Before Versailles (37 page)

T
HE MUSKETEER
Cinq Mars stood in the frame of the doorway of the house in which he and the boy lived. Like its outside, the interior of this house was fit for a king, or at the very least, a prince of the blood. His charge was inside, being fed the drugged wine that always quieted him. We’ll bathe him, he had been thinking, and cut his hair and nails while he’s quiet. He’d allowed the hair to become too long, hadn’t he? The boy hated having his hair cut. In his heart, Cinq Mars was devoted to his charge, having been with him since he was a babe. He walked out to smoke a pipe of tobacco, which explorers to that vast new world across the sea had brought back to the kingdoms of Europe. Cinq Mars found that smoking a pipe soothed him. He always hated it when the boy had to be held down and force-fed. The child was growing strong. He was ten and six, a young man, really, not a boy. What were they going to do with him? Was he going to languish forever in this netherworld? Should he risk angering the queen mother by asking her such? He was thinking those thoughts, grieving and bitter for this boy who would never take his rightful place, when he realized he was watching the gate swing shut, and he thought he caught a glimpse of a horse’s tail. He saw the abbot standing in the chapel yard, saw the boys in the gardens with their hoes suspended. Had visitors come to the monastery? When? And what had they seen? Damn their eyes if it was the boy.

Chapter 17

HERE WAS A CERTAIN LISTLESSNESS TO THE EVENINGS WITH
Madame still absent. On this particular one, ladies were spread out near the queen on rugs and cushions, and the queen was content to sit in the suspended garden while her dwarves irritated courtiers by stealing fans or other trifles and dropping them into the water of the carp pond. Louis and his friends were on the water racing gondolas again.

“I shouldn’t say so, but I find I’m glad she’s gone. Aren’t you, majesty?” Olympe’s voice was a silk ribbon falling from the sky. Reclining on her cushion, she looked like a sultan’s favorite, all creamy arms and shoulders, dark hair, sullen mouth.

“Who?” Maria Teresa asked, watching one of her dwarves who had just taken La Grande Mademoiselle’s shoe and dropped it in the pond.

“Madame. When she’s around, his majesty doesn’t pay as much attention to you, I’ve noticed.”

Maria Teresa stared at her superintendent of the household as if she didn’t quite understand, and since Olympe spoke in French, such might be true. La Grande, however, stopped scolding the thieving dwarf and was unable to keep herself from glancing toward the water, toward the gondola that Louis commanded. His majesty would be furious at this conversation.

“Majesty,” La Grande was imperious and not to be trifled with, “I think we ought to walk a while.”

“She’s a flirt. I don’t trust her.” Olympe was not intimidated by La Grande.

La Grande frowned down at Olympe. “A nice walk will do us good.”

Olympe smiled. “But you’re lacking a shoe.”

“Trust? What is this word ‘trust’?” Maria Teresa looked from one of her ladies to the next.

“Was that a raindrop I felt? You mustn’t get wet.” La Grande shivered dramatically. “We mustn’t have you rained upon, majesty. The
dauphin
, you know.”

But one of Maria Teresa’s dwarves translated the word into Spanish for her, and it hung there in the air like something threatening.

Athénaïs watched the queen absorb Olympe’s venom-filled words, and once they were understood, watched her majesty’s face change from careless and laughing to something somber. Athénaïs could literally see the queen cast her mind back over the past weeks, where, if she tried, she could find a hundred examples of Madame’s favor over hers.

So. As easily as that, poison pierced, and the little queen of France stopped being quite so maddeningly innocent and blind. Interesting, thought Athénaïs, as intrigued as if she were witnessing the quarrel that led to a fatal duel. A single sentence could sow doubt. Useful to know.

Obedient to the suggestion that the
dauphin
could be harmed by a raindrop, tingling with emotions she didn’t understand, Maria Teresa began to walk toward the stone stairway.

“She doesn’t like anyone.” It was one of her dwarves, the female one, speaking quickly in the language of their home.

“Who?” asked Maria Teresa. She trusted this little being, a link with her beloved Spain, with her court there, her past, where all was simple and rule-bound.

“The one with the dark heart.”

Servants marched across the courtyard with lighted lanterns for the gondolas; twilight was here. The queen and her ladies walked toward the outside stairway, their heels clacking on the stones. Louise curtsied in the queen’s direction, returned Athénaïs’s wave.

Choisy and Lorraine made vague bows but returned at once to their gambling. They were throwing the dice at the stones under their feet, and Louise watched, her mind elsewhere, a dog with a bone, the bone being the day’s events. Who was the boy in the iron mask?

“By all that’s holy, you must be cheating.” Choisy picked up an offending die and threw it into the water of the carp pond.

