The plot had failed, but very narrowly. Its object had been to put her in one of the prisons of the Holy Office and her children into a Spanish fortress. When she and they were disposed of, the Spanish troops would seize Lower Navarre. There were many people in this plot apart from King Philip, and one of these was the licentious, crafty Cardinal of Lorraine. Jeanne believed fervently that God was with her, for a certain Dimanche, who had been taking messages to Spain, had fallen ill and in his delirium had disclosed the plot. This had come to the ears of Elisabeth of Spain, who, braving the wrath of her husband – as no one else would have dared to do – had warned Jeanne in time, so that she had been able to fortify her frontiers to such effect that the plot was defeated.

But in what an uneasy world she lived where so many longed for her destruction!

She would win in the end. She was sure of that. Fanaticism had taken the place in Jeanne’s heart so recently occupied by her love for her husband and her desire for domestic peace.

Nothing mattered but the Faith; nor did it seem to her of any great consequence by what road she and her followers travelled to their goal, as long as they reached it.

Francis, Duke of Guise, had been murdered. Coligny said that he had not bribed Poltrot de Méray to assassinate the Duke. But what did it matter if he had done so? What mattered such a lie in a good cause? What mattered murder? If Coligny had been instrumental in bringing about the death of an enemy, then all good Huguenots must rejoice.

Jeanne had changed gradually. Her passionate love of sincerity had become clouded over. Bitter humiliation, frustration, misery, danger … and her Faith … had made of the honest woman a fanatic who could smile at murder.

And now came the report of what her little Henry had overheard in the gallery of Bayonne. A massacre of Huguenots was planned – a greater and more terrible massacre than any that had taken place before.

Jeanne lost no time in writing to Coligny and Condé, warning them of what her son had overheard of the conversation between the Queen Mother and the Duke of Alva. She knew that this was going to rouse fresh trouble. She knew that it was very likely that the bloody strife would break out again.

It mattered not. Nothing mattered but the Huguenot cause. It did not even matter that her son would continue to live at the decadent Valois court, that he would become profligate in his habits. How could it, when he could act the spy with such effect?


* * *

In the Castle of Condé, the Princess Eléonore was feeling weak and ill, and she knew that her end was very near.

Her husband was no longer a prisoner of the Catholics, and she could send for him, but she did not immediately do so. Sadly she thought of him, of their early life together, of his gay optimism and how he had taught her to be gay. How happy they might have been – as happy as Jeanne and her Antoine might have been – but for their position in this troubled country.

She and her husband had been everything to one another in the early days; it was she who had fired him with the desire to fight for the Faith. She had always known that he lacked her religious instincts, that he was first of all a soldier who must have excitement and adventure; but once he had adopted his cause, he did remain loyal to it. He did not, as his brother had, deny his Faith as well as his obligations to his wife. Poor Jeanne, what she must have suffered! What bitter humiliation had Antoine showered upon her!

There were continual prayers at the Castle of Condé. Eléonore’s children were with her, and she prayed that the lives they led would be straight and honourable. She tried to shut out of her mind the thought of Louis with the beautiful wanton, Isabelle de Limeuil.

Why had he not remained faithful to her? How could he have been so weak, knowing all the time that Isabelle was a spy of the Queen Mother’s? What charm had this woman to tempt him in such circumstances? It was not as though he were a fool, as poor Antoine had been. Perhaps it was that love of excitement in her husband which had made him such an easy victim of the plots of the Queen Mother – that puckish determination to court danger.

And the Queen Mother had deliberately wrecked the happy home, not only of the Princess of Condé, but also that of Jeanne of Navarre. Poor Louis! He was so attractive, and women had always found him irresistible. It had always been so – more with him even than with Antoine. It was not only his relationship with Isabelle de Limeuil that had set the country talking scandal against the Prince of Condé, for there had been others besides Isabelle. Calvin had written to Louis, protesting; Coligny had begged him to mend his ways. Louis always meant to; he was very sorry for his weakness; but then – a goblet of wine, a gay song and a pair of bright eyes, and he was caught again.

She had been sleepless with anxiety; she had been filled with misgivings; and one morning when she came down from her apartments it was obvious from her expression that a great peace had come to her; she knew that very soon she would be leaving this world’s troubles for ever.

