Before Versailles (66 page)

“M
Y BROTHER TELLS
me yet again I’m a disgrace to the family honor,” Choisy said to Louise.

“How upsetting for you. He doesn’t understand you. Perhaps you ought to leave court for a while, go live in the country, or go to England. Madame always speaks of her visit there with such joy. What’s the old saying: out of sight, out of mind?”

“Speaking of family honor, what’s the state of yours these days? God, you’re blushing. Come with me.” He pulled her into a huge vestibule, tugged her toward a door, and, Louise protesting, pushed her into a chapel.

“We shouldn’t be here,” she said. They were on the king’s balcony, where the royal family sat. Below them, on another floor, the chapel spread itself to the altar and back.

“The last place anyone is going to be tonight is here. Sit down.”

She was glad of the dim around them because she knew her blush had deepened. Her face felt like it was on fire. They sat in silence for a time.

“Do you have a lover?”

“No!”

“Is your lover his majesty?”

She strained her eyes at him in the dim, horror, upset, fear all playing at different moments across her face. “No! No! No!”

“I knew it.”

“You don’t know anything!”

“Precisely how long do you think you may keep this a secret?”

“Forever!” She threw the word at him. How dare he put his hands on this most precious part of herself.

“Oh, so the relationship is chaste, is it?”

She made a sound.

“Can you keep carrying his child a secret?”

Louise’s hands began to twist in her lap. These were not matters she wished to think about.

“How long?” he demanded.

For some reason, she didn’t lie. “A week.”

“You think he loves you?”

“Yes.”

Dear God, she was in over her head, thought Choisy, and she had no idea how much so. “You have to be cunning about this, my so very dear cousin.”

“Oh, I am. No one knows. We’re going to keep it a secret.”

“What if you become pregnant?”

She looked away to the altar, whose beautiful soaring angels made her writhe with guilt inside. “I’ll hide it.”

“How?”

“I’ll go away and then come back.”

“Marry me, and I’ll take you to England.”

“It’s the attention of men you want. How could I be happy in that?”

“I can make love. I like making love to women—”

She reached out and put her hand over his mouth to stop his words.

“I offer you honor,” he said, pushing her hand away. “There’s no honor in what you do.”

She stood up. “I’m going back.” She opened one of the huge chapel doors, and light from the chandelier in the vestibule framing her, said, “I’m honored that he has even looked at me.”

How sweetly foolish you are, Choisy thought. They’ll hate you when they know. They’ll compliment you, but for something in return. One had to be a horse trader to be a good royal mistress. She handled horses like no one he knew, but he had few illusions about her ability to handle people. A myth was in his mind, a story from the ancient Romans, and the Greeks before them, the story of Icarus who had longed to fly, whose loving father to please him had built wings; and Icarus had flown like a bird but too close to the sun so that the wax holding the wings together melted, and he had fallen from the sky. Choisy went to the railing, and knelt, his eyes on the glorious altar below, and said a prayer for her.

I
WON’T GO
back inside, Louise thought. She’d go outside, to the queen’s garden, and reach her chambers that way. Thinking about Louis, she walked across the gravel paths. Light showed from the gallery where everyone was gathered. The light, tingling smell of oranges seemed to be everywhere; she was approaching the orangery. It took a while before she realized she was being followed. She moved through an arch of the open-air gallery and stepped back against deep shadows made by one of the statues there. Between every arch leading outside and on the wall behind her were stags’ heads. This chamber was a monument to the love of the hunt. A musketeer, a young man, rushed through an arch. She could see him more clearly as he stepped into the pools of light the torches made.

“Miss,” he called.

She moved out of the shadows.

“I escort you,” he said. “His majesty’s orders. My humble apologies if I frightened you.”

She smiled then, her smile as wide, as beautiful as the quarter moon. Her beloved reached out to protect her. “Thank you. I welcome that. I’m going to my chamber,” and as they began to walk toward the oval court and the queen’s staircase, “I imagine you ought to tell me your name.”

A
NNE SIGHED AND
drank her wine, staring up at the same stars that her son and daughter-in-law had stood under earlier in the evening. The Duchess Marie wore one down by simple graciousness. Anne felt exhausted from it all, no longer completely clear in her mind as to why it was foolhardy, except that it so clearly was. To take on the most powerful man in France, whose financial tentacles were wrapped around the foundation of the kingdom, was a fool’s errand.

“So, you’ll fight against your son?” asked Marie, picking up the thread of an earlier conversation.

