The Sisters of Versailles

by Sally Christie

  What a strange life! What a strange existence! The day after my dinner with the king, this country (as the courtiers like to call Versailles) was all abuzz and I saw how here, gossip travels faster than a carrier pigeon. Louise’s rooms were crowded with people eager for a glimpse of me. I heard whispers, caught stares, and felt enormously content.

  “They are in vogue, these strange creatures, like those monkeys at the exhibition in Paris.”

  “Novelty and newness; I suppose that has to count for something.”

  “I shouldn’t be so direct, my dear, it’s not proper, but: I just don’t understand. I. Just. Don’t. Understand. Where is the attraction?”

  The snipes don’t bother me at all; I very quickly see that it is just the language of Versailles, one that I don’t think I’ll bother to learn.

  The king likes a small group around him at all times; Louise tells me he feels alone if he is with fewer than four companions. All vie, often in vain, to be one of the chosen few. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people who would give their teeth, real or not, to be included on the magic lists of invites, be it for the hunt, a supper, a night of games. And when one is on the list? What power!

  There are endless petty struggles over precedence, mounted with the precision of military campaigns. The battlegrounds are the pews in the chapel, the sacred stools, the queen’s table, the king’s antechamber. Such things as who may be carried through which rooms, or who should have the honor of taking off the king’s boots, are matters of central importance. And any contact or access to the king, no matter how humble, is considered worth more than a dozen diamonds.

  Frankly, I am feeling very rich right now. I am part of the chosen few, along with all who are fashionable at Court: Charolais and her sister, Clermont, equally evil; the Duchesse d’Antin, whom Louise claims is a good friend, and the Comtesse d’Estrées, both harmless ninnies whose only virtues are their pretty faces and bland, easy conversation.

  Oh, and there is Louise, of course.

  The footmen fluff the white cloth and it descends like snow over the vast gaming table. Outside, real snow blankets the world: we are in the middle of the harshest winter in living memory. As cold as a dead man’s cock, as Charolais so charmingly puts it.

  Outside, there are reports of starvation and even death, but inside, in the king’s private salon, the world is toasty with a fire blazing and the heat of too much hope steaming up the windows. On top of the table the footmen place an enormous cavagnole board surrounded by candelabras covered in golden and green acanthus leaves. The guests gather around the table.

  There are those privileged with entrées to the King’s Apartments, and then there are those that the king has decided may join us for this night of gambling in his private rooms. Many are scandalized that I am here tonight, for I have not been officially presented and am therefore nothing in their eyes. Most refuse to address me, or even look at me. Fools.

  I decide I prefer to watch, since I don’t have money to gamble, and besides, I don’t like games of chance. Silly games like cavagnole, solely dependent on luck and cheating, bore me rather completely.

  “It is perfectly all right if you don’t want to play, sister. You can sit by the fire and enjoy the warmth.” Louise is dressed in a heavy cream gown sewn with blue fur, which she insists is fox but that looks rather like squirrel to me. Charolais sneered at it earlier and told me it was dreadfully passé.

  “No, Bijou, what are you thinking? Mademoiselle de Nesle is our guest here, and she must partake of all the pleasures that we offer.”

  Well, if the king insists.

  I sidle into place between him and Louise, poking her with my closed fan to push her over enough.

  “But, Pauline, you have no money to bet with,” says Louise, slipping around to the other side of the king and displacing the old Princesse de Chalais, who snorts in disapproval and moves down the table, taking a plate of cheese tarts with her.

  “Perhaps you could bet 7,500 livres?” offers Charolais sweetly from across the table.

  “No. I’ll play with this,” I reply as I unhook one of my pearl earrings.

  “Oh, no, Pauline, don’t do that! Those are from Mama.”

  “Ha! We are intrigued, mademoiselle, intrigued.” The king looks at me with admiration. “You are very brave. If you win, I shall arrange for the banker to give you sixty-four additional pearls, enough for a fine choker. Nothing would please me more than to give you a pearl necklace.” I know from the way the king watches me that he wants to be close to me, to touch me. It is the first time I have tasted this particularly feminine form of power, and it gives me a rare giddy feeling.

