The Sisters of Versailles

by Sally Christie

  “I could not make head or tail of it. Her hand is like that of a chicken. What is her news?”

  I make something up: “The Duchesse de Lesdiguières’ rheum is better.”

  “I should like to meet her,” says the king lazily, pulling lightly at a ribbon in my hair. “Your sister, I mean, not the duchess. Though I know the duchess well, from my youth. She is great friends with my dear Ventadour.”

  A distant clap of thunder rolls through the room; outside, all is gray and the rain beats down on the windowpanes. Any more and the river will overrun. No hunting today, or yesterday. Later we will play cards and drink till we are silly, but before the evening we are fastened here in our boredom.

  “You would love Diane,” I say, detaching his hand from my head. I am not a cat. “She is very funny, and very jolly.”

  “What are her physical attractions?” inquires the king, his voice husky in a way I know too well.

  Louise fills the ensuing silence. “She has lovely long black hair and . . . soft skin! Though a little dark.”

  “Yes, indeed,” muses the king, picking at my hair again. “I should like to meet her.”

  “Why not, sire? If she came to Choisy . . . ?” I like the idea; it’s been rather too long since I’ve seen Diane. And I really can’t decipher her news very well, though I am sure she has nothing interesting to say. I’ve heard Madame de Lesdiguières is a rigid old crow.

  Louise nods vigorously in agreement. “That would be wonderful! I have not seen Diane for many years!”

  “And your other sisters?” inquires the king, his voice silky and careful, and a small frisson of fear climbs up my spine. “The young marquises—Flavacourt and Tournelle. We call them Hortense and Marie-Anne, no?”

  “Oh, yes, sire, you should meet them too. They are so charming, and so beautiful,” says Louise fervently.

  I want to reach across to Louise, take the needle out of her hand, and pop it in her eye.

  “So I have heard,” muses the king, finally leaving my hair alone to go and stand by the window. He follows a drop of rain running like a tear down the pane, then looks pensively over the flat gardens, shrouded in misty sleet. “I have heard that the Marquise de Flavacourt is one of the great beauties of this generation. Present company excluded,” he adds, but rather as a matter of course.

  “Oh, yes, Hortense is lovely, simply lovely, we call her Hen, which is funny because she hates eggs, but she is so nice and devout, and Marie-Anne—”

  I cut Louise off before she can do more damage. “Well, Hortense may be passably pretty but her husband is very jealous.”

  The king shakes his head, still staring out the window. “Hotheaded husbands are no concern of mine. The real obstacles are the walls that piety builds—those are inaccessible to even the staunchest of men. I have heard she is very pure.”

  Before I can jump in, he continues: “And what of the youngest? Not as virtuous, I hope?”

  “Marie-Anne is a lovely girl, sire,” says Louise, and this time I want to take her cushion cover and wrap it around her head.

  “She may be fair looking,” I add quickly, “but she is duplicitous and mean.”

  “Such strange words to describe a young girl!” exclaims the king, and to my horror I realize I have intrigued him.

  “Pauline! What a thing to say. When was our Marie-Anne ever duplicitous? She was so sweet, why, I remember in the nursery she used to rescue—”

  “She once burned down a cupboard, and blamed it on a lame maid.”

  “Nonsense!” says Louise softly, her mind turning, as it always does, away from the distasteful; she is like a sunflower that seeks only the sun. “Everyone knows it was Claude’s fault. Look at this new dove I have stitched—is it not desirable? I think I will add another, here.”

  “But we all have our faults.” The king’s voice comes from far away; I know he is ruminating on a family reunion. That will never be. No more Nesle sisters, perhaps with the exception of Diane, at Court.

  “We should have a reunion,” he says with more excitement than he has said anything all day. He claps his hands and the lounging courtiers instantly straighten as though he has stroked their spines. Nangis snorts awake with a phlegmy wheeze.

  “Here, at Choisy, all five sisters and—” At that moment there is an enormous clap of thunder and the Duchesse d’Antin shrieks and drops her cup over her new magenta-rose dress. All eyes and attention turn to her and my sisters are forgotten in a spill of hot coffee and nervous laughter.

