The Shadow Queen

by Sandra Gulland

  “No, it’s me, Claudette,” I’d assured her soothingly, yet wondering: had Madame Catherine something to do with what had happened to Louise de la Vallière? Was it possible that Athénaïs had given her rival poison? I was Athénaïs’s confidential maid, but there were things even I did not know.

  As I descended the church steps, lost in thought, a woman grabbed my arm. “Attendez!” A solemn procession was approaching. The King, dressed in a fox-collared robe, was accompanied by men of the Church.

  Of course: he was touching for the King’s Evil that day, dispelling the disfiguring disease with a pat of his royal hand. That explained the hundreds of grotesques on the streets. They bowed their heads, murmuring prayers as the silent procession passed by—a powerful display of spiritual kingship.

  I stood watching the ritual healing, the King’s solemn laying on of hands as he moved among the sufferers, sprinkling them with holy water, touching their tumors and making the sign of the cross over them. His Majesty went slowly through the motions of the ceremony with purpose. It was clear to see that he was moved by such suffering, clear to see that he longed to offer relief. With each cure—and there were many—people cried out with joy. It was proof—was it not?—of the miraculous nature of kingship, the Christ-like power of our good King.

  Yet I knew all too well that players were often hired to perform the role of the “miraculously” healed—I’d done it more than once myself. Even so, I wept at the sight of a girl leading her mother away, embracing her so tenderly.

  Was the miracle of the King’s touch nothing more than a performance? I longed to believe in wonders. How joyful I would be in the presence of a miracle. More than anything, I wanted my mother to be well. I wanted her to live.

  CHAPTER 44

  I turned the handle of Mother’s door and pushed, but it held firm. I rapped several times, then pressed my ear against the planks. Not a sound. I put down my bags and rummaged for my big iron key to let myself in.

  The door creaked open. Mother was standing before me like some ghostly apparition, dressed in a tattered nightdress and cap, a counterpane comforter hanging over her shoulders. “It’s you,” she said, reaching out for a wall to steady herself.

  I embraced her. She was bone-thin in my arms.

  “I’m better,” she said, but visibly quaking. “You didn’t lock the door.”

  “I will if you want, Maman,” I said, bringing in all my things. We’d never locked it before. Was she in a fever?

  “Why the bags?” she demanded.

  “I’m staying for a while,” I said, setting the string bags on the sideboard. They were filled to bursting with food from Athénaïs’s abundant table—sweetmeats, figs, cheese from the Auvergne, fried sheep’s testicles, a roast partridge in cabbage—all wrapped in cloths and tied up with pretty ribbons. “Like I promised.” I’d even managed to get some of Athénaïs’s opium pills by stealth.

  Athénaïs had not wanted to allow me time away, but in the end it had been simple. She had to go north with the King and Court, and someone was needed in Paris in case the Widow had a problem with the bastard babies. (Heyday—I would even be paid.) “Where is Gaston?”

  “He’s at the theater. I think.”

  “Where’s the girl I hired?” Ants were swarming over a trencher left out on the table.

  Maman waved her hand through the air. “I let her go.”

  I groaned.

  “She left her stool in my chamber pot!”

  I made an incredulous scoff. She had a point. “I’ll find someone new.”

  “I don’t want strangers around. They sing off-key.”

  I felt too exhausted to do battle … yet. “I have some things for you,” I said, opening my leather valise, stuffed full with Athénaïs’s rejected garments—a silk chemise, two boned bodices and four sets of sleeves, several shawls and veils.

  Mother brightened.

  “Get back in bed and I’ll show you.”

  I WALKED DOWN to the river, furious and frustrated. At a book-stand, a title caught my eye: The Imitation of Christ. It was a beautiful volume, bound in red leather and tooled in gold. It promised counsel on meeting adversity as well as reflections on death. On the frontispiece, I saw that it was translated from the Latin by Monsieur Pierre Corneille.

  Our Monsieur Pierre?

  His Paris abode wasn’t far: I would see if he was in. Maybe he wouldn’t mind signing the book. I could give it to Mother as a present. It would strengthen us all.

