Chicot the Jester

Summary

In a Versailles-like labyrinth of mirrors where candle-light refracts into daggers, King Henri III drifts like a gilded ghost, his every laugh purchased by courtiers who rehearse his funeral behind their fans. Only Chicot—jester, colossus, conscience—walks the polished corridors with the swagger of a man who has sold fear for breakfast. When the sovereign, stung by the radiant fame of Count de Bussy, scribbles a warrant that smells of sulfur and envy, Chicot snatches the parchment, rends it into white moths, and spirits the poet-soldier to the ivy-choked keep of Baron de Meridor where Diana, moon-bright heiress, keeps her heart under lock and key. But the king’s hunters track blood across the drawbridge; Bussy staggers back to court and into the clutches of Count de Monsoreau, a nocturnal predator who covets Diana as one covets a rare jewel. In a sacrilegious chapel ceremony lit only by guttering tapers, Monsoreau forces a ring upon the girl while Chicot, eavesdropping from the confessional, arrives a heartbeat too late to prevent the desecration. What follows is a danse macabre of disguises, midnight abductions, poisoned quills, and a final duel beneath a tapestry of stars where loyalty and love bleed out upon the same stone.

Synopsis

Henri is surrounded by fawning courtiers, who hide behind their smiles a deadly intent to do away with him at the first opportunity in favor of his brother, Duc d'Anjou. There is but one man who is honestly Henri's friend. This man is Chicot the Jester, a huge, handsome, fearless fellow, true as steel, to those who called him friend, deadly as venom to those who dared betray him or his sovereign, and the only person who may speak the truth to the king. Chicot the Jester is given an order by the king for the arrest of the gallant Count De Bussy, whose deserved popularity with the ladies of the court irritates the petulant Henri constantly. Chicot the Jester had the courage of his convictions; he was a man who dared. Knowing his friend De Bussy to be guiltless, he tore the court order into shreds and ordered De Bussy into retirement at the peaceful castle of Baron de Meridor, whose beautiful daughter, Diana Chicot, knew to be the adored one of De Bussy's heart. How De Bussy complied; how he was waylaid by the king's men within Diana's gates; how Diana nursed him secretly; how the uncouth Count de Monsoreau had the beauty kidnapped upon De Bussy's return to court; how De Monsoreau married her before Chicot, who had overheard the plot could interfere.