by Rock, Judith
Shaking his head, La Chaise frowned and said, more to himself than Charles, “Those two should not be together.” Then he caught himself and said, “What did he say about the body?”
“He seemed indifferent to it. But—I wondered if he’d been following me.”
“He well might.” La Chaise’s look was eloquent. “Stay away from him. For many reasons. He’s just been admitted back to court after a year of exile in Chantilly, with the old Condé, and the king is still none too sure of him, or of his loyalty. The man seems to have spies everywhere.”
“Here at court, you mean?”
“Yes, but not only here. Don’t be seen with him and don’t talk to him. Or about him.”
“What did he do to get himself exiled?”
La Chaise hesitated. “For one thing, a few years ago he wrote letters making fun of Madame de Maintenon and saying the king was only a ‘king of the theatre.’ The letters were intercepted. And two years ago, he fought briefly on the side of the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor against the Turks. The king considers the emperor a much more dangerous enemy than the Turks.”
Charles’s mouth fell open. No wonder Lieutenant-Général La Reynie wanted to know more about Conti. It was Charles’s turn now to hesitate as he remembered gossip he’d heard at Louis le Grand. “It’s rumored that our Most Christian King himself encourages the Musselmen to keep the Hapsburgs too busy fighting to turn west and attack us.”
“Kings weaken their enemies in any way possible.” La Chaise lifted his chin as though daring Charles to say more.
Charles took the dare. “So the rumor is true. And you are saying that ends justify means?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“When the Prince of Conti fought on the Hapsburg side, was it at the king’s behest? To help keep the Hapsburgs occupied—and help them lose against the Turks?”
“Aren’t you forgetting that Conti was exiled from court for joining the Hapsburgs?”
“Exiled to the comforts of the Condé chateau at Chantilly. Hardly a dire punishment.”
“Is not exile from the king’s presence considered the worst punishment a nobleman can have?” La Chaise’s face warned Charles not to answer that question. “In any case, Maître du Luc, none of this is your business. Your business relative to Conti is to avoid him at all costs. And now, if you wish any rest, leave me, go to your bed. Evening will come soon enough.”
Deciding that obedience was the better part of valor at this point, Charles started toward the adjoining chamber. And turned back. “Mon père, I saw the new Prince of Condé just now in the corridor. He was—” Charles paused, but no euphemism came to his aid. “Barking.”
La Chaise grunted unhappily. “This Condé is peculiar even for that peculiar family.”
Sensing that La Chaise wanted to say more, in spite of the order to leave him alone, Charles drifted toward the adjoining chamber as slowly as he could. He was nearly in the doorway when La Chaise burst out, “That is another thing I worry about. The Bourbon lineage. Not one of the Princes of the Blood has the king’s ability to command respect, let alone his self-sacrificing devotion to duty.”
Charles turned and stared. “Self-sacrificing?! When has he ever—”
“Self-sacrificing, maître,” La Chaise said coldly, across Charles’s indignation. “I do not use words lightly. Something you should remember. The king works every day, most hours of the day. With his council, with his advisors, with his officers. He leaves no detail unchecked or unregarded. Not one!”
All of which seemed to Charles only what a king ought to do. “But he also sacrifices everyone and everything else to his own ends. To his blood-soaked gloire.”
La Chaise surged out of his chair, and Charles realized too late that he’d thrust his verbal knife not only into the king but into the king’s confessor, director of the royal conscience. And thereby director—at least in theory—of the royal actions. But it was too late to take back the words, even if he’d been willing to do so.
“Never,” La Chaise said between his teeth, “never say those things again. Not here, not anywhere. If you do and the wrong people hear you, I will not lift a finger to save you from the consequences. I will also see that your own confessor hears of your opinions. King Louis is God’s anointed sovereign, the king God Himself has given to govern France. King Louis is the mystical body of France. You and I and every soul in the realm are members of that body, and he is the head. Rebel against the king, and you rebel against God Himself.”
