Before Versailles (49 page)

“Y
OU SEEM DISTRACTED
,” Henriette said.

“Do I? Forgive me.” I do care for you, Louis thought. This is real, not that odd, flaring passion, like lightning on the horizon, for the quiet blue-eyed belle who, he noticed, was walking in the far park with Guy and Philippe as her escorts.

“The Count of Guiche admires Miss de la Baume le Blanc?” he asked. Guy had been rude to Philippe this day, he’d been told, kicking him on the sole of his shoe as if he were a minion and ordering him to follow, and follow Philippe had.

“As much as he admires anyone. How does your flirtation go?”

“Which one?”

“With Miss de la Baume le Blanc.”

He found he was reluctant to speak of it. “She’s shy.”

“Be careful with her, won’t you?”

“You act as if I am a heartbreaker.”

“The king takes all hearts.”

Her wide smile, the way she tossed her head, the smooth surety in her voice, annoyed him beyond bearing. He stood up abruptly. “I must pay some attention to the queen.”

Maria Teresa sat in among the trees of the park with her ladies. As usual, she was embroidering on something small, something for their son. Walking toward her, he thought of her sincerity and trust, much like that of Miss de la Baume le Blanc’s. Why was Miss de la Baume le Blanc so attractive to him and his wife so annoying? He was going to see the monastery tomorrow.

Q
UIETLY, FURTIVELY, TRYING
to make no noise to wake, Louise slipped a note under Fanny’s pillow. Lie for me, she wrote. Tell the gargoyle I had to go to Paris to see my mother. She sat in a silent stairway to put her boots on, walked to the gardens, no one in them at this hour. Lieutenant d’Artagnan stepped out so that she could see him.

“I’m not late, am I?” she cried.

“It’s all right, miss. Follow me.”

He led her to a stable she hadn’t known existed, and in its yard were some twenty musketeers, most on their gray horses, and they nodded solemnly to her. But where was the king? thought Louise, and then she saw that he was dressed just as they were, blended in among them. He nodded his head abruptly at Louise, and then D’Artagnan handed her a tabard and a hat. How clever they are, she thought, and she went into a stall and took off her cloak and pulled on a tabard, which was a musketeer’s short cloak, slit on the sides, an elaborately embroidered cross on its front, over her riding dress. She set the hat upon her head. Another musketeer helped her to mount, and then they were riding out toward the open heath behind this part of the palace. She felt disoriented, suddenly uncertain of herself, of finding the monastery, of knowing east from west and north from south, which was silly, one had only to find the sun and shadow and certain mosses.

“I’m accustomed to leaving from the common courtyard,” she said to D’Artagnan nervously.

He pointed, and Louise saw the magnificent entrance gatehouse of the common courtyard rising in the sky and realized she was on one of the village’s back lanes, and she felt certain again. She snapped at her horse with the riding crop, and the beast sprang forward, and D’Artagnan allowed her to lead.

There was only the sound of hooves on the floor of the forest. D’Artagnan rode beside Louise, but Louis stayed back, surrounded on all sides by his musketeers. They rode long and hard for several hours, Louise never wavering, never asking to stop for rest. When the monastery was in sight, the tower of its chapel rising up to the sky, she pulled her horse short. She pointed toward the vineyards, the monks and boys working in them.

“What do we do?” she asked D’Artagnan.

“We go in,” he said, and they rode right up to the gate.

“Open in the name of his majesty,” D’Artagnan called, pulling at the rope of the bell on one side of the gate. After a time, the window cut into the gate opened, and a monk peered out. Seeing musketeers, he pulled his head back. When the gate didn’t open, D’Artagnan nodded to two young musketeers.

“Over and open it,” he told them. One stood in his saddle while the other held the reins of his horse tight, and in minutes the first was over the wall. A bell began to peal, even as the gate was opening. The musketeers rode into the enclosure, the chapel bell loud. Boys in the garden put down their hoes at the sight of them, and Louise watched monks clap their hands and point toward a side building on the chapel, as boys lined up, and monks began to shepherd them into the building.

Louis rode forward. “Where did you see him?”

She pointed with her riding crop. “I think he lives there.” She was pointing to the ornate stone house, its roses rambling over the columns of the porch.

“Surround the house,” D’Artagnan ordered.

I
NSIDE THE HOUSE
, Cinq Mars had been seated at a table sharpening the blade of his sword. His precious charge sat in a corner, singing to himself. At least that was what Cinq Mars called it, the singsong, sometimes endless murmur that would come out of the boy. He was rocking back and forth, his arms around himself. Happy today, thought Cinq Mars.

I’ll take him for a ride later, Cinq Mars was thinking when the chapel bell began to peal. The boy put his hands to his ears, began to hit his head against the wall. Pounding sounded at the front door, as several monks rushed in from the back of the house. They made gestures with their hands. Soldiers, that’s what their hand gestures said. Had the queen mother sent soldiers to take the boy? But even as that thought was forming, he knew she wouldn’t have sent them without a warning beforehand. It was something else.

“We have to get him away,” he shouted to the monks, who surrounded the boy and jerked him to standing, no easy task with his rocking and size. They ran down the hall, half-carrying, half-dragging the boy. Cinq Mars maneuvered ahead and threw open the back door. Musketeers stood not a foot away.

He shut the door quickly, his mind going over every route. His orders were mortal sins, to kill the boy and then himself. Himself he could do, but not the boy, never the boy. It was a vow he couldn’t keep, and he’d always known it.

“Make them stop pealing the bell!” he shouted. “Keep him here.” He’d fight his way to the stables, take a horse, get the boy and himself on it, and be off. He opened the back door again, sword raised.

