A few days later, having clearly decided that enough is enough, Tante Anne summons Louis to her private apartments in the Louvre and tells him that he cannot marry Marie Mancini and must put his personal feelings aside for the good of his country and honour the match with Spain. I hear all about it from Mam afterwards when she bursts into my room with her hair in disarray and usually pale cheeks flushed with excitement.
‘Of course Louis wept and declared that he would rather die than give Marie up but that didn’t last long.’ Mam says with a great deal of satisfaction. ‘Anne had locked them both in the room, you see, and refused to let him go until he promised on his life and honour to give Mademoiselle Mancini up for good.’
I’m appalled. ‘That’s terrible,’ I say. Poor Louis.
Mam shrugs. ‘What else could she do?’ She flops down on to a chair and fans her face with her hand. It’s been an intolerably hot summer and even though all the windows are flung open to let in the sweetly scented air from the gardens below, the room is still unbearably warm. ‘I wish that I had thought to do the same when Charles got involved with that Barlow woman.’
‘It wouldn’t have worked,’ I say, which makes her scowl. ‘I’m surprised that Louis gave in so easily though.’
My surprise abates somewhat when Mam takes me to court the next day and I see for myself how miserable my cousin looks. He’s pale, thin cheeked and his eyes are bloodshot from, presumably, hours of weeping. He barely notices me as I curtsey obediently before him and when I glance over my shoulder to see where he is looking, I see that it is Mademoiselle Mancini pale but still radiant in pale blue velvet who draws his gaze.
‘I am sorry,’ I whisper and he looks at me then, his eyes widening in surprise.
‘Apparently it can’t be helped,’ he replies after a moment.
I bow my head. ‘Where would we be without our mothers to remind us of our duty,’ I say, unable to help myself and terrified that I will cause offence.
His lips twitch upwards. ‘Where indeed,’ he agrees.
I go to Marie and she greets me warmly, kissing me on both cheeks and taking my hands to lead me into the window embrasure. ‘He almost smiled when you spoke to him,’ she says sadly. ‘That’s the first time in days.’
I glance back at my cousin, who is watching us with an almost despairing expression on his dark face. ‘He doesn’t look very happy,’ I observe. It’s an understatement of course as actually he looks completely miserable, as if the bottom has fallen out of his world or he’s discovered that he isn’t actually king after all. Both of which are, partially at least, true.
‘He will recover soon enough,’ Marie says, picking at a seed pearl that has come loose on her blue bodice. ‘I give it a week after I have gone before he is all smiles again and has found someone new to flirt with.’
‘You are leaving?’ Mam hadn’t told me this titbit. I look around for her and eventually spot her standing with Tante Anne, both of them glaring over at Marie and me. I deliberately turn my back on them.
Marie laughs mirthlessly. ‘Of course I’m leaving,’ she says. ‘Did you honestly think that they would let me stay after this? My uncle has already made all the arrangements. I’m to go at the end of the week to Brouage.’
‘I’ve never heard of the place,’ I say.
Marie sighs. ‘Me neither. I think that’s the point.’
‘Are you to be married?’
Again that mirthless laugh. ‘Who’d have me?’ Now there’s a sentiment that I can sympathise with.
‘I’ve asked for something to take with me,’ Marie says, taking my hand in hers. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I thought it would suit both of us.’ She touches her fingers to her lips and turns away before I can ask her what she means.
I find out soon enough though when we return to the Palais Royal and find one of Louis’ messengers waiting in the entrance hall. ‘Now, why couldn’t he talk to me when we saw him just now at the palace?’ Mam tuts to herself as she opens the sealed note that the messenger hands to her. He winks at me and I hide behind her. ‘Oh.’ She crushes the note into her palm and I see that she has gone very pale.
‘What is it Mam?’ I try to take her arm but she shakes me off and hastens up the stairs to her bedchamber, which overlooks the courtyard. She slams the door behind her but I open it and follow her inside. The heavy crimson brocade curtains are still drawn and the room is gloomy and smells of rose perfume and lavender hair pomade. ‘What is it? What does Louis want?’
