Written on Silk (34 page)

“What should Francis do, mon oncle?” came Mary’s soprano voice.

Catherine ground her teeth under her breath.
Do? Do? I will tell
you what a king would do. He would not permit your oncles to rule him
through you!

The Duc de Guise spoke: “The House of Bourbon . . . a danger to our house . . . they must be removed . . .”

His voice lowered, and though Catherine slowed her breathing, straining to catch his syllables, the conversation was garbled.

Catherine listened in a trance. Then she heard the words that most filled her with hatred.

“And what shall I do, continue to spy on Catherine?” Mary asked.

“Yes, watch her. Report back to me her movements. She cannot be trusted. She is too friendly with the Huguenot Admiral Coligny and the Bourbons.”

The voices faded as they must have moved across the chamber. A moment later Catherine replaced the plug on the listening tube and closed the secret compartment. She stood in chilled silence. Too friendly with the Huguenots, was she? What did that fool Guise know about what she was doing? She was merely leading them on for the appropriate final kill!
We shall also see about our little Bourbons Louis and Antoine! So they
needed to be removed? We shall see, my fine arrogant Duc de Guise!

Catherine sat down at her desk and wrote a brief message to Sebastien to come to Fontainebleau.

A
HANDSOME COACH-AND-FOUR RATTLED
along at a fast clip across wet cobbled streets on a gray twilight evening traveling away from Paris and the Louvre, far away from the infamous Bastille where Sebastien had been recently imprisoned; away from its putrefying stench, from its pain and human suffering.
Forward! Onward toward Fontainebleau château-palais
in Orléans. Make haste, for the Queen Mother has called for you,
race past the king’s royal forest for hunting his stags — past the gardens
and trees, see the gray doves fleeing safely to the hills. Ah, do not look back,
Sebastien, do not remember your months in the dungeon and underground
torture chamber. One
faux pas
and you will be taken there yet again. Watch
your step when you are at Court, keep your facial expression submissive
and benign, do not let them guess how you plan your escape from France
with Madeleine and Joan.

He grasped hold of his emotions. His frenzied mind pointed ahead:
there — you see it at last. Fontainebleau, palais of French kings and
queens. Ah, how the massive structure gazes out upon the less fortunate in
complacent satisfaction, like Mother Babylon boasting to her foes: “I sit a
queen and am no widow. I shall never see sorrow.”

Comte Sebastien’s elegant attire, his elaborately equipped coach, his uniformed footmen and pages, including his newest page in training, his neveu, Andelot, all announced him as a nobleman of prestige and authority as his entourage swept past the villagers on the country road leading away from Paris.

And so he was, at least outwardly.

I am Comte Sebastien Dangeau, a member of the privy council to
the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici
, he repeated to himself, trying to subdue his trembling, but the reminder of his freedom did little to strengthen his bones. He scoffed at the noble impression he was making on the poverty-burdened serfs and shopkeepers eyeing him as some great one as he drove past.

I am powerless, and I know it
. His weakness reached down to the deepest crevices of his soul.

His useable hand trembled; his crushed hand felt pain anew, but he knew the suffering was mostly in his mind. Though it had been over two months, lingering images jabbed their fiery pitchforks into his mind.

Fontainebleau, fifty kilometers from Paris, was looming closer, the door to his luxuriant chambers would soon open to him like a lover’s embrace. “Come out of the stormy persecution. Are you not a courtier of renown once again?”

Fontainebleau, isolated in the pleasant countryside of Orléans, with its old oaks and pine trees, with the river Seine nearby and the moonlight reflecting on its waters, was a hunting lodge, a château, and a palais. But among the stately forest trees, the trill of birds, and the innocent eyes of the doe — there were also loathsome dungeons where the condemned were kept without hope. Sebastien felt his heart quicken in nervous fear. No matter how he struggled to overcome these emotions, they returned to haunt him.

His fellow Huguenots had met such horrifying deaths back in March at Amboise. He shook his head. They were dreadfully forsaken, though not of Christ. Even in their sufferings, they had called out, saying His Presence was near.

I need to depend on Christ more. When this fear overtakes me, I must
remember Him. He is there to help, as Madeleine reminds me.

The sudden unbidden tears springing from Sebastien’s eyes surprised and angered him. Men were not to show such emotion. The salty drops poured down his cheeks. He brushed them away in a gesture of self-loathing, feeling his rough skin with deep creases. He shut his eyes and pulled his pristine handkerchief from beneath the lacy cuff of his blue and burgundy coat.

His conscience flogged him yet again:
I am a coward. I surrendered
to the inquisitor’s wishes while better Huguenots than I died in faithfulness
to Christ.

The carriage lurched in a sporadic gust. Twilight settled, making the coach darker. From outside, he heard his smartly uniformed coachman shout at the peasants to scatter. They always gathered outside the gates of the royal residences seeking coins. Sebastien heard the long whip hiss and snap several times, clearing a path.

His thoughts continued to race along with the drumming hooves.

He moistened his dry lips.

He knew he would never recover from his injuries. The pain in his twisted knee relentlessly taunted,
Remember the Bastille? You may be
taken there again. The dungeon waits if you refuse to comply
.

