by EM Castellan
“A queen,” she went on, “has many duties. But none more important than producing an heir. I was fourteen when I married the king, and I was thirty-seven when my son was born.” I made a quick calculation, which must have shown on my face, for Anne d’Autriche tilted her head to the side, as if she read my mind. “That’s twenty-three years.”
I couldn’t help it—my eyes widened. The pressure she must have endured all those years, with an entire kingdom waiting for her to have a son. And then, when at last the miracle had happened, having to lose her husband and to raise an infant king … the loneliness of it all must have been overwhelming.
“I raised my son to be king,” she added. “To be strong. To be powerful, so that no one—no one—would ever threaten his rule or his life ever again.” Driven by her impulse, she’d leaned forward, so she straightened her back again. “But God, in his wisdom, didn’t grant me just one son.”
All of a sudden, the point of this long-winded speech struck me. This wasn’t about her, or Louis, or even me. This was about Philippe.
“He gave France an heir and a spare, as they say.” Her features darkened. “But every time I looked at Philippe, I thought of Gaston. My husband had a brother, and that man tried to steal what wasn’t his. And I couldn’t help wondering if my son’s brother would ever try to do the same. They’re only two years apart, and they’re similar in so many ways.” She closed her eyes, as if recalling those long-gone times. “So I looked at Philippe, and I wished he’d been a girl.”
My whole body tense, I became aware of the stillness in the room, the gentle tapping of the rain against the windows the only sound beside the Queen Mother’s voice. I listened to her tale, my heart squeezed by my churning emotions, unsure whether any of these people deserved my pity or my admiration.
“I raised Philippe so he would never become a threat to my son. I ensured Louis would know never to give him any political role or position in the army. But to do that, we had to keep him in check another way. So we indulge him. He wants to dress as a girl—we let him. My son only appears more of a man next to him. He wants to spend vast amounts of money on frivolous things—we let him. Better he likes the theater and clothes than politics.” Her intransigent golden gaze met mine again. “And if he wants to complain to me about whatever upsets him—I let him.”
Realization descended on me like a cold draught. One thing you have to know about Philippe, Louis had said, is that his jealousy for me knows no bounds … And anytime he feels I’ve done him some sort of wrong, he runs off to Mother to moan. This was about me after all. I had been summoned, because Philippe had complained about me to his mother, like a willful child who didn’t get his way.
My temper rose. Instead of coming to me with his grievance and talking to me as an adult, he’d avoided me for two weeks, then gone to his mother, tasking her with the telling-off of his own wife? He was lucky not to be in the room, or I would have let him know exactly what I thought of his behavior. My feelings must have been apparent, since Anne d’Autriche grabbed my hand in an appeasing gesture.
“Henriette, you have to understand. We’ve ensured Philippe is under control, but that requires giving into his whims from time to time. He’s very jealous of his brother, and you spending time with my son is really not helping our cause.”
“But the king asked for my company,” I replied, with more heat than I should have let on in front of a queen, but my frustration ran too high to be controlled. “Am I supposed to refuse him, when Philippe himself shows no interest in spending any time with me?”
She paused and pressed her lips into a thin line, as if gathering her thoughts to make herself understood by a stubborn opponent.
“We have to tread carefully, here. I—we—France cannot afford a quarrel between the two brothers. So I’m asking you to avoid furthering whatever type of relations has developed between my son and you. In the meantime, I shall ask my son to mind his brother and set his attentions elsewhere.”
Except that Louis wouldn’t want to set his gaze anywhere else. Despite what his mother believed, and what I sometimes desired, our relationship wasn’t romantic. Louis needed me for my magic, and he wouldn’t let it go easily. I chose to pacify her anyway.
“I shall try my best.” I gave her one of my well-practiced, reassuring smiles, and she squeezed my hand affectionately.
“I knew you’d understand. There is a reason you’re everyone’s favorite, my dear.”
