This time, Henri sat at my side on the dais, and while we didn't look at each other I was certain the hour at hand loomed in both our minds. So much, in fact, that I couldn't eat anything of the fifty-seven courses set before us in dizzying succession nor feign my delight in the gifts that the nobles piled at our feet.

At the stroke of midnight, the hundreds of courtiers crammed into the palace corridors to cheer us on to our nuptial suite. I surrendered my wedding gown for a white lawn nightdress and was led into the adjoining room. Henri stood by a vast bed hung with garlands, talking to his friend with the hawk's stare. My husband wore a translucent linen shift that clung to his muscular body like wet skin. Most women, and some men, would have been overjoyed to have such a man in their bed. Maybe in some part of me, I was too, for my heart thumped like a drum. I also felt queasy as I avoided his friend Francis de Guise's leering smile and allowed Lucrezia to tuck me under the covers. The bishop blessed the bed; the courtiers drank a final salute to our happiness, and the tapers were doused. Everyone left to resume their revels.

Silence descended. I lay utterly still.

I wasn't ignorant of what people did on their wedding night. Lucrezia had given me a brief explanation and I had seen dogs mating; still, the thought was not appealing.

He rose from the bed. My breath hissed through my teeth. He wouldn't dare leave me alone! Then a flame flared, and he stepped from the shadows with a candle. He set the candle at the bedside, sat on the mattress, and cleared his throat.

"I wish to apologize for any offense I may have caused you."

At the sound of these, his first words to me, I shifted up on my pillows.

"I failed to greet you when we first met," he added. "My behavior was inexcusable."

His apology sounded stilted and I suspected the king had reprimanded him.

"It was," I said. "Surely I did nothing to merit such offense."

He glanced away. The candle flame cast a wavering shadow across his chin. Thus would he look someday, I thought, when he grew a beard. He was very handsome, even if he still smelled like a goatherd, but that didn't mean I should care for him. In fact, I sensed it would go far better for me if I did not.

"No, you did nothing," he said at length. "Though there are those who say ..." He raised his eyes back to me. His look was cool, impersonal. "Some say this marriage isn't worthy of me."

I was taken aback. "Not worthy? How so?"

Now it was his turn to look discomfited. He hadn't expected me to question him. What, did wives not have tongues in France?

"I should think it's obvious," he said, with a stiff lift of his chin. "I am a prince of France, while you ... you are the daughter of wool merchants."

I remained quite still against my pillows. I'd never heard anyone describe me thus and for a moment I almost laughed aloud, it was so absurd. My amusement died when I realized he was serious. He believed I was beneath him.

"My family may come from modest origins," I said, "but we now count among us two popes and several lords. In Italy, families like mine are considered noble, as we've-"

"I know about your family," he interrupted. He'd not expected my candor, either, it seemed; tears and maidenly pleas, yes, but never candor. Every moment that passed deepened my contempt. He was like any boy forced to do something against his will, eager to maim the object of his discomfort without a thought for the consequences.

"Still, you are fortunate to have a prince in your bed," he went on, and I knew these weren't his words. He might believe them now that he'd been apprised, but someone else had put this malicious notion in his head, someone he trusted. Who?

I wasn't about to defend myself to him, though a part of me wanted to remind him that my origins sufficed for his father, who'd hankered after my country for years and taken my dowry money and my uncle the pope's promise of future duchies, quick as you please. Instead I said, "Indeed. It's a great honor."

He stood silent, chest and jaw thrust out like a fighting cock's. "Of course, I don't fault you for your lack of lineage. I'm sure you would have preferred to remain in Italy with your people."

I was silent. I would never admit aloud how little I had left to mourn in my native land.

"And I'm told this needn't be disagreeable," he said, interpreting my silence for agreement. "If we do as required, in time we can live as husband and wife."

It was a night of truth. I wasn't yet fifteen, a novice in matters of the heart, but even I knew a successful marriage did not depend on personal preference. Women like me often wed strangers. If they had survived the disappointment, so could I.