  “Bijou, you will hold the bag tonight, we all know you are dependable and honest, and you have not the money to be playing again. Besides, I dislike the bad humor you have when you lose.” Louise curtsies and takes the velvet bag, soft and minky like a little animal, and shines with misplaced pride. She told me she lost thirty thousand livres at cards last month, an enormous sum, and a debt that the king keeps promising to pay for her, but hasn’t yet done.

  The king turns back to me: “So, what number shall be your lucky number tonight, mademoiselle?”

  “Well . . .” I search his face for inspiration. We are very close, no more than the length of a candle apart and I can feel the lust rising off him.

  “Fifteen,” I decide, and go to place my pearl earring on the board.

  “Wait. Let me bless it with good luck, for this pearl has the number of my history on it.” He takes the earring from my fingers and touches it to his lips, all the while looking at me. I open my mouth ever so slightly. He hasn’t kissed me yet, but I know he wants to. And I want him to.

  “Ah, Majesty, but that was my pick. I also thought to honor you in that way,” announces Meuse from the end of the table in his high-pitched, annoying voice. “Instead let me honor you by choosing the number of the boar Your Majesty killed this week.” He places his stack of counters on the number forty-eight.

  “Indeed.” The king turns back to me and grins. I have noticed the king can be cold, even aloof, with those he doesn’t know, but once one is inside the charmed, magic circle he relaxes and becomes a very friendly, witty man. Louise keeps insisting he’s shy, but I don’t think he is, really.

  “Now, mademoiselle, would you do me the honor of choosing my number?”

  I raise my fan to shield us from the others, that none may hear my words and improper address. I lower my voice to draw him in even closer and whisper: “King, you will be twenty-nine soon.”

  “Yes,” he whispers back. “And you, mademoiselle, you are twenty-six?”

  “I am.”

  “I believe fifty-five will be my luck tonight,” replies the king, catching my meaning quicker than a wink. “I like the way you think, mademoiselle. Together, we make the perfect number.”

  Louise shakes his arm, intruding on our little world. “Fifty-five? Oh no, dearest, you must play your special number seven.”

  “But all last month that number did nothing for me, nothing. I will change. Sometimes, change is just the tonic that is needed.”

  The other courtiers decide their bets, the Marquis de Mezières ostentatiously placing a high tower of coins on three and thirty-six, announcing to no one in particular that he was blessed with a dream last night in which those numbers appeared. The Princesse de Chalais stops nibbling on a cheese tart long enough to place a bet on number twenty.

  “Twenty—is that for the number of tarts you have already eaten, or for those you plan to eat?” inquires Charolais in a voice as smooth as an egg. The princess observes her with a cold, unblinking eye, then, without losing her grip on the gaze, slowly reaches for another tart. Madame d’Estrées and the Chevalier de Cocq banter obliquely about the number of times they “visited the Fountain of Venus” last month, and decide it was sixteen, though she claims she visited twice without his knowing. Soon, the board of seventy numbers is an uneven landscape of towered coins and porc
elain tokens, low and high.

  “The time has come!” announces the banker grandly, tapping lingering hands with a gold-tipped cane and collecting the list of bets. He gestures to Louise and she spins the bag delicately. All eyes are on her as she pulls a bead from the black velvet.

  “Forty-eight!”

  The young Princesse de Guémené squeals like a pink piglet and jumps so hard that a pearled begonia falls from her hair. “Now I shall have that ruby ring! It has been denied me too long—I knew I would be lucky tonight.”

  The Marquis de Mezières bows solemnly and declares some forgotten obligation, and departs the room with an unsteady gait. The Princesse de Chalais throws a half-eaten cheese tart on the floor in disgust.

  “Ah, I am sorry, mademoiselle, the numbers were not in our favor.”

  I shrug. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Besides, it’s just a game of chance and luck. They bore me.”

  “So you do not believe in chance and luck?” The king raises one eyebrow in amusement.