“No.”

“You’ll betray your son to the viscount and prevent the arrest? Doubtless, he’ll forgive you in time. Perhaps an exile for you, like your royal husband’s mother, but I do assure you exiles can be most wonderful. I do believe my best lover was a Dutchman, of all things.”

“He’s wrong,” answered Anne.

“He’s the king,” replied Marie, and once more she mentioned the island stockpiled with weapons and soldiers.

“There’s been some misunderstanding,” said Anne. “He is going to tell my son about it all.”

“And when might that be? When the king does as the viscount dislikes or offends him? People hold secrets because the conduct behind them is shameful.”

Yes, thought Anne, thinking of her own secrets. I’d thought to be done with intrigues, and here I am in another one. If he fails … If he failed, she’d go on her hands and knees to the viscount for him or she’d sit atop a warhorse and lead a charge in Louis’s name. “My son has my loyalty, but surely there is a better way.”

“And what might that be?”

“Go to the viscount, speak with him, take away his island.”

“And the viscount would walk away from his riches and power without a struggle?” asked Marie.

“He would be allowed to keep something.”

“Who decides how much? The viscount or his majesty?”

“Oh, you tire me!”

“Let’s go for a walk in my garden. One of my sons has sent a basket of plums that are crying to be tasted. There’s nothing better than plums ripened by sun, yes?”

Chapter 34

HROWING OFF COVERS, STANDING NAKED BEFORE A LONG WINDOW
, watching the rise of the sun touch the cupola above the chapel, he knew what he was going to do. I’m going to Monaco, he thought. Henriette’s ballet was tonight. He’d leave as soon after that as possible. He’d make Colbert provide an excuse for his absence.

Later, standing in one of his costumes for the ballet, Louis explained what he wished. “What reason for my absence? I can think of nothing.”

Colbert pursed his lips. “A pilgrimage?” he suggested after a long pause.

“For?”

“Ah … the well-being of the dauphin and the queen.” Colbert continued slowly as he built the edifice of the story in his mind. “And the only person you will tell is Monsieur. You will go to him today and inform him you’re worried about the queen, that you’ve had a vision—no, a dream—that this is what you must do, that you must go as a simple traveler, in disguise, and pray before—”

Colbert paused, his mind obviously rustling through its bins of random knowledge. Louis watched him in the pier glass, interested, eager even, to hear what he would say next. Philippe would be intrigued with the idea of a secret pilgrimage and touched that Louis trusted him. It might begin to heal the breach between them. And Philippe couldn’t keep a secret. He would tell someone, who would tell someone else, and by the time Louis returned, the story would be out.

“You must go to Sainte-Baume, which is the cave where Mary Magdalene is said to have lived the last years of her life.”

How fitting that he should mention the Magdalene. Louis turned so that he faced this man who had become so necessary to him.

Colbert continued. “It is quite near Marseilles, which is quite near—”

“Monaco,” finished Louis. He called out for the tailor, shrugged out of the costume, and sent the man away with it. “I know nothing of the Magdalene coming to France,” he said. “Tell me about this cave.”

“It is claimed by some that she became a great advocate for the Christ after the resurrection and that because of her preaching, the king of Palestine had her banished by placing her in a boat and putting it out to sea. A boat, I might add, without sails or oars. It’s said she reached the shore of southern France. A favorite servant of my wife is from Provence and is a follower of the cult of the Magdalene there. The Magdalene is the patron saint of Provence. It’s said she preached and performed good works and converted the barbaric Gauls, which is what we were, sire, before we were Christians. The last years of her life she lived alone in a cave, and there is a shrine and a basilica built to hold her bones.”

The Magdalene he’d created, whom he loved with all his heart, was in his mind. “There’s someone I want you to protect while I’m gone, someone so dear to me that—” he stopped because it did not do to reveal so much to another man, even one you trusted. One of Belle’s sons walked forward and laid his head against Louis’s leg, and Louis stroked the dog. “I have sworn to protect her from the eyes of the world, and while I’m gone, you must see that she has all she needs. Her name is Miss Louise de la Baume le Blanc.”

He was alert for the least sign of judgment in Colbert’s face; this was, after all, one of the most devout men of court, but Colbert’s face remained impassive.

“Of course, sire.”

“I want a saddle made for her, with interlocking ‘L’s’ in gold thread all about the edge.”

“It will be done, sire.”

“What word from the duchess?” His mother had returned late in the evening, gone straight to her chambers without a word to anyone.