Between Two Kings (24 page)

Anne stared up at him, her eyes twinkling as though in mystification. “I am developing a special craving for apples,” she confessed. She had felt the same when she was pregnant with Elizabeth.

François arched a brow. “Apples?” He feigned that he had understood nothing. He had already noticed Anne’s morning sickness and nausea, but he didn’t dare to ask her. He only accurately suggested that she needed to consult a physician. He waited for her to tell him herself.

A timid smile curved her lips. “Your Majesty, I am with child. The midwife and the physician confirmed this today.” She wanted that child. She already loved him or her wholeheartedly because it was her child.

François looked at her, his face alight with gladness. Overwhelming happiness slashed through him at a thought that he would be a father again.

After Queen Claude of France’s death, François had always wished to have more legitimate children, but he couldn’t because he didn’t consummate his marriage to Eleanor of Austria, the emperor’s sister. When he had felt wild passion or love for Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Duchess d’Étampes – now he didn’t know what it was – and slept with her for many years, he had hoped that she would give him a child, but it hadn’t happened.

Despite being a passionate man with quite a rich collection of amorous conquests, François didn’t have many illegitimate children, the majority of whom were born many years ago. Now when he had a chance to have another legitimate child, he was incredibly elated with the news. He was sure that children with Anne would be unique, like Anne herself.

François placed a tender kiss on her forehead and her right temple. His heart was blossoming. “Anne, I am very happy to hear this great news,” he whispered into her ear.

Anne was silent as though she had stepped into a land of confusion and doubtfulness. She still wasn’t sure that François was happy to have children with her. “I am happy too,” she murmured half consciously. Indeed, her new child was a blessing for Anne. This child would make her life happier in the darkness that had enveloped her many months ago.

François sighed. Being a man with great observational skills, he quickly realized that she was half embarrassed and half frightened to confess to him about her condition. “Anne, please don’t worry. I will do everything to protect you and to ensure that you and the child are safe,” he said quietly.

Anne turned her eyes to his face, her gaze impenetrable and bleak. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” she murmured with relief in her tone.

François kissed Anne on her forehead, his right hand tenderly stroking her belly where the child was growing inside her. He felt that she had doubts about his attitude to her condition. “Don’t doubt that I want to have a child with you,” he assured. “I want this child,” he said firmly.

“Thank you,” she repeated. She didn’t know what else she could say. She was grateful to François for his attention and reassurance.

The long amethyst-framed mirror on the wall reflected their image standing in front of each other. Anne placed her hands around her waist, as if to insure that she still had her figure. François bent his head and kissed Anne on her lips. He kissed her because he wished to make her smile. He wanted to share his happiness that she carried his child. He kissed her because he dreamed about that every day when he left her in the morning and later returned from the meetings with his ministers and courtiers. He kissed her because he wanted her. Then he lifted her and accurately put her on the enormous bed, among the rose leaves and lily leaves.

When they were undressed, François kissed her softly on her lips. His lips were everywhere – on her cheeks, her brows, her earlobes, her forehead, and her neck. He took her hand in his and kissed her palm and her fingertips, and then his lips returned to her lips. His mouth was exploring her body up and down, then again up and down.

His caresses awakened a host of divine sensations in her body, and she wasn’t positive she wanted to feel them, fighting against the overpowering tide of physical desire for François as that desire blotted out every other emotion, except the insidious demand of physical need. She was fighting against her sensations because King François was not King Henry. Anne didn’t want to confess to herself that she wanted François at that moment, even if he wasn’t Henry.

“Anne, please relax and let me give you pleasure,” François murmured into her lips, feeling that her body was slightly tensed under his lips and arms. He was also experiencing a pang of jealousy, thinking that she was probably thinking about Henry, comparing the two kings. “There is only you and me here, and I want us to enjoy this moment.”

“I am relaxed, and we are alone here,” Anne whispered, not knowing what else to answer.

