The Enemies of Versailles

by Sally Christie

  “It is a very fine painting,” I say. I want to stop, but the words keep coming, and then the magic spell is broken. “D’Isle recommended it, and—”

  “Ah, my dear, come, let us go back, it is getting late.”

  I stand up with him and hold my breath in anticipation, but he does not embrace me. Yet I can still feel the touch of his hand, the kindness in his voice, the naked appeal for my understanding. He disappears upstairs with his entourage, and slowly I walk back to my apartment. The king’s touch, I think happily, dreamily, the king’s touch restores even the basest of lepers. Of course Papa does not touch and cure the beggars anymore—he cannot while in a state of sin—but soon. Soon. Perhaps even this year?

  As his lust slackens, his humanity returns, wrote Louise, and though I frowned at the sentiment, now I realize she is right.

  She makes me happy, Adélaïde, he said. Was it worth it, ruining my relationship with the only man I have ever loved, over something—someone—who made him happy? Did I cling to my hate because I had nothing else to hold on to?

  Strange thoughts, but ones that have been my constant companion since my illness last year. I do not allow myself to dwell on those dark days of despair, but I know they changed me. Others may laugh at me but I only do my duty. I can hold my head high, and know that I have never brought shame or disrepute upon my position or upon the legacy of the Bourbons.

  Thank you, Adélaïde.

  The door opens and a footman announces Madame Victoire. She comes in with Clothilde on the one hand, Élisabeth on the other.

  “Sorry to interrupt, sister, but you just have to hear Clothilde sing this aria! It is so beautiful, and my first thought was that we should come immediately and share it with her dear Tante Adélaïde.”

  I frown, for seeing Victoire and Clothilde side by side makes me aware just how fat they both are. A certain plumpness is expected in an older woman—even I, despite the strict care in my diet, have noticed a tightness in some of my bodices—but in one as young as Clothilde, only fourteen! And my sister is but forty, with no preg—indispositions to blame. I am about to make a cutting remark to share my displeasure, but then I see the terrified look on Clothilde’s face and something in me softens.

  She is to be married next year, to the son of the King of Sardinia, a brother of the two new wives of my nephews. Two for one, jokes the Court, in allusion to Clothilde’s massive weight. When her future bridegroom heard of her girth, he declared himself in all happiness, for it meant only more to love.

  I thought them vulgar words, and had an image of an enormous elephant crushing a dainty mouse, but now I see they were really kind words, to make his young bride less terrified as she prepares to leave all that is familiar. Kind words. And were those not kind words my father said to me? I should share it, I think, instead of keeping this happiness to myself.

  “How delight—” My voice is more of a growl than I intend and I check myself. “How delightful,” I try again, quieter now, and with kindness. “I should love to hear it.”

  Victoire smiles happily and pushes her niece forward. Goodness, to see the two of them together, you would think them a circus act, both so fat—but no, they are my family, and I must be kind.

  As Papa was to me.

  Clothilde clasps her hands and opens her mouth. A tremulous note flies out.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  In which the Comtesse du Barry visits a meadow

  “Two weeks!” I say merrily. “What are two weeks?” The blight of the priest’s omen has followed us all month, but now there are but a few days left until we are free of his dratted prophecy about everything being destroyed before forty days are over.

  “Ah, my love,” says Louis sadly.

  “No, really, France, what are two weeks?”

  “Are you posing me a question you wish me to answer, sweetheart?”

  “Yes.”

  Louis sighs deeply.

  “No sighing!”

  “Ah, love, you give me so many rules, and we are not even in the bedchamber. Well, in truth, two weeks is not a long time.”

  “Exactly! Before you know it, we’ll be past the forty days, and all will be well again.” I wish we could go and hide in a hut in the woods—as they used to do in times of plagues past—but since we can’t do that, we are cloistered at the Grand Trianon on the grounds of Versailles. Close enough for the king to travel back to the main palace when needed, but here we can be happy and free and only admit those we care to see.

