Courtesan (4 page)

The young woman lifted her head and looked at Diane. Her face was plain and her hair was a dull ash-colored blond, but she was wrapped in enough silk and fur to have been mistaken for one of the King’s daughters.

“Monsieur, as you can see, I have brought my own ladies. They are all I shall need to attend me.”

Montmorency screwed his angry face tighter and leered at Charlotte and Hélène. Both of the women were clothed in rich fabric but nothing near the style or fashion of the young woman’s gown.

“Due respect to you. . .Madame. . .de Poitiers,” he said, putting the emphasis on her family name. “But His Majesty has graciously appointed you Mademoiselle Doucet. As you undoubtedly can see, she is entirely more well suited for the. . .demands of life at Court.”

“You may thank His Majesty for me, Monsieur, but explain that I prefer the company of my own attendants.”

“You will find that independence to such a fault is rarely seen as flattering by our most benevolent King, Madame.”

“Nor, if I recall correctly, is impudence. . .Monsieur de Montmorency.”

His eyes locked with hers. Neither moved. Then he broke the deadlock with a courteous bow. “Will you at least permit one of my men to show you to your accommodations then?”

“But of course, Monsieur.”

A tall blond guard came forward and bowed. Diane and her ladies then followed the young man down the hall toward a stairway, leaving the Grand Master alone and scowling.

The mahogany stairway, shaped like a twisted vine, led to a long, narrow gallery capped by a high vaulted ceiling. They followed the page down a smaller shadowy hallway ablaze with thick tallow candles in mounted braziers. Diane swept down the damp hall disguising her fears of uncertainty with a purposeful gait as Hélène and Charlotte followed behind her.

“I shall get through this,” she whispered to herself. “I must get through this.”

After an hour had passed, she received word from the King. As Hélène and Charlotte began to stuff the two armoires with their mistress’s gowns and nightclothes, she was informed that His Majesty had been made aware of her arrival. He was most anxious to see her. As soon as she was rested and properly attired, he instructed her to send word through one of her ladies and he would give her an immediate audience.

She shuddered as Charlotte unlaced the travel-worn black damask mourning gown in which she had journeyed and Hélène silently draped her in the modest black gown which she had chosen for her meeting with the King. Diane had forgotten the feeling one had when faced with the magnificence and the enormity of Court. It was that same feeling now which crept up her spine like a warm, slow death.
I cannot leave now,
she thought again.
I have come this far. Now, I must face him.

F
OLLOWING THE
K
ING’S VICTORY
at
jeu de paume,
he adjourned to the audience chamber where he would hear anyone who had business with the Crown. Both the destitute and the nobility could attend these more public hearings called “pleadings of the door.” The name of the ceremony was given due to the proximity from which most of the subjects (unless they otherwise found favor with the King), were forced to speak.

Montmorency advanced past a large wall of windows. Against the heavy leaded panes, fresh flakes of snow fell like feathers from an open pillow slip. On a dais carpeted with crimson velvet at the far end of the vast hall, was the King’s throne. It was covered by a canopy of blue silk peppered with small gold fleurs-de-lys. The King sat there in a doublet of gold satin beaded with lapis, rubies and jade. Through the slashings of the shirt sleeves (the fashionable practice of inflicting vertical cuts along the fabric to expose the color and textures underneath), was another shirt of red. It matched to perfection the feathered toque which tilted to just the right angle over his neatly bearded smile. François, who was fascinated by Italian fashions, had his tailors copy for him that country’s most current styles.

Near the King, a cortège of his intimates joked to help him progress through the tedium of the day’s ritual. A silver cord in the center of the room marked the place through which no man, except those few intimates, might pass. The large vaulted doors at the end of the room were pressed full of those few who would attempt it.

As Grand Master in charge of the King’s household, it was his duty to inform His Majesty that among those who had business with the Court and were ready to be received was the Grand Sénéchale de Normandie, Diane de Poitiers.

“She shall be first,” he replied and tossed a devilish look at the courtiers around him.

Although he tried to concentrate on the next few names proposed to him, François’ mind wandered. It wandered to romance. It wandered to lust. It wandered to the memory of Diane. He felt a rush of excitement akin to a child, at the anticipation of seeing her again. He remembered her well. He would be willing to wager that she had not changed. There was something timeless about her. Hers was not a raw, savage beauty, nor even a particularly seductive one. Her beauty was due to elegance. At times he remembered her appearing almost regal. She was a strong-looking woman. He remembered that too because it was an unusual attribute for a woman of her breeding. He thought of the long, firm limbs. . .the fine thin neck. He had heard rumors that she bathed naked in cold river water to preserve her youth. He shifted in his seat impatiently.

