Before Versailles (45 page)

“I’ll sew it for you,” trilled Julie. “My stitches are more and more even, Mother Superior says.”

“Well, wonderful. If you keep practicing your stitches, when I marry, you shall come with me and be my maidservant.”

“And my brothers? And my mother?”

Oh, dear, thought Louise, but she smiled. “Perhaps.”

Julie beamed at her as if it were settled and reached for the last roll.

Louise pleated a piece of her gown, her mind gnawing again at the problem that was the boy. “If you had a terrible secret,” she heard herself saying, “that you’d been warned not to tell, but you had to tell someone or die, what would you do?” How silly I am, thought Louise, to be talking to a child about this, but nonetheless she fastened anxious eyes on Julie’s face.

“I’d tell Mama.”

“What if you couldn’t tell your mother?”

“I’d tell her.” Julie pointed to the figure of the Mother Superior of the order, in the garden now counting baskets of picked beans.

Louise hadn’t considered that. Her eyes on the Mother Superior, looking brisk and efficient among the baskets of beans, she asked, “What if you couldn’t tell her either?”

Julie’s brow furrowed in thought. After a moment, she said, “I’d have you take me to the palace and tell his majesty.”

Louise laughed. “How very grand you are. His majesty, indeed.” She stood up, shook out crumbs of roll from her gown. “Come with me, young lady, and we’ll go for a nice ride on my horse before I return.”

“The Chevalier de Choisy, you could always tell him,” said Julie, a little later when they were cantering along a lane near the convent. “He has a nice heart.”

T
HAT AFTERNOON
, M
ARIA
Teresa on his arm, Louis walked into Henriette’s antechamber. Word was Philippe had left for Paris. He hadn’t asked permission, which was disrespectful to Louis, but Louis knew where he went and to whom. Make certain someone is watching over him, he’d ordered D’Artagnan. Philippe chose rough companions when he was in certain moods. The least Louis could do was keep him from physical hurt. The other hurt, the internal hurt, well, it was too late for that, wasn’t it? Another Mazarinade pinned to a pillow, but this time the writer was all but caught. Shall I bring her to you? asked D’Artagnan. Not yet. He wanted time to think about precisely what he was going to do.

Embroidering, Henriette’s maids of honor were set out like so many charming porcelain shepherdesses. Henriette waved and came forward to take Maria Teresa over to her mother.

Louis looked around like a hunter choosing his prey—to know the originator of the Mazarinades for certain had eased something in him—and stopped before Miss de la Baume le Blanc, the third name on Henriette’s list and perhaps an accomplice to the nasty little messages that had so unsettled him. If she is involved, she has no idea of what they say, argued D’Artagnan. I’m certain of that. I’d imagine La Grande Mademoiselle told her they were important to you and must be kept secret. It was interesting to Louis that D’Artagnan defended Miss de la Baume le Blanc.

Louise, sewing away, her mind playing over the choices Julie had given her, imagining conversations she might have, didn’t even notice that he was standing before her. But the chattering of friends sitting near, like birds throwing out song, had stopped, and she lifted her head because of it, and there he was. His majesty, the king.

“How do you do this evening, Miss de la Baume le Blanc?”

Louise gaped at Louis, unable to think. And then the blush began, a deep telltale stain that edged out at the shoulders and traveled up her neck and face, so that in seconds she was a perspiring and crimson wreck.

“The evening is warm,” he said, watching the blush spread with what seemed to her were cold eyes. “Your visits to my Belle are much appreciated.”

She swallowed, unable to force a word past her throat, and again the silence between them and around them seemed larger than life. What an absolute fool I am, she thought to the immense and loud pounding of her heart.

“Well, good evening to you,” Louis said, surrendering to her inability to answer, and to her relief he moved on.

“You idiot,” Fanny whispered the moment she thought he was far enough away.

“I-I couldn’t think,” said Louise.

“Obviously.”

“Well, that seemed singularly unsuccessful,” said Henriette to Louis.

“Yes, she rides beautifully, is kind to dogs, but apparently can’t speak. I’ll go sit by Miss de Chimerault again.” Chimerault was another name on Henriette’s list.

Louis sounded grim, and Henriette smiled to herself.

“Where’s Monsieur?” Louis asked. I wonder if you even care. The sudden judgment behind that thought shocked him.

Henriette was blithe. “Probably still sleeping. He drank like a fish last night.” She brushed at a thread on Louis’s tight jacket. There was nothing there, but she couldn’t help herself. It was a small, secret gesture of ownership.

Across the chamber, Maria Teresa’s eyes focused on that gesture.

“He loves her,” hissed a dwarf in Spanish.