I nodded. Satisfied, he blew out the candle and slid back under the covers. "Good night," he said, and he turned over. Within seconds, his breathing deepened, punctuated by a guttural snore. He slept like a man well exercised, which, in a manner of speaking, he was.

I stayed awake for hours, staring up at the dark emptiness of the bed canopy.

SEVEN.

FROM MARSEILLES WE TRAVELED TO THE VALLEY OF THE LOIRE in the heart of France.

Surrounded by laughing men in fitted velvets and bold ladies with painted faces, along with hundreds of carts bearing precarious loads of furniture, utensils, carpets, and tapestries-everything the court might need-I was in awe. Nothing I'd seen in Italy could compare to this court's extravagance, snaking along the roads like a multicolored ribbon frayed at its edges by a cacophonous multitude of servants and barking hounds, the king always at its center, surrounded by his men. I often glimpsed a striking red-haired lady at his side, clad in jade satin, her long throat glistening with jewels, her hand touching Francois with familiar intimacy. She was not presented to me, but I guessed she must be his mistress and I thought of his staid Spanish queen, who'd bid me a stiff good-bye in Marseilles and gone another direction with her entourage.

And the land we traversed was astonishing-so immense it made Italy seem like a calcified spine. I beheld well-fed vales under luminous skies that arched overhead like azure-painted vaults; majestic forests that spread as far as the horizon and fertile fields cradling spacious townships, where livestock grazed in wide paddocks and rivers sloped in sinuous curves under stone bridges. At my side Lucrezia rode as wide-eyed and open-mouthed as me; and Anna-Maria, who'd weathered our travels with admirable nonchalance, whispered, "It's like something out of a storybook. It doesn't seem real."

I couldn't have said it better. France was an enchanted realm, and I thought I could be happy here in ways I had not foreseen: free to create myself anew without the weight of the past. Anything seemed possible in such a beautiful country; and when the king caught my eye he winked, as if he could sense my thoughts, and he leaned to my ear to whisper, "Wait until you see my Chateau of Fontainebleau. You will discover that I've spared no expense in creating a palace worthy to hold its own even among the Medici."

He was right. Fontainebleau emerged from the alabaster mists of the Loire Valley like a fantastical dream, the first place in France I would call home. From stucco nymphs that seemed to writhe on the wainscoting of its gilded great gallery to lavish corridors festooned with the king's prized collection of paintings, including Leonardo da Vinci's superb Madonna of the Rocks and his odd little Giaconda, I recognized Francois's passion for everything Italian. He had sought to re-create a vision of my land that I no longer held, one of supreme artistry and extroverted exuberance, and he was so delighted in my interest he even took me on a personal tour of his chateau, pointing out the oleander-dusted grottoes that echoed courtyards of Tuscany and bathing chambers that boasted heated floors and mosaics like those of ancient Rome.

I soon discovered that Henri and I weren't expected to share a household. Indeed, royal couples don't coexist as other married people do. Queen Eleanor was never at court, preferring to reside in houses designated for her personal use, and I took this tactic model as my cue. I let Birago oversee my affairs and plunged into my new life, which included lessons with the princesses Madeleine and Marguerite.

As I had hoped, we became fast friends.

Thirteen-year-old Madeleine was a delicate creature, fashioned of porcelain skin and weak lungs. She adored poetry, which she read even in periods of illness, and many afternoons I spent at her bedside, reciting aloud. In contrast, ten-year-old Marguerite was tall and robust like her father, a freckled redhead with a spirit that exceeded any boundaries imposed on us. At first she was content to test my mettle with my knowledge of Cicero and Plato; once the classroom grew too confining, she took me on outings to explore Fontainebleau's less apparent wonders. We were never alone at first; our ladies shadowed and chided us, until with a boisterous laugh, Marguerite grabbed my hand and yanked me, running and breathless, away from our dismayed companions, who squawked in distress, unable to keep up with us in their court gowns.

