The Shadow Queen

by Sandra Gulland

  In spite of the rich trappings, The Magnificent Lovers was, I thought, a disappointment. A mythological ballet laced with romantic burlesque, it was a somewhat insipid comédie galante. And tiring, certainly: five acts, with intermèdes at every turn. The noise of the audience milling was so loud it was difficult to hear the singing.

  Only when the King performed was there silence—and then, I had to admit, it was riveting. The changes that Molière had hastily made to the script had clearly appeased His Majesty, for he danced like the supreme being that he was, leaping and twirling with breathless grace.

  “So, Mademoiselle Claude,” Athénaïs said, turning to me during the final intermède, “what is your intellection concerning this performance?”

  “The effects are spectacular,” I offered charitably. Venus flying down on a cloud? I’d seen it many times before. “And the costumes stunning.”

  “The heroine’s cost three hundred fifty livres I’m told,” Athénaïs said, fanning herself.

  A very great deal! The advantage of performing for His Majesty, of course, was that the costume costs were covered by the King’s purse. (I hoped to help the Bourgogne get invited more often.)

  “With a few exceptions, the unities were respected in the central drama,” La Vallière observed primly. “One main action, in one place, and everything happening in a day or less.”

  Deus, the unities. I was sick to death of debates about the unities, Aristotle’s three rules for drama. “Certainly,” I said. La Vallière’s attendant had fallen asleep, propped up and snoring softly in the corner.

  “But overall?” Athénaïs persisted. “You didn’t find it dreary?”

  “Perhaps in parts,” I admitted, smiling at Athénaïs’s candid assessment. She was so different from La Vallière. It was hard to imagine the same man loving both women.

  “I find it an interesting artistic experiment,” Louise de la Vallière offered quietly. “The intermèdes especially. His Majesty calls it opera.”

  I recalled Mother and Monsieur Pierre discussing the new form. Monsieur Pierre had said he didn’t like combining singing with drama, and preferred music only between acts. The memory made me sad. I wondered what my mother was doing now. On a Wednesday, a jour extraordinaire, she would likely be in rehearsal, preparing for the show to play on Friday. I hoped her health was better and that Gaston was staying out of trouble.

  The doors opened and a man wearing an abundance of ribbons stepped into the loge, wafting a strong scent of sweat.

  “Bienvenue, Monsieur le Marquis de Louvois,” Athénaïs said with a cough.

  Zounds. The Secretary of State for War. I hardly recognized him. He was now the size of an ox, but resembled a pig, his small eyes beady.

  La Vallière’s attendant woke with a start. I stood and joined her against the wall, keeping my eyes down.

  Louvois bowed gracelessly. “Madame la Marquise de Montespan. Mademoiselle la Duchesse de la Vallière.” His voice was high for such a large man.

  “Please join us,” offered La Vallière.

  “I’m just stopping by.” He blew his nose into a kerchief and examined the result before folding it carefully in fours and putting it back in his vest.

  “Are you enjoying the performance, Monsieur le Marquis?” Athénaïs asked with little enthusiasm.

  “His Majesty is magnificent, as always. Au revoir,” he said, retreating, bumping into a chair.

  “Charmed,” Athénaïs said to his back. “Can you believe that he actually boasts of never having read a book,” she hissed with disgust once the loge door had closed behind him.

  “Yet he’s efficient and devoted to His Majesty,” La Vallière noted.

  I blanched. The “efficiency” of Louvois’s armies was credited to unrestrained violence. It was said he actually encouraged his soldiers to rape, murder, and plunder.

  People in the audience began to laugh. We turned to the stage, where Molière, playing the jester, was staggering, very nearly falling, catching himself, then teetering again. The final act had begun—at last.

  The royal entertainment came to an end with a ballet of six executioners with axes. (Odd.) Athénaïs struggled to rise up out of her armchair. La Vallière moved to help her, but Athénaïs signaled impatiently and I slipped a hand under her elbow instead.

