Before Versailles (52 page)

“Did you ever perform a service for my mother that was of great delicacy, great danger?”

“Many times.”

“Now would be the time to tell of them.”

“I spied for her, wrote secret letters to Spain. And I plotted against Cardinal Mazarin, but not because she asked it. Surely you know all this.”

“Nothing more?”

“I stood guard when she and the cardinal made love.”

“Before I was born?”

Her mind went reeling. “No.” She’d been in exile then. Would he banish her for this conversation?

“You didn’t like the cardinal?”

“His influence was too pronounced.”

“With my mother?”

“With your mother.” She was too old to make a new place, as once she’d done, going off jauntily on a new adventure. She wanted to end her days here. It had always been rumored Queen Anne had married the cardinal. It must be so. What did he want of her? She could not verify the marriage. If anyone could, surely it was this king.

“Why did you intrigue against him?”

“It was what one did. Intrigue. It was my duty as a courtier, as a daughter of the Rohan-Montbazons.”

There was a long silence between them.

“May I sit down, your majesty?” she asked. He didn’t answer her, and the trembling in her voice moved to her body. She clasped her hands together in an attempt to control some of her shaking.

“At my command and under my direction, you will convince my mother that a certain friendship she treasures must be sundered, that my will is paramount.”

“Yes. Your wish is my command.”

His eyes bored into her, and she felt pinned to the ground by his fierceness. “I very much hope so. I very much hope you’ve told me everything. If I am betrayed, I’ll destroy your husband, and then I will destroy your children, and then, and only then, I will destroy you.”

With those words, he left the chamber. She could see and hear men moving outside, hear the jingle of harness. She slumped into a chair. She felt as if she’d been savagely beaten. A discreet knock came at the door, then Monsieur Colbert entered the chamber.

“You’re to say nothing of this visit, this conversation, to anyone, not your husband, not even your confessor.” The words were flat, said with no emotion.

She could see Colbert’s immense intelligence shining in his eyes, his face. He works night and day, was the word, a drone. She had no sense of the dry emptiness of a drone. This man vibrated with will and determination and purpose, just as his majesty did. “Am I to know the name of this friend I am to convince her majesty to renounce?”

“The Viscount Nicolas.”

So, it is the viscount who is to fall, she thought. Will it bring war? She thought briefly of warning Nicolas, of playing both sides as once she’d done so well, but she lacked stamina. And Colbert would have her watched. From this moment on, her every move would be reported. She knew that as well as she knew her own name.

“His majesty has asked that I tell you why the Viscount Nicolas has fallen from favor. It is a high honor and a responsibility to be taken into his confidence. He has a great regard for your friendship with the queen mother. Your influence with her is legend. I trust it will live up to its reputation.”

In a few brief words, he told her about the lies and disarray in finance and about the island filled with weapons and soldiers. To behead the most powerful man in the kingdom was a brilliant stroke, she thought as she listened, the move of an intrepid warrior, worthy of a great king. It would awe the court. It was a perfect first move toward subduing the nobility. If she’d been younger, she’d have made this king adore her.

“What can I give his majesty?” she asked. “Some gift that underscores my loyalty and devotion.”

Colbert’s eyes flicked to the wall of books, several lifetimes of acquisition, her father’s, her first two husbands’, both dukes’, her own. The gesture did not go unnoticed.

Without hesitation she said, “Will you tell his majesty that when I die he would do me a great honor if he would accept these books that my family has assembled, as a sign of my loyalty to his reign and my honor at the trust bestowed?”

“I will tell him,” said Colbert.

“Have you children?”

“I do.”

“An alliance between our families is not inconceivable to me.”

It was an extraordinary suggestion. Her family was one of the oldest, the proudest in France, and Colbert came from merchant stock. He was rich these days. No one who had worked for Mazarin went unrewarded. A brilliant tactician, he had managed the details of Mazarin’s life—including the king’s wedding—with verve, and thoroughness, but still, he was a lackey. Nonetheless, she decided to gamble with the brashness that was her best, and worst, feature.

“I would never betray a member of my family,” she said.

Colbert’s dark eyes had become velvety soft. Either he was at his most truthworthy or most dangerous. It didn’t matter, really. She’d thrown her glove over his garden wall.

“I shall consider your husband’s advancement a personal obligation,” he said to her. And then he was gone, disappearing with his black clothes into the night like ink poured on dark stone.

She sat down very slowly, very carefully. It had been a long time since anyone had made her afraid, not since Cardinal Richelieu. She hadn’t been afraid of Mazarin, who had believed that everyone had his price and had simply searched for that price. Mazarin hadn’t had the sheer ruthlessness of his predecessor, Richelieu, but this one—well, he might be the child of Richelieu instead of him whom it was once whispered he was the child of. So long ago, those whispers. She had forgotten them. Life, wasn’t it interesting, now? What excitement for her. And gray as she was, she was still necessary. Queen Anne was stubborn and ruthless when cornered. Even this young lion couldn’t quite handle her. God, her Beloved, was good. The minion Colbert would rise. She could sense it, and her family would rise with him, if she behaved herself, for once. Perhaps she would. She was, after all, old.

A
T
F
ONTAINEBLEAU
, L
OUIS
allowed himself an hour or two of sleep at the side of his wife, woke, was dressed, and began his day, which included a hunt that took courtiers all the way to Versailles, where a picnic was set up, and the court gratefully descended from horseback to rest. Louis walked among them like a restless animal. He sat by his cousin, La Grande, who’d ridden as hard as he had and had mud on her skirts, tossed a note, its seal broken, in her lap. She read it, and shocked, raised her eyes to his.

“You’re caught,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you’ve been writing these.”

