Marie-Louise was gone, no doubt with her governess, who had also vanished. In the center of the walk, curiously framed by a pointed antique stone archway, stood Madame and, with her, the king. They stood very close to one another, with her gazing up to him, as lovers will. I remembered the whispers, how long ago there had been an intrigue between these two cousins, and to see how she swayed toward him now, her face full of longing, I would have believed it. My poor Madame! Was this the weightiest secret kept within her heart?
Unsure of what exactly I was witnessing, I remained where I was, not wishing to disturb them either by presenting myself or by retreating and catching their notice.
“What was it this time?” the king was asking, concern giving his voice an unexpected urgency. “What did Philippe demand of you?”
She shook her head, her dark curls brushing over her forehead. “He wanted me to apologize to the chevalier, and would not come down unless I did.”
“Not that,” Louis said. “What did he ask of you first?”
I saw her shoulders draw up beneath her cloak, and she bowed her head in shame. “He ordered me to welcome the chevalier to my bed, and take them each in turn in my mouth in the Italian fashion, and then embrace him as another husband.”
The king drew in his breath at that, and swore some manner of dark oath that I couldn’t hear.
“Forgive me,” Madame said unhappily, as if she were to blame for her husband’s perversions. “Oh, please, please, forgive me, I beg you.”
“This will never happen again, Henriette.” He rested his palm against her cheek. “You have our word.”
She slipped her hand over his, holding him there for another moment longer in gratitude, in regard.
“Thank you,” she whispered so softly that I saw her lips form the words rather than heard them. “Thank you.”
The king nodded, and said no more. Then he turned quickly away from her, and before I could move he was striding toward me.
“Your Majesty,” I said, sinking low in my curtsy, my bowed head hiding my guilty flush.
“Mademoiselle de Keroualle,” he said, lifting his hat to me. “Happy Christmas.”
“Happy Christmas to you as well, My Sire.” I rose slowly, my knees wobbling with nervousness beneath me. “Madame dropped her bracelet, and I found it.”
I held the pearl cuff out in my hand, and prayed that it would be proof enough that I’d reason for being there, and was not spying.
But the king was looking at me, not the bracelet. “How old are you, mademoiselle?”
“Nineteen, sir.” He was studying me closely, as if seeing me for the first time instead of the thousandth in Madame’s company.
“Nineteen?” he asked, doubtful.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said. “I swear to it by all that’s holy.”
He nodded, finally accepting, I suppose. Beneath the wide brim of his hat, his dark-eyed gaze flicked over me, missing nothing of my face and person. Yet he looked at me not with desire, the way he did with the Madame du Montespan and countless other women beyond her, but with purpose, as if deciding whether I would serve in some other manner.
It worried me, that scrutiny. Louis was not frivolous by nature, and seldom did or said things without reason. Where, I wondered, did I fit in his scheming? In all the time I’d been in Madame’s household, he’d never before regarded me like this. What plans could he possibly be making for me?
“You are changed, mademoiselle.” He nodded, leaving me to decide if he judged me changed to my improvement, or the reverse. “Her Highness needs you. Go to her.”
I curtsied again, and once he’d walked past me, I hurried to Madame, still standing where the king had left her.
“I found your bracelet, Madame,” I said, holding it before me.
“Thank you,” she murmured, slipping the cuff onto her wrist as if it had never been lost. She was looking past me to the departing figure of the king, and her pale face was wistful.
“Things will be different now, Louise,” she said softly, still looking after the king. “You’ll see. He gave me his word. Things will change.”
Though I nodded, I did not share her confidence. I’d been at Court long enough to have seen how the pledges of kings, while solemnly given, were not the most secure of promises.
I was wrong to doubt. Within the week, the Chevalier de Lorraine had been arrested and imprisoned on Louis’s orders. Enraged, Monsieur protested, and Louis answered by having the chevalier moved to solitary confinement in the grim Château d’If.
Monsieur retaliated by carrying Madame and her ladies away from Court to his most distant estate at Villers-Cotterets, as much an imprisonment for Madame in being so removed from the Court as the chevalier’s new residence was. Peevishly he informed Louis that he’d not permit her to return until the chevalier was released. Louis was not pleased to be crossed like this, and soon sent his own coach of state to bring us back to Paris.
The chevalier remained in prison.
And in March, the king announced that he would visit Flanders, and that the Queen, Monsieur, Madame, and a large portion of the Court would be accompanying him. Monsieur had no choice but to agree, and bring Madame with him.
The chevalier was at last released, but sent far away from France to Italy, where it was presumed (wrongly, as it later was known) he’d be too far away to cause his usual mischief.
All that spring we were in a frenzy of preparation. The official reason given for the Court’s journey was that His Majesty wished to view certain Flemish territories that had recently been acquired and added to his own. No one was fooled. This short journey was but a first step to another, one of far greater importance to all involved.
At last Madame was permitted to visit England, and I—I was going with her.
