The Shadow Queen

by Sandra Gulland

  “Then you need not fear.”

  He had such faith, it made me want to weep … weep, and rage. “You know, of course, what my going to trial would entail,” I said. “If convicted, I would be required to make a full public confession at the doors of Notre-Dame.” Madame Catherine had had to do so. I signed myself, weakened by the memory. “I doubt very much that either Madame de Montespan or His Majesty would want such intimate details made public.”

  Birdsong, wind. From far off the sound of string instruments.

  “You would do that?” he asked with a tone of incredulity. As if I were impugning the Crown!

  I was close to tears, close to keening like the prisoners in the Hôpital Général. The Court was a world unto itself. Versaie was far from Paris, far from the smoke of the pyre. Had Xavier ever even been to a burning? Had he ever seen one up close? “Why—in the name of all that’s holy—why would I not?”

  “Because you are a loyal subject?” he offered, lowering his voice, “and a good woman.”

  I shuttered back tears. Oui: the Good Knight Claudette. Do what is right, whatever the cost. But it was so much more complex. Was I to protect the guilty, so that the innocent suffered? “I have a daughter, Xavier, a brother in my charge. I vow to you now: if I go to trial, I will make sure that all is revealed.”

  Church bells rang: both close and far away.

  “Meet me back here before the lighting of the lamps,” he said, standing.

  CHAPTER 58

  Shaken, I walked to the market. I had broken a trust. Worse, I had threatened harm to His Majesty: an act of treason. I bought a wedge of rabbit pie—a leftover from the King’s table the day before, “almost fresh.” (Or so it was claimed.) It was rancid, but I ate it, washing it down with sour wine. Then, heart aching, I bought a tin spinning top for Sweet Pea at a toy stall. A thin maid from Athénaïs’s staff recognized me, then looked away.

  Where could I hide?

  The little church in the village was dark as a dungeon and cold as stone. I bought a candle and lit it, but I couldn’t even summon a simple prayer. I sat shivering for some time in the silence.

  I HEADED BACK to the Labyrinth as the sun was starting to set. Xavier stood as I approached, his hat covering his heart. I felt dizzy, as if on a precipice.

  “You will never be brought to trial, Claudette.”

  Would I be imprisoned then without a hearing? That happened often enough. A letter signed by the King—the dreaded cachet—could lock a person away, never to be heard from again. I was shaking. He helped me to lower myself onto a cold bench.

  “I delivered His Majesty’s order to Louvois just now,” he said, baffled by my mute response.

  “What does that mean?” I asked finally, taking a breath.

  “It means you have nothing to fear.” He held out his hands as if making an offering. “His Majesty understands that a public trial would not be in his best interest.”

  I bowed my head: merci Dieu. I searched for a nose cloth to wipe the tears from my cheeks.

  “Louvois has been trying to prosecute a number of people associated with Madame de Montespan,” Xavier said hesitantly, sitting down beside me. “Her sister-in-law, a cousin, others. I’ve been noticing this with suspicion, I confess. It’s possible that the Secretary of State is … well, to be frank, rewarding certain prison testimonials.”

  Had it been staged? “You think Louvois gave the prisoners my name?”

  “I think it’s possible. Why I don’t know.”

  “It’s because he despises her.” Her: Athénaïs. She’d mocked him, belittled him in front of the King, referred to him at salon gatherings as Monsieur Pig. She’d made him grovel! Was Louvois using the Affair of the Poisons as a private vendetta against her?

  Xavier leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “Yet he dares not attack Madame de Montespan directly: she’s the mother of several of His Majesty’s legitimized children.”

  Louis Auguste, Louis César, Louise Françoise, Louise Marie Anne. A girl had been born two months before I had left, but I couldn’t remember her name. Françoise Marie? She would be three now. I wondered if any other children had been born since, and if the eldest, the boy, could walk yet. “Have you spoken to His Majesty about this?” I asked.

  “The King is not approachable on this issue. He’s given Louvois and the judges full liberty.”

  I recalled the King’s rage over that fateful duel, so long ago, his proclamation that “no one be spared.” He was, indeed, firm: there was strength in that, but taken to brittleness it could be a weakness, too. I thought of the hundreds who had been executed. I thought of the guilty, yet alive. I thought of the wall-eyed priest.

