The Sisters of Versailles

by Sally Christie

  Diane takes up duty on her knees by the bed, praying for hours. I am grateful to her. I feel a strong urge to pray myself but I want to give more practical help. I pester the doctors and hover while they administer their endless bleedings. Louis does not improve but continues to burn, and though we drench him with water and fan his body, he is as hot as the evening embers. I hold on to his hand, pressing, squeezing, exhorting him to listen to me and to become strong again. I forbid him to leave me. If he leaves, my world is over. I need him. And so it passes for six days and then I remember the folklore from Burgundy: five days in a fever. Beyond that, no cure.

  Louis’s mind wanders and his eyes run with a curious yellow liquid. The doctors bleed, then bleed again, as if the little leeches can slay this demon of a fever. They consult and confabulate and then bleed again. I call them the leech masters, and the chief doctor, Peyronie, snarls at me, as he would never have dared snarl before. Another doctor, a thin, swarthy man reputed to be from Turkey, pleads to be allowed to administer an emetic, but the others ignore him and order more jars of leeches. I keep Louis well sated with water and diluted wine, but the truth is that he has eaten nothing—nothing—for six days. His skin is stretched and he looks like an old man. A dying old man.

  I succumb to terror and fall to my knees and implore and beseech God. “If not for me, then for France. Louis is too young to die. We cannot be parted.” For one awful moment my imagination leads me to the scene of Louise being banished from Versailles. In a snap I know her pain as it hurtles toward me and knocks me off my knees. I am being punished, and I deserve it.

  On the seventh day the generals, princes, and religious men force their way in, encouraged by the doctors who have turned against me. They shout at me to leave the room and to leave the king in peace, but I ignore their bluster and hold my ground. No one knows what to do; to foretell the death of a king is treason, yet the king may be dying. Only Maurepas, my sworn enemy, hisses that I shall be banished, once the king comes to his mind and takes the final sacrament.

  “It’s the end, girl, do you understand that?”

  “You are a fool gambler, Maurepas.” I muster as much odium as I can. “And you are gambling on the king’s death. I say it will not come to that, so think what will happen to you, talking thus to me.”

  Maurepas sneers and waves a hand toward the bed. “He’s dying and you know it as well as the rest. The time for his final confession is coming. And when it comes, girl, then you go.”

  The king’s confessor, Perusseau, is that most unusual of creatures: a sympathetic and kindly priest. I demand of him if it is true that the Bishop of Soissons, who circles me like a vulture over carrion, will force me to leave.

  “I do not know, madame,” he says softly, looking everywhere but in my eyes. But I want to know. I want to know the worst, so I can be prepared. To fail to plan is to plan to fail. I must not fail.

  “Tell me!”

  “I cannot, madame, I cannot, for I do not know. The king . . .” Perusseau stands helplessly before me. Diane rubs my shoulders and my back and suddenly I whirl around as though demons are forcing me to turn.

  “Well?” I shout, not caring who can hear or not. They all know what we are talking about. “Tell me, just tell me, or damn you!” I swear, not caring that I am in the abbey and surrounded by monks, brown-suited ghouls with centuries of censure clinging to their skirts. No one answers, for what if the king does not die? They know I will remember clearly everyone who said I should go, and everyone who wanted me to stay.

  It’s early morning, pale warm fog filling the sick chamber, eight days since it all began. Outside the bells toll and the masses gather, their prayers and cries piercing the thick stone walls of the abbey. At last Perusseau comes to tell me that the bishop is getting ready to administer the sacraments, and that I must go. If I do not, the king will die without sacraments. And the king is dying.

  Richelieu looks at Perusseau as though he were a bug he could step on, but says nothing. Perusseau shuffles nervously and I know he agrees with the bishop. A wave of terror washes over me: something bad, very bad, is going to happen. I flash to the face of the fortune-teller Sybille, her tense mouth and strained smile. Black-stained fingers of death. The woman was humoring me; she saw something beyond what she told me.

