The Enemies of Versailles

by Sally Christie

  I knew her to be heedless, but I did not think her cruel.

  These days Narbonne is constantly urging me to reconcile with the harlot, for through her lies the path to regain the love of my father. But I cannot, simply cannot, and so I watch him as he spins ever further away from us, ever more under the influence of her, and the younger generation.

  Yet I can see what I have lost, and what my enmity has cost me.

  As though pulled by my thoughts, the Barry harlot appears, laughing loudly in her vulgar way. She is wearing a lovely cream dress, bedecked with a glistening sapphire necklace though it is not yet evening, and accompanied by a buzzing cloud of acolytes. Everyone in the salon turns to watch her, and waves of recognition ripple through the crowd.

  I glance at Papa; he is watching her with a look of tenderness and admiration.

  I must concentrate on my soup and on my duty. I must eat my soup in the most regal manner, give the spectators a chance to witness the grace and majesty of their rulers. But since that woman entered, no one is looking at us.

  “Coo—how lovely!” exclaims a woman in an overly large pink dress.

  “Just look at that hair! And those jewels!”

  “Like an angel,” declares the man in the yellow coat, shaking his head as though in wonder.

  The dance starts again, the soup plates whisked smoothly away, the last course grandly borne in through the doors. A quivering mountain of red gelatin is placed before us, and I can hear the dauphine inhale in disgust.

  “Quiver . . .” whispers Sophie as though in awe.

  Recently I have had a curious shaking feeling that sometimes bedevils me for days on end. I am past forty, the only of my siblings to achieve that age. They say thirty-five is the Rubicon in a woman’s life, when she must stop wearing flowers and flounces and put on caps and somber clothes. But we are not in my grandmother’s time and I believe the younger fashions look perfectly fine on me, and the new pale colors complement my complexion.

  Somehow forty seems more momentous. If I died, who would mourn me?

  What use is a childless woman, ever? asks the Lady of Introspection from her perch inside the trembling rhubarb jelly. A lifetime of getting dressed and undressed, endless dinners and endless rituals, a lifetime of waiting for visits, a lifetime of sitting around. A lifetime of doing my duty.

  And in return I didn’t want much from him—why couldn’t he give it to me? My father was the only man for me, ever, yet I was never enough for him.

  “This jelly looks old,” hisses Antoinette as her portion is placed before her with a flourish.

  I sense Narbonne and Beauvilliers somewhere above me.

  “Sister, dear sister, what is it?” Victoire’s voice floats by me and then her face, a well of kindness and worry, comes slowly into focus.

  Goodness, what am I doing on the floor? I am helped to my feet by the firm hands of Narbonne, and I am uncomfortably aware that the entire room—my family, the courtiers, those dreadful base people—are all staring at me. Looks of concern on some, amused indulgence on others. Did I fall off my chair?

  “Is it the jelly?” whispers Victoire, holding up a spoonful.

  “No, no, I—a faint turn, no more. Thank you, Narbonne,” I say as she guides me to my feet. My head feels light, as though there is nothing inside it. Nothing inside me. “I would return to my apartment.”

  “Are you sure you’re fine, sister? I’ll come with you.” Victoire’s voice is worried, torn between duty and the dessert she is loath to leave.

  “No, no, I would—I am fine.”

  As I am helped away, I glance back at Papa, but he is not even looking at me; he is smiling once again at the harlot. I stumble and catch my equerry’s arm.

  “Just a slight—indisposition,” I say to no one in particular, but no one is listening. No one ever listens. And no one ever watches you, a voice, one that sounds too much like Louise’s, mocks me.

  “What did you say?” I ask Narbonne sharply, but she only looks confused and shakes her head. I am led into my bed, and the curtains are drawn against the outside world and the cold of the November day.

  I startle awake—when did I fall asleep? It is dark in my room; from an alcove, candles glitter but the room is empty and silent. I lie inside the bed, not stirring to alert my attendants. I can be alone here, I think, then realize I am always alone, even amidst the crowd of my life.

