Before Versailles (18 page)

“His majesty? The viscount? Madame? Well, well. You do move in high circles.”

“We’re the hors d’oeuvres of the theater, not the entrée.”

“Keep making his majesty laugh, and you’ll become the entrée. Where’s the tall man wrapped in the cloak I saw the other night?”

“Not one of ours,” answered Molière. “Just a vagabond who joined us for supper one night.”

“One of yours,” piped up an actress, a saucy, plump thing. “I saw his uniform.”

“What color was it?” asked d’Artagnan.

“Green.”

“For true love,” said Molière.

Green had been the color the cardinal’s musketeers had worn, thought D’Artagnan. “Did you catch his name?”

“He didn’t give one.”

“You’ll let me know if you see him again?” He walked his circuit around the rest of the courtyard, thinking about the man he had half-noticed out of the corner of his eye the other day. He’d assumed he was one of Molière’s troupe. Who was he? Why was he at Fontainebleau? Doing something he shouldn’t for someone who paid well? But then again, it might be the newly arrived princess who had once been their enemy. This morning, without saying a word, his majesty had handed him another Mazarinade. Same handwriting, same note paper. It had been placed with stinging mockery in the brim of a hat. A wind from the Fronde is blowing, blowing, blowing, it said.

The Fronde had been the name given to the civil wars.

Chapter 8

AY BEGAN TO WHILE ITS WAY TOWARD
J
UNE
. T
HE MAIDS OF
honor’s Mary gardens—created in honor of the Holy Mother—bloomed with monkshood and our-lady’s-fingers and mother’s-heart and Christ’s-eyes. Roses on courtyard walls unfurled crimson buds to bask in warmer, longer days.

Louise rode with a groom to the nearby convent to see Choisy’s waif. A nun led the girl into a cool, dim chamber, where Louise waited.

“Do you remember me?” Louise asked. Bruises were healing, but the child’s hands were red and chapped. The nuns must have her washing clothes. The Carmelites were known for their vows of poverty and toil. Not all orders were as strict.

The girl nodded her head.

“What’s your name?”

“Julie.”

“I came to see how you do.”

A tear appeared. “I miss them.”

Of course you do, thought Louise. “Come outside and see my horse. Perhaps you’d like to ride him?”

Later, back at Fontainebleau, as she changed her gown for evening, Louise thought more about the girl. If there were tears the next time she visited, she’d take her to see her family. She went to a window, unable to withstand the lure of the setting sun. Dusk was here, a long May’s dusk. Someone was singing an old ballad:

I send you here a wreath of blossoms blown
,

and woven flowers at sunset gathered
.

Time is flying, be therefore kind, my love
,

whilst thou art fair
.

Whoever sang had a tender voice. Summer was almost here, thought Louise. It was one of her favorite seasons. All of nature unfolded and stretched. Each morning, she eagerly rode in the forest, each night she gratefully watched the moon. It was in its waning phase this night, but romance at court, especially between the king and Madame, did not wane, but like a new moon, opened and grew.

S
EVERAL HOURS BEFORE
the dawn in a bedchamber with blue draperies and bed hangings and solid silver chairs, Catherine brushed out Henriette’s hair. Henriette was in her night robe, but Philippe was off somewhere with Guy and wouldn’t be calling this night.

“He says he loves me.”

Bubbling, as wide awake as if it were noon, Henriette spoke into the looking glass set up for her at her dressing table. Hers was an amazing story, a civil war begun before she was born, a father dead by the time she was five, a mother a beggar at the court in which she’d been reared as a princess, a brother who was offered back his throne by the same people who’d fought him, and as her brother’s star had brightened the sky, so had hers. It was intoxicating and heady, like strong wine, to know how much she was admired at the moment when a little more than a year ago, she and her mother hadn’t the funds—for horses, for servants, for new gowns, for jewels, for gifts—to journey with the court across France to witness the king’s wedding. It was as if she’d unknowingly drunk a magic elixir.

She tossed two priceless rings into a silver dish on her dressing table as if they were baubles. “What have you done to my court? he asks. He says he needs me to begin his day. The rest is shadow, he says. You are my light, he says.” She laughed, her face, small and pointed, gamine, a changeable tableau upon which expressions and moods flitted like lightning, part of her charm to her admirers. She was restless and sensitive and very aware of the impression she made upon others. “Once he wouldn’t even dance with me. Do you remember it? Oh, I wish we could stay like this forever, adoring one another, living off kisses.”

“You can charm the birds from the trees,” said Catherine. “They’re saying that and a hundred other things.”

