The Sisters of Versailles

by Sally Christie

Pauline gave birth to a son! The doctors declared her free of all danger and the baby fine and healthy. Now she is a mother and I am an aunt of the king’s son! How grand it all sounds. Madame Lesdig says I must not get too excited, for these days are not like the old days when the royal bastards all became royal princes. This king, she says, will not acknowledge the child, and I must always refer to him as a Vintimille. Not to worry; I am sure Pauline will change the king’s mind.

  I am impatient to see the child, and of course Pauline. We received the good news five days ago, and now I eagerly wait to hear the name of the new baby. Will she name him Louis? Would the king allow that? The first message said the baby looked very like His Majesty. Madame Lesdig snorted: “Such foolery. The only thing a baby resembles at two days old is a crumpled little crab. More importantly, we must pray it is healthy, and leave such trifles as appearance for later.”

  Perhaps Pauline’s husband will want to name him, in which case it might be a Vintimille family name, perhaps Félix or Gaspard? I hope she doesn’t have to call the baby Gaspard—I have never liked that name. I don’t know why; perhaps because it sounds like bastard, or custard.

  We are sitting in the salon on the first floor of the house, an old-fashioned room with dark red walls hung with gloomy portraits of men on horses. Madame Lesdig is sorting through old letters; when she finds one from a friend who has died, she gives it to me and I roll it up and tie it with a black ribbon and place it in a small enameled chest.

  “So much death, so much death,” says Madame, shaking her head. “But as I am sixty, I suppose it is only natural that half my friends are gone. So many who died so young.”

  I roll a long letter from the Comtesse de Marbois.

  “A friend of my youth,” says Lesdig with a sigh. “From our convent days. She hated birds—was terrified of them really—and then she married a man whose heraldry included a hawk, and her entire home was decorated with them. Quite unfortunate. Poor Clémence.”

  I tie it with a ribbon and pop it into the coffin box of dead letters.

  “Dead in an accident, she was only twenty-two—or was it thirty-two? The wheels rolled over a flock of chickens and the carriage overturned.”

  I giggle. “Death by chicken!”

  Madame de Lesdig tuts. “Don’t be disrespectful, Diane-Adelaide. Here is another from Marie-Clémence. Roll them together. Maurice, get down.” She takes a large ginger tom off the table and deposits him on the floor, where he slinks off into the shadows. I don’t ask what she’s going to do with the letters in the box, especially as she’s probably going to die soon herself. It’s hard to talk to old people about death, though I am sure she must think about it a lot.

  Then I hear the clatter of a carriage outside on the cobblestones.

  “Oh, it could be news. From Pauline!”

  “Diane-Adelaide! You must remember that curiosity is for cats, not ladies!”

  I leap up and skitter outside, ignoring Madame Lesdig’s pleas for more decorum. It is a footman in the Noailles colors; his face is solemn. Messengers are trained so their demeanor matches their news, and I stop short, something cold suddenly creeping over my heart.

  “Gaspard?” I squeak, before I can stop myself. Is that the bad news?

  The man bows and hands me a letter. I see the black feather, sealed under the black wax. Oh no. The baby . . . Oh no, Pauline will be devastated. The baby . . .

  The floors are no longer as level as they were before, and I walk carefully back to Madame Lesdig. Wordlessly I proffer the sealed note, though I would prefer to burn it and pretend it never came. Madame Lesdig slices it open with one gnarled nail and reads. She closes her eyes, her face marble white.

  “The baby? Is it the baby? Is he dead?”

  “No, dear heart, it’s not the baby.”

  She hugs me and I am enveloped in rosewater and love. Suddenly I wish it was the baby, because I know what she is going to say next. “No, dear heart, no. It’s not the baby. It’s your sister.”

  “But the doctors said she and the baby were fine . . .” I whisper, beginning to cry.

  “She is dead. Pauline is dead. It must have been poison,” Madame Lesdig says. “They do that,” she declares, shaking her head and pursing her lips. “Take advantage of this time in a woman’s life when she is most vulnerable. And the news after the birth was so positive . . .” Now she is crying too and her tears are as real as mine.

