sank back into my chair.
His voice broke as he relayed to me the results of his examination: Francois’s body could bear no more. Although the King was only fifty-two, infections had overwhelmed him. He was rotting from the inside out.
“You lie!” Anne hissed. “He has always recovered. You underestimate his strength!”
I turned to her. “Get out,” I said softly. “Get out, Your Grace, and do not set foot into this room until you are called for, else I will summon the guards.”
She gasped as though I had struck her. “How dare you,” she said, her jaw slack with outrage, but I heard uncertainty in her tone. “How
“Get out,” I repeated.
She retreated as far as the corridor, muttering curses beneath her breath.
I ignored her and turned back to the sorrowful, rheumy-eyed doctor. “Are you certain?”
He nodded gravely. “I do not expect him to survive more than a few days.”
I steepled my hands, pressed them to my lips, and closed my eyes. “My husband must be sent for at once. He is at Madame de Poitiers’s chateau at Anet…”
“I will see that the Dauphin is notified, Madame,” the doctor responded kindly. “In the meantime, His Majesty has asked for you.”
I banished imminent tears and eased my taut, vacant expression into one more pleasant, then rose and went into the bedchamber.
Francois was propped up on the pillows, his face grey against the white linens. It was the end of a cold, damp March, and a fire roared in the hearth, leaving the room oppressively warm, yet the King shivered beneath many blankets. The curtains had been drawn and the lamps left unlit, to avoid paining his eyes, which cast the room in twilight. The lines in his brow conveyed misery, but he was altogether lucid, and when he saw me, he managed a wan smile.
I did my best to smile back, but he was not fooled.
“Ah, Catherine,” he said, his voice wavering and reedy. “Always so brave. There’s no need to dissemble; I know I’m dying. Cry if you wish, my darling. I won’t be frightened by your tears.”
“Oh, Your Majesty…” I clasped his hand. “I’ve sent for Henri.”
“Do not tell Eleonore.” He sighed. “I regret that I’ve treated her badly, especially when I see what you’ve endured.”
I averted my eyes. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh, but it is. Perhaps…” His face crumpled-in physical pain, I thought, until he opened eyes gleaming with tears. “Had I not sent him away to be the Emperor’s hostage, perhaps he would have grown to be a different man. But he is weak…”
His teeth began to chatter. I tucked the blankets tightly about him, then wrung out a towel from a basin of water and set the damp cloth upon his forehead. He sighed with relief.
“That woman…” His lip curled. “She rules him, and so will rule France. Henri has made the same mistake I did. Mark my words: She’ll seize all the power she can; she’s ruthless, and Henri too much a fool to see it.”
The speech exhausted him; he broke off, panting, until he could catch his breath.
“Don’t let Anne in here,” he said finally. “I have been such a fool.” He squeezed my hand. “You and I are alike. I see it in you. You’re strong enough to do what is best for the nation, even if it breaks your heart.”
“Yes,” I said, very softly.
He looked at me with wan affection. “Promise me, then. Promise me that you’ll do what is best for France. Promise me that you’ll keep the throne safe for my son.”
“I promise,” I whispered.
“I love you more than my own child,” he said.
At that, my composure broke and I sobbed openly.
The physicians bled the King with leeches and dosed him with quicksilver, but he worsened markedly. By morning, he did not know me. Toward the afternoon he grew lucid again and asked for a priest.
Henri arrived late that night. He and his father wished to be alone, without witness to their grief or final words to each other. The Duchess d’Etampes hovered silently in the corridor, her eyes wide with shock.
I sat on the floor in the King’s antechamber, my back pressed to the wall, and wept into my hands. Francois had been my protector and dearest friend. I remained huddled on the floor throughout the long night, listening to the rise and fall of Henri’s voice on the other side of the closed door. In the morning, the King’s confessor, the Bishop of Macon, arrived. I tried to see past the door as it opened, and glimpsed Henri’s haggard face, his black eyes raw with grief.
The King never called for me again.
When Madame Gondi came for me at noon, I was too weak to resist but let myself be guided to my room and washed and dressed in clean clothes. I could not rest, but returned to the King’s apartments and settled again on the floor near the entrance to his bedchamber. The Duchess d’Etampes again appeared, dazed and carelessly dressed and minus her white face paint and rouge. She did not dare speak to me, but held vigil in the corridor.
In the next room, Henri let go a heartbroken wail; I lowered my face into my hands and wept. The Duchess seemed strangely unmoved until the door to the King’s bedchamber opened and the red-eyed Bishop of Macon emerged. He turned to me, his head bowed.
“His Majesty the Most Christian King Francois is dead.”
I could not speak, but in the hallway, the Duchess d’Etampes let go a scream.
“May the earth swallow me up!” she wailed-not in grief but in terror. She had abused her power as the King’s mistress to harm many and insult all. Apparently she had thought that Francois would never die, that retribution from her enemies would never come-and now she was unprepared. I remember her dry-eyed panic well-how she clutched first her cheeks, then her head, as if to keep it from suddenly flying off, how she seized her skirts and ran away, her progress hobbled by her fine high-heeled slippers. It was the last time I ever saw her.
I sat down upon the cold floor a princess and rose from it a queen, but took no joy in the fact. As it would the Duchess, change would bring me catastrophe.
PART VI
Twenty-four
My husband was transformed by the King’s death. Henri wept for his father, but along with his grief came a curious lightness, as if all his anger and pain had died with the old man.
His first official act was to dismiss his father’s ministers and summon the former Grand Master, Anne Montmorency, to the palace. Montmorency had fallen out of favor with the King, though his friendship with my husband had remained steadfast.
Montmorency was like Henri and Diane in many ways: conservative, dogmatic, resistant to change. His very being reflected those traits: He was solid and square of build and pompous of bearing, with a long, old-fashioned