  “His Majesty asked me to give you this.” Xavier reached under his cape.

  The soft leather sack was heavy: coins, from the feel of it. I looked up at him, puzzled.

  “It’s rather a great deal, so be cautious.”

  For my silence, I knew: keeper of a secret. “I can be trusted,” I said, feeling the weight of the coins. I handed the bag back to him. “But I don’t need to be bribed.”

  “Claudette, please consider,” he said, perplexed.

  I’d always loved Xavier’s eyes, his solid gentleness. I shook my head. Swear to do what is right, whatever the cost.

  “Believe me, it’s not about paying you off—it’s for your daughter’s care,” he said with tenderness.

  “You told His Majesty about my little girl?” The King’s daughter too.

  “I had to.”

  “What did he say?”

  Xavier looked at me apologetically. “That you’re never to come to Court.”

  Gladly!

  “I’m sorry. But please—keep the coins.”

  “I can manage, Xavier.” Court riches came with a price. “Inform His Majesty that I will honor his command, nonetheless.”

  “How is she?” he asked after an uncomfortable silence.

  I clasped the brass locket hanging from a ribbon tied around my neck: inside was a strand of Sweet Pea’s hair, together with a tiny image I’d drawn of her. It was a crude likeness—I did not have a talent for portraiture—but there was something of her spirit in it. “Growing,” I said, tearfully relating her cleverness, her latest bon mot, how tall she was now, how pretty and pert.

  “Like her mother,” he said.

  I turned to him, suddenly in the grip of an impetuous tumult. “Do you still have that rose?” I asked, flushing.

  He smiled shyly. “Of course.”

  The birds began making a racket, a chorus of calls, a chorus of answers. I put up my hands in a gesture of surrender, tears brimming.

  He pressed his hands against mine, palm to palm. “I’ve loved you for a long time, Claudette.”

  “Show me,” I said.

  One kiss revealed everything. I felt like Cupid flying.

  EPILOGUE

  (1684, Château de Suisnes)

  CHAPTER 59

  I walked through the rooms of the Château de Suisnes jingling a big ring of keys. The papers had been signed two days before, the money transferred to Monsieur François Pingré, the owner. The former owner, that is, for now the château was mine—made possible by an astonishing and totally unexpected windfall from one of Mother’s “foolish” investments. (Thank you, Maman!)

  I was filled with gratitude. At the full and blooming age of forty-five, I had everything I’d ever hoped for. I thought of the caves and campsites of my youth, the ramshackle rooms and grand palaces I’d slept in. Whether a roaming player or a member of the Court, I had been always on the move. Finally I had a place I could truly call home.

  I went up the curving stairs and looked into each room. Sweet Pea—a long-legged eight-year-old with red curls and big feet—adored her new room under the eaves with its canopy bed. Even in the heat of July, it was cooled by the shade of the chestnut tree outside.

  I looked into the four remaining upstairs rooms. The shutters had been opened and the rooms aired. Gaby ha
d made them up nicely for my guests: a vase of freshly picked flowers adorned each toilette table. The fine muslin curtains in the room next to my own fluttered in the breeze.

  I heard Gaby calling from downstairs. I followed her through the salon to the double doors of the library.

  Shh, she gestured, her finger to her lips. She moved so that I could look through the doors. There, inside, was Sweet Pea, absorbed in constructing something—but what was it? She’d hoisted a rod between two shelves and was draping linens over it. Curtains?

  “It’s a stage,” Gaby whispered, nudging me away so that we might not be discovered. “It’s supposed to be a surprise,” she explained in the basement kitchen, handing me an earthen mug of hot cider. “But I thought you should know.” Newly baked loaves of bread were lined up on the plank table. The oxtail soup, chicken pot pies, crepinettes, beignets, tarts, and other sweets had already been prepared for this afternoon’s feast. Venison was turning on the spit. A maid, a girl from the village, was just finishing cleaning up.

  “Sweet Pea intends to put on a performance for us,” Gaby said, taking off her apron. She was wearing her best gown, her church dress, a stiff taffeta in an ancient style, with enormous sleeves. “It’s going to be a play—from something by Monsieur Corneille.”

