“Because they are peasants,” says Aglaë helpfully. “It’s what they do, they smell.”
We are four in the carriage, heading to Metz and to the king and war: myself, Marie-Anne, and our friends Aglaë and Elisabeth. Behind us is a second carriage with our women and clothes.
“It’s true; if we didn’t wash for a month we still wouldn’t smell as ripe as they do,” says Elisabeth. “Look at our grooms. They are poor but they don’t smell. Yet peasants? It must be in their blood.”
“But why don’t they wash? Water is free, isn’t it? When it rains they should just stand naked under the sky and wash that smell away.”
“I think charities should give less food and more scent to the poor—a good dousing of rose oil would go a long way to solve their stink.” We all nod in agreement.
Our friends are both older ladies with scandalous pasts. Aglaë in particular is good company; she is the daughter of the old regent and sister of the notorious Duchesse de Berry. She used to live in Modena and has entertained us with many funny stories about Italians and the dull horror of the court there. The heat inside the carriage is intolerable and we wear loose, old clothes for comfort and carry masks to keep our identities hidden. Overnight we stop at inns and eat the gruesome food. In my pie this morning I found the crest of a cock! It actually wasn’t as disgusting as I thought it might be; it tasted rather like chicken.
During these stops we hear the local people talking, hear the rumors and gossip of the country. It is no secret that no one loves Marie-Anne or myself, or that they say scandalous things about us. Some of the things they say, of course, are true; I try not to think too much about that dreadful night at Choisy.
“I’ve heard he lets them ride him as one would a horse.”
“That youngest one’s a Protestant, mark my words: everyone knows the Tournelles are Huguenot sympathizers.”
“Ten days of hail? Nothing like it in a century. Why, even my mother, all eighty-eight years of her, has never seen the like! But that’s what happens when a whore rules the world.”
“Apparently incest is all the rage at Versailles now; even the dauphin and his sisters are getting involved.”
At an inn past Reims a table of drunken oafs next to us complains that la pute—the whore—is on her way to Metz and that will only create problems. Women at war cause excessive rain, as well as the drooping of a man’s anatomy; neither is good for the fighting spirit. One adds that the Châteauroux harlot is a witch who has blinded the king, and that France will only prosper again when she is dead and gone.
Marie-Anne smiles her sour smile to show she has heard but doesn’t care. She spends the rest of the day staring sightlessly out the window and chewing her nails. She is worried: Louis did not give her permission for this trip and she told the queen she needed time away to attend a personal matter. I don’t like to see her like this: it is not her habit to regret a decision. As we near our destination I wrap the tips of her fingers in ribbons so she cannot further destroy her nails. Louis is very fastidious about such things and I know that Marie-Anne wants nothing to mar our arrival.
After five long days, we are in Metz. Almost in Austria, or at least the Austrian Netherlands—it’s all very confusing. They say Austrians have enormous hands and feet and eat rotten fish; they have no choice as they have no coast. I hope we shan’t meet any.
No one greets us on arrival and this puts Marie-Anne in a bad mood. She snaps at the chambermaid who comes to wash her and slaps me when I drop her striped petticoat, one she was saving for this reunion, on the floor. We are lodged at the abbey in the center of town; Aglaë and Elisabeth are garrisoned—I like that word, we are really at war!—in another room. Marie-Anne orders me to join them there before the king arrives, but I am still in her room when he bursts in. He holds Marie-Anne for a long while and she snuggles in his arms. Finally he holds her away from him.
“Too long! Too long! I shall not stand to be away from you for this length of time again.”
“Fifty-eight days, sire,” says Marie-Anne shyly. “I counted every one.”
Marie-Anne says she loves the king, but I am always confused by how silly and childish she acts when they are together. Not like herself at all. It’s just an act, she says. I must pretend to be a little girl so he can be a man.
“Leave us now, Diane,” she simpers, and the king fair pushes me out the door, giving me a resounding slap on my backside as he does. “You had best beware,” he calls after me. “I have army manners now.”