I accepted the compliment with a dip of my head. I would indulge her, and speak with Louis. But in the grand scheme of things, my husband’s petty jealousy wouldn’t weigh much in the face of magic and a king’s power.
* * *
The ballet was an enchantment.
The clouds had dispersed, leaving clear skies and warm air behind. Stars twinkled in the summer night, thousands of shiny dots that mirrored the torches and candles illuminating the movable stage the Comte de Saint-Aignan had commissioned.
At the start of the show, a powerful spell pulled the stage along an alley of trees. It floated above the path until it reached a lake by which the spectators sat. Gasps and applause greeted this grand entrance, and from then on the courtiers’ awe never ceased. My own performance—with magically sparkling moon crescent in my hair—elicited the audience’s appreciative murmurs, but it was soon forgotten as the rest of the show unfolded, and fantastic wonders filled the stage.
The count had surpassed himself: The costumes were a riot of colors, glitters, feathers, jewels, and ribbons, all shimmering with magic to enhance their glow in the falling night. The sumptuous sets moved without pause, each season turning into another as vegetation grew and changed onstage amid water jets, cascades, and fountains conjured out of thin air. A garden, filled with flowers too large and beautiful to be real, switched to a fragrant wheat field, soon replaced by a vineyard and an orchard that offered lifelike grapes and fruit. A short snowstorm followed, covering the stage with a layer of white and shaping icicles on the now bare trees.
Each tableau succeeded the last at a quick pace, drowning the courtiers under an assault of magical wonders. Before I could realize it, I was due to go onstage again for the final part of the show, with spring awakening the flora. Backstage, chaos prevailed as members of the cast struggled to remain hidden while changing costumes and getting into position for their next appearance.
“Ready?” Louis’s face was set in a focused expression, but his golden eyes sparkled with excitement.
Nerves and weariness weighed down my limbs, but I forced a smile on my lips. “I suppose I am.”
We’d been practicing this part in secret for days, and there was no going back now. Still, the idea of failing the king and facing public humiliation was enough to make me dizzy for a second. Next to me, Louise was also struck by an attack of stage fright, as she muttered her lines and fiddled with her bunch of flowers with trembling hands. I squeezed her fingers, the need to reassure her overpowering my own fear.
“It’s going to be all right. Just do as we practiced.”
The smile she gave me was full of doubt, but Lully didn’t give her time to reply. Dressed in a checkered outfit overflowing with lace and gold trimmings, he had left his orchestra to play the part of the Gamer in the last tableau. Upon a signal from the count, who stood by the stage with the African prince Aniaba, Lully gestured for us to move onto the stage, followed by a flock of actors impersonating the pleasures of life and the arts.
Louis took center stage amid a lavish and sweet-smelling garden, with me on one side and the courtier playing Apollo on the other, and the rest of the crowd around us. As planned, Louise stood at my side as the music swelled in the brightly lit night and an actor sang how spring was now forever established at Fontainebleau and welcomed everyone under his generous protection. It was all rather over-the-top to my taste, but the audience kept sighing in delight and shouting Bravo as each character gave the king a compliment when called forward.
By the time Louise�
��s turn came to speak her four lines, cold sweat ran down my spine and my pulse was out of control. In the front row, the Queen Mother, Fouquet, and Marie-Thérèse sat so close to the stage I feared they would see through our stratagem in an instant.
A hush fell over the audience as the music stopped to let Louise say her lines. I didn’t dare glance at her. But Louise’s soft voice rose on the first words, and she delivered the expected compliment with enough assurance that delighted murmurs rippled along the crowd. As she spoke, she pulled roses out of a basket and handed them to me one by one. I, in turn, gave them to Louis, who then threw them in the air.
The spell was simple, but impressive: When tossed up toward the sky, the flowers exploded into fireworks, which fell back on everyone onstage in a shower of golden flecks and covered us in a shimmering glow that made us all godlike.
