And so I stay, and sometimes it feels as though I am besieged from all sides. Those uneducated girls were to be my salvation and my safety, but I misunderstood the power of a young girl over an aging man. After that little prostitute was banished, I wanted him to promise me that in the future they would stay in town and never again breach the walls of the palace, either in body or spirit. He evaded my subtle entreaties and I know I want something he can’t or won’t give. As he ages he becomes more closed off, retreating behind a mask of guilt as he seeks out diversions that are ever more unacceptable.
This time, at least, there was a satisfactory ending. It also revealed to me what I had long suspected: that even those closest to me are not to be trusted. Perhaps no one is a friend; perhaps no one ever was. Two pieces of coralline, one engraved with an O’M, the other with an E—Elisabeth received her lettre de cachet—nestle at the bottom of the fishbowl.
Friends into enemies, and enemies into friends. Everywhere. We are working on a new alliance with Austria, long France’s staunchest foe. Together, we will stand against Prussia and its growing friendship with England. This new alliance will serve us well: British aggression against our colonies in North America and Africa is increasing, and the Prussians continue to wave their sabers around northern Europe. I fear we are heading for another war.
The negotiations are top secret and only Louis and I, Bernis in Venice, and Stainville in Rome are involved. It is a thrill to keep even the most powerful of ministers, including Argenson, in the dark and insignificant. We work directly with the Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna; she writes me letters and calls me her cousin.
Sometimes I think back to the time, so many years ago, when I made my first political request, to get rid of Orry. Now I seek to remake the boundaries of Europe, if not the world.
If only the silly girls would leave me in peace.
Act V
Marie-Anne
Chapter Fifty-Three
“Oh, I am bored! So bored, bored, bored!” I fling myself onto the sofa, my arms outstretched in supplication, the soft padding breaking my fall.
“Marie-Anne de Mailly!” says my mother in a sharper voice than usual. “Get your feet off the sofa.”
I partially roll over. “But I’m bored,” I whine again. “What would you have me do?”
“You may be bored, but you may not stop being a lady,” says my mother firmly.
I slither down the sofa until my head is almost touching the floor.
“Get your feet down, I can see the soles of your slippers and they are filthy.”
“Only because I have but two pair,” I mutter, sitting up and putting my head back. I contemplate the ceiling above; even the angels look bored. “I shall die, simply die, of boredom.”
My sister, Thaïs, tells me to stop being dramatic, then resumes her intent stitching. Mother is the most placid and refined of women; sometimes she says it is hard to believe I am her daughter, and that one convent produced two such vastly different sisters.
“Why don’t you help Thaïs and me with these prayer cushions?” says my mother, though she knows I hate sewing. “I promised the dauphine we would have at least two ready for the chapel on Saint Irenaeus Day.”
“Noooooo,” I wail. “You know I hate sewing. But, oh! How I wish I were a lady to the dauphine, or even to Mesdames. At least then I wouldn’t be bored. As it is, I am nothing—nothing!”
Thaïs snorts. “I can assure you, dear sister, that being a lady to accompany Madame Adélaïde is the very definition of boredom. Even Mother has been known to complain about her service with the dauphine.”
“But at least you have something to do. You may become friends with the other ladies, and live close with the royal family, and walk first and sit first and have an apartment at Versailles, and oh! But life is unfair!” I pick up a book on the side table, then throw it down with a shudder: Treatise on the Treatment of Parliamentary Treaties.
“Oh, shut up, Marie-Anne. You do talk nonsense sometimes. Mother, what do you think, the dark blue or the light blue here, on this border?”
I roll off the sofa and wander over to Thaïs. “You didn’t ask my help. And why are the acanthus leaves blue? Everyone knows they are green. Sometimes brown.”
Thaïs ignores me and repeats her request to our mother.
“Use the darker blue,” says Mother calmly. “That is how I have done mine.” She turns to me. “Darling, you would absolutely hate royal service. And you talk too much; those in service must be discreet and calm. But I promise, as I have in the past, that I will use my influence to secure you a post, once I have the slightest hope you will be a credit to our family.”