  I fight my way back to Louis’s bed but he only grows worse, and by noon his breath is alarmingly shallow and his skin the color of ashes. He slips in and out of consciousness and once even thinks we are at Choisy. Oh, how I wish we were at Choisy!

  “Bijou, Bijou,” he calls. I am sure he is calling for his jewels, and not for Louise. I listen intently but he never mentions me.

  “Long enough!” roars the bishop, storming into the sickroom. “Get that whore out. The king must confess, and all must be readied for the sacraments.”

  Back in my room I sit numbly on my bed and close my eyes. The king has agreed to confess and take the last rites, and has agreed that I must leave. He said it himself. Louis said I must go. In delirium, but still, it was said. The dauphin and queen are to arrive within days. And I—and Diane and our friends—we must go. Banished by order of the king.

  “When must I go?” I ask. I am a duchess. I thought I was immune, I thought I would never know insecurity or want again.

  “Today,” says Perusseau firmly. Maurepas comes in and repeats the news. I wish I could spit on him, but instead Diane does it for me. The spittle misses and lands on the ground near his boot. He steps back in surprise and disgust and suddenly we are laughing, hysterically. I point my finger at Maurepas. “This is not over, and I will remember what happened here, today.”

  He bows and doesn’t even bother to smirk. “Madame, go. Now. Listen—outside.”

  We fall silent and hear the chanting of people outside, crying that the whore must be banished or they will kill her themselves, for the sake of their king. I blanch. Richelieu enters and he is all business; he will survive this, as he always survives.

  “Go today, right now. Belle-Isle will give you his carriage and none need know it is you inside. Rest and recover and prepare for the future.”

  What future? I think numbly as the servants stuff our chests and gather our dresses. Already carpenters are outside in the laneway, pulling down the wooden bridge between our apartments and those of the king, to show the world that the hated harlot cannot reach him ever again. I realize I have not said good-bye to Louis. My heart stops and I double over in pain.

  “What is it, sister?” Diane rushes to my side but I shake her off. There is no need to say good-bye, I tell myself, because I will see him again. I will see him again. And not in Heaven. I will see him again on this earth. I know it. And all those who hustled me out shall rot in Hell. Yet my legs wobble like jelly and inside I am not sure of the truth, not sure of anything.

  We close the curtains and the carriage rolls through the streets of Metz. We sit tensely in the fetid box, breathing easily only once we have cleared the town. Then we are out into the countryside, heading south to a château where Richelieu assures us we will be welcome. A man on horse passes us at a gallop and in the next village we are jeered at and pelted with rotten cabbages. They cry that we are dangerous whores who shall burn alive. I wait to be dragged from the carriage and murdered by the mob.

  Surely this is not how it is going to end? Diane grasps my hands tightly and Aglaë thumbs her rosary with her eyes shut while Elisabeth cries into her hands. They must regret our friendship, I think. But we get through that village, and two more like it, and finally take the road through a thick pine forest to the small provincial château at Fleury—an ironic name. The forest is dark and close, and as night falls we hear wolves and other beasts of the black night baying around us.

  “Those men, all of them, the bishops, the generals, the peasants—they were like wolves,” I say, “howling for our blood.” It is the first word any of us has said in more than an hour. I am glad when we are finally beneath the gates of the château that is our dest
ination for the night; at least here there are friendly faces and a welcome meal. I am trembling inside, we all are, and I gulp at the wine that is offered. Without having to be asked, the young hostess orders brandy brought and we drink in silence.

  Everything is over. I have lost. God has abandoned me. One does not have to be religious to see something biblical in my punishment.

  Diane faints from exhaustion and is carried upstairs to her room. For the first time I remember her pregnancy and wonder if she will lose the child. Then I remember Louis running his hand lightly over my stomach and asking me when we would have a child. Almost the last words he ever said to me. I feel the abyss upon me, and in front of everyone I begin to cry with great big heaving sobs.

