‘The masque went well,’ he says to me just as I finally look away. ‘You danced particularly gracefully, cousin.’
I look up at him again, somewhat startled. ‘Thank you.’ Mam and Tante Anne have stopped talking and I can tell they are straining to hear what we are saying to each other.
Louis clears his throat. ‘And Mademoiselle Mancini as well, don’t you think?’
I give a silent sigh. I’ve had this before when my brother Charles took a huge fancy to the gorgeous Duchesse de Chatillon, who is known at court as Bablon, and could talk about nothing else for months on end. It was delightful at first but soon became very tiresome when he began to shoehorn mentions of her into even the most unlikely conversational topics. I wonder if I will do the same thing when someone catches my eye. ‘Yes, she dances very well,’ I murmur as Tante Anne gives a whimper of annoyance behind me and is quickly hushed by my mother.
However, make no mistake. She may be full of conciliatory murmurs and soft denial but Mam is furious on my behalf and she and Tante Anne hide themselves away in her closet overlooking the palace gardens for hours to discuss the situation, which has clearly reached some sort of crisis as it’s all over the court that Marie has declared to her uncle, the Cardinal that she needs only lift her little finger and the completely besotted Louis will make her his queen. My aunt stays for dinner in our cosy little dining room afterwards and she sighs often and casts me multitudes of pitying looks across the dinner table.
‘Oh, that it should be this way,’ she exclaims to Mam when she leaves with her entourage. ‘I’ve never been so disappointed in that boy but you know how headstrong he can be…’
Mam sighs and clasps her hands in front of her. ‘Oh, I know, I know just how it is,’ she agrees with a miserable look. ‘You’ve met my sons, haven’t you?’
And then, just like that, everything changes again when word comes from Tante Anne’s brother and my uncle, the King of Spain that, thanks in part to the urgings of Cardinal Mazarin, he would rather marry his own daughter and heiress, the Infanta Maria Theresa, yet another one of my cousins, to his nephew Louis than see him thrown away on Savoy, a penniless pauper from England or, worst of all, one of Mazarin’s own designing harpy nieces. The whole court is agog with the news while Tante Anne is beside herself with joy, having now apparently quite forgotten that she ever considered me a suitable bride for her son.
‘She’s always wanted a match with Spain,’ Mam says despondently over breakfast the day after the news breaks. ‘Of course, it’s only natural that she should prefer her own niece over that of her husband.’
I nod my head and smile, determined not to let anyone know how upset I am. ‘Of course,’ I say, pushing away my plate and pouring myself another cup of hot chocolate. ‘What does Louis think?’
Mam gives an impatient shrug and picks up one of her little spaniels who has been hiding beneath the table, hoping for scraps. ‘He is apparently delighted, of course. Why wouldn’t he be? A match with Spain would be the answer to a lot of his problems as it would mark the end of the conflict between both nations and also, as you might expect, Maria Theresa’s dowry is likely to be vast.’
I look down miserably at my plate as my mother kisses her dog’s nose and feeds him crumbs of cake and a piece of chocolate. Of course. As it stands my dowry comprises a few trinkets, the debts of my brothers, the shame of my family, Mam’s continual interference and some ostentatiously empty coffers. ‘I wonder what she looks like?’ I wonder aloud.
‘I’ve heard that she isn’t very pretty and has a big nose and fat cheeks,’ Mam says in a rallying tone before reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. ‘It’s such a shame as her mother, my sister Elisabeth, was a true beauty with huge dark eyes and the most beautiful black hair. Maria Theresa certainly isn’t as lovely as you, my dear.’
‘Looks aren’t everything,’ I grumble before gracelessly pulling my hand away and stomping from the room. So much for retaining my dignity and keeping my true feelings hidden.