He smiled at her, although in reality he wished to reproach her for her constant thoughts about her past and King Henry. He hated that illusionary rivalry with Henry. “You are lying, and I know this. Forget about the past as I am offering you a sort of excellent shelter for this night.” Wishing her simply to feel and not to think, his lips took hers in a deep, desperate kiss. Then the desperation was supplanted by tenderness, which made her think that she would faint from giddiness.

His words sent a quiver of excitement and appeasement through her veins, and she delightfully responded to his kiss. His tongue plunged hotly over and over again between her parted lips, sensuously exploring its inner warmth. At last, under an effect of his slow, tender, silken caresses and soft, tender, lingering kisses, she felt her blood simmering with desire, and, dizzy and unable to think clearly, her arms crept around his neck as she lost the battle with herself. She realized giddily that she wanted to be in his arms at that second.

She went into his embrace eagerly, her bosom pressed under his broad chest. His caressing hands worshiped each and every inch of her body. There was a lingering, canorous tenderness and softness, melodiousness and lyricism in his endearments. It was as though François had tried to melt her down, trying to get his own heat and warmness reverberated in her body. The innate tenderness and certain affection was simmering between them, like a light, cherishing breeze caressing their flesh and their hearts.

When François finally entered her, Anne was so relaxed that she barely felt his smooth thrust into her. They kissed, their tongues tangled in a duet as old as the world itself. François looked into her eyes and smiled. Anne noticed that something glistened in his eyes, but she didn’t want to think what it was. As her lips parted beneath his, he felt her breath under his mouth and enjoyed feeling her chest under his hands.

His hands came to her side, clasping her waist. His movements were very slow and exceedingly careful, demonstrating his tenderness and amenity. He kissed her and then broke it, closing his eyes. As he opened them, Anne dazedly stared up at his handsome face above her, her blue eyes smoky and mysterious in the dim light of the candles. She entangled her fingers into his chestnut hair and kissed him on his lips.

As it was always during their intimacy, pleasure was rolling up to Anne at a slow speed, assaulting when she didn’t expect it. Soon dizziness completely overcame her under the onslaught of drawling pleasure; her blood simmered, and the plangent, sharp wave of pleasure swept through her body. She groaned, and he crushed his lips on hers, absorbing her cry. As it was over, François embraced her and buried his face in her long loose hair.

François and Anne lay in each other’s arms. Their eyes were shut, his hand placed on her flat stomach. Her head was on his bare chest, and she felt his smooth breathing. François was awake, enjoying the peaceful environment and temporary paradise around him. Anne didn’t know that François had experienced a fierce, wild passion and desire that nearly drove him to the verge of his sanity, but he had repressed it and followed his old approach to their lovemaking. He was so happy that she carried his child and he wanted her urgently and violently, but he couldn’t risk making her feel uncomfortable with him. In addition, he had to be very careful due to her delicate condition. He was interested in whether she had again compared him with Henry that night. Then he decided that he was being foolish comparing himself with his English rival. He silently laughed at himself, and his thoughts returned to Anne.

It was a magic night for the King of France because he saw something that he hadn’t felt before: it seemed that Anne had begun to trust him and was more or less comfortable with the idea of having him as a lover, even if she didn’t love him. François also didn’t love her, so that he was just delighted that they had begun to understand and trust each other. They were political allies, and he also wished to become her closest friend. That was enough at that point.

Yet, any thought that Anne had been with Henry in the same bed in the past and that she had felt passion for Henry sent François into a silent rage that bordered on madness. He couldn’t imagine her in bed with any other man. He wanted her only for himself. He didn’t know whether it was jealousy or a primitive feeling of possession. Maybe he felt a combination of possession and jealousy, but it was not clear which feeling was stronger. François again laughed at himself.

François had many mistresses in the past, and the majority of his scandalous and notorious amorous escapades happened in his early youth. At that time, he could have spent a single night with several mistresses, summoning them to his suite during the evening.