Memories, like leering demons, stirred from dark corners of his mind.
You will go back there one day. Remember the red-hot pincers that
tear at the flesh? How the inquisitors carve out tongues, poke out eyes, cut
off feet, hands, arms? Remember?

Therefore, be wise; do not risk your good favor with the king by even
a suggestion that you intend to escape; do not let the Queen Mother know
you have concern for heretics, lest she question your sincerity in attending
Mass at noon each day.
Recurring pain served to remind him of how near he had come to being burnt at the stake for heresy. He had trained his mind to avoid the brutality of the past.

Though Sebastien concealed things he would not discuss even with his wife, Madeleine, he could not easily hide his mangled left hand. At least it was his left hand, and he was able to cover it in a black velvet glove.

Those brutal scenes he had been forced to watch as part of his punishment came alive again, carved with vivid terror across his mind. He could not destroy those stark images, nor could he rid his nostrils of the stench. He leaned his head near the small coach window and thrust the shutter open, feeling sick.

His handkerchief, always perfumed with sweet musk, offered no refuge. He still smelled the rotting, unburied corpses that were ofttimes left to torment the prisoners. He leaned out the window and sucked in cool, fresh, rainy air.

The coach bounded through the gates of Fontainebleau, but the groans from his mind pursued him.

He looked over his shoulder, back toward the road, as though expecting to see a grayish apparition following him, pointing a bony finger of accusation for his willingness to escape the dungeon by recantation while they had endured for the name above all names. He saw only the royal guards, dressed in spotless crimson, gold, and black, their swords glimmering, receiving him into their habitations.

The driver brought the coach to a stop in the courtyard of Fontainebleau. Sebastien heard the horses snort and whinny as his lavishly garbed footman opened the door and bowed.

Sebastien stepped down, swayed a little, and was swiftly steadied by Andelot Dangeau, who, with a guard, had ridden ahead of the coach on the marquis’s golden bay, while other pages rode behind, at the tail end of the procession.

Andelot had evoked the scorn of the Cardinal de Lorraine over his actions at Amboise with the boy, Prince Charles. Whether or not the cardinal intended to continue his remoteness toward Andelot was questionable, and troubled Sebastien. He was secretly pleased to have learned that Andelot was now excluded from the cardinal’s personal league. Sebastien knew the cardinal treated the boy-king Francis in a cynical and overbearing manner. Why would he treat Andelot differently? He hoped the cardinal’s aloofness would persist.

Sebastien blamed himself for ever having brought Andelot to Chambord to meet the duc and the cardinal. He should have delayed, making excuses until the cardinal lost interest and forgot about his kinsman. Now, though presently Sebastien’s page, Andelot could yet become caught in the inner circle of the Guise coalition. Thankfully Andelot seemed content and was not seeking to win back the cardinal’s favor, due, no doubt, to Sebastien securing the scholar Thauvet as his tutor, as the marquis had written and paid handsomely to acquire. If the cardinal discovered it was the Bourbon marquis sponsoring Andelot at Court, there would be trouble. Thus far, the cardinal had paid no heed. Scholar Thauvet was one of the most learned men at Court, and also a secret Huguenot. Did the marquis know of Thauvet’s forbidden faith?

Sebastien felt the chill of drizzling rain hurling against him. He drew his cloak, heavy with silver embroidery, around his slumping shoulders. He was not an old man, but recently he had been mistaken for Madeleine’s père, though he was but ten years her senior. His sufferings in prison had aged his body and in two months’ passing, his once dark hair bore streaks of gray.

In a badly limping stride, he made his way across the wet courtyard, attended by pages and liveried footmen, all at his call.

An ostentatious young monsieur was loitering near the orangerie, and Sebastien saw that it was his sister’s son, Maurice.

Comte Maurice Beauvilliers ambled forward, wearing a peacock-blue gilded cloak, slashed black hose, and a sombrero hat with an ostrich feather dyed crimson.

“Mon oncle,” he stated, “I must speak with you. It is urgent.”

Sebastien paused. “Be it so, Maurice? I am late for audience with the Queen Mother.”

“I know you are about to see her. That is why I have waited here enduring this most miserable rain and cold. I must present a petition to her, mon oncle, and you can do so for me most easily, I assure you.”

Sebastien felt a rise of impatience. Maurice was spoiled by his mère, Comtesse Francoise Dangeau-Beauvilliers, who schemed day and night to advance Maurice’s favor and importance at Court. Sebastien believed she could have helped her son far more if she had not given him his every wish.

“Ma mère Francoise, your sister, has written this lettre to the Queen Mother, mon oncle. Do see that she has it.”

Maurice handed over a sealed parchment. Sebastien took it reluctantly. He loved his sister and neveu, but their intrigues now seemed to him, after such sober days, as unwise.

“What does she petition?”

Maurice smiled, lifting the pink rosebud from his sleeve and smelling it. “I want Mademoiselle Rachelle Macquinet to return to Court that I might marry her. I am madly infatuated, and I must have her.”

Anger sprang up in Sebastien’s chest. The request was selfish and frivolous. “Do not be a fool, Maurice. I have no time to worry about my young sister-in-law coming to Court. She is content at the Château de Silk. Let her be. She has lost petite Avril and her grandmère in so short a time.” Pushing the lettre back into Maurice’s hand, he brushed past him and went on his way.