Before Versailles (40 page)

“She’s a good, kind girl. I’ll bet my first child it isn’t her leaving the Mazarinades. It’s La Grande Mademoiselle.”

“Who you have yet to catch in the act. I smell a rat. Make certain you know where Miss de la Baume le Blanc is at all times,” said Colbert.

D’Artagnan puffed out. “As I already do, do you mean?”

“Where is she right now?”

“Walking Madame’s dogs and avoiding the Count de Guiche.”

“What has the Count de Guiche to do with anything?”

“He flirts with her, but she won’t have much of it. That is unusual for the count, who has at least one of the maids of honor misbehaving.” D’Artagnan enjoyed court gossip, enjoyed the romantic adventures of the young. He and his friends had had many an adventure, romantic and otherwise, in their day. “Miss de Montalais isn’t behaving as she ought.”

“Miss de Montalais is the dark-eyed one who is always with Miss de la Baume le Blanc, isn’t she?”

D’Artagnan watched Colbert write something on one of those papers of his. He heard himself say, as if he were driven to defend, “They’re very good friends. They both come from the Orléans household.”

“Nest of snakes, those Orléans.”

Colbert waved him away, but D’Artagnan didn’t mind. A man like Colbert loved very little, his wife and family likely, his God for certain, and the king. D’Artagnan had no doubts of that anymore. Every ounce of Colbert’s incisive, aloof, and broad mind was in service of his sovereign. His majesty had found another Mazarinade last night, pinned to his pillow, an ugly little piece of filth.

“The Cardinal,” and here the first initial of an extremely graphic word was used, its meaning clear, “f---- the Regent, and what’s worse, the bugger boasts about it; to make the offense less grave, he only f---- her in the ass,” it said.

Who continued to bring up again those turbulent times when the kingdom howled that a Spaniard queen and an Italian lackey ruled badly? Had pretty little Miss de la Baume le Blanc a part? She didn’t compose them, D’Artagnan would bet on that, but she might be one of the means by which La Grande Mademoiselle, an Orléans to her fingertips, aimed such perfect, poisonous darts at his majesty’s peace of mind. Colbert thought it was the Viscount Nicolas, but D’Artagnan put his money on the royal cousin.

L
OUISE DELIVERED
M
ADAME’S
excuse to an attendant and then hurried away, down broad stone steps, and then she was out of the palace buildings, into the bright sunlight of the courtyard to take a moment for herself. She sat down on a bench to watch the officials and clerks that worked in this part of the palace. What would happen now that Madame had returned? She felt fretful and worried for everyone, Madame, Monsieur, his majesty. But she couldn’t linger all day thinking about that. She must return to her duties.

She ran through a ground-floor arch of the staircase called the horseshoe because of its shape, her mind on the play Molière and his actors had performed upon it before Madame had left. Tell me with your eyes, don’t explain, the actress had said. His majesty’s eyes had told their tale today, she was thinking, when suddenly a man hidden in the shadows stepped in front of her. Louise took an instinctive step backward and almost screamed. It was the musketeer from that day she’d been in the woods. The shock of seeing him nearly paralyzed her. I don’t know him, she told herself. I’ve never seen him before, she thought, as he caught her arm in a bold and rude gesture.

“Sir! Unhand me!”

He didn’t reply.

“I am a lady of Madame’s, and you may not treat me so!” Valiantly, she strove for arrogance, disdain, playing the Princess de Monaco, the way she had at the monastery, but her teeth were chattering. “I-I’ll call a guard and have you arrested.”

“But there’s no one about, is there? And I have only to do this.” With one insulting yank, she was pulled inside the shady overhang of the stairs, pushed against its harsh stones, a calloused hand over her mouth. “Must I continue?”

Her strength broke, and she shook her head. He dropped his hand. She began to shake so badly that she thought she’d fall.

“You’re a sly one, giving your mother’s name. I went to Paris. Your mother thought I was a madman, nearly had me thrown out on the street. But for the right amount of coin, servants always talk, and when I learned she had a daughter, I knew it was you. I thought you understood that I wished you to forget that day in the woods. Your friend, the oh-so-changeable Choisy, delivered my message, didn’t he? And coins?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t have if she’d tried. Standing so close to him, Louise could see the puffiness under his eyes, the way the sun had dried his face to leather. She began to cry very quietly. She knew it would do her no good, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Miss de la Baume le Blanc, your curiosity is dangerous. How do I make that clear to you?”

“I won’t say anything! I promise!”

“It would be best for us both if I believe you. So I will, for now. This,” his voice was soft, as menacing as if a river snake were slithering around her body, “is your last warning. I knew your father. I give you a last warning for his sake, for the honor due a fellow soldier, nothing more.”

He stepped out into the sunlight, which made every angle on his face as rough as the stone on the staircase around them, but fortunately Louise didn’t see that. She was weeping too hard. She listened to his retreating footsteps. She had to sit down on the bench that was pushed back into the underside curve of the staircase. She had to cry for a long time before she could compose herself enough to simply find the wits to stand up and walk away.

