Before Versailles Read online

  He clapped his hands again, and the three big dogs went swirling out of the bedchamber, as Belle whined. He reached down and pulled La Grande’s dog from one of the silver andiron pillars. It tried to bite him.

  “Odalisque, my jasmine blossom,” La Grande said, folding the dog into the crook of her arm.

  “It will be too much to give her the same amount of fever water his majesty might take.”

  Both La Grande and the valet looked over to Louise, who had moved outside the ruelle.

  “Yes,” said La Grande. “Half—”

  Louise shook her head.

  “A quarter, I would say. Yes, that should help.” La Grande marched out of the bedchamber, leaving Louise behind her like a discarded ragdoll.

  The valet considered Louise, then nodded, a small, neat movement matching his small, neat presence. “Would miss care to wash her hands?”

  “Oh, yes, please. Thank you so much.” Louise hurriedly splashed her hands in the basin of water, dried them on the cloth. “I think Belle would like to be wherever the others are.”

  She fled, not daring to tell him about the mess La Grande’s dog had left on the other side of the ruelle. She just didn’t dare.

  AT MIDNIGHT, PHILIPPE’S birthday gift came rumbling up the road from the stables. It passed along the length of the carp pond, and linkboys ran before it lighting the way with the torches they carried. The gift, a carriage, pulled up to the ornate doors of what was called the golden entrance, the king’s personal entrance into the palace, a beautiful pavilion built to resemble a gatehouse. Courtiers crowded around the vehicle, lacquered black with Philippe’s crest picked out in gold and blue paint on the doors. Six white horses—matched in size and color, no easy task to find—were in harness. The inside was blue velvet and blue leather, and Philippe played footman, opening the door for Henriette, while Louis walked around the carriage inspecting it.

  “Do you ride inside or with us?” Philippe asked his brother. He pointed to Guy, who sat in the coachman’s place. One nimble movement, and Philippe was up beside Guy in the groom’s seat. Louis climbed up to join them, as courtiers looked on enviously.

  “Stand aside. We take Madame for a drive,” Guy shouted.

  “Don’t be disappointed not to join them.” Anne, the queen mother, patted the hand of Louis’s queen as they watched the carriage being turned around. “His majesty would do nothing to harm the child you carry, and with that scamp driving,” she pointed toward Guy with her fan, “anything could happen.”

  “Élan,” Molière said to one of his fellow actors as they stood among the crowd watching the carriage depart. Part of the kitchen staff this evening, the two carried heavy trays to the courtyard laden with food from the kitchens—duck floating in orange sauce, flan with lemon, a swan stuffed with pigeon breasts and apricots—to tempt Madame’s capricious appetite. “His majesty has tremendous élan. Take that and exaggerate it, and you have a hero.”

  GUY MANEUVERED THE horses toward the grand canal that anchored one end of the gardens. Built by the king’s grandfather, the canal stretched nearly four thousand feet in length; it was this same canal the young court drove around in the wee hours of the morning.

  “Where did you find six white horses?” Louis asked his brother.

  “I found three, and the viscount, when he learned of my dilemma, offered the other three.”

  The wheels of the carriage came too near the wall of the canal, and Philippe gripped the wooden coachman’s seat they sat upon with both hands, as Guy laughed.

  “Afraid?” asked Guy.

  “Let me have the reins,” snapped Louis.

  “I’ve practiced for weeks, your majesty. You’re safe.”

  “It’s not my safety I’m fretted about, but Madame’s.”

  “She’ll survive a jostle, won’t she, Monsieur?”

  Louis spoke evenly. “I don’t wish her jostled—”

  Philippe put his hand on Louis’s arm. “It’s all right, really it is. Slow down, count. Back to the palace in one piece, I beg you.”

  “He’s too unskilled to do this,” insisted Louis.

  “He did practice for weeks,” Philippe said. “And it’s his gift to her tonight, to be her coachman. Please, my brother.”

  When the carriage had safely returned to the golden entrance, Philippe hopped down to play servant to his wife one more time.

  “Does my gift please?” he asked her as she descended.

  “You’re too kind to me,” Henriette exclaimed.

  Philippe brought her hand to his lips. “You make it easy to be kind, my dear love.”

