Before Versailles (11 page)

Louise took a drink of wine. “I’ve been thinking—”

“Thinking?” Choisy interrupted. “Stop that at once. You are here to look beguiling and act vacuous, and don’t forget it. Once you’ve found a husband, you may then find a mind.”

Trumpets from the music gallery sounded, and everyone stood back to make way for the king and queen, followed by the king’s mother. The queen mother wore black and pearls everywhere. In her day, she had been the best-dressed woman at court. She still dressed splendidly, but no one was watching her anymore. Madame had everyone’s eyes, and after her, the queen. The young queen displayed diamonds in her fair hair and around her neck and at her ears, and her gown was of a pink summer gauze with more diamonds, but her expression was remote and distant.

“Why doesn’t the queen ever smile?” Fanny whispered.

“Perhaps she feels shy,” Louise whispered back.

“Shy?”

Both Choisy and Fanny hissed the word. It had no meaning for either of them. They were noticed by those nearby, and Fanny glared at Choisy, and he pinched her arm, which made Fanny squeak, which made the king turn in their direction.

Louise blushed and dropped even lower into the curtsy she was making. If his majesty were to approach them, she knew she wouldn’t be able to think of a single thing to say to him.

“Safe,” said Choisy. “Adonis has passed us by.”

“Who is Adonis?” asked Louise.

“The king, my ignorant one. I must find you a book of mythology. Didn’t they read in the Orléans household?”

Fanny shot up out of her curtsy. “If you’ve gotten me in trouble, I will never forgive you.” She flounced away.

“Remind me to be afraid if she ever becomes important,” Choisy said.

“I want to ride out tomorrow.” They were riding out nearly every morning while the palace slept. Louise was trying to locate the place where she’d seen the boy in the iron mask.

“We should stop.” Knowing she would argue and not wishing to, Choisy began to talk of something else. “The dancing is beginning. You’ll be besieged with partners, so save the courante for me.” The courante was a lively dance loved by the king.

“So, my flower doesn’t change this gown at all?”

“No one will notice. They won’t be able to get past your shining eyes.”

He blew a kiss to her. Like Fanny, he was in his element. Another in her element was his mother, who waved to Louise with an imperious ringed hand, and Louise walked over to pay her respects.

Madame de Choisy kissed her on both cheeks. “You’re looking quite blooming. This,” she tapped her fan on Louise’s shoulder, touching the golden curl, “is lovely. I’m going to instruct my maid to curl my hair so tomorrow, as will every other woman of taste here. That patch is very improper, but I see you’re all wearing them, Monsieur, too. Quite amusing. Anything Madame does must be charming, but perhaps you go too far? Yes? You went swimming today?”

“We did.”

“Word is you took your hair down to dry it while sitting in the gardens with gentlemen about.”

Louise’s mind scattered in a dozen directions. They’d all done it. It had been Madame’s idea. She’d been the first to pull pins from her wet hair and shake herself like a cat, but Louise wasn’t going to say that. It would be tattling.

“The queen mother has gotten word of it, my dear, and she doesn’t like it. Now you know I’m the last to lecture, but I wouldn’t wish you to get a reputation for being too reckless. You’ve no proper dower and little or no family to protect you.” Madame de Choisy smiled to make her words less stinging. “Now, go away, my beautiful child, and play.”

Rebuked, however lightly, and feeling it, Louise slipped from the ballroom, found a jutting, angled balcony open to the night, and sat down in one of the chairs placed there. She rubbed her leg. It had healed shorter than the other one from a long-ago fall. The little wooden wedge she wore inside her shoe to make her legs even sometimes caused a deep ache in her hip. She thought about this afternoon, its loveliness, the river so cool on her body, the sun afterward so warm. All the young men, the king among them, full of talk and laughter and flirting, on their great horses beside the carriages that brought them back to court. The king and his gentlemen were like the stallions they rode, gallant and proud and mettlesome, pawing the ground in impatience, shaking their long manes. It was bold to take their hair down while gentlemen were watching, but it had seemed a sweet boldness, tender, somehow, like the breeze playing through the trees. It was an unfurling, ever so gently, that said, see, see how beautiful we are. Her mind went to the searing glance the king had sent Madame’s way, the way his mouth had set so grimly when Monsieur had impetuously kissed her. Danger there. Madame flirted with fire. Perhaps they all did, but it was all so delicious—

“Miss, what are you doing out here alone? Are you ill?”