  I RESISTED EMBRACING Monsieur Pierre—outbursts of heart-fulness alarmed him, I knew. I hadn’t seen him for more than four months, not since encountering him at Mother’s performance in the disastrous premiere of Racine’s Britannicus. “I’ve missed you,” I confessed. His room was bright, but of modest size and cluttered, every surface covered with books and papers.

  “Bah,” he said with a smiling scowl. He had tufts of hair coming out of his ears. He looked like an owl.

  I insisted he sit while I scrounged up the makings of tea. This took some doing, as the dishes and implements were in great disarray—worse even than Mother’s. He had a girl to help, he said, but her mother was dying, so she hadn’t been coming around as much. “My wife refuses to leave Rouen. She’s convinced Paris is a city of cutthroats.”

  “Don’t worry, I can manage.” Was my own mother dying? She was ill—seriously ill, without a doubt—yet there seemed to be so much life in her (so much stubbornness). Her spirit was clearly strong.

  I set the cups of tea on the table. “How have you been?”

  “Pas mal.” His hand trembled, causing his tea to spill, but he paid it no heed. He seemed pleased to see me, uncharacteristically prattling. He’d been to see Monsieur Molière’s The Miser the day before at the Palais-Royal. The performance had been a disappointment, possibly because there was hardly anyone in the audience. Without all the courtiers, who was left in Paris?

  Oui, I nodded. They’d all gone north with the King, following the royal progress through the Flemish lands newly acquired through the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. It was to be a parade, a theatrical show of splendor and military might.

  Getting Athénaïs packed had not been easy: she’d gained weight, and the gowns she wished to take were no longer comfortable, much less flattering. Then there had been all the commotion of departure: I’d never seen such chaos. The courtyard swarmed with pages, maids, valets, flunkies, carriages and wagons, pack mules and horses. There were thousands of men in the military escort alone. Even one of the King’s former wet-nurses was part of the procession. (She kissed the King each morning, Athénaïs told me—something she thought was absurd but I found endearing.) The King’s bed had been dismantled and sent on, an enormous four-poster construction draped in gold-embroidered green velvet, as well as all his tapestries and silver candlesticks. Moving a court was no small undertaking.

  “And speaking of courtiers, why aren’t you with the Court, headed to Flanders?” Monsieur Pierre asked.

  “I’m needed in Paris,” I explained vaguely. “Look what I just bought,” I said, changing the subject. I showed Monsieur Pierre the lovely little book.

  He was delighted. “I worked on this translation off and on for almost twenty years. It’s as old as you are.”

  “You flatter me, Monsieur Pierre.” Oh, to be twenty again.

  “You’re so pretty when you smile.”

  I smiled again. I loved this old man. “Would you sign it? It’s a gift for Mother.”

  “You have such nice teeth,” he said, standing unsteadily to rummage in the clutter of his writing table for a quill.

  I surreptitiously found a rag to mop up the spilled tea.

  “How’s your charming mother?” He cut a few pages with a kitchen knife, then scratched out his name on the title page, sprinkled sand on it, and shook the book clean before handing it back to me. He looked at me over his sight glasses. “I was alarmed, I confess, to learn that Alix did not renew her contract this year. She’s not well?�
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  I could not bear to look into his eyes.

  “So, it’s like that,” he said softly.

  I nodded. Like that.

  CHAPTER 45

  Mother was awake when I got back, but in bed as I’d instructed. “I found someone to help me clean up,” I told her. Yet another neighbor’s daughter, free mornings and often some evenings as well. I’d already put her to work, clearing some of the mess.

  “Do I have any say in this?” Mother demanded.

  “We won’t move a thing, I promise.”

  “You’ll be throwing things out.”

  “We’ll always ask you,” I lied, knowing my mother would want to hold on to even the most moth-eaten rag.

  “Is this supposed to prepare me for the beyond?” she asked, holding up Monsieur Pierre’s book. “It looks like a prayer book with all these holy pictures in it.”

  “Monsieur Pierre wrote it.” Or, rather, translated it from Latin. “He even signed it.” I turned the pages. “See?”

  “You know I can’t read.”

