‘You can’t afford me,’ I retort cheekily as I dance away. I’m laughing but really it just makes me feel sad and afraid inside. The problem is that not many people can afford me and those who can, won’t. Perhaps the most dignified course of action would be to join Louise in her convent after all. At Chaillot once, I tried on a nun’s plain coif just to see what I would look like. I pushed all of my auburn hair back beneath the harsh unforgiving fabric and stared at myself in a mirror - seeing a rather forbidding and remote stranger with enormous sad eyes, a slightly too big chin and pursed lips that quivered on the verge of sacrilegious laughter.
‘A penny for your thoughts?’ Edward says, looking concerned.
I shake my head, making my ringlets bounce pleasingly on my bared shoulders. ‘I was just thinking about Louise and how hard it must have been to turn her back on all of this,’ I say. ‘I can’t imagine a life without parties and fun and…’
‘And handsome young men,’ he finishes for me with a grin. ‘You forget that my sister is thirty seven now and it seems to me that she has had her fill of all life’s sweetnesses.’ He looks at me and pauses for a moment as if choosing his next words carefully. ‘I would think it much harder for a young lady of your own tender years to give up worldly pleasures and retire to the cloisters.’
‘I was not thinking of myself,’ I murmur, going a little red as I always do when I lie.
Edward nods as if satisfied, but I know that this conversation will be reported in his next letter home to Aunt Elizabeth and she won’t be pleased at all to hear that I am contemplating taking the veil. ‘It won’t always be this way,’ he says, squeezing my hand. ‘Just wait and see.’
‘People always say that,’ I say with a shrug as I twirl away from him, ‘and nothing ever changes.’
Edward laughs and takes my hand again. ‘When I first met you, Minette, you were a tiny little mouse of a girl in patched stockings shivering beneath a threadbare blanket in your mother’s closet while eating a broth that appeared to mostly comprise braised cabbage and a few sprouts. It was when you were still living in the Louvre and your Tante Anne had been forced to cut your allowance. Do you remember?’ I nod unwillingly, hating to recall that time when Mam spent hours on end staring into space, looking so sad and defeated and we were always freezing cold and hugging our empty, rumbling bellies. ‘I think you’ve come a long way from those days, don’t you agree?’ He nods towards my reflection in the tall mirrors that line one side of the gallery. I’m glorious in a shimmering pink satin gown paid for by my sister Mary with pearls and diamonds borrowed from Tante Anne glistening in my auburn hair and around my neck and wrist. ‘You’re the belle of the ball nowadays, little cousin. The cynosure of all eyes.’
‘Not all eyes,’ I say, glowering towards Louis, who is surrounded as usual by a mob of pouting, preening young women. As I watch, one of them, a chestnut haired beauty with huge blue eyes flirtatiously offers him some snuff on her side of her plump white hand. ‘You’re tickling me!’ I hear her squeal as I look quickly away.
Edward follows my gaze and laughs. ‘Well, well, well,’ is all he says.
When he leads me from the dance floor we pass close to the Mancini girls who stand close together as always in a dazzling little cluster surrounded by the usual ardent male admirers who chatter and preen and kiss and swagger around them, hoping for the merest little nugget of attention, for just one of the sisters to turn her gleaming dark eyes upon him and notice that he is there. Marie winks at me as I go past and I smile shyly but dare not stop. I wonder if she remembers the time I walked beneath her balcony and she beckoned for me to come up to see her.
Her sister Olympe’s drawling Italian accented voice floats towards me. ‘Of course, Anne would much rather see her precious Louis married off to his dumpy other cousin, the Infanta of Spain but while we’re all at war, what else can she do but look closer to home?’
One of the gentlemen laughs slyly. ‘All these cousins! Perhaps they should bring some fresh blood into the family…’
Olympe gives a scream of laughter. ‘Don’t look at me, Monsieur. I am already spoken for! It all falls to our darling Marie now to entice Louis away from the Holy Innocent.’