She sent a messenger to the Prince to tell him that she could not live long, but she instructed the messenger to break the news gently, that he might not suffer any great shock.

‘You must tell him,’ she said, ‘that I have one aspiration. It is that our spirits may continue to be bound together. Tell him also that I conjure him to keep watch over our children in my stead, that they may be brought up in the fear of God.’

When Condé received the messenger and heard the news of his wife’s sickness, he was overcome with grief. Mercurial in temperament, there was nothing for him now but the very depth of his despair. He made all haste to the Castle of Condé, and there he flung himself beside his wife’s bed and poured bitter reproaches on himself and his conduct.

‘You must live, my love, that I may prove to you that there has never been any in my life but you. You must give me the chance to show how deeply I love you.’

The tears he shed were genuine; but she also knew that what he meant this week he would cease to mean next. Such men were Louis and his brother Antoine, and because they were so, not only must their wives and children suffer, but the great cause of their religion be put into jeopardy.

Eléonore stroked his hair.

‘My darling,’ she said, ‘you have given me great happiness. I would not have you different, for if you had been different, how could you have been my love?’

‘I have not loved you as you deserve to be loved. I am a rogue. Tell me so. Tell me you hate me, for I deserve that. I deserve to be unhappy for the rest of my life.’

He was so handsome, with his head flung back and the tears on his cheeks, so earnest in his protestations. But how long would it be before he was swearing eternal fidelity to Isabelle de Limeuil or Madame de Saint-André? How long before they, and others too, would hear from those handsome lips that they were the loves of his life?

Charming Condé, so unstable in his emotions, yet so resolute in battle! Why had these Bourbons, so gifted with their charm and beauty, both been so fickle? Were the characters of these men responsible for the failure of the Reformation in France? They could not resist women, even those they knew to be the spies of the Queen Mother.

But what was the use of regretting now? The end was near for Eléonore.

‘Oh, my darling!’ cried Louis. ‘My dearest wife! Blessed will the moment be when God commands us to meet in eternity!’

‘Do not reproach yourself, my love,’ said Eléonore. ‘Only look after our children and remember that I have loved you. Remember the happiness of our days together. Remember the sober, prim little girl you married and whom you taught to laugh. Promise to look after our children and I shall be well content.’

She had her son brought to her and begged him to honour King Charles, the Queen of Navarre, his father and his Uncle Gaspard. ‘Never forget the allegiance to the Faith I have taught you,’ she implored him.

The boy was weeping, and she asked her husband to take him away and to leave her for a while. When they had gone she lay back smiling, her lips shaping the words of a prayer: ‘Oh, God, my winter is past and my spring is come …’

When Condé knew that she was indeed dead there was no stemming his grief. It seemed to him that his infidelities came back to mock him; he remembered so much that shamed him.

‘Oh, what a scoundrel am I!’ he groaned.

His little daughter came to him and tried to comfort him. He lifted her in his arms and said to her: ‘Try, my darling, to be like her. If you are as she was, I shall love you more and more. Girls are said to take after their fathers, but you must try to be like your mother. In her you would find nothing that could not serve as a cherished ideal.’

He stayed in the Palais de Condé mourning for some weeks; he kept his children about him and talked continually of their mother; he longed to have his life over again, he said; he longed to turn back the clock.

But Condé’s moods changed rapidly, and this one of remorse had lasted longer than usual. There was work to be done, he declared. He could no longer stay with his family.

Isabelle was waiting for him, more alluring, more beautiful than ever. He told her of his new resolutions to lead a better life. Isabelle listened and commiserated. She knew that it would not be difficult to obliterate those new resolutions of the most charming sinner in France.


* * *

Back at court after the trip to Bayonne, Catherine had found that the feud between the Colignys and the Guises was growing dangerous. Young Henry of Guise, whom she had thought of as nothing more than a boy, seemed, with his new position and responsibilities, to have become a man. Youth though he was, he was head of his house, and he could not forget nor forgive his father’s death. Catherine saw that such enmity – as seemed always to be the case – was more than the quarrel of one man with another, more than the quarrel even of one family with another; it was once more the quarrel between one religious faction and another, just as the quarrels of Diane de Poitiers and Madame d’Étampes had been in the reign of the first Francis; and in these quarrels were the sparks which set the fire of civil war raging throughout France.