Before Versailles (4 page)

C
HOISY, WHOSE FULL
name was François-Timoléon de Choisy, ran upstairs, Louise’s tale of boys and iron masks forgotten. Born to privilege, he belonged to the cream of the nobility and was as attuned in his own way to the nuances of court as his mother was.

The world as we know it is ending, he thought, initial excitement and surprise turning to elation as possibilities unfolded one after another in his mind. The cardinal was dead. Amazing. For Choisy’s entire life, the cardinal had been alive and in power either directly or indirectly. But there was more than that in his jubilance. For the first time in years, France was in the hands of the young. Did anyone but Choisy comprehend that? The king was only twenty and two. Monsieur, the king’s brother, was twenty. They were young and mettlesome and high-spirited, as he was. He’d ask Monsieur for a place on one of the king’s councils. Why not drop a young man who liked to wear earrings among the old graybeards? It would liven things up. Off with the old, on with the new.

Once he was on horseback, gown gone, diamonds glittering sedately—for him—here and there among his clothing, he told his mother and Louise his intention, and his mother nearly snapped his head off.

“Ask the viscount, my Choisy, not Monsieur! Have you lost your senses? Now, be your most silver-tongued, my angel, your most charming. Even if you have to wait in an antechamber for hours, see the viscount tonight if possible. And call upon the queen mother and tell her I return tomorrow and that I send her my deepest condolences.”

As the sight of Choisy and his horse faded into the distance, Louise and Madame de Choisy turned to walk back, their heels crunching in the gravel of garden paths, birds filling the country silence with a sunset song, the château looming large and grand before them, forest just beyond its gates.

“Does he call upon the Viscount Nicolas?” asked Louise.

“Who else! There is none other who matters!” Madame de Choisy sounded scandalized, and Louise lowered her head in embarrassment as Madame de Choisy stopped right where she was and looked Louise over. “Mother of God, tell me you’re not completely ignorant. Did the Orléans never talk of court?”

The family her stepfather served, this princely house of Orléans, talked of how they’d been wronged over and over again. “I didn’t pay much attention, I’m afraid.”

“The Orléans’s great stalk of a princess could have been the queen of France, you know, only she fired a cannon at his majesty during one of the misunderstandings. I’m appalled that your mother has not prepared you for the court you will grace.”

Misunderstandings? Louise was shocked in her turn by Madame de Choisy’s blithe description of what had been civil wars. This stalk, as Madame de Choisy called her, was the king’s first cousin who had taken up arms against him. So many of the king’s family had done so. It’s the history of our kingdom, her mother said, but it was a history of disloyalty that Louise didn’t understand.

“Was the exile hard for you?” No longer scolding, Madame de Choisy’s expression had shifted from dismay to soft pity, both of which were uncomfortable to Louise.

“You forget I was born in the country. I knew no other life until we came to Paris,” she answered.

“You’ve been in Paris nearly a year,” countered Madame de Choisy. “Surely that’s given you some sense of court.”

Some sense of court? thought Louise. How? The widowed Duchess d’Orléans must mourn by shutting herself away in the Paris family palace, where she must have endless headaches and need her head bathed in lavender essence and be read to and be irritable if the reader became tired, be angry if there were too much laughter or talk. Louise’s life had gone from the freedom of the country, where escape was easy—she might ride wherever she liked, for almost as long as she liked—to a cage bound by the four walls of a Paris palace garden. She knew all the world was just across the river at the palace of the Louvre, where his majesty lived, from which word came of fêtes and parties and dancing and marriage arrangements. The king and his new queen were all that were talked of. To hear of their comings and goings, to be so close and yet so far, had been hard. If Madame de Choisy—well, really Choisy; it was he who had taken an immediate liking to her—had not lifted her out of the purgatory she endured, she didn’t know what she would have done. Strange and very wonderful not to endure anymore, Louise thought, and some of the strain that had played across her face eased. Please, she thought to herself, may my good fortune continue.

“What a dear you are,” said Madame de Choisy, who had missed none of the various emotions playing across Louise’s face, “not to complain. I find the Duchess d’ Orléans quite difficult, and as for those daughters of hers—well! I see you’re loyal. Not a word against them has escaped your lips. I commend you upon that; such loyal silence will make you a rarity at court, which I must explain to you—otherwise I will be dropping a lamb among lions, and that will never do.”

Talking all the while about past intricacies of the court to which Louise was going: the queen mother’s widowhood, the cardinal’s rise, the fact that he had been the queen mother’s secret lover, Madame de Choisy swept Louise into a exquisitely appointed little antechamber with bowls of flowers and huge tapestries covering the walls and settled her into a chair as if she were an invalid. Her kind briskness touched Louise to the heart, and she almost couldn’t listen to everything Madame de Choisy was attempting to make certain she understood.

“You must upon all occasions be polite to him,” Madame de Choisy was saying of the Viscount Nicolas. “Cardinal Mazarin, God rest his soul, was his majesty’s foremost minister, and now it is the viscount’s turn. The man is handsome and well enough born and has an eye for art and an ear for music and an ability to conjure funds when there are none, all a first minister should be.”

“Does his majesty desire the viscount as his first minister?”

