Before Versailles

by Karleen Koen

  The Magdalene he’d created, whom he loved with all his heart, was in his mind. “There’s someone I want you to protect while I’m gone, someone so dear to me that—” he stopped because it did not do to reveal so much to another man, even one you trusted. One of Belle’s sons walked forward and laid his head against Louis’s leg, and Louis stroked the dog. “I have sworn to protect her from the eyes of the world, and while I’m gone, you must see that she has all she needs. Her name is Miss Louise de la Baume le Blanc.”

  He was alert for the least sign of judgment in Colbert’s face; this was, after all, one of the most devout men of court, but Colbert’s face remained impassive.

  “Of course, sire.”

  “I want a saddle made for her, with interlocking ‘L’s’ in gold thread all about the edge.”

  “It will be done, sire.”

  “What word from the duchess?” His mother had returned late in the evening, gone straight to her chambers without a word to anyone.

  “I received a letter from the Duchess de Chevreuse this morning, sire. Here it is.”

  Louis ran his eyes over the words the duchess had scrawled. She is not satisfied, but she is loyal. He closed his eyes. Pray God that was true. “La Grande Mademoiselle will be among the audience tonight.”

  “Yes.”

  Another Mazarinade had surfaced. Neither of them now thought her the instigator. It would be a most unwise instigator who ordered another sent while under suspicion herself. Perhaps, as Colbert had always maintained, the author was indeed the viscount.

  THE BALLET WAS held in the ballroom. The audience, glorious in jewels and lace and high heels, walked to the rows of chairs set among the arches.

  The actor and troupe manager, Molière, moved from one member of his troupe to another. His actresses were in the ballet itself, as chorus for songs and as dancers in the interludes. The principal parts went to courtiers, except for the soprano brought in from Paris, who more or less sang the loose threads of the story that framed the interludes of dancing. It was a frail frame, thought Molière, who found the fashionable long ballets with no cohesive story line tedious, but no one had asked him.

  Courtiers settled into chairs to watch a bevy of women dance out as shepherdesses, followed by men as shepherds and children costumed as fauns. At the last moment, Monsieur had suggested the queen’s dwarves join the cast of the fauns. They’d bring laughter from the audience, Madame and Molière had decided, which was never a bad thing in a long production. Maria Teresa clapped wildly at the sight of them.

  Costumed as the goddess Diana, Henriette carried a bow and quiver and wore a silver crescent as her crown. She was still slim enough to dance, and rumor was she and Maria Teresa had had words in the queen’s gallery this morning, Maria Teresa insisting that dancing would endanger Henriette’s child. If I were more cow-like, I might worry, Henriette snapped back, and since the queen was as wide as she was tall these days, neither lady was now speaking to the other.

  One eye on the performance, the audience leafed through their book of verses. It was the custom for the court poet to create verses about each courtier who danced in the court ballets, verses that used the theme of the ballet to compliment, and in some cases lightly mock, the courtier in question.

  Henriette’s nymphs had been picked from among the prettiest young women at court. Choisy couldn’t take his eyes from Louise. Her hair loose on her shoulders, she wore a shorter, shimmering green skirt that showed her slim legs and ankles, and she was radiant, happiness spilling from her like light from a lantern.

  “My word,” said the Chevalier de Lorraine, “La Baume le Blanc looks positively glorious.” He peered down at the verses in the leather book. “This beauty, recently risen, in color fresh and clear, is springtime with her flowers,” he read, not caring that he talked aloud. “Our court poet is a prophet. She’s growing more beautiful right under our eyes. I wonder if she has a magic potion. Soissons was telling me about a witch in Paris—oh, here’s Monsieur. Hush, now, Choisy, don’t distract me.”

  And then, after Philippe had danced his solo and been roundly applauded, Lorraine continued talking. “You know, his majesty called on Monsieur today. I have no idea what they spoke of, but Monsieur was thoughtful afterward.”

  Applause interrupted him. His majesty had just danced onto the stage with more vigor and style than any dancer there.

