Under a Starlit Sky

by EM Castellan

  “Apartments are going for a fortune, I can tell you that,” Armand replied. “But it’s rumored the king and Lorraine are planning a huge display of magic this afternoon. They are going to add two new wings to the palace.”

  His mention of Lorraine’s name dragged me back to the point of our meeting. I handed him the journal and spell book.

  “Lorraine might not, actually.”

  Armand’s eyes widened as he leafed through the journal. “You did it! How?”

  “Never mind how,” I replied, anticipation swelling in my chest. “The right question is: What’s in there?”

  “Well?” Armand turned to me with an avid gaze. “What’s in there?”

  “A list of all the vanished spells,” I said, a slight tremor in my voice that I blamed on my satisfaction at sharing the news at last, “with potential prices attached. Apparently, Lorraine has been planning on selling the stolen spells to the highest bidders at court.”

  Armand gaped. “So it was him! Which magicien helped him, do you think?”

  “Someone in Paris, I suspect. I don’t think a court magicien would take such a risk, when there are far easier ways to become rich and influential.”

  “So Lorraine has been making spells vanish in order to resell them later on for money?”

  “Or for favors, or blackmail,” I said.

  “But that’s … that’s treason, isn’t it?” Armand said, still torn between disbelief and astonishment. “The king is going to murder him himself when he finds out. He destroyed Fouquet for reaching for the throne. Imagine what he’s going to do to someone who tried to take control of French magic!”

  I wasn’t certain I wanted to imagine Louis’s reaction to these revelations, but it was out of my hands now. I had collected the proof he had asked for. Within an hour Armand and I would deliver it to him and explain everything. Lorraine would be out of my life, and I would start rebuilding what had been shattered in the last few weeks.

  Armand stood up, tucking both volumes under his arm. “Let’s go see the king, then. Let’s show him all this.”

  A huge weight off my chest, I grabbed his offered hand, and we walked toward one of the openings in the surrounding trellis.

  “Do you think—” I began—and didn’t get a chance to finish.

  Four dark figures barged into the grove and swooped on us like birds of prey. Clad in black from head to toe, masks covered their faces and blades glinted in their hands.

  Armand let out a loud exclamation and dropped my hand. He stepped in front of me, but our attackers were already upon us. They brandished their weapons and one punched Armand in the jaw.

  I screamed.

  Under the force of the blow, he dropped the journal and book and stumbled against me. I grabbed him to prevent his fall, just as another of our assailants picked up the two bounded volumes off the gravel.

  “No!” I shouted.

  I reached for him, but a sword thrust in front of my chest stopped me short. My pulse wild and my breathing ragged, I watched as the proof of Lorraine’s guilt was snatched from my grasp. The thief gave a low whistle, a signal for their flight. They took off one by one, the one threatening me with his sword the last to go. It had all happened in an instant.

  I stood breathless, my mind racing for a quick solution. Running after them in my gown was useless, but I could try the spell again with Olympe, if Lorraine didn’t put up wards against it before we—

  Hurried footsteps and shouts pulled me out of my thoughts. Alerted by my scream, a group of palace guards and gardeners rushed into the grove with their weapons and tools drawn.

  “Your Highness! Are you all right?”

  The mustached guard who had let me through the palace gate a week ago stepped forward, a look of dark suspicion lending on Armand.

  “Thieves,” I managed to say before he could draw any awful false conclusion. “Thieves in the gardens. They attacked us.”

  A bruise bloomed on Armand’s cheek, and he wiped his forehead to dispel the dazedness brought on by the blow.

  “There were four of them,” he said. “Dressed in black. They went that way.”

  A few soldiers followed the trail he pointed at, while the old one with the mustache surveyed me.

  “And you’re not hurt, Madame?”

  I shook my head. He assumed the thieves had been after my jewels, and I wasn’t about to contradict him. I turned to Armand instead.

  “How is your jaw?”