“But I am discreet!” I wail. “I keep secrets; you shall never know what Polignac told me about his sister. And besides, Aunt Diane is the dauphine’s dame d’atour, and she talks more than I do. You once even called her a drunk magpie because she chattered so much.”
“Yes, the poor dauphine, she enjoys Christian suffering almost as much as the queen,” says my mother cryptically.
“And,” adds Thaïs, “it’s so menial, you can’t imagine. Madame Victoire never closes her mouth when she eats, she positively chomps her food like a . . . like a . . . well, like some sort of animal, I should imagine, though I do not think I have ever watched an animal eat.”
“My dear wife, you must not speak so of the king’s daughter,” says Thaïs’ husband, Montbarrey, from a window in the corner of the room, where he has been in deep contemplation of the courtyard below. “It is exactly such talk that will hinder our advancement in life. To serve the royal family is to serve our nation. We have had many talks about this, yet still you persist with this intractable attitude.”
Thaïs gives her husband the briefest of glances, then returns to her sewing. “I do think the light blue here would be better, but I will follow you, Mother.” Thaïs never says she regrets her marriage, but she did once call her husband a squirrel, because he climbs everything in sight, including society. Though Thaïs is the Comtesse de Montbarrey now, she never lets anyone forget she is a de Mailly.
“Have a nut,” I say to Montbarrey, then start giggling at my wit.
“There are no nuts in this room, Madame,” he replies with a stiff bow. “Perhaps you intended the plums?”
“Well, I think service sounds rather fun,” I say, turning my attention away from Montbarrey and rolling back onto the sofa. “Better than boring old Paris, or hanging around at Court with no money for playing games or giving dinners.”
“I do believe, dearest Marie-Anne,” says Mother calmly, opening her sewing box, unspooling a new thread, and squinting at her needle, “that you are the type of person who is rarely satisfied where they are; you have a tendency to think the cake on the other plate is more tasty than your own. If you were in royal service, I am sure we would hear no end of complaints.”
“It’s not true! I like all kinds of cake! And I should be most happy if I were in royal service. But I am not and I shall just die—die, I say!—of boredom.”
“No one dies of boredom,” says Mother mildly. “And once again: sit up straight and straighten your cap; your hair is becoming unpinned.”
“But they do die of boredom!”
“Who has died?”
“Well, I am sure someone has,” I say uncertainly, then I am distracted by a loud smack on the window.
“A pigeon, dear Madame,” says Thaïs’ insufferable husband. “Now splayed on the cobbles below, being approached from one corner by a cat, from the other by a kitchen girl. Who will win, I ask you? Doubtless we will see it in some form on our table tonight.”
The endless afternoon weaves on.
“I am bored, bored, bored,” I say again, to no one in particular. “Only Polignac came to see me yesterday. He told me his sister was caught kissing their cook!”
“Don’t spread gossip, dear.”
I sigh. “Perhaps I will go back with you and Thaïs to Versailles on Sunday, but what I will do
there I have no idea. I wonder if Milord Melfort will be there?” Melfort is another one of my admirers; English, but he hardly smells at all.
“Yes, dear,” says my mother. “That reminds me, the Prince de Conti is giving a grand dinner on Wednesday, to celebrate the victory and return of the Duc de Richelieu. I was told to invite you.”
“Mother! How could you forget to tell me such a thing? And something so important! And Wednesday!” A horrible thought strikes. “Mother, I have nothing to wear! Nothing! Thaïs . . . ?”
“No more loans, not after that incident with the egg sauce,” Thaïs says primly. Even though I am far prettier than Thaïs—she has a rather unfortunate chin and her eyes are too close together—I sometimes envy her. Her husband is a boring midget but still, he has buckets of money and she never has to worry about what to wear. Sometimes, it is as if the world were against me.
“Unfair, unfair, unfair,” I wail.
“Why is Conti inviting Marie-Anne?” asks Montbarrey sharply. I stop wailing to wonder the same. The Prince de Conti is the king’s relative, and Richelieu is one of the grandest men at Court and is now the hero of France for having won some island or other.
