“Well, pinch me, everyone’s life is hard.”
“None as hard as mine,” he says, complying and pinching me gently.
I caress his neck and murmur something in his ear, which he thinks is sympathy, but isn’t. I don’t have time for his melancholy and his dark moods, for the vacancy in his eyes when he sets to snuffle in self-pity. So many have lives so much harder than this king, I think, remembering the scourge of hunger in my belly on the days when the convent couldn’t feed us, the endless cold that seeped through our thin shoes, Dorothée’s sightless eyes and ruined nose.
“But you were sent to rescue me. Heaven cannot be entirely displeased with me, to send such an angel. I was getting tired of the house in town,” he muses. “Pleasure, lots of it, but no friends, no companionship. Ah,” he sighs, “indeed I must be getting old.”
I snuggle against him. “No, everyone needs a friend.”
He holds me closer. “You remind me, a touch, of my dear Pompadour; she was a true friend. My only friend.” His features draw in again, back in the past. “But a trifle annoying at times—she tried to be perfect in everything. But I know she loved me, for me.”
I’m silent. I never ask about her, but when he does wander down memory lane, I follow him gladly.
“Not as sweet as you, dearest,” he continues, stroking my arm. “There was a coldness to her, the heart of seagull beneath her beautiful dress. No, you remind me in your sweetness of another lady, my first Louise.”
I don’t ask who she is but instead: “I’m warm,” I say, guiding his finger into the heat of my insides. “I’m fire.”
“No, not fire,” he says, gazing at me tenderly, moving his finger inside me. “A slow, gentle burn, the flames just enough to warm my soul. How I love you, my dearest.”
We spend the autumn at Fontainebleau. When the Court returns to Versailles, he leases me a house in town on the rue de l’Orangerie, and I leave the ghosts of the little house on the rue Saint-Louis behind.
I pass my nights with him at Versailles, but not the days. When I walk through the halls of the palace, with Chon or Richelieu, I am like a ghost, a nameless creature no one sees or acknowledges. I am not presented, so I am nothing at Court and I must spend hours or even days away from the king, our lives cleaved in two by the power of etiquette. Were I presented, I would have the right to take part in the journeys of the Court, to get in royal coaches, to live publicly with the king, attend concerts with the royal family, show myself at Mesdames’ card parties.
And have an apartment in the palace.
“A painted prostitute,” Chon says the ladies of the Court call me, and my heart hardens—they don’t even know me, yet it seems they are determined to hate me. And I don’t even wear rouge. Chon has become my confidante; she has her brother’s scheming ways but in a much more pleasant package. When she tells me about her life in Toulouse, it is as though she speaks of my convent days. I shudder. I’m never going back there, and neither is she.
She is very resourceful and beetles around the palace, befriending members of the second tier at Court, a large and vast group generally ignored by the ones above, yet who hold all their secrets. She determines that I need to be presented.
“Presentation is like a baptism. Welcome to the church of Versailles!” she says.
I agree. The Christmas and New Year’s festivities are coming up and in my current state I cannot be a part of them. I pout and cry at Louis—I think he would be perfectly happy for things to continue as they are—but eventually he agrees. Yes, I shall be presented.
Ha! I shall be not just the queen of his heart, but the queen of Versailles. And then maybe those starchy old ladies will talk to me.
But those starchy ladies . . . it seems none is prepared to present me. And without a lady who herself has been presented, I cannot be. Louis insists Richelieu will take care of it, and that I must not worry.
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” he says sadly. “I shall redouble my efforts with Richelieu—he must know it displeases me greatly that he has not been able to take care of this.”
“Soon, you promise?”
“Yes, my dear, you have my word.”
“And after your presentation,” he announces to me one night, with the air of one who is about to grant me an enormous and unhoped-for favor—possibly the emerald parure I wished for? “You are to spend several months . . . preparing yourself.”
“Oh!” I sit up in fright. “What do you mean, preparing myself?”
“I mean to say, my dear, you must prepare yourself . . . for this place,” he finishes grandly.
