Виктория Холт - Queen Jezebel

‘Marie, you must not be afraid. She will not harm you. She likes you. She has said so. If she did not, I should not allow you to remain at court. I should give you a house where I could visit you. But she likes you.’

Marie, however, continued to tremble.

‘Page,’ called the King, ‘go tell the Queen, my mother, that I will see her in my own apartments.’

‘Yes, Sire.’

‘There,’ said the King to Marie, ‘does that please you? Au revoir , my darling. I will come to you later.’

Marie kissed his hands, relieved that she would not have to face the woman whom she feared, and the King went through the passages which connected his apartments with, those of his mistress.

Catherine greeted him with a show of affection.

‘How well you look!’ she said. ‘I declare the prospect of becoming a father suits you.’

The King’s lips tightened. He was filled with numb terror every time his mother mentioned the child the Queen was carrying.

‘And how well our dear little Queen is looking!’ went on Catherine. ‘I have to insist on her taking great care of herself. We cannot have her running risks now.’

Charles had learned to dread that archness of hers. The Queen Mother was fond of a joke and the grimmer the joke the better she liked it. People said she would hand the poison cup to a victim with a quip, wishing him good health as she did so. This trait of hers had led some people to believe that she was of a jovial nature; they did not immediately see the cynicism behind the laughter. But Charles knew her better than most people, and he did not smile now.

Catherine was quick to notice his expression. She told herself that she would have to keep a close watch on her little King. He had strayed much further from her influence than she had intended he should.

‘Have you news for me?’ asked the King.

‘No. I have come for a little chat with you. I am disturbed. Very soon Coligny will arrive in Paris.’

‘The thought gives me pleasure,’ said Charles.

Catherine laughed. ‘Ah, he is a wily one, that Admiral.’ She put the palms of her hands together and raised her eyes piously. ‘So good! Such a religious man! A very clever man, I would say. He can deceive us all with his piety.’

‘Deceive, Madame?’

‘Deceive indeed. He talks of righteousness while he thinks of bloodshed.’

‘You are mistaken. When the Admiral talks of God he thinks of God.’

‘He has discovered the kindness of his King—that much is certain—and made good use of Your Majesty’s benevolence.’

have received nothing but benevolence from him, Madame.’

‘My dear son, it is not for you to receive benevolence, but to give it.’

The King flushed; she had, as ever, the power to make him feel foolish, unkingly, a little boy who depended for all things on his mother.

‘I have come to talk to you of this man,’ said Catherine, ‘for soon he, will be here to cast his spells upon you. My son, you have to think very clearly. You are no longer a boy. You are a man and King of a great country. Do you wish to plunge this country into war with Spain?’

‘I hate war,’ said the King vehemently.

‘And yet you encourage those who would make it. You offer your kingdom, yourself and the persons of your family to Monsieur de Coligny.’

‘I do not. I want peace . . . peace . . . peace . . .’

She terrified him. When she was with him he would remember scenes from his childhood when she had talked as she had now, dismissing all his attendants; on those occasions she had described the torture chambers and all the horrors which had been done to men and women who were powerless in the hands of the powerful. He could not shut out of his mind the thoughts of blood, of the rack, of mangled, bleeding limbs. The thought of blood always sickened him, terrified him, drove him to that madness, when, obsessed by that thought of it, he must see it flow. His mother, more easily than those Italian tutors whom she had set over him, could arouse this madness in him. When he felt it rising and while some sanity remained with him, he must fight it with all the strength he possessed.

‘You want peace,’ she said, ‘and what do you do to preserve it? You hold secret councils with a man who wishes for war.’

‘No! No! No!’

‘Yes. Have you not held secret meetings with the Admiral?’ She had risen and stood over him; he could see nothing but her heavy face with those glittering, prominent eyes.

‘I . I have had meetings with him,’ he said.

‘And you will hold more?’

‘Yes. No . . . no. I won’t.’ He looked down, trying to escape from those hypnotic eyes. He said sullenly: ‘If I wish to hold meetings with any of my subjects I shall do so.’

There spoke the King, and Catherine was secretly perturbed by this show of strength. He had made too many friends among the Huguenots. At the earliest possible moment Coligny must be killed, and Téligny would have to follow, with Condé and Rochefoucauld. But Coligny was the most dangerous.

She changed her tone and, covering her face with her hands, she spoke with sadness. ‘After all the trouble which I have taken to bring you up and to preserve your crown—the crown which Huguenots and Catholics alike have tried to snatch from you—after having sacrificed myself for you and run a thousand dangers, how could I ever guess that you would reward me so miserably? You hide yourself from me—from your own mother!—in order to take counsel of your enemies. If you intend to work against me, tell me so, and I will return to the land of my birth. Your brother too must escape with me, for he has spent his life in preserving yours, and you must give him time to fly from those enemies to whom you are preparing to give the land of France.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Huguenots who, while they talk of war with Spain, want only a war in France—the ruin of our country so that they may flourish on those ruins.’

‘You would never leave France,’ he said.

‘What else could I do? As for you yourself, when they had you in the torture chambers, when they had left you to rot in a dungeon, or, worse still, disposed of you in the Place de Greve .

‘What do you mean?’

‘You cannot imagine they intend to let you live?’ She lifted those large eyes to her son’s face. Although he did not believe she would ever leave France, although he knew that his brother Anjou had never been devoted to anything but his own ambitions, he was hypnotized by this strange mother of his, as he had been so many times before. Realizing that her son was no longer the pliable boy, Catherine did not intend to press her point too far; at the moment she only wished to plant distrust for the Admiral in her son’s mind.

She took his hand and kissed it. ‘Dearest son, know this: everything I say and do is for your good. I do not ask you to exile the Admiral from court. Indeed no. Receive him here. Then it will be easier for you to discover his true nature. Ah, he has bewitched you. That is understandable. He has bewitched many before you. All I ask is that you should be wary, not too trusting. Am I right, my son, in asking that this should be so?’

The King said slowly: ‘As usual you are right. I promise you I will not be too trusting.’

‘And if, my dear son, you discover that there are traitors about you, men who plot against you, who work for your death and destruction?’

The King was biting his lips and there were flecks of red in the whites of his eyes. ‘Then,’ he said savagely, while his fingers pulled at his jacket, ‘then, Madame, rest assured that there shall be no mercy for them . . . no mercy . . . no mercy!’

His voice had risen to a shriek, and Catherine smiled, certain that she had gained her point.