Something like an explosion went off inside Maria Teresa’s head. She stood, dropping her plate of light snacks. At once, she was surrounded.

“Are you well, your majesty?”

“Is there pain, your majesty?”

Louis was among them, her hands in his, and his expression concerned.

“I want to go to my chambers,” she said.

He took her up in his arms, carrying her all the way, and once there shooed her ladies away and sat on her bed and held her hand.

“Women flirt with you!” Maria Teresa said.

“Of course they do. You mustn’t mind it. There’s nothing to it. It’s our way here.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Oh, my sweetheart, I can’t be rude. It’s a game, nothing more. No one is more precious to me than you. You are an infanta of Spain and the queen of France. There is no one higher in my regard. You carry my dauphin, the heir.”

Maria Teresa shivered, unable to withstand his dark eyes, the slight monastic sadness in his face.

Louis kissed her tears, hand-fed her the Moroccan dates she so loved, the Spanish olives, and flat bread. When finally he left her, he hated himself. His heart felt stony and empty.

“Never!” she screamed to the dwarves. “You are never to imply his lack of duty again!” They resorted to expert tumbles and chases to make her laugh, but she didn’t.

“I’ll say nothing more, no matter what you pay,” one of them said to Olympe later. They met in secret on the servants’ stairs.

“Of course.” Olympe gave the bag of coins, her face somber, but inside her was triumph. It didn’t matter now what was denied. The queen would be watching all the time.

L
ATE THAT NIGHT
, his mouth still bruised from Henriette’s kisses and several from the Pon flirt, Louis listened to Colbert.

“Créqui is son-in-law to the Marquise du Plessis-Bellièvre,” Colbert said.

Louis closed his eyes. The marquise was high on the list of those firmly allied with the viscount.

“Therefore, in essence, the Viscount Nicolas controls the Mediterranean fleet.” Colbert’s voice was, as always, dispassionate, detached from the news he delivered.

Therefore, in essence, the viscount was the French navy. The flesh on the back of Louis’s neck prickled. “I’ll arrest him now.”

“We haven’t the funds for war, sire. He has.”

It was like being dropped into the water of a winter river.

“Let him empty a bit of his money chests on this fête of his—he’s invited everyone, six thousand at last count, I hear. Let the taxes refill our coffers even a trifle. Let him give you the million you asked for.”

There was a sharp knock at the door, and it opened. Lieutenant d’Artagnan hesitated at the sight of Colbert, but Louis nodded his head for him to speak.

“Monsieur is in Paris at Madame Rouge’s.” Madame Rouge ran an expensive and exotic whorehouse for men and women and anyone with tastes in between. “There has been some—” D’Artagnan searched for some word to cover the behavior of Philippe and his friends “—awkward conduct.”

“Is he hurt?”

“I’m afraid so. We’ve taken him to the Palais-Royal, and a physician is attending him.”

“Seriously hurt?”

D’Artagnan shook his head, thinking, there are levels of hurt, seen and unseen.

“When he wakes up tomorrow, I want his confessor at his bedside.”

“Yes, sir. Good night, sir.”

When D’Artagnan was gone, Louis said, “The viscount’s drawn a noose around my neck. It lies loosely. He thinks it lies there without my knowledge, but all he has to do is tighten it, and I choke.”

Colbert made no answer. It seemed wisest not to.

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON
Louis again greeted Louise, and again she was unable to be anything but silent, gazing down at her sewing after one quick flick of her eyes upward at him. He strode away, angry at being ignored, but something made him turn around and look back at her, and she was staring after him, a strained expression on her face. He felt something he couldn’t put words to. Then Henriette was at his side, wanting to show him a new song she’d learned, and the afternoon whiled away its hours in music, a whiling away he loved, but every so often he would raise his eyes to Louise’s, and for just a second, perhaps less, they’d stare at each other and then drop their eyes or look elsewhere.

“If he ever deigns to speak to you again, you have to say something,” Fanny told her that evening, as they dressed in their best gowns and pearls and pinched their cheeks since they couldn’t put rouge upon them. “Come, let’s practice. Say, ‘Good day to you, your majesty.’ Go on. Say it.”

And Louise did practice, imagining making him smile instead of frown. She’d made an important decision. He was the one she was going to tell about the boy.

But he didn’t speak to her once during the whole evening. And where was Choisy? Her champion, her companion, her adviser in these wars of ballroom flirting and maneuver had abandoned her. Off to Paris, I understand, Madame de Choisy told her. He said he loved her, but where was he now that she needed him? His majesty was brave and gallant and wise for his years and would know what to do about the boy. But he wasn’t speaking to her this night, and she hadn’t the courage to initiate any conversation on her own. Other ladies had his attention, but if he spoke to her again, she’d do it.