I murmur an excuse and let go of Edward’s arm before hurrying away, my cheeks burning with mortification. I see Anne-Marie and Philippe standing very close together whispering. Their eyes follow me as I walk past and I’m surprised a few moments later to feel Anne-Marie take my arm and accompany me through the crowds. There’s a grand supper laid out in one of the reception rooms and everyone is slowly making their way there. I can see Mam and Tante Anne ahead of us, their greying heads close together as they walk.
‘And how are you enjoying your party?’ Anne-Marie asks pleasantly and, I notice, loudly enough to be heard by everyone close by. Ever since she came back to Paris, the whole court has been abuzz with scurrilous talk of some great imaginary feud between us. ‘And what a pretty dress.’ She takes my hand and gingerly pats it.
I look at her with surprise. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask her why she is suddenly being so friendly after months of frosty looks and subtle put downs but instead I smile. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I am enjoying the evening very much.’
‘It must be very pleasant to be twelve at last,’ she murmurs with a sidelong look. Ah, here comes the sting.
‘I am fourteen now,’ I remind her, my smile slipping a little to become a grimace. The crowd has thinned out now as they wait for us to ceremoniously follow Mam and Tante Anne into the reception room.
Anne-Marie raises one painfully over-plucked eyebrow. ‘Are you really?’ she says. ‘You are so small still that I would never have taken you for older than twelve.’ And with that she drops my hand and quickly steps through the doorway in front of me.
It shouldn’t matter. It really shouldn’t matter. But it does.
As Anne-Marie calmly walks away to the tables and pops a cherry into her crimson painted mouth, there’s an audible gasp from the courtiers near us and everyone looks from me to her, wondering what I will do and barely troubling to conceal their amusement behind their glittering fans. ‘What just happened?’ I hear someone cry out behind me. There’s a whisper and then a laugh.
‘Minette…’ Edward, kind as ever, is beside me and takes my hand. ‘You look like you need a drink.’ He leads me through the doorway and up to the table, where Anne-Marie is pretending not to notice us although I see her sneaking looks at me from the corner of her eye. She crams another a cherry into her mouth and looks around the courtiers defiantly.
‘I don’t care,’ I whisper to my cousin, my cheeks flaming with shame. ‘I never did care about precedence and boring things like that.’
He nods gravely and hands me a glass of champagne so ice cold that it makes my fingers ache. ‘Your mother cares though,’ he says. ‘It’s not easy feeling dependent on others for your daily bread. She will feel the sting of this very keenly.’ He gives a wry smile. ‘Everyone at court thinks that I married my wife for her fortune. I dread to think what cuts I would endure if she were not so popular.’
‘Or you so handsome,’ I say with a smile and a grateful squeeze of his hand.
‘My mother thinks that our good looks are a curse,’ he says with a droll look. ‘She says that they’ve made my brothers and me complacent and all too dependent on the good offices of womenfolk.’
I laugh. ‘That sounds like the sort of thing my mother would say.’
Edward grins. ‘Perhaps they aren’t so different after all,’ he says before lowering his voice to a confidential whisper: ‘Don’t tell either of them that I said that though.’
Cardinal Mazarin enters in all his state a few moments later and goes straight to Anne-Marie. He’s nothing if not discreet and despite all their best efforts, no one can hear the words that he urgently whispers into my cousin’s ear as her cheeks crimson and her eyes go flinty with rage.
When he eventually moves away, the Cardinal, who has never o
nce spoken to me and whom I know from my brothers’ letters regards us all as a huge nuisance and unfortunate drain on the French royal purse, pauses for a moment and nods gravely to me, his large grey moustache twitching with something that might well be amusement, before continuing on his way.
‘Well,’ I say breathlessly as the crowds part to let him through, his crimson robes a vivid slash of red in the midst of all their glittering finery. He pauses for a moment to speak to his nieces and I see their bared shoulders droop and their pretty faces sink with dismay as he talks. Monsieur le Cardinal generally has that diminishing effect on people. ‘Why do I get the feeling that I’m in trouble now.’
‘We’re all trouble as far as Mazarin is concerned,’ Edward murmurs.
My cousin Philippe sidles up to Anne-Marie as she stands alone and red faced by the table and whispers something to her. He’s not very tall and hops around her like an over eager spaniel, burying his face in her bosom because he can’t quite reach her ear. What a pretty couple they’ll make if she manages to snare him.
