Before Versailles (33 page)

“My dear friend,” said Anne. “I have such need of you,” she whispered.

Henriette was the last out of the carriage.

Marie ran her eyes over this new Madame’s face. “But how wonderful to meet you at last,” she said, smiling and gracious and displaying a charm that had initiated many plots and lured many a man into them, “you are even more darling than I have heard. Let me—”

“I have a headache and need to go to my chambers immediately,” interrupted Henriette. She moved past the duchess, following the major domo into the house, and Catherine, with a quick curtsy to the duchess, followed behind her.

Anne and Marie walked slowly up the steps.

“So,” said Marie, “my task isn’t to be an easy one, is it?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Marie linked her arm in Anne’s, a great breach of etiquette, but etiquette wasn’t needed between these two. They had run through the halls of the palace of the Louvre together as girls of fifteen and sixteen; they had, more often than not, been on the same side in the maze of plots that had been the reign of Louis XIII and his Cardinal Richelieu. They knew each other to the bone.

Anne went through the ceremony of greeting family and friends and faithful servants gathered in the hall, but at a signal from Marie, everyone melted away, and Anne followed Marie into her most private of chambers and sat down with a sigh as Marie poured wine. She unpinned her hat. “Is it possible that we’ve gotten old? I feel quite ancient.”

“You’re ageless. How does his majesty?”

“Well.” Anne took off her leather gloves, smoothed the fingers of each one. She had asked Louis to allow Marie back at court after her dearest had died, but he’d refused. Marie never mentioned it. For some reason, that made Anne love her all the more.

“One hears he meets with his council twice a day.”

“Yes.”

“Most enterprising. Most unusual. Will it last, one wonders? You’ll forgive me if I say I was surprised you weren’t named to the council.”

“I didn’t want it. All that fuss, all the decisions,” Anne lied. “Time to read my prayers and count my grandchildren.”

“Ah, yes, my congratulations. And when is the dauphin expected?”

“In November.”

Marie took a small sip of wine. “And her majesty? Does she suspect?”

“The queen is an innocent child.” As simply as that, they were at the crux of the reason Anne traveled from Fontainebleau and dragged her reluctant daughter-in-law with her.

“And this one?”

“She is a heartless minx!”

So I would be too, thought Marie, if I held the heart of the king of France in my hands. She looked down at those hands. Once they’d held hearts, and other parts of men, and made them do her bidding. Now all that heat was cooled in her; sometimes it was hard to remember the passionate woman she had once been, never mind that she had married again. It was for reasons other than passion. Her husband told her that the naturals of the new world across the sea were advised by their old women as to when to make war or treaties with other tribes. An old woman’s heart was wise if it wasn’t too bitter. The duchess could feel her wisdom now, coiled, sitting dispassionate, interested in its cool way, waiting to put her mind, her talents, to this task Anne brought her, first in a hurriedly dashed-off letter delivered by a musketeer, now in a visit.

“She has his majesty’s regard?”

“I’m certain of it,” answered Anne.

“Have they bedded?”

Anne gasped and crossed herself.

You’ve gotten lazy, thought Marie. Jules Mazarin allowed you to become lazy so he could gather all the power in his hands. I knew he would. “If they’ve bedded, you have no need of me. There is nothing I can do.”

“Surely they haven’t! It’s a sin before God!” Anne cried.

“Did we not sin in our time?”

Anne didn’t answer.

“The English ambassador will call in a few days, as you requested,” Marie said. “I’ve a confessor who is all that is discreet and will guide her in the right direction, should she choose to confess. And I must add, he’s quite handsome. I find it easier to confess to a handsome man myself.”

“Discretion.” Anne laughed without merriment in the sound. “That would be a blessing. She insults an infanta, not to mention the Mother Church!”

Marie remembered a long ago time when another infanta had allowed a young and handsome and ardent English duke into her bedchamber. That, too, had been a scandal. You will like this Mazarin, Cardinal Richelieu was reputed to have said, when he introduced an upstart Italian wise enough to change his name from Giulio Mazzarino to Jules Mazarin to Anne, the frustrated queen of France. He looks like the Duke of Buckingham, purred Richelieu.