The trick was, of course, to make people wonder where the magic came from. In the last couple of weeks, Louise had made sure to drop hints around court about the fact neither of us were Sources. And now, in full public view, we had to make it look like Louis was performing the spell on his own.
The way we managed it was through the handing of the flowers and the wording of Louise’s lines. The spell—Éclaire—was the rhyme in her verse: I repeated it as an echo, and so did Louis when I gave him the flowers, filled with my magic. To further confuse anyone watching closely, I made sure to touch both Louise’s fingers and the king’s when handling the roses.
When the first flower exploded into a red firework, the audience clapped and cried out in delight. But when the rest followed, bathing the whole on-stage cast in a magical glow, they stood to stamp their feet and shout their approval in a happy pandemonium above the music. Through it all, Louis kept his expression serene, a benevolent smile tugging at his lips. It was his moment, the spell he’d dreamed and conceived, and which he performed to perfection.
Even after the music finished, the audience kept on applauding the ballet and their king, true wonder in the eyes of people who were so hard to impress. The air sizzled with magic from the numbers of spells that had been performed tonight, and golden flecks, bright as embers in the night, drifted up toward the stars in the warm summer wind.
Louis descended the steps off the stage, the actors trailing after him and the audience coming up to congratulate him. He had a word for each courtier, a nod for each compliment, and his magnetism was so intense then I couldn’t help but want to be part of the crowd around him. Throughout the spell, my main concern had been to keep my strength and my wits: That was what we’d practiced the most, and a smile pulled the corners of my mouth at the thought that I had succeeded. Tiredness would wash over me very soon, I knew, but in the meantime I could mingle with the courtiers and receive the few compliments thrown my way.
I couldn’t find Philippe anywhere in the jostling crowd, and a pang of disappointment shot through me. We hadn’t spoken since my conversation with his mother the previous day, and there would be a time for that, but tonight I wished he would be the first to search for me after the show. Instead, it was Athénaïs who linked her arm with mine and whispered her congratulations in my ear.
“Magnificent. Everyone is very impressed.”
I thanked her for the unexpected compliment and wondered at its sincerity. But her eyes still shone with awe, so I decided that the magnificence of the ballet had maybe made a dent in Athénaïs’s cynicism for once. And it seemed she was right about the crowd: They all appeared delighted, and none the wiser about my real part in the show.
The Queen Mother and Marie-Thérèse now spoke with the king; Lully and Prince Aniaba shook hands with emphatic nods; the count collapsed on a chair amid a cluster of adoring admirers, and Fouquet chatted with Louise, who bit her lower lip in a demure fashion at his compliment.
“Madame.”
I turned at the soft call, and relief spread over me when Moreau’s stern golden gaze met mine. He offered me his arm.
“Shall I walk you back to your apartments?”
Somehow this man, who could be so rough-mannered and taciturn, always knew exactly what I needed.
“May I be excused, then?” Athénaïs asked.
I nodded as I gripped Moreau’s forearm, and she sashayed away to meet Olympe, who’d played one of the nine Muses in the ballet. In her golden costume, she stood out in the night like a beacon, her eyes bright with magic.
With Moreau to steady my step, I walked toward the château.
“Did you enjoy the ballet?” I asked him.
Speaking made me cough, so he had to wait a moment to reply.
“I’m not really one to be the judge of any artistic endeavor.”
“Surely you appreciate beauty?” I said, nudging at his cold facade. “And magic?”
“I must confess I struggle to see the beauty in magic, Your Highness.”
His reply brought a frown between my eyes. “What an odd thing to say. You’re a magicien yourself. Surely you’ll agree that a world without magic would be very sad.”
He gave an unapologetic shrug. “The price for magic is a very steep one. And most spells are about power, not beauty at all. See the enchantment you performed tonight, for example. Wasn’t it designed as a show of strength?”
My heart sank a little. He was right. Magic was about power more than anything else.
“I would wager most crimes in this country are committed because, or in the name of, magic,” he concluded. “So, no, Your Highness, I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy tonight’s ballet.”
