The Sisters of Versailles

by Sally Christie

  Diane

  CHTEAU DE CHOISY

  October 1743

  Oh, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, I have sinned. I go to early Mass then late Mass but there is no forgiveness there. I pace my bedroom and shout at the maids to leave me alone. I lie on the bed and cry and wait for God to strike me down. Then I realize He cannot strike me down if I am already lying down, so I stand up, but my knees are too weak and I end up on the floor, terrified.

  I was a sinner before but only a small one. The wags say that morality is only for the vulgar bourgeoisie, and that what is a sin elsewhere is no more than a peccadillo at Versailles. Peccadillo, a funny word. I did not know what it meant until I came to Court. But last night, that was no peccadillo, even if it was with the king. That was a sin, a great God Almighty sin, and surely I will be struck down for it.

  Between Masses I blurt out my fears to Marie-Anne.

  “The only thing we have to fear is your notorious big mouth,” she hisses. “Stop worrying. God cannot see into the King’s Apartments, for are they not well guarded and very private?”

  I do not think that is correct, but as usual I cannot think of a good reply. If a peccadillo is a small sin, what is a big sin? A grand peccadillo? It sounds like an animal. An awful big, sinning animal.

  I lie inert on the floor, waiting for divine punishment, but then the clock strikes two and I remember I am to return to Versailles and dine with Angélique, my mother-in-law, this night. If I do not rise soon, I shall be late.

  From Louise de Mailly

  Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, Paris

  January 6, 1744

  Dear Hortense,

  Greetings and New Year’s blessings to you. May this year bring continued health and prosperity for you and your husband and two children. Thank you for your New Year’s gift of the blue silk chemise, but I must confess I will not wear it. I have grown detached from the cares of my face and dress that occupied me for far too many years; I now no longer wear anything soft next to my skin. If you desire to honor me with a gift, please instead make a donation to a charity; the hospital at Saint-Michel, which cares for many abandoned infants, is a particular favorite of mine.

  I pray for you all. I know, Hortense, you are very good already, but I still pray that you may stay on the righteous path you have chosen. I also pray for Marie-Anne and Diane, but I have no hope of their redemption. I still struggle to forgive Marie-Anne, but now I am grateful to her: she helped me distance myself from my old life and see the error of my ways.

  I pray for His Majesty’s soul, but I do not pray that he will ever see me again. That chapter of my life is closed, a book snapped shut that will never be reopened. No, I pray for him as I might pray for someone I once held dear, and when I think of how I gently prodded him from the pious life he once longed for—oh! Can twenty years of penance ever erase that sin?

  Please let me know if your little Freddie or Addie will be coming from Picardy to Paris anytime this year; I should very much like to know them. Occasionally I visit Pauline’s son, he is being educated with Noailles’s son here, but I must confess it pains me to look upon him, so similar is he to his father. He adores sugar biscuits and I make sure to bring him a box whenever I visit.

  My blessings,

  Louise

  From Hortense de Flavacourt

  Château de Versailles

  February 11, 1744

  Darling Louise,

  News of your increased piety has traveled through all circles here and I am overjoyed with the news. I apologize for my inappropriate New Year’s gift. I made the donation to Saint-Michel as you recommended, but it was with some reluctance: it is well known that children from such dubious backgrounds only grow up to be lazy beggars and I am not sure they should be encouraged.

  I shall not bore you or tire you with news from the Court, though I took the liberty of sharing your latest letter with Her Majesty. We have become fast friends; I know you will be happy, for the affection you had for her was real. The queen dedicated last Thursday, the feast of Saint Veridiana (one of her new favorites), to pray for your soul and your change in life. Unfortunately Marie-Anne was not in attendance that day—she avoids her duties with Her Majesty with a cunning I suppose I should not be surprised at.

  She is as evil as ever. The king is bewitched, but I know, as does every God-fearing person of this Court, that even the strongest potion must eventually wear off. I pray the day comes soon, and anticipate with delight the convent she will be banished to. Diane is fatter than ever, and there are some dreadful, simply dreadful rumors and songs circulating about . . . No, I cannot write it, for fear I might faint over the desk.

  Your sister in love and God,

  Hortense

  Marie-Anne

  PARIS AND VERSAILLES

  April 1744

  My woman, Leone, tells me of a famous fortune-teller in Paris who is quite astonishingly accurate and is all the rage amongst the fashionable. Apparently she even predicted the sudden death of the Comte de Monville, burned alive when his lace sleeves caught the edge of his bedroom candle; that is quite a recommendation. She is called simply Madame Sybille and has her house on the rue Perdue near Notre-Dame. It is more discreet to visit her than to have her brought to Versailles, so I don a veil and a fur cape against the cold and go forth to Paris to hear what my future holds.

  It is the first time I have been to such a woman. They were very much the vogue some decades ago but are now looked upon with suspicion. I must keep the visit a secret; if the Court gossips and the Parisian scandalmongers find out, I am sure I will be accused of witchcraft and necromancy and trying to poison the queen, and a hundred other nefarious deeds.

  Leone and I wait for her in the small front salon of her house, a room of plain painted walls and some dreadful old furniture. A dog examines us from the screenless hearth and a three-candle chandelier is the only light.

