Thief of Hearts

by Leda Swann

  How he wished with all his heart that she could have stayed in the country with him forever, but it was not to be. When the King of France called, his subjects must obey - and the King of France had called her back to his side once more. She had wept on parting with him, but go she must. He could only follow after her and hope that in the byways of the palace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, he would find some time to be alone with her once more, grabbing snatched minutes of joy instead of wallowing in their happiness for hours as had been their wont.

  Once he was accepted into the Guard and had furnished himself with a uniform from the money he had borrowed at a ruinous rate from a crafty old moneylender in the Left Bank, he would pay her a visit. He would not present himself to her in the guise of a beggar, all his belongings down to his very boots stolen. Minor gentry though he was, he was too proud for that. He would present himself to her as a soldier, worthy of her respect – and of her love.

  The Captain of the Musketeers was trading blows with one of his men in the practice yard. He raised his eyebrows but did not put up his sword when Jean-Paul dismounted, introduced himself with a few brief words, and laid claim to a place in the Musketeers. “Metin, Metin,” the Captain said, half to himself, as he parried a quick blow. “Now where have I heard that name before?”

  “The Savage,” said the man opposite him with a grunt, as he ducked the swinging blade aimed in his direction. “He’s named Metin as well.”

  The Captain smacked his head with his open palm and put up his sword. “Of course, I recall now. A young fellow with the finest black mare I’ve seen in a long time, and a dab hand with a knife. He’ll be well worth his salt once he’s had a few manners beaten into him.”

  Metin took a step backwards, startled out of the fine speech he had prepared. A man with his name had just joined the Musketeers? Riding a fine black mare just like the one that had been stolen from him?

  The Captain turned his attention back to Metin. “So then, Metin the second, why should I have you then? What have you to offer me?”

  Metin switched his mind back to the job at hand, his ears pink at the thought of being caught woolgathering at such a time as this. He drew his sword out of its scabbard and knelt in the ground at the Captain’s feet. “My sword and my loyalty,” he said, offering the hilt to his Captain.

  The Captain spat on the ground at his feet. “Pah. Any man can promise me loyalty and then run me through when my back is turned. Do you have anything of rather more practical use than a few moldy ideas that wouldn’t fetch ten a sou at the market?”

  Metin flicked his sword into the air and caught it again by the hilt as he jumped to his feet. “I am no coward, to attack a man from behind---”

  The Captain silenced his protests with a wave of his hand. “Can you at least ride better than your namesake? He sits on his fine mare like a sack of potatoes. It’s a waste of good horseflesh.”

  Metin mounted his horse in a swift motion and set it cantering around the practice yard. He would show that Captain that he was not mere empty words. Riding was one thing he could do superbly. His horsemanship had been what had first attracted Francine. She had seen him practicing his stunts in a field close to his father’s manor, and had stopped to watch. He had noticed her interest in him and had performed his best for her – first in the field, and then in her bed...

  Once his horse was in a steady canter, he got to his feet in the stirrups and then, with one swift leap, he stood in the saddle, balancing on the balls of his feet as the horse cantered around the yard.

  A quick flip and his hands were on the saddle, his legs sticking straight up in the air. A somersault later and he was facing backwards. A quick jump and he had landed on the bare back of a horse that was drinking from the water trough in the corner. Taken by surprise, the animal reared up on its hind legs to shake him off, but he gripped her tightly with his knees and brought her to the ground again.

  Only when he had her firmly in his control did he slide off and doff his hat to the Captain, breathing hard from his exertions. He had lost some of his suppleness and agility while recovering from his wound and even such simple tricks as these taxed his still sore chest. “Yes, I can ride.” He held his hand over his chest, trying not to let the pain show on his face. Judging by the dampness he could feel under his fingers, he feared he had torn the edges of his wound open once more.

  The Captain roared with laughter. “An accomplished acrobat and horse thief, I see. Can you fight as well as you ride, or do you prefer to run away on someone else’s horse when the fighting gets too close?”

