If Anne-Marie were here now she’d be everywhere at once, striding smugly about the place with her blonde head held high and her shrill voice barking orders at everyone. She’d smile at James, who is the eldest brother of a king, albeit a dispossessed one, and therefore worth noticing then slide a small nod at me, whom she regards as a pathetic rival to her eminence as the most important princess at court. ‘They are going to put you in a convent,’ she whispered to me once at one of Queen Anne’s parties at the Louvre. ‘That’s what they do to poor princesses who can’t get a husband.’
‘She’s not so bad,’ James says and I see that he has noticed my clenched fists. I can’t help it; whenever I think of Anne-Marie I just want to punch something, preferably her face. ‘Besides, if Mam has her way, she’ll be our sister in law one day so we’ll all just have to get along, won’t we?’ For as long as I can remember, our mother has been plotting to marry Charles off to Anne-Marie, while blithely ignoring the marked lack of enthusiasm on the part of both parties.
I shudder at the thought of it. ‘It will never happen,’ I say. ‘Anne-Marie doesn’t like Charles. She says that he is too poor, too dark and too Scottish to please her.’ I begin to count the points off against my fingers. ‘Also his French is too bad, the English drink too much and she wouldn’t like Mam as a mother in law…’
‘And she is too Catholic to please him,’ James murmurs, turning away. ‘He’s no fool. He knows that if he marries a Catholic bride, as our father did and look how that turned out, then England will be lost to him forever.’
‘Too right,’ a familiar voice, warm as spiced rum on a winter’s evening says behind me and I turn with a squeal and hug Charles, who has come backstage with Harry beside him. ‘I fear I am destined to remain a bachelor forever as I don’t like the Protestant princesses from cold northern countries either.’
James laughs. ‘Cold hands, warm heart,’ he says, fanning his own heart with his long white fingers.
Charles pulls a face. ‘Cold hands, cold everything,’ he replies with an eloquent shiver. ‘Anyway, brother, you are close to missing your cue. Cousin Philippe and his dandies are making eyes at you to join them.’ He frowns, his generous mouth turning downwards. ‘Or maybe they are just making eyes at you.’
James blushes, gives his stupid headdress one last pat then saunters off to join the other young men. Philippe turns to greet him with an arch look and for the first time I am struck by how alike they are with the same long noses, heavily lidded dark eyes and sardonically curving red lips. I think that our redheaded Jemmy is the better looking of the two though.
‘I should go back and do my duty,’ Charles says unhappily. ‘Did you know that this ballet is four hours long?’ he whispers to me. ‘Four hours of prancing and screeching and God only knows what other horrors still to come.’ He looks at Harry and gives a rueful little shrug. ‘Mam is in heaven though - she keeps saying that it reminds her of the mummeries they used to perform at Whitehall when we were but twinkles in Our Sainted Father’s eye and before the damned war put a stop to such frolics.’
‘At last we have something to be grateful to the war for,’ Harry says drily and my brothers grin at each other before Charles pinches my cheek and strolls away back to his place beside our aunt. They always talk this way to each other - Charles says that if we don’t laugh every so often at the absurdity of it all then we might all just as well have died too.
There’s a commotion behind us and I turn to see that Olympe Mancini, one of the gorgeous Italian nieces of Cardinal Mazarin has swept backstage on a wave of meaningless noise and fuss to prepare for her role as Music. A gaggle of chattering maids sweep her away behind a painted screen in the corner of the room and there’s a great deal of laughter and catcalling from the gentlemen as she merrily flings each article of clothing over the top as it is stripped from her.
Her floaty cotton and lace chemise lands on the dusty floor just as Louis himself strides into the room to change his costume and the cluster of hopeful young men that has gathered around the screen backs away as he gracefully bends and picks it up. ‘It’s still warm,’ he says, holding it to his cheek.
‘It’s always warm for you, Sire,’ Olympe says pertly, holding his gaze just a fraction longer than is strictly necessary before turning away to let the maids unpin her long dark hair which hangs past her narrow waist.