She’s opened the velvet covered jewellery box that contains her few remaining trinkets and is delving inside as if looking for something. I half expect her to shout at me for following her but instead she just sadly shakes her head. ‘He wants this.’ She brings out her beautiful pearl necklace. ‘I was keeping it for you.’
I steal across the room and put my arm around her. ‘We need the money though, don’t we?’ I ask. Marie’s remark earlier on makes perfect sense now - she asked Louis for Mam’s necklace in full knowledge that it is worth the small fortune that Mam and I need to keep going.
Mam nods. ‘There’s just never enough money,’ she says. ‘It was foolish of me to buy Colombes as I did but we needed somewhere of our very own, didn’t we, Minette?’ She starts to cry. ‘I kept these though because my mother gave them to me when I left France to be married to your father and I hoped one day to give them to you on your own wedding day.’
I kiss her wet cheek. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say as cheerfully as I can, even though I feel cold and hollow inside. ‘Feeding ourselves now is much more important than making plans for a wedding day that might never happen.’
‘Are you sure?’ Mam sounds doubtful. ‘We can probably manage for a few more months.’
‘I’m absolutely certain,’ I lie. ‘Only, let me put them on just once to see what they look like.’ Mam laughs then pushes back my hair and fastens the necklace around my neck for the first and last time. I stare at myself rapturously in the mirror, turning this way and that to admire the luxurious silken sheen of the pearls against my skin and copper hair. I look like a princess. No, a queen.
‘Oh, Minette,’ Mam says on a sigh. She’s clasped her hands together and I can tell that she’s on the verge of crying again. ‘I can hardly bear to see Mademoiselle Mancini wearing my pearls instead of you.’
‘Well, you won’t be seeing her wearing anything as she’s leaving court at the end of the week,’ I say grumpily, reaching up to take the necklace off before my resolution can waver and I end up begging Mam to let us keep it.
Mam sees my hesitation and looks sad and a little ashamed. ‘I promise that one day you will have finer pearls than this,’ she says. I wish it were true.
Mademoiselle Mancini leaves court in high style a few days later with Mam’s pearls fastened around her neck, a spaniel pup bred from one of the Queen’s own dogs tucked beneath her arm and, it’s rumoured, all of Louis’ love letters tied up with blue velvet ribbons in a locked trunk to be used if she is ever in need of money. Her unmarried sisters, pretty Marie-Anne and impudent little Hortense go with her. Louis stands at a window to watch them go, tears streaming down his cheeks and one hand raised in eternal farewell. No one dares go to him or try to offer any comfort. What could they say anyway? How does one comfort a king who has not been allowed to have his own way?
The following evening, Anne-Marie hosts a grand ball in her apartments at the Palais du Luxembourg, which is now known as the Palais d’Orléans as it has become the principal Parisian residence of my ramshackle and frequently disgraced uncle Gaston, Duc d’Orléans and his family. It’s whispered that having a ball at such a time is in rather poor taste but for once I am on Anne-Marie’s side as it was all planned months ago and she could hardly cancel the whole thing just because Marie has left court.
However, it has to be said that Anne-Marie herself doesn’t help matters much by striding about court and crowing that at least now she won’t have to put up with the undignified spectacle of Louis
and Marie necking in her window embrasures. She never did learn when to keep her mouth shut.
Desperate for diversion after what has proved to be a very gloomy few days, the whole court flocks south of the Seine to attend the ball, jamming the bridges over the river with their splendid, gilt embellished carriages and causing an immense traffic jam around the Sorbonne. Mam hates to be kept waiting and pulls down the blind and glowers as we wait for the carriages ahead to start moving but I am too excited to care.
I’m wearing a new dress, sent all the way from my sister Mary in Holland. It’s a pale green silk with seed pearls on the bodice and fine lace at the elbows and bosom. It feels almost too grand, considering that we are on the brink of financial disaster and I know that I really ought to have sold it and worn one of my old frocks instead but as soon as I set eyes on the soft, shimmering silk, I knew that I could not bear to see it worn by someone else.