  He grimaced. “I’ll live. I’ve had worse.”

  From what I knew of his upbringing and of his father’s violence, I believed it.

  “We better take you back to the palace,” the guard said.

  Armand gave me a questioning look. He knew how important the journal and book were to me, and he was ready to follow my lead on how to handle the situation. Gratefulness expanded in my chest at his reaction, but there was nothing I could say or do in front of witnesses that wouldn’t put us in a precarious position.

  I forced a breath down my constricted lungs. There would be time later to think about a plan to retrieve the stolen items again. This was a setback, not a defeat. We were all staying at Versailles, and if it was Lorraine who’d organized this attack as I suspected—who else could it be?—he wouldn’t get away with it for long.

  So I nodded at the guard. “Yes, let’s go back.”

  We all filed out of the grove, leaving Enceladus and his crushed hubris behind in the morning sunshine.

  * * *

  My plans to find Olympe immediately upon my return to the palace were thwarted by the guards who insisted on taking me back to my apartments, which Philippe stormed a couple of minutes later.

  “Out! Everybody out!”

  Pale with anger, he ushered out my maids and ladies, who didn’t even dare a glance back. My mouth gaped in astonishment. In our thirteen months of marriage, I had never seen him behave like this.

  “What are you doing?”

  He opened his arms wide. “What did I ask you?”

  I hesitated. Giving him the answer he sought would likely help settle him down, but I couldn’t think of anything, and his furious expression wasn’t helping. In the end, he answered his own question.

  “I asked you to take care of yourself. That’s the only thing I’ve ever asked of you.” His voice grew louder and more distraught as he spoke. “All I want is for you to be safe and feel cared for. But you don’t give a damn, do you?”

  I took a step toward him to reply, but he cut me off, waving his arms.

  “You’d rather do magic, and run about everywhere, and put yourself at risk every bloody day. The problem is, you’re too nice. You can’t say no to people. Not to Louis, not to anybody at court, and certainly not to Armand. So you know what? I’m saying no for you Molière’s Tartuffe now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Apprehension gripped me. He was so upset that he didn’t seem able to listen to me at all.

  “You’re going away,” he replied. “Louis wants to trap all of us here, but he won’t have you. I’m sending you away. Today.”

  “You want me to go back to Paris? For how long? And why?” My voice went higher in surprise. This was not part of my plan.

  “I’m sending you away,” Philippe said, his tone cutting, “so I don’t ever have to walk into those apartments again thinking the worst has happened. I can’t do it, Henriette! This court isn’t good for you, so you’re not staying here.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but he interrupted me again.

  “And you’re not going to Paris. You’re going to Saint-Cloud.”

  SUMMER

  CHAPTER XIII

  The afternoon breeze blew through the open window, filling the sheer curtains that billowed liked ship sails at sea. It teased my hair, rustled though the music sheets at my feet, and swept the open letters off my desk.

  “Oh no!” the painter exclaimed.

  His paintbrush in hand, he rushed to close the window. Mimi yapped at
the disruption, and I took the momentary pause as an opportunity to stretch my neck. The portrait commissioned by Philippe showed me as Minerva surrounded by objects representing the arts. Dressed in a silk gown the color of a blood orange and an ermine fur cape, I sat with a blank canvas in my hands and a plumed helmet at my side.

  “I’m so sorry about your correspondence, Madame.”

  The painter retrieved the letters from the floor and set them down on my desk in a reverent gesture. A short man in his sixties, his long wig always bounced about his thin face and gave him a youthful and dynamic look that his serious expression denied in a comical manner.

  “Don’t worry about those,” I said. “They’re nothing valuable.”

  They were just news from court, sent by people who believed the story that I had been taken too ill to remain at Versailles. Louise announced the king’s next entertainment, set to take place mid-July for the benefit of every courtier this time; Athénaïs warned me Lorraine had all but moved in with my husband and they spent all their leisure time together; Olympe detailed the Queen Mother’s failing health; and Marie-Thérèse complained about how crowded the salons had become at the palace. None of these missives provided me with a way back to court.