Later we join them for dinner and I see that all of Marie-Anne’s nerves are quieted and she looks as radiant and happy as the king. We are an odd party—the king, us four ladies, and a smattering of stern-faced dukes and generals. We eat in a large mess hall that reminds me of the refectory at the convent, and the king regales us with tales of recent victories. He has been having a grand time and assures us that victory will be France’s before too long.
“Is that not true, Noailles?” he cries, and his chief marshal inclines his head and says he could not agree more with His Majesty, though his words are accompanied by the unmistakable odor of displeasure. Noailles is a friend of Marie-Anne’s, but it is clear he does not support our arrival.
I was afraid we would be served army food, gruel or dried cod or some such horrible thing, but instead we dine on spicy lamb stew, cheese-and-egg pie, and delicious apple breads. I have a sudden craving for apricot jam, eventually settled the next day at breakfast with some damson marmalade.
“Perhaps you’re pregnant,” says Aglaë shrewdly, sipping her chocolate, watching me pile my third bun high with jam.
“No, Diane always eats like that.”
I consider, then grow excited and flush. “Oh! Perhaps I am.”
Marie-Anne raises her eyebrows and the ghost of something sour flits across her face, then disappears as quick as a wisp of smoke. She gets up to hug me.
The king comes in and joins the hug before we can separate.
“What is the occasion, mesdames?” he inquires, releasing us, then takes a slice of cheese from the table. “No, no.” He waves the footman away. “I will not sit to eat. We ride out early.”
“Diane might be expecting.” The three of us know from the timing that it is not the king’s, but the flushed look on Aglaë’s face shows she is avidly considering the possibility.
“Ah, Lauraguais will be delighted. A man can never have enough sons.”
“Perhaps, sire, but my husband is so unfaithful, I am not even sure if the baby is his.”
The king chokes with laughter and cheese spurts out of his nose. When everything is cleared away and the tears have dried in the king’s eyes, he takes my hand and bows to me, still chuckling. “And that, madame, was perhaps my least regal moment ever. If these were not modern times, I would have had you clapped in the Bastille for treason.”
The king spends hours overseeing dispatches and huddled with the generals in a room we call the Camp. On a table in the center of the Camp there is a sizable map of the area, and nothing delights the king more than to show us the changing pins of blue (us) and yellow (the Austrians) as battles are fought and won. It is all very dull but we are ready with polite murmurings of interest and take pains to conceal our ennui. Once Aglaë convinces one of the generals to stop lecturing about the proficiency of their Prussian allies and instead explain the forward thrust to us. I can’t stop giggling. Marie-Anne runs her hands up and down the king’s arms in a manner that causes him to blush and stammer, and causes the generals’ eyes to almost pop out of their face.
We are very much aware that we are not wanted here by anyone except the king. Of course, he is the only person that matters, not the generals or the disapproving Bishop of Soissons, but there is a harsh atmosphere here that curdles our days. Everyone looks at Marie-Anne as though they want to chew her to bits, then spit her out.
We ride in a borrowed carriage around the streets of Metz, but it is a little town, nothing like Paris. The fashions are
dreadful and most of the women are stout and ugly, and it appears that rouge and powder are not essential here. “Austrians look like that, too,” says Aglaë knowingly; she is very well traveled and has even been to Vienna. “They are thick people. Not in the head, so much, but in the arms and wrists and legs. Lips. Such places.”
We are invited to the house of the governor for dinner and suffer through an interminable evening listening to the man’s son, a smug little boy of ten with a quavering duck voice, sing all six of César’s arias from the opera Giulio Cesare. If you know that opera, you will know that the arias are very long. When we are finally released and back at the abbey, Marie-Anne declares that any future social visits will take place in our apartments. “Let the peasants come to us,” she says, falling on her bed.
“The governor is hardly a peasant,” says Elisabeth stiffly. There is a distant family connection.
“You know what I mean,” says Marie-Anne in irritation. “These provincials. My God, why did I come here?”
