The Shadow Queen

by Sandra Gulland

  Scooping up her train, Athénaïs shuffled over to the bed and kicked a little stool out from under it. I placed it in the middle of the room. She slipped her feet into a pair of heeled mules and stepped onto it. “You’re not married, Claude,” she said, turning slowly as I directed. “How did you manage that?”

  I winced, a pin piercing my thumb. I sucked it clean of blood, then dipped it in pooled candle wax. “I have my family to look after.”

  She made a clucking sound, which the parrot echoed. “Your mother is a queen of the stage and your brother practically a grown man.”

  “But he’s a child at heart.”

  “There are places that take in people like that,” I heard her say from above. “You can’t look after him forever.”

  I remained silent. Gaston had been a trial of late. Some of the players were furious with him, upset about props disappearing. There were times when I longed to be free, longed for a life of my own. Who could I talk to about such things? It was a betrayal even to think such thoughts. “The lace of your chemise should be showing at the hem in the front,” I said, sitting back, “but as to the length of the train … That depends on your title.”

  “When I marry, I’ll be a marquise—” She made a mocking la de da look that made me smile. In spite of everything, there was still a feeling of intimacy between us.

  “It’s two feet for a marquise,” I said. The rules on this were exact. “We have to know these things for the stage.”

  “Ah, the stage! You don’t know how lucky you are to live without restriction. I sometimes dream of running away, becoming an actress.”

  How curious, I thought. She lived a life I could only dream of, and I, in turn, lived a life she longed for. I unfolded my measuring stick. “But you’ll not be a marquise until after you marry, so your father is right. I could leave plenty of hem so that you could have it let out after.”

  She looked down at me. “I’ve had word,” she said quietly.

  My heart skipped. Alexandre. So that’s why I’d been summoned.

  “He’s safely in Portugal,” she said.

  “Merci Dieu,” I breathed, then bit my lips. My tender feelings were inappropriate.

  “Remember the Marquis Henri d’Antin?” she asked.

  How could I ever forget the sight of that young man with a rapier in his chest? How could I ever forget the sight of the soles of his boots sticking out of the bushes?

  “The man I’m to marry … is his brother.”

  Non! I caught my breath. But of course: they had the same sticking-out ears.

  And then I recalled Alexandre’s letter to Athénaïs: I beg you to assuage his family’s sorrow.

  I sat back on my heels, my hands clasped as if in prayer. “It’s what Alexandre would have wanted,” I offered with feeling. “To atone for the death of his friend.” And then I felt terrible. I’d been looking for tragic redemption, as if Athénaïs’s life were a play being performed on a stage. “Forgive me!”

  “But that’s it exactly,” Athénaïs said, her huge eyes brimming. “You understand, Claudette. And you’re the only one.”

  CHAPTER 31

  On the day of Athénaïs’s wedding, I hovered outside the church of Saint-Sulpice, part of a gawking crowd.

  I watched as the carriages slowly pulled up, one by one. Liveried footmen offered gloved hands to the bride, the groom, the members of the family. Athénaïs looked exquisite in her gown, but her eyes were red and her cheeks blotchy, even under powder.

  The enormous church doors closed. I waited until the bells pealed in celebration, then turned away. She was a married woman now, the Marquise de Montespan, whose husband forbade her to have anything to do with me. I found myself inexplicably close to tears. I threw the amulet in a cesspool: clearly, it wasn’t working.

  IT WAS A busy time at the theater—and I was thankful for that. The Bourgogne was at war with Molière. In response to the outpouring of jealous criticism of School for Wives (which was, without a doubt, a triumph), Molière staged a satirical piece, The Critique of School for Wives. In turn, we staged The Counter-critique of School for Wives, followed by a short piece, The Husband Without a Wife. Written by Montfleury, it hinted that Molière’s new young wife was unfaithful. Molière, in turn, ridiculed some of our players (not Mother, merci Dieu) in a performance before the King, singling out Montfleury, mocking him as fat and pompous.

  How to fight back? The answer came in an unexpected way.

