The Queen and the Courtesan (10 page)

‘My dear,' he said, bringing both her hands to his lips to kiss her fingers. ‘Do not doubt that I love you dearly, for now you obey my will. Believe that this is the true way to govern me – in short – the only way.'

It was a warning, a gentle one, but a warning nonetheless. But even as Marie strove to think of a response, he was already doffing his cap and making ready to mount his horse. She blew him a kiss and watched him ride away with tears in her eyes.

It was Leonora who brought her the unwelcome news. ‘Your Majesty, they are saying that instead of riding straight to the capital, where his presence was allegedly needed so urgently, the King has in fact called at the Château de Verneuil to meet with his mistress and urge her to return with him to Paris.'

Marie stared at her loyal servant in stunned dismay. She'd been distressed by Henry's apparent abandonment of her, her female pride hurt by his ability to leave her so abruptly, and so soon after their wedding. Now she felt a burning indignation, and the first stirrings of jealousy. Marie had been but a small child when she'd witnessed her mother's tears when her husband of just a few years had brought a sixteen-year-old girl to live close by in a fine palazzo in Florence, so that he could visit her daily. Now she understood fully how Joanna must have felt.

‘His Majesty was seen to arrive at the château where he flung himself into her waiting arms.'

‘Are you saying that urging me to take my time to explore my new kingdom was a deliberate ploy on his part?'

Leonora lowered her gaze, unable to witness the pain this knowledge brought to her mistress, yet feeling a need to take her revenge against the King for his slight against her. ‘I cannot say.'

‘Then you are kinder than the thoughts rattling in my own head,' Marie tartly replied. ‘To go to his mistress now, so soon after our wedding, is a gross and stinging insult.' If at the outset of her marriage she'd ridden on a tide of happiness and joy, now Marie was plunged into the depths of despair. Perhaps he had not cared for her at all. He had simply been performing a duty, admittedly with great skill and artifice, and undoubted charm, laced with a natural earthy desire. Yet all the while Henry had been longing to return to his mistress, who was clearly far more beautiful and desirable than herself.

Marie was mortified, deeply insulted, and somewhat alarmed, feeling suddenly insecure and unwanted in this new land. ‘He does not love me.' The words were out before she could stop them.

‘The King shows every sign of indifference, that is true,' Leonora agreed, revelling in her power to insult him. ‘But you must guard your pride well. Do not let him see how he has hurt you, how you feel spurned by this callous neglect.'

Neglect! It was the one word Marie feared more than any other. Had not her own father neglected her to such an extent that he had not even troubled to visit his own child in years. How would she tolerate such treatment from a husband? And after believing that he cared.

Wringing her hands together she began to pace about the room. They were staying in yet another anonymous hostel on the road somewhere between Bourges and Orleans. It was a bitter winter's night, rain beating on the windows and a draught swirling beneath the door. Marie had been fondly imagining how much warmer and more comforting her cold bed would be were her husband beside her; how in just a few more miles she would reach Paris and could nestle again in his arms. Now she was stricken to the core.

‘It is an insult to your royal person,' Leonora was muttering. ‘Oh, Your Majesty, you are growing agitated, let me calm you.' Snatching up a brush she attempted to smooth the long brown tresses, but Marie did not have the patience to sit still and again began to walk up and down in a lather of distress.

‘Mayhap it was not deliberate on Henry's part,' she said at last, pausing in her fretful pacing. ‘The meeting might well have been arranged by
that woman
, by the Marquise herself. I am not so blind that I cannot see it would be to her advantage to delay my arrival for as long as possible. Perhaps things will be different when I am in Paris.'

With this somewhat forlorn hope, she curled up alone in her bed and dreamed of a contented life together.

Because of the constant stops on the road, the dreary ceremonies, civic functions, and endless speeches, Marie did not reach the capital until early February. She was met by the King at Nemours, and he personally conducted her to Fontainebleau. To her relief she saw no sign of the royal favourite, and Henry was as friendly and warm as ever.

‘How can you be so susceptible to his charms?' Leonora scorned, her monkey-like face tight with disapproval as she helped her mistress prepare for their first night together. ‘Why do you not challenge him?'

