Before Versailles (65 page)

T
HE INK ON
the letter was dry now. Cinq Mars folded the paper into a small square. He wrote the Viscount Nicolas’s name across the square’s front and waved the paper back and forth to dry those words. Then he tucked the square into his sleeve and began the business of stoppering the ink and drying the tip of the quill. He put the ink and pen back into the drawer in which he’d found them, looked down at his hands. Ink stained a finger. He looked around the chamber. There was nothing with which to wash his hands. He licked the ink with his tongue, but he couldn’t remove all of it. They’d bring him food soon. He’d pray they didn’t notice anything. He went to the window, looked out into the courtyard, down upon the musketeers standing in groups talking. Where was he exactly? He had been blindfolded when he was put into a carriage at Pignerol, but now he was sure he smelled the sea. What was happening?

Chapter 33

ND THEN MY DWARF BEGAN TO CHASE THE PARROT
, and where would he go but to Monsieur’s shoulder, and Monsieur would have laughed, but the parrot chose that moment to defecate, and Monsieur was unhappy, but Madame laughed,” Maria Teresa chatted in Spanish about her day.

Where is she? Louis thought, looking among the courtiers gathered for an evening of gambling, but then he saw Louise, his secret in the bower, his heart of the rose. He placed his wife at a table to play cards. D’Artagnan’s last message said they were in Monaco. They were having to keep the boy drugged much of the time, and he was ill with it. D’Artagnan was worried for him.

“I tell about bird,” Maria Teresa said to the ladies at the table.

“Oh, it was too funny, your majesty,” said Athénaïs, all bright vivaciousness. “When it landed on Monsieur’s shoulder, he screamed, ‘Shit,’ and at first we thought it was his irritation with the bird. Little did we know he was being, in truth, literal.”

Louis walked to Louise, who was playing hazard with several of her friends. He wasn’t going to rest well until he knew the boy had reached his final destination, a small island off Monaco, little on it but an old fortified monastery. He glanced toward his brother, but Philippe didn’t look at him. They hadn’t spoken to each other since their quarrel. Too many quarrels in the family. I didn’t write the Mazarinades, his cousin La Grande insisted in letter after letter. She was ready to swear any number of holy oaths upon her innocence. If not she, then who?

“Does it please you to gamble, Miss de la Baume le Blanc?” he asked. He just wanted to hear her voice.

“I always lose, your majesty.”

He held out a coin. “Here. Perhaps this will bring you luck.”

She took it, and their eyes met for a quick moment, then Louis walked around the room to give coins to all the maids of honor. He wanted to stay near her, but of course he couldn’t. When she began to draw a crowd because she was winning, he was unable to resist standing by her again.

“What is the fuss all about?” he asked.

“She can’t lose,” said Choisy.

“I’m so happy. It’s unusual for me to win,” Louise said.

Choisy watched as she pushed the pile of coins before her toward Louis, then, a sudden instinct rising in him, looked from her face to the king’s.

“Take my pile of coins, sire. They’re yours. They began with your coin,” said Louise.

“A gallant gesture,” said Nicolas, who was one of those watching the game.

“If only all my court were so generous,” Louis said. “No thank you, ma’am. Have a pink gown made. I’d like to see you in pink, as pale as the roses—” he stopped, aware suddenly that he was likely betraying too much. “Enjoy your play,” and in another moment he was at his wife’s side. “Let me take you outside to see the stars.”

“Like the summer roses in the queen’s garden,” finished Nicolas smoothly, his eyes moving from a retreating Louis to Louise and back again.

Louise laughed, her laughter was so clear, so joyous, so heartfelt, that nearly everyone nearby found himself smiling.

“Miss de la Baume le Blanc,” said Nicolas, moving to sit down right beside her, determined to follow this hunch that had taken hold of him. “Take my coin and make my fortune.”

But Louise was already pushing back her chair, raking the coins into a napkin. “Play in my place, if you would, sir. I have good fortune enough.”

