The Medici Queen aka The Devil’s Queen

“Not him!” Bourbon waved his hands as if to ward off the very idea. “No, Madame la Reine! I would rather die than act against the King!”

“But you would lift your sword against Grand Master Guise, whom my son himself appointed, and against his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, whom my husband named Grand Inquisitor. Is that not treason, Monsieur?”

Bourbon’s eyes widened in dismay; whatever he had expected from me, it was not this. “No! Madame, I beg you, it is not!”

“How is it not?” I demanded.

“We do not take up arms against the King. But we wish to show, most emphatically, that the Guises have overstepped their bounds.”

“You would show His Majesty,” I said, my voice growing lower and ever more dangerous, “with arquebuses. With swords and cannon. You would shed blood, to force him to oust the ministers he and his father chose. That is not loyalty, Monsieur de Bourbon. That is treason.” I rose, forcing him to rise with me.

“No! I swear before God!” He wailed and wrung his hands. “Madame la Reine, please listen to me-”

“I have heard enough,” I said coldly. “Step aside so that I can call the guards.”

At that, he fell to his knees-blocking my path-and quivered, a weak, disgusting thing.

“For the love of God!” he shrieked. “What must I do to convince you? I will order them all to disband. I will disavow them. Only tell me what His Majesty wishes, and I shall do it, to prove that I am loyal only unto him.”

I sat down. I slid open my desk drawer and drew out a piece of parchment covered in a copyist’s perfect script. Bourbon could disavow the Huguenots all he wished-but he was only a figurehead. The rebellion could easily continue without him.

“Get up,” I told him, “and sign this.”

He pushed himself to his feet and peered uncertainly at the paper. “Of course, Madame la Reine. Only what is it?”

“A legal document surrendering your rights to the regency in the event of King Francois’s death,” I said, “and transferring them to me.”

Revelation dawned in his eyes as he stared down at the writing; the color returned to his cheeks and increased to a full-out flush. He had been played, and he knew it. “The regency?” he whispered, then more loudly said, “Do not tell me our young King is seriously ill.”

I answered nothing. I did not want to call for the guards to haul him to prison-but I would, if necessary, and Bourbon sensed it. Beneath my ruthless gaze, he began to fidget. Wretched creature, I thought. God help France if you ever become King. I found it hard to believe he had produced such a fine son.

I dipped a fresh quill in the inkwell and proffered it across the desk.

He stared at it as though it were a scorpion. Yet after a long moment, he took it, and asked, “Where shall I sign?”

I pushed the parchment toward him and pointed to the spot.

He leaned over and scribbled rapidly: the A and B were huge, dramatic, looping. Afterward, he sat back with a long sigh of self-loathing.

I took the document and waved it a few times to dry the ink before setting it back into the drawer. Then I stood, prompting him to do the same.

“Your Highness,” I said, as though finally remembering that I was speaking to a prince. “Your heroic act of self-sacrifice shall not go unmarked. When the time comes, I shall tell everyone how you have put the good of France far above your own.”

We both knew, of course, that neither of us would mention this again-I, out of the need for secrecy; Bourbon, out of a sense of shame.

Even so, I continued warmly: “Please stay with us awhile at Blois. You are among family here, and ever welcome.”

He murmured barely coherent phrases about his gratefulness for my hospitality, about his pressing need to return to Paris. I offered him my hand and repressed a shudder when his lips touched my flesh.

I did not need Cosimo Ruggieri, I told myself. I had just averted a potential war using my wits, and nothing else. Yet after Bourbon had sidled out the door and closed it behind him, I lowered my face to the cool, smooth surface of my desk and sobbed.

After my meeting with Bourbon, I made my way down the winding staircase that led to the King’s apartments. The Duke of Guise was bounding up the steps and was so distracted that we nearly collided. He was gasping, his native arrogance overcome by blind panic; in his eyes, I saw the death of dreams.

Abandoning protocol, he seized my arm. “Madame la Reine! We have been searching everywhere for you! Doctor Pare needs you to come to the King’s bedchamber at once!”

We flew. I kept pace with Guise on the stairs and pushed past the solemn assembly in the corridor to enter the royal antechamber. I was met by Doctor Pare’s bleak, weathered face. Mary stood beside him, a wide-eyed wraith with a twisted kerchief in her restless hands-waiting, all this time, for me and for her uncle the Duke of Guise, who put his arm about her shoulder.

Doctor Pare did not waste time with pleasantries; he was a man unimpressed by titles and, certainly, by Mary, Queen of France. He understood that a mother’s love trumped that of a political wife and so addressed himself to me.

“His Majesty has worsened, Madame,” he said. “Within the last two hours, his fever has risen sharply. The infection has spread to his blood.”

I closed my eyes. I had heard the same words from Doctor Pare before, when they had sealed my husband’s doom.

“What does it mean?” Mary demanded. “What must be done now?”

“There is nothing more I can do,” the doctor told her. “It is a matter of hours now, at most a day or two.”

She lunged at him; the motion caused me to open my eyes just as she was raising her hands to claw the doctor’s face. The Duke of Guise struggled to hold her back as she screamed, “He cannot die! You must not let him!”

While the Duke and Doctor Pare did their best to calm her, I went into the sickroom to sit vigil beside my son. Francois lay with his eyes tightly shut and crusted, his cheeks flushed an unhealthy violet hue. A heavy fur throw had been drawn all the way up to his chin; even so, his teeth chattered. I crawled into bed beside him and wrapped my arms around him, pressing my body against his in an effort to warm him. I remained there even after a calmer Mary entered and sat nearby. Her face hung over us, a wan and anxious moon.

There is little more to tell. Francois never came to himself, though at times he groaned with pain. At the end, his body convulsed pitifully, again and again. He fell still to the sounds of Mary’s whispered recitations of the Ave Maria and Pater Noster, and when he let go his last rattling breath, citrine pus streamed from his nostrils.

Only then did I open my arms and climb slowly from the bed. Mary had given up praying to gape with horror at her husband’s body; she remained limp and unresisting as I embraced her, only long enough to whisper in her ear: “Go home to Scotland now. I promise you, it will be safer for you there than here.”

I left Francois to Mary and the Guises’ hysterical ministrations and went off to find my surviving children. The prescient governesses had dressed the children in black and assembled them in the nursery. Charles was sitting impassively watching Edouard, Margot, and little Navarre throw a tennis ball for the spaniel, who fetched it, safely beyond Charles’s reach. At the sight of me, Charles glanced up, scowling.

“Is he dead, then? Is Francois dead, and am I King?”

I could only nod. Edouard threw his arms around Margot as she and little Henri began to cry, while Charles’s lips curved in a self-satisfied smirk.

“You see?” he told Edouard. “I am King, after all, and now you shall have to do everything I tell you!”

At the sight of the children’s tears, I had been on the verge of loosing my own, but Charles’s words drew me up short.

“No, he doesn’t,” I corrected him. “You are King in name only, Charles. It is I who rule France now.”