Mistress Stewart’s little girls are waiting in the hall when we leave and they both stare at me in open mouthed admiration as I pull on my heavy black evening cloak and do one final twirl in front of the tall mirror that hangs above the fireplace. ‘You look beautiful,’ the younger girl, Frances breathes and I smile and give her a kiss. She’ll be a beauty herself one day, in the same mould as Athénaïs de Rochechouart - all tumbling auburn curls, flushed cheeks and sleepy hazel eyes.
The carriage begins to move and Mam gives a tight lipped smile. ‘Finally.’ She pushes the blind up a little and I lean forward in my seat to peer out at the busy Parisian streets as we creak and sway on our way to the palace. Crossing the river and seeing a different part of Paris is a rare treat for me and I try to take in as much as I can - the gaily decorated shops; the Sorbonne students in their shabby robes, with piles of books under their arms; pretty rosy cheeked shop girls strolling arm in arm down the streets, waving and grinning at the carriages as they go past and everywhere the noise and tumult of a city that is shutting up shop for the day and preparing for an evening of leisurely fun.
As always it strikes me as strange that unlike my cousins and mother, I am not a natural born and bred Parisienne. I’ve never really known anywhere else, try as I might to remember what little snatches I can of my life in England before Lady Morton smuggled me out and I’ve lived here for so long now that I feel like the city is somehow a part of me. I would be bereft to leave even though I know that really my place is elsewhere and that if things had turned out differently then I would have been raised in London as an English princess like my sisters.
‘There is no finer city in all the world,’ Mam says, almost as if she has read my thoughts.
‘Not even London?’ I ask with a smile.
Mam grimaces. ‘Certainly not,’ she says. ‘London is a mean little city with narrow dirty streets and rickety wooden houses and a filthy river flowing slowly through its heart. It’s in no way comparable to our beautiful Paris.’ Of course, having been born here, in the Louvre no less, she would say that, wouldn’t she? ‘You should hear the way that Londoners speak,’ she continues, ‘with their flat vowels and stupid jokes and total lack of respect for their betters.’
I turn away. Perhaps it’s for the best that we can’t go back; Mam would have us at war again within hours of setting foot in England.
Our carriage picks up pace and before we know it, we have arrived at the palace, which has flaming beacons lining the drive and dozens of liveried footmen running busily here and there, briskly directing the guests and ruthlessly ejecting optimistic interlopers. Every single window blazes with light and as we are helped down from our carriage, I hear the strains of distant music floating down from the tall windows high above.
Mam leads the way and I follow her into the vast marble entrance hall then push my way through the crowds up a sweeping stone staircase lined with old portraits of stern faced ancestors trussed up in shimmering satins and stiff white ruffs. The ball is being held in the gallery lined with Rubens paintings that Mam took me to visit when I was a little girl and I smile with pleasure to see them again, this time softly illuminated by light from the hundreds of candles in the huge crystal chandeliers hanging overhead.
‘Aunt Henriette,’ Anne-Marie greets us with smiles and kisses. She’s already had too much to drink and there’s splashes of red wine seeping into the pale satin of her elaborately trimmed gown. ‘Cousin Minette.’ She looks me over. ‘Is that a new dress? It looks charming.’
I don’t like her using the pet name that my family use for me but what can I do but smile and curtsey politely and offer up my cheeks for the kiss of welcome.
‘Louis isn’t here yet,’ she carries on in a rush, waving her fan frantically in front of her red cheeks. ‘I hope he gets here soon so we can start the dancing off.’ She looks around triumphantly. ‘There’s quite a crush in here, isn’t there? It looks like all the court have turned out for my little party.’
Mam smiles politely and murmurs something about it being nice to be so popular but I can’t resist a little eye roll, which unfortunately Anne-Marie isn’t too drunk to spot. She moves closer to me so that I can smell the cinnamon spiced wine on her breath and lowers her voice to a hiss. ‘Perhaps you should have a party at the Palais Royal and see how many people turn up,’ she whispers.
