Jean Plaidy - [Queens of England 01] Page 4

  “I hope that the Huguenots will give up heresy and come to the true Faith.”

  “You are repeating what you have heard, little one. Don’t do that. Think for yourself as I always did. Do I frighten you?”

  I hesitated.

  “I do,” she went on. “Well, now go, little one. You are a beautiful child and I hope you will have as vivid a life as I have had.”

  I said: “I like sitting here talking to you.”

  The hand pressed mine and she smiled.

  “You must go. Your mother would not wish you to talk too long with me. I think she has noticed us…or one of her spies has. The King is her son but I have as much right as anyone to be here when there is a wedding in the family.”

  A young man was approaching and I saw her interest in me fade.

  He came and bowed before her.

  “Ma belle Margot!” he said softly and she smiled and held out her hand.

  I knew it was then time for me to leave.

  I never forgot her and was extraordinarily moved when a year later I heard that she had died. She was sixty-three years old then and I found it hard to believe that anyone could live so long. When Mamie came to us she told me lots of stories about La Reine Margot; her life seemed to have been one long succession of lovers and wild adventures. I was surprised to hear that she and my mother had been quite friendly.

  “I should have thought she would have hated my mother who took her place,” I commented to Mamie.

  “Oh no,” Mamie corrected me. “She liked her because of it. Every time she saw her she would say how lucky she was to be rid of your father. And your mother was in sympathy with her because they had both had to—as they would say—‘put up with him’ and knew what a troublesome matter that could be. It made a bond between them.”

  So she was dead, and that wild and exciting life was over forever.

  Those celebrations were certainly an important event in my life. I ceased to be a child during them. For instance it was the first time I saw the Maréchal d’Ancre about whom people were constantly talking. Christine pointed him out to me. “Look,” she said, “there is the Maréchal talking to our mother. I don’t think our brother likes him very much.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Christine was about to speak when she looked at me and I guessed she was reminding herself that I was only a child.

  “Oh, he has his reasons, I’ll swear,” she said, and then she left me.

  I noticed my brother, the King, was sitting looking at the proceedings with a disconsolate air. His Queen was beside him, smiling, fluttering her fan and now and then putting up one of her hands to touch her mantilla—not to adjust it but to bring her pretty hands into prominence. She looked very Spanish and I wondered whether the people were going to like that. Louis spoke very little to her. He stammered quite a bit when he was in a temper or alarmed about something. I suspected he was in one of his stammering phases now.

  Then he was smiling suddenly because Charles d’Albert had come to sit beside him and it was immediately clear that he enjoyed the company of Charles d’Albert better than that of his Queen.

  I knew a little about Charles d’Albert because there was a great deal of talk about him around the nurseries.

  “Another of those Italians,” I heard one of the attendants say. The man was standing beneath my window at the time and even though I had to take a few paces back to hide myself, I was able to hear what was said.

  The man to whom he was talking replied: “We have had our fill of them since the King went to Italy for a wife.”

  “And married one of the Medicis at that! It would have been better if he had stayed with La Reine Margot.”

  They said something about La Reine Margot which I did not understand and they laughed heartily. I could tell by the sound of their feet on the gravel that they were pushing each other to make their point.

  “Well, we wouldn’t have had a new King if he had not married her.”

  “No, no. For all her tricks Margot was no hand at producing the goods.”

  More laughter and jostling.

  “They say he’s getting a real hold on the young King….”

  “Won’t do him much good with Maman in control. Concini will see to that.”

  “Another Italian! Isn’t it time France was for the French?”

  “Yes, I agree. But don’t worry about Albert. The King is in leading strings and likely to remain there as far as I can see. He’s no Henri Quatre.”

  “Ah, there was a man!” There followed what I guessed to be more shuffling and jostling, but to my chagrin they moved away. I should have liked to hear more about Charles d’Albert.

  I was interested though and kept my ears open. It was no use asking questions—everyone either considered I was too young to understand or they did not want to waste time on me.

  So I listened and at the time of the wedding I did know that Charles d’Albert was originally Alberti and he had come to France from Florence to make his fortune. When he found he could do this he decided to become French and changed his name to Albert. He came to the King’s notice because he was clever with birds and trained hawks. He loved to hunt with them and as the King did too that made a bond between them and they soon became very friendly. My brother made him his very special falconer and they were constantly in each other’s company training birds and making nets and thongs for hawking. Albert could train other birds and he was very clever with little sporting birds like pies grièches which, I discovered later, in England, were called butcher birds.

  It was very interesting to see the young man of whom I had heard so much. He was considerably older than my brother Louis and he had certainly made his fortune at the Court of France. He had married, through the King’s graces, Mademoiselle Rohan Montbazon, who was recognized as one of the beauties of the Court.

  Watching them now it was easy to see that he was on very familiar terms with the King.