  “I’m going to read it to you,” I said, rearranging and plumping her pillows. “I thought you’d like the pictures.” I could hear the new maid at work in the wash-up area, singing off-key. “He said to tell you that he’ll be coming to visit.” Often, he’d told me, his cheeks wet with tears.

  IN A MATTER of weeks it became clear that my mother was truly dying. On the advice of young Docteur Baratil, she was put on a diet of tepid goat’s milk for eight days, and after that, for three days, that of a cow. There had been hope of a cure, and she had, in fact, rallied, but only briefly. Now it sometimes seemed as if she was burning up from within. She kept to her bed and had to be helped to the chamber pot, her urine clouded and rank. The doctor called frequently—often in the morning and then again in the evening.

  My own sorrow I could not face. Instead I focused on practical matters. I feared my mother would slip away without renouncing the stage, feared, too, that she would simply refuse—so I made the decision for her. “I’ve sent for a priest,” I informed Gaston. It had been a grueling few days; we’d been sleeping in shifts. “To renounce,” I clarified.

  He pointed to our mother’s room with a look of incredulity. He hummed one long drawn-out note. Then, “Accept?” he managed to say, haltingly.

  I grimaced. “Not exactly.”

  Soon after, the priest arrived and, without ceremony or delicacy, proceeded to read out the statement:

  With all my heart, I freely promise God not to act on the stage for the rest of my life, even if, in His infinite goodness, He pleases to return me to good health.

  “Now you’re to sign, Maman.” I’d purchased a pot of lampblack ink and a swan quill in preparation. There must be no question, later, of the document’s authenticity.

  Gaston helped her sit up and put the leather portfolio on her lap.

  Mother looked up at him. “You’re so big now.”

  The priest cleared his throat, rocking on his heels.

  I positioned the document in front of her.

  “But what if there’s a miracle?” she demanded, gesturing to her little Virgin propped in the corner.

  I looked over at Gaston in despair. She wasn’t going to sign.

  Gaston knelt down beside her, humming, his gestures sweetly beseeching.

  “It’s not right!” She threw a scornful look at the priest.

  I couldn’t help but smile. She was feisty, even on her deathbed. “Maman, you don’t want to go to Hell, do you?”

  “I want to be with your father, I don’t care where.”

  I groaned. I had no defense against this argument!

  The priest reached for the paper, but I held the document firm. I couldn’t bear the thought of my mother’s body dumped unceremoniously into a pit with felons and sinners. She deserved a proper funeral, a proper burial—a proper eternity. “Please.”

  Mother looked at me with tears in her eyes. “And so, the final scene,” she said with resignation, taking up the quill. She dipped the nib into the ink and slowly—ever so slowly—traced out the initials of her name.

  IN THE DAYS and nights that followed, Gaston and I took turns sitting by our mother’s bed, doing what we could to make her comfortable, giving her opium, and reading to her. I combed and dressed her thinning hair, made up her face as if for the stage, and adorned her in her beloved gewgaws.

  “Your father liked this color on me,” she said dreamily, fingering her sleeve, then fell into a deep sleep.

  A STEADY STREAM of friends came and went as word got out: Monsieur Pierre, Floridor, and the players from the Bourgogne were daily visitors. Madame Babette showed up with beignets. Even our old landlord came with his wife.

  Gaston moved a bench into the bedchamber for our guests, who lingered at Mother’s bedside, praying, singing, telling stories—weeping and even laughing. Mother no longer woke, but I was certain she could hear and I knew how much she loved the sound of merriment.

  By the fire, stirring a simmering cauldron of oxtail soup, I asked Floridor if he would deliver the eulogy. The dear man, so elegant and refined, began to sob with such violence that I poured him a mug of wormwood wine. He sipped at it delicately, holding it in his shaky hands. “You see? I’m all to pieces. Soon I’ll be the only one left.” The only player still living who had performed in the cursed Andromaque less than three years before. Of the four principals in that play, Montfleury had died, then Thérèse du Parc—and now, soon, my mother.

  It was nearing midnight on the third day of our vigil that Mother breathed her last. Monsieur Pierre put down the text he’d been reading from aloud: lines from Sertorius, lines from one of the great roles Mother had played, a role he’d written for her, a role she’d helped create.