  Oh, poor Pauline! Dead. I cannot bear to think of her cold and all alone in the ground. She always hated the cold. And the heat. She hated everything. I cannot believe she let herself die.

  Poison? No, surely not.

  Pauline is dead. My sister Pauline is dead. How can this be? She was invincible, she was supreme, she was Pauline. She was my sister. A force of nature.

  Later we hear more details of her death. She died so suddenly that there was no time for the sacraments. Her body was quickly taken from Versailles, for no one but royalty may lie dead under the palace roof. She was taken to the sacristy in a church in town and left unattended; a mob found her and desecrated her corpse.

  They desecrated her body. Her poor, cold body. Why? Why did they hate her?

  I cry and cry and I think I may never laugh again.

  When she hears what happened, Madame Lesdig is so overcome she retires to her room and stays within for days, anguished at the idea of Pauline dying without last rites. I think, but surely God will understand? If there is no time, there is no time; you can’t stop the night from falling or the sun from rising the next day. But the mobs . . . they tore . . .

  The images I conjure in my mind don’t leave me alone, not for a second.

  To distract myself I mix up my dresses, cutting the bodice of one and attaching it to the skirt of another. I drink too much brandy until I fall asleep, but even in my dreams I cannot get the images from my mind. They tore her body apart. They tore it apart. And cut off all her hair.

  They stuck firecrackers in her body and lit them and then laughed. Why? She made the king happy. She never hurt anyone . . . well, perhaps Louise a little bit, but never anyone else. Certainly some at Court didn’t like her and not everyone at Port-Royal did either, in fact many did not like her. But that was only because they were jealous of her intelligence and her wit, which was quick but sometimes too sharp. She never really wished anyone ill, they were words only, and in her actions and deeds she never did anyone ill. Except, again, Louise.

  It is because she sinned, they say. Her awful death punishment for her many awful sins. But where was the sin? She loved the king and he loved her—how is that a sin? People tell me I don’t understand but of course I do.

  I want the baby to come and live with us at Madame Lesdig’s, but Louise writes and tells me that his father—she means the Comte de Vintimille—will occupy himself with the boy’s future.

  But when the boy is older I will tell him all about his wonderful mother.

  A stray dog wanders from the street into the dining room, followed by several hissing cats. Before the footman can shoo it away, it comes straight to my side and sits and looks at me expectantly. It is looking at me with the eyes of Pauline, and though of course the dog is not Pauline, I feel in some way it brings a message from her.

  “It’s because you are eating chicken,” says Madame Lesdig harshly, but I do not agree.

  I pick up the dog and ignore Madame Lesdig’s horrified cries. I leave the room with the dog and my plate of chicken in my arms. I cuddle it as though it were Pauline and we are children again in the nursery on the fourth floor.

  That night, the cook makes me pigeon pie and sugar tarts and I eat until I wish I could vomit. My stomach hurts it is so full, but my grief is an empty pillowcase that nothing can fill. What will become of me now? Pauline assured me my future was in good hands, but now she is gone and my life must go on, and I do not want it to go on at Madame Lesdig’s forever.

  Oh, Pauline. I will pray for you for the rest of my life.

  From Mar
ie-Anne de la Tournelle

  Hôtel de Mazarin, Paris

  September 20, 1741

  Dear Diane,

  Hortense insisted I write to you; she said you would be devastated by Pauline’s death. As we all are. Hortense says only I truly know what grief is, because of my husband’s death. So, I must write to you. Still, you know Pauline and I were not close; nonetheless I would not wish such a terrible end upon even my worst enemy, and certainly not on my sister.

  I am truly sorry for your grief; you must come and visit and we will cheer you up. I am very bored back in Paris; Tante’s house is the same prison it always was. Does the Duchesse de Lesdiguières have any books she could lend me? Anything is fine—I’ve quite run out and Tante has nothing more of interest in her library. Please come and visit, and bring the books. We can have Cook prepare something special for you, perhaps plum cake or some almond tarts?