  MOTHER AND I arrived for a theater meeting just as someone was being introduced. He was a slight young man in his mid-twenties, yet wearing a fusty wig. There was both terror and arrogance in his wide-set eyes.

  “That’s Jean Racine, I think,” Mother whispered.

  “Molière’s protégé?” My mind was on other things. Earlier that morning, I had glimpsed Athénaïs and her husband entering the church of Saint-Eustache. Her husband’s smug face, long as a fiddle, shot daggers at the beggars at the door. He raised his silver-tipped cane at them in warning. Athénaïs, who followed behind him, looked drawn—and my heart beat high in sympathy. I’d been plagued by ominous dreams in which she screamed out to me for help.

  Floridor signaled for silence and then introduced the playwright. “Monsieur Racine has proposed that we produce his tragedy, Alexandre the Great.”

  Several of the players gasped.

  I was confounded. Racine’s Alexandre the Great was soon to be premiered by Molière’s troupe at the Palais-Royal.

  “He wishes it prepared quickly—and, needless to say, under the circumstances, secretly.”

  How was that even possible?

  “There are a number of things to be considered,” Floridor went on, squinting down at his notes, “not the least of which is the scheduling. We would have to have it mastered in a matter of weeks—”

  Someone close to me groaned. As it was, the players had just begun to commit Monsieur Pierre’s newest play, Agésilas, to memory. An experiment in irregular verse—eight-syllable lines mixed with alexandrines and other rhyme schemes—it was proving to be a challenge—even for Mother.

  “So we’ll need to talk it over.” Floridor paused, letting out an exhale. “Do you wish to address the troupe before you go?” he asked the young playwright.

  Jean Racine stood, clasping and unclasping his hands. His mouth was small, almost prim, a hint of moustache above his upper lip. He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Do you have any questions?” His accent was refined, educated, but his voice hard to hear.

  “Do you have any questions?” Floridor repeated in his carrying voice.

  Why didn’t anybody speak up? My heart pounding, I stood. “Monsieur Racine, please explain: Alexandre the Great is in rehearsal with Molière’s troupe.”

  “I’m not happy with their approach,” Racine said.

  “Of course not!” Montfleury jumped up. “Monsieur Racine wishes his masterpiece produced by real players of tragedy.”

  “We’re better, it’s true,” Mother whispered.

  “That’s not the point!” I said, heated. Molière had taken a chance on young Jean Racine, producing his first play. It had not done well, yet even so Molière had encouraged him to write another tragedy: this one, about Alexandre the Great. From what I’d heard, Molière had invested a small fortune in what was going to be a lavish production. And now Racine was offering it to us, just as it was about to be premiered?

  “In a natural cadence, the poetry of the lines is lost,” Racine went on, straining his voice so that he might be heard.

  “Forsooth! What do comedians know about dramatic declamation?” Montfleury was obviously still furious over the way Molière had ridiculed him before the King. I wondered if he’d gone so far as to lure the young playwright away from Molière.

  “It is here that I would have my verses spoken,” Racine concluded, the twelve syllables constituting an inelegant alexandrine. “This is the true home of tragedy.”

  “Hear, hear!” Montfleury cried out, accompan
ying the playwright to the door, patting him heartily on the back (very nearly knocking the slight young man over).

  Floridor frowned down at his notes, pulling at his ruff. “Well?” he said, once the chatter following Jean Racine’s departure had died down.

  “It depends on the principal players,” someone spoke up. “They would have the most lines to learn, and quickly.”

  “I’d need two weeks to master Alexandre’s lines,” Floridor said. “Montfleury would play Porus, of course, and Alix, Axiane. Could you two commit a major part to memory in that time?”

  “Easily,” Montfleury said.

  “Alix could have it mastered in days,” a player at the back called out and several clapped.

  “So long as it’s not irregular verse,” Mother said, and a number of the players moaned.

  “What about the sets?”

  “Could we use the ones made for Boyer’s Alexandre?” someone asked. Not long before, we had produced a play about Alexandre the Great as well, but it was a listless script and the production had closed after only a few nights.

