‘And rich enough to be your wife.’

‘I tell you I will have none of it.’

‘You will have to be reasonable, my son.’

‘Madame, I would beg of you to reconsider this matter.’

‘I have already carefully considered it. Have you? Think! A crown … the crown of England will be yours.’

He was wild, that boy, conceited, arrogant and a lover of intrigue. She took him to Amboise and kept him a prisoner there. One could not be sure what such a wilful boy would do to wreck his proposed marriage with the Virgin Queen.

‘And now that I have my little frog safe at Amboise,’ said Catherine to the King, ‘I must set about the marrying of Margot.’

When Catherine received Margot in her apartments and told her who was to be her husband, Margot’s eyes blazed with contempt and horror.

‘I … marry Henry of Navarre! That oaf!’

‘My dear daughter, it is not every Princess who has the chance to become a Queen.’

‘The Queen of Navarre!’

‘Your great-aunt was a clever and beautiful woman – the most intellectual of her day – and she did not scorn the title.’

‘Nevertheless, I scorn it.’

‘You will grow used to the idea.’

‘I never shall.’

‘When you renew your acquaintance with your old friend, you will grow fond of him.’

‘He was never my friend, and I was never fond of him. I never could be. I dislike him. He is a coarse philanderer.’

‘My dear daughter! Then you will, I know, have some tastes in common.’

Margot steeled herself to conquer her fear of her mother and to answer boldly: ‘I was prevented from marrying the only man I wished to marry. I therefore claim the right to choose my own husband.’

‘You are a fool,’ said Catherine. ‘Think not that I will endure any of your tantrums.’

‘I am a Catholic. How could I marry a Huguenot?’

‘It may be that we shall make a Catholic of him.’

‘I thought I was to marry him because he is a Huguenot, so that the Huguenots might fight with the Catholics against Spain.’

Catherine sighed. ‘My daughter, the policy of a country may change daily. What applies to-day does not necessarily apply tomorrow. How do I know whether Henry of Navarre will remain Huguenot or Catholic? How do I know what France will require of him?’

‘I hate Henry of Navarre.’

‘You talk like a fool,’ said Catherine, and forthwith dismissed her daughter. She had no serious qualms about Margot’s ultimate obedience.

Margot went to her room and lay on her bed, dry-eyed and full of wretchedness.

‘I will not. I will not!’ she kept saying to herself; but she could not shut out of her mind the memory of her mother’s cold eyes, and she knew that what her mother willed must always come to pass.


* * *

There was a constant flow of letters from Catherine arriving at Jeanne’s stronghold in La Rochelle.

‘You must come to court,’ wrote Catherine. ‘I long to see you. Bring those dear children – as dear to me as my own. I assure you with all my heart that no harm shall come to you or to them.’

Jeanne thought of all those years when her beloved son had been withheld from her. What if she allowed him once more to walk into the trap! She could never forget what had happened to Antoine. He had been her dear and loving husband; their domestic life had been a joy; and then one day had come the summons to go to court; he had gone, and soon there were those evil rumours; quickly he had fallen under the spell of La Belle Rouet, as Catherine had intended he should. After that he had even changed his religion. It was as though the serpent’s fangs had pierced him, not to kill, but to infect him with that venom, that particular brand of poison which she kept for the weak. And Henry, Jeanne’s son, was young, and far too susceptible to the charms of fair women. What Catherine had done to the father, she no doubt planned to do to the son.

Jeanne sat down and wrote to the Queen Mother:

‘Madame, you tell me that you want to see us – and that it is not for any evil purpose. Forgive me if, when I read your letters, I felt an inclination to laugh. For you try to do away with a fear which I have never felt. I do not believe you eat little children … as folks say you do.’

Catherine read and reread that letter.

They were enemies – this Queen and herself. They had been so from the beginning of their acquaintance. Always Catherine was aware of a vague hatred of this woman, which was outside the normal irritation which her character – so different from Catherine’s – always aroused in the Queen Mother. Always Catherine was aware of an uneasiness when she thought of Jeanne. She would like to see her dead; she was, in any case, one of those people who the Duke of Alva had declared must be removed; she was dangerous, and her death would give undoubted pleasure to the King of Spain. ‘I do not believe you eat little children … as some folks say you do.’ One day perhaps, Jeanne would see that Catherine could be as deadly as those words implied.