“What things?” Henriette couldn’t get enough of the compliments about herself. All the admiration she’d received had gone to her head, as the young roosters at court continued to preen and screech before her.

“They call you a sprite. They call you a fairy. They call you a nymph, and there is a disagreement about whether you’re a moon nymph or a sun one. They say that you’ve brought a life and vitality to the court that has been missing for years, that even the queen mother didn’t provide when she was younger. They say he should have married you.”

Henriette gasped in pleasure. “They don’t—”

“They do. They say you are all that is best of we French, that you are truly one of us, that your charm and liveliness have changed things forever. They say you’ve changed Monsieur, that before you, women never held him.”

Henriette turned in her chair to face Catherine. Her blossoming vanity turned anxious. “I don’t want to hurt him, you know. I adore Monsieur. He’s been so good to me.”

Catherine leaned over to whisper in Henriette’s ear. “But you have more, far more than Monsieur. The king is your slave. You have him in the palm of your hand.”

Henriette looked down at her hand on the dressing table’s top and turned it to gaze at her palm.

“What are you going to do?” asked Catherine. They both knew exactly what she referred to.

“I don’t know.”

“Has he asked you to—”

“No!” Henriette interrupted, shaking her head, beginning to flush.

“He will.” Catherine kissed her cheek. “Don’t be uneasy. I’ll help you. Did you see the viscount’s gift?”

On a table in the antechamber lay a beautiful book with purple velvet for its cover, and inside were pages edged in gold, and Henriette’s crest was woven into the velvet cover in silver thread. Monks at the university in Paris had illuminated in colored inks the stories of three old folk tales written down by a courtier and court official gifted at such things. There was a story of the girl whose foot fit in a glass slipper, the story of a girl who was made to sleep by a jealous fairy, and the story of a girl who wore a red riding hood. I found it amusing to ask him to make his knowledge into a book, the viscount had said, and of course, I thought of you. Please count me as one of your many admirers and champions. The viscount patronized many writers and artists. La Fontaine, Corneille, Saint-Évremond were under his wing. Henriette wished to do the same.

“It’s very beautiful,” answered Catherine. “He wishes you to know his regard for you.”

“He has offered me Vaux-le-Vicomte any time I desire,” confided Henriette. Vaux-le-Vicomte was a château the viscount was building several hours distant by carriage, closer on horseback. “For my rest, privacy, and contemplation, he said.”

“How thoughtful,” answered Catherine, thinking, Vaux-le-Vicomte would be the perfect meeting place for Madame and the king, away from prying eyes.

“I’ve told his majesty,” said Henriette, her china-blue eyes wide and innocent as if she hadn’t suggested a place where her romance with Louis might become much more serious.

Catherine turned her by the shoulders to face the mirror again and resumed her task of brushing her hair, thinking all the while of what was unfolding. This princess she served danced on a precipice, adoring the admiration thrown at her, and playing as yet with being unfaithful. But there came a moment when play turned physical. Wiser in the ways of the world than Henriette, Catherine thought of the summer days stretching out endlessly before them, the long summer nights when the breeze died and the lace-edged sheets were too heavy and perspiration beaded under arms and breast, behind knees, while the heart beat like a drum at the thought of a desired one, and the forest with its cool mocking green seemed to offer refuge and a hundred bowers.

She remembered her first infidelity, the guilt mixed with unbearable excitement, when passion could be set alight by nothing more open than a meeting of the eyes, simmering until lovers could finally touch each other, explore naked flesh, exploding, made almost violent by the wait. Those thoughts led her to think of the Viscount Nicolas. Discretion, he advised. He’d met with Catherine in a grotto in one of the gardens several days earlier, to assure her of his loyalty to both Madame and his majesty. Discretion would be wise, he’d said, meeting Catherine’s eyes in a way that had made her heart beat faster, something stern and yet tender about him, something appealing and worldly. Assure Madame I am her friend in this, he’d said.

Your implications insult everyone, Catherine had replied, but without anger, playing the court game wherein the truth lay always behind the words. A thousand apologies, the viscount had replied. How may I make up my clumsiness to you? And she’d remembered that word was he was a wonderful lover, and generous, and they had looked in each other’s eyes, the attraction between them neither denied nor spoken aloud, better that way.

The viscount was correct to advise discretion, thought Catherine now. She put down the brush. It seemed to her the king was beginning to show the strain of keeping his passion leashed. He wouldn’t be able to hold it inside forever. He and Henriette were like two comets blazing in parallel paths. Sparks were beginning to shower out into the surrounding darkness. They must all make certain nothing was destroyed, or, at the very least, Catherine must make certain that she herself wasn’t singed.