  Thank You, God, I say silently to the ceilings. Thank You for the thunder. There are few things in life that I fear, and while I don’t exactly fear my sisters, I can’t say that Hortense and Marie-Anne would be as . . . meaningless . . . as Louise.

  Outside, the rain continues.

  Marie-Anne

  BURGUNDY

  November 1740

  My husband is dead. I never imagined this would happen. He was so young; only twenty-two.

  And now he is dead.

  It was a damp November day when JB fell ill. He had been gone most of the year with his regiment, and had only visited Burgundy twice. Then he came home and suffered for five days in a heavy fever that deepened until the sheets were wet and his eyes looked to disappear inside his head. As the fever rose he rambled and called my name but not as much as I would have expected. He often cried out to Fleurette. As far as I know, none of his female relatives come by that name—they are mostly Charlottes and Louises. Either, I decided, a cherished nurse from childhood, or his current camp follower from Languedoc.

  If indeed the latter, then how sad that Fleurette will be when he does not return and she learns from his comrades that he is dead. I picture a small heavy-breasted woman with long yellow hair, smelling of wildflowers. I wonder about their nights together when he uses her, as I have taught him to use a woman.

  There is a local saying that if you suffer for more than five days in a fever, the end is near. On the seventh day we called the priests and in a few lucid moments JB received extreme unction, and that duty done, he quietly expired. I sat with him in death; he was cold and pale from the sweated fever and looked so young and defenseless. I wished I had been a better wife to him, more loving and less scornful. I wished I had written him more letters.

  His uncle’s widow descended upon the château with indecent haste. I calculate she started the journey before he even died, for she lives at least a week’s ride north in Brittany. Her husband, JB’s uncle, died two years ago and now she is the mother of the heir, a little boy of only seven. She arrived with a brother, flushed and nervous looking.

  They embraced me and consoled me, but the woman could not keep her eyes off my stomach: a young widow can throw a wrench in the most cherished of plans. Just to spite them, I make sure to wear a gown sewn in the new sackcloth style that falls loosely in the back as well as the front. I wear that gown and wrap myself in furs for the best part of a week and raise my eyes to Heaven when I think they are too near to asking me that most private of questions.

  “You are taking this so well,” says the woman.

  Before she married JB’s uncle she was a de Blampignon; everyone knows the de Blampignons are as poor as their name is ridiculous. She has rabbit looks and brown teeth; her brother is pompous and bourgeois. I call them Brown Teeth and Mr. Sweat, for the man drips with perspiration despite the cold of November. Disgusting.

  Finally the village priest, tired of my evasions, confronts me in front of them and I tear up and clasp my stomach and say I will know with more certainty in another ten days. In fact, I already know I am not pregnant—my visitor Saint Maurice has shown me the irrefutable evidence that I am not—but something in me delights in creating anxiety for the relatives and the base hopes which ooze from their oiled pores.

  When their lawyer arrives, I greet him serenely and announce I will not be sure for at least another week.

  Mostly I spend the days alone, reading in my chamber and thinking of the future and tendi
ng to the herbs in the hunting lodge. I like the lodge, a cozy womb of calm and serenity. No one knows where I disappear to; they probably think I am praying for Jean-Baptiste’s soul in the chapel.

  I do not have enough money, or courage, to set out to see the world as I have often dreamed. If I did, I would go to England to see London, and then to the wild coast of Ireland; then I would travel to Canada and see spaces vaster than anything here, and red savages and strange animals. Then I would go to Greece to worship at the site of Aristotle’s birthplace. And then I would go to Java and explore the world of spices, and then . . . so many places to go.

  Widowhood is the one time in a woman’s life when she has some small freedom, but for me there is only one future: I must return to Paris and to Tante Mazarin’s house. If I had a son, the castle and the position would remain mine and I would be in that most envied of positions, a young widow with independent means. JB was not wealthy but there would have been enough here to give me some small independence.