  I start to cry. Everything is sad, and I have a melancholy I cannot shake. Everything I did in my life, I did for him, and now I sense we have become distasteful to him. My fixity of purpose inspired no respect, and he has chosen her—that harlot—over his own daughters.

  How dare he?

  This time I cannot push my awful thoughts away, and my hollowness is filled with vitriol and bitterness and aching pain. The Lady of Introspection curls into bed alongside me and stretches out to stay the night, and she speaks in the voices of my enemies and taunts me with truths I never wanted.

  I hear that mocking girl’s voice: a dead end. Aiguillon’s voice, calm, smooth, treachery underneath, thinking one word from me would send Papa running in the opposite direction. That harlot, looking at me with kindness, even pity. Worst of all, my father’s blank eyes.

  I stay in my bed, unable to rise, the doctors unable to prescribe anything but bleedings that leave me even weaker still. Was it all a dreadful mistake? Why did my goodness not inspire the love it should have? Why do others have love but never me? I only wanted to be good, and I cry great tears from the deepest river inside me. I am a fool, a joke, a burden. That is what they think I am, and that is what I have become.

  Élisabeth, crying in fright, Clothilde wetting herself, even Louis-Auguste impatient with us. My sister Élisabeth, dead now, saying we were like frogs in a well, never knowing the world outside Versailles. But that was not my doing! Why did Papa never have us married? Why did he fail in his duty to us? I hear the taunts mixed with the crowds on the roads to Plombières, where we went to take the waters. So long ago, we were so young then, Henriette with us, Louise with us; now we are so old and ugly and forgotten.

  I lie a week or more in the sheltered cavern of my bed, but then one morning I wake up feeling different, and determined. This is not who I am. I must rouse and straighten myself, not hide like a bug in a bed. We all have our duties and our place in this world. The prayer cushions for Saint Agonia’s day need to be finished, and I have missed two lessons with our trumpet master—how will I ever learn the piece by Gluck that I was supposed to?

  Chapter Forty-Three

  In which the Comtesse du Barry hears an awful prophecy

  I tap my foot impatiently, and beside me, the Marquise de Flavacourt twitches in disapproval. I cannot believe we are listening to this same damn priest, the same one who railed against the king last year and who caused Louis such sorrow and fear.

  I told Louis he must seek new counsel, but he only shook his head dolefully, with that distant, pious look he gets when speaking of things religious (quite often these days) and said the man was just doing his job—tending to souls.

  Just doing his job . . . I look down from my box to the king in the center of the chapel below. To think, if the pope had done his job and approved the divorce, I could have been sitting down there with the king and his family. But in truth, the view is better from up here. I note in appreciation the Duchesse de Valentinois’ hairstyle, piled high and ringed with black roses, rather elaborate and sinful under her black lace lappets.

  The priest rails on: “The people of France are in misery while their king resides in sin! The whole of France stinks of want and desperation.”

  Outside, at least the sun is shining, casting gemlike shards through the dreadful cold of the chapel. I twist one of the ends of my lappets until Flavacourt takes my arm and puts it firmly down again. It has been a grim start to the year: a hailstorm in February, coinciding with Louis’ sixty-fourth birthday; a string of sudden deaths that put my Louis in a scared and tremulous mood, and t
he continuing troubles of a woman after thirty: the specter of caps is starting to haunt me, the need to cover my hair in the name of age and respectability.

  And then to crown the series of unfortunate events, the king hurt his arm while hunting. Again. The bone was not broken, thank goodness—last year the Comtesse de Montholon tripped on her train and broke her ankle, then died from the subsequent infection—but still it swelled up and was angry and red for many weeks. Now the horse is forbidden him and it is all he can do to spear some little piglets, specially hobbled by the grooms for the honor of being killed by the king.

