Before Versailles (20 page)

“Whoo-hoo,” called La Grande, waving a long scarf and carrying one of her pet dogs. She was past her first youth, still unmarried, but that was her choice. I can’t bear to leave France, she told one and all. Those who knew her best said she couldn’t bear to have a master, but since the existence of a married princess very much depended upon the kindness of her husband, perhaps she was more wise than headstrong.

Cursing silently, Choisy turned, bowed low. He could not ignore this princess whose family was intertwined with his. He walked toward her, to play courtier, to pretend to be interested in what she said, to pretend she was a fount of wisdom or goddess of beauty or however it was she wished to be perceived today.

“Where did La Baume le Blanc run off to?” she asked him. Her scarf had fallen from her hands, and she ignored it, waiting for Choisy to pick it up, which he did.

“She had to return at once to Madame’s,” he said. “She sends you her respect and greetings.”

“Tell her to come and examine my dog. My precious hasn’t been piddling the way she should. Look at the way they pee.” She pointed to the bronze dogs. Sunlight played on the water arcs made.

Choisy coughed not to laugh. “Forgive me, but those are male dogs.”

“I know how a dog ought to pee, male or female.” La Grande took a deep breath of garden air. “Ah, it’s good to be here. Now, walk with me around the garden and tell me all the gossip.”

Choisy bowed obediently, amused now rather than irritated. This statue with its dogs was his favorite, for the impudence of it if nothing else. The ancient Romans had wrapped their art in the sacred and the profane. For them, the borders blurred. Choisy liked that blurring. It mirrored his own. As for Louise, he’d find her in the evening and insist she do as he said.

June 1661 …

Chapter 9

OUISE AND
C
HOISY WEREN’T SPEAKING
.

He paid elaborate court to La Grande Mademoiselle, but if he expected upset from Louise, he was mistaken. Choisy was the last thing on her mind. She was determined to find a map, and she asked innocuously pointed questions of ladies-in-waiting and footmen and his majesty’s flirtatious entourage until she had her answer.

It was an evening in early June, the day having been devoted to the feast of Corpus Christi. The royal family had led a procession of monks, nuns, courtiers, and villagers to the chapel while bells rang endlessly and candles shone like beacons in the chapel dark. Afterward, the palace was silent, courtiers snatching a bit of rest from a morning spent on their knees in long prayer and contemplation. Those more worldly met a lover at some prearranged place, which is what Madame was doing. Her household thought she was asleep, but Louise knew she’d crept from her bedchamber and had gone to meet the king.

Louise was exploring the oldest part of the palace, the medieval keep that King François I had made the center of the palace’s rebuilding in the 1500s. He’d added a gallery to link the palace with a monastery that had once stood nearby, and on the ground floor of that gallery were the king’s tile-and-marble bath and steam-rooms, such as the Romans had created. She was told that in other chambers were kept treasures: paintings, engravings, medals, coins that kings and queens of France had collected for more than a century. But that wasn’t what she searched for.

One of the footmen who thought she was pretty had assured her this corridor held a room of royal books. Where there was a chamber of books, there would be maps, she reasoned.

Musketeers stood here and there along the corridor, and as Louise walked on, one of them stepped in front of her. Stocky, the way men become as the middle of their life settles in, he stared at her with intent, twinkling eyes. Louise recognized him as the lieutenant of the king’s musketeers. Was the king in his bath? She would die if she had ventured onto this floor when he was in his bath. But he wouldn’t be in his bath, would he? He was meeting Madame.

“Are you lost, miss?” the musketeer asked.

Louise hesitated, bashfulness taking her by the throat. “No, sir. I was searching for a room of books.”

“You wish to read, miss?”

“I, well, I wish to find maps of the surrounding countryside. I’m from the country, you see.” You’re talking too much, she told herself, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “And I knew every hill and dale and farm for miles. My father and I rode them together. And I still like to ride, oh, I ride all the time if I can, but I don’t have a sense of where I am, and I wanted to know the country around the palace.” Her voice trailed off. She felt tired from her lying. He won’t believe me, she thought. She didn’t even dare look at him.

But D’Artagnan was already thawed. Louise had no idea of it, but she was one of the favorites among the musketeers because she was as polite as she was quietly beguiling. D’Artagnan found her humility most charming, just what he’d want if he had a daughter at court. “And who is your father, miss, if you’ll forgive my asking?”

“My father was Laurent de la Baume le Blanc de la Vallière.”

“I knew him. He was a fine soldier, and now that I look at you, I see you have his eyes. He was a most gallant warrior.”

Touched, she smiled, and D’Artagnan blinked. Well, now. Her smile was something else again. What an enchanting young woman. He touched at his moustache, pulled in his stomach, the automatic gestures of an old flirt.