  Guy, still in the coachman’s seat, scowled.

  Once she was in the fountain courtyard, ensconced in a chair between the yawning queen and the queen mother, Henriette began to open her gift from their majesties.

  “The Mazarins?” said Anne, the queen mother, looking at diamond pendant earrings Henriette held up for all to see. The diamonds were famous, a legacy from their dear cardinal.

  “Like mine, majesty.” Maria Teresa pulled back her ringlets, so that Anne could see a duplicate pair hanging from her ears. “His majesty, he have made. For me. Then, for Madame.” Maria Teresa leaned over to touch Henriette’s hand affectionately. “I am glad you have. Happy day of birth to you.”

  Henriette stared down at the magnificent earrings, then turned to her mother-in-law. “Thank you for sharing these, majesty. These are so lovely.”

  “I had nothing to do with it.” Anne spoke testily.

  Louis held out a matching crimson box to his mother. “You have everything to do with it.”

  Anne opened the box to reveal earrings that matched those Henriette had just received.

  “How lovely.” From the front row of courtiers, where she had stationed herself, determined to see and be seen, to miss nothing, the queen’s maid of honor, Athénaïs, spoke. She smiled brilliantly at the royal family. “The queens of our court sparkle like stars.”

  “There are only two queens here.” Anne’s tone was sharp, her look toward the dazzling maid of honor, whom she normally favored, a razor’s cut.

  Louis knelt on one knee before his mother. He smiled, his smile tender, beautiful really. It made his whole face suddenly remarkable. One saw humor, and passion, and bright intelligence.

  “With your permission, your majesty.” He was very formal, like an ambassador come to call, as he put his hands to his mother’s ears and unscrewed the earrings she was wearing. “I could not bear to have no earrings for you.” And then, low enough so that only she could hear, “Our dear cardinal would not like it.” And when the new pendants were in her ears, he said, “I claim a kiss.” And he kissed her.

  “With your permission,” he repeated, kneeling now before Henriette, moving her hair, unscrewing her earrings.

  Standing where he could see both their faces, Guy’s expression turned stern.

  “A birthday salute.” Louis dropped his mouth on Henriette’s, the briefest of touches, as Guy made a sound and looked around to see where Philippe might be.

  “And witness how to play the hero,” Molière whispered to a fellow actor who helped him refill great silver platters with food, “seriously, as if all your heart were in it, no mockery of any kind. One must also be handsome.”

  Happy that his friends from Paris had journeyed to Fontainebleau for this fête and for his sake, happy that his gift of the carriage had impressed, Philippe had abandoned his brother’s gift-giving and stood with friends near the outside staircase. They were playing a guessing game.

  “Tiberius,” said the Chevalier de Lorraine.

  “Caligula,” argued Philippe.

  “Cleopatra set the fire,” insisted Choisy.

  “It was Nero, you imbeciles,” said La Grande Mademoiselle. “Here’s the Count de Guiche. He will tell you I know of what I speak. Guiche, tell them it was Nero.”

  “I could care less who fiddled while Rome burned. We have our own fire.” Guy advanced directly toward Phili
ppe, but a palace page reached Philippe first to announce, “His majesty asks for you, your highness.”

  “What, now?” Philippe rolled his eyes, but it was clear he was pleased to be summoned.

  “You’d better go, hadn’t you? Your master is calling. Do you bark and slobber when he pats your head?” Guy was mocking.

  “Someone seems miffed,” said the Chevalier de Lorraine.

  “Miffed,” answered Guy. “What a petty little word. I think I’ll throw you in the carp pond.”

  “I don’t like your tone, Count,” said La Grande. She was as tall as Guy, taller because the feathers she wore pinned in her hair stood straight up behind her head in a style that had made the Chevalier de Lorraine laugh aloud when he saw it. “There are ladies present.”

  “There certainly are, half of them right here—”

  Choisy put himself in front of the Chevalier de Lorraine. “We’ve done nothing to deserve your insults, Count. You may not treat us so.”

  Head lowered, looking a little like a bull on the verge of charging, Guy turned away and walked back toward the king and queens, toward Henriette.

