The Rival Queens by Nancy Goldstone

Author:Nancy Goldstone [Goldstone, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Europe, France, History, Nonfiction, Retail
ISBN: 9780316409650
Amazon: 0316409650
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2015-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

13

A Royal Hostage

Men commit injuries either through fear or through hate.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

THE FIRST WEEKS WERE THE most difficult, as Margot soon realized that Henri and Catherine had succeeded in turning the entire palace against her. “I remained a close prisoner, without a visit from a single person, none of my most intimate friends daring to come near me, through the apprehension that such a step might prove injurious to their interests. Thus it is ever in Courts,” she observed bitterly. “Adversity is solitary, while prosperity dwells in a crowd.” Only one of her former familiars, a lord named Grillon, defied the king’s order and, at risk to his own safety, insisted on attempting to comfort her in her solitude. “Brave Grillon… came five or six times to see me, and my guards were so much astonished at his resolution, and awed by his presence, that not a single Cerberus of them all would venture to refuse him entrance to my apartments,” Marguerite recounted fiercely in gratitude.

However, like her former sister-in-law Mary Stuart, who was similarly constrained under house arrest by Elizabeth I, the queen of Navarre seems to have managed to circumvent at least some of the restrictions of her captivity. She contrived, for example, to smuggle letters in and out of court by bribing the servants, a stratagem that brought her news of the outside world. In this way she learned that she was not quite so bereft of allies as Henri would have her believe: her brother François had learned of her imprisonment and was threatening retaliatory measures if his sister were not released. “Some few days after I had been put under arrest, my brother had intelligence of it, which chagrined him so much that… [he wrote] to the Queen my mother, informing her that, if I was thus treated, he should be driven upon some desperate measure,” Marguerite reported triumphantly.

But certainly the most unexpected—and encouraging—message she received while a prisoner came from her husband. Henry might have sneered at her while in Paris, but he was induced to change his mind upon his return to Navarre. “Meanwhile, the King my husband reached the States under his government. Being joined there by his friends and dependents, they all represented to him the indignity offered to me by his quitting the Court without taking leave of me,” Margot wrote. “They observed to him… that it would be for his interest to regain my esteem; that… he might derive to himself great advantage from my presence at Court. Now that he was at a distance from his Circe, Madame de Sauves, he could listen to good advice… Accordingly, he wrote me a very affectionate letter, wherein he entreated me to forget all that had passed betwixt us, assuring me that from thenceforth he would ever love me, and would give me every demonstration that he did so, desiring me to inform him of what was going on at Court, and how it fared with me and my brother.

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