“After all we’ve done,” Anne ranted on. “His Eminence died from laboring too hard to arrange the details of the peace. To marry his majesty to the infanta was all his hope.”

It was your hope, your ambition, thought Marie, and Jules died of greed.

“For the future, he said, of both kingdoms. All the others must bow before France and Spain. The infanta is a pearl beyond price, a gentle, well-bred girl. I won’t have her hurt!”

A gentle, well-bred girl content to stay in her chambers all day and snack on Spanish almonds and play cards. Did that really do for a vital young man who held the destiny of the kingdom in his hands? “And Monsieur?”

“Monsieur is willing to trust my guidance in this.”

So, Philippe had little or no importance in this. Had he ever? “And one had heard he was so in love with his wife—”

“He was! Is!” Anne’s mouth tightened. “Monsieur will make no trouble, that I promise.”

Broken already, is he? thought Marie. But of course he would be. You above all people know how dangerous a brother to the king can be. She picked up a fan left lying on a table, moved it gently to stir the air. Alliances were so interesting; the way they could break on a whim or cross word. If she’d been younger, this would have been perfect fodder to start another civil war, another Fronde, as they liked to call such skirmishes, where those ennobled kicked against the traces of the king and thus won more privileges, taking their rightful place by his side. A wind from the Fronde is blowing, blowing, blowing and Monsieur Mazarin will be going, going, going. So they’d sung in the streets and in the court once upon a time. Long live the princes of the blood, they sang, but murder him who knows neither joy nor law nor religion. Murder, murder, murder Mazarin.

“I depend on you to show her the error of her ways,” said Anne. “It is not acceptable for her to conduct a love affair with the king of France, and I want her to understand that in no uncertain terms! I will be her enemy if she does so, an implacable enemy!”

“You give me my head in this?”

“I bow to you. No mind is more supple than yours.”

“Well, then, leave all to me. You are here as my guest. You must rest and not fret about a single thing during your stay,” Marie said. “My cook has a new dish to present for your supper.”

“Oh, I can’t think of food at a time like this.”

“Come and see my chapel,” Marie said soothingly. “It’s the only thing I’ve done to this old barn. We’ll have vespers there this evening, and perhaps you and I might pray for wisdom and forbearance before I escort you to your chambers.”

“I already have wisdom and forbearance!” Anne snapped.

“But I haven’t,” smiled Marie. “We’ll pray for me.”

Anne walked beside her to the chapel. “His Eminence always said you were the most intelligent woman he knew.”

Then why did he end as adviser and more to you, while I was exiled? thought Marie, but her thoughts weren’t angry. She’d seen other lands and other ways; she’d played spy over and over and yet over again, changing sides like a chameleon does color. She’d driven Richelieu to swear and almost brought down his successor, the Italian turned Frenchman, Mazzarino who styled himself Mazarin, and then she had ended on his side. Ah, it had all been great fun. So many men, their lust often larger than their wit. So many men, with their wit larger than their lust. So little time. Time, the hussy who weakened us all. Even someone who was a hussy to begin with. Was this Henriette a hussy? If she was, Marie could only wish her well. What was the saying? It is extremely useful to die in God’s grace, but it is extremely boring to live in it. Would God take a hussy? A woman who had been crafty and faithless and lied as easily as she smiled? Who looked in her mirror now and could no longer find herself? Who longed for something more and had discovered that it could be found not in men or wine or ambition or diamonds but only sometimes in prayer. Ah, she must meet this God whose sense of life, of timing, was so ironic. She had a feeling His smile was as wide as the sky, His love as deep as the ocean, that they would get along, she by amusing Him with her past, and He, by bringing her restless heart, a lioness that stalked the plain of her being, peace.

M
ARIE’S HANDSOME CONFESSOR
led vespers. An acolyte with a voice like a silver bell had been borrowed from a nearby nunnery to sing for them.

“What is that prayer?” asked Anne. Its Latin words flew up the vaulted ceiling and cascaded back down into their ears and hearts.