  The next day we receive orders that we must remove ourselves even farther from Metz; apparently four leagues is not far enough for such as we. We decide to head back to Paris, as we have received no instructions that we may not. Outside Reims, we pass the queen’s entourage, traveling quickly in the opposite direction. Hortense is probably with her. No one recognizes our carriage and when we pass we stare straight ahead.

  We were in Metz for only a few months, but it seems an age ago that we set out from Paris, laughing, gay, nervous. Now it’s the middle of August and the fields are swollen with wheat and rye and my senses rush with the smell of Burgundy just before the harvest. What if JB had never died? I would still be in Burgundy, and never would have met Louis, or become a duchess.

  They can’t take that from me, my title. Or perhaps they can. Mistresses may be adored while alive, but before the king’s body is cold they become the worst of whores. Hated and despised.

  “Why do they hate us so much?”

  Diane starts to cry and says: “They tried to tear Pauline’s arms off.”

  We are almost to Paris when our carriage is recognized and we are surrounded by a mob that screeches like an owl and pelts our windows with stones and soft turnips.

  Diane

  HÔTEL DE MAILLY-NESLE, PARIS

  November 1744

  It is going to be another hard winter and already frost and snow as deep as knees blanket the city. I know that nothing will ever be the same again. Everything has changed and everything is worse. We are trapped in the house, and when I hear the bells of the Bastille ringing for its prisoners, it is as though they ring for us, the hollow sounds floating through the thin air to taunt us in our jail.

  We are back in our childhood home, the house a present from the king to my sister. We are in my mother’s gold-paneled bedroom, her bed now gone, but the dead can linger in so many ways. The servants weren’t expecting us and our first few days were filled with dust beaten from the carpets and the curtains, making me cough and irritated. Marie-Anne looked at me with dull red eyes and even managed to smile: she said she had never seen me irritated.

  “Well, how can I laugh with dust in my throat?” I said tensely.

  We have been all alone these last months; no one comes to visit, or even writes. I can’t blame them, for contact with us is as deadly as if we were stricken with the pox. Only Aglaë remains, though she frets about her daughter’s upcoming marriage to the wealthiest little boy in France—will her prospects be damaged by this? Elisabeth slipped back to Versailles last month to see if she has been damaged beyond repair. I think I will miss Court but I am not sure. Perhaps I will be allowed back? But could I abandon Marie-Anne?

  I think I could. If they send her to a convent, I really don’t want to follow her there. I’ve done my time in a convent, I think, remembering the slow, steady life at Port-Royal. Then, it was enough for me. But now? Never. I decide if I can’t go back to Versailles, I will stay in Paris.

  Marie-Anne is defiant. She says even if they banish her to a convent in the middle of the Auvergne, she will escape and flee across the border where the king’s justice can’t find her, and then she will make her way to Martinique.

  “I have money, I have jewels,” she brags, and spends her days poring over the chests that Leone has managed to bring from Versailles, rescuing what she can before all is confiscated in the name of revenge or law.

  Through it all—the tears and the flight, the king’s miraculous recovery and our current plight—I feel my baby kicking inside me. No one cares about this child except for me. She—or he, though I think it will be a girl—will be mine completely. No one will be disappointed if it is a girl; Lauraguais says he is hoping for a son but he would not have married me if he needed them.

  My husband comes to visit and inspects my belly and tells me I am more pregnant than any woman he has ever seen.

  “What,” I say sourly, “how many naked pregnant women have you seen? How many children have you sired?” I am so tired and my nerves are stretched so thin; I am in no mood for his bantering comments. I feel like hurting someone: I want to pull off his legs, like Marie-Anne used to do to spiders.

  He surveys me and softens.

  “Wherever they tell Marie-Anne to go, she must go, and you must let her. It’s not a good time to be her sister, and you must distance yourself from her.”

  I cover my belly again and caress the big, lumpen egg. Yesterday, she was kicking as though clamoring to come out, but today all is quiet. She wants nothing of this world or of this life.