  It had been two weeks since my exile.

  I had spent the first few days at Saint-Cloud searching for ways to return to Versailles as quickly as possible, but in the end I had to admit my defeat: I had no means to prove Lorraine’s wrongdoings or to regain any evidence of them; my health was as fragile as ever; I could perform no magic alone; and the chasm between Philippe and me was so large I couldn’t see how to overcome it.

  What was obvious, however, was that my situation wouldn’t last. Philippe wouldn’t be able to keep me away forever without raising questions and suspicions. I only had to bide my time.

  “If Your Highness could look at me again…?” the painter asked. Back at his easel, he gave me an expectant look that I returned with a smile as my dog settled again on the carpet. “Lovely,” he added. “Simply lovely.”

  In his well-meaning yet misguided way of looking after me, Philippe had provided me with two distractions: a house and a painting.

  An hour’s ride from Versailles, the former was a sixteenth century building renovated ten years ago. A large country house with beautiful French-styled gardens, it operated as a retreat, not a place made for permanent living. It lacked the fanciful gilded decor I had grown accustomed to at the palaces, and the servants had never worked for a princess before. To their surprise, it suited me perfectly. I was mistress of a house that boasted gorgeous manicured gardens and was small enough to run as I wished, with staff eager to please yet uninterested in tracking my every move.

  The latter also turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The painting meant to show both of us but didn’t require my husband to be present: Philippe’s portrait would be added later on the blank canvas I held in my hands. The irony of the whole endeavor wasn’t lost on me, but it also gave me a lot of time to think.

  “Madame, your guest has arrived.” The maid gave a quick, perfunctory curtsy and waited for my reply.

  I discarded my blank canvas and jumped to my feet. “Is he in the blue salon? Please tell him I’m coming.”

  I removed my ermine cape and agreed with the painter on our appointment the next day. Then, Mimi in my wake, I skipped through my apartments, which I had filled with flower arrangements. Like in the rest of the house, dozens of blossoms in vases greeted me with vibrant colors and delightful fragrances whenever I went. Saint-Cloud might belong to Philippe, but everywhere it was my presence that lingered.

  My guest stood looking out the open window, his gloved hand resting on the handle of his sword and his large frame casting a long shadow onto the parquet floor. My entrance prompted him to turn around and to sink into a deep bow, his feathered hat in hand.

  “Madame,” he said, “you requested my presence?”

  I clasped my hands together to hide my trepidation. After two weeks of idleness, I was moving forward again of my own volition, instead of being cast about by fate and duty like a leaf in a stream.

  “D’Artagnan,” I replied. “Thank you so much for coming.”

  I gestured toward a chair, and he took a seat with his back straight and that slight awkwardness of soldiers more used to riding a horse than sitting on silk-covered furniture. A middle-aged man with a thin mustache and the golden eyes of a magicien, he still displayed the handsome features that had made him famous in his youth, but his hair now showed more silver than brown and lines traced his brow and mouth.

  “I heard you were poorly,” he said, kindness in his tone. “I’m pleased to see you’re better.”

  “Indeed. The country air does wonders for my lungs.”

  It wasn’t a lie: although still present, my symptoms weren’t now as much a cause for concern as they had been since April. I took a seat opposite him and lifted Mimi into my lap.

  “I grew up in the countryside,” D’Artagnan said, the hint of a smile crinkling his face. “You don’t have to convince me of its advantages.”

  Under other circumstances, I would have loved to hear about his youth in Gascony and his time serving the Crown as a musketeer, but pleasant conversation or tales about his past weren’t why I requested he come to me. My reasons were far more self-serving.

  “There’s something I must ask of you,” I said.

  The change in my tone brought a crease between his brows. “What is it, Your Highness? You know I’m always here to help.”

