Before Versailles (67 page)

“I received a letter from the Duchess de Chevreuse this morning, sire. Here it is.”

Louis ran his eyes over the words the duchess had scrawled. She is not satisfied, but she is loyal. He closed his eyes. Pray God that was true. “La Grande Mademoiselle will be among the audience tonight.”

“Yes.”

Another Mazarinade had surfaced. Neither of them now thought her the instigator. It would be a most unwise instigator who ordered another sent while under suspicion herself. Perhaps, as Colbert had always maintained, the author was indeed the viscount.

T
HE BALLET WAS
held in the ballroom. The audience, glorious in jewels and lace and high heels, walked to the rows of chairs set among the arches.

The actor and troupe manager, Molière, moved from one member of his troupe to another. His actresses were in the ballet itself, as chorus for songs and as dancers in the interludes. The principal parts went to courtiers, except for the soprano brought in from Paris, who more or less sang the loose threads of the story that framed the interludes of dancing. It was a frail frame, thought Molière, who found the fashionable long ballets with no cohesive story line tedious, but no one had asked him.

Courtiers settled into chairs to watch a bevy of women dance out as shepherdesses, followed by men as shepherds and children costumed as fauns. At the last moment, Monsieur had suggested the queen’s dwarves join the cast of the fauns. They’d bring laughter from the audience, Madame and Molière had decided, which was never a bad thing in a long production. Maria Teresa clapped wildly at the sight of them.

Costumed as the goddess Diana, Henriette carried a bow and quiver and wore a silver crescent as her crown. She was still slim enough to dance, and rumor was she and Maria Teresa had had words in the queen’s gallery this morning, Maria Teresa insisting that dancing would endanger Henriette’s child. If I were more cow-like, I might worry, Henriette snapped back, and since the queen was as wide as she was tall these days, neither lady was now speaking to the other.

One eye on the performance, the audience leafed through their book of verses. It was the custom for the court poet to create verses about each courtier who danced in the court ballets, verses that used the theme of the ballet to compliment, and in some cases lightly mock, the courtier in question.

Henriette’s nymphs had been picked from among the prettiest young women at court. Choisy couldn’t take his eyes from Louise. Her hair loose on her shoulders, she wore a shorter, shimmering green skirt that showed her slim legs and ankles, and she was radiant, happiness spilling from her like light from a lantern.

“My word,” said the Chevalier de Lorraine, “La Baume le Blanc looks positively glorious.” He peered down at the verses in the leather book. “This beauty, recently risen, in color fresh and clear, is springtime with her flowers,” he read, not caring that he talked aloud. “Our court poet is a prophet. She’s growing more beautiful right under our eyes. I wonder if she has a magic potion. Soissons was telling me about a witch in Paris—oh, here’s Monsieur. Hush, now, Choisy, don’t distract me.”

And then, after Philippe had danced his solo and been roundly applauded, Lorraine continued talking. “You know, his majesty called on Monsieur today. I have no idea what they spoke of, but Monsieur was thoughtful afterward.”

Applause interrupted him. His majesty had just danced onto the stage with more vigor and style than any dancer there.

Nicolas led the applause and murmured the word “magnificent” to Madame de Motteville, as all watched Louis leap in and among lithe girls in silvery green skirts and then dance with Henriette as his partner.

“Always,” answered Anne’s lady-in-waiting.

“How was her majesty’s visit with the duchess?” Nicolas asked. “You’ll come to see me later with all the details, I know. I hear there’s an old secret, a love child or something.”

Motteville’s gasp made him turn his head to her.

“Ask me no questions, so that I may tell you no lies,” she said, and before Nicolas could respond, she’d stood up and moved to stand by Queen Anne.

The audience sat through summer with its gardeners and dancing flowers, the dwarves again creating laughter, and now it was winter’s turn. Louis danced on, in full costume, skirts, headdress, and bosom, of the goddess Ceres. He played the part with a deadpan seriousness and gigantic leaps that delighted the audience. Molière, whose idea it had been, smiled.

Everything after that was anticlimactic, never mind that the musicians played like a heavenly chorus, never mind that all the cast gathered on stage for the finale, dancing and singing, and finally falling into stylized poses as various attributes: love, abundance, joy, prosperity, the kind of heavy symbolism loved by this century. Among the melee of congratulations and compliments and preening about in costume afterward, Louis managed to pull Louise behind the large cutout of the sun for one quick moment.

“I’m leaving for a week. If you need anything, go to Colbert,” he told her.

She couldn’t answer because he was already walking away. She stared sightlessly at the glitter and paint on the cutout. Now Mister Colbert knew? Who else had to be swept into their secret to preserve it, and how long would it be preserved if more and more people were told? How would she look Mister Colbert in the face and not blush?

