by Judith Rock
“There! Now you’re all as wet as I am!”
Charles took off his bonnet and shook the water from it. “You seem to feel better. Crying often does that, I find.”
Both girls looked at him curiously. Anne-Marie, walking now on Charles’s other side, said, “Do you cry, too?”
“Everyone does.”
“My father doesn’t.” Lulu’s tone was suddenly venomous and the words spilled out. “He’s never miserable, he only makes other people so. Especially women.” She stopped in front of Charles and faced him. “Do you know what he said when his first daughter was born? His only legitimate one. It was-oh, thirty years ago, and she soon died, but of course, he didn’t know she would and he had all the bells rung in Paris and bonfires lit. And when they asked him why he did that for a girl, he said that a daughter was something to celebrate because she would make a valuable marriage connection with some other prince. That’s all a daughter means to him.” She spat impressively into the gravel.
“It may be true that some fathers care less for daughters, but God doesn’t make that distinction.”
“Oh, no? Priests talk enough about Eve’s daughters and all the evil we’ve brought into the world.”
“The story doesn’t say Eve shoved the apple down Adam’s throat. I imagine he gobbled it down and asked for another.”
“And then blamed Eve when his belly hurt!” Lulu laughed, in spite of herself.
“Of course he did!” Charles said, laughing, too.
Anne-Marie, digging a thinly shod toe in the wet gravel, was watching them so somberly that Charles wondered if the little princess ever let go of her dignity long enough to behave like a child.
“Margot’s husband was just like that,” Lulu said disgustedly, taking Charles’s arm and beginning to walk again. “The Duchess of Tuscany, I mean. You probably don’t know her. Anyway, her husband blamed her for his bellyache when he didn’t like the marriage he and my father forced her into!”
Charles let her hold on to him, not wanting to disturb the growing confidence between them. “The Duchess of Tuscany was with you in the little alcove last evening, wasn’t she?”
“How did you know that?”
“She came out after you and Monsieur Montmorency left.”
“Oh.”
Charles decided to seize the moment and hoped she wouldn’t take offense. “Your Highness, I beg you not to encourage Monsieur Montmorency. He is very much in love with you. But you must not-” He searched for words, but there was no other way to say it. “You must not use him.”
Lulu made a dismissive noise. “At least he doesn’t want me to go to Poland! Is it my fault he throws himself at my feet whenever he can get away from your school and come here? Which is hardly ever. Anyway, you needn’t worry, I’ll probably never see him again.” A fleeting smile brightened her face. “Last night Margot kissed him, and you should have seen him blush! I wish Margot were here all the time. She’s the only one who really knows how I feel. Her marriage was so terrible-her husband tried to poison her, did you know that?”
Charles shook his head.
“Of course, he said she tried to poison him first.”
“Did she?”
“Of course she didn’t. It’s always the Italians who poison people.”
Not always, Charles thought, remembering suddenly that in the Paris poison scandal that had rocked France a few years back, it was Lulu’s mother, Madame de Montespan, who had been accused of trying to poison the king. Though nothing had come of the accusation. But since he was thinking about poison…
“Is the Grand Duchess of Tuscany acquainted with your mother?”
“Of course. Though they don’t like each other much. They don’t have much in common.”
Except poison, Charles thought, if rumor was to be believed. Which it usually wasn’t.
Lulu leaned closer, her eyes suddenly sparkling with glee. “Do you know what Margot did in the convent where my father makes her live in Montmartre? No? Well, the mother superior was trying to keep her from going out so much-Margot comes here often to gamble. And Margot got her pistol-”
“Pistol?”
“Perhaps ladies have them in Tuscany, I don’t know. Anyway, she got her pistol and grabbed a hatchet from somewhere and chased the mother superior through the convent until the poor woman relented! Now Margot leaves when she pleases!”
“I can imagine she does,” Charles murmured, hoping that hatchets and pistols would not be much in evidence at the Polish court, since Lulu seemed so charmed by Margot’s example.
Lulu dropped his arm and sighed. “But I’ll never come back from Poland.”
“Your Highness, why does this marriage seem so terrible to you?”
