He could not count on an army of sufficient size to back him up. He must not forget that it would be folly to put too much trust in Spain. The English, if he found himself in a weak position, would be ready to move in against him. In the Netherlands his enemies would be waiting; and he knew that Philip was more likely to squander his men and money in that country than to help to the throne of France a man who he was unsure would prove a good vassal. Nor must he forget the armies of Navarre, not yet subdued; the brilliant victory over Joyeuse could not easily be forgotten.

If the King was assassinated now, the King of Paris would immediately become the King of France; and the King of Paris was not yet ready to assume that responsibility.

He had set a guard round the Louvre; he had declared that he would account for what was inside the palace; but he was careful to leave one exit unguarded. Let the King escape and, in escaping, postpone a situation with which the man who intended eventually to be King felt he could not yet adequately deal.

And so the gate to the Tuileries was left unguarded, and it did not take the King’s friends long to discover this.


* * *

Catherine talked urgently to her son.

‘It would be your greatest folly to leave Paris now. You must stay. I know it is very alarming, but if you went .you would show your fear. You would leave Paris completely in the hands of Guise. You should not admit defeat.’

The King paced up and down his apartments, pretending to consider her words. He looked at her sharply. ‘Mother,’ he said with a nervous laugh, ‘there have been times of late when I have wondered whether you have served me or . . . the baton of your old age.’

She laughed with something like her old abandon. ‘Then you have been a fool. Whom should I ever serve but you? If I have seemed to be over-friendly with that man, it was that I might win his confidence.’

‘It has been said that he fascinates you as he fascinates others.’

She blew with her lips as though to blow away in disgust that which was not worthy of consideration.

‘You are my life,’ she said. ‘If aught happened to you, I should no longer wish to live. You have allowed evil counsels to lead you to this. You have not watched the growing discontent of the people, and the people of France are not a patient and long-suffering people. They love and they hate; and they do these things in good measure. Your young men, my dear son, have not pleased the people.’

‘You are right, Mother. Ah, had I but listened to you! Go to Guise now, I beg of you. Plead with him. Tell him that I am inclined to accept his terms, and tell him he must control the people and take away those ridiculous barricades. Tell him he cannot keep his King a prisoner.’

She smiled. ‘That is wise. You must pretend to agree with these Leaguers. You must lull their suspicions, and then, when all is peaceful again, we shall decide what we must do.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you are wise. You are subtle. You are the great dissembler. My mother, I know you have learned the art of saying one thing and meaning another. Go now to Guise. See what you can do. Mother, you gave me my kingdom; you must keep it for me.’

She embraced him warmly. ‘Joyeuse is dead,’ she said. ‘Do not heed Epernon. Listen to your mother, who loves you, who has only your good at heart.’

‘Mother, I shall listen.’

She told him what she planned to say to Guise. She felt almost young. The reins were in her hands once more. Never mind if she had to travel over the most treacherous country she had yet encountered.

She went in her litter to the Hôtel de Guise.

As soon as she had left, he strolled quietly out to the unguarded gate, walking slowly as though deep in melancholy thought. A few friends were waiting for him with horses; he mounted and rode away; he did not stop until he had reached the top of Chaillot, then pulling up, he turned to his friends and smiled ruefully; but when he looked back at Paris there were tears in his eyes.

‘Oh, ungrateful city!’ he muttered. ‘I have loved thee more than my own wife; I will not enter thy walls again but by the breach.’

Then he turned abruptly and rode on.


* * *

The crowned King had fled to Chartres, and Guise was the uncrowned King for a spell. The Château of Vincennes, with the Arsenal and the Bastille, were in his hands; he insisted on the election of a new town council and provost of traders; and all these were naturally composed of members of the League. He was still uncertain. He shrank from violence and ardently desired a bloodless coup. He therefore allowed royalists to leave the city for Chartres if they so desired; his enemies, considering this action and the fact that the King had been allowed to escape, detected a weakness in him He was now doing all in his power to restore calm, but the people’s blood was up, and they would not be satisfied without violence. Atrocities were being committed and Guise knew himself powerless to stop them. All Huguenots were turned out of office; and there were Leaguers in control of all the churches. They shouted from the pulpits: ‘France is sick and Paris has wealth enough to make war on four Kings. France needs a draught of French blood. Receive Henry of Valois back into your towns, and you will see your preachers massacred, your women violated, your friends hanging from the gibbets.’

The Guise family arrived in Paris. The Duke’s wife, who was pregnant, was greeted as though she were the Queen of France, and all her children the heirs of a royal house. The Duke of Elboeuf came with her, as did their staunch ally, the Cardinal of Bourbon.

Catherine, closely watching events, had insidiously slid to the side of Guise. It was with her help that he formed a new government. She knew that her effort to have her grandson recognized as heir to the throne had failed; but while she feigned to work with Guise she was plotting secretly to depose him and put the King back in his place.

Epernon had escaped from Paris, but only with his life; he had tried to take his treasures with him on mules laden with those priceless gifts he had amassed during the years when he had enjoyed the King’s favour; but the mules had been stopped and searched; so Epernon lost his treasure.

