The poisoned chalice

she had been married to Francis, Mary might have had a harder time for he was a consummate bed player. As one of his courtiers later whispered to me, 'He slips readily into the gardens of others and drinks water from many fountains.' Oh, yes, Francis was ardent, he had his own petite bande, a group of young blondes led by Madame D'Estampes who joined in the antics on the black satin sheets of his bed. Do you know, at Fontainebleau he set up a system of mirrors so he could watch his young ladies pose and inspect them from every angle, whilst his palaces were full of secret passageways with peep-holes in every bedroom for Francis was deeply interested in the sexual exploits of others.
    (Poor Francis! Yes, I say 'poor'. At Fontainebleau he was full of the juices of spring but that's before he caught syphilis and his nether parts began to drop off. He got it from La Belle Fertoniere: her husband knew she had syphilis and allowed Francis to seduce her. King Francis became so rotten that when they took his corpse to St Denis they had to put it in a lead coffin. It still stank and his nobles were so keen to avoid the putrid smell, they sent waxen images of themselves to the church. Can you imagine it? A church full of wax statues mourning a waxen image?)
    Ah, the passage of time! When I met Francis on the first occasion in that throne room, life had not turned sour for him. He was still the great lover, and the woman beside him was the reason for his constant philandering. Queen Claude – or 'Clod' as the courtiers called her – was fat, lame and revolting. Yet she had a kind heart! (Ah, there goes my clerk, the clever little fool: 'You're no better than Henry VIII!' he cries. 'You, too, regard women as objects of lust!' What the hell does the little hypocrite know? Don't you worry, some of the women I've met have proved to be the most formidable of foes. Like little Catherine de Medici who married King Francis's son, Henry. She practised the black arts. Oh, yes, I know about the secret metal box she owned; her turreted chamber at Blois with its magic mirror which told her the future; and her employment of that terrible prophet Nostradamus who prophesied the end of the world. I'll tell you some other time about Catherine's special squad of ladies, the Escadron Volant, whom she used to seduce her opponents. I'll finish with this about women: they make the best of friends and the worst of enemies! A man forgives and forgets. A woman can forgive but she never forgets. You mark Shallot's words!)
    Now in that room at Fontainebleau so many years ago, I studied Francis but my eyes were drawn to that bloody ring which sparkled on the fourth finger of his left hand. I knew it was the one Henry wanted back. The French king, his elbows resting on the arms of the throne, kept playing with the ring, taking it on and off, twirling it around, whilst throwing heavy-lidded glances and the soupcon of a smirk at Benjamin and myself. Beside him Vauban seemed to share the joke; that extraordinary bastard leaned against the arm of the throne as if he was the king's brother, openly stifling a yawn at Dacourt's ponderous phrases.
    The ambassador, however, kept rambling on. Lord, I thought, he'll never shut up. I even considered swooning so as to get out of the room when suddenly a secret door just behind the throne was thrown open and the most incredible sight emerged: a man, black as night, well over two yards high. A crimson turban was wrapped round his head, the upper part of his body was bare except for gold bands round his arms and wrists. He wore white, baggy trousers which billowed like silken sails and red, high-heeled, velvet slippers with ornately curled toes. Dacourt stopped speaking and gaped like a carp. The big, black mameluke was an eye-catching sight but the beasts which went before him on silver chains were really alarming. Two great cats, amber-eyed, with tufted ears and spotted skins of burnished gold, padded as soft as death across the polished floor. The French king suddenly stirred, laughed and clapped his hands. 'Akim, you're late!'
    The mameluke grinned vacuously, his mouth opening like a great, red cavern. I closed my eyes in disgust. Where the tongue should have been was a rag of skin.
    'Monsieur Dacourt,' Francis announced in perfect English, 'I apologise for the tardy arrival and abrupt interruption of your eloquent speech by Akim and his cats. By the way, I call them Gabriel and Raphael. They are a gift from the