  But there is no child and so there is no place for me at Tournelle. I will have to leave; leave Garnier and the spice garden and my beloved library. I write to Tante, and to Hortense, and to my father’s lawyer in Paris. He promptly comes down and, once it is clear that there is no little JB growing inside me, starts negotiations with the Blampignon pig for the return of my dowry. My pathetic little dowry, all that I have in this world.

  As I expect, Hortense comes as well. I am grateful to her because I know she does not like to travel. She arrives in the carriage that will take me back to Paris.

  “Sister.”

  It’s been almost a year since her wedding and she is lovelier than ever, cheeks rosy and eyes sparkling. “You are looking very well,” I say.

  She smiles and shows her dimples to advantage. “Thank you, sister. And you too, you also look well.” She frowns. “Are you not grieved at the death of Jean-Baptiste?”

  In my letters to her I have only ever played the content young wife, but now I can’t be bothered to keep up any pretense. The last few weeks have drained me of any artifice. JB is dead and nothing will bring him back. I will miss him . . . but not that much. I fear I am as cold as I have ever been. I shrug my shoulders. “I saw him but rarely.”

  “I only see François at most a few times a year,” protests Hortense. “That does not stop me from loving and missing him . . .” Her eyes well up.

  “Not everyone has a love story such as yours, Hortense,” I snap impatiently. I may sound envious but I’m not; I’ve met Flavacourt.

  “Is there no . . . ?” Hortense looks in expectation at my stomach. We are alone, she is my sister, we are two married women (well, one married and one a widow), and yet she cannot bring herself to ask me the indelicate question: Are you pregnant?

  “I’m not pregnant,” I say baldly, and Hortense flinches a little, just a little.

  “Oh, sister, I am so sorry.”

  “I have accepted the situation.”

  “Well, that changes nothing. I came, of course, to bring you home.”

  “Home? I hardly think of Tante’s as home.”

  Hortense is puzzled. “But it is our only home. Where else would you go?”

  “There is nowhere else for me to go,” I say, and where I see only a bottomless void, Hortense sees acceptance and duty.

  What shall I bring from Tournelle; what shall I bring to remind myself of the six years I spent here? My memories of JB; some sweet memories of our time together, certainly.

  Alongside my clothes and memories I pack a set of Molière’s plays, all of Artamène and a few scientific books from the library; neither Mrs. Brown Teeth nor Mr. Sweat look like avid readers. Brown Teeth tries my patience sorely, coming into my chambers on the least pretext and making a show of helping me arrange my affairs, while I know she is only interested in my jewelry. She is trying to determine what belongs to the château and what is mine from the house of Mailly-Nesle. She has a list from the archives that her lawyer, or perhaps mine, has provided but she can’t match the descriptions to the pieces in my boxes.

  I don’t know whether I should keep the jewels that JB gave me, but I won’t offer them back unless directed to do so by her stringy lawyer. In the end I pack them all and leave her only a string of black pearls that I never liked. I know there won’t be a big fuss; what are a few middling pieces of jewelry when the real prize, the château and the title, are now within their grasp?

  A few days before we are to leave, I fall into a deep depression. I am listless, tired, everything is pointless: What does it all mean and what does it all matter? We’re all going to die anyway.

  JB is buried in the small church not far from the château. I sit for hours beside him in the freezing Tournelle crypt, wishing he wasn’t so cold. I read the names of his relatives already dead. Elisabeth-Charlotte, dead at twenty-two. Madeleine-Angélique, dead at seventeen. And my Jean-Baptiste, dead at twenty-two. All of them so young. One day I’ll be dead too, and then what will it matter what I did while I was alive?

  Everyone leaves me alone, assuming I am feeling some well-deserved, if tardy, grief for my dead husband. I lie in bed for two days and cry because I am not pregnant and wish I were, then cry because I am so confused—I never hankered for a child before. But suddenly the idea of a little JB is very appealing. Or it could have been a little girl, though a female child would not have stopped my eviction. But still. I would have named her Armande, after my mother. Now JB is dead without posterity and who will remember that he ever lived? Soon all that remains of him will be his name engraved in marble, and he will lie with his ancestors in the crypt, alone and forgotten.

