The Confessions of Catherine de Medici Page 13
When word came to me of a doctor who traveled the plague-stricken areas treating the sick with pills he concocted from rose petals, I was immediately interested. Michel de Nostradamus, I was told, was a converted Jew who had published a discourse on treating the plague. He’d lost his wife and now made his home in Provence; to my surprise, he was also considered a gifted seer.
I went to talk to Henri. “I’d like to invite him to court.”
He reclined on a couch as our court physician, Ambrose Paré, dressed his thigh. He’d suffered a flesh wound during sword practice, and while not grave, the injury was inflamed. My husband clenched his teeth as Paré applied a poultice and started wrapping the wound in a fresh bandage.
“Michel de Nostradamus is a doctor,” I said. “He can assist Dr. Paré with your leg.”
Paré glanced at me in weary gratitude. Henri was not an ideal patient. He hated being inactive and had already reopened the wound twice by insisting on riding.
My husband scowled. “If he can help, summon him. I’m tired of bandages and poultices.”
“Thank you.” I kissed his brow and went to dispatch my summons.
Weeks passed without a reply. In the fall, we made our habitual move to the red-brick and stone Château Blois in the Loire Valley, where I had refurbished my apartments with new wainscoting and tapestries. Here, I spent hours overseeing my household affairs.
One afternoon without warning, Michel de Nostradamus walked in.
I looked up and went still. He was tall but otherwise unremarkable at first glance. Clad in a physician’s black robe and peaked cap, his cragged face half-covered by a graying beard, he seemed like a tired merchant as he bowed before me. As his eyes rose to mine, I saw they were brown, piercing, and sad—eyes that conveyed infinite knowledge and weary tenderness.
“Your Grace,” he intoned, his voice somber, “I’ve come from Fontainebleau. I was told you were here.” Though he didn’t indicate his displeasure in any way, it was clear he implied that I’d made him travel at a cost he could ill afford.
I offered him a warm smile, sensing he’d not be placated by falsity. “I regret the inconvenience, but you never answered my letter. How could I know you intended to visit?”
He did not lower his gaze. “I assumed you wanted to see me as soon as possible. You said His Majesty your husband had an open wound; I didn’t think a reply was necessary.” He paused. “Does he still have that wound?”
I nodded, intrigued as I glanced at the threadbare sleeves hanging over his large bony wrists. He looked as if he had walked to Blois in that robe.
“Have you no belongings?” I asked.
“I brought a valise. I left it with the guard outside. Shall we see the king now?”
I nodded, starting to rise when the room melted around me. At that moment, the gift I had not felt in so long awoke. As I reached out to grip the edge of my desk, I heard him say, “You know why I have come.” I met his gaze. He stood still, unmoving, as if nothing were amiss.
This strange man had come to court to tell me something.
“We’ll see His Majesty soon,” I said, and I motioned my ladies out, though it was unorthodox. I was the queen; I’d never met this man before. For all I knew, he could be mad.
I led him into my private cabinet, a small room with a glazed window, gilded desk, chairs, and a fireplace. I’d had the walls covered in fragrant cedar, with Henri’s and my initials carved in gold on the frontispieces. My cabinet at Blois was one of the few places in France where the interlocked HD did not appear, and another man might have paused, even concealed a smirk.
Nostradamus didn’t seem to notice the room. He sat on the chair I indicated, and after declining my offer of wine, he said, “I was surprised by Your Grace’s letter. I’ve sent you several messages over the years, but not once did you respond.”
“You sent me letters? But I received nothing. I assure you if I had, I …” My protest faded; I was about to lie. “The truth is, I receive hundreds of petitions. My secretary alerts me to the most urgent or personal, of course, but I can’t look at every one.”
“I see. My messages were not important, then.”
“Oh, no! They were simply overlooked.”
“No. They were not important.”