  “There will be dancing into the small hours, but we must not dally,” she told me in the corridor leading to the stairs. “His Majesty will be calling,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER 40

  The entry to Athénaïs’s apartment was crowded: four armed guards (“the King’s, but they practically live here”), two footmen, and three maids. Athénaïs ordered the guards to prepare for His Majesty’s arrival, dismissed the footmen, and commanded the maids to set out orange water, sweetmeats, and flowers.

  I followed Athénaïs into her bedchamber, already ablaze with candlelight. I recognized some of the things from our hideaway in the rue l’Échelle: the little black enamel cabinet, her India shawls, and Turkey carpet. The massive silvered bed and toilette table were new. Everything was red and glittery. It was a room such as only Athénaïs could create, a room where one was invited to give way to sensual reverie. A stage set for a queen of seduction.

  A fire crackled in the fireplace, making the room comfortably warm. Athénaïs stood in front of an enormous mirror—a Venice reflecting glass of such clarity I wanted to touch it, test it to see if what I saw was an image, not a door into another world.

  “Unlace me, Claude.” I pulled on her bodice strings to release her stays. “I’m not going to be able to wear Court dress much longer,” she moaned as the laces gave way. As full and loose as the gown was, it was heavy. I untied the train.

  “Thank God it will be Lent soon.” She held onto my shoulder as she stepped out of her skirts. “It’s wearisome having to entertain His Majesty in my condition.”

  I wasn’t sure where I should put the train, skirt, and bodice.

  “Just hang them over that chair. His Majesty likes a certain disarray, an erotic aura of having come undone.” This with a twisted smile. “My chemises are in that chest over there,” she said, pulling off the last of her layers. Her pubis was golden, like her hair, her breasts and belly full.

  I tugged on the lid to open it. It was filled with tangled silk and fine linens. “Will any one do?”

  “Oui, oui,” she said impatiently, slipping her feet into mules.

  I pulled a laced chemise out by its sleeve and helped her get it on over her head, then draped an ermine-lined dressing gown over her shoulders.

  She opened the door of a carved court cupboard. “Want some?” she offered, pouring out a tumbler of wine.

  “No, merci.” I needed my wits.

  “Allow me to introduce you to my magical arts.” She held up a small green jar-glass stoppered with cork and a bone salt spoon. “Add one spoon of this liquid to His Majesty’s wine.” She measured in the fluid, which was brown and smelled noxious, even at a distance. “It’s to help him relax,” she explained, adding wine from a pitcher and then sipping from the glass herself. She placed the glass on a round silver tray with a gold floral design around the edge.

  I was to serve the King?

  “His Majesty comes here to be at his ease, to escape the rigors of his world. This is his sanctuary. If he speaks to you, you may respond, but otherwise remain silent.” She stood back and appraised me. Her eyes were dark, her pupils dilated. “Take off your fichu.” Her voice had a dreamy quality.

  Puzzled, I untied the large linen kerchief that covered my shoulders. It was one of my own, but I’d embroidered it nicely, disguising the rents in the fabric.

  “That’s better.” Athénaïs tugged on my bodice and pulled the sleeves farther down my shoulders. “Although small, you have lovely breasts, well shaped.”

  I pressed my hands to my chest, flushing at such immodesty.

  Athénaïs pulled my hands away, smiling. “Don’t be shy. Everything chez moi must be pleasing to H
is Majesty. What pleases him, pleases God.”

  I hadn’t expected a spiritual connection—not in this circumstance, certainly.

  “But more to the point,” she added with the look of a coquette, “what pleases His Majesty, profits me.” She raised her brows conspiratorially. “Understand?”

  I nodded. I was beginning to understand that she was setting the stage for a scene in a sultan’s harem. Very well: I knew how to play a part.

  There was the sound of commotion: men’s deep voices, the clanking of swords and clinking of spurs. “Ready?” Athénaïs said over her shoulder. I followed her out, concentrating on holding the silver tray steady. How like a stage this was.

  My heart jumped as the King entered the salon, attended only by a valet. Athénaïs “swooned” into a reverence.

  I stepped back to stand beside the King’s valet, my eyes lowered, my heart beating violently. His Majesty was taller than most, almost as tall as I was—a handsome, well-made man. He still had traces of stage grease and powder on his brow.

