Before Versailles (28 page)

“Don’t you dare walk away from me!” she said to his back.

The soldier in him took a sword from its scabbard and raised it. Unsmiling, he turned to face her. Inside, his pulse was beating hard, but the sword’s blade gleamed bright.

“Is it true?”

“Is what true? Which rumor in this dung heap has caught your ear this morning?”

“Answer me!”

Her eyes were daggers. If he’d been closer, they would have stabbed him a thousand times over. It used to frighten him, that quick fury of hers. But today he felt fierce himself. He owed the viscount a thank-you for having enraged him.

“I’ve heard the most disgusting, most immoral thing,” she said.

Those words stung. They were true, not the disgusting, but certainly the immoral. He fought to keep his face stoic.

“I’m asking you one more time, is it true?”

“And I’m asking you, one more time, is what true?”

“That you and your brother’s wife are lovers.”

“Good God! You can’t be serious!”

“Don’t toy with me. Your brother is beside himself. He called on me this morning to tell me that the regard you and Madame share is shaming him. I want to hear from your own lips that it isn’t so.”

“It isn’t so.”

It was like watching ships’ sails collapse when the wind dies, but she continued to measure his every blink. Silence grew. Neither would be the first to break it. They were matched in stubbornness. She patted at the cushions upon which she sat.

“Come, my son, sit.” Heat was gone from her voice.

He fought to keep his face and bearing stoic as he sat down on the end of the daybed. She’d done everything in her power to keep the throne for him, and he knew it.

She took his hand. “I was young once upon a time. I was indiscreet.”

The Duke of Buckingham story, he thought. He’d always wondered what the truth was.

“I felt affection for someone other than your father. I was so lonely, so abandoned. He—the man I felt affection for—was ardent, handsome, dashing. I flirted. I loved. But in the end, I remembered my duty as queen of France, and I did nothing I should not have done. You set the tone for court, my dear one. Everyone watches you. You are God’s anointed, God’s given.”

Yes, he’d suckled it in with his breast milk, Louis, the miracle of the kingdom, coming after more than twenty years of marriage between his mother and his father, the last fifteen of those years in estrangement. Quite a miracle.

“Your duty is to your queen—”

“I do my duty to the queen.”

“Of course. She adores you. Discretion, my son, discretion is all. If your feelings for our sweet Madame are stronger than they should be, then I plead for you to be the resolute man you have shown yourself to be and walk away from them.”

The way I did before, he thought, bitterness at the back of his throat, bitterness at his younger self, at that self’s innocence and obedience, even though he knew he’d done what was best for the kingdom. It had been hard.

“In the eyes of the Mother Church, Madame is your sister. Love her as one. She is lively and graceful—”

“And innocent of these lies about her!”

“I am so pleased to hear it. I would hate to think of our court being mocked or scorned in other kingdoms.”

He had not gone this far in his imaginings, to what would be said of him and of her in other courts. He felt suddenly foolish, naïve.

“This could never be ignored. You’d be lectured, gently, of course, by the king of Spain for certain, and she, well, she will be an object of ridicule and contempt in all courts.”

“Spain wouldn’t dare—”

“Spain’s princess is your wife! Its king, my brother, would dare.”

“I’ll go to war—”

“Over a flirtation?” She laughed.

“Over my dignity.”

She patted his hand. “Yes, you do possess dignity. And I trust you’ll do all that is proper to maintain it. There will also be the Holy Father in Rome with which to contend. You are his most Christian king. Such a title comes with responsibility.”

He hadn’t thought about the Holy Father, either.

“You appointed a lieutenant governor to the province of Brittany.”

Nonplussed, he stared at her. What had that to do with anything? And he’d only just done so. How could she already know? “Yes.”

“I am Brittany’s governor.”

As if he didn’t know that. “Then you’ve decided to give the lieutenant governorship to the man I’ve selected, Mother.”

“No, I haven’t.”

He would have smiled at her ruthlessness, except that he felt so bitter. “Dearest Mama and dearest majesty, will you allow me to select a lieutenant in Brittany? I’m going to choose someone our dear cardinal would have wanted.” She paid him back for not having put her upon the council, where she’d always been before.

She looked out the windows to the gardens and sun, to her past, Louis would imagine, and all that had been. “Yes, then.”

She pulled Louis forward, kissed his forehead, his cheeks, as if thinking about Mazarin had softened her. “He served you so well. There is another who wishes to do the same. The Viscount Nicolas thinks only of you.”

He told her about the governorship, thought Louis. Who was the first name on the list Colbert had compiled for him of the viscount’s probable spies and friends? His mother. “Why do we speak of him, Mama?”

“I was thinking of our dear cardinal, and thoughts of him led to thoughts of the viscount, who, as you know, is a treasured friend to me, now more than ever. May I ask if all is well between you?”

A possibility unfolded itself in his mind. “The viscount is a good man. I’m fortunate in my ministers. How old is our dear Séguier now?”

Séguier was chancellor of France. The position of chancellor was a grand, ancient one, one of the offices of the crown; only death took it away.

“Ancient, my darling. I’ve heard he’s been ill. I must write him a note.”

“When he leaves us, my dearest Mama, who do you think should take his place?”

“I hadn’t really thought of it.”

“Might the viscount consider it?”

“The viscount chancellor of France? You don’t mean it!”