Chapter Seven
DUNKERQUE
May 1670
Driven by the wind from the sea, the rain drummed against the carriage windows so hard that it sounded like small stones hurled by an angry hand. Closed inside the stuffy coach, we could still hear the lash of the driver’s whip as he tried to urge the horses to pull the wheels free of the sticky mud that held them fast, and the swearing soldiers striving to push us clear with pikes and their own shoulders. Finally the coach lurched forward, and the five other ladies and I were again jumbled and tossed against one another like coins in a pocket.
“Mother in heaven preserve us,” Madame muttered, her face pale and drawn as she braced herself anew against the cushions. Beside her Madame de Beaulieu, one of her ladies-in-waiting, began to dab at her forehead with a lace handkerchief soaked with restorative cologne, but irritably Madame waved her away.
“No more of that, I beg you.” She sighed restlessly, striving to find any position of comfort in the rocking coach. We’d already tied the shades over the windows to keep out even the dull daylight at her request, once she’d confessed that the brightness made her head ache.
We’d been happy enough to oblige, from concern for her. Madame had been ill since we’d left Paris three weeks ago, and before that, too, truth to tell. She’d have spells where she’d cough for an hour without end, bent double with distress, and the only thing I’d seen her eat or drink was milk and chicory water; she seemed unable to take any other food or wine without retching horribly. There were those who’d begun to whisper that Monsieur was somehow slowly poisoning her. We who were closest to her feared for her health, and begged her to send for a physician or surgeon. She’d steadfastly resisted, not wanting to provide even the slightest reason for her not to continue on this longed-for visit to England.
But even the weather seemed determined to conspire against her hopes. Instead of the bright spring to be expected in May, each morning greeted us with torrents of rain. The roads became nearly impassable with mud and water-filled ruts, and this despite the king having employed thousands of men for the three months beforehand to mend the roads along their route.
It didn’t help that we were such an en
ormous procession, as was expected for His Most Christian Majesty. In addition to the royal family, the king had also brought his two mistresses, Madame de la Vallière and Madame du Montespan. There were artists and historians to document the journey and musicians to make it more entertaining. The rest of the party included favored friends, attendants, assorted courtiers and diplomats, servants, and guards, and the horses, coaches, luggage, and wagons to support them. Finally, because Louis also wished to make this a display of his military power, we were accompanied by large numbers of soldiers, on foot and horse. When everyone was tallied together, we were nearly thirty thousand souls, and what would take a single horseman riding over a dry road a matter of hours took us days. As can be imagined, we were like an entire army invading the countryside, and our lodgings each night were crude and crowded. Even the greatest of ladies was expected to lie on her side and share a bed with as many others as could be contrived to squeeze beneath the coverlet with her.
In each village and town that the royal procession had passed through, we’d been forced to stop so that the local nobles and merchants could honor His Majesty with lavish banquets and tributes. These lasted hours at a time, and we all were expected to remain standing during the entire proceedings. Madame had been too weak to obey, and had fainted dead away several times, much to the displeasure of both the king and Monsieur. At one such dinner, Monsieur had cruelly told all the company how a fortune-teller had predicted he’d soon become a widower, and finally be freed of his inconvenient wife. No one had laughed, but that had not concerned Monsieur. Instead he had continued his usual jealous rants the entire journey, showering poor Madame with his criticism and scorn as surely as the rain had drummed upon our heads.
Yet at last, at least, that torment was done. Earlier in the day in the town of Lille, Madame’s party had separated from the king’s and turned north toward the coast. At the parting, the king had embraced Madame in a fond farewell; her husband had not. While Monsieur had granted her leave from him for a fortnight’s visit to her homeland, Louis had extended that to nearly a month, what surely must have stretched before Madame like a delicious eternity.
Her relief at having left Monsieur behind had been instantaneous. No matter how wretched the weather might be or how ill she might feel, everything was improved by having him gone from us. We were a much smaller party now, only two hundred or so, plus our armed escort and our servants, and we should have been able to make a swifter progress, if only the weather were more agreeable.
“Can you see where we are, Louise?” Madame asked of me, the youngest in our coach and therefore the one to perform such low tasks. “Any landmark to guide us?”
Crouching there between the seats, I hesitated with my hand on the leather shade. “If you please, Madame, I cannot do it without letting in the sunlight.”
“The rain light, you mean.” She turned toward me and smiled weakly. “You have my leave, my dear. I am feeling better, you see. To know that every moment brings me closer to England—how could I not improve?”
What I saw was the same drawn and pallid face that she had been showing us, and thus with great care I lifted only a corner of the leather shade to peek outside, and spare her the brightness.
After the murky shadows of the coach, I blinked myself as my eyes grew accustomed to the day.
“What do you see, Louise?” Madame asked. “Pray tell us all!”
“I see trees, bent and blown by the rain, Madame,” I said slowly, wishing I’d something of greater cheer to report. “I see fields, and stone walls, and of course our guard riding before us, and the others behind.”
“No church spires?” she asked with disappointment. “No inns or signposts or other landmarks?”
“No, Madame,” I said. “I fear ’tis much the same as we’ve seen for days.”
