Lauro bent his head down to him. ‘Monseigneur, your Majesty must prepare to meet your God.’
‘Is it so, then?’ said Antoine; and he began to tremble as the memory of his weakness came back to him. He wished the tent to be cleared of all but the doctors, the prelate and his mistress.
He opened his eyes and looked in bewilderment from one face to another. ‘I … I …’ He found it difficult to speak. ‘I … I am a Catholic by profession, but, now that my end is near …’
It seemed to him that Jeanne’s steadfast brown eyes were watching him, that she was smiling at him now. It was not my fault, Jeanne, he thought. I loved you. In the beginning, I did. If we had been humble people … if we could have lived there in Béarn … farming our land together, planting our mulberries, watching them grow, we should have been happy. I should have been the gay one; you the sober wife. You would have kept me beside you. But you were a Queen and you made me a King. The position was too tempting for me. I became greedy for more power. I did not know what I wanted. One moment I was sure, the next I was unsure.
At length he spoke: ‘Now that my end is near, my heart returns to the Protestant Faith.’
‘Repent,’ he was urged. ‘Think of your sins, Monseigneur. Repent that you may enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’
He looked at the man who had spoken, and recognised him. ‘Ah, Raphael,’ he said slowly. ‘You have served me for twenty years, and this is the only time that you have ever warned me of my miserable mistakes.’
Then he began to think of his sins, to enumerate them, and to ask God for forgiveness.
‘Oh, Lord,’ he prayed, ‘if I recover, I will send forth Lutheran missionaries to preach the gospel throughout France.’
He heard someone whisper: ‘It is too late to talk thus.’
Ah yes. He understood. It was too late.
‘Jeanne,’ he moaned, ‘why did you not come? You should have made the journey that you might be with me.’
He did not die at once. His brother, the Cardinal of Bourbon, came to him, and Antoine begged him to ask forgiveness for him of that other brother, Louis, the Prince of Condé, whom he had loved so dearly before religion had come between them.
‘I will die a Huguenot!’ cried Antoine, thinking of Louis and of Jeanne. ‘It matters not whether people believe me to be sincere. I am resolved to die in accordance with the Confession of Luther.’
It was decided that he must be moved to more comfortable quarters, and one misty November day he was taken on to a boat and rowed down the Seine towards Saint-Maur. This was not wise, for the rocking of the boat was very painful to him, and when they carried him ashore he knew that his last moments had come.
The Guises had sent a monk to pray for him and, too weak to resist, Antoine listened to his prayers; and when they were over he murmured: ‘Amen.’
Because of this the Guises said he died a Catholic, and if he had declared himself a Huguenot when he was dying, well, that was only to be expected of L’Échangeur.
In her stronghold of Béarn, Jeanne received the news.
She stared stonily before her. It is nothing to me, she assured herself. I had finished with him. I hated him … at our last meeting, if not before. When he refused to let me have my son, I knew I could never feel any tenderness towards him again.
Nevertheless, it was not Antoine the turn-coat, the unfaithful husband, the cruel father, of whom she must think, but Antoine the gay Prince at the christening of King Francis, Antoine the lover in a silver galleon triumphantly seizing his love. It was Antoine, lover and husband, whom she must remember.
And the tears rolled down the cheeks of the widow of the King of Navarre.
Catherine was in residence at her favourite Castle of Blois. Life was a little more secure than it had been a few months ago. The towns which had been taken by the Huguenots were being slowly won back; she herself was no longer a prisoner of the Guises; for she had been their prisoner; she knew it and they knew it, although they had tried so hard to disguise this fact.
Now she had lulled them to a certain feeling of security, and she must keep them thus. She must act with greater caution. She had learned an important lesson, and as she had been learning through bitter lessons all her life, she was not likely to forget this one.
She was glad that Francis of Guise was busily engaged in warfare. She was happier with that man out of the way. At the moment he was fighting for Orléans. Who knew what would happen to him! France’s greatest soldier, yes; but Catherine’s greatest enemy.
Catherine’s thoughts turned from the Duke of Guise to her son Charles, the King,
Charles was growing up. He was only thirteen, it was true, but thirteen was a considerable age for a Valois King. They would have to marry him soon. Catherine smiled grimly. The boy still thought he was going to have Mary of Scotland. But perhaps his memories of her were growing dim by now. He was changing. One expected him to change. He could not remain static. He had to grow up. He was a strange boy, with many sides to his personality. There was a streak – more than a streak – of madness in him and it was widening as the years passed, the unbalanced fits were growing more frequent.
Yet he was clever. He could, at times, be eloquent, but he was too easily moved. She had seen his face work with emotion during a sermon or the reading of a poem which he thought particularly beautiful; she had seen his mouth twitch – though not with madness – and tears stream from his eyes. He himself wrote poetry, and he was modest enough to declare it to be worthless. Ronsard was one of his constant companions. He struck up friendships with his musicians – humble folk like that boy servant of the Duke of Bavaria, just a musician who had a gift for playing the lute; and the King of France would take him for his boon companion. Nor would the King be denied his pleasures; his brow would darken and he would frown, even at his mother, if called from his music and his poetry-reading. He would sit till long past midnight with the writers and musicians, and at such times he would be very happy. Then there would be no madness, only an aloof enchantment. Catherine would look in on him and his friends and find them all together, talking in low, earnest voices while the candles burned low; and he would turn to look at the intruder without seeing her, even though she was his mother, of whom, on all other occasions, he was deeply aware.
His tutors could do nothing with him at such times.
And then that mood would pass and he would be touched with black melancholy. Sometimes he would stay in his bed all day, and this was a sure sign that the madness was on him. Perhaps at midnight, he would be seized with a wild mood of hilarity, and he would awaken his friends – a different set of friends from the poets – and insist that they follow him; he would make them put on masks and carry lighted torches. It was alarming to see him at such times, his eyes glinting through his mask, his mouth working, the madness on him, the lust for violence. He and his friends would creep out of the palace and go to the apartments of one of their friends, whom they would thrash into unconsciousness. This was hardly a suitable pastime for the thirteen-year-old King of France, thought Catherine.
If there was not a flagellating party, he would hunt with such recklessness that none could keep up with him; he would thrash his horses and dogs with the energy which he used on his friends. A more harmless madness was that of imitating a blacksmith and hammering iron until he was exhausted.
Then he would return to normal; he would be gentle, loving, pliable; and it would invariably seem that when he had recovered he would have little remembrance of those terrifying bouts.