  “Oh, but I do. How else does one explain the success of people that have no merit?” I look down the table at Meuse, picking his nose while mindlessly rooting through a bowl of dried figs.

  The king chuckles. “Ha! You are so unkind, mademoiselle, so very unkind. Now, if these games bore you—what do you suggest?”

  “Chess,” I say promptly. Madame de Dray was a keen strategist and we spent many long evenings playing together at the convent.

  “But that is not a game for a friendly evening!” declares Madame d’Estrées, contorting her lips into a ducklike pout as she attempts a flirt.

  “Ah, chess—the game of kings. Fleury taught me, many years ago, but I must confess I have lost the knack in recent years. No willing partner, perhaps?”

  “There is a set in the Wig Chamber, sire,” offers Meuse, hastily swallowing a fig. “The gift from the Spanish?”

  “You are right as always, Meuse. Goodness, it has been a long while. But I must agree with Madame d’Estrées; chess is not the game for the group we have here tonight.”

  I don’t murmur that I agree, but continue to smile at him. He hesitates a flinch, then makes up his mind: “But perhaps tomorrow evening—that concert in the Queen’s Apartments does not interest me. We shall play chess, then, yes, with Mademoiselle de Nesle!”

  “Wonderful. I shall polish my plays and I have no doubt you will be in checkmate by the end of the evening.”

  The king licks his lips and stares at me, then shakes his head as though he had forgotten there were others around us.

  “That chessboard is ever so pretty. Such dainty little carvings, made of ivory, I think,” chips in Louise in a rather worried voice.

  The king turns to look at her and for one brief moment it is as though he is looking at a stranger. Then he claps his hands: “But for now, another round of cavagnole.”

  I take the other pearl from my ear, and place it on the one. Why not? Louise jingles the bag again and the air is thick with anticipation and greed as those with the most of everything pray for only more.

  “One!”

  Ha! I clap and spontaneously reach over to grab Louis’s arm and he hugs me back. It is the first time I have ever embraced a man; I don’t think my father ever hugged me, and certainly not a strange man.

  Oh.

  “Sixty-four pearls, for a pearl herself. Mademoiselle, I will see the banker and have your winnings made into a necklace. And I shall add sixty-four more, for your presence here gives me much pleasure.”

  At the end of the evening I walk back with Louise to her rooms. I’m in delirium—perhaps skill and strategy are overrated? Perhaps all you need is luck? And tomorrow we will play chess—alone.

  “You are very lucky, Pauline. The king was in a good mood tonight,” says Louise as we wend our way back through the candlelit corridors to her room, the giant mirrors throwing ghostly reflections back at us, her voice soft because who knows who lurks in the shadows? “It is rare to see him in so fine a mood; usually he is quite melancholy in wintertime. And he was very friendly with you—so friendly. I wonder if it was the arrival of the young Prince of Lichtenstein, yesterday, that put him in such a good humor?”

  Her voice is slightly worried, but hopeful, as if by airing her thoughts she can rid them of unwanted suspicions.

  From Pauline de Mailly-Nesle

  Château de Versailles

  April 3, 1739

  D—

  You know how much I hate writing letters, but I am going to write you a nice long one to apologize for my tardiness. I want to share with you everything that has happened here. It has all been quite exciting. I have met many powerful people. Cardinal Fleury, the king’s adviser, is the oldest man I have ever seen and frightfully powerful even though his father was just a country lawyer or some such thing.

  Mademoiselle de Charolais, the late king’s granddaughter and a complete whore, has pronounced herself my very best friend and showers me with gifts and advice. Mademoiselle de Charolais is dreadfully false—everyone here is, apart from our good Louise—and loves intrigue. I always do the opposite of what she counsels. I even sleep in her apartments sometimes, though I am averse to the lavender she stocks everywhere. Still, it’s preferable to sleeping with Louise; her room can be very noisy at times.

  But I should let you know that my plan is coming along marvelously. The king thinks me the most fascinating woman! I know this, for he said it himself. He marvels again and again that one such as I should emerge from a convent: I tell him it’s because I never listened to a single word the nuns said.