“Days and days and days,” she said with unabashed discouragement. “I must say His Majesty’s kingdom might be a rich and bounti ful country, but it’s also a richly tedious one for travelers.”
“Yes, Madame,” I agreed absently. The coach was following a long curve in the road, and we’d just cleared a small hill. “Hold now, what I see—Oh, Madame, it is! The ocean, Madame! I can see it now for certain. The ocean!”
I was certain, too, and doubly excited by the prospect. Not only did it mean that our long journey by coach was almost done and England within our sights, but also this was the first time I’d seen the water of the Channel since I’d left home nearly two years before. Each morning of my girlhood I’d spied the sea in the distance from the window of my bedchamber, and I hadn’t realized until now exactly how sorely I’d missed that view.
“The sea?” Madame cried, and to my surprise she found the strength to sit upright and lean close to me at the window. “Open the shade, Louise, so I might see for myself!”
The nearest lady rested a gentle hand on Madame’s arm. “Take care, Madame, and mind your strength. Pray do not exert yourself without reason.”
“But this is a reason, and the most joyous one of all!” Madame exclaimed gaily. “If we are near the water, then we’re near to Dunkerque and our boats, and that much more near to England as well. Open this shade, Louise. Open it at once.”
“Very well,” I said. I untied the lashings that held the shade in place, and rolled the leather upward, tied it high. “There, between those two hills. That silvery stripe’s the sea.”
Madame squinted and winced, shading her eyes but refusing to look away. Then at last she spied it, too, and her face broke into a smile of such pure joy that it could have brightened the entire gloomy landscape.
“There it is,” she said, and laughed, giddy with delight. “The sea, my sea! Oh, now we’ll be at Dunkerque by nightfall for certain, and then my brother will be waiting to come meet me!”
“I pray you won’t be disappointed, Madame,” cautioned Madame de Beaulieu. “Surely His Majesty has many affairs demanding his time and energies in London, and you must not be disappointed if he isn’t waiting for you when you land.”
“But he will be,” Madame replied with perfect confidence. “My brother has been waiting for me in Dover this past week, so eager is he to welcome me himself. He wrote me so, again and again, and he would not lie. It’s I who have kept him waiting as we’ve wallowed in this mud and muck. But soon we’ll be together again. Soon, soon, soon!”
I grinned with her, pleased beyond measure to have her so happy—more happy, really, than I’d ever known her to be. This single glimpse of the sea had done more for her than a score of surgeons ever could, and I wondered at how her sorrows seemed to have vanished so completely, and her suffering with it. For the first time in our acquaintance, she appeared a young woman of twenty-six, a princess born of kings and queens.
“Soon, yes, Madame, but even Your Highness must heed the sailors,” warned Madame de Beaulieu, seemingly determined to play the role of the cautionary. “Most shipmasters won’t put to sea in such a driving rain as this. Then there are also tides to be considered, and the difficult process of embarkment itself.”
“That’s as nothing to me, Madame de Beaulieu,” the princess said fiercely, her gaze still intent on the distant stripe of water. “Consider all I’ve endured these ten years, and then ask again whether I’ll be stopped by a wave or a raindrop or even a tide?”
I listened, and marveled. Could the coming meeting with her brother truly inspire so great a change in her? She might have been taken for a different lady entirely, now that she’d left Monsieur behind. I’d heard that when she’d been younger, she’d been a girl of great spirit and fire as well as charm, and that was what I glimpsed now.
“Forgive me, Madame,” said the hapless lady. “I never meant to challenge you.”
Madame nodded, at last turning away from the window. “I’ll have you know this is no ordinary journey, my lady, no simple visit for pleasure. Surely you must have guessed as much from the gentlemen, the diplomats, among our escort?”
“Yes, Madame, I d
id,” Madame de Beaulieu admitted, persevering still. “But then if there is such importance attached to your journey, wouldn’t it be wiser to be cautious rather than rash?”
Slowly Madame smiled, a smile not of joy, but of a rare determination that I’ll never forget.
“Perhaps it would be more wise,” she said. “But pray recall that I was born a Stuart, and as a family we Stuarts have never been known to be cautious. If I chose to be safe, then I’d turn back now, and return to Paris with the others. But if I wish to secure the prize that dangles like the ripest fruit before both England and France, then I must be brave and stretch to seize it, no matter the risk of falling.”
I thought it the boldest and most stirring speech I’d ever heard spoken by a lady, and my heart beat faster from excitement just to listen. Perhaps because Madame had shared other confidences with me, I trusted her completely in whatever scheme she intended. Perhaps I believed with her that her brother could accomplish whatever he set to do, or perhaps even then I’d decided my own course in the world would be every bit as brave and bold as Madame’s declaration was on that rainy day.
But the older ladies were not so pleased. I saw the worried glances they exchanged with one another, as if they believed that the princess had quite scattered her wits or, worse, that she should be forcibly returned to the keeping of her husband, who would put a swift end to such ravings.
“You are certain that this is proper for you to do, Madame?” Madame de Beaulieu asked tentatively. “A great lady in your position?”
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