“I have lately become enamored of Saint Hildegard,” answered Marie.

“O most radiant Mother, Mary, star of the sea, sweetest of all delights—pray for us …” the acolyte sang in Latin, her voice one of shivering purity, the prayer a repeating chant of drawn-out syllables, her voice rising up and down a scale of notes.

“Charming,” said Anne. “I must tell the queen.”

“You must take the acolyte to court and have her sing for her majesty.”

“O most sweet and most loving Mother, authoress of life, you birth light, as God breathes you …” sang the acolyte.

But the one for whom all this soothing loveliness was planned wasn’t present. She was in her bedchamber with a vile headache brought about by the trip, Catherine had explained. And Marie had watched Anne twitch with irritation.

Catherine knelt now with them. A handsome thing with a carnal, cool look to her that no man could find unpleasing, thought Marie. It was said her cousin, the captain of the king’s guard, was wild for her. The viscount was to be named chancellor, Anne told her, but said nothing of the man named Colbert. He was a rising star, Marie’s young husband told her.

Later, as the lovely twilight flirted with its promise of dark, she went to the chambers that held Henriette and found her sitting in a chair staring moodily out at the fading light. Marie curtsied low.

“Have you all you need, highness? Is there anything I may order for you?”

She saw that bowls of food sat untouched on an enameled tray on a nearby chest. The duchess considered the young woman brought here so that some sense and decorum might be argued into her. Friends wrote that Henriette had brought a lightness and festivity to the court that his majesty much enjoyed. What an inept, blind fool the queen must be.

Marie pushed the shutter on one side of the window open even more. “Do you smell it?” she asked. “Jasmine. Once I would bathe in nothing but jasmine water, and men who loved me swore they knew when I’d walked through a room by the fragrance of jasmine that lingered behind.”

Catherine was drawn, she could see, but it wasn’t for her that Marie was setting her lure.

“I’ve heard you carried on affairs with six men, two of them dukes,” said Catherine.

“Oh, hardly that. But I did manage three, and they were all dukes.”

Catherine laughed.

Marie stepped back from the window, the soft summer night. She curtsied again to Henriette. “I am honored that you visit my house. The queen mother is an old friend, and you, I hope, will be a new one. I’ve heard nothing but praises sung about you, and now I see they didn’t say enough.”

“Not from the queen mother, I imagine. I blush to think what she’s said of me to you.” Henriette was brittle, defiant, chin lifted, eyes sparking, ready to do battle.

“But what can be said, except that you are lovely and so of course the king desires you.”

Marie was so matter of fact, so without blame, that some of the stoniness left Henriette’s posture. She met the old duchess’s eyes, worldly wise, smiling, crystalline, clear. “Which she doesn’t like.”

“She doesn’t like mess and bother.” These days, thought Marie.

“I can’t command someone’s heart.”

“Of course not.” Marie reached out her hand and touched a strand of thread that made up the heavily embroidered draperies of the bed. “You see the blue picked out there in the flower? Your eyes are that same shade. Remarkable. No wonder he’s fallen in love. He cannot help himself. Might I sit down just a moment? I’m tired after my walk in my gardens. Now you really must walk them tomorrow. Every ache, every care will be scattered by the sight of them. I have a rose bush said to be a hundred years old, and my jasmine, well. I’ll have my servants cut some for you. We’ll make a special bath for you. We’ll put the tub right here, at the windows, and you can look out on the trees and sky as jasmine-scented water is poured over you. Delightful, no?”

Less sullen, but still wary, Henriette gave a short nod of her head.

Marie smiled to herself. First lure taken. “I so wish you to have the most pleasant of visits in my home. I so wish you to visit me often, to bring your young, fresh face and ways for my old eyes to feast upon, but I wouldn’t be a friend to her majesty if I didn’t speak plainly. I ask you, in the quiet that is my garden at its best, in the beauty, which will only be heightened if you grace it, that is my chapel, if you will think about the kingdom, the king, if it, if he, can bear this scandal, for the scandal will be large. You are, after all, a princess of France, and you must consider your position.”