Whatever he says clearly pleases her because she gives a harsh peal of laughter and rolls her wide blue eyes towards Edward and me as we stand frozen together on the other side of the table. ‘I completely agree,’ Anne-Marie drawls loudly enough to be heard by almost everyone in the crowded room. ‘Things must have come to a pretty pass, if we are to allow people who depend upon us for bread to pass into a room before us. For my part, I think it would be better if they took themselves off altogether.’
She looks around as if awaiting applause but none comes. There was a time when my cousin was surrounded by dozens of fawning sycophants who would have tittered politely and clapped their soft pampered hands together in delight at every single misjudged, rude and unfunny quip that dropped from her crimson painted lips. Those days have gone though and now she stands alone and virtually ignored, regarded pityingly as something of an embarrassment - an awkward and rather crass remnant of an earlier, less polite age. Everything about her is slightly off from her too loud voice and her brusque mannerisms to her ever so slightly outmoded purple satin gown. She was only away from court for five years but it might just as well have been fifty.
If I wasn’t so angry then I might almost have felt sorry for Anne-Marie as a heavy silence falls upon the company and she looks around in confusion, her blue eyes blinking rapidly as if striving frantically to see through a sudden darkness. Even Philippe steps away from her, his cheeks pale with horror. I see him look quickly across at his brother and shake his head as if to deny all knowledge of what just happened. ‘That’s not what I said,’ he mumbles to no one in particular.
I look at Louis too and to my relief I see that he is almost quivering with anger, all of which is directed at our cousin. As I watch, he turns his head and looks directly at me and in his dark brown eyes there is a warning. ‘Do nothing,’ they seem to say. ‘Stay silent.’ And so I lower my gaze, hiding the red hot rage that burns within them and take hold of Edward’s arm with trembling fingers. ‘I think that this part of the room does not agree with me,’ I murmur to him and he immediately whisks me away from all the stares and shocked whisperings. Behind us I hear Louis’ high heels tip tapping across the wooden floor as he goes to Anne-Marie, who remains still and completely alone beside the table, deserted by everyone.
Chapter Ten
Paris, September 1658
We leave Paris shortly after my birthday party and take up residence at Colombes for the summer, while the rest of the court rides off to Lyons to watch Louis reluctantly pay court to yet another cousin, Marguerite-Yolande de Savoie, the daughter of Mam’s elder sister Christine. Colombe is the French word for ‘dove’ and the grounds that surround the little château are home to several dovecotes where soft white birds coo and gently flutter their downy wings. At night I leave my windows wide open and listen to them as I drift towards sleep. My dreams are tranquil and filled with sunlight and laughter. I left my nightmares behind in Paris.
The summer is hot and long. I spend my mornings having my usual music, art and dancing lessons with tutors who travel out from Paris every day to teach me before joining Mam for dinner, which we often eat on the marble terrace overlooking the gardens. We enjoy simple food: chicken, salad, omelettes, strawberries, syllabub and lemon tarts, all washed down with lemonade or milk from our own dairy. Lord Jermyn and the Duchess of Richmond usually join us and we lightly talk about the latest books, plays and fashion. War, politics and scandal have no place here at Colombes.
After dinner, I either change into my rather threadbare pale blue velvet habit that has been turned up and patched more times than I care to remember and go for a ride or throw off all of my clothes and swim in the pond behind the trees, enjoying the cool sensation of the water as it surrounds me. If it rains I sit indoors with Mam and embroider, read the books that I have brought with me from Paris or write letters to Louise, Mary and my brothers. When dusk falls, the footmen silently light the candles in the salon and Mam will sit at the pretty painted harpsichord beside the window and play and sing melancholy tunes from her youth. Lord Jermyn sits entranced when she sings and I can tell from his rapt yet sad expression that he is imagining himself back at Whitehall when they were all young and carefree together only back then the songs were more lively and less full of such painful sorrow and longing.
Afterwards Mam always asks me to play something more happy and modern and, trembling with nerves, even though there are only a few people present to hear, I sit at the harpsichord and play, my anxious, bitten fingers stumbling over the notes and rushing at sections that ought to be played slowly and savoured.