"Look at them." Marguerite chuckled when we reached our destination and I doubled over to catch my breath. "Like hens with nothing better to do than flap their wings. I'll never be like that when I'm old enough to decide my own life. I will never be a useless woman."

"Of course not," I said, in unabashed admiration. She seemed quite grown up in my eyes, and everything I longed to be. "You are a princess. You can do whatever you like."

"True." Her green eyes met mine. "I am a princess. But even princesses can't do as they please, without the will to fight. Look at you: weren't you married off without as much as a by-your-leave to my brother?"

She didn't mean to offend. She stated the matter as she saw it. But the mention of Henri stung all the same. I remembered what he had said about me and suspected that, like him, others in this court regarded me as an upstart foreigner with little to commend her.

"I don't lack will," I retorted. "Many princes vied for my hand. Your father made the best offer, but Henri means nothing to me."

Her eyes sparkled. "Naturally. He's your husband. You can always take a lover once you bear him sons. Look at Papa: he had to wed Charles V's sister but that hasn't stopped him from seeking his pleasure. He has his Petite Bande of ladies to entertain him. One day, so shall we."

I thought of the red-haired woman I'd seen with the king and ignored the mention of childbearing, unlikely at this stage in my marriage. I said slyly, "Ladies?" and Marguerite giggled. "Well, there are women who prefer it. But I'll have a dozen gentlemen instead. My father's sister, my aunt Marguerite, was like that before she wed the king of Navarre. She had men hanging on her every word, reciting her poems aloud, and professing their undying love."

Oh, she was bold. I couldn't resist her uninhibited spirit. Marguerite showed me more of the world than I'd ever seen. She purloined books from the king's private library, which illustrated astonishing acts of fornication, and dragged me off to the pavilion by Fontainebleau's artificial lake where lovers often had their trysts.

Hunched down in the gooseberry, we spied through the branches as the pictures we'd gaped over turned to flesh before our eyes. I knew that the act those ladies with their splayed thighs and gentlemen with their pumping hips enjoyed was what should have happened to me on my wedding night and consoled myself that one day I would indeed, as Marguerite professed, take a lover so I might experience for myself those mysterious desires of the heart.

Not all was fun and games. Though I delighted in the independence that let me wander at will, at liberty to indulge my newfound interest in art and books, I realized being a princess of France was much like being a Medici; the king's daughters dwelled always under the expectations of their rank. One day, they too would wed, leave for distant courts, where they would be strangers representing their nation. And the classroom was their training ground. Here, we spent six hours every day, adhering to a regimen of mathematics, history, languages, and music, as Madeleine showed me upon opening her notebook one morning. "We had a mythology lesson yesterday."

"Taught by old Snigger-Puss," Marguerite interjected. "But today I told him we felt a touch of ague. You know how he fears sickness-almost as much as he does soap and water."

"Sinigiar-Puss," I repeated, the French name eluding me. Marguerite enunciated: "Snigger-Puss. We call him that because he wears dusty robes and snuffles like an old cat."

Madeleine piped in. "But he's very kind. He always gives us high marks."

"He can't do otherwise," Marguerite reminded her, laughing. "Papa brought him from Flanders to teach us. He's a Humanist; all our tutors are Humanists. Papa says they're the best instructors because they liberate the mind without subjugating the spirit."

"What about your brothers?" I asked. "Do they also study with you?" I'd not seen Henri in weeks and had begun to wonder if we were expected to be estranged like the king and his queen. The forbidden trips to watch the lovers by the lake had reawakened the private worry that my marriage was not as it should be.

"Oh, no!" said Marguerite. "Our brother Francois has his own household and obligations as dauphin. But he visits sometimes."

I couldn't ask about Henri. They'd assume I knew about his life, when in fact all I'd managed to glean thus far was that he stayed close to his friend Francis de Guise and liked to hunt a lot. Still, it might not be too revealing if I asked if he attended lessons here ...

