Before Versailles (78 page)

“I’ve arrested the Viscount Nicolas,” Louis said.

There was a shocked silence, a moment of absolute quiet in the chamber. What he announced was a thunderclap over their heads. A million thoughts flew through Louis’s mind. It seemed to him that he saw every face and read the feelings behind the masks of flesh. His minister of war, one of his inner three and an ally of the viscount, wiped perspiration from his upper lip. Still no one spoke. A ballad Louis had heard a few nights earlier, a local ballad of this province with its treacherous seacoast, went dancing through his head along with thoughts of all that might happen now. Would credit hold? Would there be war?

The sea has donned her robe of green, went the ballad, her robe of green, ’tis hope they say, evening has come, gone is the day, the sea has donned her robe of green with all about the skirt a screen of the ocean’s fairest flowers. Lilting had been the voices singing the ballad. His thoughts had been of Louise. The sea has donned her robe of green, let love be ours. How could the viscount have had the audacity to attempt to bribe her?

Paris would be in an uproar once the news reached them in a week or so. Who here would be disloyal? Which of his provinces would revolt first? Colbert’s bet was this one. The musketeers in the courtyard waited. If he wasn’t downstairs among them in half an hour’s time, they would storm this castle.

“I thought it necessary,” he began the speech he’d delivered a thousand times in his mind, “and now I shall explain why …”

He didn’t know it would be the first sentence of an absolute monarchy that would become the envy of Europe and the triumph of his life’s work, that only the incompetence of great-great-grandsons and the marching forward of time—the birth of the ideas of independence espoused in the new world across the sea—would unravel what he set into motion with this moment.

“Long live the king,” someone shouted when he was done, and others took up the cry, and he walked to the window and showed himself to his troop below, his heart pounding, because he could not yet know there would be no war; just as he could not yet know that his will, and his alone, would become the crux of a kingdom and the backbone of two hundred years of power and the last thing he would regret before he died.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

T
HESE FOUR MONTHS
in the life of Louis XIV when he was twenty-two capture a moment in history when he showed all that was the best in him: ardor, passion, gallantry, courage, and resourcefulness. I couldn’t resist him. Much of what I’ve written in this novel is true. What fun to guess the rest. Here is a glimpse of the history I based the story upon:

The iron mask:
This is one of the enduring legends of French history and fiction. There is no definite proof of a man or boy in an iron mask. There was, however, a man who wore a mask of black silk, who was treated with utmost respect, kept isolated from all other prisoners, and who died without a name on record. No one knows who he was.

The arrest:
When he was twenty-two, Louis had his powerful superintendent of finance arrested in September 1661 to the astonishment and shock of all around him. It was an earthquake in the terrain of court and finances. Financiers and tax farmers were brought to trial and fined. Colbert reorganized France’s system of finance and its system of governance. The superintendent, named Nicolas Fouquet, remained in prison at Pignerol for the rest of his life.

Nicolas Fouquet:
He was witty, polished, cultured, the unnamed superintendent of art and literature as well as the named superintendent of finance. He patronized many writers and artists. Controversy still thrives in France about whether his arrest was deserved or not.

Vaux-le-Vicomte:
Fouquet’s estate exists to this day and has been lovingly restored. Louis claimed the three artisans Fouquet had summoned to work together—Le Vau, Le Brun, and Le Nôtre—and put them to recreating Versailles, which was transformed from a hunting lodge and tryst for love to the most famous palace in Europe.

Love:
Louis XIV was faithful for the first year of his marriage, but by the summer of 1661 was paying enough attention to his sister-in-law to make scandal bubble. Then talk died back, but until late autumn only Louis knew why: someone unexpected had captured his heart.

A blue jacket:
In a romantic, tender, secret gesture, Louis XIV wore a blue jacket, likely sewn by Louise, for fourteen days straight in the fall of 1661

Louise:
She is known in history as Louise de la Vallière. She never stopped loving the king but became a nun of the Carmelites in 1674. Queen Maria Teresa was among the huge crowd to witness the ceremony of her taking the veil, but Louis XIV was not.

Athénaïs:
Ah, readers, that is indeed—another story …

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

F
OR HELP IN
research: the late Nancyhelen Fischer of The French Connection; Henri Leers, translator; Count Patrice de Vogüé, owner of Vaux-le-Vicomte; Sophie Hubert of the Fontainebleau Museum Château; Nick Poyntz of the blog
mercuriuspoliticus.wordpress.com
; Professor Jeffrey Merrick of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. For serving as first readers and/or proofreading eyes: Joan Boote, Ann Bradford, Alice Lemos, Chris Ritter, Sandi Stromberg, Tammie Thomas. For manuscript cleanup: Kristin Kearns, Burning Designer Studios. For support: Joyce Boatright, Sandi Stromberg, Jean Naggar, my long-time and very dear agent, and Jennifer Weltz of the Jean Naggar Literary Agency. For revision suggestions and seeing the book to completion: Heather Lazare of the Crown Publishing Group. For providing a quiet place to finish last revisions: the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karleen Koen is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Through a Glass Darkly
as well as
Now Face to Face
and
Dark Angels
. Visit her online at
karleenkoen.net
and
karleenkoen.wordpress.com
.