  His daughters are not among them; he has been spending far too much time with them recently. His daughters on their knees, or Barry on her back?

  I have to admit the race is getting tighter.

  “All will be well again,” repeats Louis. He has been complaining for several days of a general feeling of malaise, but I know it is just his mind playing tricks on his body as the final days are counted out.

  “Now, come, the carriage is waiting.” It is a lovely spring day and we head south from the palace, staying inside the parks, where we are unlikely to pass a funeral that might spin the king’s mind back to melancholy.

  He has started hunting again—his doctors reluctantly gave permission—but I am nervous every time he does. Another fall—he has already had two—and then where would we be? I keep my fears to myself, for the hunt is too much a part of his life and makes him too happy. But today I insisted we drive out together in my new gilt-and-rose carriage.

  “Wait, I know a place,” says the king, and directs the driver to a clearing by a stream, a beautiful meadow enameled with wildflowers of all different colors. We descend from the carriage into the sunlit depths.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful,” I say, twirling around.

  “I would make you a garland, Angel. Well, present you with one at least. Forgeron!” he calls, and a young valet comes forward. “A garland of the finest flowers for the lovely countess.” As the valet busies himself picking flowers, the king settles down with a wheeze on a folding chair from the carriage.

  Dappled sunlight, the breeze brisk but warm, peace in the clearing. A bird trills, answered by its mate. I sit at his feet on the grass, and feel a sudden rush of tenderness for the man he is, for the life he has given me. Some may complain of his faults—nay, all complain of his faults—but who amongst us does not have any? To me, he is the perfect man.

  Well, he would be were he younger, and perhaps less crotchety than he has been of late.

  I lie back on the grass and the flowers, enjoying the fragrance and the soft sunlight. I pick a bluebell from beside me and toss it up, slowly, floating. My life is a senseless dream of pleasure, I think happily.

  “That was lovely, my dear, lovely,” Louis says on the ride back. “Worth giving up the hunt for.”

  I lean over and give him a kiss, one hand holding on to the garland of wild flowers that sits prettily on my head.

  “Tonight, Richelieu’s coming with his son Fronsac,” I say, and then another day will be past. Twelve more, twelve more, then nevermore. We have even abstained from lovemaking, so convinced is Louis that death is coming for him. Irrational and silly. Though I am more nurse than woman these days, I am looking forward to the resumption of our activities.

  It is well known that men cannot live without sex, but a woman like me is far more rare, even unnatural, as the priests might thunder. Unbidden, the handsome face of Hercule, the Duc du Brissac, rises in front of me. He is an avid art collector and last week he presented me with a statue of Venus from Pompeii. When he ran his fingers over her marble lines, talking of the perfection of her body and the nakedness of her desire, I almost fainted. He should really be more discreet.

  I should be more discreet. Thank goodness he is off duty this year and is mostly in Paris, at Court only once a week on Sundays or so.

  I close my eyes, lulled by the rocking of the carriage, and relive the afternoon, the way the sun cast shadows over the clearing, the flowers like gems amid the green of the grass. I open my eyes, startl
ed with an idea.

  “I know what I want for May!” I declare to Louis, whose eyes flutter open; I didn’t realize he was sleeping.

  “Are you getting a present for May, Angel?”

  “I am!” I kiss him happily. “A dress, green fabric, embroidered with gems, the sapphires will be bluebells, garnets for roses, pink, I think, not red, and yellow—what stone could be the buttercups? It will be just like wearing a meadow, and then I can remember this afternoon all my life!”

  “All your life,” repeats the king rather sadly. “Of course, dearest, anything you desire.”

  “A mincing vixen, when I was finished with her, why she couldn’t—”

  “Oh, shut up, Rich, you know the king would hate it if he heard you. And I doubt it’s true.” Louis has always enjoyed Richelieu’s smutty stories, but recently they are becoming more painful for him as they remind him of what he no longer is.