He wasn’t saying I’d considered his messages unimportant, I realized, or that an oversight had impeded them from reaching my hands. He was saying—
“I’m saying they weren’t meant to reach you,” he interrupted, and he smiled for the first time, revealing crooked teeth. “God directs our paths. You know this; you too feel the invisible.”
In my stomach, I felt a flutter, my gift unfurling neglected tentacles.
“Catherine,” I said faintly. “Please, call me Catherine.”
“That wouldn’t be proper. You are my queen.”
Silence fell. “Why did you send me letters?” I asked.
“Because I have had visions,” he said. “Of you and the future.” He lifted his chin toward the door. “I wrote them down years ago, before you came to France. The book is in my valise. If you’ll permit, I’ll recite the most important ones now. You see, my visions come to me …” He paused, seeking the right words. “They come without warning. Many remain a mystery.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “I understand.”
“I thought so.” He folded his hands. “What I have to say won’t be easy for you to hear.”
I suspected as much. I could feel the brooding in the air, emanating from a dark place in his mind that had nothing to do with his humanity.
“I am just a vessel,” he went on. “This gift first came to me in my adolescence. I always knew I was different, even as a child, but I didn’t understand how different I was until I was older. I fought it, at first. I despised the power it had over me. In time, I came to accept it. God has chosen me for reasons I cannot pretend to understand. Much of what I see I turn into verse. Poetry is music. The listener hears what he wants to.”
He closed his eyes and sighed, a long sigh that floated upward like smoke. Tension gripped me as a spasm crossed his face. I sat frozen, waiting, as the silence extended.
Finally, he spoke. “‘The young lion shall overcome the old in single combat. He will pierce his eye in a cage of gold. Two wounds in one, the old lion will die a cruel death.’”
I frowned. What did he mean? Lions were a symbol of royalty, of course, but the symbolism could apply to many things and he spoke of cages, of combat.
His eyelids quivered. He wet his lips. “‘The lady shall rule alone, her unique spouse dead, who was first in the field of honor. She will weep for seven years and reign long.’”
I felt a wave of profound despair. He sat quiet for a long moment, his words dying. Then he opened his eyes and murmured, “I will go. I’ve done what I was called for.” He started to stand.
“No!” My voice rang out, shrill in the silence. I paused, took a shuddering breath. “I … I don’t understand. Are these prophecies … what do they mean?”
He did not speak. He held my gaze, his eyes sad, almost repentant.
“You must tell me,” I said. “Please. Are you saying that I … I will outlive my husband?”
He leaned to me. Though we didn’t touch, his proximity felt like a caress. “‘No truth can be determined for certain that concerns the future.’”
I started. “Someone said that to me once, in my childhood. How did you know?”
“It’s a common saying among seers.” He paused. “Is there anything else you must ask me?”
I resisted the urge to demand a detailed explanation. He looked exhausted. Later, I told myself. Once I get to know him better, he can explain it all to me.
“We should go see my husband now,” I said. “He has a flesh wound. And my children—I would appreciate it if you’d draw up their horoscopes. You’ll be rewarded for your services.”
Nostradamus inclined his head. “I’ll do what I can. But I can stay just a short time.”
I offered to accompany him through the Loire, with a stop at Chaumont to meet Ruggieri. When we arrived Nostradamus stepped into the hall and stiffened. Clad in expensive scarlet velvet embroidered with stars, Ruggieri rushed down the staircase, thin as ever, hair askew and eyes febrile as he kissed my hand. He beamed at the older seer. “Your reputation precedes you.”
Nostradamus replied drily, “Does it?”
We dined on roast quail. Ruggieri then took us to the observatory to gaze through his glass at the sky. When he insisted we stay the night, Nostradamus raised his hand. “I cannot.”
Ruggieri pouted. Nostradamus turned heel and descended the staircase, without anything to light his way. Fearing he might trip and break his neck, I grabbed a candle, told Cosimo to stay put, and braved the stairs. By the time I reached the hall, I was out of breath, sullied from passing through cobwebs.
