Antoine agreed with her. ‘I never dreamed,’ he said, ‘that the day would come when such happiness would be mine. Ah, sweet Jeanne, my dearest wife, how I wish I had led a life as pure as yours!’
Jeanne kissed him tenderly. ‘The past is done with, Antoine. And the future is ours.’
Antoine went on lyrically: ‘All women seem to have grown ugly in my eyes. Why is that, little Jeanne? There is no one else who has a trace of beauty. You have it all. Yes, all the beauty in the world is in that sweet face and form. I would barter all my fortune for one of your kisses.’
Jeanne believed him. As for Antoine, he had forgotten that a very short while ago he had had to be persuaded to continue with this marriage.
Jeanne was a happy wife of two years’ standing. The love between herself and her husband had grown deeper, for Antoine could not be insensible to her sincerity, to her steadfast belief that they would live in happiness for the rest of their lives.
During those two years Antoine had often been away from home; there had been occasions when it had been possible to accompany him to camp, but when it was not she would wait patiently for his return, and each time he came back there was a renewal of their ecstatic days together.
There had been sorrows. Jeanne’s mother, having no wish to live after the death of King Francis, had died within a year.
The second sorrow followed quickly on the first.
In the September after her marriage, Jeanne, to her great delight as well as that of her husband, gave birth to a son. She wished to accompany Antoine to camp, and, remembering the devotion of her old governess, Aymée de Silly, the Baillive of Caen, she had put her son into this lady’s care. Madame de Silly was a conscientious woman, determined to be worthy of the honour done to her, and she forthwith set about doing her best for the child. But she had grown feeble during the last years and her joints were so stiff that she found the least cold breeze increased her pains; she therefore had all windows sealed, and her walls hung with thick Arras, while fires burned in all the rooms of her house night and day. Heat, she declared, was necessary to good health, and what was good for her was good for the baby Prince of Navarre. He was accordingly kept in this bad atmosphere, never allowed out into the fresh air, and tightly swaddled in garments which were never removed. Under this treatment the little Prince grew frail and began to waste away, until at length his condition became so precarious that Jeanne was informed; and when she came to see her son, she was so shocked by what she found that she bitterly reproached her old governess and took the child away from her. Alas, it was too late. The little Prince died when he was just over a year old.
This was heartbreaking, but already she was pregnant again, and this time Jeanne vowed that she would look after the child herself. To her great delight, the new baby was a healthy boy and, under her care – so very different from that of the Baillive of Caen – he began to thrive.
And so, on this happy day, with the country temporarily at peace, she, Antoine, the child and their attendants travelled down to her father’s castle, where they intended to spend Christmas.
Antoine was happy too. His thoughts circled about his wife, for he had never known any woman like her. She was, in her directness and that almost naïve frankness, enchanting; and she was, moreover, still wholeheartedly in love with him. Antoine was vain of his own personal charms; he was almost as fascinating to women as was his brother, the Prince of Condé, and of this fact he was keenly aware. Their high rank, their good looks, and the romantic lives they had led in the days before their marriages meant that they were subject to constant temptation. Antoine had written to Jeanne when he was away from her: ‘I never dreamed that I could receive the courtship of ladies as I do now. I know not if it be the sweet winds that blow from Béarn which are the cause of this, or if it be that my eyesight has changed so much that it can no longer be deceived as it was before.’
The vanity of the little man! thought Jeanne fondly. So … he still received the courtship of ladies! Ah well, his profligate past was over.
So Jeanne continued to be delighted with her marriage; she was growing fond of her husband’s family – in particular, her sister-in-law, Princess Eléonore, the wife of the Prince of Condé. And through Eléonore she came to be on familiar terms with Eléonore’s relatives, the Colignys – Gaspard, Odet and Andelot. Jeanne and Eléonore had much in common; they were both in love with their husbands, and their husbands were brothers. Eléonore, it seemed to Jeanne, was a saint; Jeanne knew herself to be no saint, for she had not changed so very much from that little girl who had cut the saints’ heads from their bodies in her mother’s tapestry and substituted the heads of foxes; she was vehement and quick-tempered.
She was fired during those early years of her marriage by the religious devotion of her new friends. Her happiest days – when she could not enjoy the society of her husband – were spent at the Palais de Condé. Here came men and women of the new faith; some of them were refugees; there were rich and poor; some brought letters and others verbal messages too important to be trusted to paper. She met there Eléonore’s uncles, Gaspard, Odet and Andelot; there was no one – except Antoine – whom Jeanne admired more than Uncle Gaspard de Coligny. He was a great man, a good man, a man who would die for what he believed to be right. Jeanne often felt that she would like to become closer to them, one of their community. But she realised that could not be as long as her father lived. She remembered the beating he had given her when she had joined with her mother in her prayers. She was not afraid of beatings; in any case, her father could not beat her now; but it was laid down that a woman should honour her father, so how could Jeanne go against his wishes in this matter of religion? No! She would not forget her duty to her parent; she would confine herself to discussion, to discovering all she could of the new faith; but she would not accept it … yet.
Jeanne’s father greeted them with pleasure. He was enchanted by his grandson, but he did not forget to reproach his daughter for the death of her firstborn. However, he was inclined to forgive her as she now had such a bonny boy to replace him.
He had arranged for a great hunting party to entertain his son-in-law and daughter, and he talked of little else. Of Antoine he was suspicious, noting the weakness of his handsome face, the dandyism of his clothes.
‘Béarn is not Paris,’ he reminded him grimly, ‘but we Béarnais like things the way they are here.’
And Jeanne was amused to see how her father was just a little coarser in his manners than usual, determined to make no concessions to the finicky Bourbon.
She was very happy to ride out to the hunt, her husband beside her, her father riding ahead.
After the hunt, when they returned to the castle, the first thing Jeanne heard was the crying of the little Prince, her son. She sent for his nurse and asked her what ailed him.
The nurse, trembling a little, said: ‘He is a little peevish, Madame. Nothing more.’
But all through the night the baby cried.
In the state bedroom at Fontainebleau, Catherine de’ Medici lay thinking of Jeanne, and wondering why it should be that her thoughts kept returning again and again to the woman. As soon as she had seen Jeanne d’Albret at court, she had felt a strong repulsion for her; it was a strange feeling, an occult sense, which told her to beware. Why so? Jeanne was a fool, far too outspoken, possessing no diplomatic sense at all. Yet how strong she had been when they had tried to marry her to the Duke of Clèves. That declaration in the Cathedral showed power, while it showed a lamentable lack of restraint. Jeanne had hated the marriage they had planned for her, and well she might. The niece of King Francis, the cousin of King Henry, to be fobbed off with a foreign Duke-ling! Catherine could smile, well pleased in that respect with her own marriage, in which she could have been very happy if Henry had only made a pretence of loving her as Antoine de Bourbon loved his wife.