The Shadow Queen

by Sandra Gulland

  “I will let her know.” Bringing Gaston was out of the question. There would be no way to disguise him.

  There was a commotion in the back room: a crow squawking, a dog barking. “So your mistress knows how to use this?” She held up a bottle similar to the one Athénaïs kept in her locked chest. “One salt spoon in a glass of wine. No more.”

  I gave her the gold louis.

  “Merci. God bless, Monsieur!” she said, pocketing the heavy coin. “Money back if your lady doesn’t get results.”

  CHAPTER 42

  I rapped on the door of my mother’s rooms, but there was no answer. I creaked open the door and called out. “Maman? Gaston? It’s me, Claudette.” A faint light shone through the begrimed window. Our familiar things looked sordid and worn in the dimness. The fire had gone out: I could see my breath. The stench from the necessary was strong. “Maman?”

  I heard a squeak from Mother’s bedroom and quickly crossed the small space to her open door. She was a tiny shape huddled under the covers in the half-dark. Alarmed, I took off a glove and touched my hand to her forehead.

  “I’m just having a little rest.” Mother reached out a clammy hand. “How nice to see you.” She squinted at me. “Is that you?”

  I peeled off the moustache. “Where is Gaston?”

  “Helping put up announcements,” she said, her teeth chattering. “I thought I’d have a little sleep before I—” She began to cough.

  There was blood in her spittle. Still? “I’m going for a doctor.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’ll have those words engraved on your tombstone.”

  “That’s not funny,” Mother said with a laugh, which only made her cough again.

  “No,” I said, stroking her back. I could feel her bones. “It’s not.”

  I was stirring the embers to get a fire going when I heard Gaston come in. It had been six Sundays since I’d seen him. His beard was longer, almost covering his chest. He had the diffident, gentle look of a monk, innocent yet wise. I embraced him. I hadn’t realized how much I missed him. “Maman needs a doctor.”

  “She,” he stuttered. He mimed her expression of horror.

  I made a rueful face: of course. Mother had a mortal fear of being bled.

  “She. Say.” He pointed to Mother’s room. “No. Sick.”

  And of course he believed her. He wouldn’t think to doubt his mother.

  He pulled a roll of papers from the waist of his breeches and handed them to me: Mother’s annual contract with the theater, to be signed before a notary. It was that time of year. “Later,” I said, putting the contract on the table, weighting it down with an earthen bowl. I could hear Mother moaning. “There’s a doctor on the rue Tiquetonne,” I said, looking for a quill and ink in the clutter and finally finding a vial illogically nested in the soup pot. Unable to find a quill, I used the end of my big iron key to scratch out the message on the margin of an old news sheet: “My mother is very sick. Please come see her.” I handed it to him along with a silver écu, one of the two coins I was supposed to give the Widow Scarron later that afternoon.

  Mercy me: the Widow. I’ll figure this out in the morning, I thought, realizing that I would be spending the night.

  THE DOCTOR STOOPED to get through the door in his tall cap. He was a young man, unbearded—he looked like a boy, his cheeks baby-pink.

  “Go sit with Maman,” I told Gaston. “Distract her.”

  Gaston took my head in his two hands, covering my ears and pressing gently. I’d never been sure what this meant; it seemed to be a consoling gesture. I rubbed his nose with mine: Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.

  He lumbered off. I listened for the door to Mother’s room to close behind him. “May I ask you to remove your doctor’s hat, Monsieur?” I said, turning to address the young man. “It may alarm my mother.” I worried she was going to put up a fight. “I should warn you that she has a fear of being bled.”

  “First, the particulars,” he said, fiddling with the clasp that held the contraption on. “I’m not used to this nuisance,” he said, sighing when it finally gave way. “Her age, that type of thing.” He stood looking for somewhere to put it.

  “My mother is …” I paused to calculate. “Almost fifty,” I said, taking his hat and hanging it from a wall sconce. Half a century: imagine. “Her health is normally robust. She’s never missed a day of work.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Theater work,” I said, intentionally vague. “This way, Docteur …?”

  “Baratil,” he said, bowing. “And you are …?”

