“There’s more to the tale, too, mademoiselle,” he continued when I did not reply. “Our queen is barren as a stone. No one can deny it any longer.”
“I pity Her Majesty,” I said softly, and I did. Madame had said she was a good Catholic lady, faithful to a fault and woefully shy. How it must wound her to see her husband’s seed sown so freely, and with so much bastard issue, while her own womb remained empty.
“Pity her all you wish, but pity won’t change the facts,” the duke said with surpassing arrogance, showing he’d no pity at all for the hapless queen. “For the sake of all Britain, the king must secure his throne with a proper heir. Though it pains His Majesty to act, it’s apparent to everyone that he means to put this queen aside on grounds of her barrenness, and take another.”
“Why do you tell me this, Your Grace?” I asked, my heart racing within my breast at so dizzying a possibility. “These are the grand affairs of royalty, not lowly maids of honor. Even if His Majesty were cruelly to divorce Her Majesty, then he would be bound to wed another lady of equally exalted blood, a princess or grand duchess in her own right.”
“He might,” he said, making a little fillip with his fingers through the air before us, “or he might not. Considering the ill luck he’s had with a princess, there are those who believe he should look elsewhere for his breeding stock. Of course the lady must be of some rank, and with an unblemished past. We shouldn’t want any questions about the issue, you know.”
A virgin: that was what he meant by “an unblemished past,” and likewise I knew he meant me. But surely there must be virgins in England, other young ladies with noble families and reputation?
“It would make perfect sense that a new queen be French,” he continued, reading my thoughts as clearly as if I’d spoken aloud. “The king’s always been inclined that way, for his mother was French. And what better way to seal this new alliance I’ve been negotiating with your country than with a fair new queen?”
I looked away from him, my thoughts in turmoil. It was one thing to be considered as a royal mistress, and quite another to be mentioned as a future queen.
Her Majesty the Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Ah, no wonder my head fair spun!
But though I knew the duke had the ear of the king, I could scarce believe he’d be trusted with this particular errand. Why should he wish to link himself to my lowly star, except for what he could selfishly gain for himself ? I remembered how Madame had not trusted him, and how that should be warning enough for me to do the same. I reminded myself to recall the duke’s reputation for bold and extravagant behavior, how he plunged in whole where more cautious gentlemen would dip but a toe. I thought of the more circumspect ministers I’d met in Dover, Lord Arlington and Sir Thomas Clifford, and how the king had trusted them with the enormity of the Secret Treaty, while Lord Buckingham was being made to be the unwitting puppet of this second, empty treaty. If I were to ally myself with one faction over another, I’d be far wiser to trust those gentlemen rather than this mercurial duke.
Yet despite what I’d learned at Court, I was still young, still impressionable, and to my misfortune, all too willing to be flattered when this grandest of prizes was dangled before me. With a willful abandon that matched Lord Buckingham’s own, I eagerly swept aside every objection my cautious conscience raised and embraced this ridiculous scheme. There was no doubt that the king needed an heir, and a young wife with a fertile womb. Lord Arlington and Sir Thomas were more staid, true, but they were comparative newcomers to the king’s confidence, while Lord Buckingham had been his closest friend from boyhood. It would be entirely natural that His Majesty would trust him now with so delicate an arrangement. I’d only to look at the French Court to see how a king would play his courtiers and ministers against one another by way of keeping power to himself.
What seduced me most of all was the idea of becoming Charles’s wife and queen. It wasn’t only the power and wealth that beckoned, though to be sure that was a glittering temptation. No, the true reward would be the man himself, and I’d joyfully become his wife, his consort, his guiding star.
I’d be his most precious jewel, just as he’d said. I would give him delight in his bed and bring cheer to his heart, and be the most loyal subject in his entire kingdom. I’d bring respectability and decorum to his Court (which did sorely need it), and I would help to guide him to the True Church, as he’d already sworn to do in the Secret Treaty. I would love him with boundless devotion, which he of course would return to me many times over. In my girlish enthusiasm, I never doubted that I could succeed where no other woman had, and win his exclusive fidelity. I’d only to recall the fondness with which he’d gazed at me on the wall at Dover Castle, and how our single kiss must have been a pledge for our joined futures.
In short, I dreamed, and I dreamed high and sweet. As I walked beside Lord Buckingham, I was like another of the ancient race of lotus eaters—a people who, having once tasted that rare flower, forgot every common care and responsibility in favor of unending bliss.
“You are quiet, mademoiselle,” the duke said, rousing me at last from my delicious reverie. “I trust I haven’t bored you with my talk.”
“Oh, no, Your Grace, not at all!” I exclaimed, and belatedly I realized he was teasing me, his face smug and faintly mocking. “That is, you speak of many interesting things, and it is much for me to consider.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure it is,” he said expansively, and gave a little pat to my fingers as they rested on his arm. “But you’ll have time enough for considering. There are many steps to be taken before anything can be made widely known, and for the present it will be best to keep what I’ve told you to your heart alone. No tattling to your little friends, eh?”
“Of course not, Your Grace,” I said quickly, eager to appear obliging. I’d been keeping secrets since my first day in Madame’s household, and I wasn’t about to begin spilling them now, especially one that might involve me. “You may trust my confidence entirely.”