  Nicolas led the applause and murmured the word “magnificent” to Madame de Motteville, as all watched Louis leap in and among lithe girls in silvery green skirts and then dance with Henriette as his partner.

  “Always,” answered Anne’s lady-in-waiting.

  “How was her majesty’s visit with the duchess?” Nicolas asked. “You’ll come to see me later with all the details, I know. I hear there’s an old secret, a love child or something.”

  Motteville’s gasp made him turn his head to her.

  “Ask me no questions, so that I may tell you no lies,” she said, and before Nicolas could respond, she’d stood up and moved to stand by Queen Anne.

  The audience sat through summer with its gardeners and dancing flowers, the dwarves again creating laughter, and now it was winter’s turn. Louis danced on, in full costume, skirts, headdress, and bosom, of the goddess Ceres. He played the part with a deadpan seriousness and gigantic leaps that delighted the audience. Molière, whose idea it had been, smiled.

  Everything after that was anticlimactic, never mind that the musicians played like a heavenly chorus, never mind that all the cast gathered on stage for the finale, dancing and singing, and finally falling into stylized poses as various attributes: love, abundance, joy, prosperity, the kind of heavy symbolism loved by this century. Among the melee of congratulations and compliments and preening about in costume afterward, Louis managed to pull Louise behind the large cutout of the sun for one quick moment.

  “I’m leaving for a week. If you need anything, go to Colbert,” he told her.

  She couldn’t answer because he was already walking away. She stared sightlessly at the glitter and paint on the cutout. Now Mister Colbert knew? Who else had to be swept into their secret to preserve it, and how long would it be preserved if more and more people were told? How would she look Mister Colbert in the face and not blush?

  Colbert, however, was concentrated on Madame de Motteville, and he ran her to ground the way a dog would a fox. “I saw you speak with the viscount.”

  “He knows,” said Motteville.

  Colbert spoke sharply, for once displaying emotion. “He knows what?”

  “He knows about the child.”

  Within moments, she found herself in a tiny antechamber, standing before Louis. Once the intrigue of living in court, disloyalty like rotting apples forever tumbling from their basket, had enlivened her, made her bold and daring, given the days a sense of adventure, but at this moment, she felt old and used and pulled too many ways by too many competing loyalties. The expression on Louis’s face frightened her.

  “What did he say?”

  “Very little. He asked about the visit to the duchess, said he’d heard there was a secret, a love child, nothing more.” She didn’t dare raise her eyes to meet Louis’s.

  “Look at me,” he said, and when she could make herself do so, “Find out what he knows, but tell him nothing, not so much as a hint, a breath of the truth. Tell him you would dishonor her majesty to speak of such things. Weep, have a tantrum, seduce him, but find out how he knows this and tell him nothing in return. Do you understand me, Madame de Motteville?”

  She nodded her head.

  LOUISE STOOD BEHIND Henriette, who was receiving courtier after courtier, each of whom must tell her how gracefully she’d danced, how beautiful she looked, how wonderful the ballet had been.

  “—and I think it’s disgraceful the way Madame encourages the king’s regard. Our poor queen—”

  Both Louise and Henriette turned their heads to see who spoke. It was Athénaïs, standing with Olympe, and when she saw
that they’d heard her, she clapped her hands over her mouth and backed away into the crowd. But Olympe, head held high, met Henriette’s questioning gaze, a malicious half-smile on her face, as direct as a slap.

  “I feel ill,” Henriette said. How dare she look at me so, she thought.

  Louise helped her to one of the benches near the opened windows, sent Fanny running for wine.

  “Make them go away,” Henriette said, as courtiers began to cluster to see what was the matter. The look on Soissons’s face implied triumph, malice, happiness that she was sad. Did the countress relish her distress? What others around her did so, also?

  “Shoo! Leave her alone! She just needs some air.” Louise pushed at courtiers, forcing them back away, but the Chevalier de Lorraine moved around Louise as if she didn’t exist.