That night we all drink too much plum brandy. Louis is away in Lille and it is a stifling hot night. Our rooms are on the first floor but even the open windows can’t coax in a breeze, so we strip down to our shifts and fan ourselves and squeeze lemons on our arms and necks against the needling mosquitoes. We throw the bits of lemon on the floor and soon the floor is a yellow carpet.
“We are farther south than Paris, so that is why it is so hot,” I say knowledgeably. Pauline once told me that in Africa, it is so hot the natives cook meat without making a fire, just by setting it out under the sun.
“Not south, just west.” Aglaë knows; she has lived everywhere.
Richelieu will soon be joining us at Metz, and Aglaë entertains us with stories about him. They were lovers in her youth and she declares him to be the most accomplished man she ever had the pleasure of attending in bed, and tells us he uses his fingers as skillfully as he plies his cock.
“I am not sure this is a very ladylike conversation,” Marie-Anne says, though I can tell she is interested.
“But there are no ladies in the dark,” replies Aglaë, and we all laugh.
We fall silent and I start thinking about Pauline. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately; of that last hot summer when she was pregnant, as I am now. How she used to complain! I’d like to talk about her, but Marie-Anne never wants to. Marie-Anne never really knew her; they were sisters but like strangers. Strange sisters. I giggle.
Marie-Anne rolls over and spills some of her brandy. “Oops.”
The last candle snuffles itself out in a pool of wax. The abbey is frugal with their light; once it is dark, it is time to sleep. After the sun is gone the only thing that moves are the dogs in the streets and all is silent until the bells toll for matins.
“When do you think we should leave?” I ask. Part of me wishes to go back; I am beginning to press against my clothes and it would be nice to be at Lauraguais’s Paris house in August. Take a cool bath every day in that marble room and order everything I crave from the kitchen. Apricot jam, lots of it. A whole pie filled with it.
No one answers.
“Summer is the worst time to be pregnant,” I announce to the darkness. From the hot blackness Aglaë murmurs in agreement; she has six living children. To be so hot, and so uncomfortable. Pauline generally complained about everything, but now I understand her better. I hope I don’t die in childbirth, as she did.
“I don’t know when we should leave.” Marie-Anne’s voice is far away and I wonder what she is thinking.
“But it’s not like you not to know,” says Elisabeth in surprise. She’s lying beside Marie-Anne and I thought she was asleep.
“I don’t know everything. I’m not a witch. Despite what those men at the inn said.”
“You must wait until you’re older to be a witch,” I say. “When you’re an old crone, you can be a witch. Witches aren’t young and pretty.”
Louise
PARIS
August 1744
All night long the bells rang, and in the morning I rise early and send Jacobs out for the news. She came back with an ashen face, and even before she falls to her knees to weep out the truth, I know. Louis. Our king.
The news came to Paris last night: the king lies sick in Metz. He was ill three days when the horses left for Paris and we do not know how his health fares on this day. We can only hope and pray that he still lives. All around the city, bells toll and the news is read to the masses from the church steps. People cry in the street and the pews are packed: the whole city is praying for their king. On the streets they call Marie-Anne an incestuous bitch, the cause of France’s woes. When I hear those harsh words I don’t even cover my ears or turn away. She deserves that name. Bitch.
The Comtesse de Toulouse heard from Noailles that Marie-Anne and Richelieu have barricaded themselves around the king and allow none but the doctors in, not even the generals, the princes of the blood, or the bishops. When I hear that I wail. How can Marie-Anne nurse him? She has not a bone of kindness in her body. I would have been a good nurse. Oh, how I wish I were an angel that I could fly from this room to be by his side!
Hortense arrives from Versailles with more dreadful news: the king’s confessors are urging him to take his final sacraments. I fall in a faint and Hortense calls my women to help me to my chair. There is shouting in the street as news of the latest tragedy spreads. The king sick unto death! For all we know, he may be dead already. The thought is unbearable.
“The queen plans to travel to Metz,” Hortense says softly as my maid wipes my brow. “She must be there, if . . .” She does not finish her sentence but we both know what she means. “She thinks to leave tomorrow if there is no further news.”