“Why not?”

“It’s brilliant. It would honor him as he deserves and give you an excellent servant in a most important position.”

“It’s early days, yet, Mother. Our Séguier may live another twenty years, and let us pray to God that he does.”

“Oh, my darling, I’m honored that you’ve confided in me this way.” She pressed at the sudden tears in the corners of her eyes with one of her exquisite linen handkerchiefs.

“I wished to lay no burdens upon you in your time of mourning, Mother.” He could see that for this moment she was torn between continuing her grieving and being involved in governance of the kingdom again. He’d made that decision for her, but he was wise enough not to say so.

She settled back against her lustrous, plump cushions and sighed. “My grief is so heavy some days I can barely lift my head. And your brother today—heartbroken.”

“His usual drama over little, Mother. His usual jealousies. It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it?”

“I hate to see you two at odds over anything, darling. I told him to pluck his suspicion from his heart and sent him to his confessor. And you—” she didn’t meet his eyes, “—must consider your admiration of Madame and understand more fully the impression it might be making upon others.”

“How astute you are, as always.” Louis stood, kissed each of her cheeks, let her pat his face and fuss with the lace at his throat.

What a king he’s made, thought Anne, watching his exit, admiring his straight back and legs, the graceful way he moved. It was like Philippe to exaggerate. You don’t include me, he had always whined. She’d suggest to Maria Teresa that she request Madame’s presence in visiting convents. She needs your influence, she’d say to the queen. She’d talk to the Spanish and Venetian ambassadors, ask a few questions, see what they might be writing in their dispatches. Or perhaps she’d have the viscount do it for her. Certainly he already knew through his spies. If he didn’t, shame on him. This little tender friendship between Madame and her son was not going to advance a fraction farther, not while she had breath in her body.

L
OUIS STRODE THROUGH
his gallery. It was empty of people. Only the king might invite them in, and Louis seldom used this long, echoing chamber, beautiful as it was with its windows on each side and intricate, vivid frescoes with their Renaissance surround of graceful stucco figures. He preferred to hold court in his wife’s gallery where all the maids of honor were, where Henriette and her ladies congregated, and as he walked through, his steps made a lonely, echoing sound.

Adultery. That’s what they were contemplating. He could bear it, but could she? Had Philippe shouted at her? His temper could be terrible. Was she sobbing in her bed right this moment? Was that why there was no note from her today? He’d strike Philippe if he’d threatened or browbeat her. His grimness made his heart a stone. Good. A king needed a heart of stone.

C
ATHERINE STOOD AT
one side of the bed Henriette had refused to leave all morning. Louise was stationed near the closed doors.

“You have to get out of bed,” Catherine begged. “You have to act as if everything were just as it should be.”

A spaniel whined, stood on hind legs, and pawed against the bed.

“Merciful Hands of Jesus Christ the Lord, will someone take these damned dogs out before they soil the rugs?” Catherine shouted.

Louise moved from her place near the doors, walked forward and bent down to pick up one of the dogs. “It’s only natural,” she said in her soft voice.

“What’s only natural?” snapped Catherine. “That the dogs should make shit on the rug?”

“No. That Madame should be distraught to hysterics. If such lies about me were spoken, I would be hysterical, too. And angry once I was finished crying.”

For the first time in hours, Henriette sat up. “She’s right. I should be crying. And raging. How dare they pick me to pieces like this?”

Louise whistled, and the other spaniels surrounded her skirt as she led them out of the bedchamber.

“That’s it,” said Henriette, her voice a croak from sobs, but something like vigor in it again. “I don’t need to stop crying. Of course I’m crying. I’m distraught with the horror of this. Now, would I join the festivities tonight or would I lock myself in my rooms?”

“Can you brazen it out?”

“Wouldn’t I? Or would I hide away?” Tears had magically dried in the absorbing intricacies of examining her own behavior.

“Can you face the queen?” asked Catherine.

Henriette drooped. That the Spanish infanta would be hurt in all of this was one of those consequences she had refused to consider closely. “She doesn’t know, surely. No one would dare tell her. His majesty would banish them.”

“What about the queen mother?”

Henriette sniffed. “Old busybody.”

“What about Monsieur?”

“I’m innocent, and I’m hurt beyond words. I’ve done nothing, really.” She looked Catherine in the face. “I haven’t.”

Yet, thought Catherine, thoughts straying to her own adventures. Nicolas had laughed when they were done, as they lay on the floor of his bedchamber like two animals. They’d never made it to the bed. If his majesty receives half the pleasure I just have, he’d said, kissing her nipple, he is a fortunate man.

“You will fling yourself in his arms, expecting his support. Trusting it.” Catherine said.

“We’ve been married only a few months, and already this court is trying to—”

“Foul your marriage.”

“Foul our precious, precious marriage. And it is precious to me. It really is. I love Monsieur. I just can’t withstand his majesty’s admiration. And what about your awful brother?” She glared at Catherine.

“I think the sight of your weeping today gave him pause. He can’t help his feelings for you.”

Henriette sighed and fell back among her pillows in a calmer frame of mind. It really wasn’t her fault, was it? She had captured the two most exciting men at court without trying to, well, perhaps a little trying, but only to test her wings, so to speak. She was new at this game of flirtation and its companion, seduction. It was a dangerous, powerful, and exciting mix. She loved it.