“The same. Now they claim to be no more than excellent friends, for whatever value there may be in that for a lady. But then, such is the power and majesty of our monarch.” Gabrielle smiled, more to herself than to me. Most likely she was dreaming blissfully of the king, as it would seem every woman (save me) in France must do. “In time I expect you’ll be as admiring as the rest of us, Louise, and as quick to put yourself in the way of his notice.”
She glanced back at my wardrobe and wrinkled her nose with pointed disdain. “Though not, perhaps, until you’ve had some more . . . acceptable gowns sewn here in Paris.”
“Mademoiselle de la Touraine!”
In the doorway stood a lady with a face so stern and severe I would have guessed her a Mother Superior, except that she wore a rich gown of dark purple and yellow instead of a somber habit.
At once Gabrielle curtsied before this fearsome woman, and I did as well, without pausing to question.
“Is this the new maid of honor, mademoiselle?” the lady asked, looking down her hawk’s beak of a nose at me.
“Yes, madame,” Gabrielle said quickly. “May I present Mademoiselle Louise de Penancoet de Keroualle? Mademoiselle de Keroualle, Madame du Frayne, our—”
“Later, if you please.” The older lady clapped her hands together, as cracking sharp a sound as any musket’s shot. “Her Highness requests Mademoiselle de Keroualle at once in her bedchamber. Go, girl, at once, at once! Never keep Her Highness waiting!”
“Yes, madame,” I said quickly, and headed through the door that Gabrielle had pointed out to me earlier. “Should I use the direct passage?”
Madame du Frayne nodded with curt approval. “Go now, mademoiselle.”
“You’re quick to learn, Louise, aren’t you?” Gabrielle whispered grudgingly behind me.
I didn’t answer, but hurried to join my mistress. But Gabrielle was right. I was quick to learn, and already I’d learned the most important lesson of any court, and one I’d never forget or ignore: trust no one but yourself.
Chapter Three
PALAIS-ROYAL, PARIS
October 1668
The back passage to Madame’s bedchamber was much shorter and more direct than the hall that Gabrielle had taken me through earlier. I’d no need of a guide here: the plain plastered passage led in only one direction.
The narrow arched door at the end stood ajar for me to enter, and I paused for a moment to smooth my skirts before I presented myself to Her Highness. I could hear her voice within, likely addressing a servant. I stepped forward, my hand on the latch to open the door fully. The princess stood with her back to me, her carefully arranged curls, threaded with blue silk ribbons and falling over her shoulders, and the sapphires hanging from her ears winked in the light from the fire.
Then the gentleman with her moved into my line of sight behind the half-open door, and I stopped with uncertainty.
He was the same height as Madame, but where she was slender, he appeared inclined to a plump softness, his doublet and sleeves pulling too snugly around his body. Yet it wasn’t only his form that had a womanliness: his dress was the most extravagant I had ever seen on a man, fair erupting with hundreds of pale green and pink ribbon galants at the hem of his short doublet, at his elbows, and around the knees of his breeches. His stockings were embroidered with golden lilies, and topped by flopping cuffs of rose point lace. More lace formed his collar, stiffened and starched so high that his chin seemed propped up on a froth of white.
His black wig curled in ringlets to his waist, with more ribbons tied into lovelocks, and heavy rings glittered on half his fingers. But it was his face that made me gasp, an exclamation I barely smothered behind my hand. Gabrielle had not exaggerated. The gentleman was painted as garishly as an actress, his skin whitened to gleam like the shell of a goose’s egg, his cheeks and lips reddened with cerise, his eyelids languidly darkened and lined with lampblack, with more to mark his brows into ink black arches. Yet despite so much womanly artifice, his features remained those of a man’s, with a long nose and a firm, if pointed, jaw, and hard black eyes that would miss nothing.
Monsieur. I realized his identity with a start, remembering Gabrielle’s description. The brother of the king, the husband of my lady mistress. Philippe, duc d’Orleans.