My room at Fontainebleau is tiny and overlooks the palace gardens. As I fling myself down on my narrow pink damask canopied bed, I can hear the distant shouts of courtiers frolicking amongst the flower parterres and, closer to hand, the whispers of maids trotting down the gallery behind my room, their heavy wooden chopine shoes clattering on the parquet floor. Of course, they, like everyone else at court, will be discussing Louis’ marriage to the Infanta of Spain and I strain to hear what they are saying. ‘I’ve heard that she will only eat chocolate and little birds that she catches in nets that she hangs out of her bedroom windows…’ one of them says and they all laugh. I want to cry.
There’s a tap on the door, which opens to admit my mother, her face pale with concern. In her hands is a cup of hot chocolate, which she places on the little table beside my bed. ‘I came to see how you are,’ she says as I turn my face away on the soft embroidered pillow.
‘I know just how you feel,’ Mam whispers, sitting beside me on the bed and gently stroking my back. ‘I was the youngest princess too, once upon a time.’
I sigh and unwillingly sit up, recognising that Mam is about to embark on one of her stories and that my full attention is therefore required.
‘There was a great ball at the Louvre, attended by all of the court and a few foreign visitors, including two young English gentlemen, one of whom stared most rudely at me as I danced. I pretended not to see him, for I was very shy too in those days, but I couldn’t help looking at him from behind my fan.’ She sighs as the memories come back to her of a pair of much loved silver tissue dancing shoes; the court politely applauding a particularly fine pirouette and a pretty faced young man with an auburn beard watching her from behind a pillar, his sad dark eyes glowing with admiration. ‘He was very handsome, you see.’
‘What happened?’ I ask rather gracelessly.
‘We found out afterwards that he was the Prince of Wales, come all the way from England to see our court but he was not there to woo me,’ she says with a sad look. ‘He was on his way to secretly pay court to your Tante Anne’s sister, the Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, with whom he’d managed to convince himself he was madly in love. I’ve never felt so disappointed as when I discovered that he was promised to another.’ Another sigh, more heartfelt this time. ‘I thought that he had come to see me.’
‘But he married you in the end,’ I remind her.
She smiles then. ‘He did,’ she confirms. ‘His jaunt to Spain came to nothing after my eldest sister Elisabeth, who was Queen of Spain and the Infanta’s sister-in-law whispered to him that her husband would never agree to a match with England and, besides, Maria Anna did not want to marry a heretic prince of a Protestant island.’
‘But you did,’ I say, more interested now. ‘Even though you were Catholic like Maria Anna.’
Mam laughs. ‘Oh, I had my doubts about the match,’ she says, ‘but then they showed me a miniature portrait of him and I knew that I could be happy with no other man.’ She purses her lips. ‘However, if I’d known that his secret trip to Spain to woo Maria Anna would turn out to be the one and only great romantic gesture of his life then I may well have felt very differently.’
‘Did he never do anything like that for you, Mam?’ I ask gently.
She pulls herself together as if suddenly recalling where she is and whom she is speaking to and looks at me with a smile. ‘He never had to,’ she says proudly. ‘We loved each other completely, right from the very start.’
This isn’t actually true. Charles told me once that when Mam first arrived in England as Our Sainted Father’s bride, they fought like cat and dog from the minute they first met. In fact, there was so little love between them that at one point our father started looking into ways to annul the marriage and send her back to France. ‘Luckily for all of us, they eventually learned how to get along,’ Charles said with a sad smile. ‘I suspect that things would have turned out very differently had Papa succeeded in his fell intent.’
&
nbsp; What he means is that without Mam there would probably have been no war, and if there was no war then Papa would still be king and not a headless corpse mouldering beneath the flagstones of Windsor Castle. He would have different children though - there would be no Charles, Jemmy, Harry, Mary or me. I close my eyes and try to imagine what it would be like not to exist at all, but it’s impossible as reality is all around me in the form of Mam’s sweet almond scent, the chattering of courtiers beneath my windows, the singing of birds in the trees and the soft silk embroidery of my bedspread crushed beneath my anxious hands.
‘It will all work out for the best,’ Mam says with rigid certainty and I open my eyes to look at her. ‘Louis may not have been right for you but someone else will be.’