The classroom door burst open. With exuberant cries the princesses rushed to greet their father, who swept them up in his arms. Not for the first time, I felt a pang of emptiness; while I had been received at Francois's court as though I were one of his children, I now understood what it was like to have a father. I had never felt like an orphan until I saw the king with his daughters, and I stood apart awkwardly, feeling I didn't belong.

Francois put an arm about Marguerite's waist and pinched Madeleine's cheek. He cast a smile in my direction. "What?" he declared in mock severity. "No lessons today?"

Marguerite said, "We sent Snigger-Puss away. We wanted to spend time with Catherine."

"Snigger-Puss, eh? And do you think that a suitable name to teach your new sister?"

"She might as well learn it now," said Marguerite. "Then she can devote herself to her Aristotle and Plutarch without wondering why her teacher smells like mold."

Francois roared laughter. "Did you hear that, Anne, my love? She says her teachers smell! Mon Dieu, what a mouth she has. A sword cuts less."

"Indeed," replied a cultured voice. "It seems Her Highness is cut from the same cloth as her father," and the red-haired lady in green stepped from among a group of women who had slipped in, trailing skirt-tails and perfume. Marguerite had told me who she was: Anne d'Heilly, duchesse d'etampes, Francois's mistress and more of a queen at court than his wife would ever be. With her wide feline eyes and abundant coppery hair entwined with pearls, she moved to Francois, nodding at the princesses before directing the full power of her regard on me. "And how fares our petite italianne? Is she growing accustomed to our ways?"

I glanced at the king. He lifted his brow as if to encourage me. Swallowing the knot in my throat, I returned my gaze to his mistress. "Madame, I've felt at home from the moment I arrived. I love France."

"Is that so?" Her carmine mouth parted in a cold smile. "How charming. It's not every day that France has the opportunity to win over a piece of Italy, is it?"

I didn't know what to say to this and hastened to my stool as the king sat between his daughters. The duchess wafted past me to her women, her skirts brushing my legs. I sensed icy restraint as she perched on the upholstered window seat. The women arranged themselves about her, a bevy of privileged airs and overdone faces. Her eyes seemed indolent. Even as I felt them fix on me, I didn't dare meet her gaze. Then suddenly Francois exclaimed: "Did you hear that, Anne? Madeleine says Catherine has already mastered Plutarch."

"Has she?" drawled the duchess. Her habit of turning everything she said into a question gnawed at my nerves. "She must be quite advanced. I hope she won't find her time here wasted."

"Oh, I won't," I cried, startling everyone. "I won't at all, madame!" Maybe I thought she'd deny me these hours in the classroom with the princesses or maybe she'd unnerved me with her unblinking stare. Whichever the case, I trembled from head to foot as she took a long, appraising look at me and rose with daunting resolve.

"Your Majesty, I believe it is time for the duchesse d'Orleans and me to become better acquainted. Perhaps Their Highnesses would enjoy a stroll in the garden?"

Duchesse d'Orleans; she wanted to speak with one of her women. I rose quickly, to flee. "My dear," she drawled, "where are you going? You are the duchess, n'est-ce pas?"

I froze. Everyone filed out, leaving me alone with the royal mistress.

She motioned me to the window seat and I obeyed. Dear God, what had I done? How had I offended? "Their Highnesses are quite taken with you," she said. "You excel at making friends, it seems."

"Their Highnesses, they ... they are kind. I ... I enjoy their company."

"As you should. Yet being the married one, you must also set an example." She draped her arm across her chair, exposing a dazzling emerald bracelet. "Do you understand?"

My mouth went dry. "No, madame. Have I displeased His Majesty in some way?"

Her laughter was brief, a seductive vibrato. "On the contrary. He too is quite taken with you. Enchanted, in fact. I, on the other hand ..." She left her chair to step before me. Her nail caught me under my chin. "I do not like rivals, little one."

I stared at her. "But I ... I am no rival. How could I be?"

