Versailles (5 page)

Notwithstanding which, the gilt-grilled doors surrounding the Marble Court, like all the doors at Versailles, are unlocked. Ironic, when you think about it, given the King's favorite pastime, though clearly he considers the locks he makes not so much safety devices as intriguing puzzles. In fact the mechanism of the locks themselves is still fairly primitive; protection is provided by elaborate warding, or the addition of secret shutters to hide the keyholes, or sometimes even imposter keyholes.

Besides, once you're inside the chateau you can go practically anywhere, assuming you don't get caught in a traffic jam of sedan chairs, or, having wended your way through the insane maze of corridors honeycombing the Nobles' Wing, landed in some airless hopeless squalid cabinet of a room where you will live out the rest of your life entirely forgotten by everybody including your closest relatives. On the other hand you might find yourself remembered, plucked up and dressed like a soldier and sent to fight the enemy in some foreign land—Turkey, or America, or Spain. After which you might find yourself dead, consigned to a coffin that is, at least, bigger than the cabinet you lived in before...

And the King? Oh, the King has no need for doors. Just look at him, climbing the facade hand over hand like a big tame monkey, hauling himself across the stone balustrade and suddenly appearing in the Queen's Bedchamber, scaring her half to death.

The curtains part, revealing the Queen's Bedchamber; the bed curtains part, revealing the Queen. Elegant, coquettish, in charming disarray, she is seated on the right side of the bed, facing the audience. On her lap. Eggplant, a pug; to her left, Louis XVI, King of France, a softly snoringlump. It is the middle of the night—perhaps three o'clock. Though there is no moon, the room is eerily lit by recently fallen snow.

 

A
NTOINETTE,
speaking to the lump in the overwrought high-pitched "voice" of Eggplant, whom she's hoisted by his underarms and holds in front of her face:
Ah! Mon Dieu! What is to be done with the Queen? She is incorrigible. When she isn't tearing around on horseback like an Amazon, she's at the races, rubbing shoulders with harlots. And really, who's to say which is which, Queen or harlot? Are those diamonds genuine or paste? It's so hard to tell these days. It's so hard to tell whose big blue eyes those are, riveted on the flies of all the handsome young men.

 

The lump suddenly sits up and speaks.
Antoinette!

 

A
NTOINETTE,
still speaking through Eggplant:
The King is awake.
She returns the pug to her lap and leans over to give Louis a peck on the cheek.
And did the King have pleasant dreams?

L
OUIS
: I don't know.

A
NTOINETTE
: Let us see.
She lifts the blankets, peers underneath, then sits back up.
Apparently.

L
OUIS
: I want a look, too.
He takes a quick peek and ducks his head, embarrassed.

A
NTOINETTE
: One can only hope the King was dreaming of the Queen.

 

Lo vis, petulant:
I don't know, I told you.
Pause, thinking.
I seem to remember I was making you a spinning wheel.

 

A
NTOINETTE
: But you actually did that, Lou-Lou, remember? You did make me a spinning wheel.
She sets Eggplant off to one side, then shifts position, leaning back into the pillows and opening her arms.
Only let's not think about that now. Let's only think about pleasant things. Come here. Come give us a kiss.

L
OUIS
: But the spinning wheel
is
a pleasant thing.

A
NTOINETTE
: Of course it is, my treasure. Of course it is.

 

They both disappear under the bedclothes. There isaperiod of agitated movement; a hand appears, afoot. A final spasm; Eggplant jumps to the floor.

 

L
OUIS
,
from under the covers:
Owww!

A
NTOINETTE
: Let me see if I can...

L
OUIS
: No. Please.

A
NTOINETTE
:... just pry this back a ...

L
OUIS
: STOP IT!!!