  Do not be too sad, everyone has to die someday.

  Love,

  Marie-Anne

  From Hortense de Flavacourt

  Hôtel de Mazarin, Paris

  October 12, 1741

  Dearest Louise,

  My greetings to you in this time of sorrow. How terrible that our dear sister should die, and in such a manner. Tante says Pauline died without sacraments. She is very satisfied that God’s plan included this vengeance on one so shameless (those are her words, not mine). Tante knows that sinners always pay in the end.

  Is it true they talk of poison? Surely not? Who would want to poison her? I am sure she had enemies; well, in truth we heard she had many, but to wish to kill her? Oh, I cannot imagine. I do hope it was just the perils of childbirth. My confessor told me that women who are lax in their prayers or who lead a wicked life are more apt to die at that time than other ladies. I survived my confinement, and so you can see the truth of his words.

  You must be very sad. And His Majesty as well.

  We saw Diane yesterday. Poor poppet, she was distraught and not even interested in the plum cake that Cook prepared especially for her. Her grief must be deep. Tante told her that her notions of poison were silly, for even though Pauline was a curse on the nation (her words, not mine) she wasn’t important enough to poison. I do not think Diane was comforted.

  Marie-Anne has not cried but I am sure she has done so, in private or in the chapel.

  In loving grief,

  Hortense

  From Louise de Mailly

  Château de Versailles

  October 20, 1741

  Dearest Hortense,

  We are devastated, devastated. The king is in deepest mourning. He takes the death of each of his subjects to heart—he calls them his children. Pauline was a good friend of his, and of course my sister, and he knows how deeply I grieve for her.

  The autopsy revealed nothing, and though there are rumors about Fleury, I would not, could not believe them. This is not the last century, for goodness’ sake! These are modern times and poison is an ancient trickery art that is out of place in our civilized world.

  No, we must just accept that she died from her confinement and the fever that strikes women far too often at that time. I am not sure that prayers influence such matters; I know of many wicked women who have survived their confinements without being struck down.

  Excuse the blotches on the paper; I am crying as I write this.

  Your sister,

  Louise

  Louise

  CHTEAU DE SAINT-LÉGER

  December 1741

  What a miserable winter it is. Louis is broken, simply broken.

  “Why am I being punished?” he asks, then answers himself: “I am being punished for living in sin, such is God’s wrath.” He turns to me, beseeching that I might contradict him, but all I can do is murmur condolences. For if he sinned with Pauline, then what has he done with me? These days Louis finds some comfort in my arms, though we embrace only as brother and sister; we have not made love since before the birth of Demi-Louis.

  He has not returned to the queen’s bed or to mine, and loves nothing better than to hear stories of idyllic, platonic love. Libertines now declare it the highest of callings and suddenly celibacy is more fashionable than pink-powdered hair. The staid Duc and Duchesse de Luynes, notoriously dull and faithful, are suddenly in much demand at dinner parties.

  At Court, my sister’s enemies snigger and roll their eyes and ask, again and again, more openly now that she is gone and the months push her memory further back, how it could be that the king, the most handsome man in France, not to mention the king, could have been so enamored of such a green monkey and be now so devastated by her death?

  “She must have had a very fine cunt.”

  “Blinded him with her ugliness, simply blinded him. I hear there is an insect in Guinea that does such a thing to its mate.”

  “One shouldn’t crow, of course—after all, my mother and two of my sisters died in childbirth, not to mention my wife—but it is all very satisfying.”

  “An insect’s cunt—that’s what she had. Now let’s just thank the Good Lord she is gone.”

  They talk thus in front of me and I try to ignore them, as they ignore me. Louis prefers to shut himself up alone with his black moods. We spend weeks closeted away at the small château of Saint-Léger, Fleury and his ministers grumbling that he needs to come back to Versailles, that they need his signature and his interest.

