gg Dark Eminence
With this in mind she called a council of both churches to meet with her at Poissy. Here the clergy would sit down to talk matters over calmly like sensible people, she thought, and in the end there would be agreement and peace all around. Delegates to the council would be housed at Saint-Germain, the conferences to be held in the big refectory at the Abbey of Poissy. Everyone should have an opportunity to air his views and so surely, thought Catherine, a perfectly logical solution would be reached.
But a complete stranger herself to religious zeal and the heights of the emotional tempest it could rouse, she was dum-founded at Poissy to hear pious clergymen, both Catholic and Protestant, shouting at one another in anything but pious language.
Thirty-five Archbishops and seven Cardinals were present when the King, not yet eleven, rose to open the conference. His speech was not long but he had learned it by heart without understanding much of it, and his high piping voice gave strange inflections to many of the unfamiliar words.
On his right sat his mother; on his left his younger brother, Henry of Anjou. Marguerite, fidgeting at the long confinement like any merry eight-year-old, tossed her head, making her long heavy earrings swing as she tried to engage her seven-year-old brother, Hercules, Duke of Alengon, in a whispered conversation. Marguerite could not, would not ever conform to any set of circumstances not of her own making.
The debates continued for hours, becoming more and more heated. To her surprise, Catherine found the King of
Navarre, so recently a Huguenot of almost fanatical devotion, now a Catholic, siding with the Guises in every argument! Her astonishment was tempered a little by secret satisfaction. She never had liked his wife, Queen Jeanne, who had converted him to Protestantism in the first place, it was said, and Catherine now found it amusing to think of her chagrin. Sooner or later she knew that Antoine, King of Navarre, weakling that he was, would defect again. She had always found him rather engaging despite his lack of stability, but now suddenly she felt a twinge of contempt for the man.
Jeanne of Navarre had come to the Council of Poissy, bringing her little son Henry with her. He was something of a young rowdy, this nine-year-old prince from the tiny kingdom straddling the Spanish-French border, and Catherine, watching his high spirits, speculated, thinking what an excellent match he would make for Marguerite. She must give it serious thought. But before the council ended, disgust at Antoine's treatment of the boy outweighed any considerations of matchmaking.
Young Henry of Navarre, following the Huguenot faith which he believed was his father's as well, refused to hear Mass or to receive Communion. The boy's absence from religious service escaped his father's notice until one day late in the council. Then, roused to hysteria probably by shame over his own treachery, Antoine beat the child unmercifully before the congregation. Henry screamed, begging to be told what he had done that was wrong. But his father, beside himself now with rage and embarrassment, only continued his
Dark Eminence
savage punishment until one of the clergy begged him to stop.
Alone with her husband when the terrified lad had been turned over to his governors, the Queen of Navarre reproached Antoine. 'Why, milord, did you punish the child for refusing to do the very thing you would have forbidden him to do yourself a fortnight gone?" she asked, Her face was white with anger. After all, Antoine was responsible to her for his crown since she was Queen of Navarre in her own right, being the only daughter of Henry dAlbret, King of Navarre, and he, Antoine, had her to thank, not for his crown alone, but for the rich estates and titles that came with it. Now he had dared to abuse their child.
"I punished him/ 1 he shouted, "because he's a young heretic, a believer in the folly youVe taught him. You are a heretic yourself, Madame, and for this I am divorcing you—
by special dispensation. For this you should have a taste of the cold comforts of the dungeon!"
Something in his mad intensity frightened her. The dungeons of Spain and France were too well-known not to strike terror to any heart. Taking leave of the young King and his mother with unflurried courtesy, Queen Jeanne alerted her attendants and had her chariots and saddle horses made ready. Then when night fell, her cavalcade quietly set out for Navarre. Torches flared as they plunged through the darkness and by morning their lead over any pursuers An-toine might have dispatched after them was a safe one, Days later the Queen and her little son were home. She never saw her husband again.
For one of the few times in her life Catherine de Medici was frightened. Her Council of Poissy, from which she had expected so much, had failed. Moreover, one could no
longer distinguish between friend and foe; men were Catholic or Huguenot as a matter not of conviction but of expediency. She had tubes cleverly concealed in draperies leading from one of her rooms to another where frequent meetings of the Guises were held. So it was she learned that plans were being made by Anne de Montmorency, the Duke of Guise and the Marshal de Saint-Andre to have her drowned in the Seine!
For some time recently she had been on friendly terms with the Guises; now once more she swung to the Bourbons. The safety of the King—and of the regency—was all-important. If civil war were actually to break out, then she preferred the Bourbons, her kinsmen, as allies. Even An-toine, wretched turncoat that he was, seemed suddenly not such a bad fellow. Besides, that match between his boy, Henry, and Marguerite must not be