  “Mademoiselle Claude des Oeillets.” I could hear Gaston humming, Mother’s chuckle. That was a good sign. Maybe she was fine. Maybe we hadn’t needed to go to the trouble and expense.

  “You’re not …?” the doctor said with a stricken look. “Your mother … she’s not the actress, is she? La des Oeillets?”

  I nodded warily. He would leave now. He wouldn’t deign to treat a sinner. Maybe I could get the coin back.

  He put his hands to his cheeks, like a girl. “Madame des Oeillets is a marvel! She’s the finest actress in Paris. I’ve been to eight of her performances. No: nine. I saw her in Sophonisbe three times.” He blushed in his fervor.

  “My mother will be happy to know that, Docteur Baratil,” I said, relieved, opening the door to Mother’s small chamber.

  “I refuse to be bled,” she said glaring, her teeth chattering.

  “Docteur Baratil is one of your fanatics.” It was a word players used to describe the people who came to a show over and over just to applaud a particular player. “He saw you in Sophonisbe three times.”

  The doctor pressed his hands over his heart and bowed solemnly from the waist. “Perhaps I can help make you comfortable, Madame des Oeillets,” he suggested, “without the loss of blood. Your admirers long to see you return to the stage.”

  Mother consented to an examination, but insisted that Gaston and I leave the room. We squatted against a wall, staring at the closed door, listening to the murmurs within. We’d grown up sitting on the ground—using chairs had been an uncomfortable adjustment. When anxious or worried, we often returned to our old ways.

  We jumped up when the doctor emerged. My heart sank, seeing his eyes. “I’ll accompany you down to the street,” I offered.

  It was raining, so we stood under an arch in the courtyard.

  “A cold humor is dripping from your mother’s head into her lungs.”

  What did that mean?

  “She has consumption,” he said, swallowing.

  I recalled the stories told by country people in my youth, how a dog demon would take over a person’s body and eat his lungs. “What can we do?”

  Docteur Baratil looked miserable. “Opium pills, if you can afford it. Laudanum, a new liquid form, is almost as effective and costs considerably less. Give her as much as she needs to be comfortable. Don’t hesitate.”

  So. Only comfort—not cure. Was she dying?

  GASTON TURNED FROM the wash-up area.

  “The doctor says Maman is sick.” I slipped off my cloak.

  “No. Blood,” he hummed.

  I nodded. He hadn’t bled Mother—but then he hadn’t seen the point. “He said … He said it’s going to take time.” I kicked off my clogs, sending one flying.

  I sat down, drumming my fingers on the table, staring at Mother’s annual contract. “Gaston, I’m going to suggest”—strongly, emphatically!—“that Maman not sign this contract.”

  He stared, puzzled.

  “Not this year.” Maybe, with a long period of rest, Mother would recover. Maybe Docteur Baratil was mistaken.

  CHAPTER 43

  Athénaïs expected me back. She was approaching her final month and would be anxious, no doubt. After scrubbing Mother’s room clean; after hiring a neighbor’s daughter to come in every day to clear the garbage, gray water, and chamber pots; after deciding, yet again, not to tell Gaston—much less
my mother—what the doctor had said, in truth; after persuading, with difficulty, Mother not to renew her contract for the year; after obtaining a vial of opium tincture and instructing the girl how to measure it out; after kissing my mother farewell and tucking her rosary under her pillow—I sadly took my leave.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I promised. As soon as I could. Floridor and his wife, who lived close by, had kindly promised to look in every day, which was a comfort—but even so, I was heavy with concern.

  I delivered the remaining silver écu to the Widow. (“There will be another coming,” I assured her, mentally figuring the necessities I would have to forgo in order to save that much.) Then, heart- and bone-weary, I instructed the driver of my hired coach to head back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It was raining again, a spring shower. I closed the cracked blinds against the dreary landscape.

  Easter was coming. I would make my first confession, do every penance required for my many sins. I would pray for Mother’s recovery. (Surely the Virgin did not care if Mother was a player. Surely the Virgin knew her good heart.) I closed my eyes, tears spilling.