  “ ‘You may not treat us so,’ ” mimicked the Chevalier de Lorraine.

  “I’ll throw you in the carp pond myself,” threatened Choisy.

  “Oh, you’ll tear a lace, and that will be the end of that.”

  “Must we bicker, my pretty ones?” asked La Grande, and the other two gazed up at her as if she’d lost her mind. Of course they must.

  PHILIPPE STOOD BEFORE his brother. The wonderful evening, his gift, which had been more showy than Louis’s, his friends’ assurances that he was very much missed in Paris, the fact that his parties were better than his brother’s and this one proved it, shone on his face.

  “Will you escort the queen to her bedchamber?” Louis asked him.

  “The honor is too great to bear,” Philippe said in Spanish and placed Maria Teresa’s small hand on his arm to lead her away, as the women of her household detached themselves from partners and groups of courtiers to follow their queen like bright, gowned, reluctant butterflies.

  Louis’s eyes didn’t leave his brother, who was asking the queen if she had enjoyed the fête, if she’d tried the duck, if she’d seen the relic the Viscount Nicolas’s brother had sent from Rome, a saint’s finger bone, he was saying, Saint Peter’s, we believe. Philippe was at his best: kind, genial, gallant, lively. The pain that was Louis’s betrayal of him began its ache.

  “WHERE’S MY WIFE?” Philippe demanded an hour or two later. Wine and the largesse of the evening glowed in him.

  Guy pointed to the pond. Louis and Henriette, Catherine and two maids of honor sat in a small galley, a replica of an actual galley that had been given by Cardinal Richelieu to Louis’s father. They were being rowed to the summer pavilion at the far end. Other courtiers were also out on the water in gondolas imported from Venice, the lantern lights on the gondolas like enormous fireflies hovering above water.

  “I wanted to tell her again how wonderful she looks,” said Philippe, just on the edge of slurring his words. “Jump in the pond with me. We can swim to the galley.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I’m happy, happier than I’ve been in my life.”

  “You’re a blind fool,” said Guy. “It’s time you saw what is happening right under your nose.”

  FEELING SAFE, FEELING unseen aboard the small galley, Louis and Henriette held hands.

  “Thank you for the earrings,” Henriette whispered.

  Louis put a hand to her neck, caressing the flesh there, touching the pendant of the earring. “I went through a great deal of trouble just so I could kneel before you and put them in your ears.”

  They looked at each other, and even in the dark, even standing on the other side of the galley, Louise felt herself tremble inside at the sight of their expressions. They gave themselves away. To be loved that way, she thought, and then, too much wine, I’ve drunk too much wine tonight, gone from practical to maudlin, as Fanny says. The memory of the sight of the king kneeling before the women of his family, unscrewing earrings as carefully as a servant, twisted her heart. It was so courteous and grand, so flamboyant and yet dignified. He’d been like an actor no one could take his eyes from.

  The galley bumped into the small island, and servants jumped out to help the king and Henriette disembark. Catherine went with them, but Louise and Fanny stayed on board.

  “I think we warn the gargoyle,” said Louise, wine-bold. She leaned over the side looking down into the water. I could take off my clothes, jump in this water, and swim like a fish, she thought. How lovely to be a fish. “I think people are beginning to notice.”

  “That can’t be our concern, Louise. We’re of little or no importance in this.”

  “We are important. We’re their messengers. Did I see you kiss the Count de Guiche tonight?”

  “No. You saw him kiss me.”

  Louise turned on her side to look on her friend. “Be careful, Fanny.”

  “Pooh.”

  INSIDE THE SUMMER pavilion, a charming folly of sandstone and marble with arched openings on all sides, Louis pushed Henriette against the farthermost wall.

  “I want to make love to you,” he said. “It’s all I think about.” He kissed her neck and shoulders, pressing her against the wall, his hands, urgent, roaming up and down her dress, rumpling it.

  “My dress—”

  He didn’t hear. “I can’t imagine life without you, Henriette.” He kissed her mouth, biting her lips, putting his mouth on the swell of her breast just where her gown covered it, but Catherine stepped into the pavilion.

  “We have to go. We can’t linger any longer! Monsieur and my brother are in a gondola drifting our way!”