We have occasional visitors to the château, their arrival throwing our indolent, peaceful household into uproar and making Mam and I roll our eyes in exasperation as we cast aside our summer gowns and garb ourselves again in our heavy Paris silks and pearls in order to properly receive them. When we are alone, I dress simply in pale cotton, linen and silk with my hair in loose ringlets about my shoulders and no jewels at all. For her part, Mam will never stop wearing mourning but here at Colombes she wears mauve and soft pale grey rather than her usual shimmering black taffeta and satin and there is a lightness to her step that you will never see at the Palais Royal or Louvre.
Our most frequent visitor once the court returns from Lyons is Tante Anne, who comes once a week to dine with us, gossip about her friends, complain about Louis’ flirtation with Marie Mancini and get rather tipsy on a potent combination of fresh air and fine wine from Mam’s well stocked cellars. She always comes bearing gifts - an old portrait from the Louvre of some pop eyed and long forgotten ancestor; several pots of lavender for Mam’s bedchamber; an enormous cake doused in orange water and covered with roasted almonds; bottles of rosewater prepared to her own recipe or a pretty new pink silk dress for me. ‘How charming life is here,’ she always exclaims, looking about herself with pleasure as she settles herself heavily into a chair on the terrace. ‘How I wish I could leave the cares of the world behind and live as you do.’
Just once, she brings my cousin Philippe with her. He is dressed as if playing a shepherd boy in a masque in swagged, lace edged and silver trimmed rose pink satin and with matching feathers attached to his wide brimmed hat. Clearly this is what he deems a suitable outfit for a visit to the countryside. He brings the heavy, musky scent of court with him and looks about himself with a bright, curious eye. ‘I thought you lived in a cottage,’ he says at last with a look of disappointment.
He brings with him a box of oranges and an immense bouquet of fragrant blooms from the royal hot houses, both of which he presents to me with a low bow. This is clearly intended as an apology although as usual the word ‘sorry’ never actually passes his carefully rouged and painted lips.
Tante Anne smiles and nods complacently. ‘It makes me so happy to see the young people getting along,’ she murmurs to Mam, who greets Philippe far more coldly than usual. It didn’t take long for her to hear all about what ha
ppened at my birthday ball and both Philippe and Anne-Marie have been very much out of favour with her ever since.
Realising that he isn’t in Mam’s good books, Philippe begins to turn on the charm in an attempt to win her over to his side once again. To my mingled amusement and exasperation, she begins to thaw after just a little bit of carefully worded flattery and by the time he’s moved on to some scurrilous court gossip along with a few well chosen nuggets of criticism of Anne-Marie, his co-conspirator whom he appears to feel no qualms about sacrificing upon the pyre of getting back into my mother’s favour, they are the best of friends once again.
Starved of gossip and the tawdry excitement of court life, Mam’s ladies in waiting, especially the pretty Duchess of Richmond and poor Mistress Stewart, cluster around him, clamouring to hear of the new fashion for carnation pink ribbons or the latest whisperings about the Mazarin sisters. I listen for a while but then decide that I’ve heard enough and slip away through the doors and out onto the terrace which overlooks Mam’s beautiful rose garden.
I close my eyes and lean against the wall while the chatter and soft flirtatious laughter floats past me. I should be inside with the others but it feels safer, more pure outside where the sun warms my shoulders and the air is sweet with the scent of roses, jasmine and lavender.
My eyes snap open when I hear someone coming up the moss covered stone steps towards me. ‘Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves,’ Armand de Gramont says with a smile.
‘Speak for yourself,’ I retort crossly.
He grins, completely undaunted. ‘I wish that all your admirers at court could hear the way that you speak to me.’
‘They’d think it was justified.’ I’m pleased though to hear that I have admirers and long to ask him more about them.
He picks a rose and twirls it between his long tanned fingers. ‘Perhaps.’ He tucks the rose, full and blooming pink, behind my ear then turns and looks out across the gardens. ‘This is a lovely spot. You and your mother are very fortunate.’
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