  “Monsieur sends me to see how you do. Remember, you’re carrying his heir.”

  Henriette didn’t answer.

  “I’ll tell him you’re irritable, as usual,” said Lorraine and left her.

  Louise knelt in front of Henriette. “You look so pale. What is it? What can I do?”

  “I don’t have his regard, but he looks happy,” Henriette whispered, “not sad, like me.”

  “No, no, not really. We all know he loves to dance, and I heard he so liked your ballet.” Louise picked up Henriette’s fan, began to wave it back and forth at Henriette’s face.

  “You’re so kind, La Baume le Blanc.”

  Louise saw that her eyes had fastened again on the bracelets. How could she ignore them with Louise fanning her? Please, precious Mother of God, prayed Louise, please.

  “I’m glad you wear those. His majesty asked about them, now that I think on it, several weeks ago. It doesn’t do to offend, you know. Just—just don’t take any of it too seriously. I won’t have one of my household hurt because of his flirting.”

  “No, no, I don’t take it too seriously. I’m grateful to have some jewelry, actually.”

  Henriette laughed. She wiped at her eyes, stood, and shook out the skirts of her wonderful costume, in a color Louis himself had picked for her, once upon a time when they’d been in love, a kind of sage-green silk taffeta decorated with arabesques of pearls.

  “Thank God there’s at least one person around me without guile. Thank you, my dear,” she said to Louise and marched out into the milling courtiers, her back straight, her earrings dancing.

  HOURS LATER, HER head hurting from wine and self-reproach, Louise stumbled into her bedchamber with her friends. Everyone took off jewels and stockings and gowns and climbed into their beds, yawning and tired and more than a little drunk.

  That Louis would be gone a week filled her with longing. How pliable my conscience is becoming, Louise thought, and as she remembered her lies to Madame this night, remembered Madame’s sad and bewildered expression, she moved restlessly in the bed until Fanny told her in a hissing whisper to be still.

  HIS COURT SETTLING into their beds, but he himself dressed for travel, Louis knelt beside his dog. Maria Teresa had cried when he’d told her he was going on a secret pilgrimage for their child’s sake. She’d dropped to her knees. Forgive me, she’d said, her eyes shining, her arms outstretched. My jealousy has been a canker in my heart. Guilt had filled him, but also right beside it, a slithering snake in the garden, was relief. La Grande had knelt before him like a supplicant tonight. Her abrupt dismissal and her abrupt readmission to court had her all but groveling.

  “Belle,” he said, stroking the dog’s head, remembering when he’d been a boy, when he’d been so certain he’d break no sacred vows, when he’d been so certain hearts remained pure, “I shall be gone a while. Wait for me, my sweet. Promise you’ll do that.”

  “SO WHAT DID you think of the ballet?” asked Catherine. She sat in Nicolas’s bed, a shawl and nothing more on her body as he fed her slices of melon.

  “Quaintly sweet.”

  “That’s damning praise. Did you think I danced clumsily?”

  Nicolas leaned over and kissed the swell of a breast. “Nothing you do is clumsy. Dare I hope that the enthusiasm you’ve just displayed is because I was missed? And yet I see Captain Péguilin following you with his eyes like a loyal spaniel.”

  She leaned back on her elbows, the shawl opening, her hips and breasts white and inviting, her legs long and tempting. “It was boring in Monaco. Captain Péguilin was boring. The gentlemen were without finesse. Why was Lieutenant d’Artagnan there? I’ve been meaning to ask.”

  “What? You spoke with him?”

  “I most certainly did not. I was informed by my father-in-law and my husband in no uncertain terms that it was a great secret and I wasn’t to tell a soul, but of course, you know. Tell me. I promise I won’t breathe a word about what is obviously king’s buisness—What have I said? Why are you leaving the bed?”