But despite my declaration, he was frowning, his thoughts elsewhere, and his hand over mine tightened painfully. “You’ve not heard from Arlington in this regard, have you?”
“Lord Arlington?” I repeated, surprised both by his question and the change in his manner. “No, Your Grace.”
“What of Clifford?” I heard suspicion in his voice bubble up from nowhere, giving an unsavory edge to his words, and his grasp clenched clawlike over my poor fingers. “Has he written to you? Or that rascal Montagu. I know he’s here. I’ve seen him sniffing about your skirts.”
I trembled with uncertainty, trying to pull free.
“Answer me,” he ordered sharply, jerking me back.“What does Montagu want from you? What has he told you of the king remarrying?”
“Not a word, Your Grace, I swear!” I cried. I was privy to many secrets with those other gentlemen, but not one involving a second wife for the king. “If you please, Your Grace, you are hurting my hand.”
He mumbled an oath, but instantly released my hand, staring at his fingers as if they’d acted without his knowledge. He sighed, and lifted his hat long enough to smooth his wig beneath it. Then, finally, he looked back to me, his expression as cheerfully composed as if nothing untoward had happened at all.
“I’m sure you understand the reasons for delicacy in this matter, mademoiselle,” he said softly. “Arlington, Clifford, Montagu: they all believe they know the king’s mind, but they don’t, not as I do. I ask you, who has been trusted with this treaty? Which of us has King Louis fawning and nibbling from his hand? Which minister’s the master of them all, eh?”
I knew what he didn’t, and that the real master of them all was, of course, His Majesty their king. But I also knew better than to acknowledge more than I should, and so once again I feigned a meek humility to hide my secrets.
“I am honored by your confidence, Lord Buckingham,” I said, and curtsied for good measure. “I vow that I will keep your secret,
no matter who may ask me.”
“Do that,” he said, and smiled. “The world is full of simple fools, mademoiselle, those who prefer to wait for what they are given. But then there are those who bravely seize whatever fate may offer, and claim it as their own.”
Did he mean to advise me by that tidy little epigram, or was he only referring to himself ? I’d no answer, but to my relief he did not seem to expect one. I’d yet to learn that this was often the case with the duke; he was so serenely confident of his own innate superiority that he went through his life without requiring the approval of others or even their comment.
Now that I had done what he desired, he seemed almost to have forgotten me. He swung away from me, humming a scrap of a song as he sauntered a few steps closer to the water, then stopped. With his hands at his waist and his legs angled apart, he resembled some sort of roguish buccaneer captain on the quarterdeck of his pirate vessel, surveying the wide-open sea instead of this royal conceit of canal.
“What is this body of water, mademoiselle?” he asked over his shoulder. “What river?”
“That’s His Majesty’s Grand Canal, Your Grace,” I said, cautiously coming to stand beside him. The summer sun was low in the sky now, turning the water’s surface a brilliant, shimmering red. “The gondolas and the miniature galleon as well as the boathouses at the head of the canal were gifts to His Most Christian Majesty from the Doge of Venice.”
“All from the doge?” he said, gazing out over the water. “Hell.”
That was hardly the proper reaction to so artfully constructed a vista, and His Majesty would have been most vexed to hear it, but by now I’d decided there was very little that was proper about the duke.
“Yes, Your Grace, the Doge of Venice.” Like every other courtier, I felt a certain national pride in Versailles as representing the very best of French craft and art (which was to say the very best in all the world), and I was eager for the duke to appreciate it, too. “It is a masterpiece of engineering and design. Its surface covers over forty-four hectares, or over a hundred of your English acres, and its shore is more than four miles around.”
“His Majesty has a canal, too,” the duke said. “It lies in St. James’s Park outside of Whitehall Palace, in London. I’ve never measured it myself, but I’d venture its breadth to be thirty feet and its length perhaps a hundred at best.”
“I’m sure it is very pretty, Your Grace,” I said.
“It has ducks,” he said flatly. “And a single damned gondola, a gift from that same damned doge. What the devil is a doge, anyway?”
I wasn’t sure if his question was asked for the sake of pure rhetoric or not. Yet because I didn’t wish to appear rude, as if I’d not been attending his observations, I answered him as best I could.
“I believe that the doge is the chief magistrate and leader of the Republic of Venice, Your Grace,” I said. “A most ancient and venerable office.”
“If Charles saw this,” he said, “it would break his heart.”
“I’m sorry, Your Grace,” I said softly, and I was. I’d not forgotten the melancholy that shadowed the English king’s handsome face, and I’d no wish to see it sadder still for the sake of an oversized garden folly. “I’m sure that wasn’t the intention of His Most Christian Majesty when he had it built.”
“Of course it was,” he said bitterly. “That’s the whole purpose of every last looking glass and golden table fork in this place: to prove that you French are superior to everyone else, and to make sure the rest of us know it. And believe me, Charles does.”
“I am sorry, Your Grace,” I said again, for what else could I say? “I am sorry that everything French is so unpleasant to His Majesty.”
