The Confessions of Catherine de Medici (44 page)

I flicked my hand at the stack of coins at his side. “It appears you’re winning.”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t until today.”

“No, he wasn’t,” said Charles, with febrile enthusiasm. “But today, fortune is with him.” He and Navarre locked eyes across the table. “Isn’t it, my friend?”

“Indeed.” Navarre reclined in his chair, taking up the goblet at his side. “His Majesty is generous. Another king wouldn’t so freely allow someone like me to win.”

I sensed a laden undercurrent in their words. I shot a penetrating look at Margot. She had her hand on Hercule’s; both watched me with intense interest, like hounds awaiting the command to leap at their prey.

I returned my gaze to Charles. “Don’t lose too much,” I muttered, and I reached to his brow, for he looked unnaturally flushed all of a sudden. As I touched him he flinched, and I felt heat rising off his skin. “You have a fever,” I said. “Remember what Paré advised: you mustn’t overexert yourself. I think you’ve done enough gambling for today.”

Charles started to protest; instead, Navarre rose. “Your mother is right,” he said, and he gave my son a tender smile. “I wouldn’t want you to fall ill on my account, cousin. Perhaps we can play again tomorrow, after you’ve had a good night’s rest?”

As I heard the compassion in his voice, my heart lurched. He sounded as if he truly cared for Charles. “We can’t tomorrow,” Charles said.

“We’re going hunting at Vincennes, remember?”

Navarre paused. “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten.”

I forced out a chuckle, dropping my hand to Charles’s shoulder. “I don’t think it’s wise to spend the day on horseback until this fever abates, yes?”

“But I promised!” Charles jerked from me. He stood awkwardly, yanking the voluminous folds of his robe about his slender frame. Beside Navarre, he looked like a child in a king’s garb; even his voice was petulant. “I’m better and I want to go hunting. I’m sick of being shut inside.”

“We’ll see,” I repeated, and I said to Navarre, “If you feel the need for exercise, my lord, there’s no reason Henri can’t take you. I’m sure Margot can see to Charles’s diversion for one day. Can’t you, my dear?”

I heard my daughter mutter, “Do I have a choice?”

I smiled. “Good, then it’s settled. Tomorrow Henri will take Navarre to Vincennes and if Charles feels better by the evening, we can all sup together as a family.”

Navarre met my stare. I saw nothing in his regard, not a single emotion I could identify, as if his eyes were made of opaque glass. “I’d be delighted,” he said.

As soon as he left with Margot and Hercule and I saw Charles to bed, I returned to my rooms and summoned Henri. He arrived rumpled from being awoken from his afternoon nap.

“What is it?” he asked, sensing at once my tension.

I paced my chamber, trying to make sense of the inexplicable dread inside me. I told him about my visit. “It was almost as if they were plotting something.”

He laughed. “If it were up to Margot I’d have no doubt. She despises us because we made a mockery of her wedding vows by killing her Huguenot guests—as though she ever cared a fig for heretics. But poor Charles just wants to make amends. He feels terrible about that night; after all, he forced Navarre to convert. Besides, what can Navarre do to us? The Huguenots are routed and running for their lives. And Navarre is no Coligny.”

I retorted, “He could still turn against us!” and then I bit my lip, regretting this admission of my private fear. But it was done now, so I added, “I know he’s Margot’s husband. He owes us his life and I’ve no evidence against him, but I don’t want him so close to Charles.”

Henri nodded. “What would you have me do?”

I considered. “Take him hunting tomorrow as planned, but make the day long enough that you’ll have to stay overnight in the Château of Vincennes. Birago will take care of the rest.”

His eyes widened. “Maman, you’re not going to …?”

“No,” I said sharply. “Of course not. I don’t want him killed. But I must be sure he won’t turn against us either. I’ll keep him under guard in Vincennes for a time. Margot can join him there; once he gets her with child, then we’ll know his loyalty.”

Henri grazed my cheek with his lips. “To Vincennes it is.”

• • •

I waited out the next morning in my study, attending to my correspondence even as my thoughts kept drifting. Finally, after several hours in which I barely finished two letters, I rose to take my midday meal when Birago rushed in.

“You must come at once,” he panted. “His Majesty has taken a turn for the worse!”