His first wife, Queen Claude, had enjoyed her company enough to have conferred upon her the honor of Lady-in-Waiting, whenever she was at Court. Diane and her husband, Louis, had been regular fixtures in royal society; before Claude’s premature death; before his own imprisonment in Spain. Before he had been forced to take his enemy’s sister, Eleanora, as his second wife. But all of that was a lifetime ago. So much had changed.
Diane
. . .He rolled her name around in his mind. Elegant Diane, enigmatic. . .strong. He loved the challenge of it. Yes, he was anxious to see her. Once again, things were beginning to look interesting.

“M
ADAME DE
B
RÉZÉ,
La Grande Sénéchale de Normandie. His Highness, King François I.” The scribe called out the introduction in a high stiletto voice.

As the King looked up, Diane de Poitiers strolled across the floor, costumed in an austere black velvet gown with a high lace collar. Her blond hair was gathered into a net under a black cap from which one small pearl glistened.

“Your Majesty,” she said, curtsied, and then rose up to look directly at him.

François was breathless. He wondered how he could have forgotten the details of her; the long line of her nose, her slim, pink lips and the cool, graceful bearing of a Dorian statue. She drew men unintentionally; the King of France was no exception. He stood on the dais, descended the three stairs and held out his arms to her.

“Ah, yes. At last you have arrived! Come. You may embrace Us.”

Diane advanced cautiously and surrendered to his arms as they closed tightly around her. She winced as she felt his huge hands fondle her buttocks through the folds of black velvet, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do.

“How good it is to see you again,
ma chère Madame.
You have been sorely missed by this Court. How long has it been?”

“Five years, Your Majesty.”

“Impossible! Oh, could it be? I fear, though I can scarcely believe that it was, before the Queen’s death?”

“My deepest sympathies.”

“It was a great loss,” he said with appropriate remorse. “But now she is with God. And on that same sorrowful note, We were equally saddened to hear of the death of Our dear Louis. He was a friend and a humble servant of the Court. We shall mourn his death with you for a very long time.”

“I thank you,” she replied, lowering her eyes with her own competitive look of regret. This time when she looked up at him, she did not release him from the gaze of those shimmering blue eyes. They were almost hypnotic, and he sought to break the spell that he felt by summoning a steward and taking another sip of spiced wine.

Although she no longer wore the azure blue gown that had been so vivid in his memory, her mourning black seemed strangely more appropriate. The color against her alabaster skin was stark and dramatic. She was nothing at all like any of the women after whom he had spent his life lusting. She did not flirt, nor did she tease. To his total amazement, she wore none of the compulsory cosmetics or perfumes indispensable to a woman of breeding at her age. Yet, despite the fact that the flower of her extreme youth had passed, he knew that she would not have benefited by such contrivances had she used them.

“Well, now. Shall we really give them all something to gossip about?” he whispered with a cruel smile, as he leaned toward her.

Diane’s confident expression faded. “Must we?” she whispered, but he did not reply.

“I cannot say, however,” he began again in a louder more commanding voice, “that I honor your father’s passing in the same way that I honor the death of your husband. I understand from the jailers at the Conciergerie that he died peacefully. Surely there is some solace for you in that.”

So it had begun. The topic was inevitable, though she had not expected the need to face it so early upon her return. She had dreaded this event for days. It had nearly prevented her from returning to Court at all, and now he was making sport of it. Yet, perhaps the way he was speaking would put an end to the gossip, once and for all. Better to face rumor directly from the King, she considered, than behind both of their backs. She faced him, summoned a stoic expression and prepared to speak as loudly as he had.

“Though I loved him, Your Majesty, it is no secret to anyone that my father was a disgrace to his family and to his country in those last years. It is not easy for me to speak of him other than to say that his sins would have been forever borne by his children and our children after that, were it not for the gracious lenience of our great King.”

“Your dear Louis informed Us, not long before his own death, that your father was not of sound mind during those years; that he died not knowing his own name or yours. We are a most Christian King, and We do feel sympathy for that.”

“Here he goes again,” Duprat mumbled to Guise, the inexperienced page who stood enthralled beside him.