“And Marie-Anne?” I ask.
“She persistently refuses to leave.”
Louis must renounce her before he takes the final sacrament; if he does not he will die in a state of sin.
“Please, please, reason with her, and make her leave! She must do it for his sake. She cannot imperil his soul!” I rail awhile and feel better for the release my anger gives me.
“This is her retribution,” says Hortense. “For her sins. Do not fear; she will be banished. I pray she is not there when we arrive, but if she is, you can be sure I will do all in my power to reason with her and get her to leave. Not that she ever listens to me.”
“She never listens to anyone.” I hate Marie-Anne with a fierceness I am surprised to still possess; I thought I had long forgiven and purged my ill will for her. That the king might be denied Heaven because of her! It is unbearable.
Hortense holds my hands tightly. “I will write to you from Metz,” she promises. “I have asked Mesnil to come daily for comfort. He is a good friend.”
“You are a good friend.” We hug fiercely, then Hortense leaves and I am left alone with my grief and my anger. I wish Marie-Anne would die. A shocking thought and a shocking hope. Bitch. Whore. I say the words out loud and they echo off the plain white walls. There is a line, a finite end to the goodness inside us, no matter how we may aspire to virtue. I have been good enough.
This is the end for her. If the king is as sick as they say he is, she must be banished before he can receive the sacraments. Then he will recover, for he must recover, but he cannot go back on a deathbed promise. He will be reformed and live the rest of his days in harmony with the queen.
But first, he must get better. I spend the day and the night on my knees in the crowded church and allow some small, vicious thoughts to creep through the piety of my prayers. Where shall Marie-Anne be sent? It should be far, very far. And very austere. Perhaps one of the orders that observes silence? It should be cold in winter and hot in summer and surrounded by a dark forest, thick with wolves. Yes, a cold, far convent, where even the nuns will hate her.
Marie-Anne
METZ
August 1744
Louis was fine. He passed the afternoon inspecting the fortifications on the outskirts of town. Then a
pleasant evening; the talk was of recent victories and the fireworks the governor promised. Later we made love and I noticed nothing amiss: it was but a night as any other. After we lay together, Louis traced his fingers along my belly and asked me when I was going to give him a child. “I’d like a little daughter,” he mused. “With her mother’s mouth. We’ll call her Rose.”
“Don’t you have daughters enough already?” I say tartly. I have decided I only want sons, two at most. His face clouds and I know I have erred. Louis loves his daughters greatly; his devotion to them borders on the bourgeois.
“I jest,” I say quickly. “One can never have daughters enough. I would like four at least, delightful girls with their father’s character and their mother’s face. We shall call the first two Rose and Anne.”
Louis smiles, my blunder forgiven. He wants to be happy and it is not difficult to prod him back to cheer. I have noticed a change in him since he is here at Metz; he is more confident and less reserved. Amongst the generals and the men he is easy and relaxed, and some of his shyness, that once built such tall walls around him, is gradually disappearing.
That night before he slept he asked for water and I poured him a glass from the pitcher by the bed. He drank thirstily and I was going to call for more but he shook his head and fell back on the bed. He went to sleep quickly, then fell even quicker into sickness.
In the morning when he woke it was obvious he was very ill. His fever was high and his eyes already glassy. I felt a terror like I have rarely known, that things could turn so quickly. A stag alive one minute and pierced the next, but without the premonition of the chase. His ashen face and already wandering eyes told us this was no quick and easy fever, raging for a day then disappearing. This was serious.
Richelieu barricades the bedchamber and allows only us ladies and a few doctors in. The generals and the ministers, the pompous dukes and princes grumble against us but we hold the doors fast. I tell them it is a brief fever, and that the king needs peace and quiet, not a crowd with stale odors and incessant chatter. Most of all I don’t want their carping looks and quick calculations, the glee they would not try to hide as they size up the gravity of the situation. Maurepas is among them, having oozed his way to Metz over the summer.
The Sisters of Versailles Page 36