“I know that,” Charles said unhappily. His conscience was all too familiar with this particular moral struggle. “Of course I know he is divinely anointed, and that gives him his royal body—”
“Not only that. His birth also gives it.”
“But he also has a natural body, he is also a man like you and me. After all, he sins—if he did not, he wouldn’t need a confessor!”
“Of course he sins. But that natural sinning body is subsumed within the anointed mystical body of the king. The royal body can do no wrong. None.” Seething with anger, La Chaise waited for Charles’s agreement. When it didn’t come, he strode to the window and rubbed his hands over his red face. “What is the matter with you?” He sounded almost afraid. “How did you ever become a Jesuit?”
“Mon père, I know that by blood and the holy chrism with which he was anointed in the cathedral at Rheims, the king is divinely sanctioned to rule.” Charles flung out his arms, pleading for understanding, even though La Chaise’s back was turned. “I am loyal to him—I must be loyal to him in order to obey God. But—but how can I not hate the suffering the king causes his people? His greed for gloire, for triumphs, for turning Europe into a blood-soaked battlefield, is ruining France. And didn’t the prophets criticize the kings in the Bible?”
La Chaise shook his head, still looking out the window. “You are not a prophet. You are also not a stupid man, so why do you talk like an idiot? Without making himself feared across Europe, the king of France cannot rule. Our enemies would overrun us—the Holy Roman Emperor, the Protestants, the Turks, the League of Augsburg countries. Do you not know how hated France is for its power? Do you not realize what will happen if Louis dies, as he could easily have done last winter? Who would hold France together? Who would protect it? Not the king’s heir, God help us. The poor Dauphin is not only terrified of his father, he cannot say boo to a goose. But he’s young and strong—he’ll live for years. In that time, if he were king, France could lose everything. Anything King Louis can do now to make France sovereign in Europe and feared across the world, he must do. And I must help him do it.” The king’s confessor rested his forehead against the window glass. “And I must somehow help him save his soul at the same time,” he added, almost too softly for Charles to hear.
Charles was not one iota moved to agree with the king’s actions, as either mystical body of France or natural man. But he understood for the first time the danger looming beyond Louis’s death, whenever it came. And he understood much more of La Chaise’s impossible position and his struggle, saw that it was far more perilous than his own.
“I will pray for you both, mon père,” he said gravely.
“Do. God knows we need it.”
Chapter 8
Charles thought he might faint from heat. He and Père La Chaise were standing together behind the king’s chair, looking over the outsized white plume on the royal hat, waiting for the ball to begin. Around the other three sides of the large salon, members of the royal family and the highest-ranking courtiers were settling in what was called the Ring, whose back rows were raised on wooden forms so that everyone could see and be seen. Lower-ranking courtiers stood wherever they could find room, crowded sleeve to sleeve and bare shoulder to bare shoulder, sweating in their layers of silk and wool and brocade and satin. The women’s painted fans beat the air like the bright, fragile wings of butterflies, doing about as much good toward cooling anyone. Charles smiled as he caught sight of little Anne-Marie de Bourbon
, in a yellow gown with her dog in her lap, sitting in one of the Ring’s raised rows of chairs and swinging her feet, which didn’t reach the ground.
The Polish ambassadors sat on the king’s left. On his right was his son the Dauphin, also named Louis. The Dauphin was said to be the image of his mother, the dead Queen Maria Teresa. Like her, he was blond, plump, and pink-faced. And unfortunately, none too intelligent.
“Where is the Dauphin’s wife?” Charles whispered, speaking Latin to keep his questions even more private. All educated men learned Latin, but only the scholarly kept it up. Courtiers used it little.
“Pregnant again, or so I understand. Even when she’s not, the Dauphine rarely goes anywhere.”
Beyond the Dauphin was a smallish man in a beautifully curled dark brown wig, moving restlessly, gesturing with slender, heavily ringed hands at the crowd. As he turned his head, Charles saw that his cheeks were brightly rouged. Beside him, a large woman in gray satin and red jewels sat immovable as a mountain.