  I sat on a stool close to them. It was sometimes an advantage to be so young that one was ignored. I listened to their talk. They were discussing hunting, and Albert was asking the King to come as soon as he could to see a new falcon which he had acquired and of which he had high hopes.

  They talked of falconry for some time and then Albert said suddenly: “Look at Concini over there. What airs that man gives himself!”

  “You are right,” said my brother. He was not stammering now that he was talking to Albert which was a sign that he was completely at his ease.

  “Your royal mother seems besotted by the man. I believe he thinks himself more royal than she is.”

  “I dislike him, Charles. He tries to tell me what to do.”

  “What impertinence! You should not allow that, Sire.”

  I looked up and saw the pleased look on my brother’s face. He loved people to recognize his royalty. They did in the streets, of course, and cheered him as the King out of loyalty to our father, Christine said; but there were always those to tell him what to do. It must be a trial to be a king in name and not old enough to be one in fact.

  “There’ll come a time,” said Louis.

  “And I pray the saints it will not long be delayed,” added Charles d’Albert.

  “Concini and the Queen Mother will delay it as long as possible you may be sure.”

  “Indeed they will. They want to rule, and how can they do that if the King is in his rightful place?”

  “I won’t always be a boy.”

  “If you will forgive my saying so, Sire, you have the attributes of a man already.”

  I could see why Louis was fond of Albert. This was the way he liked people to talk to him. “The time will come…” he said.

  “Soon, Sire, soon.”

  Someone had come forward and was bowing to Louis. I slipped away.

  I realized later that I had been listening to the beginning of a plot.

  Those wedding festivities were a turning point in my life. My mother seemed to realize that I was growing up, and because I was dainty and pretty and could sing and dance well, the people liked me. It was necessary for her to be seen with us children because the people always cheered Gaston and me and she could pretend the cheers were for her. In fact the only way she could get the people to cheer when her carriage rode by was to have us in it.

  My mother loved displays of any sort—banquets, ballets, any kind of dancing and singing; she loved fine clothes too and was determined to have them because she believed that entertainments of a lavish nature made the people forget their grievances. It was no wonder that she had forced the Duc de Sully into retirement. He would have been horrified to see the exchequer, which he had always kept under his control and that of my father, dwindling away.

  Paris was becoming a very beautiful city; and my mother liked to call attention to all that she and the late King had done to make it so. She wanted to give balls and fêtes throughout Paris. This she did and the people certainly loved to see the carriages passing through the streets and to catch glimpses of the nobility in all their splendor. On summer evenings the whole Court would go to the Place Royale where my father had begun to build what he intended to be a bazaar, lined with shops rather like St. Mark’s in Venice. My mother was very enthusiastic—possibly because of its Italian associations, and as my father had died before it was completed, she had had it finished in time for the wedding. There was a promenade known as the Cours de la Reine because she had planted several rows of trees along it and in an attempt to win the people’s favor had opened it to the public.

  They thronged there and were delighted to catch glimpses of the grand seigneurs and ladies walking in the gardens.

  Alas, it needed more than that to win the people’s favor, and even if my mother had been the best of rulers, she could not have hoped for great popularity, because she was an Italian.

  Many of the nobles lived in the houses of the Place Royale and they all had magnificent gardens with wonderful examples of the skill of topiary, and the sculptured figures and glistening fountains were a splendid sight.

  “See what a wonderful city we have given you!” That was what my mother was saying.

  But the people continued to dislike her and they complained bitterly about the rise of Concini.

  It was about this time that Mamie was brought into the nurseries to help her mother with the children. That meant chiefly Gaston and me, for Christine was at that time nine years old and so considered herself to be very grown up.

  Mamie did not seem old to me although most people over fourteen usually did. She was even older than that—in her middle teens, I believe—and I loved her from the moment I set eyes on her.

  She exuded an air of wisdom; she was serene; and she did not treat me as a child, so that I could ask her questions without fearing to expose my ignorance as I did with most people.

  Then there was Anne, the new Queen, who was only thirteen and not quite old enough to be a wife, so I saw a great deal of her too.

  We liked each other in a mild kind of way—not as I liked Mamie, of course, but although Anne gave herself certain airs and was a little coquettish in a rather prim way, she was not clever and hardly ever looked at a book, and this endeared her to me; she was lazy and did all she could to evade lessons; and she loved dancing and singing and we discussed ballets and danced and sang together; and she, with Gaston and me, arranged a dance which we said we would perform together whenever we had the opportunity to do so.

  So I had two welcome additions to my life in Anne and dear Mamie. The days seemed to have become full of pleasure. I had no notion of the storms which were gathering in the country.

  Then I began to learn, through Mamie, something of what was going on.

  “You should know,” she told me. “It is a time of great events and as the daughter of a king you may well have your part to play in it.”

  That made me feel very important.

  It was then that she told me about the murder of my father and that ever since his death my mother had been Regent and would doubtless remain so until it was considered that my brother Louis was of an age to rule.