  “I’m afraid I’m getting too old for this, my love,” I heard him say.

  I glanced up to see Athénaïs in his embrace.

  “You were magnificent. You were in your glory.” Athénaïs’s words were modulated, soft, and caressing. She gazed up at the King with a worshipping look I thought just a bit overplayed.

  The King’s valet caught my eyes and I looked away, ashamed to have been caught staring. He was a sturdy man with round cheeks and a bushy moustache. I had seen him before—I was sure of it—but I couldn’t place where.

  “Mademoiselle, you have something for His Majesty?” Athénaïs asked.

  I presented the laced wine on the silver tray with a slow, controlled curtsy. I had to concentrate lest the stemmed goblet tip.

  “Your Majesty, this is Mademoiselle Claude des Oeillets, my new suivante. She attended me in Paris, on the rue l’Échelle. She can be trusted,” Athénaïs added in a low voice, slipping her hand under the King’s doublet.

  I stumbled back, the tray clattering.

  The doors closed behind Athénaïs and the King.

  “I’m Xavier,” the valet said in the awkward silence that followed. “Xavier Breton. Go ahead and sit,” he said. “I won’t tell.”

  “Thank you, but no.” He was manful, handsome in a fashion. I wondered how old he was. Possibly forty? His hair was black, but his moustache had some gray.

  “His Majesty won’t return for at least ten minutes.”

  “You know the routine well.” I felt flushed. “Do I know you?” I asked, leaning against a side table for support.

  “I was wondering that myself.”

  His lips were full and soft, protruding from under his bushy moustache. I wondered what it would be like to lick them. (What had come over me!)

  “Des Oeillets is a lovely name, but uncommon. Are you related to the actress?”

  “She’s my mother,” I said, bracing myself for the inevitable scorn. Royal attendants could be the worst, fancying themselves above the world.

  But his reaction was precluded by a male yelp of pleasure from behind the doors, followed by a low groan.

  Oh dear, I thought.

  He winked at me. “His Majesty is ahead of schedule,” he said, glancing at the clock.

  That wink. And then it came back to me: swooping through the air in my flimsy gown … “I threw you a flower,” I stammered, recalling.

  He laughed. “You’re Cupid!”

  Pleased and proud, I put out my arms as if flying.

  He shook his head in disbelief. “I still have that rose,” he confessed.

  CHAPTER 41

  Claude?” Athénaïs turned from her toilette table to look up at me. “Are you dreaming again? Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “I’m sorry, Madame!” I said with a start, working a bit more bear grease into her scalp. I was exhausted, in truth. My position at Court hadn’t been easy to adjust to. The rhythm of each day felt off. Other than morning Mass and the King’s afternoon visit, nothing was consistent. We ate all the time—drank all the time. I was either frantically busy or required to stand invisibly, doing nothing. (That was the hardest part, by far.)

  And, too, I had to admit, I’d found it unsettling having to stand side by side every afternoon with the King’s valet—the kindly Xavier Breton—making whispered conversation to the sounds of ardent passion coming from the other room. Athénaïs and the King were noisy lovers.

  “Forgive me,” I said with an obliging inflection, smiling winsomely (stagecraft) at Athénaïs’s reflection in the looking glass. She was all sugar water now, but I was wary of her temper, which could blaze up in a moment like dry tinder. Most of her vexation was caused by Louise de la Vallière, I knew. The King’s obvious respect for the “official” mistress was driving her mad. Athénaïs inflamed the King’s passion, but Louise, mother of two of his children, remained his frequent companion (especially out riding, which His Majesty did religiously with her every day, even in inclement weather).

  As a result, Athénaïs was tightly wound, even in repose. She did not sleep well, in spite of opium pills. Her fears of the dark were morbid, and she often asked me to share her bed. “Kiss me, Claudette,” she said sleepily to me one night, her voice thick from the pills. “What? Aren’t you curious? Come here, my pet …,” she murmured as she drifted back into dreams.

  “You were saying, Madame?” I asked, gently working out a snarl.

  “I need you to go to Paris.”