  Next to the king sit the dauphin and his wife, and I have to admire her hairstyle. She has taken to wearing her hair piled high over pads of horsehair and human hair; these elaborate concoctions, known as poufs, are suddenly everywhere. Today, hers is decorated with black bells and silk spring flowers. I pat my own hair in satisfaction—no need for fake hair for me, though many ladies must have recourse to that as styles inch higher.

  The priest rants on: “The king is the cause of the people’s misery, as sin is the cause of all the misery on earth!” The Abbé de Beauvais is a favorite of Mesdames, the king’s daughters; no doubt another one of their ill-advised attempts to meddle in their father’s private life.

  “Goodness, but he’s going too far!” hisses Madame de Flavacourt beside me, frowning in disapproval.

  “Don’t listen to him,” I whisper back, glaring down at the black-frocked priest. Beside the dauphin and his wife are his two younger brothers and their wives; they whisper that the youngest, the Comtesse d’Artois, is pregnant already. How the dauphine must have wept when she heard the news! She remains as cold as ice to me, and amidst my other worries—why are they suddenly so many in number?—is an ever-present little siren that sings: Forcing her to speak to you was not a good idea. A Pyrrhic victory, Chon called it, but I didn’t even bother to ask what that meant—I don’t want to know.

  Next to them, in descending order of dullness, are the three daughters of the king, each frumpier than the last. Clumsy, plump old wenches, the Court calls them. How sad it must be to be them: forgotten in a corner of the palace, every year older, every year more insignificant. An old unmarried princess is more useless than a clock without hands, Mirie once whispered to me.

  Madame Adélaïde was sick at the end of last year and spent the good part of a week in her bed, the curtains drawn around her, admitting no one. Who would miss her if she died? Perhaps the king: at heart he is a good man, and was once very fond of his daughters.

  The priest thunders on: “Jonah warned the city of Nineveh they had forty days until God destroyed them. The people repented and God spared them! Unless the king repents of his sin, this city will be destroyed in forty days!”

  Inwardly I groan; Louis is going to be in a pother because of this.

  And he is.

  “Forty days,” he repeats later, with the same solemn intonation. “Then God will destroy the city.”

  “He said city, not you.”

  “He meant me.” Louis sits down heavily, wincing as his arm catches the edge of the chair. “I am convinced of it. His words are clear: if I do not repent, I shall be destroyed.”

  I trace the back of his neck, then lean over and give him a long wet kiss, to remind him of what he would be missing, were he to repent.

  “Nineveh, Your Majesty, was recently discovered by a Dane,” informs Chon. After the sermon, Louis had shut himself in his room all day, and even refused to see me. Now it is evening and he has crept out, up to my apartment, but he is a distressed and worried man.

  “Mmm. The Danes,” says Louis, unimpressed.

  “Exactly. He didn’t say forty days and France would be destroyed. He was talking about Nineveh. Where’s Nineveh?” I ask Chon.

  “Arabia. Recently discovered by a Danish archaeologist.”

  “What’s an archaeologist?”

  Chon sighs and leaves the room.

  “It’s a parable, silly one,” says Louis in irritation. I growl back at him; I hate it when he demeans me, which he does more and more these days. He is increasingly characterized by worry and bad temper, and his dyspepsia is getting worse. Death is all around us: in January the Genoan ambassador fell dead during an audience with the king; the Abbé de la Ville was struck down with apoplexy, and then the Marquis de Chauvelin. Courtiers toppling like cards in front of the king, each sad incident deepening his conviction that he is being punished for his sins.

  Even my little attempts with Hélène backfired; after, he railed against me and accused me of inducing him to greater sin.

  And now that dratted sermon.

  “You’re becoming a grumpy old man,” I say, thinking ahead to the next ten years, God willing. I kiss him again to remind myself he’s only in a bad humor because of his arm and the sermon. It must be terrible to be old and sick, and afraid.

  “Priests shouldn’t be making predictions,” says Chon, coming back into the room with a green-painted box. “They’re not fortune-tellers and only God knows what the future holds. Now, I’m a little late, but I was hoping to send my brother Guillaume an Easter gift. This box of nuts—lots of hazelnuts!—will be just the thing, I’m sure he has quite overcome his aversion to them.”