She started. There, with light from the wide foyer framing him, stood the king’s superintendent of finance, he who one day soon, so the world around her whispered, would take the place the late great cardinal had held in the king’s council.

“Shall I call a servant?” the Viscount Nicolas asked. He looked very grand in a short tight doublet and lace so embroidered in gold that it was almost stiff.

“Oh, no, I’m fine, really—” Louise stood, but stumbled a little on the shorter leg, and Nicolas caught her by the arm.

“You’re—”

“Stupid and clumsy at times, that’s all.” She was appalled at herself. Had the wine already gone to her head? “Thank you, sir, and excuse me—”

“At least allow me to escort you back inside.” Smiling politely, he held out his hand, and obedient, after all he was a great deal older than she, old enough to be her father, Louise put hers on his.

“You’re one of Madame’s ladies, aren’t you? Miss Louise de la Baume le Blanc de la Vallière.”

The precision of hearing her entire name shocked her. How could he know that? She had lived all her life away from Paris. Her father might have been a nobleman, but he had been a country nobleman who’d never made his way at court. Several of the court ladies—particularly, the Countess de Soissons—had been quite rude to her because of it. She could feel the viscount’s eyes on her, not in the brash way of the other men at court, but all the same assaying her, considering her. She could feel a flush coming into her face. She hated not being able to control it, which made her flush even more.

“Your father was a soldier, I believe, dying in 1650 or so, and your stepfather serves the Orléans family. You’re very silent, miss,” he said when she didn’t answer.

She met his eyes. She had no words to tell him that her father was her talisman, his memory one of her sacred treasures, and that to hear him spoken of so unexpectedly moved her almost to tears.

The viscount had his head tilted to one side as he waited for an answer. His hair was thick and full, like Choisy’s and Monsieur’s, except that theirs was not shot through with silver.

“Laurent de la Vallière was a noble and decent man,” she heard herself say. “The name is a proud one.” Proud. Unlike her stepfather, who abased himself to the Orléans—which keeps you clothed, her mother would say.

“So I’ve been told. Are you enjoying court, miss?”

Again she didn’t answer. He had walked her back into the ballroom, and they stood at the edge of the crowd filling the long, glorious chamber.

“Here we are. Good-bye, sir,” she said to him.

“Oh, not good-bye,” the viscount said, and suddenly she could see why Claude had insisted he be in the running for handsomest man at court. He might be old, but his eyes were tender. “Just farewell for this moment. Will you honor me later with a dance?”

Something in her shut the way a moonflower closes when dawn touches it. Words were in her head and memories of her father. To the prince, like an altar fire, love undying. It was the motto of her house, of her father. She hadn’t thought of it in such a long time. Come, Louise, her father said in her mind, bending down to her from atop a horse, ride here in the saddle in front of me, my pretty girl. Her heart swelled with the thought of him, and his long-ago death was once more brutal and too near.

“A dance? Well, if Madame and the Princess de Monaco allow.” The gargoyle wouldn’t notice or care, but it was the closest she dared come to saying no. “Good evening, sir.” And she left him.

Nicolas watched her disappear among the courtiers. She reminded him of some small creature, a rabbit or fox, gone to hiding. Hiding from the wicked viscount. She had lovely hair and shoulders; there was something clean and unspoiled about her. Fresh, he thought. A young woman who didn’t wish to talk to him or charm him or impress him or imply the offer of her body for a favor. A purity to her—that was a rarity at court, like seeing a unicorn step down from the bright threads of a tapestry and make an actual bow. Certain, stringent verses came to mind: Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. I sound like a Huguenot, glum and Scripture-quoting, he thought.