  His devotion to the royal family was indeed legendary. Louis wasn’t even born when D’Artagnan already served his parents, and he’d spent all his life showing indefectible loyalty to the young king. This was why Louis had trusted him, and no one else, with Fouquet’s arrest last year. The musketeer had witnessed our spell to defeat the Crown Magicien, and been put in charge of his custody since then.

  “I need to speak with Fouquet,” I said, choosing bluntness over flattery.

  His eyes widened in shock. Since his arrest in Nantes, the former Crown Magicien was under the heaviest of watches. Kept in solitary confinement, he was moved between prisons while awaiting his trial, and I knew from Louis his latest jail was the Bastille in Paris, an hour away from Saint-Cloud. And his jailer was D’Artagnan.

  “I’m afraid no one can see him,” the musketeer replied, ever polite. “Unless I receive direct instructions from His Majesty, I can’t—”

  “I know.”

  Interrupting him was rude and not something I wished to make a habit of, but I could already guess all his reasons for refusing me, and I had no time for them. I had spent two weeks hatching this plan, and I wouldn’t be deterred.

  “I know you have to answer to the king, and I wouldn’t want to put you in a difficult position with him. But it is imperative that I speak with Fouquet. Today. It has to do with my health. It has to do with my magic. And it’s urgent. So you’re going to take me to him, and afterward you’ll tell the king everything and blame it all on me.”

  The assertiveness in my tone surprised even me. D’Artagnan blinked, hesitation and counterarguments battling on his features.

  “It would be my responsibility—” he started.

  As I thought, the gentleman in him refused the idea of not endorsing the blame, so I cut him off once more.

  “The king won’t be happy. But we are not going to do anything wrong. We are not going to set Fouquet free, or tell him anything he shouldn’t know, or help him in any way. I’m going to ask him questions and hopefully get answers only he, in the whole of France, can provide.”

  D’Artagnan opened and closed his mouth, wavering. I held his gaze, as sincere and firm as I could, my heart thumping against my ribs despite my outward composure. He had to agree. I had to see Fouquet.

  “We don’t know each other very well,” I added. “But I don’t make a habit of lying, or of getting people into trouble. I would never ask this of you if it weren’t my l
ast resort. Believe me when I say I don’t want to see Fouquet—the man nearly destroyed everything I hold dear—but I need to see him.”

  He dropped his gaze, and released a sigh. “I know you’re not a deceitful person, Your Highness. Are you certain this is what you want?”

  My heart jolted in my chest. He was giving in.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  He nodded, his expression grave. “Then I’ll take you to him.”

  Somehow, this didn’t have the feel of victory I anticipated. Instead, dread descended over me like a cold draught. I was going to a prison, to meet with a man who haunted my nightmares and whom I’d thought never to see again.

  But if I wanted answers to the questions that plagued me, I had to set aside my fears, and enter the lair of the beast one more time.

  * * *

  A complex web of torchlit corridors and winding staircases made the Bastille fortress an endless labyrinth I would have been lost in within moments without D’Artagnan at my side. I held on to his arm as he guided me past countless reinforced doors, decay and hopelessness permeating the stale air.

  “The prisoner is held in a wing that we’ve emptied for him,” the musketeer said in a low tone. “Only my men guard him, and half the garrison is here day and night: His Majesty is worried about an escape.”

  I failed to see how anyone could leave this maze without outside help or magic, but underestimating the former Crown Magicien was a mistake no one was willing to make, it seemed. My cowl low over my brow and my black cloak tight around my body, I followed my guide without a word, the rustle of my dress the only sound accompanying the echo of our footsteps in the low-ceilinged hallways.

  At last, we stopped at the end of a corridor where four musketeers stood sentry, their shadows quivering in the torchlight. They all stood at attention at D’Artagnan’s approach.

  “We’re going to speak with the prisoner,” he announced. “It won’t take long. Stay outside, and be ready to come in upon my order.”