  The king is wonderful. And very handsome and kind. We have become satisfyingly close and I now consider him more of a friend—a good one—than my sovereign. I hope spies or Mother Superior don’t open this letter; it feels strange to be writing thus about His Majesty, almost like using His name in vain!

  I believe he is positively infatuated with me. He says he loves my intellect and my fierce green eyes and the unexpected and sometimes inappropriate comments that come from my mouth (but always, he declares gallantly, always forgiven; for him I can do no wrong). He says I am the most exciting woman he has ever met. Most—all—of the courtiers here are as boring as sheep, so I have no doubt that what he says is true.

  If I can say this—goodness, I hope the spies are not reading this—I am his mistress in all but name and, well . . . I will share more details when I next write.

  The indigo ribbons I’m sending are from Charolais—I don’t have any use for them but I know you will like them. I hope they will make up for the sleeves you sacrificed. She also had a beautiful ivory and strawberry silk fan, and when I suggested to her that you might like it, she gave it to me! So here it is, enjoy it and keep it out of sight of the nuns—I am sure they would consider it far too luxurious and sinful for Port-Royal.

  Show this letter to Madame de Dray—it’s for both of you. I simply don’t have time to write twice. And perhaps Madame de Dray could write back on your behalf? I didn’t understand much of your last letter, and I should like to hear your news.

  Louise is very happy—she sends her love.

  Pauline

  Pauline

  VERSAILLES AND RAMBOUILLET

  April 1739

  The king could not hide his fascination and desire for me, and did not. From the beginning there was no scuttle-bugging down darkened corridors as he had done with Louise; ours was not to be an alcove affair. Openly he sought my company and never even apologized to Louise for his marked change of affection. I didn’t apologize either; it’s not my fault if the king is bored with her and wants to be with me.

  Of course, she is still his mistress and he still often passes the night with her. She is familiar: I now know that the king is a man who clings to routine and stability. At Versailles there is a routine to the routine; the music all sounds the same and the plays are all funny in the same way, or identically tragic. At gambling it is always cavagnole. Louis used to prefer quadrille, but thi
s year it is cavagnole and only cavagnole. I do not see why this should be so, but this is how he likes it.

  How he thinks he likes it.

  Once I am married and my position is assured, I will banish Louise. For now, I cannot deny she serves a useful purpose. Six years is six years and she knows the king intimately, both in body and mind, and I can quiz her endlessly about his likes and dislikes. Though I am sure the last thing she wants to do is sit and expose the soul of her beloved to me, Louise is unable to say no to anyone. This is a deadly flaw at Versailles. Here, soliciting for advantage is a full-time occupation and Louise spends far too much time fulfilling others’ wishes, always with her little fuzzy frown. It’s irritating. People asking her for things, I mean, though I suppose her face is also irritating. Sometimes I step in and put an end to the carping; they do say that blood is thicker than water, and when people disrespect Louise (which is fairly often) it is as though they disrespect me. Which will not do.

  Just yesterday Gilette, the Duchesse d’Antin (whom Louise claims is a friend but who looks more like a fiend to me) darted into our rooms and demanded to borrow Louise’s porcelain stove, claiming hers had been knocked over and shattered by one of her husband’s dogs. Louise, who needs it for heating our chocolate and coffee, was about to say yes when I stepped in and told the woman that we need to drink just as much as she does, and that she could not have it.

  But I’m glad Louise can’t say no to me. I ask her freely about the king, and meekly she replies. She tells me he likes the smell of carnations above all other flowers; that he is only truly happy during the hunt—the morning he killed twenty deer is one of his most cherished memories; how he dislikes Hungarians more than all the others of Europe; how he admires his great-grandfather, yet does not want to be like him, for he vows never to legitimize any of his bastards (though to Louise’s knowledge he has as yet none and certainly none by her). She tells me how he dislikes smelly cheeses, more specifically smelly cheeses from Normandy; how he hates hair powder that gets on his clothes, and how he dislikes, above all else, situations that make him uncomfortable.