There’s five Mancini sisters - Laure, Marie, Olympe and Hortense and Marie-Anne, who are a little younger than myself and both still in the nursery. The elder three girls flutter around the court like exotic butterflies though, their dark pansy soft eyes fixed very firmly on the main chance while in the background there lurks their debonair uncle the Cardinal and a dumpy Italian mama who has very little to say for herself as she watches over her girls with smug satisfaction.
The Mancini girls and their mother live in their own enormous apartment in the Louvre. I've never been there but wistfully imagine it to be filled with every possible luxury: soft carpets, beautiful paintings, parrots and monkeys squawking in every room, piles of chocolates and sweet fondant covered cakes in gold platters on the tables and expensive perfumes wafting everywhere. Whenever I walk beneath the windows, I hear the girls either squabbling with each other in high pitched, rapid Italian, playing their guitars or shrieking with laughter. There is never silence. That would be far too ordinary.
Mam and I once saw Marie, the middle sister and least pretty, watering the miniature rose bushes in gilded terracotta pots that line their windows. She was dressed in a gauze and lace trimmed sea green satin nightgown and merrily singing an Italian folk song as she waved around her small pink enamelled watering can, sloshing the water indiscriminately over the flowers, sills and anyone who happened to be walking underneath. When she saw me staring up at her from below, she abruptly stopped singing and grinned, displaying perfect white teeth. ‘Principessa!’ she called, gesturing that I should come up but my mother, her face stony, hustled me quickly away. I turned to wave as soon as her back was turned but it was too late and Marie had already vanished.
Mam doesn't approve of the Mancini. They are too brash, too loud, too new for her tastes. 'I don't understand why your cousin Louis thinks they are all so wonderful,' she says and she looks at me dourly. ‘How can he bear to be around such a noisy pack of young women?’ She sees the time that Louis spends courting the giggling Mancini girls as time that ought to be spent admiring me. For their part, they treat Mam and me with a sort of amused deference, almost as if they are play acting to an audience. Which of course they are.
‘Never mind Mademoiselle Olympe de Mancini and those famous dimples of hers,’ Harry drawls. ‘Who is that?’ He points over my shoulder. ‘Why haven’t I seen her before?’
I look and sigh. Of course. I should have known. ‘That’s Mademoiselle de Rochechouart,’ I say. ‘Her father is the Duc de Mortemart. They are even poorer than us so don’t come to court very often.’ Mademoiselle is wearing the same elaborate costume as the other girls but I can see that her thin gold sandals are scuffed and clearly second hand.
Françoise de Rochechouart, the second daughter of the Duc de Mortemart is thirteen, three years older than myself and already very obviously on the hunt for a suitable husband who can afford to buy her any quantity of new shoes. She stands a little apart from the other girls who are gathered in a great gossiping mob by the mirrors and has her wide hazel eyes fixed on Louis as he leans over the top of Olympe’s flimsy screen and flirts with her while she gets changed into her ridiculously elaborate costume.
Her attention may be fixed on Louis and Olympe but I can tell that she is still listening to everything that is going on around her - she doesn’t immediately turn around but her head inclines a little so she can listen to what I am saying. I wish that I hadn’t mentioned her family’s poverty - I don’t know Françoise very well but I have a feeling that she wouldn’t want my brother who is, despite it all still a prince, to know how poor she is.
‘What a be
autiful girl,’ Harry enthuses.
Will the admiration of the youngest brother of a dispossessed king please her, I wonder. Clearly it does for Mademoiselle turns and favours Harry with a long look before her cherry red lips twitch into a dazzling smile.
She’s lovely, Françoise, with those huge eyes set in a perfect heart shaped face and that long curling corn coloured hair falling about her shoulders. She reminds me of the small jewel like painting of a Grecian goddess by Botticelli that hangs in Tante Anne’s apartments. You just want to stare and stare at her all day long. It frightens me a little too though for if she looks like this at thirteen, what will she look like at eighteen or twenty one when her beauty has fully unfurled like the damask soft petals of a lusciously fragrant, crimson rose? What then?