  The king allows only a few friends to share his mourning and passes his days in silence and prayer, and even needs to be coaxed to the hunt. In the evening he prefers deep discourses on the meaning of life and death to a game of backgammon or cards. I have never seen his mood so black, not even after the death of his little son Philippe, cruelly taken the same year as one of his little sisters. A wax figure was made of Pauline’s head after she died and in the evening Louis has it brought out and placed on the mantel. It watches us with sightless, waxy eyes. I hate it. I want to remember Pauline, but not like this.

  On particularly mournful nights Louis will read Pauline’s letters to him, over and over. There appear to be thousands—I am reminded of my own mountain of begging letters when she wished to first come to Versailles—and they give him consolation through the long winter evenings. We sit in silence, all heavy hearts and melancholy.

  “Ah, Bijou, Bijou,” he says to me, thumbing slowly through the papers, “you are such a comfort to me. Such solace. What would I do without you?”

  My heart warms when he calls me by my old pet name. Is it possible that happiness can come from despair? Can one be on top of the mountain at the same time as one drowns in the sea? I am genuinely grieved by Pauline’s awful death, but I luxuriate in my new closeness with the king and receive much consolation from his need of me at this dark hour. Perhaps I might even venture to call him Twinkles again? It has been so long since that was possible.

  “Should I burn them, Bijou?” he asks, staring at the fire.

  “No, sire, you must not. They are our most precious of mementos.”

  “But she is dead and gone. She is not coming back, and soon I—all of us—we—shall all be dead, and so what is the point of keeping them?” Louis is lost in the flames and in his unshaven sadness. “To read them makes me sad, yet at the same time gives me comfort. How can that be?”

  “Please do not burn them, sire. Please. If it grieves you so, give them to me and I will keep them until you wish to see them again. Unless you command, I need never show them to you again.”

  Louis shakes his head; he is far, far away from the room. “She was a good woman. A kind woman. She was kind to me. That must mean she was kind, not callous, as others say. Don’t you agree, Bijou?”

  “I do, my dearest.” He puts the letters carefully back in their box. He locks it and then throws the key into the fire. I gasp.

  He turns to gaze at the wax head of Pauline. “When I wish to read them again, I shall have Bachelier take the box to the locksmiths. Everything can be fixed. Everything except death. That is final.
”

  Often his sorrow gives way to anger—sometimes in the course of one evening. He claims her poisoned, for all the doctors—and there were many—declared the delivery a success and the mother out of danger. Only Richelieu dares speak when he is in these moods.

  “It happens, sire. My dear cousin Anne-Marie of Soubise, newly married to the prince, was brought to bed of a healthy boy, and seeming in impeccable health, yet eight days after the birth, she died.”

  “Eight days? Pauline was six. Did we suspect foul play with Anne-Marie?”

  “No, sire, she had not an enemy in the world.”

  “And what, Pauline—she had enemies? What are you suggesting?”

  “Pauline had no enemies,” says Richelieu smoothly. He lies very easily. He is a very handsome man, and when he is with the king it is like seeing twins, so close is their resemblance both in body and habits, though the king is a trifle taller. “There were some not as fond of her as you were, sire, but she had no enemies. An enemy is a very strong word.”

  “As hate is a strong word, sire,” I add, remembering Zélie’s words: one may dislike, but one may never hate. “No one hated her, though some might have been jealous.”

  “Who was jealous?” demands Louis.

  Richelieu gives me one of his inscrutable looks and I feel like I might faint. Then he says: “Some of the ladies, perhaps, sire, for your charms are abundant, yet you had eyes for only one. Someone like . . . Mademoiselle de Charolais, for example.”

  That’s going a little far, even for Richelieu. Charolais is out of favor with the king—Pauline saw to that—but she would never poison anyone. And her cold sister, Clermont, died just before Pauline did. No; Fleury and his cabal would be the most likely culprits.

  “Impossible!” roars the king. “But if it were poison, I should consider it high treason, for it is as though they poisoned me.”

  We mutter dutifully. But there is no real fear in the room; the king has been talking of poison for months but the autopsy revealed nothing. We all understand that the king needs to blame. In his grief he needs to make someone accountable for a life that suddenly went terribly, hideously wrong.