I'll keep away from you, my fine bucko, I thought, and if I drop anything I'll kick it to the door before I pick it up. (No, my chaplain is wrong. I'm not being unkind. I just find such people strange though I admit some, like Marlowe, have been great friends. What I am saying is, it depends on the person. Marlowe was charming, witty, and very, very funny, but there was something about Millet I didn't like.) Peckle grumbled about the treatment due to envoys but the good physician, Throgmorton, laughed sourly and said he was pleased to be as far away from the Frogs as possible. Servants brought up our baggage, we unpacked, then heard a knocking on the wall outside. Benjamin, who had been sitting on the edge of his trestle bed, got up and opened the door. He looked out and came back, torn between anger and laughter.
'What's the matter, Daunbey?' Throgmorton asked.
'The French have just put a painting up outside our room.'
'Oh, that's nice,' Peckle observed sarcastically. 'What is it? A picture of the French defeat at Agincourt?'
Benjamin shook his head. 'La Belle Jardiniere:
'So what?' I muttered. 'What the hell are they doing?'
'The painting's by Raphael,' Benjamin replied. 'They are mocking us.'
Do you know, that's the first time I began to wonder about the name Raphael. Why did the spy use it? Why not Ragwort? Or Fat Cheeks? Why Raphael? The name of an angel, an archangel to be sure, and therefore linked to Vauban's motley crew, but also the name of a great Italian painter. Our debate on this intended insult by the French was summarily ended: a wand-bearing chamberlain told us to assemble in the great hall below for the rare privilege of an audience with His Most Christian Majesty.
Dacourt and the Clintons were waiting for us, Sir Robert dressed in cream silken hose, darted below the knees, and padded doublet and breeches of dark sea blue; Lady Francesca was clothed all in white, a small, lace veil over her lovely hair, pearls clasped round her neck. I gasped at her beauty and, like the rest, threw envious glances at her most fortunate husband. Dacourt, however, was dressed as if he didn't give a damn, in sloppy jerkin and breeches which would have shamed an intelligent plough boy. Millet giggled and, whispering to the old soldier that his points were undone, asked did he wish to astonish the French with his apparent prowess? Dacourt laughed gruffly and turned surreptitiously away to adjust his dress.
The snotty-nosed chamberlain tapped his wand on the floor and we were led along marble corridors, through chambers being prepared for the great banquet, past nobles draped in velvet and cloth of gold, retainers in blue, violet and scarlet liveries, all chatting merrily in French. They stood aside and let us pass, though we heard the sniggers and laughter caused by their little jokes. We stopped before a great, gold-embossed door and the chamberlain turned.
'You are,' he announced in English, 'to be ushered into the presence of His Most Christian Majesty.'
(Most Christian Majesty… that was the biggest lie, especially when Francis was allied to the Ottoman Turks, who were devils incarnate. You wait till you read my later journals. I still wake trembling at the horrors I suffered at Suleiman's silk-draped, terror-filled court.) Anyway, at Fontainebleau the doors were thrown open so we could feast our eyes on this Most Christian of Kings. We all trooped in, two by two, as if we were the animals going into Noah's bloody ark. The room shimmered with light, a treasure house of precious cloths and beautiful jewels. At the far end I glimpsed a small crowd who stopped talking and drew apart at our approach. I glimpsed a cloth of state under which two figures sat on thrones and then the devil Vauban appeared.
He looked gorgeous, dressed in a pink silk gown with a gold-tasselled cord round his waist. He wore blue leggings and his feet were pushed into soft leather buskins. His chest gleamed like a mirror as the thick, cheap jewellery draped across it caught the sunlight. Down each arm, from shoulder to sleeve, gleamed those bloody little bells which tinkled every time he moved. He smiled effusively, gave a mock bow, and went to stand beside one of the thrones.
'May I present,' he announced, 'Sir Robert Clinton and his wife, the Lady Francesca, Sir John Dacourt and the other English envoys.'
By now I had forgotten Vauban and was surreptitiously staring at the two seated figures. Francis and his Queen Claude perched like waxen images under a cloth of state of red silk, the oriflamme. The thrones they sat on were fluted and heavily decorated with clusters of mother-of-pearl along the back and arms.
We all bowed, then Dacourt began the usual boring, diplomatic speech bearing messages from Francis's 'brother' the King of England. I noticed a flicker of a smile cross the French king's face at the usual flowery hypocrisies; Francis hated Henry and the English king responded in kind. In a way I preferred Francis. He was a big-nosed bastard with heavy-lidded eyes, high forehead and a weak mouth which he hid beneath a moustache and beard. He was dressed in cloth of gold from head to toe, a simple crown on his head, and I could see he was as bored as I by Dacourt's vapid pleasantries.
You see, Francis was the Salamander King, that wondrous creature of magic which was surrounded by fire but never burnt. Someone had called him this more as an insult than a compliment but Francis took a liking to it and you will find salamanders carved all over his palaces. You know, he shouldn't have been king. He was fortunate enough to marry Louis XII's only daughter and so became the appointed successor. And what a change! Old Louis, feeble and doddering, choking on his own spit. Henry VIII saw him off or, more truthfully, his sister Mary did. You see she was as hot for the joys of the bed as her brother, the Great Killer. She was married for three months to poor old Louis before he collapsed and died of exhaustion and Mary went home to marry the love of her life, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. If she had been married to Francis, Mary might have had a harder time for he was a consummate bed player. As one of his courtiers later whispered to me, 'He slips readily into the gardens of others and drinks water from many fountains.' Oh, yes, Francis was ardent, he had his own petite bande, a group of young blondes led by Madame D'Estampes who joined in the antics on the black satin sheets of his bed. Do you know, at Fontainebleau he set up a system of mirrors so he could watch his young ladies pose and inspect them from every angle, whilst his palaces were full of secret passageways with peep-holes in every bedroom for Francis was deeply interested in the sexual exploits of others.
(Poor Francis! Yes, I say 'poor'. At Fontainebleau he was full of the juices of spring but that's before he caught syphilis and his nether parts began to drop off. He got it from La Belle Fertoniere: her husband knew she had syphilis and allowed Francis to seduce her. King Francis became so rotten that when they took his corpse to St Denis they had to put it in a lead coffin. It still stank and his nobles were so keen to avoid the putrid smell, they sent waxen images of themselves to the church. Can you imagine it? A church full of wax statues mourning a waxen image?)
Ah, the passage of time! When I met Francis on the first occasion in that throne room, life had not turned sour for him. He was still the great lover, and the woman beside him was the reason for his constant philandering. Queen Claude – or 'Clod' as the courtiers called her – was fat, lame and revolting. Yet she had a kind heart! (Ah, there goes my clerk, the clever little fooclass="underline" 'You're no better than Henry VIII!' he cries. 'You, too, regard women as objects of lust!' What the hell does the little hypocrite know? Don't you worry, some of the women I've met have proved to be the most formidable of foes. Like little Catherine de Medici who married King Francis's son, Henry. She practised the black arts. Oh, yes, I know about the secret metal box she owned; her turreted chamber at Blois with its magic mirror which told her the future; and her employment of that terrible prophet Nostradamus who prophesied the end of the world. I'll tell you some other time about Catherine's special squad of ladies, the Escadron Volant, whom she used to seduce her opponents. I'll finish with this about women: they make the best of friends and the worst of enemies! A man forgives and forgets. A woman can forgive but she never forgets. You mark Shallot's words!)