‘Because he is the King, and I am his queen.'

Oh, but it was hard not to start a quarrel with him. Marie was burning to ask the million questions that swarmed in her head. Except that when he came to her with his smiles and took her in his arms, she could ask none of them. His tantalizing touch made her shiver with desire, and when he bent to kiss her she eagerly yielded herself to the ecstasy of her own ardour. Intoxicated by his lovemaking, which was as passionate and skilful as ever, she banished all such miserable doubts from her mind.

For the few days of their stay at Fontainebleau, Marie held her complaints in check, savouring some of the early joy she'd found in her marriage, albeit tinged with a private sadness. Henry regularly took her riding in the magnificent forest, showed her his favourite haunts, but then one morning received word that his sister, Madame Catherine, was ill, and begged leave to depart for Paris.

‘I must see that my physician is dispatched to her.'

Marie longed to say he could surely order that to be done from here, but held her tongue.

At last the new queen entered Paris, and found that the delays to her arrival had been so prolonged that it seemed the people had forgotten she was even coming. The streets were quiet as her coach rode through. No decorations or cheering crowds here. There was none of the pomp she'd become accustomed to on her progress through the provinces. When she asked the Constable the reason, she was informed that although the civic authorities had been eager to afford her a magnificent state reception, the King himself had commanded that the ceremony should be deferred, for the sake of cost.

‘His Majesty is rigorous at controlling the treasury,' the official explained with a smile. ‘He often insists that his garments be mended, in order to save the expense of buying new.'

‘Is that all I am to him now?' she complained to Leonora as they jostled along, hiding from the empty darkness behind the heavy carnation curtains. ‘An expense! And that despite the fortune I have brought to him in the form of a dowry.'

‘I suspect it was Madame de Verneuil who has instituted an evil influence upon His Majesty in the matter. The last thing she would want would be for you to receive the kind of welcome you have received thus far in every town you have passed through. Not here in Paris, the city in which she imagined herself being queen.'

‘You may well be right. I must give Henry the benefit of the doubt.' If only because of the stirring nights she spent in his arms.

Marie shivered, her feet frozen on a foot-warmer that had long since lost its heat, consoling herself that she would be the one to wear the crown, after all. Little César was with her and the poor child was falling asleep in her arms. She drew him close to keep him warm, telling herself to stop fretting about one mistress. Did not every monarch consider it his right? She must learn to accept that, and what did it matter, so long as Henry was discreet?

‘I doubt he is even faithful to her,' Leonora inexorably continued, as the older woman did so love to gossip. ‘I have heard rumours that he constantly entertains other ladies of the court at supper.'

Marie was startled by this news, not sure whether to be relieved by this lack of constancy on her husband's part towards his mistress, or further insulted by it. She let out a heavy sigh. ‘No doubt things will not look half so bleak when we can actually step down from this tiresome coach for the last time.'

But there was little consolation to be found when they did. The Louvre appeared dingy, the furnishings outdated, certainly to Marie, an Italian princess accustomed to Florentine elegance. She was shocked by the evident lack of preparation for her arrival. There were no fires lit, no clean sheets on the beds. ‘We cannot possibly stay here. I doubt it has even been cleaned. Please find us a more comfortable abode while something is done to improve this place.'

Marie installed herself and her entourage in the finest private mansion in Paris, the home of Cardinal de Condé. Here she waited for the nobles, the Princes of the Blood and other high personages, to call and pay their respects, as was only right and proper to a new queen.

The squabbles between the Italian and French retinues had left a sour taste in everyone's mouth, and Marie was doing her utmost to keep her spirits high, despite the poor reception in the capital. But she was also suffering from that dreaded sense of neglect by an easy-going, but careless, husband. Holding fast to her dignity she smiled as she entered the ballroom the following evening, having spent a long afternoon receiving the principal ladies of the court, and derived some small pleasure from hearing murmurs of admiration as she passed by.