“I haven’t—I wouldn’t—”

Two musketeers had appeared.

“Go quietly with them, now,” Louis said.

Tears rolled down his cousin’s face. “I’m innocent, majesty! You must believe me!”

“There’s a carriage waiting. I’m sending you to your estate in the country.”

Rain had begun to fall. The storm that had threatened all the morning broke. Courtiers, who’d been sitting on rugs and idly chatting, stood up and began to run for shelter. They were less than a mile from the old hunting château, in its overgrown park. The hunt had been long and particularly ferocious. It was as if the king had been determined to bring down the stag, no matter how long it took. Louis had taken the knife from the master of the hunt and cut the stag’s throat himself, throwing down his blood-stained gloves as he strode past exhausted courtiers.

As the rain turned suddenly harder, Louise found shelter under a tree and put her back against its broad trunk. She felt strained to a breaking point. She’d barely been able to look his majesty in the eye today and was scorched by what was in his expression when she did. She felt frightened and exhilarated, as scattered as these raindrops, which were now pelting down. The tree’s thick branches and leaves provided a little shelter, but soon she’d be wet to the skin. It was all right.

Out from the sheets of pouring rain stepped Louis, his hat off his head. He held it over her. The chivalry, the foolishness, the courtesy of that gesture made her dig her hands into the tree’s bark.

“You’ve captured me,” he said.

She couldn’t answer, even if she’d wanted to.

“I believe I’m in love with you.”

She must have made some sound because he began speaking as fast as he could, as if he would outrun whatever her objections might be, objections he had to know himself.

“I’ll be in the middle of a council meeting, or riding back from a long journey, and all I am thinking of is the exact shade of your eyes when you swore you’d keep my secret. The sky after a rain? At soft twilight? What is your birth date? Who is your father? Why does your mother never come to court? All the things I don’t know about you—I want to know them. I want to know you.”

His eyes raked over her face, demanding, searching, appealing. This can’t be happening, she thought. His hair was mussed, curling wildly. She could smell it. She could smell him. Exaltation and dread warred in her.

“Do I disgust you? Do you think me lighthearted, evil, going from one woman to the next, seeing who I can seduce? I’m not like that. I want to hold you like a talisman in my heart against all I must do.” Now he looked at her directly. “It’s as if I was blind, and now I see. I swear on all that’s holy I don’t trifle with you, Miss de la Baume le Blanc. Name of Jesus, I want permission to speak your given name. I was going to say nothing to you, to quell what’s in me for both our sakes, but I can’t keep myself from you. What is she thinking? I ask when I see you with your friends. What is she feeling? I wonder. Can she care for me even half as much as I find I suddenly care for her? Say you’ll give me a chance to woo you, to show you that I would take the moon right out of the sky and hang it around your neck, if that’s what you desired.”

What his eyes promised—something true and sober and stead-fast—went straight to her heart, and she felt like a newborn bird fallen from its high nest, turning in frenzied circles in the dust, struggling and afraid in its nakedness.

Louis smiled, joy blazing in his eyes. It was like the sun bursting out after a long night of dark. She felt dazzled. He was everything a man should be, strong and good and brave and gallant. He leaned in toward her, so that his great hat was covering them both, so that his hair was falling over his shoulders. They did not quite touch.

“Tell me I can hope.”

His eyes were inches from her. She felt like fainting, like running away, like staying, like grabbing his mane of hair and pulling him to her and pressing her mouth to his.

“I think you care for me a little,” he said, moving even closer.

She could see that the brown of his eyes had a tinge of green around the edges.

“I love you.” He repeated it. Gently, he put his mouth on hers.

She couldn’t move. Feelings tumbled like plates thrown off shelves. She felt soldered to him at the lips. He didn’t move to touch her with his hands; his hands were in fact still holding the hat above them. The only place they touched one another was at the mouth, and even then not deeply, just a light kiss that was as sweet as any marzipan she’d ever tasted. One could die in this sweetness.

When he stepped back, it was all she could do to stay leaning against the tree. Her body wanted to follow his, felt bereft, abandoned, cold, and wet now with rain. The space between them literally hurt her. What’s happening? she thought, and she felt as wild as the stag being brought to its knees by the maddened lunges of the dogs. The stag bled and lowered its antlers, as trumpets blew to announce its falling.

The downpour had lessened. Louis stepped back from her, said, “You hold my heart in your hands,” and then he walked toward the chateau in the light drizzle. When he seemed far enough away, Louise followed.

“See that Miss de la Baume le Blanc has her horse immediately,” Louis told a courtier.

The courtier found the horse as asked, took it to a wet and drooping young maid of honor who hadn’t joined the melee of chattering, milling courtiers waiting for horses. Concerned, he said, “My dear miss, are you ill? Are you certain you can sit in the saddle?”

“Yes, ill.” Ill with love, ill with dread, but alive from the top of her head to the toes curling with damp in her boots. She could hear the slightest rustle in the woods, could see the farthest bird flying, could smell the rain and earth and leaves and bark as if they were a bouquet at her nose.

“Wait here and I’ll have a carriage sent for.”

“No, just help me onto my horse.” She was always more whole on horseback. She’d get some sense of herself as she rode back. She’d stay far back, not up front with the others where the king would be, his majesty, the beautiful, sensual, aloof Louis whom they all secretly loved. Could she care for him? he asked. Such a question. He was the brightest star in their sky.

She settled herself in the sidesaddle. Already thoughts were clearer. She’d die if he ever tired of her. She felt a little stronger with the fatalism of that truth. This mustn’t begin. She hadn’t the heart for it. His majesty had had a sudden fit—and like all fits, it would pass. She would ride this out, let it wither on its green young vine.