Colbert, however, was concentrated on Madame de Motteville, and he ran her to ground the way a dog would a fox. “I saw you speak with the viscount.”

“He knows,” said Motteville.

Colbert spoke sharply, for once displaying emotion. “He knows what?”

“He knows about the child.”

Within moments, she found herself in a tiny antechamber, standing before Louis. Once the intrigue of living in court, disloyalty like rotting apples forever tumbling from their basket, had enlivened her, made her bold and daring, given the days a sense of adventure, but at this moment, she felt old and used and pulled too many ways by too many competing loyalties. The expression on Louis’s face frightened her.

“What did he say?”

“Very little. He asked about the visit to the duchess, said he’d heard there was a secret, a love child, nothing more.” She didn’t dare raise her eyes to meet Louis’s.

“Look at me,” he said, and when she could make herself do so, “Find out what he knows, but tell him nothing, not so much as a hint, a breath of the truth. Tell him you would dishonor her majesty to speak of such things. Weep, have a tantrum, seduce him, but find out how he knows this and tell him nothing in return. Do you understand me, Madame de Motteville?”

She nodded her head.

L
OUISE STOOD BEHIND
Henriette, who was receiving courtier after courtier, each of whom must tell her how gracefully she’d danced, how beautiful she looked, how wonderful the ballet had been.

“—and I think it’s disgraceful the way Madame encourages the king’s regard. Our poor queen—”

Both Louise and Henriette turned their heads to see who spoke. It was Athénaïs, standing with Olympe, and when she saw that they’d heard her, she clapped her hands over her mouth and backed away into the crowd. But Olympe, head held high, met Henriette’s questioning gaze, a malicious half-smile on her face, as direct as a slap.

“I feel ill,” Henriette said. How dare she look at me so, she thought.

Louise helped her to one of the benches near the opened windows, sent Fanny running for wine.

“Make them go away,” Henriette said, as courtiers began to cluster to see what was the matter. The look on Soissons’s face implied triumph, malice, happiness that she was sad. Did the countress relish her distress? What others around her did so, also?

“Shoo! Leave her alone! She just needs some air.” Louise pushed at courtiers, forcing them back away, but the Chevalier de Lorraine moved around Louise as if she didn’t exist.

“Monsieur sends me to see how you do. Remember, you’re carrying his heir.”

Henriette didn’t answer.

“I’ll tell him you’re irritable, as usual,” said Lorraine and left her.

Louise knelt in front of Henriette. “You look so pale. What is it? What can I do?”

“I don’t have his regard, but he looks happy,” Henriette whispered, “not sad, like me.”

“No, no, not really. We all know he loves to dance, and I heard he so liked your ballet.” Louise picked up Henriette’s fan, began to wave it back and forth at Henriette’s face.

“You’re so kind, La Baume le Blanc.”

Louise saw that her eyes had fastened again on the bracelets. How could she ignore them with Louise fanning her? Please, precious Mother of God, prayed Louise, please.

“I’m glad you wear those. His majesty asked about them, now that I think on it, several weeks ago. It doesn’t do to offend, you know. Just—just don’t take any of it too seriously. I won’t have one of my household hurt because of his flirting.”

“No, no, I don’t take it too seriously. I’m grateful to have some jewelry, actually.”

Henriette laughed. She wiped at her eyes, stood, and shook out the skirts of her wonderful costume, in a color Louis himself had picked for her, once upon a time when they’d been in love, a kind of sage-green silk taffeta decorated with arabesques of pearls.

“Thank God there’s at least one person around me without guile. Thank you, my dear,” she said to Louise and marched out into the milling courtiers, her back straight, her earrings dancing.

H
OURS LATER, HER
head hurting from wine and self-reproach, Louise stumbled into her bedchamber with her friends. Everyone took off jewels and stockings and gowns and climbed into their beds, yawning and tired and more than a little drunk.

That Louis would be gone a week filled her with longing. How pliable my conscience is becoming, Louise thought, and as she remembered her lies to Madame this night, remembered Madame’s sad and bewildered expression, she moved restlessly in the bed until Fanny told her in a hissing whisper to be still.

H
IS COURT SETTLING
into their beds, but he himself dressed for travel, Louis knelt beside his dog. Maria Teresa had cried when he’d told her he was going on a secret pilgrimage for their child’s sake. She’d dropped to her knees. Forgive me, she’d said, her eyes shining, her arms outstretched. My jealousy has been a canker in my heart. Guilt had filled him, but also right beside it, a slithering snake in the garden, was relief. La Grande had knelt before him like a supplicant tonight. Her abrupt dismissal and her abrupt readmission to court had her all but groveling.