  Gladly! I thought, resuming brushing. One hundred vigorous strokes with the boar-bristle hairbrush, then twenty with the softer one of horsehair. Almost done. “When, Madame?” I longed to see Mother and Gaston; I’d bring them tasty treats for Easter. I hadn’t had news of them and hoped that meant all was well.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, pulling a folded-up paper from her bosom. “We’re running low on my amatory assistant.”

  I smiled. Her “amatory assistant” was what she called the liquid I put in His Majesty’s wine.

  “God forbid I should run out. You’re to deliver this note to the woman who lives next to Notre-Dame de Bonne Nouvelle, a little church just outside the old city wall. Her name is Madame Voisin, although sometimes she goes by Monvoisin, or even Deshayes. You’ll be given a parcel to bring back, so you’ll need this as well.” She handed me a beaded bag. “A gold louis and two silver écus, plus extra for a driver and some money for the Widow.” The Widow Scarron, the woman Athénaïs had hired to supervise the care of the babies—one now, soon to be two. “You will have to go in a rented coach. I can’t send you in one of mine, lest it be recognized.”

  I cocked my head. There was something curious about this arrangement.

  “The woman you’re to call on is a ‘seer,’ well known for her spells, powders, and love potions, all manner of things. All the ladies at Court send their maids to her—in disguise, of course. I suggest you go as your charming Monsieur.”

  I SET OUT early the next morning in pouring rain, dressed in bucket-top boots, breeches, and doublet, topped by a wig, a hat, and wearing a bushy moustache. I had a lot to accomplish in one day: pick up the parcel from the seer, check on my family, and deliver money to the Widow.

  Finding the seer’s house was not easy. It was not far from where my mother and brother lived, but in the uncharted realm beyond the old city walls. The streets—if you could call them that—were uncobbled, pitted with sewage-filled holes. Barefoot children and mangy dogs stood staring from the doors of wattle-and-daub shanties. The area was ungoverned, known to be inhabited by criminals who could live there without harassment. I was thankful that it was midday, thankful that the sun was bright, thankful to be armed and dressed as a man.

  “I won’t be long,” I assured the coach driver, who had laid a firearm across his knees.

  The seer’s house abutted a small village church, just as Athénaïs had said. It was a modest abode, the shutters in need of repair. I knocked on the splin
tered plank door.

  A round little woman in an apron and cap came to greet me. The skirt under her stained apron was of velvet. There was even a train attached, which she’d tucked up into a bustle. Bright glass beads adorned the folds of her neck. “Come in, come in, Monsieur.”

  There was something familiar about her. “I wish to speak to Madame Voisin.” The room beyond was crammed with broken-down furnishings. An enormous Easter altar had been set up over the fireplace.

  “I am she.” She grinned. She smelled of ale and tobacco.

  A girl peeked in from another room, then ducked back out of sight. I could hear a man’s voice.

  “The woman I serve wishes me to give you this.” I handed her the folded paper.

  “Oh, bless,” she said, squinting at it. “Where have I put it?” She frowned at a table stacked with boxes, books, and baskets. “Saints help me. Wait here. You’re not overheated, are you? Would you like an ale?”

  “No. No, thank you.”

  Humming cheerily, she sorted through the heaps on the table.

  Stars! It came to me: she was the fortune-teller on the bridge, the woman who had a booth on the Pont Marie. Madame Catherine. She hadn’t died in the flood, as I’d thought!

  “Ah, here we are.” Two baskets spilled onto the floor as she reached for a box. She stepped over the wreckage. “I’ve vowed to my confessor to clean all this up before Easter.” This with a sweep of her hands. “As soon as I can get my lazy husband to make me some trunks,” she confided with a look of impatience.

  “My mistress also seeks a cure for a simpleton,” I dared to ask, my heart pounding. “Would you happen to know someone who does that type of work?” She had spoken to me before of such a woman, someone who performed miracles.

  She stared at me, and for a moment I feared she could see through my disguise. “I used to know a woman who claimed to do that sort of thing,” she said, “but she’s in an asylum now herself.” She laughed with a shrug. “If you like, I could make inquiries. But I would have to see the simple first.”