Part 7 (2/2)

'It is for your own salvation, Louis,' she cried, 'that I advise you and Antoine to remain here.'

'Dear Jeanne, we cannot stay. It would be said that we were afraid to face the charge.'

Jeanne bit her lips in anger, while the Princess Eleonore, as wise in her way as Jeanne was in hers, added her prayers to those of her sister-in-law; but though the two men agreed to stay, both women knew their husbands well enough to recognise their instability.

'If you do go,' said Jeanne at length, 'you must at least appear before the Princes of Lorraine supported by a force which should compel them to respect the blood of the Bourbons.'

'Louis,' cried the Princess of Conde, 'do you not see that every step you take towards the court will bring you nearer to destruction? In the King's letter there is no attempt to hide their threats. Take men. Take arms. And if you are determined to die, die at the head of an army, not on a scaffold.'

'They are right, Louis,' said Antoine. 'I will go alone to the court. The chief accusation is against you. Let me go alone, test the climate there, and then ... send you word.'

And while they hesitated, there came another messenger to the court of Nerac with letters from Catherine.

'Advance with fearless courage,' advised Catherine. 'You have nothing to fear if you come with courage. Come humbly, without much state; that will proclaim your innocence.'

'She is right,' said Antoine. 'If we go with an armed force we shall look like guilty men.'

'If the Queen Mother says, ”Come humbly,” ' said Jeanne, 'then you can be sure it would be wise for you to go fully armed.'

There were more letters. Those from the Huguenot d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier warned Antoine and Conde not to leave Nerac. Catherine wrote asking Jeanne to accompany her husband to Orleans. 'Bring your little son and daughter,' wrote Catherine. 'I long for a sight of their bright little faces.'

'They at least shall not be exposed to Madame le Serpent,' declared Jeanne.

And when, at last, Antoine and Conde set out for Orleans, Jeanne left Nerac for Pau and began to make arrangements for the defence of her realm.

Antoine, King of Navarre, and Louis de Bourbon, the Prince of Conde, were on their way to Orleans. They had sent their chamberlains ahead to announce their approach.

Catherine in her apartments pondered this. She was going to have need of all her subtlety in the next few weeks; she was going to discover whether she had learned her lessons well, whether that self-control, that craft, that method of fabricating miracles, which she had nourished for so long, would work as she had always believed they would.

She remembered well the words of Machiavelli, that protege of Lorenzo de' Medici: 'A prudent Prince cannot and ought not to keep his word, except when he can do it without injury to himself; or when the circ.u.mstances under which he contracted the engagement still exist. It is necessary, however, to disguise the appearance of craft and thoroughly to understand the art of feigning or dissembling; for men are generally so simple and weak that he who wishes to deceive, easily finds dupes.'

That was her policy. She had learned the lesson in her home, the home of her ancestors, in the Medici Palace and the Convent of the Murate, in Clement's Rome; and she would apply it in France. She had not yet enjoyed the full force of her power, she had not yet tried her wings, but she was confident. There was no one in this country who knew her for what she was. There had, it was true, been certain rumours about her from time to time; when the Dauphin Francis, eldest son of Francis the First, had died suddenly, many had believed she had had a hand in his death. But to most she was mild and patient, the woman who had endured over twenty years of humiliation through Diane de Poitiers with such meekness as only a poor, humble creature could show. She had duped them all, and they had been easy dupes.

She went into the little closet adjoining her apartment, locking herself in and then unlocking the door of a secret compartment. Here there were several speaking tubes, and one of these she held to her ear.

Sometimes it was necessary to wait for a long time, but usually she heard what was worth waiting for. These tubes had been, through the ingenuity of Rene and the Ruggieri brothers, made invisible and inserted into certain apartments of the palace; all were connected with and led to her little room. The one she held so patiently now was that connected with the private apartments of the Duke of Guise.

She knew this would be worth waiting for, since her woman Madalenna had discovered that the Duke had invited young Mary, the Queen, to his apartments.

Catherine thought of the Queen of France as her bete noire of the moment. It was infuriating to know that that foolish girl, still in her teens, was the real source of power in France, since, but for her, there would have been no need for the Queen Mother to endure those frequent slights from the intolerable Guises. The foolish Francis and the coquettish Mary were far too important in the land, even though they were merely the puppets and mouthpieces of the House of Lorraine.