“Pay your forfeit,” drawled the Chevalier de Lorraine.

Louise watched as Choisy leaned forward and dropped a quick kiss on Lorraine’s mouth. Until she’d come to court, she hadn’t known men could kiss one another the way a man and a woman did, hadn’t known they could love one another in that way, too. She didn’t mind it. It was just she hadn’t known.

Lorraine put his arms around Choisy, but Choisy pushed Lorraine back. “You’ll make Monsieur jealous.”

Lorraine pointed toward the pond, the gondolas gliding in it, the laughing, jesting men. “Guiche has been rowing him around the pond all evening as if Monsieur were a lady he courted. I assure you I can’t make him jealous, though I don’t give up trying. I never knew affection could be so painful.”

Choisy bowed to Louise. “Do me the honor of rowing with me to the summer pavilion and back.”

At the queen mother’s terrace, a few rowboats waited to be taken out and floated on the pond. Choisy rowed as Louise leaned back on her arms and looked skyward. How pleasant it was here on the water with a breeze as cooling as a fan. She touched her cheeks. She’d felt hot all day long. What was she going to do about what she’d seen today? Who was he? A bastard child of one of the families of the blood? With a deformed face? She didn’t notice that they were now floating quietly in a part of the pond where there were no rowboats and no gondolas, no strolling courtiers on the shore, only willow trees whose limbs bent to touch the water.

“I’m sorry I kissed him. I saw it upset you, but I had to pay the forfeit.” Choisy had let go the oars, leaned toward her, earnest, appealing, curling hair framing his eager, beautiful face. “It’s you I want to kiss.” And when Louise didn’t answer, “You were gone a long time today.”

“I rode to the convent of the Carmelites in nearby Avon to hear the nuns sing and to visit with little Julie. And I stayed to pray.” How much I’ve lied today, thought Louise, looking up at early stars to avoid the expression on Choisy’s face. June was nearly ended. She had begun the month looking for a map. She ended it with finding the boy.

“I think you’re still looking for your boy in the iron mask.”

Did he read her mind? “I’ve quite given up on that. But I must have my gallop, or I’m irritable all day.”

“I want to kiss you, Louise.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?” He leaned forward and put his mouth on hers.

It was gently done, no tongue intruding as before or as one of his majesty’s friends had done after catching her alone in a hallway not too many days ago. That man had touched her breast, too. She pulled her face away.

“I’m thinking of running away. Of going to the provinces and acting. Molière says I have talent,” he told her, his hand still on her neck.

“Would you go as a man or a woman?” She regretted the words the moment they left her mouth.

“In bed, I am fully a man, Louise.” He grabbed her hand to force her to touch him between his legs, but she snatched her hand back.

“I don’t want to!”

“You owe me an apology! If you were a man, I’d call you out.”

“I’m sorry, Choisy.”

“Words aren’t enough. You have to kiss me.”

Oh, let’s get this done with, thought Louise. She pursed her lips as Choisy’s mouth fell on hers. What if I hate kissing my husband? she thought. Her marriage would be arranged. She might never know the feeling that Fanny said the Count de Guiche gave her when they kissed. No telling who her mother and Madame de Choisy would drag out of a box for her to marry: some down-at-the-heels cousin, some toadying troll desperate for office at court. In a way it was too bad that she’d been set in such a rarified atmosphere, set among the sun and moon and stars of court, the handsomest, most dashing of men, with laughing eyes, white teeth, smooth manners, their youth and birth and brio like magic talismans spilling light over those who watched. And yet she wouldn’t have missed it for anything. When she was old, she would tell her grandchildren about the dazzling men of this court. He noticed you, he noticed you, Fanny had danced the words around her today. Yes, apparently for a few, brief seconds the young sun of their court had placed brilliant eyes upon her and complimented her riding. It was the stuff of dreams.

“No,” she said, as Choisy tried to kiss her again. “No!”

Chapter 18

IS FINGERS DRUMMING AGAINST THE VELVET POUCH
, Colbert waited. Without Madame to distract him, his majesty was keeping earlier hours, so there was a possibility Colbert’s head would touch his pillow before too much longer, and sure enough, within three quarters of an hour, in walked the king.

Restless, prowling the chamber, touching this or that objet d’art, he was curt. “What do you have for me?”

Colbert took a deep breath. This was a moment he’d been waiting for. “I’ve had word about his island. It isn’t good.”

Louis stilled.

“He forbids all access to this island. No one may leave. No one may visit.”

“But someone you trust has done so.”

Colbert allowed himself the smallest possible smile. Another man would have been beating his chest in triumph. “Yes.”