But not yet. The marriage agreements had to be signed, and they must be signed by the Queen of Navarre, for she was the controller of her son’s fate.

Well, the bait was surely big enough to bring Jeanne to court – marriage for her son with the daughter of the House of Valois, the King’s sister, the daughter of the Queen Mother. Surely that must attract even the pious Queen of Navarre.

But Jeanne prevaricated. There were religious difficulties, she wrote.

‘That, Madame,’ answered Catherine, ‘is a matter that we must discuss when we are together. I doubt not that we shall come to a satisfactory arrangement.’

‘Madame,’ wrote Jeanne, ‘I hear that the Papal Legate is at Blois. I could not, you will understand, visit the court while he is there.’

It was true, for the Pope had sent him; fearing a match between Huguenot Henry of Navarre and the Catholic Princess, he was now suggesting Sebastian of Portugal once more for Margot.

But now Catherine fervently wished for war with Spain; she was fascinated by her dreams of a French Empire, and she wanted Coligny to lead France to victory. If she were to bring Catholics and Huguenots together to fight against Spain, the marriage between Henry of Navarre and Margot would help to bring this about.

‘Then come to Chenonceaux, dear cousin,’ she wrote to Jeanne. ‘There we will meet and talk to our heart’s content. Bring your dear son with you. I long to embrace him.’

Jeanne’s nights were haunted with troubled dreams, and in these dreams the Queen Mother figured largely. Her very words seemed to Jeanne to suggest sinister intentions. She ‘longed to embrace’ Henry. What she had in mind was to lure him away from his mother, to draw him into the sensuous life of the court, to get her sirens to work on him … to turn him into her creature as she had his father.

But the match with the Princess of France was a good one. Jeanne looked ahead into a hazy future. If, by some act of God, all Catherine’s sons died leaving no heir, well then, young Henry of Navarre was very near the throne, and a Valois Princess as his wife would bring him nearer.

So at last Jeanne set out for the court, but she did not take Henry with her. Instead, she took her little daughter Catherine.

She admonished Henry before she left: ‘No matter what letters arrive from the Queen Mother, no matter what commands, heed them not. Do nothing except you receive word from me.’

Henry kissed his mother farewell. He was quite happy to stay behind, for at this moment he was enjoying a particularly satisfactory love affair with the daughter of a humble citizen, and he had no wish to leave her arms for those of the spitfire Margot.


* * *

Margot was dressing to meet the Queen of Navarre.

‘That puritanical woman!’ she said to her women. ‘That Huguenot! I despise them both – the woman and her son!’

She painted her face; she put on a gown of scarlet velvet, cut low to expose her breasts. She would do all in her power to drive the good woman back whence she had come.

Catherine glared at her daughter when she saw her, but there was no time to send her back to her room to change her appearance. And when Catherine saw that Jeanne had arrived without her son, she was not sorry for Margot’s defiance.

Jeanne bowed low and received the kisses of ceremony. Catherine put her fingers under the chin of her little namesake and tilted the child’s face upwards. ‘My dear little god-daughter! I am delighted to see you at court, although I so deeply regret the absence of your brother.’

Catherine was determined that there should be no discussions on the subject which Jeanne had come to talk about until the ceremonies were over. She was amused to see Jeanne’s disgust at the court manners, and the boldness of the women. She was amused to watch Jeanne’s contemplation of her prospective daughter-in-law; she was as amused at Margot’s sly determination to make herself as unacceptable as possible by flaunting her extravagant clothes and her loose behaviour with the courtiers. Catherine laughed to herself. She knew that Huguenot Jeanne was at heart an ambitious mother, and that for all her piety she would be unable to resist this dazzling marriage for her son. Jeanne would be ready to endure a good deal in order to put Henry a step nearer to the throne.

The weeks that followed were painful to Jeanne, but full of amusement to Catherine, for Catherine delighted in prodding her enemy into anger. It was not difficult. The Queen of Navarre was notoriously frank. She said straight out that she disliked the licentiousness of the court, the masques and plays which were performed; these, Catherine told her, were done in her honour. But the plays were all comedies – for Catherine believed tragedies to be unlucky – ribald or risqué; and both the Queen Mother and her daughter slyly watched the effect of them on the Queen of Navarre.