T
HAT NIGHT
, H
ENRIETTE
swept into the ballroom to see her mother sitting at one end on the raised dais between the huge bronze satyrs there, an irony considering how pious Henriette’s mother was. Radiant in midnight blue and matching dyed feathers and wonderful dark pearls Philippe had given her, Henriette moved forward smilingly and people watched, as always they did, but it seemed to her their eyes were upon her in a new way. You’ll be blamed, said the duchess, not he. Well, why wouldn’t they stare after Louis’s impulsive behavior this afternoon?

“Finally, I see you,” her mother said to her.

Her mother was the daughter of France’s renowned King Henri IV, was sister of King Louis XIII, was widow of England’s King Charles I, queen of England until her son married. Once a beauty, bitterness had eroded into age. She turned her cheek to be kissed, and Henriette did so.

“I have duties too, now, Mother,” Henriette said. “And I wasn’t feeling well. The journey didn’t agree with me.”

“It didn’t? Only his majesty’s regard pleases you these days?”

It begins, thought Henriette. She ground her teeth and sat down on a stool at her mother’s feet in a liquid rush of satin skirts and petticoats.

“As it must all of us. We all are his loyal subjects.”

“Who knew when I bore you,” her mother lamented, “that God would leave me only you and your two eldest brothers? Who knew the heartache I would suffer? Not that I complain. I bear all things as the will of God. Not my will but His. Always.”

Henriette saw Guy looking her way and made a signal with her fan. He was standing before her in moments, frowning down at her, but she didn’t care as long as he rescued her from her mother.

“I have a private message for you from the Duchess de Chevreuse,” she said to him.

“Do I interrupt?” Guy asked, looking from mother to daughter.

“You do,” said Henriette’s mother.

“Nonsense,” said Henriette, speaking over her mother.

“You will call on me tomorrow, my dear. Early.” Her mother’s voice was icy.

“Of course, Mother.”

Henriette dragged Guy across the ballroom and out its doors and through a corridor until they were at the private balcony. “I am going to scream at the moon, and you are going to watch me silently,” she told him.

In spite of himself, Guy smiled. “I wish I didn’t find you adorable,” he said.

“I do too.” She lifted her face to the stars, the half-circle of moon there. It was that bewitching hour before complete darkness. What am I going to do? she thought. I can’t bear all these people picking at me. Can Louis command them away? Can he command their silence? I am already a scandal. I can see it in Guy’s silence, in my mother’s face, in Louis’s mother’s face. Can I bear it? Do I wish to? Can love bear all things? On her visit to England the previous year, a young duke, flirting to woo her, had read to her from the English Bible, translating into French as he read each verse about charity, about love, which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Could it be true? She heard trumpets sounding. Louis had arrived. He’d be looking for her. And where was she? Off on a balcony with the wild Count de Guiche. And then an idea occurred to her.

“You’re with child,” said Guy.

“If I am, it is no concern of yours.”

“I beg to disagree. Whatever you do is my concern. I love you.”

The second man this day to say those words. When Louis said them later, that would be three. Oh, she didn’t wish to deal with Philippe in bed tonight. How late could she encourage the court to stay up? Forever?

“Let’s go for a ride.” She felt impulsive, wild, trapped.

“What? Now?”

“As soon as we can. Go and ask his majesty if he will bear with Madame’s wishing a twilight ride under the rising stars.”

“You’ll ride in a carriage, not on horseback.”

“I will?”

“For the child’s sake. Monsieur must have his son and heir.”

“I will if you go away and do as I say.”

“Kiss me.”

“No.”

He laughed again.

“Make certain Monsieur drinks too much tonight.” She faced him squarely.

Knowing they were bargaining, that someday he’d demand a payment—there was a part of her that liked that in him—they met each other’s eyes; then he went away to do as she asked.

Men ready to do whatever I command, she thought over a restless nervousness that threatened to send her into fits. I do like that. When am I old enough not to be lectured? she asked the stars. Now, they answered, just the way they had at the duchess’s estate. You are Madame.

Chapter 20

ATE THAT NIGHT
, L
OUIS WAITED FOR
H
ENRIETTE IN FRONT
of the palace’s garden grotto, tucked away at one end of the queen mother’s wing. Everyone else was on the pond, in boats and gondolas, masked, at his order, to make this tryst easier. When he heard her hurrying steps on the path, his heart began to beat in his ears. He felt like a starved animal scenting sustenance. He would die if he didn’t kiss her. He stepped back into the dark of the grotto itself, a wonderful Renaissance fantasy of a cave with hundreds of pieces of tile and shell overhead marking out dogs and fish and other beasts. What stonework there was had not been smoothed to an even surface as it was everywhere else in the palace. Here it showed its harsh birth from larger stone. The stonework, the beasts, the tumble of rocks outlining ovals in the ceiling were in a style called “primitive,” and that’s how he felt this night, urgent and desperate to take her. A candle or two burned in the niches of the walls and on the edges of the opening so she wouldn’t stumble over her long skirts.