  Metin felt his face burn with shame and rage at the insult. “I am no horse thief,” he ground out between gritted teeth, his hand resting on the hilt on his sword, his fingers itching to draw the blade on the man he would call his Captain. “Neither am I a coward. I will fight any man to the death who calls me one.”

  The Captain dismissed him with a look of disdain. “Be off with you, you young hothead. You can prove your mettle on the battlefield some other time. Your riding has won you a place in the King’s Guard for now. As long as you ride towards the field and not away from it, I shall be happy enough. Come, Renouf,” he said, as he gestured towards the man he had been sparring with moments before, “take Metin the second and show him the ropes.”

  Renouf shrugged. “Where to first, Monsieur Acrobat?” he called.

  He was tired and his chest ached, but his horse depended on him. He would see to his gelding’s comfort before he saw to his own. “The stables.”

  Renouf nodded in approval and slouched away. Metin limped after him, reins in his hand.

  The Captain scratched his beard idly as he watched them go. “I haven’t done so badly with these Metins. Metin the first is a magician with his knife. Metin the second is a trick rider. I could hope for another such brace of Metins to join the Guard and among us we could carve up a dozen Spaniards before breakfast.”

  There was a gentle tapping on the door. Francine sat up in her bed, instantly wide awake. By the faint glow she could see through a crack in the curtains around her bed, she guessed that it was early dawn.

  She picked up the looking-glass that she kept beside her bed for emergencies such as this, straining to see her reflection in the dim light. As far as she could see, she looked as pretty as ever. She patted her hair into place, arranged the ruffles of her nightgown fetchingly around her neck and smeared just the tiniest bit of rouge on her pale cheeks to give them a healthy glow. “Come in,” she whispered, in a low, deliberately seductive voice.

  The door was turning on the handle before she had finished speaking. The smile on Francine’s face grew wide as the King of France padded into her bedchamber in his nightgown and slippers, a candle in his hand and a small nightcap on his head. At last, the moment she had been waiting for ever since she had returned to Paris from her exile in the country.

  He stood at the side of her bed and looked down at her severely. “I hope you have duly repented of your foolishness?”

  She held out her arms to her King, averting her eyes from the patches of bald pate she could glimpse under his too small nightcap. She much preferred him with his black, curling wig on. Without his hair he looked so shriveled and uncouth, not at all kingly. “Your Majesty,” she said, looking up at him from under her eyelashes like any street coquette. “Dare I hope that you have forgiven me at last for my hasty words? Indeed, I did not mean them. I have regretted them so often while I have been banished from your side. I swear I did not mean to anger you with them. They were naught but a foolish jest.”

  King Louis of France put the candle on the nightstand and snuffed it out with the jeweled candle snuffer. “We have forgiven you for the moment.” His voice was stiff and uncomfortable. “If you do not repeat your folly, naturally. The King of France does not consort with vulgar fishwives, who have ill tempers and loose tongues and no respect for their monarch.”

  Francine’s heart sank. He had not yet forgiven her, that much was clear. Sh
e would have to work on him with all her might were she ever to regain her position as favorite. Still, he was here with her at last, and that was what mattered for now. She would win him to her side again, whatever it took. She would purchase a love potion from Madame Argueille the witch that very day to win him back, though it cost her ten gold pieces or more, and put her soul in peril to truck with such agents of the devil.

  “Did you miss me while I was away in the country?” she asked in the darkness, as he kicked off his slippers with a muffled grunt and clambered into bed beside her. She cuddled up to his chilled limbs, warming them with the heat in her own. “Did you miss your little Francine?”

  He lay on his back with his arms behind his head, cold and unresponsive, ignoring her caresses. “My mind was much taken up with matters of State. I had little leisure in which to miss you.”