  “Well,” I remark to Leone, “she can’t be that impressive—she obviously has made no money from her craft. Where would a footman stand in this dreadful room?”

  Next to me Leone stiffens, then replies in her careful voice: “Madame Sybille’s husband was a master silversmith. She is by no means poor.”

  “Mmm.” Still, the room is positively frightful. Imagine living like this!

  Madame Sybille enters and she is surprisingly young, with an elaborate turban on her head and a loose gown of some cheap gold stuff. Not at all one’s image of a wise woman: I had expected someone older and more cronelike. She motions me to sit at what must be their dining table, the grain black with age and one leg broken. She lights several candles that throw lopsided shadows around the darkening winter room, then places a large deck of cards on the table.

  I make my selection. She turns over the cards and stares at them for several minutes. I shiver, and not only from the cold of the dreary room. Against my will my breath quickens and my heart starts to beat faster. A strange look comes over the woman’s face.

  “But what is it?” I demand.

  “Nothing, madame,” she replies slowly. “I just rarely see such good fortune all in one person.” She looks up from the cards and smiles at me, too brightly. Her voice is husky with the strange lilt of the south.

  “I see new adventure and action. Influence. I see . . .” She closes her eyes then fingers a card with what appears to be Demeter’s grain basket crossed through with a sword. “I see illness vanquished and hopes fulfilled.”

  A little vague, but generally good. “My . . . lover?”

  “A strong year for him. At a distance, calamity and casualty, but nothing will touch him . . . or you.”

  “And our love?”

  “Strong like this tower here.” She points to a tower of stone surrounded by high trees and I see her nails are darkened with black paint. “Enduring.”

  I scan the cards. I want to check there are no fish, or for that matter anything maritime. Or anything with stars. There is one with a shell, cradling what appears to be
a baby. “What’s this?”

  “An oyster, madame. To signify the world is your oyster. You have great power.”

  Good. I want to ask about the queen, and her health, but one cannot speak such questions aloud. Even in disguise to a fortune-teller. Instead I ask: “And the future? Not just this year, but beyond?”

  She waves her hand over the cards. “These tell me your fortune for this year, madame, but beyond that, I cannot see.”

  I narrow my eyes. “What is one year? I want to know the rest.”

  Madame Sybille bows her head, presenting her ridiculous turban to me, and refuses to say any more. She also refuses payment to loosen her tongue, and after some haggling I get up to leave in disgust. I find myself shaking—why would this woman not tell me my future? How could a woman foretell so accurately the death of the Comte de Monville, and in such shocking circumstances, yet be unable to see beyond December?

  I tell Diane where I have been and she laughs, as I knew she would. She tells me not to worry. She says the witch woman was just being greedy. “She didn’t tell you about next year because she wants you to come back again in 1745, and pay her again, and then come back in 1746, and pay her again, and then . . .”

  Sometimes, just sometimes, Diane has some good sense.

  In the bleakness of April I am laid low for a few days. I coax Diane into the king’s bed for a few nights. Alone. I lie in bed sick and the cursed doctor, some provincial recommended by Louis, insists I drink copious quantities of fish soup. It’s actually quite good, fish and salt mixed with fennel and another spice I can’t identify. I sip it and think of what Diane and the king might be doing, and what we will do together when I am well enough. And then of course I start thinking of that dreadful pretty bourgeois from the forest, the Fish Woman. I get nervous and call Leone to take the soup away.

  They now say the Fish Woman received a prophecy when she was younger that a king would love her. I wonder if she heard it from Madame Sybille on the rue Perdue? The Fish Woman is so young, perhaps no more than twenty. And here I am, only a few years from thirty. They say it is a blessing for a beautiful woman to die young, for the pain of fading looks hits a beautiful woman so much harder than a plain one. But I’m not going to die anytime soon; there is too much to do.

  We are now officially at war. France has been involved for years, mostly against the British, but now we are formally declared at war against the Austrians, as well as the Sardinians. Louis vacillated and vacillated but finally made the decision, alone. I was proud of him, I must admit; since Fleury’s death he has become a king in more than just name, and I water his growing independence as much as I can.

  And so—war is upon us. I know this was Pauline’s dream; Pauline wished the king to go to war and probably would have liked to have ridden into battle herself! I think of my sister and of the enmity that lay between us, from the time when we were very young. I have definitely won and she has definitely lost, for she lies alone and still in her grave. Without one of her arms. But when I think such thoughts I feel a rare frisson of fear, for such thoughts are evil. No one knows the hour of our death and it was a dreadful thing that she died. Though convenient for me.

  But I agree with her that it could be a wonderful opportunity if Louis were to go to the front and command the troops. Far away from the influence of Maurepas. Though he is a trifle weak and indecisive, I truly believe Louis has the makings of a great man. The last king identified with Apollo and was called the Sun King. I cannot quite decide what the right epithet for Louis should be, perhaps the Warrior King? Or Zeus, King of Kings? Zeus, Slayer of Austrians?

  I paint Louis a picture of him riding into battle, rousing the troops and honoring them with his presence, erasing the memory of France’s bitter defeat at Dettingen last year.

