Free The Hostage Queen by Freda Lightfoot

with displeasure as Margot had great difficulty in hiding her tears.
    Mother and daughter returned to Paris and Catherine at once set about assembling the necessary supplies for the army, raising funds from whatever sources she could. The treasury was running low and she willingly pawned her jewellery, stopping at nothing to finance this most vital enterprise. She also issued a decree ordering all Protestant ministers to leave the kingdom within fifteen days on pain of death.
    Despite her undoubted skill at manipulating events to suit herself, Catherine was riddled with uncertainties and superstitions, and would frequently consult wizards or astrologers, very much believing that the dead had more to say of relevance than the living. She was never without her talisman bracelet with its links of devil’s hieroglyphs and engraved human skulls. Now, in accordance with these superstitions, Catherine visited a magician and had him read the star signs of the Huguenot leaders. She ordered him to make replica figures of each, jointed with screws that she could turn and turn.
    One way or another, she would have their heads .
     
    Catherine’s frustration and fury were soon overwhelmed by other emotions as a messenger came clattering into the courtyard one morning, his horse in a lather as he’d ridden long and hard from Spain. Madame de Curton was the one deputed to relay the news to the Queen Mother, which she did with tears streaming down her face.
    ‘Our precious child, our sweet young queen, has been taken from us. Our beloved Elisabeth has died giving birth to a barely formed girl child, who, I understand, likewise did not survive.’
    Catherine’s grief was dreadful to behold. She remembered those precious few days they’d enjoyed together in Bayonne when for the first time she’d begun to get to know this daughter of hers. How cruel fate was to snatch her away so young. She forgot the accusations of suspicion, the frequent quarrels and tears, her annoyance that Elisabeth had become the mouthpiece of her sombre husband, Catherine’s most feared enemy. Since then their new-found intimacy had continued by letter, and strangely it was only in the written word that Catherine had found herself able properly to express her feelings. Now she hid in her privy chamber and wept as any mother would for a lost child.
    Yet within hours she’d rallied sufficiently to appear before her council declaring she would offer Margot, now fifteen, as a replacement. Margot herself, when she heard this news, was horrified. To marry her sister’s widowed husband was abhorrent to her.
    Fortunately, distraught at losing his lovely young Queen whom he’d adored, Philip promptly declined Catherine’s generous offer, and the ties between Spain and France fell loose once again.
    Madame de Curton felt only relief that her precious charge was to be spared from becoming that stern monarch’s fourth wife. The governess wished her little lady nought but happiness, if only a suitable husband could be found for her. So far, fortune had not smiled upon this quest.
    A memorial service was held for Elisabeth, in which Charles stood in tears beside his black-veiled mother. He presented a sorrowful, desolate figure in violet satin, somewhat unprepossessing with his slightly crooked neck and a face gaunt from long periods of sickness.
    But little time was allowed for mourning as Catherine sought a new marriage proposal for Margot, this time to Philip’s nephew, the young King of Portugal, who largely ignored Catherine’s request. The poor demented Don Carlos had died earlier in the summer, allegedly having caught pneumonia because of a predilection for sleeping on ice in order to avoid the intense summer heat. Catherine next pursued the King of Hungary, but that too came to nothing. If Margot was indeed a political pawn, she seemed to be of little appeal to anyone, her beauty apparently immaterial.
    In a rare moment of sympathy, Catherine told her, ‘My