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for her guests.
    Looking about her, Catherine remarked, ‘There are so many nobles here that every evening in the ballroom I could fancy I was still in Bayonne, if only I could see the Queen, my daughter. And everybody dances together: Huguenots, Papists and all, so smoothly that it is impossible to believe that they are as they are. If God willed that they were as wise elsewhere as they are here, we should at last be at rest.’
    ‘We would indeed, Your Majesty,’ Jeanne agreed, but both queens knew this to be a dream that neither would see fulfilled.
     
    Gaspard de Coligny read the letter from Jeanne in his beloved rose garden at the family home, the Château de Châtillon-sur-Loing. He was a sober, kindly, family man who loved his wife, his children, and his garden almost as much as he did his religion and his country. He’d enjoyed a pious and simple upbringing with his three brothers: Pierre, who had died young, Odet who had become a cardinal, and Andelot whose career was very much parallel to his own.
    He had no love of war and no appetite for torture, unlike some of the generals, nor did he tolerate insurrection within the ranks: no pillage, robbery, loose women or dice games. He made stout laws for his troops and did not flinch at ensuring they were kept, considering himself tough but fair; a solemn and ruthless advocate of justice, as well as a ferocious foe on the battlefield. Because of this, his men honoured and followed him.
    Coligny read the Queen of Navarre’s warning with the kind of stoic indifference one would expect from an old soldier. Later in the day he received another message from the Queen Mother, which troubled him more.
    ‘Her Majesty is demanding that you go to court and take part in a reconciliation with the Guises,’ Téligny informed him, his tone brittle with anxiety. He was the son of a respected Huguenot family and a young soldier whom Coligny had taken into his home for training in arms and the art of diplomacy.
    ‘Does she indeed?’
    The Guises had seen him as their enemy ever since the murder of the head of their house, Francis, Duc de Guise, two years ago in 1563. The murder had been committed by one Poltrot de Méry, a Protestant who had sworn he was Coligny’s agent, no doubt under torture as he’d later retracted his confession. Despite there being no sound evidence the Guises remained convinced of Coligny’s guilt. Paris too was ready enough to believe the charge, being Catholic and passionate in their support of Francis’s son, the dashing young Henri of Guise.
    Poltrot had been swiftly and publicly despatched, torn into four parts by strong horses whipped to north, south, east and west, but Coligny had so far escaped unharmed, if still an object of loathing to the Guises.
    Now he could not help but wonder what game the Queen Mother was playing by demanding this reconciliation. Clearly she saw the enmity between the two families as a danger to the nation’s peace, and perhaps to the King. But one could never be sure with Catherine that she might not be playing a double game: that she wished for the appearance of peace between them, while at the same time with her serpent’s guile she made other plans.
    ‘Have I not sufficiently demonstrated my innocence by proving the money I paid to Poltrot was for a horse?’
    ‘The Guises claim to possess an incriminating letter.’
    ‘Yet they have never produced such a document, because it does not exist.’
    ‘They must see that you are not the kind of man to involve yourself in treachery. You are upright and honourable. Why do they not remember how friendly you once were with Francis?’
    A wistful sadness crept over the older man’s face as he smiled in recollection. ‘Indeed, that is so. Did I not keep him well supplied with the pick of the crop of my best melons?’
    ‘It would be unwise for you to go to court, Monsieur.’
    ‘My relationship with the King has ever been a good one,’ Coligny demurred, while privately