  Abruptly pulling a loose nightgown on, Nicolas walked into another chamber, sat down at a table upon which lay papers and books, love letters and pleas for help. One of the royal tailors brought the news that his majesty made a secret pilgrimage. Trouble was brewing. Best to prepare.

  IT WAS RAINING when Louis arrived in Monaco, his destination a private château belonging to Catherine’s father-in-law, prince of this kingdom, who waited for him.

  The prince rose from his chair when Louis stepped into the salon, cloak dripping with rain. “Let me offer you dry clothing at once, sir, and food.”

  This was an ally, a man old enough to be his father, who had signed treaties with Louis’s father. He’d expelled the Spanish from the garrisons they’d once occupied here, giving France a secure friend on her southeastern coast, and in reward, his sons had played in the gardens at Saint-Germain as Louis’s companions when he’d been a boy. Let them see the grandeur of this court, his beloved cardinal had said. Then no other will be able to seduce them completely.

  “Lieutenant d’Artagnan?” asked Louis.

  “Upstairs, sir.”

  “Who is it?” D’Artagnan’s voice asked, when Louis knocked on the door.

  “The king.” Once inside, he saw that the boy sat at a window, the iron mask upon his face. Louis took in the sight of a monk and said to him, “Out. Cinq Mars?”

  “In another chamber.”

  Your majesty, D’Artagnan wanted to say to Louis, I’m afraid for the boy. There were tales to tell, of having to knock the boy down, of the priest and D’Artagnan having to straddle the youth to pour even a bit of the wine down his throat, of him tearing off bandages, of the howling as they rode through the night, of his incessant rocking back and forth before the wine took effect. The boy was drugged now, but the expression on Louis’s face told D’Artagnan this clearly wasn’t the time to express concerns.

  “You, also,” said Louis.

  Perhaps it would never be the time, thought D’Artagnan. He walked out behind the priest.

  Alone with the boy, who did not move, Louis said, “I don’t know what else to do. It’s for the sake of the kingdom. It’s possible I share your father, and no one must know. Our cousins, the Condés, they’re great warriors, proud of their bloodline, their closeness to the throne. They’ll fight me for the crown if they think their blood more worthy than mine. You’ll have the freedom to take off your mask once I have you settled. I’ll send furniture and hangings worthy of a prince, I promise.”

  There was no indication from the boy that he’d understood or even heard.

  “You’ll be treated with the honor you deserve,” Louis continued, going over in his mind all that must be accomplished in a few short hours. “I wish I might have known you,” he said. Perhaps one day, God willing, he would.

  THE OLD PRINCE de Monaco was silent, his eyes on Louis, who was walking the outside perimeter of a fortified monastery, vacant except for a handful of monks. It was an old medieval keep, a solid three-story square of stone, with small windows on its second floor and towers in its corners. It sat on the literal edge of the sea, a jut of dangerous rocks on its seaward side. Atop
its ramparts, one could see the forest that covered the remainder of the island. Saints of the church had lived in it once upon a time, converted pagans, and been massacred by the Saracens. It had never revived after that, was a tiny outpost forgotten by the Vatican and by the prince himself most of the time, simply one of four islands on his coast, all small, all mostly uninhabited except by fishermen who made their living bringing their catch into the harbor to sell.

  Dozens of questions had been flung at him by the young king of France on their short sail over: how bad were storms, when was the last time pirates had attacked, did the Pope show any hint of interest in the monastery, were the pirates in the Mediterranean as fierce as he’d been told? Now this king was looking at him with flickering eyes, eyes that bored into him, measured him, set him down again with a certain weight assigned to him, and the prince realized with a start that he’d been asked another question, a question he hadn’t even heard in his abstraction at the rapid, unexpected sequence of events that had begun with the secret visit of the Marshall de Gramont.

  “Are you a man of honor?” Louis repeated the question.

  “I am.”

  “On your honor, no one must know you’ve done this for me. No one must know that I visited you. No one must know the importance I place upon this child. The boy is dear to me, more than that I cannot say, but I will tell you this, he has the beginnings of leprosy—”