Seeing where Charles was looking, La Chaise mouthed, “Monsieur and Madame.”
Styled simply Monsieur, Philippe d’Orleans was the king’s younger brother. The gray satin mountain was Philippe’s second wife, the formidable German princess called Liselotte.
“Where is Madame de Maintenon?” Charles said softly in La Chaise’s ear. “I thought she would be here.”
La Chaise shook his head. “She makes few and brief appearances at occasions like this. Since her position is not acknowledged, you understand.”
“And Madame de Montespan, Mademoiselle de Rouen’s mother? Or is she no longer at court?”
“Of course she is,” La Chaise murmured, keeping an eye on the white plume. He smiled without mirth. “I doubt she will give up trying to retake the king’s affections while there is breath in her body. But she’s too indolent to bother much about her children.”
The king suddenly stood, and everyone sitting stood with him. He gave the signal for the proceedings to begin, and everyone sat down. A dozen men in the first row of the Ring rose again and bowed to a dozen women. As always, the ball would open with a branle. All the pairs came onto the floor, made their honors of bows and curtsies to the king and each other, and linked hands in order of rank to form a long line. Music began beyond the open double doors of an adjoining room, and the line began to wind its way around the dance floor. Each of these couples would dance a paired dance before the evening was over.
Though Charles had been a good dancer, and part of his work at the Jesuit college was creating and producing the student ballets, he couldn’t, of course, dance in public now. But he loved watching people dance. He did wish, though, that someone would open a window to cool the thick air. He scrutinized the dancers performing the branle. The branle was a simple dance, an occasion to show off rank and finery, and because the occasion was in honor of the king’s daughter and the Polish nobles who had come to negotiate her marriage contract with their prince, the finery was very fine indeed. At the head of the branle was the Prince of Conti, devastatingly handsome in a suit of what Charles at first thought was black satin. But as Conti moved, the bright candlelight struck gleams of dark red and blue from his coat and breeches, and Charles saw that the suit was of a costly weave called, appropriately enough, “Prince.” The cloth reminded Charles of the man—changeable, neither one thing nor the other, beautiful. Conti moved with the grace of Apollo himself, the blue and silver plumes of his broad beaver hat waving as he danced. He was such a magnificent dancer that Charles almost forgot his dislike of the man in the pleasure of watching his entrancing skill.
His partner, of course, was the bride-to-be. Her rose satin gown, covered with a delicate web of snow-white lace, was so obviously meant for a maiden’s blush that the effect was nearly comic. Her curling dark blond hair shone under an old-fashioned net of pearls, and ropes of pearls were wrapped around her bare shoulders, hugged her long neck, and swung from her ears. As the dance went on and the room grew hotter, Charles found himself wondering how much the girl’s finery weighed.
When the branle ended, the dancers separated, men standing in one row, women in the other, and faced the king. They made their honors to him and then to each other, and the men escorted the women back to their seats. But the Prince of Conti, instead of resuming his seat, returned to the floor. He faced the king, standing gracefully in dance’s fourth position, one foot advanced before the other, and bowed deeply. As he replaced his hat, the sound of a foot beating grave triple time was heard, and the traditional second dance of a ball, the noble courante, began.
“King Louis used to dance this himself,” La Chaise murmured, nodding slightly down at the white plume waving above the high-backed royal chair.
As Charles watched Conti stepping and balancing and turning his way through the dance’s sinuous floor pattern, he caught sight of the Duc du Maine sitting near the king’s end of the Ring. Absorbed and wistful, the boy’s shoulders twitched as he watched, his breath visibly catching in his throat as the excitement of the dance reached out to his lame body. Watching him, Charles thought sadly that but for his lameness, Maine might have shown his father’s talent reborn. He clearly had the passion. Conti ended his dance and made his bow. Then he returned to Lulu and, with another fluid bow, invited her back onto the floor.