“What place?”
“Versailles, dearest.”
“What exactly do you mean?” I ask again, my suspicions growing. I remember an excruciating conversation with Richelieu last week, about how a prince wasn’t a prince, if a prince and a duke, and that to call the Duchesse de Valentinois the Princesse de Monaco would be an insult, the magnitude of which could never be rectified. I grew bored with the conversation and decided life was too short and sweet to worry about such things. For me, etiquette is like Latin: a language I have no wish to learn.
“You must learn etiquette and our ways; the position of a royal mistress is a heavy role and a burden.”
“You would send me to school? No! France, my only burden should be to make you happy.”
Louis shakes his head, laughing. “No, peaches, you don’t understand. There are many rules and obligations, many customs to learn . . .”
“Oh, flumadiddle! Who am I supposed to be fooling?”
“Well, yes, I concede you have a good point there, but—”
“I shall not be sent to school! You cannot make me.”
“Not to school, dearest, but—”
“I shall run away. Run away right now, without any clothes on!”
Louis chuckles. “Well, fine then, we’ll leave your tutelage alone. Perhaps it is not a bad idea to ask the courtiers to adapt themselves to you. It would be rather amusing to see them learn new tricks.”
I give him a big wet kiss, and promise to show him a few new tricks of my own.
I sweep down, and up, a literal lead monster on my stomach and back. Chon has sewn my bodice with silver from the table, saying it will mimic the heaviness of the jewels that I will surely wear at my presentation.
My curtsy is perfect, but still no lady has been found who is willing to do the honors. In their resistance, the depth of the courtiers’ hatred for me is revealed. Songs circulate about me, one even claiming my sexual depravity began before I was ten, and that Saint-Maur was a brothel, not a convent.
A carriage pulls up outside—Richelieu. Chon’s face darkens. She says she does not trust the duke as far as she could throw him, but I tell her not to be silly: Richelieu is our friend. One of my only ones, I think grimly, for it is an awful thing to be on the outside, and despised, and simply for being me. A fly on the wrong side of the glass, and no one is opening any windows.
I’m not sure I like Versailles very much.
Richelieu sweeps in, setting his gloves and sword on the sideboard.
“Watch me.” I sink down in an elegant curtsy and rise up again.
“Lovely, madame, lovely. Are those forks on your bodice? Spoons?”
I smile at him. “Some good news, I hope?”
“I am afraid not, madame.” He sighs and sits down rather heavily, his face the color of pressed cheese. A wave of premonition—I don’t want to be the cause of any more harm, I think in alarm, remembering Le Bel. And Richelieu, though enlivened by the last few months, is still an old man. “So many excuses I have rarely heard. The death of the queen—as if anyone was afflicted by that! A sprained wrist; a forbidding husband—no end of useless excuses.”
“Oh, la!” I cry. “Why are they being so hateful?” I yank a fork off my bodice and throw it on the floor.
Richelieu shakes his head. “I hate to say this, but we need the Pompadour; she had the most amazing gift for taking care of eve
n the thorniest of problems.”
“Really, sir?” asks Chon. “I thought you were one of her keenest enemies?”
“Ah, in this life there are few worthy opponents . . .” muses Richelieu with a sad and distant look in his eyes, then shakes himself. “But what am I saying? She was a bourgeois nothing, with scales beneath her skirts. I never countenanced her presence at Versailles.”
“Yet you support my dear sister?” challenges Chon. “Jeanne is many things, but she is a far cry from even a bourgeoise.”
The duke winces: he is unused to being challenged, and certainly not by one as insignificant and female as Chon.
“Do not be worried, Mademoiselle Chon,” he says smoothly. “Our dear Madame du Barry is what the king needs, but I never saw the use of the Pompadour. I had many superior substitutes, but in her fried and battered way, she satisfied his appetite.”
“So who is going to present me?” I demand, turning the conversation back to what is important. “The king demands to know.” Richelieu is more at Court these days, and in the king’s presence, and all because of me. Now he has to repay the favor, I think grimly, playing with one of the spoons secured to my chest.
