Dark Eminence Catherine De Medici And Her Children Marguerite Vance (mobi ebook reader TXT) 📖

asleep in her cradle the celebration continued with a banquet at which the King played host, followed by pageants, joustings and "dysquisings." The

following day Catherine must watch while her husband, Prince Henry, wearing the colors and motto of Diane de Poitiers, easily came off victor in the jousts.

It was a gala time, one of the last during the reign of Francis I, and Catherine, the daughter-in-law who had become his faithful companion, dreaded telling him the news which just had come from England: Henry VIII, his friend with whom he felt a certain kinship, was dead. There would be no further treaties to sign with Henry.

Less than a month later the dying King held Catherine's hand—she was kind and understanding, this little Medici. Somehow she could comfort him now as he looked back with a dully aching conscience at some of the terrors that had marked his reign, butcheries he might have halted had he been less wavering in his judgment. Three thousand men, women and children killed in cold blood, children sold into slavery, gentlemen and scholars sent to the galleys—all in the name of religion. Yes, the dying man admitted, it had been bad, but heresy was worse. ("Do you not agree, Catherine, my child? Bien,'surl"').

So, in one of his favorite palaces at Rambouillet, Francis I died. Here in its vast forests lie Lad done his best hunting; here his "Little Band" had demonstrated its skill in the saddle; here, at last worn out hy worry and by the ravages of a life ill-spent, he came to the end of his reign. He might have been a truly great king, for he loved honor and held all double-dealing in contempt, but he lacked the strength of character to stamp out cruelty and treachery which all were a part of the era in which he lived.

In midsummer, 1547, in Rheims Cathedral, Henry was crowned King of France. Unloved, humiliated, yet outwardly serene, Catherine was now Queen Consort. Her own coronation came two years later, in 1549, at the Church of Saint-Denis in Paris when both she and Henry were thirty-one years old.

In the nursery at Saint-Germain meanwhile, the Dauphin, Francis, a languid six-year-old, complained to his four-year-old sister Elizabeth about an earache. "It plagues me," he whined, lifting a thin white hand to cover it, "and neither my physician nor my apothecary can find herbs to cure it— and I am weary of bloodletting. It makes my legs ache so."

"Monsieur, my brother,"—Elizabeth put aside the piece of linen on which she was learning to featherstitch and came to stand beside him—"my chief dresser, Claude de Nau, has great faith in oil of bergamot and betony. I'll get it from her, so be of cheer." She loved this brother of hers and her stiff brocade skirts swished about her as she ran on her small errand of mercy from the common nursery to her own adjoining sitting room. And months later when a visitor came

from Scotland who was to mean a great deal in the life of the Dauphin, gentle little Elizabeth still amused her dresser, her nurse and Madame de Clermont, her governess, by her ministrations and the medications she so gravely prescribed.

"But I ask you, Madame, my sister," Francis persisted just before the arrival of the august guest, "who is this Mary Stuart? Queen of Scotland, I know, but why must she come to France to join our household here at Saint-Germain? Our baby sister Claude, Your Grace, and I are so amiably met. Now, prithee, why must we have this tiresome girl from Scotland?"

Elizabeth could not supply the answer, but within weeks when governors, nurses, and ladies-in-waiting wherever the royal children were in residence were openly discussing it, the secret no longer remained a secret. Mary of Scotland, eleven months older than Francis, was coming to France to be his betrothed bride!

Mary's father, James V of Scotland, died before she was born. Her mother was Mary of Guise—and between the Guise family and Catherine de Medici there was no love. As little Mary Stuart was an only child she became at birth Queen of Scotland, with her mother acting as Regent. Now Protestant England was warring with Scotland which was divided between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism; and Mary of Guise was a staunch Catholic. Henry VIII had wanted little Mary Stuart to marry his son, Edward VI, and so bring Scotland into the English Protestant fold. So much did he want it that he had tried to kidnap her! However, her clever mother had her spirited away up into the wild High-

lands when she was four years old and with her she sent four little ladies-in-waiting for playmates—all named Mary: Mary Flemming, Mary Seton, Mary Beaton, and Mary Livingston.

The five little girls must have loved their days in the Highlands, far from Court restraints, playing their endless simple card games, shrieking over their rounds with hilboquet, when more than one tumble resulted from running blindly into one another as they tossed their wooden balls and caught them again in their cups. There were rides on their ponies across the moors and picnics high in the hills with baskets filled with pasties and honey cakes and mugs of milk. So two years passed and then came rumors, and the games and the picnics ended. Mary's hiding place had been discovered! But Guise relatives in France were quick to point out that a marriage between Mary and the Dauphin, young Francis, would unite Mary's crown with that of the Catholic House of Valois, so why not send her to France as speedily as possible?

Mary's mother saw to it that there was little surface evidence of the elaborate plans she was making* So when little Mary and her entourage set sail for France it was accomplished before the English were aware of it. The Queen and her party landed in a little town on the