Castillo de Blois, 1589.

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The events were triggered by the failed attack on Admiral Coligny, head of the Huguenots established in Paris on the occasion of the marriage of Margarita, daughter of Queen Catherine, and the Protestant Enrique de Borbón, King of Navarre. The facts are attributed to the queen, but everything points to the fact that the author is the Duke of Guise, one of the most powerful nobles who seek the favor of the unbalanced Charles IX, son of Catherine and regent of the country, but also a personal friend. by Coligny. The double face of power and betrayal is palpable even in the home of the Guise Catholics, in which the Duke's own personal secretary, Durandot, is a staple of the opposing side. He will commission François to collect a gift for the queen: a poisoned book in the style - as the author explains in the epilogue - of Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose. The trap book is a copy of the prophecies of Nostradamus, which together with the advice of astrologers, inspired the life and actions of the queen at all times.,es

Catalina, pressured by the Guises, does not have much trouble convincing her son Charles IX that the Huguenots are plotting to eliminate him, and thus gets him to delegate all the powers to prepare an ambush to the Protestant leaders. The queen lays all the cards on the table and devises a meticulous plan to kill only the main focuses of the rebellion. The signal to go on the attack that same night is clear: if the captain of the guard sees the queen reading a book under the patio window, he has a way to execute the plan. Catalina, indecisive until the last moment, does not activate the detonator because someone takes care that a lady, dressed as the queen, roams around the agreed place holding a book in her hands.,es

La suerte estaba echada y sólo podía esperar no perder el control de la situación, tolerante como era con todos los dogmas pero inflexible con las ambiciones políticas que llevarían a la destrucción del reino. Al final, lejos de su voluntad, la situación se desbocará y derivará en una guerra fratricida, provocada por la intervención de los Guisa y sus seguidores ávidos de venganza y de poder, que convertirán Francia en un mar de sangre.

For their part, François and Tinella, who are outside the palace at nightfall and therefore cannot get to safety, receive collateral damage from the massacre. After having an affair in the boy's room, owned by a widow with a son, Gilles, a mercenary enlisted in the Protestant troops, François is captured by the soldiers and only the deus ex machina appearance of Carlos IX's brother, Enrique de Anjou, with whom he had a sexual relationship in exchange for money, frees him from an atrocious death. Tinella has a worse luck: the queen's soldiers enter the house, slaughter the widow and brutally rape the girl until she is shocked. Gilles's appearance is also providential. He will put her to safety in the house of some friends, and after a while Tinella will end up marrying the old Count of Landeperéuse. Seventeen years later, already a widow, she will go with respectful noble status to the palace where Catherine spends the last hours, and will have the opportunity to learn about those two people she had loved so much: François, who had become a concubine of the new King Henry of Anjou, and without get to see her, the queen, who will end her days lamenting the disappearance of her former servant. Paradoxically, on the death of Catherine, fate will put Tinella in contact with her royal father, Antonio de Salou, captain of her majesty's guard - who had a relationship with the mother, a servant who had accompanied the queen from her Italy natal - and that despite never disclosing his paternity, he always cared about his condition and sought his well-being in his new home away from Catalina's court.,es

Lorenzo de Medici – Fragmento La conjura de la reina

George Curbet Heir