Виктория Холт - Madame Serpent

‘I am impatient,’ smiled Henry, ‘to face this young man once more. I cannot wait until tomorrow. My people will be delighted to see me in action again today. They are a good and loyal crowd and it is my duty to serve them.’

The young Scotsman was anxious. He was desperately afraid that he might make himself unpopular by proving himself the victor. He was young; the King was ageing; it was a delicate matter.

He made an attempt to excuse himself, but this attempt made the King more sure than ever, that, had the young man wished, he could have unseated him.

‘Come,’ said Henry, with some impatience, ‘and do your best.’

There was no gainsaying the King’s command. The two rode out together.

The delighted crowd cheered anew; and then, in that sudden breathless silence when the two men faced each other, lances raised, a young boy in one of the lower galleries pushed himself forward and, white of face and strained of eye, shouted in a loud, ringing voice: ‘Sire, do not fight!’

There was a hush over the vast assembly. Then someone seized the boy and hustled him away. But Catherine, sensing now that disaster was upon her, rose in her seat. She swayed dizzily. Diane was beside her, supporting her.

‘ Madame la Reine is feeling ill,’ she heard Diane say. ‘Pray, help me―’

Catherine was helped back to her seat. It was too late to do anything now, she knew. The combat had started, and in a few seconds it was all over.

Montgomery had struck the King on the gorget a little below his visor; the Scotsman’s lance was shattered, the stump slid upwards raising the King’s visor, and the splinter entered the King’s right eye.

Henry, striving to suppress his groans, tried to lift his lance and failed. There was a shocked stillness everywhere while he fell forward.

In a second, his gentlemen had reached him and seized his swaying body; they were stripping him of his armour.

Catherine, standing now, straining to see the face that she loved, caught a glimpse of it covered in blood, while Henry fell, fainting into the arms of his men.

Beside Catherine stood Diane, her fingers clutching the black-and-white satin of her skirt, and the white of her gown was not whiter than her face.

The King was dying, for the steel had entered his eye, and there was nothing that could be done. All the great doctors, surgeons and apothecaries, all the learned men of France were at his bedside. Philip of Spain sent his celebrated surgeon, André Vésale. But nothing could save the King.

He lay tossing in agony while violent fever overtook him. He spoke of one thing only. No blame for this should be attached to Montgomery. That was his urgent wish. The people were saying that the young man was a Protestant and that he had been primed to do this; but the King, in his agony, was determined that all should remember how the boy had had no wish to fight, and that he must be told not to grieve, as he had but obeyed the King.

Consciousness eluded Henry. He lay silent and could not be revived with rose-water and vinegar.

Paris had changed from a city of joy to one of mourning while its people stood about near Les Tournelles waiting for news. But though the doctors dressed the wound and were even able to remove some splinters, though they purged the King with rhubarb and camomile, and bled him, still they could not save his life.

The days passed and with them passed the King’s agony; for he remained in a stupor from which none could rouse him.

The Queen was desolate, pacing up and down her apartments, having the children brought to her, embracing them all in turn, sending them away that she might weep alone.

Oh my darling, she thought. I have lost you all these years to her; now am I to lose you to death? How cruel was life! She had watched Diane grow older, and she had believed her own day must come; but now death was threatening to take him, and she knew it would succeed, for such things were revealed to her. She lay on her bed and thought of him as she had first seen him, a shy and sullen boy, preparing to hate her; she thought of his coming to her, at Diane’s command, of the years of suppressed passion, of the hope that had waxed and waned through the long tormented years.

And what of Diane?

Catherine laughed suddenly and bitterly as she clenched and unclenched her long white fingers.

Ah, Madame, she thought, you were everything to him. Now you have lost everything. Reports were constantly brought to her by people who thought to cheer her.

‘The King is a little better. He seems to have fallen into a quietness.’

Better? She knew, with that curious instinct of hers, that he could not recover.

She sent an imperious message to Diane. The crown-jewels were to be returned to her at once; and with them all the presents that Henry had given her.

‘Hold nothing back,’ ran the Queen’s revealing message, ‘for I have noted well each one.’

When this message was taken to Diane, she lifted her grief-stricken face to the messenger and smiled bitterly. She was realizing now that she had never really known the Queen. There were a few at court who secretly spoke of Catherine as Madame Serpent; Diane could now believe that those people understood Henry’s widow better than she had done.

‘Is the King dead, then, that I am treated thus?’ she asked.

‘No, Madame,’ she was told, ‘but it is believed he can only linger a little longer.’

Diane stood up and answered imperiously: ‘So long as an inch of life remains to him I desire my enemies to know that I fear them not, and that, as long as he is alive, I shall not obey them. But, when he is dead, I do not wish to survive him, all all the bitternesses which they may be able to inflict upon me will be only sweets in comparison with my loss. And whether my King be alive or dead, I do not fear my enemies.’

When these words were repeated to her, Catherine knew that once more her enemy had the better of her. In love, she had acted carelessly again.

She rocked herself to and fro in her misery. Never to see him again. Never to watch him jealously as he bent his head to listen to Diane. There could never be another man for Catherine. Love was dead with Henry, and her passion would be buried in the tomb with him.

Mary Stuart, weeping for her father-in-law, could not keep the shine of expectancy out of her eyes. In a few days she would be the Queen of France.

Young Francis, who had loved his father dearly, was being so courted now by the de Guises, was being so prepared for kingship by his clever little Mary, that he too felt excitement mingling with his sorrow.

It will be the de Guises who will rule France now, not the Queen-Mother!

thought Catherine in the midst of her grief and the realization was brought home to her that she desired power almost as much as she had desired her husband. I do not forget that this I owe to Mary Stuart! She fell to fresh weeping.

Henry, come back to me. Give me a chance. Diane grows old, and I am not so old. I have never known the true love of a man, and if you leave me now I never shall. Word went through the palace: ‘The Queen is prostrate in her grief.’

The body of the King was embalmed and laid in a leaden coffin. With great solemnity and lamentation, it was borne to Notre Dame, and from there to Saint-Denis, with a great company of all the highest in the land.

The Cardinal of Lorraine officiated; he it was who pronounced the funeral oration as the coffin was lowered into the vault.

Montmorency broke his baton and threw its fragments over the coffin, whereupon the four officials did likewise. It was a touching scene.