  “Monsieur Racine thinks Molière’s backdrops are unoriginal, but our Boyer sets are not much better,” Floridor admitted. “So no: I think we would have to move quickly on that, and give some consideration to the expense involved. As for costumes … I suspect that with enhancements, your Boyer costumes might do.”

  There was a murmur of relief. The elaborate costumes required for serious tragedy cost each player a great deal.

  “There are other things to consider, however.” I raised my voice so that I would be better heard. I wasn’t a shareholder like my mother, so I couldn’t vote, but the members of the troupe allowed me to speak in meetings. “I’m told that Monsieur Racine is demanding and temperamental: some of Molière’s players wept at their first rehearsal.”

  “They deserve to be miserable!” Montfleury roared.

  “One other thing,” I persisted. “Monsieur Molière has been like a mentor to Racine—and now Racine is stabbing him in the back. How can we trust such a man?”

  “Molière’s no innocent,” someone observed. “He produced Sertorius before it was published.”

  “He married his own daughter!” Montfleury exclaimed.

  “That’s not true,” I protested.

  “Are you defending Molière?”

  “He mocked us to the Court.”

  “He mocked the Great Corneille!”

  “And now he’s putting us out of business.”

  Ultimately, it was no use. The arguments in favor of revenge won the day. All was fair in the War of the Theaters.

  CHAPTER 32

  Monsieur Pierre stood to one side as Gaston hefted a crate of our belongings into our new apartment close to the Bourgogne theater. Monsieur Martin and his wife had been sorry to see us go, but with Mother’s success, we could finally afford something more than a dingy little room and a closet.

  I hadn’t seen the playwright for months, not since the wild success of Racine’s Alexandre the Great.

  Mother stuck her head out of a door, her head wrapped in a cloth like a Turk. “Welcome to our palace, Monsieur Pierre.” We had three rooms and a necessary all our own in the courtyard.

  He held out a bouquet of flowers.

  Signs of spring were most welcome. It had been a grim winter, with constant prayer vigils for the Queen Mother, who had died of a cancer in her breast in January. “I’ll put them in a vase.” I hoped he hadn’t brought them thinking to mask the odors of our place.

  “Sit, please sit,” Mother said. “You’re nobility now.” Corneille’s family had long ago been awarded noble status following the initial success of The Cid. It had taken all these years for the legal certification to come through.

  “Thank you, Alix, but I can’t be long.”

  “You’ll have to excuse the mess,” I said, digging out a small vase and making a space for it on the table. I stuck the flowers in and arranged them roughly. Water would have to wait.

  The playwright had an air of gloom. “Is something wrong, Pierre?” Mother asked tenderly, pulling up a stool.

  He opened his hands in a gesture of futility. “The troupe doesn’t want my new play.”

  “We turned down Attila?” Mother and I had been so busy with the move, we’d missed the weekly business meeting.

  “That can’t be,” Mother said, her hands on her flour-powdered cheeks.

  “Turned it down flat. The Bourgogne lost money on my last play—as you know.”

  Agésilas had been an interesting experiment in irregular verse, but it had not gone over well with the public. The players hadn’t earned a sou. “But Attila is a completely different sort of play,” I protested.

  “I tried to tell Floridor that, but …” He shook his head. “We used to care about art; now all that matters is the door take.”

  “It’s because of the competition from Monsieur Molière,” I said, stopping Gaston at the door. “Would you like something to eat before you go back for another load?” He had been working so hard.

  “Oui, sit here,” Monsieur Pierre said, standing.

  “Please, Monsieur Pierre, stay. It’s such a pleasure to see you,” I said, pulling up a bench.

  “Stay, do,” Mother said. “We’ll talk of art and be restored.”

  Monsieur Pierre sat back down. “Sit beside me then, Gaston. I’ve yet to hear your news. I have a boy about your age. Are you in an apprenticeship yet?”

  Gaston looked at me, bewildered.

  “Not yet,” I said, chagrined. If ever.