‘You danced very charmingly, Your Highness,’ she says to me with a nod of her graceful head. ‘You might have been born to play Erato. No one else at court could have played her so well as you.’
Don’t be fooled. That’s how the Mortemarts suck you in. They dance around you with their kindness, their laughing eyes, those mischievous smiles and the secret sly little jokes. They compliment, pat, caress and cajole. They make you think that you are the very apple of their eye, the silver lining to every cloud, the cherry on their cake. It’s so easy to get carried away, to think that you are one of them, that you are somehow special but you’re not and never will be.
I am asleep on my feet by the time the ballet ends and we all stream out onto the street in our fabulous costumes. Louis strides through the crowd with a beaming Olympe at his side, surrounded by a mob of fawning courtiers. ‘If I were not king, I would be an actor,’ he says loudly, making his mother wince.
‘As king, he should be acting all the time,’ James mutters.
It’s a pleasant night but Charles insists upon wrapping his dark cloak, which smells of his favourite lemon and sandalwood cologne, around me. ‘The child should be in bed,’ Mam says and he nods, lifts me into his strong arms and begins to carry me back the short distance between the Hôtel du Petit Bourbon, where the performance was held and our apartments in the Palais Royal. I burrow into his shoulder and close my eyes, enjoying the way the soft curls of his wig tickle my nose. I was sad when he first came home wearing a wig and pulled it off with a flourish to reveal his shorn head underneath. His own long almost black hair was so beautiful. ‘One must suffer for fashion,’ he said with a shrug, seeing my tears. ‘No fashionable gentleman nowadays would be so uncouth as to wear his own hair upon his head.’
Mam scampers beside us, waving her pale hands about and enthusing about Louis’ superb bearing, Monsieur Lully’s marvellous music and how astonished she was by the elaborate and fanciful costumes. A wave of weariness descends over her as we go up the marble staircase to our rooms though and she becomes tearful and maudlin. ‘Do you remember the masques we used to have at Whitehall?’ she says to Charles. ‘I dressed you up as Cupid for one when you were a little boy. Do you remember?’
‘Luckily not,’ Charles says but I feel him smile against my shoulder. ‘I don’t suppose I made a very good Cupid with my blackamoor face and dark curls. Our pretty redheaded Jemmy would have been a far better choice.’
‘You were perfect,’ Mam says almost angrily. ‘Perfect in every way. Van Dyke painted you in your costume.’ She sounds sad. ‘I wonder where the painting is now.’
‘It probably has pride of place in Cromwell’s office,’ Charles replies. ‘I’m sure he finds the spectacle of me half naked and holding a bow and arrow most edifying.’
We have reached my little bedroom and he carries me inside, taking care not to step on the creaking floorboards then gently puts me on top of the bed before clumsily rolling me up into my satin coverlet, which is embroidered all over with roses and gillyflowers. I keep my eyes tightly closed and pretend to sleep, not wanting them to stop talking about the past. ‘Poor Minette,’ he whispers as he teases my crumpled rose circlet from my tangled hair and puts it on a table beside the bed. ‘Her life should be very different to this.’
‘Things will get better soon,’ Mam says. I hear James make a slight noise from the doorway. ‘I have to believe that, Jemmy,’ she says fiercely. ‘Or all this will have been in vain.’
Charles gives my cheek one last gentle pat and then they steal from the room, taking the candle with them and leaving me in the dark. I try to stay awake as the sound of their voices and tip tapping of their high heels moves away down the corridor to Mam’s rooms at the other end but it’s all too much effort and instead I sleep.
Chapter Two
Paris, July 1654
Someone, some slimy accursed creature, has tucked a pamphlet beneath my mother’s rose patterned breakfast plate. It depicts a half naked queen who is clearly supposed to be Mam lying on the ground kissing a grinning man while beside her lies a beheaded king, whose severed neck spurts thick droplets of blood on her tumbled skirts. ‘La Reine Mauvaise’ it says. The Bad Queen.
