Before Versailles (8 page)

A small, private door led directly into the chapel from here. Motioning to the lieutenant of his bodyguard to leave him, he stepped into the soothing dim of this quiet and sacred space, crossed himself and knelt, his eyes not seeing the stained-glass windows in a half-circle before him nor the gold-and-green gilded dome overhead. Why had he acted rudely to the viscount? Not only was it childish and impolite, but it showed his growing mistrust. Never let another know what you think. Was it possible that he could trust the man, if not completely, then more than he dared at the moment? Yes, said his mother. No, said something in him. So luscious Olympe was the spy in his wife’s household. Of course she would be. Was she the only one? The viscount’s knowledge of his conversation with the queen this morning disturbed. What else did he know? Did he know that Louis had begun to meet someone in secret every night in an attempt to understand finances? Did he know Louis would never, under any circumstances, give Philippe a place on the council? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor thy brother’s either. But he did, the Blessed Savior help him. He stopped that thought. It led to places wild and uncontrolled, to desires he shouldn’t have.

He prayed for strength, but like a jeer to his prayer, the face of his brother’s wife came into his mind, along with a verse from a poet: As a rose, she lived as roses do. She’d worn rose-colored ribbons last night. He touched the one that was tied around his own wrist, hidden by lush lace at the end of his shirtsleeve that was the fashion. He’d stolen it like some thief in the night, like some besotted fool.

“Henriette,” he whispered, and he repeated her name yet again into the silence around him. He didn’t wish to hurt his brother, and yet his brother’s happiness cut into him like a sword. Would he? Would she? It seemed she felt as he did. Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other, so said his mother’s beloved Spanish writer, Cervantes. Had Cervantes desired his brother’s wife? He prayed for the strength to resist temptation.

Prayer finished, calm restored, at least until he should see Henriette again, he stood to leave and as he walked back toward the small door that had let him in, he caught sight of a white square, obviously slipped under the great front doors of the chapel, which opened from a hall.

For a moment, his heart thudded. Had Henriette dared to write him? Did she accept or berate him for his almost kiss of last night? He felt like a boy, ready to leap to joy or plunge to despair. He picked up the letter, its paper heavy, grained, expensive, and tore past a plain seal of red wax.

Do you know the difference

between His Eminence

and the late Cardinal Richelieu?

The answer is not moot
.

The one led his animal
.

The other mounts his brute
.

Shock held him still. It was a Mazarinade, one of the hundreds of verses and street songs and written words full of scandal and hate that had filled pamphlets and letters, had been shouted from street corners in his boyhood, full of malevolence for the man who had been resented and feared and warred against and yet lived to be one of the saviors of France: Mazarin. Its subject was despicable and lurid, implying his mother was whore to a man who had deeply loved her. It was a dishonor to her and a dishonor to him, but worse, it was an all-too-vivid reminder of the uncertain past behind him and the uncertain future ahead. Peace was fragile. This little jibe reminded him too sharply of that. Beware, it said. Enough wrong moves, and the court would turn on him. They’d done it before. They could do it again.

He wrenched open the front doors of the chapel and stepped into the hall. A musketeer, arms crossed, took his ease at the end of the hall’s long finger on Louis’s right.

“Who came into this hallway?” Louis demanded.

The musketeer stood up straight. “No one, your majesty.”

Back in the chapel, Louis went to the small side door that led to the ballroom. He saw the lieutenant of his musketeers playing ball with the dogs. The lieutenant kept a ball from the tennis court in a pocket.

“D’Artagnan,” Louis shouted, and the dogs turned at the sound of his voice, ran toward him, Belle in the lead.

“There’s another. Down!” As the dogs obeyed, Louis held up the paper. D’Artagnan took the note from him and read it as Louis walked back into the dim of the chapel and through the wide doors to the hall. He stepped out. The musketeer had moved from his place far down at one end and waited for him.

“I repeat, who came into this hall?”

There were narrow staircases for servants with iron railings that circled up into the attic floors. There was a staircase in the pavilion at the end of this hall and a public staircase for the ballroom. And there were secret passages. Only he was supposed to know of them, but their existence was old. Many knew of them, more than he could imagine.

“No one, your majesty. I swear it.”

There was a thin sheen of perspiration on the musketeer’s upper lip, just above a small mustache, matching Louis’s, who’d made such the fashion.

The note still in his hand, D’Artagnan and the dogs were in the hall now. Louis took the paper. His heart felt like it was going to jump right up his throat and out onto the floor. He felt sick to his stomach. He folded the paper into a small oblong and put it into a secret pocket in his jacket.

“That would be the second, your majesty?”

The even tone of D’Artagnan’s question calmed. Shutters were open to Fontainebleau’s forest-blessed air here in this wide hallway, and he took a deep breath of it. The day outlined in the window’s frame was clear, temperate, beautiful. Friends of his, seeing he had skipped Mass, were waiting for him in the courtyard.

“Yes, the second. The first was while we were still at the Louvre.”

“Did you leave your position?” D’Artagnan asked the musketeer.

Sweat now rolling from his hair, the musketeer said, without looking at Louis, “I went into the Tiber pavilion for a moment.” The Tiber pavilion ended this wing of the palace.