  RACINE WAS PRESENT at the first business meeting of the Easter break. He was smiling, which made me uneasy. My suspicions were confirmed when Floridor announced that the wildly popular actress Thérèse du Parc—the so-called “Marquise”—would agree to leave Molière’s troupe if she could join us.

  The players responded dubiously. Thérèse du Parc had learned her trade as a rope dancer on the streets of Lyon. She was alluring—a draw, no doubt—but mainly because of her legs, which she allowed the audience to glimpse when making her famous leaps. The players of the Bourgogne were respected for serious tragedy, not acrobatics.

  “At full share?” one of the players asked.

  Floridor glanced down at his notes. “And with an advance of five hundred livres.”

  Five hundred!

  “I intend for her to perform one of the lead roles in the play I’m writing now.” Racine’s voice could hardly be heard.

  I exchanged a concerned look with my mother. Alix was the troupe’s lead actress. Did we really need another?

  “Andromaque,” Floridor said, clarifying, “which we’re to perform this autumn.”

  “I’m in favor,” big Montfleury said with passion. “It will be another blow to Molière.”

  “SHE CAN’T PERFORM tragedy,” I assured Mother, walking home through the spring slush. “I don’t think you have to worry.”

  “She’s young and beautiful—and I’m neither.”

  “She’s thirty-four, Maman.” Privately, I thought it wasn’t a bad notion to introduce a younger player into the Bourgogne. Mother, at forty-seven, was younger by far than Floridor, who was fifty-nine, and Montfleury, who was an astonishing sixty-eight. The Bourgogne was an aging company (despite which young Racine drove the players hard, disdainful of their frailties).

  “That’s young,” Mother said, touching her cheek. She’d recently resorted to using a much-touted face cream in hope of a fair-as-lilies complexion. Fortunately, she stopped using it because it made her skin raw. (I’d since learned that people who used the cream were being called Les Écorchées, skinned alive!) “Men go crazy over her,” she said.

  “And now, apparently, Racine,” I said.

  Mother stopped. Non.

  I made wide eyes. Oui! Why else would he cast her in a lead role?

  “She’s so much older than he is.”

  “But wealthy,” I said with a smirk, ever suspicious of Jean Racine’s motives. />
  CHAPTER 33

  The great exodus of the King and Court began toward the end of May, riding to war in Flanders. Leading an army of thirty-five thousand, His Majesty’s intention was to lay claim to the northern lands that had been legally promised him by the King of Spain when he married the King of Spain’s daughter—lands Spain was now not willing to give up. The Righteous War, it was called.

  “I’ve never seen anything so fine,” Thérèse du Parc exclaimed in Mother’s dressing room. She’d glimpsed the King’s glass coach “filled with women,” escorted by hundreds “and hundreds” of horsemen, the King himself riding—

  “Sword in hand,” I recited drearily—for Thérèse had already told the story three times.

  “Seeing His Majesty up close makes me faint,” Thérèse said, feigning a swoon.

  Like all women, it seemed.

  “Without the Court, Paris is a desert.” She missed her fanatics, the ardent noblemen who bought expensive seats on the stage so they could gaze at her heaving bosom and fine legs. Now the only noblemen in Paris were gray-bearded and stooped.

  In spite of Thérèse’s tiresome airs, I’d come to rather admire her: she had a wonderful singing voice and she worked hard at her craft.

  Or, rather, was pushed by Jean Racine to work hard. “Du Parc!” I heard him call out imperiously. “Get up here!”

  THE COURTIERS’ RETURN enlivened the city once again. Much to Mother’s intense displeasure, Thérèse du Parc proved to be a popular draw (and not a bad actress, in fact); she was clearly a profitable addition to the troupe. Our hard times were far from over, however. Just after we began to see a return on Racine’s Andromaque, disaster struck. In the second week of December, big Montfleury, vigorously proclaiming his lines during the mad scene in Act V, ruptured a blood vessel in his neck and collapsed on the stage, the men in the pit jeering at him to rise. I led Mother and Gaston quickly away, shielding them from the tragic sight, but even from below we could hear the big man’s dying gasps.