  “Oh, it’s true all right, it’s true,” the duke insists, mustering a spluttery wheeze of a leer. I regard him under half-lowered lids and remember the first time I met him, with my basket of gloves from Labille’s. How I stood in his salon and dreamed about living in luxury. And now look at me. Beside him, his son the Duc de Fronsac, a pale imitation of his father, laughs in his slightly idiotic way.

  The king enters, looking a little pale. “A slight headache, nothing more. Too much sun yesterday, no doubt. Or pollen in the meadow.”

  I brighten, thinking of my dress, then frown, for Louis is looking rather wobbly.

  “Are you sure you should be hunting?”

  “It is nothing, nothing,” he insists, “and Aumont tells me the pickings will be good around Marly this afternoon.”

  “Take care of him!” I call out as they are helped into the carriage that will bring them to the stables. It is another fine spring day, warm and balmy, only a hint of thunder in the briskly rolling clouds. Louis needs to hunt, to prove he still can, and I must let him.

  I rejoin Chon and Mirie in the gardens, and we pass a pleasant afternoon playing with Lucas, a lovely rabbit from Turkey, trained to stand on his hind legs and be fed by hand.

  I startle when I hear the men returning. So early, well before dusk.

  The king has a fever.

  Damn it! I am sure it is a trifle, nothing more—it was rather sunny in the meadow yesterday—but I know the effect it will have on him and his overactive imagination. What sheer bad timing, with only twelve days left.

  His fever deepens through the next day and I sit beside him, mopping his brow. Richelieu paces back and forth and I know he won’t be able to keep the crowds at bay much longer. All day everyone has been riding down from the palace to the Grand Trianon, no longer caring if they have an invitation, all demanding their right to see him.

  Mostly he sleeps, but then in the night he takes a turn for the worse and starts to mumble in delirium. Fear grips my heart so hard I fear I might vomit. Get better, France, get better, I whisper through my long night of vigil.

  “Two Trianon dairymaids had a case of smallpox last week,” whispers Mirie, and I blanch until Richelieu tells me the king had smallpox when he was a young man. I breathe easy. Not the dreaded pox, just a brief fever.

  It’s nothing, I and my supporters declare, loud enough for the king to hear.

  The king is dreadfully sick, hiss back my enemies, and he must be properly attended to.

  A king can only be sick at Versailles, insists the doctors who tend him, afraid of being blamed should something happen while not following protocol. They win and we move back to Versailles, where the king is installed in a camp bed next to his magnificent state bed.

  I don’t let the cruel palace close around my beloved, and every night I disregard etiquette and force my way into the room that is beginning to stink of sin and death. Around me eighteen surgeons, doctors, and apothecaries circle impotently, endlessly checking the king’s tongue and pulse.

  Light is tiring for my beloved’s eyes and the room is kept in darkness. On the third day of his fever one of the doctors brings a lantern close to examine his patient, and sees the dreaded spots on the king’s scarlet swollen face.

  “Smallpox!” he cries to the antechamber, away where the king can’t hear him. The shadows of the room did not allow us to see the spots immediately, but now they are clear, and so is the end.

  Of my world, at least.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  In which Madame Adélaïde has her finest, and saddest, hour

  Papa was brought back in high delirium and placed on a small bed. I made sure it was equipped with a decent mattress—no more of that dreadful scene after Damien’s assassination attempt, when he was placed on a bed with no mattress.

  The cloak of death hangs just by the door, but I know we will save him. When he recovers—he will recover, for the doctors (well, half at least) are adamant—we will be here. Sophie and Victoire and I sit and pray by my father while the doctors, twenty of them at least, endlessly cycle in and out, bleeding him, checking his tongue, bleeding him again, their futile flutterings driving me to distraction.

  The doctors have kept the dread news of smallpox from him, and he only believes himself in a fever.

  “Madame, you must not,” insists Narbonne. “Let me. I cannot be infected again, but you, Madame, you have not had it.”

  “No,” I say firmly, though I am touched by the genuine concern in her eyes. This is my father and I would sacrifice my own life for his. I sit and murmur love to him when he awakens; when he is in delirium I listen patiently and carefully, but he only whispers, “Bijou, bijou.” At least he does not call for the harlot.