“It was not difficult to see the embarrassment that his illness brought to a family so great as yours,” the King continued. “We found the knowledge of that, and your father’s incarceration, to have been punishment enough. His sentence of death seemed no longer to have been necessary. . .so I overturned it. It was as simple as that.”

“Ha!” whispered Montmorency to the Cardinal de Tournon. “If he feels compelled to expound like this, then why does he not tell all of those groveling hordes at the door why he really pardoned her father?!”

The dimly lit hall which had been filled with pleas and shouts toward the King before Diane’s entrance, had now been rendered completely silent by this uncommon exchange. Everyone knew the story of how His Majesty had suddenly pardoned Jean de Poitiers as he stood on the hanging platform, convicted of treason.

“Well!” exclaimed the King with a good-natured smile. “We would say that is quite enough of that dreary business! Now that we understand one another, we shall speak of it no more!” Then he leaned toward her and cupped his hand around his mouth. “That should keep all of the gossip mongers going for a while,” he whispered, and sat back straight in his throne. “So then, Madame, if you are amply restored from your journey, you would do Us a great honor if you would consent to dine with Us this evening. We are giving a banquet to honor Chancellor Duprat. Surrounding him with beautiful women will be the best gift that We could give him.”

“I should be honored, Your Majesty.”

“Splendid! I should also like very much for you to meet my Anne.”

The thought of the King’s mistress calmed her, even when he reached out and took both of her hands in his own.

“Ah,
chérie,
” he began with what sounded dangerously like sentiment. “Things have changed a great deal for you and I since you were last here. You, losing your dear Louis, and I, my Queen; my Claude. . .” But, as they began a slow cadence toward the door which was still bursting with courtiers, he added, “I am so convinced that you and my little Anne shall get along famously. We can scarcely wait for you to meet.”

“I should like nothing better, Your Majesty.”

The King set a slow pace in the direction of the door, enjoying the curious audience he had for this exchange. He slid his arm around her waist again. Diane tensed but continued her steps. The long ermine cape, which the King wore tossed across his shoulders, fell to the floor. At the same moment that Diane felt the fur brush against her, the King once again slid his arm down from her waist to the rise of her buttocks. He managed the movement so casually, his face belying no change of expression, that she wondered if he had realized at all what he had done. The tension returned and blossomed into a shiver, but she continued to work her way toward the door as though, through the yards of white petticoats and black velvet, she had not realized his hand was there.

“Do I recall correctly, Madame, that you enjoyed the classics?” he asked, as they passed beyond the silver cord.

“Your Majesty has an excellent memory. Books have always been for me the sustenance of life.”

“How very unfortunate for our dear Louis,” he quipped. Diane smiled once again, though this time she strained a little more to do it. “Join me in the library tomorrow after vespers, then. I have a recent acquisition that you will no doubt enjoy seeing.”

As he took her hand in his own and raised it to his lips, they exchanged a glance. When she saw that he was smiling rakishly, Diane quickly lowered her head.

“Until tonight, then,” he murmured to her as though speaking to a secret lover. Just as quickly, she turned and vanished into the odd assortment of citizens who still crowded around the door.

The English Ambassador, who had been privy to the subtleties of their exchange by standing nearest the silver cord, turned to see his aide staring longingly at the closed door through which she exited.

“Well, John, what do you think?”

“Splendid creature,” he replied, still unable to alter his gaze, as though his longing alone could draw her back into the room.

The English Ambassador studied his young protégé and then added, “There is something about her, John. Mark my words, if she is not the King’s mistress already, she soon will be!”

Since it was certain, he gave himself willingly to her as if he were entirely hers. They united themselves to one another with promises of love. They embraced each other and kissed each other as if they were two doves.

Diane read by forming the words silently across her lips and imagining the young knight burned into the pages. She shivered beneath the thick, woolen wrap which lay draped across the large, canopied oak bed as she prepared to rest. Over and over she had read
Le Roman de la rose,
trying harder each time to fix his image in her mind. Dark curled hair. Skin shaded from pale amber to burnished gold over well-defined muscles; all the things she had longed for and been denied. Her mind raced to the image of a young hard body of a knight whose muscles had grown more firm by the duels he fought. Duels for love. For honor. Did such a man exist beyond the pages of her mind? She took in a breath and then sighed. Her eyelids were heavy with sleep but her heart and body were eager and seeking. She cursed the fate that had seen her married for eighteen years to someone she did not love.