“Because?” D’Artagnan’s question was gentle.

“A-a girl. We spoke only for a few moments, sir.”

“Leave us,” ordered D’Artagnan.

The musketeer walked back down the hall, feeling the weight of two sets of eyes on his back.

“It might have happened then,” D’Artagnan said to Louis. Royal palaces were filled with servants, courtiers, priests, officials, visitors. Many chambers were reached only by passing through another chamber, and that included royal chambers. He indicated the plain winding stairs beside them. “Perhaps someone came down the stairs when he wasn’t watching, sire.”

“This is
my
palace.” I sound shrill, thought Louis.

D’Artagnan didn’t answer. He walked across to a window, looked out. There were musketeers stationed in this courtyard, the oval courtyard, the king’s personal courtyard, and there were Louis’s friends, Philippe’s, loitering, killing time until Louis joined them. It could have been anyone. The king’s grandfather had been killed by a man leaping into his coach. Guards riding near had been unable to prevent it. It was his task to prevent such.

“I don’t like this, D’Artagnan.”

“Nor do I, sire. But I’ll find our little messenger, and I’ll put a new man on duty.”

Louis looked down toward the musketeer. From where he stood, the musketeer could feel the sear of the king’s eyes, and he swallowed and began to sweat again.

“No.” Louis spoke softly, reflectively. “We’ll give him another chance. If he’s a good soldier, and as a musketeer, he is, it won’t happen again. I would imagine I’m safer than I was an hour ago.”

Lieutenant Charles d’Artagnan of his majesty’s royal musketeers, over twenty years service of one kind or another, thank you very much, bowed stiffly and then watched the young king of France, all of twenty and two—D’Artagnan was twice the king’s age and what he’d seen in his time was a story in itself—take another deep inhale, then blow out its air. He watched his sovereign straighten shoulders and shake his head, as if clearing it. The king snapped his fingers and his dogs rose from their sitting position. He knelt among them, patting their heads, receiving kisses, pulling ears. He said their names and grabbed one or another by the scruff, as they milled around him.

“To me,” Louis ordered, and he walked away, dogs a circle around him.

The only creatures he truly trusts, the king’s valet had been known to say when too far gone in drink, those dogs. A king’s role was a lonely one; he might be betrayed by wife, by councilor, by child, and most certainly, by courtiers. This one’s father had been. What memories D’Artagnan had of those old days before his present majesty was born and another cardinal ruled the day and betrayal grew in the bones of everyone. He leaned out the window and called to musketeers that the king was exiting at the Tiber pavilion. Then he took a rare moment away from Louis and stepped into the chapel, where many a king before this one had prayed. For what? Strength? Deliverance? Loyalty? Some glimmer of true love? Bring those he can trust into his life, D’Artagnan prayed. There have to be more than myself.

And then the lieutenant of Louis’s musketeers began a methodical search of the chapel. The note might have already been here, just waiting, placed by someone who knew the king’s habits, where he liked to pray. There was a secret passage here down into the chamber below. D’Artagnan walked down secret stairs, opened a door set so skillfully into its surrounding wood that a maidservant dusting an armoire shrieked and would have fled if D’Artagnan hadn’t stopped her.

“How long have you been here? Was anyone in this chamber when you entered it?”

“Not long, sir. No one was here, sir.” She gulped her answers, her eyes big and blinking.

“You’re certain of that?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Tears were welling up.

“Be gone with you, now, and not a word of this, any of it, do you understand me, girl?” He was brusque, substantial in the authority he carried, the pride and history of the uniform he wore.

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

Now a maidservant knows there is a secret doorway, D’Artagnan thought as he marched into an adjoining chamber and glared at the walls, as if they might tell him something. Who left this poisonous little message? And why? To frighten? To annoy? To warn? Many a king had been killed by someone he trusted. There was recent blood on nearby floors of this very palace. A visiting queen had ordered a courtier stabbed to death in one of the galleries here. How would his majesty respond if the notes continued? Would he become like his father, secretive and suspicious, killing those around him indiscriminately? The beauty of this king was his young and handsome fearlessness, his walking among his people, or among his soldiers on a battlefield, as the incarnation of France, which he was. The queen mother had used it, displayed him like an icon to the people in those past, perilous days of treachery and war, hoping the sight of him, his innocence, his young, grave, dignified purity, would rally support. By God, it oughtn’t to be tampered with, that innocence, and yet it would be. Time would do that, if nothing else. By God, he, Charles d’Artagnan, part gentleman, part adventurer, all of him loyal soldier, would love to present the name of this latest troublemaker to his most Christian majesty—the beauty of all France in his face—Louis, the fourteenth of that name.

He would bow on one knee and hold the name up like a present, anything to wipe away the memory of the expression on his sovereign, his king, his liege lord’s face—looking for one moment every inch the boy his position had never quite allowed him to be—as he stood in the ballroom and demanded to know who had approached too near, too near on too many levels, without his or D’Artagnan’s knowledge.

Chapter 3

T WAS EVENING
. A
LL THE COURT PREPARED ITSELF FOR DUSK’S
festivities.