  At the anxiety in her voice, Louis lifted his head, but he couldn’t help shivering. Henriette laughed, her voice shrill. Color came into Louis’s face, but that was lost in the three of them straightening Henriette’s gown and sash before they returned to the galley, Louis unable to stop himself from taking another kiss or two just before they stepped into the open.

  As servants began to row them back, he could feel the powerful pulse of his heart. A refuge, he thought, my kingdom for a refuge. I am weary and lonesome. When would Henriette allow him to make her his? To take what he desired so much that he couldn’t help shivering like someone with a fever? And where? At Vaux-le-Vicomte, urged the Princess de Monaco, but he would not take his beloved naked and trembling as he also would be in the house of the man he must destroy. Why had Henriette laughed? He couldn’t get the sound of it from his mind, that shrill, coquettish, little sound she’d made.

  My heart hurts, thought Louise, as the galley moved through the water, an oversized swan, toward the suspended garden, and she looked up into the sky, to the stars there, sparkling bright everywhere, to the moon, mist around it. Choisy courted her again, told her stories of the old gods who turned themselves into showers of gold to make love to women they desired, of men who were part bull and lived at the center of a labyrinth or who fell in love with their own reflections, of women who saved the hero with their wit and passion but were left behind as he sailed away. She was dreaming the stories at night. Their symbols were everywhere, painted in the ballroom frescoes, turned to statues in the queen’s garden or the stag’s gallery, woven into the figures in the wall tapestries. Seeing the king and Madame and their desperate love this night made something in her feel languorous and tender, opening. She’d allowed Choisy to kiss her the other day. The kiss had not been chaste, but a mingling of mouth and tongue and desire from him that had surprised her. She didn’t love him, kissed him only because he begged, and hadn’t let him kiss again. But it felt like a door in her was becoming unsealed, that there was something deep and mysterious on its other side, another layer, which would leave the girl in her behind. She’d taken another girl, the little Julie, to see her family. The child had wept and begged to stay, but her mother had caught Louise’s eye
and given a sharp shake of the head, and so Louise had brought the crying child back to the nuns. She understood the child’s loneliness. She’d often been lonely in the midst of the Orléans ragged splendor. The child didn’t yet understand that another world beckoned to her, a better life. She preferred the poverty of the farm and the brutality of her father to loneliness, preferred that which was known to what was yet unknown. I must do what I can to ease her sorrow, thought Louise, for that, too, she knew, that sorrow carved a deep path in one’s heart.

  I’ve made the king of France shake in his shoes with desire for me, thought Henriette. What triumph.

  STILL LATER THAT night, the fête finally over as dawn showed a hint of light over the horizon, Henriette’s maids of honor tossed words back and forth from their beds.

  “She danced with him three times in a row, and when she went off in the galley, people noticed. The Count de Guiche’s face was a storm cloud. Madame’s face when you came back from the pavilion, it looked, well, it looked kissed,” said Madeleine.

  “I didn’t see any kisses, and I was right there with them,” said Fanny. “Did you, Louise?”

  “It’s a sin to be unfaithful,” said Claude.

  “But it is not a sin to flirt,” answered Fanny.

  “Nothing would make me flirt if I were married,” claimed Madeleine.

  Fanny laughed. “If the king began to smile at you, Miss Madeleine, if the king asked for your hand to partner his favorite dances, looked pensive until you appeared on the scene, gave you diamond earrings and knelt at your feet to put them in your ears, are you telling me that you wouldn’t entertain the thought of making him happy? Her very presence makes him happy. That’s all there is to it.”

  There was silence in the chamber. Then Fanny spoke again, driving home her point.

  “I’m speaking of his majesty, that serious man with the thick curling brown hair I have to make myself not reach out and touch, that man who takes off his hat to talk to any one of us and seems to listen, too. So that man, who happens to be master of us all, smiles at you, wants to listen to what you say, wants to escort you hither and yon just to be beside you. And you’d be cold as snow? Nothing tingling? Nothing sparking? Nothing in you urging you to accede to his wishes? The only thing Madame is guilty of is enjoying his majesty’s very high regard. I would, too. And so would you, any one of you, and you know it!”