“Our dearest Marie-Anne is a charming lady, a compliment to any table,” says my mother, making it sound more like a warning than a compliment. She ties off her thread in satisfaction and smooths her tapestry with an elegant, bejeweled hand. “We need no more reason than that.”
“I must insist, Madame,” says Montbarrey, leaving his window perch to bow in front of my mother, “that you use the powers associated with your name and position to secure me an invite as well. Why, the Duc de Richelieu is one of my keenest admirers! He—”
“Don’t you mean to say that you are one of the keenest admirers of the duke, and not the other way around?” interrupts Thaïs.
“Well, certainly, but he is also an admirer of mine. Once, last year, he—”
“Mother, I have nothing to wear!” I insist again.
“Of course you do. Your yellow silk. I’ll see what I can do,” says my mother to Montbarrey, not looking up from her needlework.
Another terrible thought strikes: “Mother! But I don’t have any Court-wide hoops! Thaïs . . . ?”
“No.”
“Thaïs, lend your sister the hoops as she wants,” says my mother calmly. “At least she won’t be able to spill anything on them.”
“She’ll find a way,” mutters Thaïs darkly.
“But I wore my yellow last time I was at Versailles!” I protest.
“If, instead of complaining and slithering around on the furniture, my dearest, you chose to occupy your time in productive pursuits, you might have stitched an entire garden of flowers on your skirt, or decorated an entire bodice by this time.”
“But I—”
“The yellow,” says my mother firmly, raising her hand for silence. “Really, the peace of these weeks in Paris, when Thaïs and I rest from our duties at Court, must not be marred by your incessant whining and chatter. You’re almost twenty-four, but you behave like a girl half your age. Now, go and find Marie, and ask her to bring more of the dark blue thread.”
I trudge down the stairs to the kitchens but discover Mother has already sent Marie out to the market. I don’t return to the salon but instead go upstairs to my room to contemplate the boredom of my life. The bed is too high for a satisfactory fling, so I climb on it in dejection. This summer it seems all the men of Paris are off fighting the British overseas, or getting ready to fight the British at home, or occupied at Court with thoughts of war, and the Opéra insists on showing only Italian fare, which I find dreadfully confusing.
I brighten at the thought of the dinner next week. Going to Versailles shall be fun, though I must share a bed with my sister. Thaïs likes to eat cake before sleeping and leaves the whole bed crumbed and itchy, and it feels as though we are sleeping with fleas.
The Prince de Conti’s dinner will be frightfully grand. And to have invited me and not Thaïs nor my bore of a brother-in-law! And I’ll see my father, and Aunt Diane and Aunt Hortense, and perhaps my husband; he wrote to say when he was coming back but I can’t remember the date he indicated. I might also see the Prince de Varenne and resume our little friendship, and Polignac will certainly be there, and the Chevalier de Bissy, who was very attentive when I met him last March at the Duchesse d’Orléans’ games party.
I would never be unfaithful to my husband (my mother is very insistent on this), but I like flirting and hearing sweet words whispered in my ear, and the look in men’s eyes, like adorable puppies, when I smile at them. And the presents, of course, though I think I have enough ribbons and handkerchiefs, and little bottles of scent, to last me a lifetime.
I once let Polignac kiss me on the cheek, and for that I received a winter muff of raven sable—I wonder what he might gift me if I let him kiss me on the mouth, or permitted him a bodice fumble? Unfortunately, there is a line that must be crossed if one wants more gifts, and my mother is adamant that I not cross it. She threatens that if she hears even a whiff of indiscretion, I shall be banished to the country so fast the carriage will overturn.
Mother often says that a broken egg can never be made whole again. Though why one would want to put a cooked egg back in its shell, I really don’t know—scrambled is certainly the best way to eat them.
Chapter Fifty-Four
“Sitting, sitting, endless sitting, I shall put up my feet, you don’t mind, dear?” Aunt Diane sits on one chair and puts her feet on another, slipping off her little high-heeled shoes and wiggling her toes in relief. A dim smell of soft cheese rises up and one of her women dutifully waves a large perfumed handkerchief over them. I giggle, imagining my mother were she to see the scene.