 

They both emerge from under the covers, Louis red-faced and panting slightly, Antoinette with tears running down her cheeks. Throughout the scene the room has been growing lighter—the pale light of a winter morning. Sounds of footsteps, doors being knocked on with knuckles or delicately scratched at with the little fingernail, muffled voices, doors opening—the Queen's household includes more than five hundred officers and servants, early risers, all of them. It is now possible to see the gilt balustrade fencing off the Queen's bed and its occupants from the rest of the room, where a large crowd will soon assemble, eager to watch the royal pair eat their breakfast, the male and female of the species in their natural habitat.

 

A
NTOINETTE
: But there's so little time before the multitudes descend. Maybe if you ate less? Doctor Lassone seems to think that might help. Last night you ate a whole roast piglet. Don't pretend you didn't—I was watching. Also those pastries. Or maybe if you agreed to let him make the incision?

L
OUIS
: You didn't see the instruments. He showed me his instruments.
Hiding his eyes, shuddering.
I don't like to think about it.

A
NTOINETTE
: Well then, think about this. Think about what will become of us if we can't produce an heir to the throne, and meanwhile that wretched cross-eyed midget who is married to your brother produces offspring like a rabbit. What then?

L
OUIS
: I wish you wouldn't talk about the Comtesse d'Artois like that. She can't help the way she looks.

A
NTOINETTE
: Of course she can't. She's Sardinian.
Yawning.
But if we're not going to create an heir this morning, then let me sleep. I was up till all hours, trying to win my money back from the Marquis de Conflans, that rotten crook.

L
OUIS
:
Yawns noisily, stretches, and leaps from the bed.
The Queen's wish is my command.

A
NTOINETTE
: Well then ...
She stares pointedly at the King's erection, tenting the cloth of the royal nightshirt, then makes a pair of scissors of her fingers and holds them aloft.
Snip snip.
Suiting the action to the words.
Snip snip.

L
OUIS
: Don't tease.

 

Antoinette sighs and pulls the blankets over her head.

 

L
OUIS
: Besides, it's not just me. It wouldn't hurt for you to get more sleep, Lassone says.

A
NTOINETTE,
her voice muffled, from under the covers:
Ah. I see. All I need to do to become pregnant is get more sleep.

L
OUIS
: Only another hour or so each night, Lassone says. And less wine, though that hardly makes sense, since you don't take wine to begin with.
He
cocks
his head, listening.
They're coming. Oh, that's so bad, so bad! The tub wheels should be oiled—I can hear them squeaking all the way from here.

A
NTOINETTE,
still muffled:
I
suppose
I
could start drinking wine, in order to give it up. Just like my sister Carlotta would always give up liver pudding for Lent.
She laughs, sticks out her head.
I
know! Let's put talking pâtés on our pillows, like in "La Belle Eulalie." Then we could escape and no one would know the difference. We could go to Paris, Lou-Lou! We could have fun!

L
OUIS
: We could have fun.
Suddenly cheerful.
I could oil those wheels!

Fifty-eight steps from the centermost of the three gilt-grilled front doors, across the vestibule's rose-colored marble pavement and around a phalanx of dark squat piers supporting a dark low ceiling, to the foot of the staircase. Purposely oppressive, the vestibule—echoey, claustrophobic. "On thy belly shalt thou crawl," the overriding message.

And then suddenly at the foot of the staircase the whole thing opens wide, like breath expelled after passing a graveyard. The infinite pours in through a massive skylight three stories up.

No one standing there can resist looking into the face of God, which is to say into the sun. The Doge of Genoa, bringing the Sun King a coffer of precious jewels. The Due de Nevers, imprisoned by the Sun King for baptizing a pig. Jean Racine, suspected by the Sun King of being a poisoner. The Earl of Portland, hoping to convince the Sun King to drive James II as far from England as possible. Bonne, Ponne, and Nonne, the Sun King's hyperactive water spaniels. Dr. Guy-Crescent Fagon with his frightening tools, to let the Sun King's blood.