Though I knew it was wrong of me to remain and spy on them like this, however unintended it might be, I also realized that if I tried to leave I might be discovered by Monsieur and that would be infinitely worse. My only recourse would lie in remaining as still as I could until he left Madame alone and I could join her as I’d been bidden, and thus I waited.
“So it is true, Henriette?” Monsieur asked. “You have been plotting again with my brother without either my knowledge or my consent?”
Though I could not see Madame’s face from where I stood, there was no mistaking how her shoulders tightened and narrowed, or how she clasped her hands together before her, as if to gird herself for his attacks.
“There are no plots, Philippe,” she said, her words brittle, and without any of the lighthearted charm I’d heard earlier. “There never are, save the ones of your own invention.”
“I do not invent, my dear, only perceive,” he answered. “And what I perceive is a plot to undermine my authority, contrived by the two people that heaven orders I must trust the most.”
Pointedly not looking in his wife’s direction, he held his hands out before the fire. Most men would do so for the warmth of the flames, but from the way that Monsieur turned his hands, snowy-white as two doves, he seemed more intent on admiring how the flicker of the fire lit the jewels in his rings.
“How can a wish for peace between France and England serve to undermine you, Philippe?” Madame asked. “If your brother trusts me sufficiently to meet with my brother on his behalf, then why can’t you do the same?”
“Diplomacy should never be put into the hands of a woman,” he said, unaware of the irony of his words as he continued to admire his own unblemished fingers: or perhaps he understood perfectly, being Monsieur, and more a lover of men than of women. “My brother cannot possibly trust you with such a grave negotiation. He may tell you so, to flatter you and to amuse himself with your pathetic rejoicing, but he would never believe it.”
“It is you who are pathetic, Philippe,” Madame answered contemptuously. “Louis is secure in his manhood. He can trust women because he has no reason to fear them.”
“Insults will not soften me toward your request, Henriette.” His voice now carried a most masculine edge to it, and a menace that oddly seemed all the more dangerous on account of his decorative appearance. “You know I expect obedience in all things of you as my wife.”
“But this is for the good of the country, Philippe, and for the benefit of the French people,” she pleaded, her hands twisting together as her earlier defiance seemed to shrink away. “If I can but speak to Charles, in person and in confidence, then—”
“You will not go to England,” he said, his voice as chill and unrelenting as ice itself. “You will not speak to your brother without my permission. You will remain here with me in France.”
“Please, Philippe, please,” she cried plaintively. “I beg you, for the love of God and France!”
“For the incestuous love you bear your brother, you mean,” he said. “I’ll not condone such unnatural affection between you Stuarts.”
“Lies!” she gasped, and shook her head with such vehemence that her tightly arranged curls began to loosen and come unpinned. “The love I bear for Charles is pure and honorable, a just love between brother and sister. For you to speak of unnatural love, you for whom every unspeakable perversion is—”
“Silence,” Monsieur said sharply, swinging around to confront her. “God has given you to me as my wife. Not your brother, not my brother, but God Himself. If I say you are to remain at my side, then you will.”
She made a harsh gulping sob of despair and held her clasped hands out to him. “Please, Philippe. It
has been nearly ten years since I’ve stood on English soil, ten years since I’ve seen my brother.”
“It will be another ten years and more if you continue to grovel like this,” he said with disgust. “You are the daughter of a king, yet you carry yourself with all the dignity of a common slattern.”
“What do you want of me, Philippe?” I still could not see her face, but I knew she was weeping. “What must I do to please you, and earn the favor of a husband for his wife?”
“How dare you ask me such a ridiculous question?” he demanded. “Are you a simpleton, a half-wit? You know full well your duty to me, just as you know how you willfully withhold from me the one thing I most desire.”
Madame’s hands dropped back to her sides, her shoulders sagging. “Oh, Philippe, not that,” she whimpered. “I beg you, not again!”
“It is your duty as my wife, Henriette.” He took a step toward her, and she shrank away. “Your mother knew her role as a devoted wife, and as a true daughter of France. She gave your father three strong sons, while you refuse to grant me the only reason I have for tolerating you.”