Her gown was of gold cloth trimmed with ermine, her fine bosom framed by a ruff of rich lace stiffened by wire that rose high behind the neck. The fashion was instantly christened by the admiring courtiers as a ‘Medici'. And wishing to be in keeping with the French Court the Queen's hair was arranged in stiff rows of thickly-powdered curls. As always she looked magnificent, but her confidence, already at a low ebb, dipped lower within moments of reaching the dais.

Henriette stood framed in the open doorway, her pretty head held high as she glanced disdainfully about her with a dignity befitting a queen and not a mere courtesan.

Some instinct told Marie who the woman was, confirmed by the rush of whispers that flew about the room, followed by a stunned silence. Marie de Medici, that most royal of princesses, watched in open disbelief as her husband's mistress moved gracefully towards her. She could hardly believe her own eyes. Or her ears either when, curtseying low, the Duchesse de Nemours – the famous Anne d'Este, mother of the Duke of Mayenne, Cardinal de Lorraine, and Henri de Guise who had inherited his father's sobriquet
le Balafré
and been loved by Queen Margot – introduced her.

‘May I have the honour of presenting to Your Majesty Madame Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues, the Marchioness de Verneuil.' The elderly duchess made a small obeisance.

But if her
grande-maîtresse
looked uncomfortable over having been placed in this invidious position, Marie did not notice. She was far too concerned with examining the insolent expression and startling good looks of her rival. Dark and slim with a tiny waist that made Marie almost weep with envy, the girl blazed with jewels, her triumph radiating from her almost as brightly. Marie instantly decided that her brow bulged somewhat, that her mouth was sulky, and the chin somewhat fleshy. The heavy-lidded eyes were too large for real beauty, and the mouth too small.

Henry leaned close to whisper in the Queen's ear. ‘Behold Madame la Marquise, a lady, as you know, well affected towards myself, but who desires also to become your very humble servant.'

Fully aware though she indeed was that her husband kept a mistress, Marie had not expected the Marquise to be presented to her at court. She was outraged that this wicked jade should even be here, let alone under the wing of one so high as the Duchess of Nemours, or for the King himself to push her forward. She sensed, rather than heard, the indrawn breath of the gathered assembly as they awaited her reaction to this apparent insult. Only her own strict upbringing and pride in her Italian blood helped her to hold on to her dignity. Marie's upper lip trembled slightly but she quickly stiffened it. Not by the smallest degree would she give this slattern the pleasure of seeing how her very presence wounded her.

Giving no indication by her expression of the turmoil of her thoughts within, Marie carefully studied her rival. Henriette gave a mocking little curtsey, a satisfied little smile playing about her pretty mouth. Apparently dissatisfied with this supposed show of obeisance, the King stepped quickly forward, placed his hand upon his mistress's head and pushed her down further, compelling her to kneel and touch her lips to the hem of the Queen's robe. Marie stood rigid, making no attempt to offer her hand to be kissed, but as the girl scrambled to her feet again nor did she miss the flash of resentment that darted from those catlike eyes.

The King was casting a fierce glare in the Duchess's direction. ‘Most ungracious,' he muttered, as if the blame for this effrontery were entirely hers, and that he had not insisted she do this difficult and embarrassing task for him so that Henriette could remain at court, within his reach. Then he strolled away, suddenly finding urgent business requiring his attention in the anteroom, closely followed by the officers of his household.

Madame la Marquise remained where she was.

Assiduously ignoring her, Marie felt the insult like a lash, the colour draining from her face, and she quickly turned aside to converse with her ladies. She was eager to give the impression that the woman was of no consequence, that she'd interrupted a most important and pressing discussion.

Taking a quick step forward the Duchesse de Nemours attempted to salvage the situation by catching the eye of the Queen, but Marie turned away from her too. She made it very evident that the elderly Duchess, once referred to as the Fury of the League, had also incurred her royal displeasure. The unfortunate lady almost shrank from the fierce glare those soft brown eyes now fixed upon her. She'd made every effort to befriend the new Queen, yet had felt obliged to obey the King in this request, because Henry had so graciously pardoned her grandson, the Prince de Joinville, for his murderous attack upon the Duke of Bellegarde. Now she realized that by doing Henry this favour, she may well have gained the enmity of the very woman she had wished to please. She stepped back, wishing only for the floor to swallow her up.