We raced to Charles’s room. It looked as if a fierce wind had blown through it, chairs and tables thrown about, platters knocked from the mantels and coffers overturned. I stared, dumbstruck, at Paré as he forcibly held my son down by his shoulders. Charles thrashed on the bed, red-flecked foam gurgling from his mouth.

Birago wrung his hands. Paré was trying to get a leather strap between Charles’s teeth but my son let out a guttural shriek and arched backward with such force that he sent Paré flying away from the bed. I gasped as my son’s spine contorted at an impossible angle, bowing until his head nearly touched his feet, his nightshirt splitting across his chest. As Paré scrambled back to him, Charles started convulsing again. I lunged forward with Birago, gripping Charles’s arms while Birago held his feet and Paré forced the strap between his lips. The power my son exhibited was inhuman; it took all of my strength to press down on him, my breath stalling when I saw his eyes roll back into their sockets. Blood seeped from his nose.

He abruptly went still, his chest heaving with a gurgling sound.

“What is it?” I gasped. “What is wrong with him?”

“I don’t know,” Paré replied in a hushed voice. “I brought his afternoon draft but Their Highnesses Margot and Hercule were visiting, so I left the draft and came back later. Their Highnesses were gone and he was asleep. I tarried outside and then I heard him choking. When I ran in, I found him like this. He seemed better this morning … He had no fever. I checked.”

“Margot was here?” I looked at Birago. He whispered, “Look at his chest.”

I glanced at my son’s torso, exposed under his torn nightshirt. An amulet dangled against his white skin, the archaic design beaten into tarnished silver. I froze. Paré had risen and moved to the mess near an overturned table. I saw him pick up a goblet, bring it to his nose.

He recoiled. “Almonds.” He dropped the goblet, lifting his eyes to me
in horror. “It’s some type of arsenic! It was in his draft. Dear God, the king has been poisoned.”

“That’s impossible,” I whispered, but I recognized that amulet. It was the one Cosimo had given me; the last time I’d seen it was at Chenonceau on the day I’d cast my only spell. I’d put it in the box with the wax figures and never worn it again, bringing the box with me from one palace to another, lost among my other belongings.

Paré collapsed to his knees. “I didn’t do it. I swear to Your Grace, it wasn’t me.” And as I heard his abject terror, when his composure had never wavered even when overseeing my husband and eldest son in their final hours, everything around me started to keel, as if the room slowly capsized under a dark roaring ocean.

“Margot,” I whispered, and I stumbled from the room.

I barged into my apartments, startling my women as I moved into my bedchamber and searched my cluttered dressing table. The box was gone. Whirling about, I stormed to Margot’s chambers. She sat on the window seat with Hercule; as she stood in a flurry of skirts, I took in her startled expression, which after weeks of flinty indifference was an admission in and of itself. I eyed her white satin gown, the grape-sized pearls in her hair, and thought she dressed as if for a celebration. Then I looked at Hercule. He recoiled, his face blanching.

And I knew.

“Where is it?” I said. I didn’t take a step to her, thinking I might kill her with my bare hands.

She turned to a nearby coffer and removed the box, bringing it to me on extended hands. Inside, I found the wax dolls lying in dishevelment; as I heard my heart pounding, I sprung the latch under the lining, opening the secret compartment to reveal the vial Cosimo had given me. It was empty; a tentative sniff summoned the terrifying scent of almonds.

“How … how could you do this?” My voice was a mere whisper.

“Cosimo,” she said, and there wasn’t a hint of fear or regret in her voice.

“You … you had Cosimo …?”

“I wrote to him. He told me to look for the box. It wasn’t hard. You didn’t exactly hide it.”

I couldn’t move, the box heavy as marble in my hands. “Why?” I heard myself say.

Her eyes gleamed. “Charles wants to die because of what you’ve done. You killed his subjects, set all of the Huguenots against him.” She paused, for effect. “But most important, you killed Coligny, whom he loved like a father.”

“That is a lie!” I hissed. “This has nothing to do with Charles. You did this because you loved Guise and I forced you to wed Navarre, and now you think that I …” I cut myself short, meeting her knowing gaze in stunned realization.

“What, Maman?” she purred. “Because you plan to kill Navarre next? That’s why you sent him hunting with Henri, isn’t it, so you can do away with him in the forest and say it was a hunting accident? There’ll be no chance of him becoming a Huguenot leader then. You will usurp his realm, rid yourself of the rest of the Huguenots, and wed me again where you please.”