“I have tried so many, but all remain intractable. This insubordination of the female sex is very vexing—it is as though they do not consider the effect of their independence on the men! Even Mirie—I mean to say the Duchesse de Mirepoix. I had my man procure a very rare rabbit from India—at least it was supposed to be a rabbit, though it looked more like an overgrown rat—but the duchess is getting so old she wouldn’t know the difference. Yet still she refused.
“Even my daughter,” he continues, “denied me in a most unfilial manner. But she is married and no longer under my command, so what can I do? And my mistresses; I have a long list of them, you know.” Here he attempts a leer, which devolves into a coughing fit that leaves spittle on his fine lace coat. “I have asked all of them, yet to no avail. I had thought to have some traction with my nephew’s wife, Félicité d’Aiguillon, but it seems she has forgotten the two best nights of her life.”
“What about someone from d’Ayen’s family?” demands Chon. “Surely the old duke can help? Can’t you find him a wig of spider silk or some such thing?”
“Sadly, no. His daughter-in-law the Comtesse de Noailles is such a proper woman and he fears her health would never recover were he to command her obedience. The same for his wife.” He sighs, looking back and forth between us, shaking his head. “The king is not used to not getting his way. As you know, that toad Choiseul is decidedly against our cause, and that is not helping.”
Choiseul. I have met him, of course; Louis even arranged a small dinner for us, but his frosty air and superior mien remained. Chon tells me he calls me a strumpet and is responsible for many of the salacious poems circulating about me. He is still living in the past, when he and Pompadour regented the king’s fancies, and I know he wishes me to stay in town, and never breach the walls of the palace.
“We need someone old and in penury,” continues Richelieu. “There is a certain Diane, the Duchesse de Lauraguais—de Brancas, now. She is retired from Court since the death of the dauphine, and in terrible debt, but I fear her health is so bad that such a proposition might send her over the edge. I cannot be responsible for the death of such a dear, dear friend,” he finishes, with a little leer, successful this time. “And none of Mesdames’ ladies: they are threatening instant dismissal should anyone even consider it. Disgusting old harpies.”
I grimace, thinking of the old ladies as I saw them at Fontainebleau: the eldest, Madame Adélaïde, almost forty, with a heavy, masculine face as rigid and expressionless as stone. She wore a choker of pearls around her plump neck that dug into her flesh and made her face red. Madame Victoire, who looked for all the world like someone’s kind and frumpy aunt, and then Madame Sophie, as terrified as a squirrel. They all carefully elevated their noses and averted their eyes when I passed, except for the youngest, Madame Louise, who looked at me with what appeared to be amused nonchalance.
“What about someone in her second infancy?” suggests Chon. “Isn’t the Prince de Ligne’s mother as mad as a batfish, and not far from here in Passy?”
“Already considered, my dear Chon, but guardians can be such troublesome people,” says Richelieu, looking at Chon with new appreciation and respect.
“Well there has to be someone!” I stomp my foot, frustrated. “Surely, out of that vast palace of a thousand souls, there has to be someone?”
Chapter Seventeen
In which Madame Adélaïde’s world ends
“I know who it is! I know who it is!” Victoire comes barreling in, her hair threatening to slip out of her cap, which is threatening to slip off her head. “It is confirmed, it is confirmed,” she pants, slumping down on the sofa.
“Sit down properly, and calm yourself,” I say crisply, setting aside my morning reading: The Taxonomical Order of Vegetables. “Lisette, get Madame Victoire a glass of water.”
“Better some of the apricot cordial!” says Victoire quickly. “My nerves, my nerves. But it is confirmed!”
“What is?” I say in annoyance. I had a dream last night that left me unsettled and unable to concentrate properly on cabbages.
“The presentation,” breathes Victoire.
Oh! Damn my Narbonne woman, always leaving me in the dark and being lax in her duty of keeping me ahead of the facts I need to know at Court.