  “A very large undertaking,” he muses. “The provisions, the furniture and bedding, the utensils that must be transported. Cups. Quantities of powder. For the hair, I mean, not the cannons, though I suppose that must be transported too. If I go, too many will insist on accompanying me, and all must be provided with accommodation befitting their rank. Not an easy thing to manage. And it would be expensive. Very expensive.”

  “Nothing is impossible, dearest. Make it clear that only a very small group will travel with you. This is not to be a holiday in the country. You must go and live as the generals do. Noailles and such. They manage without large retinues.”

  He shakes his head and gestures to an embroidered fire screen, a gift from his youngest daughters, away at the abbey where they are being educated. The screen is stitched with four successively smaller brown-skirted stick figures, and it pleases Louis immensely. “Besides, soon I will bring my darlings home and I would be here when they return.”

  I wish the little princesses would stay at Fontevraud; he still has two daughters and the dauphin here at Versailles and spends far too much time with them as it is. And it goes without saying that they do not approve of me: I would prefer not to add another four recriminating little faces to the crowds.

  Last month we attended an opera in Paris, and Louis surprised me by suggesting his eldest daughters, the two not yet married and not at the convent, should accompany us. It was a brave and perhaps foolish thing to do, for the whole world could talk of nothing else. I knew his intentions were good: he loves his daughters so very much, almost as much as he loves me, and I know it would please him greatly were we all to get along.

  Needless to say weepy Henriette and the cold Adelaide were not friendly with me; Adelaide is only twelve but not too young to ooze disapproval from every pore of her little body. Henriette was at least polite, and after the final act she was as enraptured by the music as the king and I were. She could not contain her enthusiasm and burbled about the songs and the scenery through the long carriage ride home. But by the next week, she was once again as cold as her sister to me.

  They need to be gone and married—if only Prince Charles could get rid of those awful Protestant Germans and reclaim the British throne! He would make a very suitable husband for Henriette. I push Louis to put his full support behind the Stuart venture but he is not fully committed. The French navy did help with a failed invasion in February, but he now insists that Austria must be our first priority.

  Still, it would be very suitable if Henriette could go to England. A few years ago she was madly in love with the young Duc de Chartres, a relation of the king, but Fleury decided against their match—it would make the Orléans family too powerful. The duke was married off last year and Henriette has not stopped weeping since. Yes, Henriette to England, and then Adelaide could go to Sardinia or someplace even dirtier, for I have a particular dislike for her. But with four more sisters still to come, it will be a decade at least before they are all gone.

  I murmur my approval of his plan to bring his daughters home and cover his chest with butterfly kisses. We are in bed together, tucked inside the most private of all rooms, safe at the top of the palace, above his private apartments, above the state apartments, above the enormous halls of the reception rooms. Louis had this small room, entirely decorated in shades of green and gold, designed especially for us; surrounding our nest is a buffer of empty rooms, cocooning us from the rest of the palace.

  Very faintly we hear the sounds of Versailles at dawn rise up from below as the great palace stirs itself for another day: the clattering of iron grates; a clash of chains as the chandeliers are lowered to be lit; troops on gravel in the courtyard outside. The fresh smell of orange wax as it is rubbed on the floors wafts dreamily up. Soon I will slip back to my apartment and Louis will descend to the state bedroom for the formal levée.

  “You could be my Warrior King.” It doesn’t take long to convince Louis of anything.

  “Well, it would be an adventure, certainly. And the marshals assure us of victory; our presence could only further guarantee it.”

  Our presence? Does he mean “our” as in us, or is it just the royal “our”? I hadn’t thought of going w
ith him, but I wonder if I should.

  “But, Princess”—his special name for me—“won’t you miss me? Why is it that you are pushing me to war, to leave Versailles and to leave you?”

  I run my fingers down his thigh and he sighs in pleasure. Far away we hear one valet berating another, telling him to be careful with the steaming irons. “I would sacrifice my own pleasure for the sake of the nation.”

  “I would miss you, Princess. Perhaps too much.” He shifts and I tighten my hand around him.

  “I would miss you too,” I say, and I mean it. I’d have to talk with Richelieu, but why not accompany him? It would be good to get away from Versailles, and see more of France. I’ve never been anywhere except Burgundy. I suggest the idea to him but Louis only laughs and shakes his head.

  “No, Princess, no: the front is no place for women. Ladies, at least.” I murmur my acquiescence and continue working my hand, to bring him to a place where he will deny me nothing.

  Richelieu likes the idea, both of them.

  “Yes,” he says, “let’s get the king out to the front and away from Maurepas. And I don’t see why you shouldn’t go as well; Louis XIV went to war with both Madame de La Vallière and Madame de Montespan, at the same time, and it didn’t hurt anyone then.”

  So it is decided, though Louis still has to agree. And perhaps Diane should come as well?

  Diane

  METZ, FRANCE

  June 1744

  Why do you think peasants smell?” We are in the carriage, rocking along the road at a quick clip. I really, really hate traveling—my back hurts the minute I step into a carriage. And oh! The odors. Simply frightful.