Harry covers his mouth with his hands and looks quickly away as Mam fishes it out between her thumb and forefinger and with a disgusted noise flings it onto the table between the plates and delicate cups that our morning hot chocolate is served in. I know he is thinking about our father. When the news of his execution first filtered across the Channel to Paris, we were initially told that Harry, who was just eight years old at the time, had been made to watch from a window as his head was struck from his shoulders. We were told that Cromwell had intended this grim spectacle to act as a deterrent to the boy, a warning of the grisly and righteous fate that would befall an unwise king.
It was all a lie, of course. Harry last saw our father the night before he died when he was taken to him with our sister Lizzie by a group of grim faced Roundhead guards to receive his final blessing. ‘I didn’t see him die,’ he told Mam when he first came back to us. ‘I was playing in the gardens when it happened. They came to us later and told us that he was dead. It was so cold that day…’
Our father wore an extra shirt when he went to the scaffold so that the crowd would not see him shiver with the cold and think that he was afraid. Mam cried for hours when she heard this. ‘How like him,’ she kept saying. ‘How like that foolish, wonderful man to think of a thing like that.’ We all know that Mam would have refused to go, would have clung to the door frames and shrieked - not out of cowardice but due to sheer outrage that they should dare to lay hands upon her.
‘La reine mauvaise,’ she says now, softly. ‘Is that what I am?’ She turns the pamphlet over with a spoon, not wanting to touch it again with her fingers, to risk being tainted by its spite and venom. On the reverse it says in bold, sloppily printed letters: ‘La Putain Medici.’ The Medici Whore. There’s a large black thumbprint on the front of the pamphlet and for days afterwards I catch myself staring at everyone’s fingers, looking for that telltale smudge of ink.
There have been two Medici Queens of France - Catherine, who had sloe dark eyes and is said to have poisoned our great grandmother, the Queen of Navarre by making her an unusually unpleasant present of some poisoned gloves and Marie, our grandmother, who was too indolent and lazy to ever bother poisoning anyone. Mam took me once to her mother’s enormous mansion, the Palais du Luxembourg, on the other side of Paris which was designed to evoke the beautiful Italian palaces where Marie grew up in Florence. Inside there was a long light filled gallery lined with twenty four huge paintings by Rubens depicting the most significant moments of her life. My mother put down her little spaniel, which she was carrying in her arms and it gleefully barked and sprinted down the long gallery, its sharp nails skittering on the polished wooden floor.
‘This one shows the birth of my brother, Louis,’ Mam said, pointing to one. ‘And this one depicts my mother’s coronation at Notre Dame.’ She hurried between the enormous paintings which overflowed with florid, vibrant activity and colour, barely giving me time to look at them properly. ‘This one shows the murder of my father a day later.’
&nbs
p; I stared up at the vast canvas, which showed my bearded grandfather King Henri, dressed like a Roman emperor being borne away with an expression of genial unconcern through the air by Jupiter and Saturn, while on the other side his downcast queen, dressed in heavy but still glamorous black accepted the Regency of France during the minority of her son. Of my own mother there was no sign.
‘I was not even a year old when my father was assassinated,’ Mam said in answer to my silent question. ‘He gave me my name and then vanished from my life before I had even had a chance to know him.’
‘Do you sometimes pretend that you remember him?’ I asked curiously.
She looked at me in surprise. ‘What a strange question, Minette,’ she said but then she nodded. ’Sometimes I pretend to myself that I remember being rocked in his arms as a baby. I always envied my brothers and sisters for having so many memories of him. He used to go to their nursery and let them ride about on his back like soldiers. Imagine that.’
‘I wish that I could remember the time that father came to see me at Exeter just after I was born,’ I said, slipping my hand into hers. ‘Lady Morton says that he sat for hours beside my crib to watch me sleep. I pretend that I woke up and saw him looking down at me.’ I imagine it so vividly sometimes that I can almost feel his pointed beard against my cheek when he picks me up and holds me close. ‘Don’t ever forget me,’ he whispers.
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