  Gaston cried out. I put my hand on his shoulder, suddenly unsteady.

  “Peace now,” Monsieur Pierre said, closing her staring eyes.

  I WENT THROUGH the minutes, hours, and days that followed in a daze. Gaston was twenty-four now, but the shock of our mother’s death rendered him a child once again. He squatted by the fire, humming, words lost to him once more.

  I knelt beside him, trying to comfort. He looked at me helplessly, locked in his grief. I pressed my forehead against his.

  I, too, felt inarticulate and dazed, stumbling into furniture. Fortunately, I had taken care of quite a bit in advance: paying for a funeral at Saint-Leu-Saint-Guiles; arranging for the burial; hiring callers to walk throughout the city announcing the tragic news; making sure we had a quantity of deniers on hand to throw down to the people who gathered beneath our windows.

  I was well prepared, but even so I found it surprisingly difficult to deal with. Waves of tears came over me at unexpected moments. I even began to feel faint in the lawyer’s office, sending everyone scrambling for nose cloths and salts. I had always been the strong and practical one, the one who held my family together in times of need. Now I could no longer count on myself. My mother—that charmingly willful, exasperating child of a woman—was gone.

  The day before the funeral, I tackled the chaos of Mother’s papers and discovered, in a basket under her bed, promissory notes, leases, legal documents—all unopened, their wax seals intact. I hauled these back to the lawyer, who studied them over, and then looked up at me with sympathy.

  The debts, as it turned out, were staggering.

  As well as being responsible for my mother’s obligations, according to the terms of the will I was now Gaston’s legal guardian. “Don’t worry, Turnip. I will look after you.” In truth I felt at a loss.

  DIES IRAE! DIES ILLA! O day of wrath! O day of mourning!

  On the day of the funeral, Gaston and I eased our mother’s body into an oak coffin. She seemed small, birdlike, clothed in the simple blue linen gown she’d been wearing when she’d met Father. I’d wrapped her ugly shawl around her shoulders.

  As the carpenter was about to bolt the coffin shut, I turned stricken to my brother. “What did we forget?”<
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  He retrieved Father’s rosary and the humble wood statue of the Virgin. I tucked them into the crook of Mother’s arm, along with the key and chipped cup. (The corn-husk doll had long ago disintegrated; I regretted not having thought to buy carnations.) We each kissed her cold powdered cheek, and lowered the coffin lid.

  I slowly descended the winding stairs to the street, following the coffin borne by Floridor, Gaston, and two strong actors from the troupe. A small crowd had assembled. The young doctor and Monsieur Pierre were there. Players of the Bourgogne hovered to one side, and a few vaguely familiar faces from the Marais to another, clustered around old La Roque, who’d become surprisingly stooped, his beard still divided into points, but gray. And many, many tearful strangers—Mother’s ardent fanatics.

  Monsieur Pierre stepped forward and offered his arm.

  I nodded, fearful of speaking. I regretted not holding onto Father’s rosary. I covered my face with my veil and slowly set off, following the coffin down the rue Saint-Denis to the church, someone behind playing sweetly on a flute.

  I looked down at the cobbles. I thought of how Mother, Gaston, and I had walked down this very street after the flood so long ago. I remembered picking her up and twirling her laughing in the air. That’s how I would imagine her—now and forever.

  CHAPTER 46

  Saint-Germain-en-Laye looked gray in the November drizzle, the river valley misting. No flags or banners were flying and the coaches were draped in black, due to the sudden death of Henriette, the King’s brother’s wife. The Court’s mourning mirrored my own.

  I nodded to the two guards stationed in front of Athénaïs’s doors. I knew Miguel, but the other one was new.

  “Madame de Montespan is not receiving,” he told me officiously.

  “Mademoiselle des Oeillets is Madame’s personal attendant,” Miguel informed him, ushering me into the antechamber. “We’re taking precautions,” he explained with a meaningful look.

  I found Athénaïs sprawled on her bed, a heap of soiled linens on the floor. “I’ve just had a bouillon purgative—the usual humors kicking up, an excess of bile. Don’t worry. I won’t be bolting for the necessary for at least an hour, but until then I must not move. Shut the door, will you?”