D’Artagnan now stood at the front of the other musketeers, his sword out of its scabbard.

“Cinq Mars!” D’Artagnan cried. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw monks pouring into the enclosure through the front gate.

“To my aid!” shouted Cinq Mars.

And D’Artagnan realized that the monks running toward them carried hoes and knives and rakes and seemed ready to use them. There were boys with them, boys whose faces were odd, and some of whom were wailing and jumping up and down.

“On guard,” D’Artagnan shouted, and at once, he and the others made a tight square, their backs to one another, their swords pointed outward on the advancing monks, as Cinq Mars ran to the stable.

“Do I kill them?” one of the musketeers asked D’Artagnan.

“No! Aid! To our aid!” shouted D’Artagnan.

Hearing it, the musketeers in front of the house, ordered to stay with the king, looked at one another. On Louis’s orders, they’d made no move to stop monks herding distraught boys into the side building of the chapel. Louis dismounted, took his sword from his scabbard, and ran around the side of the house with them, Louise behind.

The sight that met their eyes stopped them for a moment, monks surrounding musketeers, who valiantly deflected the wild downward thrust of rakes and hoes with their swords. Other monks grabbed at swords with bare hands and didn’t seem to mind the gushing blood.

“Cease and desist,” Louis shouted. Could they even hear him over the pealing of that chapel bell? He took his hat from his head so they could see his face plainly. “I order you in my name, Louis, the fourteenth, king and keeper of this kingdom! I order you in the name of all that is holy to desist!”

“It’s the king!” shouted D’Artagnan.

Uncertain, monks stepped back, looked at one another. Hesitantly some began to bow, one or two fell to their knees.

Cinq Mars, who’d brought out saddled horses—he’d kept horses saddled ever since Louise had visited—began a wide run toward the front door of the house, but D’Artagnan moved from the square of musketeers.

“Stop in the name of the king!” he called. And then, “Old friend, it’s me, Charles de Batz-Castelmore d’Artagnan. Stop! Don’t make me kill you!”

“I order you to stop,” Louis called. He had joined D’Artagnan.

Cinq Mars turned to Louis, brought his sword to his forehead in a salute. Then he lunged for D’Artagnan, cutting the musketeer in his side, but the loose tabard made the aim inaccurate, and D’Artagnan was quick enough to fall back so that the wound didn’t disable him. Their swords met in that deadly clang of steel on steel that was serious battle. D’Artagnan inched Cinq Mars backward, the man fighting him like someone gone mad.

“Help him!” ordered Louis.

Other musketeers rushed forward, cutting Cinq Mars on each arm, and in spite of himself, Cinq Mars lowered his sword arm, just as D’Artagnan, his sword at point, pushed hard and deep through Cinq Mars’s chest below his shoulder. Cinq Mars staggered back, and the other musketeers tackled him, dropping him to the ground.

A howl rang out through the chaos. A thin, nearly grown boy with a shocking iron mask upon his face ran into the melee, pulling musketeers off Cinq Mars as if they weighed nothing. D’Artagnan raised his sword, but before he could use it, Louise was there, hanging on his sword arm.

“Don’t hurt him, please!” she cried.

“You mustn’t touch him—” Cinq Mars shouted.

But D’Artagnan’s blade grazed the boy, who gasped in shock and then to everyone’s horror, grabbed the sword with his hands, his fingers quickly reddening. The boy sat down abruptly.

“Enough!” shouted Louis.

“Yes, it’s enough!” cried the abbot of the monastery, who’d been herding the younger boys into the side building of the chapel, but was now here, a sword in his hand. “Obey his majesty!” he ordered.

So, thought Louis, he speaks, but the others remain silent. Louis knelt down to see this youth in an iron mask. Gasping, he lay on his side, but in a sudden, agile movement, the boy shoved Louis with his feet, knocking him backward. In another moment, the boy was surrounded by musketeers, swords all pointing downward, his abdomen their destination.

“Stop!” shouted Louis.

“He can’t understand,” panted Cinq Mars. And then he went silent. Better if they killed him, he thought.

The boy stood. It looked as if he was getting ready to charge, and one by one, musketeers gripped their swords in preparation. But he caught sight of Louise; she’d lost her hat and her hair was loose, out of its pins and on her shoulders. The boy tilted his head to one side. “Mama?” he said.

As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Louise replied, “Yes. Come with me like a good boy, won’t you, my dear?” She stepped toward the boy, reached to touch him, but he stepped back, trembling.

“We’ll go inside,” Louise said, “where it’s quiet. Come with me, dear boy.”

D’Artagnan looked to Louis, who gave a sharp nod of agreement.

As if there weren’t a dozen men and a king watching, half of them ready to pierce him if he made a single, wrong move, the boy followed Louise into the house, down the hall, into a chamber. Louis, his men, the abbot followed.

“Won’t you sit down, my dear one,” Louise said.

Hesitantly, the boy sat in a chair.

“What goes on here?” Louis demanded. No one answered him. “I want the mask taken off,” he ordered.

“He’ll become wild,” said the abbot.

“Will you do the honors?” Louis said to Louise.

Carefully, talking to him all the while, explaining every move she made, Louise began to fumble with unfastening leather straps. Musketeers stood poised in a semicircle, swords drawn.

“Mama,” the boy made the one word a song he repeated over and over. He had begun to rock back and forth so that Louise’s task was difficult.

D’Artagnan walked outside the house to a prone Cinq Mars, surrounded by monks attempting to stanch his wound.