The two took their places and made their honors. As the girl rose from her curtsy, she raised her eyes to her father, and the fury in them took Charles’s breath away. Then the upbeat of the gavotte sounded and her face became as smooth and expressionless as a mask. Her dancing burned with life; as she turned, jumped, balanced, and posed through the lively gavotte, her feet might almost have set fire to the floor where she stepped. Charles felt her every move in his own body and wished he could dance with her. The gavotte was also a proud dance, and the blue-black and rose pattern of royal order and balance she and Conti wove together coaxed sighs of pleasure from the watchers. When the pattern was complete and they made a final reverence to the king and to each other, Conti took his seat again in the Ring.
With another brief glance at the king that Charles thought must have struck him like lightning, Lulu advanced on the younger of the Poles. Charles felt almost sorry for the hapless ambassador as she gave him her hand—and a look colder than the Polish winter. The Pole, wearing French coat and breeches now, was competent enough at French dances, though his carnation-colored suit clashed badly with Lulu’s rose silk. He was also sweating heavily, and Charles saw the girl flinch as sweat flew from his moustache during a jumped turn. When the dance ended, the Pole returned Lulu, who had steadfastly refused to look at him, to her chair. His face was as red as his carnation coat—with embarrassment as well as exertion, Charles thought—and his coat’s back was dark with sweat. The man’s sigh of relief was audible as he regained his seat, and a woman in a bright yellow wig, in the Ring’s second row, laughed loudly. A ripple of laughter spread through the salon.
But near the door, the laughter turned to protest, and Charles looked to see what was happening. He stared in disbelief as one of his students from Louis le Grand, eighteen-year-old Henri de Montmorency, pushed through the standing watchers, apparently headed for the dance floor. Montmorency’s pride and high nobility had not saved him from being painfully bewildered in the classroom or from being the only student Charles had ever had who was incapable of even the simplest dancing. Charles watched him narrowly. Surely Montmorency did not mean to dance here. Surely even he knew that all the dancing pairs and their dances had been chosen before the ball began. But Charles had learned that with Montmorency, it was best not to make assumptions. He began trying to edge through the crowd toward the boy, but La Chaise pulled him back.
“What are you doing?” he rumbled in Charles’s ear. “No one can leave yet.”
“One of my students just arrived.” Charles nodded toward the boy, as wedged in now by the crowd as Charles was and obviously seething with frustration. “I need to find out what he’s doing here.”
La Chaise frowned. “You think he’s here without permission from the college?”
“He may be,” Charles said. It was as good a reason as any to get to Montmorency, and it might well be true. The closer some boys got to leaving the school, the less they cared about offending the rules they’d lived by for so long.
“No matter,” La Chaise said, “you’ll have to wait till the ball ends. The king brooks no interruptions to these ceremonies.”
And, indeed, as though to underscore the words, King Louis slowly turned his head and looked up at the whispering Jesuits, who whipped off their bonnets.
“Forgive us, Sire,” La Chaise murmured, and they bowed their heads.
The annoyed king turned back to the dancing, and La Chaise’s grip on Charles’s cassock forbade him to move so much as a toe.
To Charles’s relief, Montmorency stayed where he was, even as the final dance of the evening began. Charles was interested to see that it was one of the new English contredanses, in which all the evening’s couples danced facing each other in two lines. He’d heard of this style’s recent import to France but had never seen it, and he was fascinated by the simple but lively meeting and parting of the dancers and the bright swirl of color as pairs changed places up and down the line.
When it was over, he checked to be sure Montmorency was still there. He wasn’t. Which made Charles uneasy, but at least now the dancing was over and Montmorency couldn’t disgrace himself—and Louis le Grand—by trying to dance.
Charles turned to La Chaise, hoping that they could go, and saw that La Chaise was leaning over the back of the king’s chair, listening as Louis talked. Wondering irreverently which royal body was speaking—God’s mystically anointed king or the natural man who begat children—Charles watched the white plume wave above a royal nod.