The sharp precision of that question made Madame de Choisy widen her eyes. “My word, does a mind reside amid all this dewy-eyed beauty I see before me? You surprise me, child. I think he has no choice.”

“But he is the king!”

Geniunely amused, Madame de Choisy laughed. “Your innocence is most charming, but such does not thrive at court. His majesty is not an innocent and is wise enough to do what must be done. I’m certain, therefore, the viscount will be first minister. None of us can get along without him, you know.”

Louise sat up very straight, her clear eyes suddenly brilliant. “I saw his majesty once, when he stopped at Blois.” The moody face under its great hat was unforgettable.

“I’d forgotten his majesty made a visit to the old duke. That was when the world and he traveled to Spain for the royal wedding, wasn’t it? So you saw the one and only, did you?”

“Yes.” It had been the absolute romance of the kingdom, the royal wedding last summer. All the nobility had traveled to see it, one huge, merry entourage, but of course, that did not include the presence of the king’s once rebellious, once very dangerous uncle, the Duke d’Orléans, or his household or, therefore, Louise.

“And?”

Louise began to blush, not some slight flattering coloring of cheeks, but a deep hue that stained her neck and shoulders in splotches, as well as her face. “He’s very handsome, very gallant.”

“Isn’t he though? So, will you flirt with him at court? You’ll see him there, you know, quite often.”

The terrible staining blush deepened. “He-he is married. It would not be proper.”

“Oh … are you going to be proper?”

There was a silence.

Madame de Choisy threw up her hands, the jewels on her rings catching sunlight. “Don’t tell me I’ve selected a secret Huguenot or worse, a devotée—yes, you know them, don’t you? Dry, somber, pruned-up Catholics, not an ounce of fun anywhere. And you going to serve in what I predict will be the most exciting household in court!”

“I will try, of course, to be proper, but I am—” Louise didn’t know the words, but a lovely smile spread across her face in excitement at all that awaited her. The smile was more than lovely; it was incandescent and glowing.

“—charming? Adorable? Fallible?” Madame de Choisy leaned across and pinched her cheek. “And quite extraordinarily beautiful when you smile that way. You take my breath away. I see why Choisy flirts so. You are going to grace Madame’s court and make all the gentlemen swoon, and everyone is going to say to me, where did you find her, my dear? A hidden jewel, that’s what she is, they’ll say. That’s what you’ve been, haven’t you? A shining little diamond hidden under the dreariness of the Orléans. Poor dear. Well, what fun you’re going to have now! Ah, to be twenty again. Thirty … Mother of God, I’d take forty! Come, my sweet, let’s have an early supper, and I’ll tell you all I know about our very handsome king of France.”

“I would like that!”

“So would I!” Madame de Choisy’s infectious laughter pealed out like the clap of bells into the little antechamber, while the sweet light of a cold spring afternoon spilled in to highlight all the beautiful objects placed here and there, to highlight Madame de Choisy with her rings and fashionable gown and lively gestures and love of life, and Louise thought, I can never go back. Never.

A
FEW HOURS
later, in a handsome château just on the outskirts of Paris, Choisy sat with one or two others in the Viscount Nicolas’s antechamber. It was late, and most people had gone away to supper and cards, but Choisy waited, as he’d been ordered by his mother.

“Everyone who is anyone has already been here,” said a young nobleman waiting with Choisy. “You should have seen the crowd earlier. Do you know what they’re saying?” continued the young man. He and Choisy knew each other well, were members of the king’s brother’s circle of friends. “They’re saying the king summoned his principal ministers today to tell them he would have no more first ministers, that he would oversee the details of the running of his kingdom himself.”

He raised an eyebrow in disdain, then laughed. Choisy joined him. It was a ridiculous gesture on the king’s part. Overseeing the details of a kingdom was tedious. It was why courtiers were invented, to run the kingdom for a king.

“The Prince de Condé has already sent a message to the viscount, I’m told.”

“Well …” said Choisy. What a delicious piece of gossip. Condé was a formidable prince who’d warred against the king and his mother.

One half of a set of huge doors opened, and Choisy’s name was called. He stood, shook out his hair and the long lace hanging from his sleeves, and smiled significantly at his friend. Even though the other had been waiting longer, Choisy had been admitted first, a testament to the power and high birth of his family.

He walked into a chamber as beautiful as a king’s, thickest velvet draperies, embroidered chairs, armoires of wood patterned with ormolu and filigree, paintings by the finest artists in the world, solid silver candlesticks the size of boys, and bowed to the figure sitting in a chair, awaiting him. The viscount held out his hand, and Choisy knelt, as if the man were a bishop of the church, and made a kissing sound above the slim, white fingers, one of which wore a giant emerald set in a ring.

“I’m not the Holy Father,” protested the viscount, but he smiled, and Choisy knew he had pleased.

That was good. This man was the only man with the wealth and connection and verve to step into the enormous space the cardinal’s death had just created, and so Choisy began the game of court, making certain one’s family was allied with those most influential and powerful, and if that wasn’t possible, making war.

Two months later
,
May 1661
,
at the royal palace of
Fontainebleau …

Chapter 1