My aunt Diane’s father was a cousin of my father, the Comte de Mailly-Rubempré, but I call her Aunt. I am relieved her sister Hortense, the Marquise de Flavacourt, does not join us; Hortense adores Thaïs but never hides her disapproval of my manners. They say Hortense was a great beauty when she was younger, as was their sister Marie-Anne, my namesake, whom everyone says I look exactly like! Poor Aunt Diane was never pretty but I love her best of all—she is the only one who never complains that I talk too much.
We are in Diane’s apartment at Versailles and her woman serves us a cozy supper of round noodles in beef sauce. With Aunt Diane, one never feels the need to be on guard; she is famed as a simpleton, but I think her pleasantly intelligent.
“So very exciting we shall both be attending Conti’s dinner tomorrow,” she says, tucking into the pasta. It’s rather difficult to eat, the noodles like miniature white maggots slipping off my fork; I am glad there are no gentlemen present when I spill some down the front of my dress. At least the jacket is brown, I think as I dab at it with my linen. “At Richelieu’s behest, you know; he said he wanted to meet this young lady who is the very image of Marie-Anne, and just as beautiful.”
“But I’ve met him before, I’m sure I was presented to him, back when I married Henri.”
“He’s a great man, you know, they can’t always remember everyone they meet and your marriage was six years ago. Why, I am sure he doesn’t even remember everyone he has slept with,” Aunt Diane giggles, and tells me a story about a dinner party the duke gave where he invited twenty-nine women, all lovers of his, and seated them all at an enormous round table. “And of course I wasn’t among them, no, not at all, I mean this was in Toulouse, but if it had been here at Versailles . . .”
I giggle.
“Do you think I look like your sister Marie-Anne?” I ask. There are things in life that one can never get enough of, like kittens and candied fruit, and of course being told one is beautiful.
“You remind me of her so, though you are far sweeter and laugh more easily, both traits which only serve to increase your beauty, in my humble opinion. Ah, but she was so beautiful, just like you, my dear, and no time more so than the summer of ’42 when the king fell in love with her.” Aunt Diane’s
voice takes on a wistful tone and she sips her wine thoughtfully. “I remember it was ’42 because that was the year the giant oak—from Charlemagne’s time, they said!—fell down in the park.”
“How romantic that sounds! The summer of ’42!” I sigh.
Diane shakes her head and piles a wobble of noodles precariously on her fork, stewarding it to her mouth with a determined hand. “We were so young then, all of us, the king, Marie-Anne, everyone. Fourteen years! How the time flies.”
“Aunt Diane, do you think naming someone the same makes them look alike?”
“I don’t think so,” says Diane with a puzzled frown. “That really wouldn’t make sense, would it? Think of all the men named Louis we know! But then again, you are the very likeness.”
We stare at each other blankly.
“Now, my dear, tell me all the gossip about your lovers. Is Polignac still attending to you?”
“Not lovers, Aunt Diane! Admirers.”
“Mmm, gallants, admirers, swains, different names for different people, why, when I was young—”
I interrupt her quickly before she embarks on a long winding trip down memory lane. Though we both talk a lot, at least what I have to say is interesting. “Well, yes, Polignac is still attending me and then there is the Prince de Varennes, who is quite charming, and the Chevalier de Bissy, though he is sometimes very confusing, he was talking about his tongue and what he could do with it, but what can you do with a tongue other than talk?
“So, Aunt,” I say as the plates are cleared away and a platter of strawberries is brought, “what is the gossip from you? The dauphine? Mama insists there is nothing interesting in the dauphine’s household, but I am sure there must be something.”
“Well, they are unfortunately more right than I care to admit, for the dauphine is certainly a woman of convention. Her husband is still devoted to her and visits every day, but his conversation and wit are not the most exciting, and of course they are very close with Mesdames, another tribe of tedious young ladies. Almost as dull as your parents, mmm, perhaps I should not say that, but I intend it as a compliment, well, not really a compliment, just an observation, but a true one . . .”
The Rivals of Versailles: A Novel (The Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy) Page 28