Catherine looks on with a troubled countenance. Her eyes incessantly follow the King and watch his every movement. As knight after knight is unhorsed and rolls in the dust, and loud cries and shouts of laughter rise at each discomfiture above the tumult of the fight, the anxious expression on her face never changes. Now and then, when the King, excited by the mimic warfare, deals and receives hard blows and vigorous lance thrusts, Catherine visibly trembles. Like the wife of Pilate, “she has suffered much because of a dream concerning him”—a dream that has shown him to her, disfigured and dabbled with blood, lying dead in a strange chamber.
In the early morning she had implored the King not to enter the lists, but Henry had laughed and had ridden forth wearing the colours of her rival.
Now the long day is drawing to a close; the sun is low on the horizon and the tournament is over. The King, who has fought like the son of Francis I., and broken the lances of the Ducs de Ferrara, Guise, and Nemours, has retired from the lists into his tent to unarm. The young princes have dismounted and ascended into the dais beside their mother and the brides. Catherine breathes again; the King is safe—her dream but the coinage of her brain! But hark! the faint sound of a trumpet is heard, proceeding from the extremity of the long street of Saint-Antoine. The Queen grows pale and bends her ear to listen. The sound comes nearer; it becomes more distinct at each fresh blast. Now it is at hand, and as the shrill and ill-omened notes strike her ear, a herald advances preceded by a trumpeter, and announces that a masked knight has arrived and challenges his Majesty to break a lance with him in honour of his lady.
The masked knight, habited entirely in black armour, rides into the arena. Certain of the fatal event, the Queen rises abruptly from her seat. Her countenance expresses absolute terror. She beckons hastily to the Comte d’O, who is in attendance. “Go,” says she in a low voice, speaking rapidly; “go at once to the King. Tell him if he fights with this stranger he will die!—tell him so from me. Haste! for the love of the Virgin, haste!”
No sooner has the Comte d’O left her, than, leaning over the dais, Catherine, with clasped hands and eager eyes, watches him as he crosses the enclosure. She sees him parley with the King, who is replacing his casque and arranging his armour. Henry laughs. The Queen turns to the young Comte de la Molle, who is near—“Call up hither his Majesty to me instantly. Tell him he must come up to me here before he enters the lists. It is for life or death—the life of the King. Go! fly!”
This second messenger crosses to where Henry is just mounting on horseback. “Alas! alas! he does not heed my messenger. Let me go,” cries the Queen in the most violent agitation; “I will myself descend and speak with his Majesty.” She rushes forward through the astonished courtiers to where a flight of steps leads below into the enclosure. As her foot is on the topmost stair, she sees the King gallop forth, fully equipped, in face of the masked knight. The Queen is ashy pale, her large eyes are fixed on the King, her white lips tremble. She stands motionless, supported by the balustrade. Her daughters, the brides, and her ladies gather round her, full of wonder. By a great effort she masters her agitation, and slowly turns back into a retiring-room behind the dais, and seats herself on her chair of state. Then with solemn gesture she addresses herself to the princesses—
“Elizabeth, my daughter, and you, Marguerite, come hither. My sons, Francis and Charles, come to me all of you quickly.” At her invitation they assemble around her in astonishment. “Alas! my children, you are all orphans and I am a widow. I have seen it. It is true. Now, while I speak, the lance is pointed that will pierce the King. Your father must die, my children. I know it and I cannot save him.”
While they all press with pitying looks around her, trying to console yet unable to comprehend her meaning, she slowly rises. “Let us, my children,” says she in a hollow voice, “pray for the King’s soul.” She casts herself on the ground and folds her hands in silent prayer. Her children kneel around her. There is a great silence. Then a loud cry is heard from below—“The King is wounded; the King is unhorsed; the King bleeds; en avant to the King!” Catherine rises. She is calm now and perfectly composed. She approaches the wooden steps leading into the arena below. There she sees, stretched on the ground, the King insensible, his face bathed in blood, pierced in the eye by the lance of the masked knight, who has fled. Henry is mortally wounded, and is borne, as the Queen saw in her dream, into a strange chamber in the Palace des Tournelles, hard by. After some days of horrible agony he expires, aged forty-one. The masked knight struck but a random blow, and was held innocent of all malice. He was the Sieur de Montgomeri, ancestor of the present Earls of Eglinton.
CHAPTER XI.
THE WIDOWED QUEEN.
EVEN while the King lay dying, Catherine gave a taste of her vindictive character by ordering Diane de Poitiers instantly to quit the Louvre; to deliver up the crown jewels; and to make over the possession of the Château of Chenonceau, in Touraine, to herself. Chenonceau was Catherine’s “Naboth’s vineyard.” From a girl, when she had often visited it in company with her father-in-law, Francis, she had longed to possess this lovely woodland palace, beside the clear waters of the river Cher. To her inexpressible disgust, her husband, when he became King, presented it to “the old hag,” Diane, Duchesse de Valentinois.