“Children are God’s will, His blessing on a marriage,” she said, her words tumbling over one another as she continued to inch away from him. “I cannot be faulted if He has not yet granted us the miracle of a son!”
“But God will punish a sinful wife through her husband,” Monsieur said sharply. “An unnatural wife who prefers to abandon her husband’s bed and country to dabble in men’s affairs.”
“That is not true, Philippe, none of it!” She twisted to one side, trying to slip past him.
He grabbed her arm to stop her, his grasp so tight upon her that she yelped with pain, or perhaps frustration. He pushed her backward onto the bed, and climbed atop her, pinning her flaying legs beneath his knees. She fought him still, reaching up to try to claw at his face and chest, and with a loathsome oath he struck his palm hard across her cheek. She cried out with pain and anguish and resignation, too, and covered her eyes and her tears with her hands so she could not see what he did.
In my inexperience, I remained still in the hall, unsure of what else to do, and the awful image of what came next was soon seared forever in my consciousness. With a shocking swiftness, Monsieur unfastened the front of his breeches and pulled his shirt to one side. At once his member sprang forth, already furiously engorged and as unappealing as the rest of him. Breathing hard, he tore aside Madame’s skirts, heedless of how his impetuosity ripped the fine linen and lace hemmings. He pushed apart her pale thighs and fell between them, shoving hard without any preamble or pretense of lovemaking. Sparing not a single endearment to ease his wife, he grunted and found his own rhythm. She caught her breath, but that was all, and soon the only sounds were Monsieur’s animal-like groans and the creaking of the bed’s springs as he worked her hard, and without mercy or kindness.
I had never witnessed such a sight, either for its intimacy or its cruelty, and yet I could not make myself look away, even as hot tears of horror and sympathy for Madame’s plight slipped down my cheeks.
Though it seemed to last forever, in truth Monsieur was quickly finished. His face was blotched and florid beneath its cracking white paint, the tendrils of his black wig sticking to his temples and the back of his neck. He withdrew his staff, inspected it briefly as if it were his most treasured belonging (and perhaps it was), and at last tucked it away. He slipped from the bed and the silent form of his wife. With disgust, not tenderness, he pulled her skirts back over her violated nakedness. Her eyes still covered, she moaned softly and rolled to one side, away from him, curling her knees up tightly against her chest.
And for Monsieur, there was no further reason to linger in his wife’s bedchamber.
“I’ll expect you to attend my brother with me this night, Henriette,” he said as he gathered up his hat and cloak. “Do not disappoint me.”
In my inexperience, I’d no idea what to say or do to comfort my new mistress. Perhaps this hateful treatment was common between husbands and wives of long standing. Perhaps the sweet love and poetry of courtship for which I so longed was destined to fade after marriage, and deteriorate into the wretched treatment I’d just witnessed.
Gabrielle had told me that everyone at Court was accustomed to looking away and pretending things were other than they were for the sake of ease. If I were wiser, or more worldly, perhaps I, too, would have followed that course, and returned to my new lodgings. But by nature I was too tenderhearted to slink away like that, and too honest to pretend ignorance. Madame had been kind to me when I’d been in need, and now I’d not leave her to suffer alone.
I waited until the latch of the door clicked shut and the sound of his heeled footsteps faded down the hall. Then I threw open the door and ran to Madame’s side, kneeling before the bed so my face would be even with hers.
“Oh, Madame, my poor lady,” I cried softly, “are you hurt? Are you ill? Should I send for a physician, or your lady’s maid?”
She jerked her head from the bed, struggling to compose herself and sit upright once again.
“What could be wrong, my dear?” she asked, trying to smile though the mark of her husband’s blow still stained her cheek.
“I—I do not know, Madame,” I stammered with bewilderment, rising to curtsy beside the bed. “That is, forgive me, Madame.”
She might have been able to be brave, but I could not. Suddenly my earlier tears returned, spilling from my eyes, and betraying all I’d seen. Her face crumpled as her misery swept over her, and to my surprise she took me into her arms and drew me close. Without a thought, I slipped my arms around her narrow back, holding her tightly with my head on her shoulder and hers pressed into mine. Twined together that way, we rocked from side to side and wept shamelessly, taking as much comfort from each other as we gave.