“She hates us,” muttered Hercule under his breath, as if I weren’t in the room. “Maman hates us and didn’t warn us about the massacre. She wants us all dead.”

I stared at my daughter in horrified disbelief. What had I done to create such a twisted being? I loved all of my children as best as I could; I’d fought to keep them safe. I’d been distant as a mother during much of their infancy, yes, but only because Diane stole them from me. But after my husband died, they were mine again and I never wavered in my defense of them. How could Margot, so full of beauty and promise, have become this vile stranger? I tried to summon my rage, to blast her into humiliation, but the truth coiled inside me and I could not evade it.

She would do anything for revenge. She was a Medici; her curse was my blood.

“I gave Charles the amulet and the poison,” Margot went on, as though she could read my thoughts. “It’s what Cosimo advised: earn his trust by showing him what you are capable of.”

I felt the box drop from my hands but didn’t hear it hit the floor.

“And that’s not all,” she said, with a slow malicious smile. “Charles was going to let Navarre escape at Vincennes. But then you came and took away his last hope for redemption. Now he thinks Navarre will die. That’s why he took the poison. He can’t bear his own guilt anymore.”

I looked at her face, at those remorseless eyes, and I grabbed her with my fists, shaking her until the pearls unraveled from her hair and pebbled across the floor. “He thinks Navarre will die because you filled his head with deceit! Do you know what you’ve done?
Do you?
Your brother is dying because of you.”

She laughed in my face. “It’s
your
poison,
your
amulet. Everyone will say you did it, just like you killed Queen Jeanne, just like you used me to wed Navarre so you could lure the Huguenots to Paris to kill them. They’ll say you poisoned your son and no one will ever trust you again!”

Hercule cowered. “Not me,” he blubbered. “I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.”

I pushed Margot aside, took a deliberate step back. “As soon as I see to your brother,” I said to her, “I’ll deal with you as you deserve.”

I put my youngest children under guard and sent soldiers to Chaumont to arrest Cosimo, who was apprehended and brought to the Bastille.

At nightfall, I went with Birago to see him. As I entered his slimy cell, deep in the fortress, I shuddered to see my astrologer bound to a chair, nude save for a tattered loincloth. In the shadows on the wall hung an array of prongs and other instruments of torture.

Cosimo looked like a cadaver, bruises marring his sallow skin. All the life inside him seemed to rush into his eyes at the sight of me, bringing back the memory of the little boy I’d met outside his father’s house. I had known him since childhood; we weren’t far apart in age. He was a fellow Italian, a Florentine. I had a moment of paralyzing doubt. What if this was part of Margot’s vengeance? What if she’d found the box on her own, spewed her venom in Charles’s ears to tip an already unstable mind into insanity, and then schemed to accuse Cosimo?

Birago murmured,
“Madama
, we must proceed. His Majesty’s life depends on it.”

I nodded and Birago took his seat at a small table, removing from his satchel the paper and quill he would use to record the session. Cosimo stared at me, unblinking, searing me with all the memories between us, even as Birago’s resonant voice filled the small cold room.

“Cosimo Ruggieri, you are accused of conspiring to effect His
Majesty’s death by poison. Her Grace is here to determine the recipe for the antidote. If you provide it, she promises that you will leave here with your life.”

Cosimo did not move, did not indicate he’d heard anything.

“Cosimo,” I added, “you know I’ve no wish to harm you. Just tell me what I have to do to save my son. You know the poison’s ingredients. What is its antidote?”

His cheek twitched. Birago made a brusque motion to the table. “If you do not speak, the truth will be forced out of you. Every poison has its cure. You know it and you will tell us.”

Cosimo’s mouth twisted. His laughter cracked forth like shards of metal. “You still don’t understand, do you? The gift you’ve refused to acknowledge in yourself, I devoted my entire being to attaining. And everything I learned, everything I discovered, I put to your service. I did what you did not have the strength to do. I am your instrument.”

My skin crawled. “You … you are deluded. How dare you set claim to my life?”

“Because I am yours!” His ribs protruded as he strained against his bindings. “You never thought of me; you left me alone and ignored me, but I … I was always yours. While you paid heed to your fool Nostradamus, who only gave you poems and rhymes, I probed the darkest realms to bring you your heart’s desire. But you disdained me. You forsook me and now—”