O
UTSIDE ON THE
balcony, Louis stared at the sky for a long time without speaking, all the things he wished to accomplish there before him like the twinkling stars in the sky above, all the reasons why he might fail also there. Where was D’Artagnan? How was the Duchess Marie faring with his mother? Was the writer of the Mazarinades aware of the question of his birth? Or were the notes simply taunts that had a deeper meaning than the taunter realized? A small sniffle made him look down at his wife. “Dear one, why do you weep?”

“Too many women.”

His heart began to beat very fast.

“Too many women, they flirt with you, always.”

“Yes, women do flirt with me. I am, after all, king of France. But their flirtations don’t touch my heart. If I seem to flirt back, it’s because it’s fun. Nothing more. No one can take your place in my affections.”

“I don’t flirt.”

“Yes, but you’re very devout and serious, and I am frivolous and only a man, a man who has had the good fortune to be wedded to a saint. Dear saint, don’t despair of me.”

“I am not a saint.”

But he saw his words pleased her. He could see that she loved that he had compared her to one. “You are.”

“Saints don’t feel jealousy.”

“Then pray to have it removed for your sake and mine, my dear.” He walked her back inside and gestured to several of his friends to take her off his hands. Vivonne, who spoke Spanish well enough, came forward and smiled down like a lean wolf at Maria Teresa.

“Tell me the story of your parrot today,” Vivonne said. “My sister said it’s a wonderful story, but no one tells it as well as you.”

Louis leaned against the ornate woodwork of one of the walls and saw the Marshall de Gramont had returned. Thank God. He straightened, and Gramont made his way to him.

“Your journey went well?” Louis asked him.

“Just as you would desire, your majesty.”

“You’ll come and tell me of it later tonight.”

N
ICOLAS PLACED ANOTHER
coin on the toss of the die, several piles of coins already before him. He was winning. Without seeming to, he watched the swirl of courtiers spin around Louis. So, the Marshall de Gramont was back from Monaco, was he? As he walked by, Nicolas called to him. “I’m winning, marshall. Come and sit beside me.” He pushed a neat column of coins he had won in the marshall’s direction. “I saw your son in Paris not long ago.”

The marshall made a snorting, derisive sound. “My caged tiger.”

“An apt description, sir. I invited him to Vaux-le-Vicomte. There’s plenty of forest where he may ride himself to exhaustion.”

The marshall raised a goblet of wine in Nicolas’s direction. “If you can provide any means of exhaustion, you have my gratitude.”

“I offered him a position in the Mediterranean fleet. I know the commander well. He could have a galley if he so wished.”

“And his answer?”

“He wasn’t interested. The offer remains open. To be of service to your family would honor me. How was your visit to Monaco?”

“There must be some mistake. I’ve made no visit to Monaco. Look, viscount, you’ve won.” Gramont changed the subject smoothly. “My wife is beside herself about your fête.”

“New gown?”

“Three. She can’t decide which to wear.”

“My humble apologies, sir. Shall I rescind the invitation?”

“She’ll never speak to me again, and, alas, I am fond of her.”

Louise walked by, arm in arm with Choisy. Was his majesty interested in this little meadow flower? wondered Nicolas. Where were all these people he paid to spy on the king, on his every word, on his every change of expression. His orders had been explicit. He’d put his best spy to turning over rocks about Louise de la Baume le Blanc. And his secretary wrote that there had been an unusual prisoner in the Pignerol fortress, one who screamed and cried and whom no one was allowed to see. It had frightened the guards, who claimed they’d heard the prisoner was so deformed he was a monster. And a small, select troop of musketeers led by the inestimable Lieutenant d’Artagnan had taken that prisoner and two others, a musketeer and a priest, away. And now the Marshall de Gramont lied about going to Monaco. Why? What game did his majesty play? What secret was so secret it could not be shared with his most important minister? Nicolas looked around the gallery. Moody faces, happy faces. Court was a wheel that kept turning, and those at the top balanced like acrobats to stay there, their drop depending on a king’s whim. He’d climbed high. He didn’t intend to drop.