“Not everything, mademoiselle.” He turned his back on the Grand Canal, and looked at me with such purpose that I couldn’t mistake his meaning. “There is one specific example of French beauty that will give him only the greatest joy, and by God, I mean to see he receives it. Are you ready, mademoiselle?”
“I am, Your Grace,” I said, and raised my chin to prove my resolve. “I am.”
He laughed with sly delight, and winked. “Come, then, let me return you to your friends.”
I took his offered arm, and in truth by then I was trembling so with excitement that I’d need of his support. I’d listened, and there by the banks of the Canal, I’d made my decision. I was done with relying on others to decide my future. I meant to seize what fate was offering, and claim it as my own.
Madame’s funeral was arranged for the twenty-first of August. Paris seemed filled with dignitaries from other countries who’d come to pay their final respects to the princess, and at the same time curry a bit of favor with the French king. Though the gatherings at the Louvre were somber at this time, as they should be, Louis expected us ladies to attend and be our most charming before the foreigners, at least as well as we could manage in our deep first mourning.
On one of these evenings, I had joined the others in the rooms set aside for gaming. I was not playing, of course—I’d still not the means to be able to toss away what little money I had—but I did take pleasure in watching, seeing another’s cards and deciding how, if they’d been mine, I would play the hand. I was standing to one side of a table with several other ladies, languidly fanning myself, when one of the royal pages came to summon me away.
I excused myself and followed him, curious as to why I’d been called. Because I served no lady at present and it was doubtful I’d be requested by Monsieur, I could think of no reason for it.
“Where are we going, sirrah?” I asked the boy as soon as we were in the hallway. “Who has sent you for me?”
“It is not my place to say, mademoiselle,” he said, taking obvious pleasure in refusing to share his knowledge. The pages were often like this, puffed full of their own importance as if the entire palace depended exclusively on them. “My task was only to fetch you, no more.”
“Impudent little rascal,” I said, and jabbed him in his brocade-covered arm with my closed fan. “It won’t hurt you to tell me.”
“You’ll learn for yourself in time,” he said with airy superiority, “because you won’t learn from me.”
But as I followed him through the palace and past the guards, I realized soon enough who had requested my presence. We went through two more sets of doors and another group of guards, and then I alone entered the small reception room, and found myself in the presence of His Most Christian Majesty.
He was sitting in a tall-backed chair before the window, his hands resting on the cushioned arms and one foot elegantly placed before the other, with the huge satin bow on each shoe presented as if a gaudy butterfly had landed on the royal foot. He was as usual beautifully, extravagantly dressed: his coat and breeches of black satin (black being the extent of his mourning for Madame) densely embroidered with gold thread and festooned with at least a hundred yards of ribbon, his hat crowned with scarlet plumes and jewels scattered on his fingers and person, even on his hat.
I realized full well that so much magnificence was not solely for my benefit, and that he was doubtless on his way to join the others for the evening’s amusement. Still, as I sank into my deepest curtsy, I was both honored and awed to be alone with him. Although this solitary summons was unusual, even curious, the king would most likely tell me his intentions for my future, and grant me a new place elsewhere within the Court. It wouldn’t matter now that I’d longed to go to England to try my luck at the English Court; unhappily, nothing had come of Mr. Montagu’s hints, and Lord Buckingham’s schemes still remained as insubstantial as the air. If I were to be offered a new position here in France, I would accept it at once, with gratitude and no hesitation, and as I curtsied, I had to swallow back both my excitement and my relief.
“Mademoiselle de Keroualle,” the king said, solemnly lifting his hat to me, “good evening to you.”
“Good evening, Your Majesty.” I rose, my hands folded before me in proper respect. I’d not seen him in
such close quarters since I’d met the English king, and I was struck by both the similarities and the differences between the two. They both were tall and handsome and dark, with black hair and a regal mien, which was understandable for cousins who’d shared a common grandfather.
But where the English king had laughed easily and found much in the world to please him, his power tempered with warm kindness and generosity, the French king was as severe as a graven image, his expression unchanging and his dark eyes as intent and unblinking as any hawk’s as he regarded me. I thought of how most every woman in Paris was dazzled by Louis, and desired to be his mistress above all things, yet as I stood before him, I could not imagine sharing so much as a kiss with a man who seemed so remote.
Ah, but the English king, and what I dreamed of sharing with him . . .
“Mademoiselle,” Louis began, jarring me back to his presence. “Mademoiselle, we have been most pleased with your loyalty to us and to France, and most especially to our lamented sister, Madame.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Tears—my constant companion in the dark days following Madame’s death—once again sprang unbidden to my eyes at the mention of her name. “Her Highness was most dear to me, and it was an honor to serve her as I did.”
He nodded gravely, as much emotion as I expected he ever showed. “You served her well, mademoiselle. But that service is done, and we must now decide where you shall go next.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, breathless with eager anticipation. “I pray that I might continue to serve you and France, however you decide.”
“A true daughter of France,” he said with approval. “Before Madame died, she told me of how useful you were to her in Dover, and how much you pleased her brother the king. She praised both your discretion and your delicacy in diplomatic matters that required perfect trust, and she had every faith in you.”
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