She commanded Fosseuse to come to her, and when the girl stood before her, she looked at her with kindness and said: ‘my dear Fosseuse, this thing has come about and it is no use blaming anyone for it. We must do our best to keep it quiet. As you know, it would do the King’s cause much harm throughout the land if it were known that you were to bear this bastard. The Huguenots are puritans and they do not like what they call immorality among their leaders. For the King’s sake and your own, since it is not suitable for a daughter of your house to bear a child while still unmarried, I offer you this solution: I propose to take you with me to our very secluded estate of Mas Agenais, which, perhaps you do not know, lies on the Garonne between Marmande and Tonneins. There you shall have the child in great quietness and no one will be any the wiser. I suggest that when the King and the court leave for a hunting party, we accompany them part of the way; then you and I with our ladies and attendants, will leave the King’s party for Mas Agenais.’

La Fosseuse listened to this suggestion and lifted suspicious eyes to the face of the daughter of Catherine de’ Medici.

‘Madame,’ said Fosseuse, ‘nothing would induce me to accompany you and your friends to a quiet spot.’

And with that she curtsied, and, leaving the Queen, went straight to her lover. When he saw how distraught she was, he demanded to know what had happened.

‘It is the Queen,’ said Fosseuse. ‘She plans to murder me.’

‘How so?’ demanded Navarre angrily. It seemed to him, as it did to his mistress, possible that the daughter of Catherine de’ Medici would plan to eliminate those she wished out of the way.

‘She proposes a hunting party on which we shall all set out; then she and her women will take me to a secluded chateau where I shall stay with them until my child is born. I will not go. I know that she intends to murder me.’

‘Ventre-saint-gris!’ cried the King. ‘I believe she would try it too. Don’t fret, my love. You shall not go with her.’

He strode to Margot’s apartments. She was reclining on a couch, and she turned and looked at him with haughty dignity, moving her head elegantly to one side in a mute plea that he should not come too near her; since she had asked him to wash his feet, he had taken a great delight in them. He would sit smiling at them—and she believed he had not yet washed them.

‘So,’ he said, ignoring one or two of her attendants, ‘you follow your mother.’

She raised her eyebrows interrogatively.

‘See here, Madame,’ he cried, ‘enough of those haughty looks! What is this about taking Fosseuse off to a lonely spot to murder her?’

‘I do not understand why my offer of help should be construed as intent to murder,’ said Margot.

‘You . . . help her?’

‘Why not? Your Huguenots will not be pleased when they hear about the bastard. I remember your father’s plight when his mistress bore him a child. We Catholics are more broadminded, you know. A little confession . . . and we are forgiven. But you chose the more rigorously righteous religion. I merely wished to help you and Fosseuse.’

‘By murdering her?’

Margot shrugged her shoulders. ‘Very well. I withdraw my offer. If you insist on leading an immoral life you cannot hope to do so in secret. You must be exposed to your righteous followers.’

‘You dare to talk to me of leading an immoral life!’

‘At least there are not these sordid complications in mine.’ ‘Do not boast of your barrenness.’

‘I have no cause to be ashamed of unpleasant consequences. I am sorry I offered to help. I merely thought that, as the reputation of this court is as dear to me as to you, I might help in this matter. That is all.’

‘How would you help?’ he demanded. ‘Did your mother leave you a selection of her morceaux when she was here?’

Margot reached for a book and began to read. Her husband stood staring at her in angry silence for a few seconds; then he strode out.

He was worried. He was anxious that his Huguenot friends should not be too scandalized, and it was a fact that these self-righteous people did not so much object to secret immorality in itself; it was when it was exposed that they held up their hands in horror; but he was still enamoured of his little Fosseuse and he did not want her to be neglected.

The weeks went by; it was now impossible to ignore the condition of the King’s mistress. Navarre began to feel that he might have been rash to neglect Margot’s offer of help.

He came to her when she lay in bed, and, drawing aside her curtains, assumed a humble air.

‘I need your help,’ he said. ‘I wish you to look after Fosseuse.

‘I can do nothing in that matter,’ she said with pleasure.

‘There was a time when I offered my assistance, but it was most churlishly refused. I will have nothing to do with the matter now.’

He caught her wrist and looked at her menacingly. ‘You will obey my commands,’ he said.

Margot was not displeased. She and Turenne greatly desired to have charge of Fosseuse, and she made up her mind there and then that she would carry out her original plan; but she must exploit the situation; she must have a little fun with Navarre to punish him for his recent rejection of the help she had offered. She wished to refuse, and be persuaded. So now she tossed her head.

‘Monsieur, you ask me, a Princess of France, your Queen, to act as midwife to your slut of a mistress!’

‘Why have you become so dignified? A few weeks ago, my dear Princess of France, my Queen of Navarre, you were asking for the privilege of acting as midwife to my mistress.’

‘My kind heart got the better of my good sense,’ she said.

‘Your kind heart will have to repeat its action, my dear.’

‘You insult me.’

‘Then it is no more than you deserve. You will take care of Fosseuse.’

‘I will do nothing of the sort.’

He caught her by the shoulder, but something in her expression set him laughing. She had great difficulty in steadying her own expression.

‘You are the most maddening woman in France,’ he said.

‘And you, Monsieur, are the crudest, coarsest, most hateful . . .’