  The rough tumbling of the coach wheels over cobbles jolted me awake. I wiped my cheeks dry. In the castle courtyard, a footman handed me down, protecting me from the rain with a leather ombrella.

  I felt a guilty relief, stepping back into the ease of the Court. Perhaps here, in the realm of the blessed, prayers would be heard. Perhaps here, miracles were possible. I headed up the stone stairs to Athénaïs’s suite.

  “The Marquise is in her chamber,” one of the maids informed me coolly.

  I heard a man’s voice from deep within the apartment, the faint sound of a woman crying. “What’s happened?” I asked, alarmed, but the maid had insolently turned her back on me.

  I hurried into the salon, burning at the slight. Athénaïs’s staff were in league against me, resentful that I was in a position of confidentiality and favor: the daughter of an actress, no less. Fortunately, I ate with Athénaïs, and not below in the kitchens with the others, where I would be left to starve, no doubt.

  I paused, puzzling over a bumper of wine that had been spilled onto the Turkey carpet. Five thick candles were burned down, the wax pooling. Cats were sniffing at a broken dish, helping themselves to cake crumbs and pâté. (Pâté? During Lent?) I had only been gone for one day, and the place was in shatters.

  Apprehensive, I headed toward Athénaïs’s bedchamber. I scratched three times on the door. No response. I tapped again, more insistently.

  Monsieur Blucher opened the door. The midwife? Thunder. Had …?

  “It’s your maid,” he said, turning to Athénaïs, who was stretched out on the bed, her arm dripping blood into a bowl, her other hand pressed against her mountain of a belly.

  So: the baby hadn’t yet birthed, I realized with relief. But why was she being bled? Some women believed that being bled when pregnant would make the child quick and smart—but Athénaïs was not of their number, I knew.

  “You’ve taken enough out of me, Blucher,” Athénaïs said, rousing.

  “Patience, Madame, the last bit is important.” Blucher checked the contents of the blood-bowl.

  “Don’t ‘patience’ me, you idiot.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. I’d had a lifetime of experience steadying a wavering temper. “He’s going to do exactly as you say, Madame.” I glared at the doctor.

  Blucher’s hands shook as he strapped Athénaïs’s forearm to stop the flow, then wound a long strip of linen around her wrist. “His Majesty wishes me to return later this afternoon,” he said sullenly, gathering his tools.

  Athénaïs did not answer, her unbandaged arm now covering her eyes. I was startled to see that she was weeping.

  I stepped into the parlor after the doctor. “Do you have anything to calm her?”

  “We’re in Aries?” He checked the astrological charts in his girdle book. “Bleeding from the forehead is ill advised. A sleeping remedy, perhaps?”

  “Thank you, but we have that.” Athénaïs was right. The man was a dunderhead. But why was she so distraught? “What happened, Monsieur?”

  “There was a fulmination in the night, that’s all I’ve been told. When the emotions are strong, the life of a womb-infant is endangered.”

  Truly! “You know the way out? Through La Vallière’s suite?” It wouldn’t do to have a midwife seen coming and going through the door to Athénaïs’s rooms.

  MERCIFULLY, ATHÉNAïS HAD fallen asleep. I set the bloodied bowl and rags outside the door for the chambermaids to deal with. I found a stick of incense in a dish on the cluttered toilette table and lit it to cover the lingering smell of blood.

  Athénaïs stirred, opened her eyes, but then closed them again. “It’s cold,” she murmured, turning onto her side, pulling a feather comforter over her.

  I refreshed the fire and lowered myself onto the chair close to the bed. Something had happened, but I would have to wait to find out. I would have to wait, too, before I could ask leave to return to Paris. I had been foolish to imagine I could absent myself so close to the baby’s birth. Patience, I told myself, leaning my head against the back of the chair, listening to rain pelting against the shuttered window, the wind howling.

  ATHÉNAïS WOKE IN early evening, as the call for Vespers was sounded. “Those damned bells,” she said, stirring.

  “How do you feel?” Blood had soaked through her bandage: I would have to change it.