A huge painting arrives at court of the Infanta Maria Teresa and everyone rushes to see it after it is unveiled with a great deal of ceremony in one of the long galleries. The vast crowd gathered around it parts out of the way and watches me as I walk towards it, carefully schooling my face so that I look both interested and unconcerned. This is no easy matter but I am determined that no one will know how much I care.
I look carefully at the portrait, which is full length and dominated by the Infanta’s enormous cream and gold silk hoop skirts which seem to take up most of the canvas space. Otherwise, Mam was right about her nose and cheeks while her prominent blue eyes, pouting red lips and dark blonde hair, which has been elaborately arranged on wires so that it sticks out in rigid ringlets either side of her head, make her look like an unkind caricature of Tante Anne. I peer more closely at the painting, this time noting her double chin, the shy uncertainty of her gaze and, more absurdly, the silly little rows of peach bows, each with a perfect diamond drop suspended from it, that hangs from each wing of hair.
‘She is very pretty,’ I say clearly to no one in particular. ‘My cousin, the King, has chosen well.’ Do I imagine a ripple of applause? I turn and see that Louis is standing directly behind me, a sardonic smile on his handsome face.
‘You never really wanted to marry me, did you?’ he whispers as he bends over my hand.
I can feel my cheeks go warm as his lips brush my skin. ‘I am too small for you,’ I reply, flustered.
‘You shouldn’t be too harsh on yourself,’ he replies, squeezing my fingers before sauntering away followed by a great crowd of hangers on.
I hear laughter and look to the tall windows which line the whole length of one side of the gallery. It’s Armand de Gramont, of course, and he looks at me sadly for a moment before turning back to the young woman at his side. She’s not nearly so pretty as his usual paramours; in fact there’s a certain superficial resemblance to Maria Theresa in her plump cheeks, blue eyes and thin blonde hair, which she wears in sparse ringlets about her plump, bare shoulders. She’s also incredibly over dressed, even by court standards, in pink and green striped brocade with enormous pearls swinging from her ears and chunky diamonds around her neck.
‘Ah, I see you have spotted our latest arrival?’ Athénaïs de Rochechouart (her old name of Françoise has now been firmly consigned to the past) is beside me in a whisper of silk and malice. ‘The new Comtesse de Guiche is quite the beauty is she not?’
I stare at her in shock, forgetting that I am supposed to be radiating calm composure and indifference. ‘He is married then?’ I blurt out.
Athénaïs’ thin pencilled eyebrows go up in surprise. ‘Not you too, surely?’ she says with a laugh. ‘Oh dear.’
I reclaim whatever tattered vestiges of dignity are left to me and lift my chin high as I have seen Mam do when trying to deflect an insult. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I say. ‘I was merely surprised to see that Monsieur le Comte is married, nothing more.’
‘Of course.’ Athénaïs bows her head, but I see that her hazel eyes are alight with mischief. ‘We were all surprised,’ she adds for good measure. ‘Monsieur le Comte has always been so resistant to the marital state in the past. I think everyone had assumed that he either intended to die a bachelor or was hanging out for someone in particular.’ She gives me a significant look, which I haughtily ignore.
‘Is she rich?’ I ask, staring across at the new Comtesse. She has hold of her husband’s arm and is laughing up into his face. She looks deliriously happy. I can’t see his face though as he has turned away from me but I expect his expression mirrors hers, his grey eyes alight with love and his generous lips turned upwards in a fond smile.
‘Disgustingly so,’ Athénaïs whispers before dancing away again. ‘How else could she afford those vulgar diamonds? She looks like a streetwalker. It’s a shame she doesn’t have any friends to tell her so.’
Chapter Twelve
Paris, June 1659
The huge portrait of Maria Theresa travels back with us to Paris and is put on display in one of the grand salons of the Louvre. As far as Mazarin, Tante Anne and most of the court are concerned, she and my cousin are as good as married to each other but, of course, Louis has very different ideas.
He’s in love, you see, and doesn’t care who knows it. The polite discretion that has always been his watchword in the past has been flung aside in favour of soft sighs, longing looks and wearing his heart, the greatest prize at court, softly glimmering like the richest ruby, on his silken sleeve.