He was striding into the courtyard to my litter; he removed his valise from the interior and pulled up his hood. “Seigneur!” I bustled to him. “What is the meaning of this? Ruggieri is a trusted friend of mine since childhood. Why do you disdain his hospitality?”
He turned to me, featureless under his hood. “I did not disdain his hospitality; I reject it. I cannot stay here. I am not comfortable.”
“Well, neither am I. It’s not Blois, but I assure you the sheets are clean and floors swept.”
“No,” he said. “I am not comfortable with him. I must go.”
I stared in bewilderment. “Has he offended you?”
“No. But he will offend you. He will betray you.”
I gave a short, nervous laugh. “Come now! I trust Cosimo with my life. You are tired. Let us go inside. We’ll have some hot wine and—”
“My imagination never plays tricks.” He stepped to me. “He plays with evil. And evil he will wreak. It is his fate.”
I lifted a hand to my throat. “You actually think Cosimo …?”
“I’ll never withhold the truth, no matter how painful. Should you wish to see me, send word to my home in Salon.” A smile crossed his lips. “Or I may come to you, should the need arise.”
Uncertain as to how to respond, thinking that if he ever spoke to others like this he risked arrest by the church or worse, I took a ring from my finger, its jasper stone bearing my seal. “If anyone tries to harm you, tell them the queen of France holds you under her protection.”
He pocketed the ring. I stood under the moon as he shouldered his valise and strolled onto the road. I didn’t think I’d see him again and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Mesmerizing as he was, he had struck an unbidden chord in me that I did not wish to hear.
FIFTEEN
NOT A CLOUD MARRED THE SKY ON THE DAY OF THE FIRST WEDDING of a dauphin to be celebrated in Paris in over a decade. Candles sparked fire off the nobles’ finery, the breeze drifting through Notre Dame’s open doors spiraling the draped silk banners. Depleted as our treasury might be, we would not spare expense for this important occasion.
I was beset by worry as François and his bride knelt before the altar. I’d protested the marriage at first; my son had turned fourteen, an age when most princes have awoken to their carnal appetite, but he continued to be plagued by crippling ear infections that nothing could assuage and he looked frail in his gem-encrusted robes. And while he appeared enamored of Mary, he treated her more like a beloved sister than a consort. Henri thought bed sport was just what our son needed, but I suspected François did not have the maturity, and I blamed Diane, her ceaseless vigilance over him having retarded my son’s growth. She had kept him a perpetual child, coddling him to his detriment so she could keep him under her control.
Nonetheless, the marriage united Scotland and France; and the impaled arms of Valois and Stuart were displayed on the litters that brought us back to the Louvre, where we dined on tablecloths emblazoned with the thistle and fleur-de-lis.
Mary and my husband opened the dancing, while I sat on the dais and recalled when I’d been a bride, displayed beside my father-in-law for the first time.
Henri wore plum velvet studded with pearls. As he entered his thirty-ninth year he had grown more like his father, though his demeanor was subdued, mindful of his regality at all times. François had laughed too loud and drunk too much. Henri scarcely touched wine anymore and when he smiled, it was with a near-imperceptible tilt of his bearded lips.
And the bride—how different she was from the naïve girl I had been! With her chestnut hair swinging past her waist and my seven gray pearls swaying about her slim throat, she reveled in her own beauty, her gaze casting shameless coquetry at Henri. I felt envious of her careless youth and vibrancy and turned my gaze to our guests.
At the Guise-Lorraine table, the aged dowager duchess, flanked by her favorite daughter-in-law, le Balafré’s wife, and several Lorraine cousins, sat engorged with pride as she beheld her royal granddaughter; at the children’s table their offspring mingled with mine.