“Allow me to introduce myself formally,” he said, feeling fatherly with a pinch of palest lust thrown in. “I am Charles de Batz-Castelmore d’Artagnan, lieutenant of his majesty’s musketeers and proud of it. You’re in Madame’s household, are you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, come along, there is indeed a room of books, and I can well imagine in it there are maps of the countryside. You like to ride, miss?”

“More than anything.”

He opened enormous double doors to a chamber lined floor to ceiling with books. Low cabinets sat in the middle of the room and atop them onyx vases with gold or silver handles as well as bronzes of heads, the hair on them short and combed forward, reflecting another time, another empire. D’Artagnan strode at once to the low cabinets, pulled open one of the narrow, long drawers.

“If there are maps, miss, they will be in here. Now, I must go, but I wish you happy hunting.”

Left alone, Louise stood still a moment. So many books together in one place were a rarity. There was also the luxury of a thick rug on the floor, draperies falling in folds at the windows, embroidery in silver and gilt thread picking out patterns on pillows fat and tasseled, lying in piles before the shelved books. There were tall figured candle stands and even a clock.

She was drawn to the sight of the elaborate gold clock, its pendulum moving back and forth. Clocks with a pendulum and a hand that measured off minutes were quite new. She’d never seen one before, but she’d heard of them. At the Orléans palace in Paris there was the usual sundial in the garden and also a water clock, which someone had told her the ancient Greeks had invented.

The water clock measured the passing hours by means of water flowing from one container to another. To be able to know the time at night hadn’t been possible when she was a child, and she and her friends had gone outside in the evenings with lanterns or candlesticks to observe the water clock and see just how late they were staying up. The precise ticking sound of this clock in this chamber transfixed her, and she stood watching, as one of its long golden hands moved a fraction, and then another. But finally, she shook herself. Time was passing, and she had a task to accomplish.

She began with the drawer the lieutenant had opened, carefully sifting through the papers there, maps, as he’d said, the paper heavy in her hands, the ink and paint long dried. She opened a second drawer, sifting quickly but carefully through the papers. When she’d gone through the fifth drawer, she sat back on her heels. There were five of these low cabinets in this chamber. How long had she been, half of an hour, more? Had she time to look through one more cabinet before hurrying back to change for the evening?

Irritated, she walked over to the clock. Nearly three quarters of an hour gone. She bit her lip, trying to decide what to do next. Then she saw what she’d come for. Mounted on the wall, in an ornate frame, was a map. It showed a coastline with drawings of ships sailing in a sea. There were the requisite dragons painted along the ocean’s edge. A river labeled the
Seine
ran downward from the coast. Castles on either side were painted in.
Louvre
, she read,
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Vincennes, Versailles
. She found the word
Fontainebleau
. His majesty’s palaces. She had heard talk of the court traveling to Saint-Germain. Versailles was a small hunting lodge, rather close to here; sometimes they rode there with his majesty during the course of their hunts. Attempting to imprint it in her own mind, she stared hard at the map, but something else caught her eye.

To her right was an ornate standing cabinet, every inch of its wood carved into a display of swags and fruit, with caryatids, those draped female figures craftsmen loved, disguising its solid legs. A tassel dangled from the key that transformed the cabinet into a writing desk. Unable to stop herself, Louise turned the key and a great square in the cabinet’s front popped down. It was a writing desk. She found the side slats that would hold the weight of the square and then considered what was inside. Many little shelves filled with odds and ends, seashells, bowls of rock crystal, a small mother-of-pearl casket, figures carved in ivory, an inkwell of silver, quill pens, paper in an ivory box. She pulled out a piece. A
fleur-de-lis
was embossed in gold.

It was the king’s paper. She crossed herself and said a quick prayer to the Holy Mother, imagining his majesty, with his frowning, serious eyes, writing something important. Would he mind if she borrowed just one piece? The inkwell’s top was set with rubies. Dipping a pen in, she quickly traced the river, wrote the names of the castles. Geography was considered unimportant for a girl. Girls who had gone to convents for schooling might have learned some, but she’d been schooled at home with the Orléans’s princesses, whose tutor had soon tired of trying to teach anyone anything. She could read and write French, paint, sing in Italian without knowing what any of the words meant, add and subtract sums, and she did possess an excellent sense of direction. Her father had taught her when she was barely talking, just as he’d taught her to ride. Sometimes, she dreamed of sitting before him in his saddle, his arm strong around her waist. Look at the sun, he’d told her. Look at the moss. This map was already making her explorations form a more sensible whole in her mind.

She replaced the stopper, looked at the quill pen. How would she clean the ink from it? The ticks from the clock seemed loud now. At any moment, someone was going to come in and accost her. What are you doing? the footman or major domo or someone important would say. And what would she answer? She tried to clean the pen upon the paper and managed a little, but now she had ink on her fingers. Then she accidentally touched the soft, padded leather of the writing surface and to her horror left a faint fingerprint.