But who is the object of his ardour? Surely you can guess. She wanders the beautiful rooms of the palace with her exquisite head held high, well aware that everyone is asking ‘Why her? Why not someone more beautiful?’ But then she smiles and everyone understands why it has to be her rather than any of the other girls at court, the ones who cluster around Louis and shriek with laughter, tossing back their pretty ringlets, at his every witticism, whether its funny or not. Marie never laughs at him though, she just turns away and looks bored, sometimes even pained.
‘He needs to learn that he isn’t very funny,’ she whispers to me. ‘They’ve led him to believe that he is some sort of wit. It’s really not fair.’
Gradually the joking stops and Louis begins to look thin, sad and anxious, as if he’s literally wasting away for her approval. The whisper goes around court that he’s not sleeping, that he’s barely touching his food, that he’s threatened to abdicate if her uncle Mazarin doesn’t give his permission for their marriage.
There’s an incident on an outing to Bois le Vicomte when his sword crushes her hand as they are walking together down the avenue and Louis immediately reacts to Marie’s cry of pain by taking off the sword and throwing it to the ground. There’s a silence as everyone present stares at them and then a buzz of chatter and laughter as everyone discusses what this could possibly mean.
‘The problem is that girls today simply don’t know their place,’ Tante Anne says with an exasperated sigh when she comes to visit us at the Palais Royal the next day. ‘In the past, she would have become his mistress and then nothing more would have come of the matter.’
‘I’m not sure that the Cardinal would be very pleased about that,’ Mam points out. ‘He must surely plan to make a splendid match for Marie one day.’
Tante Anne smiles then. ‘Ah, the poor Cardinal,’ she says with a tiny flutter of her fine white hands. ‘You must admit, my dear Henriette, that he has behaved in the most exemplary manner during this whole affair. A lesser man would have leapt at the opportunity to plant his niece upon the throne but he has been even less in favour of the match than I, if such a thing is possible.’
‘History tells us that nothing good can come of such ambition,’ Mam reminds her. ‘The Cardinal has probably realised this.’
‘Very true,’ Tante Anne agrees before turning towards me and patting my hand. ‘At least we know that our own dear girl wouldn’t behave in such a disgraceful way.’
Her own dear girl? I feel suddenly uneasy. Louis may be off the cards so what else do they have in mind for me?
‘Did you know that the Mancini girl’s own mother told the Cardinal on her deathbed that a sorceress,’ at this point Tante Anne crosses
herself and looks very disapproving, ’predicted that Marie would cause a great deal of trouble in the world and begged him to shut the girl up in a convent and throw away the key.’
‘If only he had paid her some heed,’ Mam says with a cautious look at me as I quickly look down at the embroidery lying forgotten across my lap and pretend that I’m not listening. ‘Is it true that her father was a necromancer?’
Tante Anne crosses herself again then lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘It is,’ she says. ‘How could Louis do this to me? To contemplate even for a second aligning the noble blood of France with such a family? With Italians?’
‘I don’t know what is wrong with young people today,’ Mam agrees with her, tactfully not mentioning her own half Italian ancestry or that of Tante Anne’s own husband. ‘You know, of course, that Mrs Barlow claimed to be married to my Charles and even sent a letter claiming that she could prove it.’ My ears prick up at mention of Jemmy’s poor mother. ‘All nonsense of course!’
Tante Anne nods. ‘Of course.’ She rises to leave, her black taffeta skirts rustling elegantly as she moves to kiss Mam on both cheeks and take her hand. ‘May God preserve our boys from these designing hussies.’
‘At least Philippe knows what is expected of him,’ Mam whispers consolingly.
Tante Anne sighs happily, almost completely restored to cheerfulness by mention of her youngest son. ‘Oh, I have no fears at all where Philippe is concerned,’ she agrees. ‘He would die rather than disoblige me.’ I look up from my embroidery to see that they are both looking at me most oddly.
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