His private life had been full of amorous conquests long before his marriage to Queen Claude of France, and he had even managed to sire several bastards before he ascended the throne of France. In early 1513, François began his liaison with the beautiful and young Jacquette Andron de Lansac, the daughter of the rich knight and merchant from Bordeaux. Jacquette became pregnant, bearing François’ son named Louis and referred to as Louis de Sant-Gelais, seigneur de Lansac and de Précy-sur-Oise, Baron de la Mothe Saint-Héray; he didn’t officially acknowledge the boy because the child was born in 1514, before his kingship, and because Jacquette Andron didn’t want it. There also was Françoise de Pérusse d’Escars who had given birth to his daughter whom he officially claimed as Jacquette de Lansac de Valois-Orléans-Angoulême and who died in 1533 in childbirth. In 1512, he had a love affair with Jeanne Le Cocq, Dame de La Commune-en-Brie.

Right before his marriage to Claude of France, François was enchanted with another inamorata – the daughter of Jacques Disomme, a Parisian barrister. When he married Claude de Valois, the future Queen Claude of France, in May 1514, François continued the same lifestyle.

When he succeeded King Louis XII in January 1515, he completely submitted to lustful dreams, being continually inclined to more and more amours. His infidelity to Queen Claude wasn’t limited to the periods when his wife was pregnant as he almost invariably strayed all the time.

François wasn’t a shining example of a proper husband ensuring his wife’s concordant and there was a time when some people said that King François had given his mind to four notorious vices – lechery, luxury, war, and adultery, but this, of course, was a kind of embellishment. Despite the king’s lifestyle, all the courtiers agreed that the King of France tried to conduct his affairs quite discreetly in order not to offend his wife, and it was much appreciated by Queen Claude herself who kept her eyes shut to her husband’s infidelities.

It was a great scandal in the European society when François introduced the position of 
maîtresse en titre
 which hadn’t existed at the French court or at any other European court until 1518. This new official title for royal courtesans thus legitimized possible infidelity to a queen. Françoise de Foix, Countess de Châteaubriant
,
was the king’s first 
maîtresse en titre
; she had a daughter with her lover, the girl officially acknowledged by François as Anne de Valois-Orléans-Angoulême, but the girl died in infancy after having caught a severe cold. Among his short-lived old affairs, there was Anne’s elder sister Mary Boleyn, and at present François regretted their amourette as he had taken Mary’s innocence and then brutally discarded her. François’ reputation as a notorious libertine had its roots in his youth.

Marie Gaudin, Dame de La Bourdaisière
,
known as Marie la Belle Babou and as one of the most beautiful and the most notorious women of her time, was taken by François in his bed in the early 1520s, before his captivity at Pavia. Then the king broke their relations, but at the beginning of the 1530s they again became friends and occasional lovers. Although she wasn’t François’ 
maîtresse en titre
, Marie Gaudin was the king’s premier mistress because of the frequency of their encounters and because of the scandals caused by her husband Philibert Babou who at first fiercely objected to her relationship with the king and publicly threw tantrums of violent jealousy at his wife. Finally, Philibert reconciled with his wife’s role when he was appointed the minister of finance, the Mayor of Tours in 1520, and treasurer in 1523. Marie served as the maid of honor to Queen Claude of France and later to Eleanor of Austria.

Several years ago, at the beginning of the 1530s, François also had intimate and friendly relations with Jacqueline de la Trémoille, Countess de Sanverre
,
and even fathered one child with her, his only illegitimate daughter starting from the second half of the 1520s, but he didn’t claim that child for whatever reason. If the fire flared up in his heart, he chose new lovers from beautiful belles at the court and then discarded them when he was tired of them. He had especially many short-term paramours, and some of them gave birth to his children. It was also likely that he had sired other illegitimate children as a result of short-term affairs without knowing.

François was not always faithful to his two official 
maîtresses en titre
 – Françoise de Foix, Countess de Châteaubriant, and later to Anne Jeanne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Duchess d’Étampes, who changed François de Foix and became the king’s grand favorite. Although he had shared his bed only with Anne de Pisseleu in the past several years, at the beginning of their relationship François used to spend much time with his other mistresses, especially with Marie Gaudin, Jacqueline de la Trémoille.