He shook her and kissed her; and they were both laughing together.

‘No one amuses me as you do,’ he said. ‘It is a pleasant thing to be amused. If you were less immoral, I could easily love you.’

‘Alas!’ sighed Margot. ‘If you were a little cleaner in your personal habits I could love you.’

‘If you took fewer lovers . . .’

‘And you took an occasional bath . . .’

They laughed again and she said: ‘Enough of this folly. You need have no fear. I will look after the girl.’

‘My sweet Margot!’

He would have embraced her, but she drew back. He looked down at his feet and let out a great roar of laughter.

‘So much do I admire you,’ he said, ‘that I shall now leave you. Tell Turenne that he takes so many baths of late that he reminds me of one of the dandies of the Louvre, and nothing . . . nothing on this Earth . . . would induce me to follow his example.’

Later Margot discussed the situation with Turenne.

‘This will be the end of Fosseuse, my dear. She will regret showing her insolence to me.’

‘What do you plan?’ asked her lover.

‘Ah, my dear! You too? Can you be thinking as those others thought? I see it in your eyes. You say to yourself: “This is the daughter of Catherine de’ Medici.” But I would not murder. In this case it would be folly. Now that the King has suffered so much anxiety over Mademoiselle de Fosseuse, he is already half out of love with her. He does not like to feel anxiety. After all, it is the duty of a King’s mistress to lure him from troubles, not to cause them. Fosseuse will come with me. I will take her away, and she will not see the King for some weeks . . . and during that time, you will make sure that he sees others. I think it may well be that our pretty little Fosseuse will find that someone else has taken her place when she returns to court. If this thing were bruited abroad, the King would be less pleased than ever. Why should it not be? It is ridiculous to try to keep such a matter secret. My darling, we cannot allow this girl, who has shown us how arrogant she can be, to work against us.’

Turenne agreed. The King must be provided with a new mistress, for it was obvious that La Fosseuse had reigned too long.

Margot managed the affair very satisfactorily, but Fate helped by allowing the child to be still-born. The King’s little affair was over, and so was the brief glory of the little Fosseuse, who, to her great chagrin, when she returned to the court, found that the King was amusing himself with several light love affairs; but as these proved to be nothing very serious, La Fosseuse tried to regain her position, and she might have done so but for the fact that Diane d’Andousins, the Countess of Gramont, whom Navarre had loved at the time of the Countess’ marriage when he was a boy of fourteen, had reappeared in his life. She was the Corisanda of his youth, and he was enchanted to find her more beautiful than he remembered her.

But the story of the King’s love affair with Mademoiselle de Fosseuse continued to live after that affair was over. It was discussed throughout the country, and the scenes which had taken place between the King and Queen of Navarre were exaggerated until it seemed that the court of France talked of nothing but the shameful lives lived by those two sovereigns.

The people in the streets talked of it. The Parisians shivered and starved while they grumbled and compared the misery of their lives with the wanton extravagance of those of the royal family.


* * *

Catherine had suffered a crushing blow through her old enemy Spain, and, as always at such times, she felt the need to act quickly and to neutralize those enemies nearer home, since there was little she could do to lessen the power of the great and perennial enemy.

It had been a tragic miscalculation on her part, and the King did not hesitate to remind her of this. He was falling so completely under the spell of Joyeuse and Epernon that all they suggested seemed right, and if it should happen to fail it immediately became, in his eyes, of no importance. But when the mother, who had sheltered him from babyhood, who had schemed to put him on the throne and keep him there, made an error of judgement, he was the first one to blame her.

The King of Portugal had died suddenly and there had been two men who laid claim to that throne; both of these claimants were the nephews of Philip of Spain—one named after his mighty uncle and the other Antonio. Then Catherine surprised everyone by declaring herself a claimant to this throne. The late King’s family, she announced, was illegitimate; and by delving into the past she found an ancestor of her own who had been connected with the Portuguese throne. Philip of Spain treated this with scorn, and Catherine, in high indignation and at a crippling expense to France, mustered a fleet to support her claim. The French were not good sailors; whereas the Spaniards were the greatest sailors in the world, with the exception of the English, and Catherine should have known that her men would have no chance against them. Her fleet was routed at Terceira, and those ships which did return home presented a miserable sight to all who saw them. Philip of Spain took the throne of Portugal for his namesake, and the people of France had yet another grievance against the King and his mother.

‘We have been taxed to starvation to pay for her follies. She murders the courtiers with poison and the people with starvation. How long shall we tolerate the Italian woman and her vile nest of vipers?’

Catherine would stand at the windows of the Louvre and look out; she would see the people huddled together, gesticulating; now and then one would turn towards the palace and shake a fist. She heard what they said as she mingled with them in the markets. ‘Jezebel . . . Queen Jezebel! Only you’d not find a dog to eat her flesh!’

They sang:

‘L’une ruyne d’Israel,

L’autre, ruyne de la France.’

But they sang it sullenly, not gaily; and it was that brooding sullenness which Catherine feared more than anything It was like a smouldering fire, she knew, ready to break into flames.

She must watch all her enemies. And what of those two at Nérac? What did they plot and plan?

She spoke to the King while he fondled his lap-dogs. ‘My son, we should have your sister back at court.’ The King looked at her in dismay. ‘It is much pleasanter without her.’