  “The king will never give her up. He loves her too much.” I believe it; I have never known a man as infatuated as the king was with Marie-Anne. So utterly, utterly in love. Sometimes I wonder what that would be like, for I have never had that experience. I am sometimes with the king, but only when Marie-Anne is unwell. Suddenly I think: I am like one of Lauraguais’s breast pillows. A chest coddle, something to offer comfort, but only when needed. The thought is not pleasing.

  My husband shakes his head. “You’re wrong. The king cannot go back now. He has received the final sacraments. He has made a vow in front of God.” He points up to the ceiling, just in case I had any doubt as to where He lives. “All have read his printed confession. There is no love strong enough in the world to overcome that.”

  “You don’t know what love is.”

  “Neither do you.”

  That may be. That may be. We look at each other in silence. But I think I will love this little baby as much as any little baby has ever been loved, and maybe she will truly love me in turn. Before he leaves, Lauraguais hugs me, strongly and fiercely, and I think in surprise: But I am loved. I remember Madame Lesdig holding me, so tightly, the day I learned that Pauline died; there is grace in this world, in those that surround us.

  Today the king returns from the border with Austria, all triumph and majesty. A string of victories: France’s prestige is restored and now the streets are noisy with cheer. Marie-Anne was right to encourage the king to go to war. It was her undoing, but her efforts have made the king more popular than he was before. The cries are for Louis the Well Beloved and even the pigs in the streets seem to squeal in approval; Paris is infected with love. Marie-Anne paces nervously through the rooms and then up and down the stairs.

  “He will love that name,” she murmurs. “Louis the Well Beloved. He will be so pleased.”

  She slumps in a chair by the window, her cheek pressed against the icy glass. The courtyard below is the repository of all her hopes and dreams. A visit, a letter, a sign. But all is silent and empty, the snow a smooth white blanket over the cobblestones. There are no wheel marks; no one has come to see us in weeks.

  Marie-Anne’s woman, Leone, comes in, shaking off snow and bringing with her news from the street. “Such a crowd, such a crowd. I’ve never seen so many people in my life! And all drunk with happiness and love.” She stops and looks timidly at her mistress. Today there was a service of Thanksgiving at Notre-Dame and all afternoon the streets were raucous. By fall of night the crowds have dimmed and the chanting is replaced by drunken singing and the crash of fights.

  “I want the truth,” snaps Marie-Anne. “I’m strong enough for it.”

  “They clamored for the king . . . oh, how t
hey clamored for him. He appeared in a window—the crowd was such I couldn’t see him myself. But my! The roar when they saw him. Louder than the bells of the Bastille; louder than the largest thunderclap. Something to hear, indeed, and something I will never forget. Such noise! Such joy!”

  Marie-Anne stays by the cold window, refusing food and drink though I make sure she has a pot of something hot beside her at all times. I have a maid bring a heavy blanket from one of the bedrooms, but even wrapped in the sumptuous pelt, she looks frozen and sad. The window is nothing but a thin piece of black glass between her and the icy night. She is not looking well, drained like a sack of curds pressed of whey. Her face is gray and black circles rim under her eyes.

  I can’t bear to see her like this, so frightened and vulnerable. Louise was always the one who would comfort us in the nursery, sing us a song when we had a toothache, pat away our tears when our toys broke. We need her now. She lives near this house, just across the Seine, but it doesn’t matter: she is as far away as if she were on the moon. I put the idea of inviting her firmly away, and pray it doesn’t bubble up in my chatter. I caress my stomach.

  “He’s coming,” she says. “I know it.”

  To dampen her hopes would be far too cruel. But it is as my husband said: what the king has done, he cannot undo. “Of course he will come, Marie-Anne,” I say. “He loves you more than anyone, and cannot be apart from you.”

  The clocks chime eight and it is already well dark on this bitter winter night. Marie-Anne continues her vigil by the window and stares out into the black void of the courtyard, willing a carriage to appear. There has been no letter from him, only a short note from Richelieu saying that the king regrets all that happened. Even Richelieu does not visit us, though he too has returned to Paris. Marie-Anne says she understands and that in a similar circumstance she would not take the risk. “It wasn’t friendship,” she says dully. “Only ambition.”