Foremost among these was le Balafré’s son Henri, an angelic boy with white-gold hair and sculpted features. He sat beside my own seven-year old Henri, who twirled the jeweled pendant I’d given him, his dark eyes impatient, for he danced well and longed to show off his grace. The bridegroom, François, watched Mary, even as my second son, almost eight-year-old Charles, gabbed in his ear. Nearby, my eldest daughter, Elisabeth, was serene in carnelian, overseeing ten-year-old Claude and five-year-old Margot. My baby, four-year-old Hercule, played with his food.
Like François, they too would wed someday and leave me, I thought. I must care for them while I could, plan their futures and ensure their happiness.
I eased back in my chair, reaching for my wine when I found myself staring into the austere visage of Queen Jeanne of Navarre at the table to the right of the dais. Her eyes were cold, regarding me with the same intolerance she’d shown years before when she’d come to Amboise and denounced my Catholic faith. Her mother, François I’s sister Marguerite, had died several years ago, shortly after Jeanne wed Prince Antoine of Bourbon. Descended of thirteenth-century noble blood, the Bourbons were Catholic princes of France who stood next in the line of succession after my own sons. Jeanne and Antoine made an illustrious match but, I suspected, not a happy one. A handsome lout preening in his unlaced doublet, Antoine drank heavily, his dark blond hair disheveled about his flushed face as he chatted up a painted court jade even as his wife sat a few chairs away, clad in the unadorned black of her Calvinist creed. I’d heard she had tried to convert Antoine to Protestantism to no avail; as I saw Antoine lean close to nuzzle the jade’s throat, I felt a surge of pity for Jeanne. It was evident that Antoine did not care about religion or anything else that might come between him and his pleasure.
Still, she was so unapproachable that I’d barely exchanged three words with her, and as I tried to think of something to engage her in conversation, I found myself looking at her son, little Henri, heir of Navarre—a sturdy freckled child who’d inherited her red hair and his father’s green eyes and saturnine features. He was six, a year older than Margot; and as I wondered why he wasn’t seated with the other children, he turned in his chair toward me.
I was captured by his stare. In his curious eyes, not yet tainted by age or experience, I recognized myself, the girl I’d been: prematurely cognizant of the world but unaware of how much it could change. A rush of sympathy overcame me as I thought of how overwhelmed he must be by the activity and glamour of the occasion
, and so I beckoned him. Jeanne started and leaned to him, whispering in his ear; he faltered for a moment before he rose and came to me.
He bowed with stilted precision, uncomfortable in his finery, his hair springing around his head in untamed spikes. He’d been born under Aries, I recalled, thinking back on the birth announcement Jeanne had sent and the silver christening basin I’d dispatched as a gift.
I said softly, “My child, do you know who I am?”
“Yes.” He fixed his gaze on his polished shoes. “You are Tante Catherine.”
“That’s right. I am Aunt Catherine. Come; let me give you a hug.”
As his gaze fled to his mother, I descended the dais and took him in my arms, feeling a compact body that didn’t even tremble as I enfolded him.
It came upon me. I had never felt anything like it since my childhood, a sensation so powerful that it dissolved my surroundings and left me floundering in darkness.
Cannon fire bursts in the distance, echoing through a long valley blackened by drifting smoke, where charred trees bear only the shredded remains of autumn leaves. A man sits on a black destrier, a white plume in his dark cap; his beard is thick and coppery on his weathered face with its long nose and pursed lips, wide cheeks and close-set eyes full of purpose; he seems to command the very air he breathes. He sits his horse as though born on a saddle, nudges it with his knees to calm its nervous prancing.
A young page rushes up to him, dressed in green livery bearing an unfamiliar badge.
“They will not surrender,” the page gasps, and the man looks at him with a flash of impatience in his eyes. Then he tosses back his head and laughs. He says something I cannot hear and I try to move closer, to hear him, but he recedes, disappearing like smoke and—
My gasp brought me spinning back to the hall; as I struggled to regain my bearings, nausea filling my mouth and sweat chilling me under my gown, I felt the boy reach up to touch my cheek. “Aunt Catherine?” he murmured, and I gazed down at his face, knowing then I had just seen him as he would become.