We’re standing in the 16th century palace spanning the river Cher, studying Sauvage’s Portrait of Catherine de Medici in the former bedchamber of Diane de Poitiers, who was King Henry II’s favorite mistress during his marriage to Queen Catherine. Château de Chenonceau was a love trinket Henry gave to Diane in lieu of leaving his wife for her, and Diane definitely did it up with, notably, her three-acre personal garden remarkable for its splendor of yew trees and lawns of curving scrolls of shrubs. In her portrait Catherine, dressed entirely in black but for a white neck ruffle, looks pretty miserable – I guessed she was painted before Henry’s 1559 death in combat when, as a widow, her first order of business was to snatch Chenonceau from Diane and give her (the lesser) Château Chaumont in a sorry/not sorry consolation. For her part post-Henri, Diane wrote her rival, the queen, to say, “pardon for my past offences against your person,” signing the letter “your most obedient and loyal subject;” with it she returned some crown jewels gifted to her by the king.
“Would you have sent the jewels back?” I couldn’t fathom Karen as the mistress in this scenario, for she’s so, so far from a foolish woman, but people in love…well, who knows. They might even get themselves Camino married like Angela Leslee’s irritants, David and Mary Jo.
“You’d probably have to, like it or not,” she replied, as we both felt a little sad for Queen Catherine, looking so fat and forlorn in her portrait. “The fury of a woman scorned…well, the only hell Diane got for the queen’s humiliation was exile to obscurity in her own low-rent château. It could have been a lot worse.”
For sure. The king’s and queen’s marital bed beneath an elaborate wooden coffered ceiling; Correggio’s Education of Love; the Francis I salon with Primaticcio’s Diana the Huntress; the queen’s green study; Aubusson tapestries; and a ginormous portrait of King Louis XIV surrounded by gobs of gold, his faux black extensions giving him a pouf of big Texas hair sky high: Chenonceau’s sights certainly gave us plenty to ponder vis-à-vis French history, so we shuffled along with other château visitors, from room to room, art-rich, gilt-drenched, and exhausting.
“Do you think he’s okay?” We paused before the portrait of Madam Dupin of the creamy decollété, by Nattier. Supposedly she alone spared Chenonceau from destruction during the French Revolution. I knew Karen meant Camino, whom I assumed was sleeping peacefully in his little house in the car. “We should check.” My friend’s concern was so sweet, though kitty had proven that days in the car with the weather cool were his chance to rest from hotel overnights of rampant partying as we slept.
“Hiiiiiiiii!” He was fine. Back in the car Karen seemed so happy to see Camino when she opened his crate for some on-the-road cuddling, that I marveled at how her dachshund-mama self also struggled to resist him. Kitty’s practiced “two or three tender glances” seemed to persist from his place in her lap, but with only puppies and dogs the sum of Karen’s pet-owning knowledge, he remained a mystery. “I’ll bet Camino would create nothing but havoc if you left him home alone too long,” she said, while caressing the petite, pink-toed paws he invited her to hold. No doubt she recalled the many, many naughty-dog moments she and her fellow puppy-people well understood – from chewed furniture to all-day barking, holes to China dug in the flowerbeds to full-on escapes from the yard. “Actually, he’s pretty easy,” I said. “When left alone he mostly sleeps. It’s when I arrive that he goes wild.” Yes, just as the “fair flower” Señorita Lolita does not succumb so easily to the seductions of Señor Zorro in Johnston McCulley’s story, and, indeed, threatens him with death when he declares, “the sight of you this afternoon kindled a fire in my heart, señorita,” Karen was not yet convinced Camino, as a cat, could light any serious blaze in her heart. “Oh, that’s nice,” she said mildly and returned the kitty to his crate. At least Puss in Boots had the princess at bonjour, igniting her love for the faux Marquis de Carabas and showing his shrewd skill for the sport of seduction.
Better up your game, Camino, I thought, as we drove to our next Loire palace, the Royal Château d’Amboise. This is where the court of France cavorted during the Renaissance and where today more than 90 species of birds fly around, fond as they are of the château’s spectacular site high above the river Loire and the “hanging gardens between heaven and earth” its visitor info promises.
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“Do you think we can sit, for just a minute?” I was shuffling behind Karen, who was trudging behind tourists, around Mile 30 – surely – of our trek through our next château. Leonardo da Vinci’s tomb in the stained-glass chapel of Saint-Hubert, the door lintel where King Charles VIII hit his head and died in 1498, the Annunciation fresco, the oratory of Anne of Brittany, the odes to the childhood of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots: All the history packed into the Château d’Amboise had given me a French late Gothic Flamboyant-sized headache in honor of the palace’s style, and a little timeout would be nice. From her place on the Camino, outside the Spanish town of Boadilla del Camino, trekker Angela Leslee spoke for me: “My feet are so sore I’m not sure I can walk the remaining half a kilometer,” she says as I contemplated the many, many, many remaining rooms yet to visit. “The urge to lie down and curl up and cry in the wheat at the side of the trail is almost overwhelming.” And we have two more châteaux today to tour?? Angela continues: “I remind myself of the many species of poisonous snakes in Spain that live in the tall grass – to keep me moving forward. You can do this.” I, in the château, remind myself that at least lunch is on the horizon, so to keep myself moving forward I visualized frites – the mountain of fresh French frites I would enjoy soon (I hoped) in a sidewalk café. You can do this. Not so much a frites fan, Karen had her own motivation for sprinting along in a determined let’s get this done stride that looked like it might actually bypass The Death of Leonardo da Vinci, a famous painting by Ménageot. “Camino’s probably wondering what is taking us so long,” she said, as we plopped down on a bench with an oof of fatigue. Hmm. I kept the obvious between me and me. I do believe Karen can’t stop thinking about kitty!
Those tender glances. Those petite pink toe beans. Could my dear friend the dog-girl be coming around to that a-ha moment when she knows for sure she has fallen…for a cat?
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