  “Matters of state?” She gave a light laugh and nuzzled her head into his neck like a playful kitten. “Sometimes I forget, your Majesty, that you are the King and have such weighty affairs to tend. Here I was banished in the country, imagining all sorts of horrors in my exile - that you had forgotten your Francine, that you were whiling away your hours with another love. All the while you were tending to your duty with all due honor and respect. I will have to apologize for my wayward imagination.”

  The King unbent just a fraction. “I was tending to the matter of my sister-in-law, Henrietta the Duchesse of Orleans. I mislike her correspondence with her brother, King Charles of England, and would have brought her into ways more fitting to the French Court.”

  Henrietta. Damn the woman. She had heard rumors even while in the country that the King was enamoured of the English princess, his own brother’s wife, and sought to make her his latest mistress. She did not like to hear her rival’s name on her lover’s tongue. “Surely the Duchesse is only too pleased to do your Majesty’s pleasure?” she said, the tartness in her voice barely covered with a layer of honey. Heaven knows, she could not afford to give the King a taste of her temper just at the moment, much as she would like to.

  She felt the King stiffen beside her – in all the wrong places. “The Duchesse is proving most obdurate. I am not pleased with her.”

  Good. She hoped the Duchesse proved obdurate for a long while yet. The King had not the patience for a long pursuit. He would soon leave the Duchesse be and seek solace in someone else’s arms – someone who would give him the attention and excitement that he craved. Someone like her. “Do not worry about your affairs of State now, your Majesty. Now is the time for rest - and for pleasure.” She suited her actions to her words, reaching around to touch him in a way that had never before failed to arouse him.

  He pushed her hand away. “Leave me be. I am not in the mood for taking my pleasure.”

  Then why on earth had he come to see her? The King never paid an idle visit in his life – everything he ever did was weighed down with secret meanings.

  He must have sensed her unspoken question. “I have heard a scurrilous rumor whispered in the court that the English princess is a witch and has unmanned me. People whisper that I cannot lie with a woman or give her pleasure any more.”

  Francine shrugged in the darkness. She doubted he had ever given any woman pleasure by lying with her in the past. What was new in that?

  “It is foolish nonsense, but it offends us that they try to make a mockery of our royal personage. I will sleep in your bed tonight to still the wagging tongues whose noise affronts my ears. If you do not want to molder away in a nunnery for the rest of your days,” he added, with an icy glare, “you will say nothing of what has passed between us this night.”

  At least he trusted that she would hold her tongue. That was a good start. If she could but get him sleeping in her bed regularly, it would be a short step to becoming the royal lover once more. Besides, even if she did not become the royal lover again in fact, she would be so in reputation – and that was what mattered. “You can count on my silence, your Majesty.”

  He grunted in reply. “I am weary and would sleep.” He turned over on his side and in just a few moments, he began to snore softly.

  The sun was high in the sky when the King finally awoke. Francine stifled a yawn. She had been wide awake ever since he came to her chamber, plotting how to regain his interest as he slept fitfully by her side, and the lack of sleep was starting to tell on her nerves. As soon as she felt him stirring, though, she turned to him with murmured words of love and welcome. However sleepy she may be, she needed to make him want to stay by her side.

  He barely looked at her as he sat up and stretched and yawned, his foul breath pervading the air trapped in the curtains drawn around her bed. Without so much as a word to her, he clambered out of her bed and padded out of her chamber in his nightgown and slippers.

  Francine rose from her bed and stood at the door of her chamber, watching him as he shuffled down the corridor back to the royal apartments. Her reputation as the King’s mistress would be short lived if the King did not make more of an effort. He did not even turn back to glance at her as he padded off.

  Her only consolation was the look on the face of Count Colbert, a courtier with a fat, pale face like bread dough who had been her sworn enemy from the moment she had first come to court as a waiting woman for the new Queen. His eyes bulged out of their sockets as he came strutting around the corner of the hall and saw her standing at the door to her bedchamber, and the King disappearing off down the hallway.

  “Monsieur Colbert,” she said, acknowledging his presence with a brief nod.