  “I dreamt I tried to kill the Limping One with a knife,” she said with a loopy smile. “The holy whore.” She laughed weakly.

  “Why would you have done that, Madame?” Had it only been a dream? “Hold still, please. I need to change this bandage.” I looked around for the supplies the doctor had left behind.

  She laid her head back against the pillows. “Unfortunately, I didn’t succeed,” she said, using her free hand to wipe her eyes with a corner of a covering sheet.

  I set her rebandaged arm down. “Keep it low, below your head.” I gave her two opium pills and a glass of wine.

  Athénaïs downed the pills with big, gulping swallows. “Tant pis,” she said, handing the glass back to me.

  I noticed a raised bruise on her cheekbone. She was regarded as the most beautiful woman at Court, but there were times, like this, when she looked not unattractive, but … I thought of the demons that could take over a soul. She was only twenty-nine, yet already she’d started to coarsen.

  “The Limping One is with child,” Athénaïs informed me, her voice thin. “By His Majesty.”

  I groaned in sympathy. The King had vowed to her that he no longer had relations with Louise de la Vallière, that she was his mistress in name only.

  “He tried to stop me,” she said, closing her eyes.

  It hadn’t been a dream. “What happened?”

  “I tried to kill him too.” Her voice tremulous.

  Mon Dieu. I’d seen the scorn Athénaïs sometimes showed His Majesty—treating him like some slow-witted shopkeeper—but to strike out at him! “You must rest, Madame,” I said breathlessly. Calm.

  NINE DAYS LATER, Athénaïs’s throes came on while she was with the King. Her cry was sharp, helpless—different from her moans of passion.

  “It’s begun,” I told Xavier. “Her pains,” I added, clasping my rosary. “She’s early.” Athénaïs wasn’t due for at least another week.

  I heard another cry. The King appeared at the door in his frilly linens. “Her waters—” He held up his soaked sleeve.

  Just after three of the clock in the dead of night, Athénaïs gave birth to a son, who emerged with some difficulty, the wrong end presenting. He was small, with one leg dwarfed, shorter than the other, and strangely turned. (Yet another deformed infant from Athénaïs’s womb: what did this signify?)

  As soon as the baby was cut free, I swaddled and handed him to Xavier, who handed him in turn to Monsieur de Lauzun, Commander of the King’s Household, who was waiting at La Vallière’s door. Lau
zun was to rush to an unmarked coach by the gate to the park and give the baby to the woman within—the masked Widow Scarron. The stealth procedure had all been worked out only days before. “Hurry!” I hissed. Before the baby began to howl.

  Xavier disappeared, heading for La Vallière’s suite.

  “Well done, Monsieur,” I told the midwife.

  Blucher turned expectantly. I handed him a velvet bag of coins: the hundred gold louis were heavy. My own “reward” was only a tenth as much, but at least it would cover my family’s expenses for the next little while. “From His Majesty and La Marquise,” I said, looking over at Athénaïs, who had fallen, finally, into a deep slumber.

  ON EASTER SUNDAY, I pushed my way through the throngs outside the Convent of Récollets. I’d made my first confession. I’d revealed my concern that I wasn’t doing enough for my mother and brother, confessed to a slice of beef eaten during Lent, my sinful attachment to life at Court—the fine clothes, the food, the gaming, and partaking of spirits. I did not mention my visit to Madame Catherine. Athénaïs would not have wanted that revealed. I was keeper of her secret.

  “I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life,” I said, fingering the coin I had brought to buy a prayer for Mother.

  “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.”

  “For His mercy endures forever,” I intoned.

  As I sat listening to the priest’s words of absolution, I tried not to think of his garlic breath, vowing, instead, to improve, to curb my eating (I’d gained yet another stone) and save my earnings in order to provide for Mother and Gaston.

  I was assigned penance for my sins—one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and one Glory Be—yet even so, I felt burdened. Two nights before, La Vallière’s cries had filled our rooms. She miscarried, but quite violently, very nearly dying. Athénaïs’s response had seemed theatrical to me: staged. Something was amiss. She had woken several times in the night, tearing at her hair. “Catherine,” she’d hissed several times over.