  I gaze at her in sudden tenderness. Dearest Chon—she refuses to give up, and keeps on trying. But she had best hurry, comes a little voice I can’t quell—we’re running out of time.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  In which Madame Adélaïde receives her heart’s desire

  After our dear Abbé de Beauvais’ Maundy Thursday sermon, my father is a changed man—humble, pious, spending more time with us and less with her. All the hopes of the previous years rise again like a phoenix from the river. The priest’s words hit my father hard and we all sense he is on the verge of repentance.

  “Verge,” says Sophie softly and hopefully.

  His arm is not fully mended and he still cannot hunt. Instead he frequently drops by in the afternoons and takes a kind interest in our little world: he compliments Sophie on the cape she is embroidering for the Comtesse de Montbarrey’s greyhound, ensures Victoire has the most delicate sausage from his kitchens, and even spent one delightful afternoon talking with me about trade with our colonies in the West Indies.

  My heart aches with both happiness and regret, for this is the father I always wanted, yet so rarely had.

  Now he writes Louise daily, and I write to her as well; we scheme between ourselves to continue our father’s gradual return to God. I know Papa well, and I fear that once the forty days are done, his heart and mind will go back to her, at least for another year.

  Time is of the utmost, but I accept Louise’s advice: do not press hard, for his own heart must lead him down the righteous path. She even suggested that Papa should consider keeping the harlot beside him, as a friend, while he returns in soul and spirit to the church. A soft separation, she writes. My sources and the doctors tell me he rarely spends the night anymore; dear sister, you will know what I mean. I cannot stop some of my old jealousy returning, that Louise in her cloistered world knows more about the intimate life of our father than I do. All I have heard are disgusting rumors about a monkey—a handsome one, Civrac clarified—and dastardly goings-on at that hotbed of sin and vice, otherwise known as Louveciennes.

  “But that is very pretty, my dear,” Papa says to Sophie, who does not blush as she might have in former times, but only nods her head.

  “It is a bluebell,” she says in a small but clear voice as our father admires her embroidery.

  “My dear,” and I start, then realize he is addressing me. He hands the dog cape back to Sophie and gestures to me. “My dear, I would walk with you awhile.”

  “Of course, Papa.” Though his voice and eyes are kind, I cannot stop a small knot of worry binding my stomach.

  “Come, let us take a turn in the Salon of Apollo.” We walk there in silence, his equerries hurrying ahead to clear a path and keep the intimacy
of our walk. He sits down on one of the red velvet benches that line the room and motions for me to sit beside him. I do, my stomach now entirely tied up.

  “It has not been easy for you,” he says, staring ahead at a giant painting of Icarus and his fall on the opposite wall.

  What? What has not been easy? I think in wild apprehension. Have I displeased him? I was so careful to heed Louise’s words, I know I have meddled in the past, but—

  “Adélaïde, dearest,” and here he takes my hand and squeezes it, and through our gloves I can feel the force of his love, and my breathing slows. “This has not been easy for you. I have perhaps not lived my life as behooves a man of family and God. I know the burden you have taken on is great.”

  “Oh, Papa . . .” Is he really saying these words? Am I really hearing this? “Oh, Papa,” I repeat, but I don’t know what else to say. Is he apologizing? Repenting? Confessing? Should I get a priest?

  “She makes me so happy, Adélaïde,” he continues calmly, and I see the best I can do is listen; these words do not come easy for him. “I know I live in sin, but I am not so old, not ready to repent and live my life as a monk. And I know I have you—all of you—praying for my soul, and that cheers me greatly. Thank you, Adélaïde.”

  “And so we will continue to pray!” I declare fervently. For a few blissful moments we sit in silence, my hand still in his, and I cannot bear to move, for fear of breaking the spell of this wonderful closeness. I sneak a peek and see his face is blank, and tired, and that he is still staring at the painting on the opposite wall.