“Because the Polish prince is nothing but a child! And he-he can’t-” Fresh tears ran down her face, and she wiped angrily at them with her hand.
“A child? What do you mean?”
“He’s ten years old. Oh, there’s an older brother, but the Polish king has other plans for him. What good is a little boy to me?”
“Not much,” Charles said injudiciously, appalled at this piece of news. For the ten-year-old husband, as much as for the sixteen-year-old bride. “Or not much good yet,” he made himself add. “Children do grow up.”
“I’ll be old before then! When he’s my age, I’ll be almost twenty-two!”
“Hardly old.” Charles made a face at her and said confidingly, “Though I myself am so old, perhaps my opinion hardly matters.”
“You? You don’t look old. What age are you?”
“Twenty-nine, Your Highness. One foot in the grave, I fear.”
She laughed a little. “I never knew Jesuits were so amusing. First you are a tree and now you are pretending to have one ancient foot in the grave.” She sighed, gazing at him. “I wish you were Jan Sobieski’s second son!”
“Not a drop of Polish blood in my veins, I fear,” Charles said lightly, and widened the space between them. The dog turned from nosing through the wet grass and jumped up on him with muddy paws.
“No, Louis!” Anne-Marie tried to pull the dog away as Charles leaned down to fondle its long black ears.
“No matter, the mud’s the same color as the cassock.”
Lulu suddenly scooped up the dog, cradling him as though he were a baby, and buried her face in his fur. For a moment, she was so still she seemed not to breathe. Then she put him down, picked up her gray skirts, and ran down the arbor path like a small fierce storm.
Anne-Marie glared at Charles. “You shouldn’t make her run. She’s been feeling ill.”
“She doesn’t seem ill. Although she does look pale.”
“Yes.”
Charles and Anne-Marie found Lulu beside a fishpond with a small dolphin spouting water in its center. Standing at its rim, she was taking crumbs from a pocket under her skirts and throwing them to the fish. With a sense of girding his loins, Charles decided that it was time to do what he’d agreed. Though he was even less sure now whether doing it was a good or a bad thing.
“Your Highness, there is something I would like to say to you.”
“What?” she said, without turning.
Charles went to the pond’s edge. “I would like to see you find a measure of peace in this marriage the king is demanding of you. So that some good can perhaps come from it, though you dread it now. You were never meant to be a darkling, angry soul!”
Behind him, he heard Anne-Marie catch her breath. He looked over his shoulder and she nodded eagerly at him. But Lulu’s stare was cold.
“So that’s why you’re willing to walk with me? Not for the pleasure of my company, but to ‘help’ me stop being inconvenient?”
“Your company is more pleasure than I expected. I would like to help you for you yourself. No one else.”
She shrugged, but a wary hope showed in her eyes. “Everyone else only wants me out of the way. Because I smoke and flirt and swear and-” She bit her lip and grabbed a handful of her ski
rts and shook the soaked hem’s straw-yellow lace trimming at him. “I ruin my gowns, I run away from my tedious women… such very grave sins.”
Charles said nothing, and the three of them walked on. The path opened suddenly into a long vista down the newly dug lake. Unlike the bank where the gardener’s body had lain, this bank was already covered in thin grass and the piles of dirt had been removed.
Wondering again at the lake’s vast size, Charles said, “Where does all the water come from?”
“The Machine brings it,” Anne-Marie said. “Haven’t you ever seen it?”
“No, Your Serene Highness. What machine is that?”
“The Machine de Marly. It’s by the river at the king’s chateau of Marly. It’s immense!” The white lace ruffles fluttered at her elbows as she stretched her short arms as wide as they would go. “And it makes a terrible noise. No one can sleep near it. It pumps water up the hill to Marly’s fountains and then here to Versailles.”
“Yes, even the water has to obey my father,” Lulu said bitterly. She went to a small stone bench at the lake’s edge, but turned back. “It’s wet.”
“I’ll dry it for us.” Charles pulled a large handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped the bench with it.
The girls sat close together and Charles remained standing, but Lulu reached up and pulled him down beside her.