  On my last day in my dead husband’s house, Hortense drags me out of bed and puts me into the carriage. Maybe, I think, burrowing down into the mound of blankets and cushions, for the roads are cold and bumpy from here to Paris, maybe I can be like this forever, doing nothing, saying nothing, no one expecting anything.

  I will just exist.

  From Louise de Mailly

  Château de Versailles

  December 10, 1740

  Darling Marie-Anne,

  I heard the terrible news about Jean-Baptiste and I write to offer you my deepest condolences. What a tragedy! You must be sorely grieved. I too am in the depths of despair. At your news.

  I know the heartbreak you are going through, that grief that comes when you lose everything. No one understands this better than I. I know how strong your anguish is—to lose all that you loved in the world, to be turned away from all that is familiar and safe, and only because of one dark dash of fortune. That is loss. That is death. And what is loss but a form of death?

  I grieve for you, sister, and I pray that in time you will come to accept your burden. Acceptance is the most important thing, for there is much in this life that we cannot change. In this time of sadness and affliction, I am sure Hortense and Tante Mazarin will take care of you in Paris. You must let me know what I can do to help.

  Here, the king is well, a touch melancholy, as he often is when winter arrives. Pauline is also well; she is very happy with her husband, the Comte de Vintimille. He is a fine young man, despite an unsightly skin condition. Pauline sends her love and her condolences. How I wish you two could be friends again! When we were last at Choisy the king talked of a reunion of all of us sisters. I thought it a wonderful idea! Imagine the five of us, together again? Perhaps once your mourning is over?

  I send you this handkerchief, embroidered with black doves, that they may comfort you in your sadness.

  In loving sorrow,

  Louise

  Pauline

  VERSAILLES

  December 1740

  It has been a year of change and growth, of triumphs and battles, both large and small, most of which I have invariably won. Louis and I have grown closer and he is still very much devoted to me. He has a lot to thank me for; I have helped him make his own decisions and stand up to his carping ministers. Gratitude is a strong foundation for love.r />
  The fight with the Austrians now brews into war. Charles of Austria, France’s cursed enemy, died in October and left only a daughter to succeed him, opening the way for France’s interests in Austria to be asserted. Fleury wants to avoid war at all costs: have us roll over like a lapdog and accept the outrage of a female Empress of Austria. Not all agree with him, and I certainly don’t.

  There is a general called Belle-Isle who has spent much time cultivating my friendship, for he is a smart man and knows where the true power lies. The gossips say he provides two hundred men with stipends, to spread good rumors in his favor. It is a strategy that works. I like subterfuge; I am thinking of employing a verse writer to write positive songs about me for a change, to counterbalance the scandalous drivel. Something comparing me to Athena, perhaps? It’s not that I mind them overly much, the verses I mean, but the king is still awfully sensitive to them.

  Belle-Isle and I both agree a glorious war would be the making of Louis; the king could emerge like a phoenix from the shadow of his great-grandfather (Belle-Isle’s words, not mine; the man is quite the poet) and establish himself as a noble warrior king. Louis would no longer be known as a king who only fights stags and boars.

  “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” repeats Belle-Isle, a hard edge to his voice. The men have been arguing for hours; what started as a simple review of regiment expenditures has degenerated into a polite but tense battle. “We must join with the Prussians and assert our interests while Austria is weakened.”

  “War is the undoing of countries!” Cardinal Fleury repeats in a wearisome voice. “You do not know anything, none of you bullheaded young bucks . . . you have never lived through war and you know not the devastation it causes.”

  You’ve lived through everything, I think sourly. And continue to live; he must be three hundred years old by now. We are in a cozy inner library, hiding from the cold of the council rooms. I leave my perch by the fire to stand beside Louis’s chair. “I agree with Belle-Isle: Maria Theresa’s right to rule is highly questionable, and this could be the perfect opportunity for French expansion in the region.”