  Five nights and five days in a vigil at his bedside. The rest of our family—the dauphin, his wife and younger brothers, their wives and all their households—is kept safely away, and most courtiers avoid the sick chamber, claiming fear of disease. Even the Comte de Puyrec, whose face is as poxed as a whore’s. Papa is more alone in death than he has ever been in life, I think sadly one afternoon as he dozes, a dozen doctors slumped on chairs, the rest of the room empty.

  But I am by his side.

  His head is now swollen and red, his body blackening, and he senses the end coming swiftly nearer. We cannot keep the truth from him much longer. One morning he holds his hands up, in the faint light allowed in through the shutters.

  “Smallpox—but I thought I had it,” he declares in amazement, his breath wheezing over the words. When the doctors confirm the truth, he accepts it without demur.

  He shall recover. The Comtesse de Chabannes had it last year, and she recovered, as so many do. Like my dearest Narbonne—she lived. He will be amongst the lucky ones. Though God is no merchant and I have nothing to offer, I want to bargain with Him for my father’s life. I can’t say I will enter a cloister, for God knows what is in our hearts, and that life is not for me. I have nothing else to offer, I think bleakly, staring at the grotesque swollen face of the only man I ever loved. Though he left long ago, I plead with God not to take him from me. Not again.

  And now his body is a battleground between those who say he is dying, and must confess, and those who insist he is not. I find myself siding with Richelieu and the harlot—I know that to even mention the last rites would scare the wits, and possibly the life, out of my father.

  She comes, every evening when we turn to leave, silent and unassuming, quite ignoring the fact she does not have the entrées to the sick chamber. She just walks in, as though the walls erected by etiquette are completely meaningless. The world doesn’t stop turning and nothing breaks, and I see in a moment of sad clarity that if one does not believe in it, etiquette is as meaningless as a crucifix to a pagan. I put that thought aside, for another day.

  For now we are united in our fight: I do the vigil of the day, she does the vigil of the night. She may be a harlot, but we love the same man. And she makes me happy, my papa said. Can’t a king try, like any man, to have some happiness in this life?

  She is risking her health a
nd her beauty; they always said she had a kind heart. I never believed them, but I know she must care for Papa to risk all she has. Well, not all; we hear her creature Chon has begun emptying her apartments, taking her jewels and all her treasures to her lair at Louveciennes.

  It is almost midnight; no moon tonight and the room is silent. He sleeps, the only sound his tortured wheezing. I gather my prayer book and beads and rise. I do not lean down to kiss him, but I grasp at his hand, and squeeze it, and fancy a tremor passes though.

  “Good-bye, Papa,” I whisper. “Good night.”

  “Pomponne?” he whispers back, and the hand that grasps mine is strong and unyielding; in such small things, we take comfort. As I take my leave, I pass her coming in.

  Tonight something compels me to stop, and so does she.

  “How is he?” she whispers, her face searching mine. I shake my head. A sudden urge to cry comes over me, for I fear I am weak and exhausted. How can God ignore our prayers? Without thinking, I put my hand on her arm, and clench it, as though she can offer me comfort.

  “He drank a little bouillon, and the doctors prescribe another bleeding for tomorrow.”

  The harlot’s face is drawn and blank, etched with worry.

  “I brought him some chicken,” she whispers, holding up a small basket. “Don’t tell the doctors—they want him on nothing more than water and thin soup.” Then she looks at me in fright, as though she has said the wrong thing, but I can only nod my approval—anything that makes Papa feel better.

  As I settle into my own bed, the thought comes to me: But I do have something to offer. If he gets through this, as I know he will, I will be kind to her. I will accept her, even embrace her. I will treat her as a venerated stepmother, and together we will make my beloved father’s last years the best years of his life.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  In which the Comtesse du Barry says good-bye

  “You hear them?”

  “Dearest?” I lean in, stifle my senses against his stench. The room is now putrid with the stink of his decaying body and soul.