She flicked her hand. "You're almost fifteen. At your age, I was considered quite a force."

"But I am not like you. I could never challenge you."

She hesitated. A spontaneous smile warmed her face. "You don't understand, do you?"

I went limp. "I fear not."

She perched beside me, so close I smelled ambergris on her throat. "I don't see how you've avoided the rumors; it's the talk of the court. They say as your husband pays you no mind, you'd lure Francois to your bed to prove he wasn't a fool to bring you here."

I gasped. "He's my father-in-law! I love him, yes, but not like that. It ... it would be incest."

"Only if you're related by blood," she purred, and a remarkable transformation overcame her. One moment she'd been a fearsome personage; now, with her hair about her face like a halo and laughter on her lips, she became a mischievous girl. I could see why Francois adored her.

She regarded me with open curiosity. "I do believe you are indeed what everyone says you cannot be: an innocent. And I, it seems, have been deceived. I believed you sought to take him from me. Mind you, you wouldn't be the first."

I couldn't move. The court mocked me. They deemed me a neglected, conniving wife. They talked about me behind my back.

The duchess said softly, "What are you thinking?"

I averted my eyes. My voice failed me. I felt like a simpleton before such polished sophistication, even as I longed to spill out my misgivings to her.

She sighed. "I see. Not everything the court says is false."

She spoke with such assurance, as if the secret were branded on my face, that I had no will to pretend otherwise. "Yes," I whispered. "Henri ... he doesn't care for me."

"Oh, my dear, does his indifference hurt you so much? You want him to love you and you resent that he's so devoted to his friend Guise and that horrid mistress of his."

A pit opened inside me. "He ... he has a mistress?"

"Why, yes." She waved a hand. "Everyone knows. Or at least we think we do. No one is quite sure who she is to him, exactly. She was his governess for a time, brought to court to train him in proper etiquette after he returned from Spain. Oh, the abuse he poured on his father was terrible! He blamed Francois for sending him away and still does, which infuriates Francois. So, he appointed her to ensure Henri learned to behave as a prince should. But her charge ended on Henri's thirteenth birthday and she returned to her chateau in Anet. It's believed he visits her there. He says he's hunting, but how much can any man hunt?"

My skin crawled. Henri had a mistress. He played me for a fool. In time, he'd said in Marseilles. In time, we would learn to live as husband and wife. Was this what he meant? That I should be complacent while he consorted with his ex-governess? That I'd become the object of lurid speculation because he had made a mockery of our marriage?

The duchess added, "I thought you knew. It's not uncommon for men of Henri's age to become infatuated with older women, but in time the interest fades. Indeed, once you get with child by him, he'll forget about her." Her voice edged with a hint of spite. "She'll be a crone by then, in any event."

I stiffened. "How many years older is she?"

"Oh, she's at least forty-three. She hides her age well, I'll grant her that, but she's still a widow with two grown daughters. Some say she's attractive; I can't for the life of me understand the appeal. Always dressed in that dreadful black and ugly coif-cold, she is, cold and hard. Francois says she has coins for eyes. He doesn't approve of her hold on Henri."

"What is her name?" I whispered, afraid to know, as if hearing it would make her materialize before me.

"Diane de Poitiers, widow of the seneschal of Normandy. We call her la Senechale." She arched her brow. "I gather you also don't approve."

"Approve?" I spat before I could stop myself. "He has no right! How can I get with child if he spends all his time in his mistress's bed?" As soon as I spoke, I wished I could snatch back my words. I had offended her. After all, she too was a royal mistress.

The duchess contemplated me for a long moment. Then she said with clipped precision, "Men will dally; and as women, we must endure. But no man should place dalliance above duty. Unlike our Senechale, I have always known my place. The king has had his children and wants no more; his marriage to his second queen, Eleanor, is one of strictly political convenience. But your marriage is a different matter. As Francois's second heir, Henri is expected to sire sons. This cannot continue. I'm afraid we must speak with His Majesty."