Soon she heard the Duke's voice: 'My dear niece, it is good of you to come to my call ...'

Good of her, indeed! thought Catherine. For was she not the Queen of France? And who was this Duke to summon a Queen in such a manner to his apartment? But he was Le Balafre, a man whom many found irresistible, the embodiment of virile French manhood handsome, das.h.i.+ng, swaggering, with that rare quality in a Frenchman, a calm, cool manner in an emergency. Oh yes, he had fascinated his charming niece as he had fascinated others.

It was not easy to hear through the tube, for it was only possible to catch a word here and there. This was far from satisfactory, but it had sufficed to teach her much, and, until some better method could be found, she would have to be content with a tube.

'The Bourbons are on their way, Mary.'

Then came Mary's high voice: 'Uncle, what is it you wish Francis to do?'

'They threaten our house ... these Bourbon Princes. They cannot be allowed to live ...'

Catherine nodded grimly. 'But they shall live, Monsieur le Duc,' she murmured, 'for without our little Bourbons, our Princes of Lorraine would be even more arrogant, more intolerable than they are now.'

Then she heard the words which made her face grow pale with anger.

'Continue, Mary, to watch the Queen Mother. Report all her actions ... however insignificant they may seem. You have done well so far. But continue ... Contrive to be at her side as much as possible.'

Catherine's eyes had gone blank, her mouth slack. There was about her that look which people must have noticed when they had likened her to the serpent.

So the Queen of France had been set to spy on the Queen Mother!

There could be no greater indignation than that of the spy who knew herself to be spied upon.

Catherine was in the audience chamber when Antoine and Conde came to pay their respects to the King. The Guises were lounging against the wall, and Mary was with them.

Antoine bowed low over the King's hand; he was too humble. Francis, in accordance with his orders, and aware all the time of the fierce eyes of the Duke and the sneer of the Cardinal, ignored Antoine, though he was very sorry for him and hated to be churlish to the uncle of whom he was fond.

Then came Conde.

If the Guises despised Antoine, they feared Conde. Conde was cool and arrogant, showing by his demeanour that, although his life was in danger, he did not forget that he was a royal Prince.

The newcomers went through the traditional address while all courtiers and attendants stood by, tense and waiting.

Then Catherine spoke to Conde. It was an uncharacteristic and impetuous action, but some hidden emotion which she had not fully examined forced her to take it. They were planning to murder Conde, and she wanted to help him to escape; and this was not merely because she wished to use him against the Guises. It was something more, something inexplicable. Was there just a faint tenderness in her eyes as they rested on the gallant Prince?

Conde, alert, knowing himself to be in acute danger, turned to the Queen Mother. Had he one friend, he wondered, in this nest of vipers?

'Monsieur de Conde,' said Catherine, 'there are matters which I would discuss with you before the investigation as to your guilt in the Amboise plot takes place. Pray step along to my privy chamber now.'

The Guises were alert, regarding the Queen Mother with suspicion.

Conde bowed low, his charming face creased in a smile; his eyes said that his journey, his fears, his dangers were worth while if they brought him an interview with the Queen Mother, whom, while he respected her as a Queen, he admired as a woman.

The Guises made no attempt to stop this strange and sudden action of the Queen Mother, and they allowed her to lead Conde to her apartments; but once they had left, quick action was decided on, and it was in the private apartments of the Queen Mother that Conde was arrested.

Conde looked startled when they took him. He was not sure what the friendliness of the Queen Mother meant, and Catherine felt a thrill of triumph. She had the Prince guessing as to her intentions towards him; and that was a position into which she liked to thrust all those with whom she came into contact.

So Conde was in the dungeons and Antoine was confined to the palace, more or less a prisoner.

How ridiculous she had been, thought Catherine, to contemplate any man with tenderness when the struggle for power was more intense than it had yet been!

Conde had been removed from the dungeons of Orleans to those of Amboise and condemned to death.

His sorrowing wife had journeyed to Orleans, and she had begged the Cardinal of Lorraine to let her see her husband; but this request the Cardinal had brusquely refused. He and his brother did not like the wives of Conde and Navarre. They were strong women, both of them; upright, moral women, not the kind to interest the Cardinal. He knew what havoc such women could cause. He dismissed Eleonore with threats.

<script>