Виктория Холт - Queen Jezebel

Margot, her husband was relieved to contemplate, had been separated from him for some time. She had acted’ with her usual careless impetuosity at Agen. She had settled in at the château there and declared that she had come to hold the town for the League. The townsfolk had been sympathetic at first; they had been enchanted by her vivacity and her dark beauty; they had seen in her a romantic Princess fleeing from the husband to whom she had been married against her will, the husband who had a faith different from her own. But very soon scandalous stories of the happenings inside the castle seeped out. It was said that there were scenes of unparalleled immorality between Margot and certain gentlemen of the castle; and that her women were no better than she was. The people of Agen did not wish to be ‘protected’, as Margot called it, by such an immoral woman; they now began to believe the stories which for so long had been circulating about her. They became threatening, and in the end Margot had been forced to leave Agen, fleeing as her brother had fled from Poland—in a manner more dramatic than was necessary. She had ridden pillion with her lover of the moment, the Lord of Lignerac; and her women had followed in the same manner on the horses of the officers of her court. Lignerac had taken her to his castle in the mountains of Auvergne and kept her there as his prisoner, so enamoured of her was he, so distrustful of her fidelity. There the troublesome prisoner was forced to stay, although it was said that she was making attempts to evade the old lover with the help of several new ones.

Navarre could smile at the exploits of Margot; but his own life was too exciting just now for him to think very much about her. He knew that in the civil war which seemed inevitable, Guise and the King of France would be uneasy allies; and that he would be the opponent of both of them. He knew that he would be faced by a formidable force, so he asked that, rather than plunge the country into another war, Guise should meet him in single combat, or, if it was preferred, with ten men aside, or twenty—the number could be decided on.

‘It would give me great happiness, he wrote, ‘to deliver at the price of my blood, the King our sovereign lord from the travails and trials a-brewing for him, and his kingdom from trouble and confusion, his noblesse from ruin, and all his people from misery.’

The Duke of Guise replied that he must decline the honour while appreciating it; had this been a private quarrel between them, then gladly would he have accepted Navarre’s proposal; but it was no private quarrel; theirs was the cause of the true religion against the false. It could not be settled by two men’s fighting together or even by ten or twenty on each side.

Navarre now knew that war was inevitable; and within a very short time after he had made his offer and Guise had replied to it, the War of the Three Henrys had begun.

It was called The War of the Three Henrys, although one of these Henrys, the King of France, wished to have nothing to do with it. He was more furious when he heard of Guise’s successes than when he heard of those of Navarre; he was piqued and jealous on account of Guise’s. He was a strange creature, this King of France; in his early years he had been by no means stupid, but his love of his mignons and all those young men stood for had blighted that intellect which had undoubtedly been his. It emerged occasionally when he addressed the council meetings; there he could show by a sharpness of wit that he was a man who had profited from his reading of the greatest books of his age; but the determination to pursue pleasure at all costs, his great vanity concerning his personal appearance, the dominance of those worthless young men whose elegance, beauty and charm had won him—together these things had almost succeeded in suppressing the intellectual side of his character. But he still had enough sense to realize that in this war of the Henrys, it was his ally, Henry of Guise, of whom he must be wary—far more wary than of his enemy, Henry of Navarre.

Guise was fighting in the north against the Germans and the Swiss who had come in to help the Huguenots, and news came of the tremendous victory he had scored over these foreign troops. He had surprised the Germans while they were sleeping and so demoralized them that before they were able to collect themselves together, there was no German army. At this the Swiss took fright and were bribed to withdraw. News of this great victory was brought to the King. But it was a Guise victory; it was not even called a King’s victory.

In the south events did not turn out so happily for the King’s forces. Against the advice of Guise and his mother, the King had given the command of the southern army to Joyeuse, who, having been a successful mignon and bridegroom, now wished to make his name as a soldier. He had cajoled and wept when asking for the command of the army; and he had looked so charming a suppliant that the King had been unable to refuse him. And so, with six thousand foot, two thousand horse and six pieces of cannon, Joyeuse marched into the Gironde country to meet the little army at the head of which was the King of Navarre.

There were members of that tiny Huguenot force who trembled at the thought of the mighty army which had come to attack them; but when Henry of Navarre heard who was at their head he laughed aloud.

Before his men went into battle, he addressed them in his coarse Béarnais fashion, which, though it might offend the ears of elegant ladies, put great heart into soldiers about to go into battle.

‘My friends, here is a quarry different from your past prizes. It is a brand-new bridegroom with his marriage-money still in his coffers. Will you let yourselves go down before this handsome dancing-master and his minions? No! They are ours. I see it by your eagerness to fight.’

He looked about him at the glowing faces of the men touched by the faint dawn-light. His shrewd eyes twinkled. They would beat the dancing-master no matter how many cannon he had against their two, no matter if he had five hundred men to twenty of themselves.

Now for that little touch of spirituality which, he was aware, was so necessary to men such as these before they went into battle.

‘My friends,’ he resumed, ‘all events are in the hands of God. Let us sing the twenty-fourth verse of the one hundred and fifteenth psalm.’

Their voices rose on the morning air: ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.’

The sun now appeared above the horizon and, before it was high in the sky, Navarre, at the cost of twenty-five men had inflicted a loss of three thousand on the enemy.

Joyeuse, bewildered, found himself surrounded by Huguenots, and saw that they recognized him. Fresh from the court, he believed his, beauty must appeal to these men as it had to others; but these warriors saw no handsome mignon; they saw their enemy, a sinner from the cities of the plain who had led the King into extravagance and folly.

Joyeuse in horror cried out: ‘Gentlemen, you must not kill me! You could take me and demand a reward of a hundred thousand crowns. The King would pay it. I assure you that he would.’

There was a second’s pause, and then the shot rang out. Joyeuse opened his beautiful eyes in astonishment before he fell bleeding to the ground.

This was the greatest victory that the Huguenots had ever won, and all knew that they owed it to that quality in their leader which almost amounted to genius. The King’s army had been a mighty one, and even though it had been under the command of Joyeuse, would, but for Navarre, have gained the victory. The careless philanderer could throw off his laziness after all; he was a great soldier; the careless joker was, after all, a great King.