He glanced around this ballroom, this elegant kingly chamber of golden wood and wide arching bays and tall windows and gilt and paint and bronze, the best of another age. He knew these people well, and she didn’t quite fit. Everyone here wanted something. They wished loans, they wished help in revenge, they wished places for lesser relatives in the bureaucratic maze that was the government of this kingdom, they wished stipends, they wished marriages, they wished dispensations. They wished anything, everything. He didn’t mind. When a man or woman owed you, even slightly, it was the beginning of obligation. They wished, he wished, she wished, but what was it his majesty, Louis the fourteenth of that name, wished? From where Nicolas stood, he could see the king far down the other end of the ballroom, flanked by his friends.

I misstepped today, thought Nicolas, seeing again the flickering eyes of the young king of France. Do you attempt to bribe me, viscount? Who was the man beneath the crown? He didn’t know him, really; Mazarin had always stood between them. In the grand bay nearest him was the Countess de Soissons, who stood in his majesty’s regard as high as anyone at court, and Nicolas paid her a pretty penny because of that regard and to be kept informed of both young majesties. He approached her, thinking, connoisseur of beauty that he was, her mouth is a taunt. A man wanted to slap her and then kiss her, hard.

“He wasn’t happy about the vines,” he told her, smiling as if they discussed something pleasant.

“That’s your fault, viscount. Doubtless, you surprised him. He doesn’t like surprises.”

“You might have told me that.”

“And you might have refrained from overwhelming him with your need to be magnificent and magnanimous on all occasions.”

Nicolas laughed and took her hand and kissed the soft side of her wrist. She is like a dark plum, he thought. She might be sweet when you bit into her, but it was just as likely she’d be bitter. He liked not knowing which side he’d taste.

“I want to call on you,” she said. “Privately.”

She wanted something. He made the proper, polite response, and moved on, his progress majestic, like a king’s, people continually circling him for a moment of his time, complimenting him even when they didn’t have some need to present. His importance was as shiny as the gold thread woven into his clothing. Finally, he left his crowd of admirers and supplicants and went to the queen mother.

There was a touch of gratitude in the smile she accorded him. She was glad, he could see, that he paid court. She and Nicolas were old friends; he had done many favors for her, some of which must never be known. He felt pitying. He’d never known this proud, vain, determined woman to be lost or directionless, but Mazarin’s death had made her stumble. Not so long ago she would have been in the thick of things. It was as if she were groping for a sense of what world remained without her lover. There was an old rumor that she and Mazarin had married. Her grief certainly seemed large enough for that, despair, bewilderment in her every gesture and expression, black displayed everywhere from her mantilla to her shoes. He took her hand, a great liberty, which he was allowed. “How are you this evening, your majesty?”

“Out of sorts. Out of my element. I don’t know where I am anymore. Do stay with me a while.” She looked around herself with unhappy eyes. “What is everyone laughing about?”

All around them was furious and fast-paced flirting. The court hadn’t been this lively in decades. They laugh because they are young with all their lives ahead of them, he didn’t say. Seduction and gallantry and sweet promise were in the air as clearly as perfume. A born courtier could smell it, feel it, taste it.

“And those patches atop other behavior I won’t mention,” she continued, glaring at a group of young people nearby. “Scandalous! What can Madame be thinking?” Some of her old fire appeared. “I’ve let her know I don’t approve. I told the Princess de Monaco as well.”

And how was that received? thought Nicolas, but all he said was, “Come soon with her majesty the queen and visit my estate nearby.” He was building what he considered to be the finest château in France a few hours distant. There was to be a grand fête to celebrate it at the end of summer. All the court, all Paris, all France, and even points beyond, were invited. “The chapel is almost finished, and I need your fine eye to find fault with it so I may make it perfect.”

“As if it won’t be perfect. I talked with him today,” she said, as if she read Nicolas’s mind on certain dark nights when he couldn’t sleep. “He needs you. It’s only a matter of time.”

There was no question of whom she spoke. There was only one “he” at this court, and he stood in front of the ballroom’s fireplace in crimson stockings and gold ribbons and a wide hat with a feather around its brim, looking like the statue of a young god found in a Roman ruin.

Her words were reassuring, but then it would be dangerous not to need him. Ambition might be buried deep inside Nicolas—under the charm, the refinement, the creativity—but it was there, sharp as any gleaming blade.

Chapter 5