Dark Eminence Catherine De Medici And Her Children by Marguerite Vance (good e books to read .TXT) 📗

palace. Elizabeth sat back on her heels on the giant cushion beside her mother's chair, toying with the jeweled pomander hanging by its heavy gold chain from her waist. It smelled de-liciously of verbena and clove and crushed rose petals. "Is he?" she repeated.

Catherine turned from the documents she had been reading, her mind obviously still on their contents. Her child was asking a question, but what was it? "Is he what, child? And of whom are you speaking?" The scent of the pomander rose to her nostrils and, like any mother, she thought how like a

lovely flower was this girl looking up at her with such a trusting, artless expression. Just a little of Mary Stuart's laughing sophistication, little as she liked it, would have made the question easier to answer. The Queen Consort laid her hand for a moment on her daughter's head.

"Oh, I remember now, it was His Highness, Don Carlos, you were speaking of. No, he has not a merry heart. He—he is a sad young prince. Mayhap, well, mayhap a young bride with laughter in her heart could change him, and/' she added, "as he is heir to the greatest empire in the world there are doubtless many royal maidens eager for the chance."

She was tempted to enlarge on the theme, for it was very close to her heart, but she thought better of it. Why tell this hypersensitive child the truth: that Don Carlos was by any standards a monster, a mentally sick human being? that he delighted in torturing small animals and birds? that when angered he belabored his tutors and governors with any weapon on which he could lay his hands? that his favorite sport was to gather a company of young noblemen together and with them, riding four abreast, to gallop deliberately through the narrowest streets of the city, riding down anyone, regardless of age or condition, who happened to be in their path? Why needlessly torment her with this knowledge when, unless plans miscarried, she soon would be his bride?

"Nay, Elizabeth/' she repeated, "Don Carlos is not of a merry heart, but that is of no great concern. Your brother also is of a sober mien, yet who could be a more gallant prince than he? Her Majesty, the future Queen Dauphiness, will be blest, indeed, to have him for her husband,"

That had been several months ago. Now Francis was called the King Dauphin and the crowns of Scotland and France were united in his arms. Elizabeth, the romantic, gentle dreamer, tried to think of that brother as King with the grave responsibilities kingship entailed; tried to picture Mary, the gay, the beautiful, the naively flirtatious, as his wife. How was it all possible? And Don Carlos, the fabulous wealth of Spain, faraway Madrid. How should any of this touch her own life?

Strange, indeed, how in any age wholly unrelated incidents should be able to mold the course of lives distant both in time and place. For instance, in England Mary Tudor, half-sister of England's Queen Elizabeth, died knowing her handsome Spanish husband, Philip II of Spain, did not love her, never had loved her. Throughout Europe his name was dreaded as that of one of the most fanatical persecutors of heresy. He was suave, cultured, charming and cruel. He spent hours on his knees in prayer, made countless pilgrimages to shrines, and kept the fires of the Inquisition burning. Inconsistent, erratic, and now a widower, he bethought himself of a new wife. His half-sister-in-law, Elizabeth of England, he had always found fascinating, but Elizabeth was as staunchly Protestant as Philip was Catholic, so any thought of a marriage between them was out of the question.

However (and one wonders by what process of reasoning Philip reached this point), there was that beautiful French princess whose mother had sanctioned, nay encouraged her betrothal to his son, Don Carlos—Elizabeth of Valois. What of her? And what of Don Carlos? Philip un-

doubtedly shrugged off the distasteful thought. Impossible young savage, Don Carlos! Hadn't he boxed his ears just recently? Besides, there were still many details to be completed before a betrothal could be achieved. Reports had come to him—actually at Mary's funeral—of the grace and royal bearing of the Princess. Again it had been said more recently that at the marriage of her brother, the Dauphin, she had been acclaimed by those who dared whisper it even more beautiful than the bride! Now Philip must see her or at least know more about her.

Very simply, then, he had his own name substituted in all the lengthy documents drawn up between the Houses of Hapsburg and Valois pertaining to the betrothal of Don Carlos and the Princess Elizabeth. This was in January, 1559. That Don Carlos gave way to a fit of violent rage at his father s consummate audacity was to be expected, but what of Elizabeth?

Though Don Carlos was known to her as rather a sullen boy, someone she had no desire to meet, the name of King Philip, his father, filled her with abject terror. Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom he was known as His Most Catholic Majesty, a monarch who tolerated no slightest liberty of thought in any of his subjects toward the established Church; to question a single tenet of the Church was to light a fagot. He sincerely believed, in a transport of religious zeal, that he was the divinely appointed exterminator of heresy in the civilized world and his dreadful work of extermination was no respecter of age or rank.

His great love was Spain and his contempt for all things

not Spanish roused the indignation of his foreign subjects everywhere. He refused throughout his life to speak or read any language but his own Castilian Spanish. He followed the Spanish fashions in clothing and left the country of his birth only when it was absolutely necessary for political reasons. He was haughty and