I found nothing to reply, so we walked on in silence. Magic still warmed the night air, and although I sometimes wished my power gone, I had never considered a world without enchantments. But as the noise of the crowd receded behind us and our footsteps crunched in the gravel of the alley, Moreau’s words conjured up thoughts of the murdered Sources and melancholy settled over me, like frost blanketing a garden and wiping out all traces of delight.
CHAPTER XI
I ambushed Philippe in his antechamber the next day.
A note from the king had let me know he wouldn’t meet me that morning, so after my usual swim, I returned to the château and sat on a silk-covered sofa with a book outside my husband’s apartments. When the gilded clock above the fireplace chimed nine o’clock, a parade of valets in liveries walked through the small room to bring breakfast, water, and fresh linens into the main chambers. My presence provoked alarmed looks and hurried footsteps, until Philippe emerged from his bedroom, still in his nightshirt and embroidered morning robe.
“What’s going on? What’s wrong? Why are you here?”
A part of me enjoyed his agitation, but I chose not to keep him on tenterhooks. I put on my most innocent face.
“I wanted to speak with you. And since you don’t come to me anymore, I figured I would—”
“Yes, all right.”
He took my hand and pulled me into the salon adjoining his bedroom. A wave of his arm dismissed the servants, and he sat me in a chair before marching around the room to close all the doors. Although heavily decorated, his apartments didn’t resemble mine: While bucolic paintings hung on my walls, tapestries depicting hunts and battlefields covered his.
I folded my hands in my lap and maintained a wide-eyed expression, biting back a smile at his nervousness. He worried I would make a scene, and, in all fairness, I hadn’t yet decided I wouldn’t, even if my mother would have been appalled at the thought. His breakfast sat in silver dishes on a table by the windows, and he poured steaming tea into a cup, which he brought to me with a small brioche.
“Here.” He shoved the rattling porcelain cup and the pastry into my hands. “As long as you’re here, eat something.”
One of the reasons I enjoyed swimming was that it helped unwind my stomach and awaken my appetite. So I bit into the brioche while Philippe took a seat next to me. His expression softened as I chewed, and I let him assume my eating was all thanks to his intervention, and not my morning swim.
�
��I couldn’t find you last night,” he said. “After the show. And then the party to celebrate the success of the ballet … I lost track of time.”
Unsure whether this was an apology or not, I kept on taking small bites of my brioche and sipping my tea. The shadows under his eyes and the faint smell of wine about him did hint at a late night. He ran his hands over his face and through his hair, then let out a sigh.
“Is Armand here?”
He shot me a quick, uncertain glance, as if debating whether he could lie about this or not. “Yes,” he said at last. “He’s sleeping next door. He had even more wine than I did.”
Hence Philippe’s eagerness to keep me from storming his apartments. For suspense’s sake, I finished my brioche, then met his gaze.
“I would never walk in here unannounced,” I said, my tone serious for the first time. “Or make a scene in front of the servants. You would know this, if you tried even a little bit to know me.”
Philippe studied me, uncertainty all over his features.
“Which reminds me,” I added with a pointed look. “What makes you think avoiding me and talking to me through your mother is going to help matters between us?”
He pushed himself off the chair and went to retrieve another pastry from the breakfast table. “Haven’t you heard, my love? Evading reality is my specialty.” He handed me the small pain aux raisins.
I crossed my arms and didn’t take it. “Some would call it cowardice.”
He blanched. “Have you just come here to insult me, then?”
“I’ve come here because you promised not to shame me,” I replied, heat warming my cheeks despite my best intentions. “Yet you’ve stopped visiting my chambers and you’ve complained to your mother about me. How long before the whole court starts gossiping again?”
He dropped the petit pain back on its tray, his jaw tense with anger.
“You’re the one cavorting with my brother and refusing to listen to me. Isn’t obeying me supposed to be one of your duties as my wife?”