Ghosts, all of them. The Staircase of the Ambassadors is no longer there—hasn't been since 1752, when Louis XV ordered it destroyed to make apartments for Adélaïde. It was falling apart, anyway, he claimed: the cast-bronze structure supporting the skylight was beginning to wobble, and rain was beginning to leak through. An ill-advised decision for posterity, though certainly not surprising from the same man who remarked, "
Après moi, le déluge.
"

In any case, ghosts are often associated with stairways, liking to hover at their head, or to drag noisy things such as chains up and down them. And don't stairways provide an avenue of connection between two levels or, really, worlds?

For instance, there by the fountain on the landing, where the two flights of stairs branch out, one to the right, one to the left. Isn't that La Voisin, in her trim white cap, with her bag of arsenic and nail cuttings, powdered crayfish and Spanish fly? La Voisin the Sorceress, who helps the women of the Sun King's court—many of them the Sun King's past, present, or future mistresses —obtain bigger whiter breasts, or smaller whiter hands.

It's difficult to tell for sure, since the Staircase is teeming with people who turn out on closer inspection to be unreal. The conquistador, fur trapper, and two red Indians in nothing but loincloths, gathered together on a loggia above the left-branching flight of stairs? The work of Charles Le Brun, master illusionist. Probably the only place at Versailles where you'd find a live red Indian would be out past the Grand Canal, in the zoo.

Nor would you be likely to run into the Bedouin prince and African tribal chief who stand in rapt discourse on a facing loggia.

Even the loggias themselves aren't real, nor are the oriental rugs draped over their parapets, no matter how temptingly soft to the touch they appear to be. The rugs are there to support the idea that this is a festival day, the Sun King having returned triumphant from the Dutch War, meaning—
grâce à Dieu!—
he will once again be able to line the walkways with tulips, his favorite flower.

A festival day, and not only have people from the four corners of the earth joined to receive the King, but also, in a mixed metaphor of hyperbolic proportion, all the divinities of Parnassus. Clio and Polyhymnia, Hercules and Minerva. Calliope, Thalia, Apollo. Fame and Mercury, Magnificence and Pegasus. Authority, Strength, and Vigilance. Also the twelve months of the year, back in the good old days when they were still named for gods and goddesses. Also a great variety of exotic birds—peacocks, ibises, and so on.

Not to mention
actual
people, many of them the Sun King's mistresses, since, let's face it, the King of France is expected to be excessively virile, a lion among men.

Up the stairs and down the stairs, delicately lifting their skirts to avoid an unsightly tumble. Beautiful but stupid Mademoiselle de Fontanges in her turquoise - blue riding habit. Mademoiselle de la Valliere and her cunning daughter, Marie, the two of them in matching black velvet gowns. Madame de Maintenon, otherwise known as Your Solidity. Madame de Montespan in all of her many incarnations, young and slender, old and fat, but always with that infuriating parrot jabbering away on her shoulder.

Up and down, up and down.

Let us walk among the tulips! Dance until dawn! Spin the roulette wheel! Slip the King a love philter when he isn't paying attention! Look at me! No, me!

Watch out, though. Sometimes La Voisin's clients get more than they bargain for. Sometimes out pops the Devil, with his sharp little hooves and his appetite for discord.

Nor do you want to get so involved in the spectacle that you fail to notice the python on the ceiling, lying dead at Apollo's feet. "His Majesty," as the
Mercure Galant
explains, "putting a stop to the secret rebellions His enemies have tried starting, as depicted by the serpent Python who originates from the gross impurities of the earth..."

 

Presently, the girl takes a walk. So many doors to choose among, so many people. Stupid, witty, amorous, bored, dark-eyed, washed-out, plucked-lipped, hairy. Scratch scratch scratch, with the little fingernail.

"Come in, my dear."

"Hello, grandmother."

Dancing, billiards, reversi, roulette. The path of the pins or the path of the needles. Sorbet, asparagus, cock kidneys, bonbons. Sausage, pigeon eggs, truffles, lemonade.