Louis arrives with his mother and Philippe shortly afterwards and he and Anne-Marie dance together to start the ball. She looks pleased as punch to be so close to him and clings on to his arm in the most undignified fashion so that it almost looks like he is actually propping her up. Louis, for his part, barely even looks at her and instead directs his bored gaze far over the heads of the courtiers who have gathered to applaud his dancing. I realise that he is looking at the Rubens paintings of our Italian grandmother, Marie de Medici, so famously defeated and exiled by her own son, and wonder what thoughts of filial rebellion are running through his mind.
I dance with my cousin Edward, who, as always, is full of jokes and florid compliments and then with Lord Jermyn, who talks about nothing but my poor mother and how pale she is looking at the moment. As we leave the floor I see an elderly Duc with notoriously sweaty wandering hands making his way purposefully towards me and adroitly make my escape through the crowd, thinking that I might find a glass of wine and hide in a corner to drink it.
The grand salon that has been put aside for refreshments is a crush of splendidly dressed, over perfumed bodies but I push my way through, snatch up some wine and a few little honey cakes and take a walk through the other rooms in search of a quiet corner to enjoy my feast.
A noise that sounds midway between a laugh and a snivel from behind the crimson velvet curtains in one of the chilly drawing rooms catches my attention as I walk past and unable to help myself, I go to investigate. ‘Who is there?’ I whisper before pulling the curtain aside.
It’s my cousin Philippe looking forlorn and rather tragic in a crushed wig and with spider webs on the shoulders of his lilac satin jacket. ‘I’m hiding from Anne-Marie,’ he whispers pathetically, pulling me inside his curtain den so that we are both hidden from view and rather closer than I would like. ‘She’s started up with that whole Little Husband pantomime again, only this time the Little Husband is me, not Louis. It’s completely intolerable and now my mother has started joining in and saying that perhaps it is high time that I was married.’
‘You and Anne-Marie would make such a charming couple,’ I say, reluctantly offering him one of the honey cakes which he accepts with alacrity.
Philippe scowls at me. ‘You wouldn’t be so quick to joke about it if you were the object of her terrifying passions.’
He looks like he is going to cry so I relent and pat his arm. ‘Sorry, it must be horrible for you.’
Philippe nods. ‘Louis says that he’s going to suggest the match to her father. I don’t know if he’s joking or not.’ He takes the half finished glass of wine from my hand without asking and drains the lot in a gulp. ‘This whole business with Mademoiselle Mancini has unhinged him so much that
it’s hard to tell these days.’
‘Perhaps he wants everyone to be as miserable as he will be once he marries the Infanta?’ I suggest.
Philippe smirks a little at this suggestion. ‘You may well be right,’ he says. ‘He’s so obsessed with doing his duty - it’d be totally typical of him to insist that I also marry some fat nosed horror just so that he can be assured that I am doing mine too.’ He finishes the cake and wipes his hands fastidiously on a lace edged handkerchief. ‘You’re lucky that no one is making you get married,’ he observes as if recalling for the first time who he is talking to.
I sigh and shrug my shoulders. ‘That’s because no one wants to marry me,’ I reply. ‘I think that I will probably end up having to saving face by running away to join a convent like my cousin Louise.’
He smiles then. ‘Please don’t,’ he says, to the surprise, I think, of both of us. ‘I think that I would miss seeing you about court.’ He looks a little uneasy, as if he has said too much and to my relief decides to change the subject. ‘Have you heard from your brothers lately?’ he asks.
I smile then. ‘They all write as often as they can although really none of them are very fond of writing letters,’ I say.
Philippe nods. ‘Which one of your brothers do you love best?’ he asks suddenly.
I’m surprised and a little discomforted by his question. Harry’s face swims instantly to mind, but what about the others? ‘I love them all equally,’ I eventually say.
Philippe looks sad. ‘There’s no such thing as equal when it comes to family,’ he says.
The curtain is yanked roughly back and I turn in a panic, expecting to see Anne-Marie standing there. Lord only knows what a terrible fuss she would make about finding Philippe and me in such an apparently compromising and intimate position. I need not have worried though as it’s only the Comte de Guiche. He looks annoyed to see us both together but doesn’t say anything and just nods curtly in my direction. ‘Mademoiselle is looking for you,’ he says shortly to Philippe, who looks terrified and clutches wildly at my arm.
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