  He gave her a glare of furious irritation, to which she responded with a triumphant smile. The story would be all over the palace before sundown that the King had returned to her bed. If Colbert didn’t spread the news, she would do so herself.

  She was feeling far from triumphant though. Back in her chamber again, the door safely closed once more, she opened the casement window and drew back the curtains of her bed to let in the fresh, cold air. A light dusting of snow covered the ground, glistening in the sun of the cool, clear day.

  Still in her nightgown, she sat down in front of her dressing table and stared at herself in her looking-glass. Barely twenty four, in the prime of her youth, and the King was already turning away from her. She stared at her reflection closely and touched the tip of her finger to her face. There was a wrinkle there surely, that had not been there the night before.

  She threw her pot of rouge on the dressing table with such force that it shattered into a thousand tiny fragments. A crystal bottle of perfume was caught in the fray. It tipped over, splintering the fragile top and sending waves of a strong flowery scent through the room. She swore and rang her bell violently. “Clean it up,” she hissed at her maid, Berthe, who answered her ring.

  Berthe nodded silently and knelt on the floor, picking up each shard of crystal carefully between her thumb and forefinger.

  Francine watched her in fuming silence. She was tired, disappointed, scared, and in a foul temper to end all foul tempers, and she didn’t care who among her servants knew it. She had every right to be furious with the world.

  Berthe picked up the last shard of crystal and ran her hands over the carpet to check that it was all gone. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Madame?”

  Francine shrugged. What help were servants in such a crisis? She needed a witch. “Not unless you know a spell that will recall the King to me.”

  “He was here with you last night, Madame,” Berthe quietly reminded her. “That is worth much.”

  Francine got to her feet and paced up and down the chamber. “It is not enough, Berthe. It is not enough. I did not race back to Paris as soon as he recalled me from my exile in the country for this.” She stomped one slippered foot in exasperation. “I thought he had missed me. I thought he was ready to restore me to favor once more. Damn my foolish tongue. I should never have teazed him so, however much he infuriates me.”

  Berthe opened the casement window and flung the sh
ards of crystal out on to the courtyard below. “He will return to you again, Madame. He always has before. No one else can please him like you can.”

  If only she could be sure that her maid spoke the truth, not just fair words to coax her out of her ill humor. “No other mistress of his is prepared to go so far to please him.” She would do anything for him, anything, to keep him coming back to her bed. Her sex was the one weapon she had to keep him under her thrall, and she would wield it to its best advantage, always seeking out new and exotic ways to enthrall her royal lover.

  Berthe was on her knees now, sweeping the grate. “He will surely realize that no other woman cares for him as you do. No man can resist a woman who loves him.”

  Care for the King? Francine snorted with impatience. She was not such a fool as that. Loving was for fools and servants. She cared for the King only as far as he served her ambition – no more. She had seen what loving the King had brought to his first mistress, Louise. Louise had loved him dearly, poor fool that she was, but the King had cast off Louise for her, who loved him not a jot.

  Louise lived in a nunnery now. Francine shuddered. She would never retire to a nunnery. Not ever.

  Heaven knows she was in no danger of loving the King too well that she would forsake the world when he rejected her. He did not appeal to her in any bodily way. His shoulders were narrow, his calves thin and spindly, his breath stank of the filthy cheese that he loved to eat, and he had rather less than the average man to please a woman with. Neither was he a pleasant companion to be abed with: he was suspicious and grasping, and cared more for a bag of gold than he did for his mistress or her pleasure.

  “I love being his favorite mistress. That is all.” She loved the importance it gave her. Courtiers of both sexes bowed and scraped at her feet, hoping to win her notice, knowing that a word from her into the ear of the King could make their fortune, or send them to the Bastille. The men flattered her to her face while the women whispered darts of poisoned jealousy behind her back. She didn’t know which gave her the more pleasure. She would bed a hundred filthy misers more disgusting than the King simply for the pleasure of being so courted and so envied.