He let a few moments go by and then said carefully, “Is no one trying to help you through this time, Your Highness? Not your mother? Nor Madame de Maintenon?”
“My mother doesn’t want me to go, but what can she do? The king cares nothing for what she wants, not anymore. And Madame de Maintenon only really cares about my brother; he was always her favorite.” Lulu twitched a dismissive shoulder. “Though she did put her new relic temporarily in the chapel, so I can go there every day and pray to Saint Ursula for help in doing my duty.”
Charles winced at the chill of that. But the Duc du Maine had said that Mme de Maintenon did not care much for the troublesome Lulu. “So you have no one to help you.” Or love you, he thought sadly.
“Except Saint Ursula,” Anne-Marie whispered. “And me.” But Lulu didn’t seem to hear her.
Charles did, but he paid no attention. He was remembering himself at sixteen, remembering how the love of God and the saints and everyone else had paled beside the love he’d really wanted then, from Pernelle.
Forcing himself to go on, he said, “Your Highness, may I-”
She laughed bitterly and waved him quiet. “If you’re going to suggest a convent, I think I’d rather go to Poland.”
“It’s good that you can think of something worse than Poland. But no, I can’t imagine you in a convent. I was going to say that what helps is giving over your own wants to God. I know from experience that it’s very hard to do that. But if you manage it, then God will give you more than you can possibly imagine.”
He expected anger, but she turned on the bench and studied him. A small frown gathered between her eyes. “You believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly the wary hope in her died, and she hugged herself as though something hurt. “No. I can’t. You don’t understand, you’re a man-” White-faced, she jumped up from the bench. “I must go. Come, Anne-Marie.”
She pulled the little girl up by the hand and walked away, stumbling on her petticoats in her haste. Dragged in her wake, Anne-Marie gave Charles a look so formidably displeased that he glimpsed her grandfather, the legendary Great Condé, in the tiny, twelve-year-old princess. The dog, Louis, followed them, barking and wagging. Charles watched the trio out of sight and then went on sitting, gazing at the dark, dead waters that obeyed the king and knowing he’d failed utterly.
Chapter 11
That evening, Charles stood in the doorway of one of the large salons, watching the famed Versailles gambling. This salon was for cards, and in the one beyond, a lottery was in progress. Candles in tall lampstands were set along the tables, bathing the piles of coins in gold and silver aureoles. As the gamblers’ stakes changed hands, shouts of triumph and disappointment rose to the ceiling, which was painted, appropriately enough, with scenes of Fortune and her wheel. The king himself was there, strolling sedately through the room, his gentlemen following at a distance as he spoke amiably to the gamblers. La Chaise had said that the gambling tables were the only place where anyone and everyone could sit in the presence of the king, and indeed, as Louis passed through the room, no one rose. Some of the players barely noticed him, avid as they were for their games. Besides the usual lotteries, there were card games: lansquenet, reversis, and bassette. There was even a hoca board at a corner table, though the notorious game had been banned from Paris years ago, after it ruined too many citizens.
“Have you come to pray for us, maître?” The young Duc du Maine paused beside Charles in the wide doorway. “I could use your prayers against the Prince de Conti.”
Maine nodded toward a table farther down the room, and Charles saw Conti lounging in a chair, gazing expressionlessly at the cards in his hands. The Grand Duchess of Tuscany sat on his left, her yellow wig clashing with her crimson bodice and slipping a little sideways as she tried shamelessly to see what he held. Across the table from them, rings flashed on the fingers of three men hunched over their cards, murmuring to each other and glancing unhappily at Conti from time to time.
“How the Prince of Conti plays so well I can never understand.” Maine smiled ruefully. “I keep thinking that I’ve watched him and learned, but I always lose. It makes Madame de Maintenon furious, but she never comes to the gambling, so I’m safe till someone tells her. Or till I have to borrow money from her to pay him back!”
Fascinated by this glimpse of royal life, Charles couldn’t help asking, “Does she lend it?”
“Usually. But with very high interest-I have to listen to long and severe lectures on my morals and my duty as a prince.” The boy’s smile was irresistibly sweet. “But if you pray for me tonight… is there a patron saint of gambling, I wonder?”