Finally she pulled back and placed her hands on either side of my teary cheeks. She cradled my face between her palms with rare gentleness, yet also to keep me from looking away as she spoke.
“What you have seen, mademoiselle,” she whispered urgently, her voice ravaged with emotion. “What you now know of my shame and my suffering: remember it well, I beg you, and if ever I come to grief, swear to tell all to my brother in England. Swear to it, mademoiselle!”
I swallowed, and nodded, even though I quaked before the awful burden of such an oath.
“I swear, Madame,” I said fervently. “You have my word.”
I gave it without thinking, too, for she was my mistress, my princess, and because one did not refuse anyone of royal blood. But the consequences of my oath that would come later—Ah, it would be greater than either of us could ever guess.
Though the Louvre, His Majesty’s palace, was within sight of the Palais-Royal, Madame and her attendants did not walk between the two, but instead rode the distance in great lumbering carriages. I was among the most noble folk now, and walking, it seemed, was beneath us, an ignominious resort of common people. But noble or not, there was still much petty bickering among us ladies as we climbed into the carriages, with endless concern over who sat beside the window to be admired by the world, and who was made to sit hidden inside, and whose skirts were being crushed and rumpled by another’s clumsiness.
Being so new, I didn’t care, and gladly squeezed into the space I was given. I was to see His Majesty for the first time, and I’d ride in an oxcart if I must. Besides, after what I’d witnessed in Madame’s bedchamber, the foolish chatter around me was a relief, soothing in its lack of consequence.
I was thankful, too, to be with so many others as we made our way through the halls and staircases of the Louvre. If I’d been impressed by the elegance of the Palais-Royal, then I was overwhelmed by the formal grandeur of the Louvre. His Majesty was famous for his insistence on perfection, both here and at his grand palace in the country at Versailles (likewise in a constant state of improvement). From the marble statues to the gilded frames on the life-sized pictures to the porcelain vases filled
with flowers grown beyond their season in the royal hothouses: everything was exactly as it should be, and all of it designed to glorify the king.
I soon saw that this magnificent display extended not just to the furnishing of the palace, but to the courtiers themselves. The halls were as crowded with folk as if for market day, and every gentleman and lady seemed to be determined to outdo their neighbor in regards to their dress, with more extravagant shows of lace and ribbons and costly silk embroidery than I’d ever imagined.
However snide Gabrielle’s dismissal of my new wardrobe might have been, there had also been a large measure of truth to her criticism. The gowns that had seemed so fashionable in Keroualle were far too plain in this company, and hardly suitable for my new rank. I’d no money for replacing them, of course, nor could I conceive of the cost of so much splendor here in the shops of Paris. I would simply have to hold my head high and rely upon the beauty that God had given me, not the labors of some mere seamstress. In a world that was ruled by pretense, I’d simply pretend that I didn’t care that my gowns and jewels were so inferior, and plan for the day when my fortunes would rise, and I’d be the most gloriously attired of them all.
For now I wore my blue silk, with my grandmother’s small gold crucifix around my throat. The lady’s maid who served all the maids of honor had arranged my hair in the same style as the others, with elaborate curls bunched high on either side of my forehead and trailing down to my shoulders. Thin wires were cunningly threaded through the bases of the curls to hold them aloft, and though the unfamiliar weight felt strangely unbalanced on my head, I found the effect most elegant, and I was sure my hair had never looked so fine, nor so fashionable.
There was no momentous event at Court that night, no ball or play to be debuted. Instead the entertainment was a troupe of traveling Florentines, acrobats and low comedians. According to the other ladies in the carriage, this was one of His Majesty’s favorite sorts of amusement on account of his grandmother having been an Italian princess, Marie de’Medici. There were others who’d spoken less kindly, who’d said that this Italian blood was also responsible for both the king’s ruthlessness and his swarthy complexion; but already I’d learned to be suspicious of gossip, and not to believe whatever I was told.
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