виктория Холт - Queen Jezebel

Was this the pretext? Was this the right moment?

The King was being dressed for the wedding, and there was a certain dismay among his friends and attendants, for his mouth was working in a way which all had seen before, and the whites of his eyes were shot with red. What would be the result of this wedding which was the talk of Paris, the talk of France?

‘This wedding will be blood-red,’ said the people of Paris. And the King knew that they whispered those words.

The Cardinal of Bourbon had been persuaded to perform the ceremony; he had been shown that he would find extreme disfavour in the eyes of the King and, what was more serious, in those of the Queen Mother if he did not comply with their wishes. Charles and his mother had had the news spread through Paris that the Pope’s dispensation was in their hands. So there was nothing now to delay the ceremony.

So the King trembled, and as he was dressed in the most magnificent garments yet seen—for his clothes, with his jewelled cap and dagger, alone cost six hundred thousand crowns—those about him wondered how long he would be able to smother his smouldering madness and whether it would break out before the wedding was a fait accompli .

Busy as she was, Catherine found time to admire her darling. How beautiful he was! More beautiful than any, and more. magnificent than the King himself. His dark beauty was set off by a hundred sparkling jewels; and he was as delighted with himself as his mother was.

Catherine admired the cap with its thirty pearls, each one weighing twelve carats. How soft the pearls looked in contrast with the sapphires and rubies and the hard glitter of diamonds—and how they became her darling!

She kissed him tenderly. ‘If I could have one wish granted, my dear,’ she whispered, ‘it would be that you were King of France this day. To think that you were born one year too late hurts me deeply.’

‘But one day, Mother . . .’ he murmured, his long eyes alight with ambition.

‘One day, my darling. Your brother looks sickly today,’ she added.

‘He has looked sickly for so long.’

‘Have no fear, my darling. All will be well.’

She smiled, but, in spite of outward calm, she was uneasy. She felt like one who, imagining herself to be a goddess, had stirred up a troublous sea, only to find that she was no goddess, but merely a frail human being in a flimsy craft. She was determined to steer to safety. Let them get the wedding over and then, as compensation, Philip should be offered Coligny.

‘The marriage at least was not of my making,’ she would say, as though to imply: ‘And that other deed was. I did it to show you that I am your friend.’ That would satisfy Philip. But would it? Fanatic he might be, but he certainly was no fool.

She was never one to think more than a move or two ahead, and today she must think only of the wedding and Coligny. After that? . . . There were gathered here in Paris a mighty force of Huguenots and Catholics. She had said: ‘When the time comes, I shall know what to do.’ And she would know. She had no doubt of that. So much for the present.

The bride was haughty, pale-faced and sullen. She stormed at her women.

‘I have prayed all these nights and days. I have begged the Virgin and the saints to help me. Is it all of no avail? It must be that this is so, for here is this most hateful day, the day of my wedding. I have spent my nights in weeping . .

Her women soothed her. They knew that her, nights had been spent in love-making with the Duke of Guise, but Margot often managed to convince others as she convinced herself. Now she saw herself as the reluctant bride, the tool of her brother and her mother, forced to marry a man whom she hated. Did she hate Henry of Navarre? He was not without his attraction. She had felt mildly interested when he had cocked a shrewd eye at her and winked in an extremely vulgar and provincial manner. Perhaps she did not exactly hate him; but it was far more dramatic to hate than to feel mildly indifferent, therefore she must declare she hated Henry of Navarre.

For all her misery she could not help but delight in her own appearance. She touched the crown on her head. How well it became her! By this marriage she would be a Queen, and even her beloved Henry of Guise could not have made her a Queen; yet this coarse fellow whom she hated was a King. She put on her cape of ermine; then she stood still admiring herself while the blue cape glittering with the crown jewels was put about her. She looked over her shoulder at the long train which would need three to carry it—and they must be Princesses. Nothing else would be suitable for a Queen. She laughed with pleasure, and then remembered that she was a most reluctant bride.

The 18th of August, she thought, and my wedding day . . . the day I. shall become the Queen of Navarre. She had left behind her that girl who had thought her heart was broken when they took her lover from her and married him to Catherine of Cleves. She thought fleetingly of that girl—only a little younger than the bride of today, but how different, how innocent! She wept a real tear for that girl, for now she recalled something of that desolation which had come to her when she had known that the dream of her childhood, that dream of marriage with the most handsome man in France, was ended. That girl was a charming, tragic ghost who watched the women preparing her for a wedding which would make her a Queen.

‘Your Majesty, we must go,’ whispered one of her women.

The ghost retired and the actress was there in her place. ‘You are premature,’ she said coldly. ‘I am not yet a Queen to be addressed thus.’

The girl’s eyes filled with tears and Margot kissed her. ‘There, let there be no more tears. Those I have already shed will suffice.’

As she walked along the platform which was draped with cloth of gold and which led from the Bishop’s Palace to Notre Dame, she held her head high. She could see the masses of people below, and she knew that many were dying of suffocation in that crowd, and that before the ceremony was over many would be trampled to death. And all for a glimpse of a royal wedding, and in particular for a bride who was noted not only for her beauty, but her profligacy. She knew what they would be saying about her, and yet they would not be unkindly. They knew of her love affair with their hero, and the Catholic population would murmur together because she was being married, not to Catholic Henry of Guise, but to Huguenot Henry of Navarre. There would be coarse jests about her. She could imagine their saying:

‘Oh, it was not only Monsieur de Guise, you know. There was Monsieur d’Entragues and a gentleman of the King’s bodyguard, Monsieur de Charry. Some say there was also the Prince de Martigues.’

It seemed impossible to keep one’s affairs from the public. Were the walls of the châteaux no protection at all?

Ah well, she would amuse them; and the people of Paris loved those who amused them—although they might not be pleased with her infidelity to their beloved Duke.

Yes, Margot had no doubt that she was providing gossip for the streets and markets of Paris today.

They did not enter the church, because it had been agreed that the bridegroom should neither hear Mass nor cross the threshold of Notre Dame for the ceremony; the crowd murmured loudly at this and there were jeers and cries of ‘Heretic!’ But it was soon seen that it was more interesting to have the ceremony performed outside the church than inside, since it could be seen by more people. So, before the western door of the church, Margot knelt by the side of Henry of Navarre.

The bridegroom looked handsome enough, magnificently attired as he was, but his bride was quick to notice the lack of elegance to which she was accustomed in the gentlemen of the court and which even cloth of gold and jewels could not give. He wore his hair en brosse , à la Béarnais; no delicate perfume hung about the man; and yet with his lazy smile and his cynical eyes he was not altogether unattractive.