“But we must send for Sophie and Louise,” I say, rising and trying to contain my excitement. “Narbonne! Now, calm yourself and do not tell me, not yet. We must all be together.” I get up to circle the room in mounting excitement; war is meaningless if the enemy is not known. Who could she be, this traitor to our blood, who will present that unspeakable woman whom no one can stop speaking about?
Only when we four are gathered do I dismiss the women and allow Victoire to tell. Sophie is almost overcome with the gravity of the situation, but Louise only looks rather annoyed at being summoned! She affects great piety, but how irresponsible that she should not care when our father’s soul is in peril.
“Yes, yes,” said Victoire eagerly, looking flushed and not only from the news, “it came from Civrac herself, she heard it straight from her daughter, who heard it from Belsunze, who heard it from—”
I hold up my hand. “We are not interested in the genealogy of this information, just in the facts. And I propose we guess!” A pleasant hour stretches before me, and I will be the one to—
“It is the Comtesse de Béarn,” says Victoire, and I could throttle her.
“Who?” asks Louise curiously.
“Yes, she’s frightfully obscure, but was presented to Mama—and probably to you too, Adélaïde, in ’38, more than thirty years ago. Distantly related to Villars and Ségur, I believe. She is apparently very poor, and there are debts involved . . . Civrac says she used to go to that creature’s house in Paris and gamble.”
The enemy, identified. Well, not the real enemy, that of course remains the indelicate woman, but enemies can be a many-headed Hydra. A many-headed Medusa?
“We shall stop her!” I announce. “The Comtesse de Béarn is a traitor to the entire noble race.”
Sophie murmurs something that sounds like poison.
“What?” I say sharply.
“She might die. Poison. She’s very old already,” she whispers in a tiny voice, and buries her head in her hands.
“Pity she’s not indisposed; then she might die in childbirth,” says Victoire solemnly, “but she’s got five children already and they’re all grown up.”
“How you have such a memory for these insignificant facts, Victoire, yet can never remember the pluperfect of Greek verbs simply astounds me. But back to the task at hand: the countess must be stopped.”
“Which countess?” asks Victoire, pouring herself another glass of cordial.
“De Béarn! Well, du Barry too, but to stop that indelicate woman, we need to first
stop Béarn. Letters! Yes indeed! We shall all write her letters.”
“And what will we write in these letters?” asks Louise. “For her to desist in this undertaking?”
“Of course,” I say in astonishment. “What else?”
“Don’t you think she already knows that we are displeased with her decision to present that woman?”
“Well, yes, if she is not half-witted, though wasn’t there a Villars who was mute from birth? But I have no doubt a letter coming from me, from Madame de France, will certainly bear weight.”
“We must be careful not to make Papa angry,” warns Louise. I haven’t told anyone about the dreadful scene with him, but sometimes I suspect Louise knows, and now there appears to be an irritating pity under her warning. Even though it happened more than six months ago, time has not erased the crushing cruelty of his words.
“But we are trying to save him from making a dreadful mistake! Choiseul said the entire monarchy risks being undermined by this indelicate woman.”
“But will Papa see it like that? And he’s happier these days, and it is his decision, really.”
“It is not his decision,” I say through gritted teeth, struggling to control myself. “He is not in his right mind, he is simply held captive by that part of his anatomy, by that p— Oh, Sophie, I am sorry,” I say as Sophie squeals in fright. I glare at Louise: “Look what you almost made me say!”
Louise apologizes calmly and rises. “My dears, I must go. I shall see you later.”
Oh, go, I think in irritation, then turn back to the matter at hand. “Civrac! Have our writing desks brought!”
We will make this Comtesse de Béarn understand she risks our eternal enmity if she does goes ahead with the presentation.
We shall not fail.
We failed and the infamous day dawns, a pretty spring day to herald the end of Lent and the coming summer.
It should be hailing.
Papa returns from the hunt, but this evening at his debottée he looks harried and irritated. As though this is an onerous duty imposed on him, and not one of his own creation, I think sourly, then curse myself for my disloyal thoughts.
The Enemies of Versailles Page 12