  “When will that be?” I asked. “Poor Louis. He is not much like a king.”

  “It might be sooner than you think.”

  She pursed her lips and looked mysterious, glancing over her shoulder in a manner which I found most exciting. That was Mamie’s way. She created intrigue and made mystery around it.

  I remember flinging my arms about her—it must have been some six months after she had come to the nursery—and making her promise that she would never go away.

  She had stroked my hair and rocked me to and fro. “I’ll never go until they force me to,” she promised.

  For all her exciting outlook on life, Mamie was a realist. “It could be that the time will come when I shall have to go. But for now…we are safe. I don’t think anyone wants to part us. To tell the truth my mother finds me too useful here with you children.”

  “Gaston loves you too,” I told her. “And Christine also…although she doesn’t show it as I do.”

  “Poor Christine! She thinks a great deal about the Princesse Elizabeth, and she fears that one day what has happened to her sister will happen to her.”

  “Will it?”

  Mamie nodded slowly. “Almost certainly,” she said. “Princesses usually marry.”

  “I am a princesse….”

  “A little one. You have a lot of growing up to do.”

  She was comforting me, but I knew what was in store for me although it had not yet appeared on the horizon. But it would come, because it came to all Princesses.

  “We shall always be together,” I said fiercely.

  And she did not deny that we should.

  She changed my life for me. Although it would soon have changed after the wedding in any case, she put something beautiful into it. I realized for the first time that I wanted a mother—someone to care about me, to scold me at times, to tell me about life, to comfort me when I needed comfort, someone who was the most important person in the world to me—and I to her. I felt I was beginning to get somewhere near that relationship with Mamie. And how strange it was that only then I knew that I had missed it.

  She began to make me aware. She told me what was happening all around me. It was by no means what it seemed, and sometimes it was a little frightening, but as conveyed by Mamie always exciting.

  “Who is Concini?” I asked, and instead of telling me it was no concern of mine, and that I should know all I needed to know when I was older, she told me.

  My mother had brought Italians with her when she came to France. It was inevitable. Usually attendants were dismissed when a young princess came into a new country, but Marie de Médicis had kept some of hers, and many were saying that it was to the detriment of France.

  “She brought with her Elenora Galagaï,” Mamie told me, “who was the daughter of her nurse and who had been brought up with her. They grew up to be very fond of each other…like two sisters.”

  “As we are…you and I, Mamie,” I put in.

  “Yes,” agreed Mamie. “It is very like that. Well, when she came to France to marry the King, your mother refused to be parted from Elenora Galagaï and brought her with her. Then because she wanted to see her settled she arranged for her to be married to a man for whom she had the greatest regard. This was another Italian who had come with her to France—Concino Concini. He was the son of a notary from Florence and she had made him her secretary. They were married and, of course, being such favorites of the Queen, they planned to make their fortunes.”

  “And did they?” I asked.

  “My dear Princesse! Did they indeed! Concini became the Maréchal d’Ancre. You know of him.”

  “I saw him at the wedding celebrations with my mother. Charles d’Albert, who was with my brother, did not seem to like him very much.”

  “Oh Charles d’Albert! It is said that the King listens to him more than he does to his mother.”

  Gradually I began to learn more and more of what was going on outside the nursery. Mamie was such a vivid talker and I never ceased to marvel that she had made me her special friend. That honor might so easily have been reserved for Christine who was so much older than I, or even Gaston who could give me a year. But no! I was the one, and for that I promised myself that I would be grateful to her forevermore.

  “At times,” she said, “I forget how young you are. Never mind,” she went on as though to excuse herself. “You will have to play a part in all this one day so it is as well that you should be prepared.”

  I remember the great excitement just after the wedding. The Prince de Condé was at the center of it. Mamie had already told me how he had married Mademoiselle de Montmorency when my father had wanted her to be his “little friend” and how the Prince had turned out to be not quite the indifferent husband my father had hoped he would be. Apparently when my father had died, the Prince had brought his wife back to Paris because there was no need then for him to keep her hidden away.

  “It had been a very stormy marriage,” Mamie told me. “Many marriages are.”

  I was not surprised to hear this and remembered what I had heard of my father’s marriages to La Reine Margot and to my mother.

  “The Princesse was very angry because he had taken her away from Court. She had quite looked forward to being your father’s “little friend.” She would have had all the advantages of being a queen and none of the disadvantages. And what had Henri de Condé done? Dragged her away. For what? His indifferent attentions? She has held that against him ever since.”

  I had seen them at one of the fêtes at the time of the wedding. The Princesse was very beautiful and I could understand why my father had been attracted by her.

  A week or so after the wedding festivities the Prince de Condé was arrested.

  “He has plotted to overthrow the Maréchal d’Ancre,” said Mamie, “and has tried to assemble the nobles of France against the man he calls the Italian Schemer.”