“I’ve never thought to wonder that,” Charles said, laughing. Then, wickedly, “Shall we ask Père La Chaise?” He inclined his head toward the adjoining salon. “He’s just there in the buffet room.”
Maine grinned. “Yes, let’s!” But then he looked suddenly down the room. “The king is coming this way,” he said urgently, and his hand went to his hat.
Louis was making straight for them-or for the door, Charles hoped. Charles stepped aside and snatched off his bonnet. Maine made his bow and Louis paused, his eyes resting warmly on his son. Then the king turned his gaze, so like Maine’s, on Charles, who clutched his bonnet as though it were a lifeline and hoped he didn’t look as hunted as he felt. There was a deep, watching quiet about Louis that Charles found oddly disconcerting. This was not a man easily fooled.
“Père La Chaise informs me that you are persuading Our unhappy daughter to a more seemly acceptance of her duty,” the king said. “You have Our thanks.” He added, “She is at the lottery table in the next room. There is no other door from that salon except the one you see from here.”
Louis walked serenely on. Charles let his held breath go and looked down at his half-crushed bonnet. He felt as though Louis had hung Lulu around his neck.
“I esteem him above all men on earth,” Maine said, his eyes following the royal back. “But-” He sighed.
“But it is not easy being his son,” Charles hazarded.
The boy nodded feelingly. “You can have no idea. He is kindness itself to me. But still, how can one ever please a-a-well, a god, almost? A hero, at the least!”
Charles thought of all the Jesuit college ballets he’d seen in which the king was depicted as Hercules. Or Apollo or Jupiter. No, it couldn’t be easy to be Louis’s son. Or daughter. It was difficult enough being one of Louis’s anonymous subjects-and it seemed to Charles now that he was no longer anonymous.
Maine drew closer. “But do you know who I feel most sorry for? His real
son, Louis. The Dauphin, I mean-he’s the one who matters, because he is legitimate and will rule after him. And our father is so constantly disappointed in him, because the poor Dauphin isn’t-well-very quick. And that disappointment has made the Dauphin terrified of most everything.”
“That’s very unfortunate,” Charles said thoughtfully, remembering what he’d heard from Conti and his coterie in the garden. A terrified king would be a gold mine of opportunity to that little coven.
“Well, I must go now and lose my pretty shirt,” Maine said, shrugging off the realm’s future. “Unless you can discover which saint to pray to!” He smiled at Charles and went eagerly to where the Prince of Conti sat, raking a pile of gold coins called louis toward him.
Charles moved a little aside from the door, beyond a potted orange tree, and stood against the wall’s dark silk brocade. From there he could look for Lulu, and also watch Conti and Margot, without being much noticed. A gambling evening was not a usual place for a Jesuit, however, and he felt distinctly uncomfortable. Not because he’d never gambled. Far from it-soldiers endured long hours of boredom when not marching or fighting, and dice and cards helped to pass the time. But that was a long time ago. And the stakes he’d played for then were nothing compared to the fortunes spread out on these tables. As the candlelight from the tables lit the gamblers and their money, it threw dancing shadows into the salon’s corners, where Charles could easily believe that the patient specter of ruin waited for its prey.
His attention sharpened as he saw Lulu, changed now into a gown of tawny gold satin, come slowly from the lottery room and stop at Conti’s table. Her gown shone like the sun, but her face was pinched and shadowed. She leaned down to speak to Maine, her brother, who was sitting on Margot’s left. Then she sat in the empty chair on Conti’s right. Margot was frowning blackly at her cards and ignored the newcomer. Conti glanced sideways and gave Lulu an absent smile, but his real attention was all for the game. One of Lulu’s hands disappeared under the table. After a moment, Conti’s eyebrows lifted and his free hand disappeared likewise. Well, Charles thought, that doesn’t look to me like resignation to Conti’s indifference. Or perhaps Conti was only giving her a little brotherly comfort? But Charles had sisters, and a girl’s face didn’t look like that for a brother. He wondered if the girl was trying again to persuade Conti to help her stay in France. A forlorn hope, from everything he’d seen of the man.