Never had Catherine worked harder than she did now; never had she displayed her craft to better advantage. She understood that Guise had deliberately made it possible for the King to escape, and although she deplored her son’s action of running away, she construed Guise’s conduct as weakness, for hesitation was the most fatal weakness a man could display at such a time. He was a great man, this Guise; she had always recognized that quality in him; he had ambition and courage; but he had failed to take an opportunity which could have put him immediately on the throne; he had hesitated at a crucial moment; he had been unsure. She, like the Parisians, had thought at one time that he was a god among men; but he was no god; he was human; he had a weakness, and his greatest folly was in showing that weakness to her. She knew her man now, and she would be equal to him.

How she longed for her youth! How she longed to throw off the nagging pains of her body!

She suggested to Guise that he should command the army, that he should be heir to the throne, and that Navarre’s claim should be ignored, that the Duke of Mayenne should take charge of a wing of the army and go out to attack Navarre. She saw that, in order to avert revolution—which was very near—the King must join the League; and she would take it upon herself to persuade him to do so. Guise had to trust her; she was the only possible go-between. Her suggestion, if carried out, would be the only way of restoring temporary order in France.

She went to Chartres. The King had been badly frightened. Epernon had fled, so there was no one to advise him but his mother. On her advice, he signed documents which Guise had prepared for him. He could tell himself, if he liked, that he was now the head of the Catholic League, for the Catholic League had become royalist.

But when the Pope heard that Guise had allowed the King to escape from Paris he was filled with wrath.

‘What poor creature of a Prince is this,’ he cried, ‘to have let such a chance escape him of getting rid of one who will destroy him at the first opportunity?’

Navarre in his stronghold roared with laughter when he heard the news. ‘So all is well between the King of France and the King of Paris! What an uneasy friendship!’ He spat. ‘I would not give that for it! Wait, my friends. We shall soon see what happens. There could be little better news than that I might hear that she who was once Queen of Navarre—and is now so no longer, for I’ll not have her back—has been strangled; that, and the death of the lady’s mother, would make me sing the song of Simeon!’

Meanwhile, Catherine did all in her power to nourish that uneasy friendship between her son and Guise.


* * *

The King was in a fury, and all his fury was directed against one man. He would never be happy while Guise lived. If I do not kill him, he thought, he will kill me. The wiser of us two will be the one who strikes first.

Guise had become generalissimo of the armies, and was ready to make another bid for the throne. He was growing more and more powerful; he had the army with him, and the fastidious aristocrat need not now rely only on the mob.

When the States. General had met at Blois, and the King had addressed it, the Duke of Guise, as steward of his household, had sat at his feet. Guise had not applauded the King’s speech—and numbers of the men in the hall, all Guisards, followed their master’s example—for the King had deliberately attacked them when he had said: ‘Certain grandees of my kingdom have formed leagues and associations which in every well-ordered monarchy are crimes of high treason. But, showing my wonted indulgence, I am willing to let bygones be bygones in this respect.’

Guise had prevented the publication of those words.

The King had been more or less ordered to meet his committee, and there he had been respectfully but firmly informed that he must alter that pronouncement, for it was not his prerogative to forgive benignly; it was his duty to take orders.

Catherine had been there beside Guise, and it was she who had advised the King to comply, but it was obvious that no self-respecting King could bow to such tyranny.

It had come to the King’s ears that the Cardinal of Guise had proposed the health of his brother—referring to him not as the Duke of Guise, but as the King of France.

Philip of Spain had been Guise’s ally, but, a few months ago, that monarch had suffered a defeat so great that the whole of Europe was agape, for many believed that the greatest power in the world had been quenched for ever. There had been placards posted in the towns of France. Frenchmen had read them and tried to look perturbed while they laughed in their beards:

‘Lost. Somewhere off the English coast, the great and magnificent Spanish Armada. Anyone bringing information of its whereabouts to the Spanish Embassy shall be rewarded.’

Spain was crushed, for there was nothing to be done which could minimize that disaster. Spain, which lived by her sea power, had lost her sea power; and a small island off the coast of Europe had risen high in significance during that fateful summer. In place of mighty Philip, Gomez, Parma and Alva, other great men had arisen: Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Lord Howard of Effingham. The little island had become a country of great importance. The red-headed Queen was smiling serenely on her throne; and she was a Protestant Queen ruling a Protestant people. The previous year, on the pretext of having discovered that her cousin was involved in a plot against the crown, Elizabeth had sent the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots to the block. She had snapped her fingers at Spain then; and this year her sailors had delivered what might well prove to be the final blow.

Guise’s ally, Spain, was not going to be so useful to him as had seemed possible a few months ago.

When he had considered these matters, the King determined on action. Either he or his enemy must die, he was sure. It must be his enemy.

A plot fermented in the diseased mind of the King. He would not discuss it with his mother, as he knew she would not approve of it. She had taken to her bed once more; she was ageing fast; her skin was yellow and wrinkled, and those eyes which had once been alert now had a glassy look.