  I frowned. My daughter had only just learned her letters.

  Gaby grinned. “Of course it will only be a line or two, but all last week—while you were with the notary in Paris—she practiced, committing the lines to heart. Père Petit has been helping her. It was her reward for learning her catechism.”

  Our village priest had taught my daughter lines from a play? But then, Père Petit cast himself as a rebel priest who even talked to Huguenots. He once confessed to going to Paris to see a theatrical production, so perhaps it wasn’t so surprising.

  “I suggested she perform it after dessert.”

  “Good idea.” I heard a coach and horses, and hurried up the stairs to look out the window that overlooked the courtyard. “Gaby, tell Sweet Pea that her uncle Gaston and Monsieur Pierre are here,” I called down. And Gaston’s friend Pilon. And two children?

  “Christophe and Humbert. Twins,” Pilon explained when I went outside to meet them. “Our newest recruits. We didn’t think we should leave them alone just yet.”

  “Welcome,” I said to the boys, who I guessed to be about six. “We have all sorts of treats for you.”

  I embraced Gaston, who had grown quite round with a long beard that he tied into a knot at his waist.

  “So here you are,” Monsieur Pierre said, approaching, leaning on a crooked wood cane. “All the way out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “I’m so glad you could come.” I was shocked at how much he’d aged. He was almost eighty now, true, yet he seemed older than that, overly thin. It came to me that he could die at any time. Did he know how much I loved him? He had meant so much to my mother, my family.

  I felt little hands around my waist. I grinned down at my daughter. “Sweet Pea, this is Monsieur Corneille—the Great Corneille.”

  “The playwright?”

  Monsieur Pierre touched the brim of his floppy hat and my daughter made a charming curtsy.

  “Why don’t you show the boys your new swing,” I suggested.

  “The very image,” Monsieur Pierre said, watching her skip off, the twins running after her.

  I flushed. It was true: Sweet Pea looked very much like her father. I took Monsieur Pierre’s arm, to steady him, following his slow, tentative steps into the house: my house.

  EVERYBODY LOVED THE château, its vistas, its congenial ambience. They admired the gardens, Monsieur de Maisonblanche’s friendly old bearlike dog, the cat’s newest litter, the pigs, the mare, the cow. After Père Petit arrived, we all sat down to dine.

  Père Petit said grace, giving thanks to the Good Lord and His helpmate, Madame Gaby, for the bounty before them, and to her helpmate, Monsieur de Maisonblanche, for his most excellent ale.

  “Hurrah!” Everyone raised a mug.

  The room hummed with talk of the war (briefly), the peace (thankfully), the Company (quietly, in whispers), and the King, whose conquests continued to bring him glory (unfortunately due to Louvois’s evil genius). We raised our glasses to the memory of the Queen, who had tragically and suddenly died the year before. (It was rumored that the King had secretly married the Widow, something that must have enraged Athénaïs!)

  There was also talk of Racine, who had long ago retired from theater to become His Majesty’s official historiographer. (Clearly, the accusations against him had come to naught.) He was something of a bigot now, it was said, even condemning players and the world of the theater.

  Over venison and chicken pie, Monsieur Pierre told us about the Comédie-Française. The newly created government theater was an amalgamation of the warring troupes, intended to put an end to the War of the Theaters.

  “Did you see their recent production of The Cid?” I asked.

  Monsieur Pierre confessed that he had not had the heart to go, it had been so poorly cast. “I have no wish to spoil my memory of former glories,” he said. “Let us raise our glasses to a truly great player, La des Oeillets. She made gods weep.”

  “Is he talking about Grandmama?” Sweet Pea asked Gaston, who was beside her.

  “Oui,” Gaston said, crinkling his eyes at his niece.

  “To Alix!” we all sang out in chorus.

  And to Father, I thought, saying a silent prayer. Thank you.

  CHAPTER 60

  Gaby and I were setting out the snow custard and cakes when I heard a horse cantering down the laneway.

  “Now who could that be?” Gaby said with a smile, tilting her head.

  In the courtyard, I saw my stable hand taking the reins of a stout horse from a man in the King’s livery. Xavier!

  “I’m so glad you could come,” I said, giving his cloak to the maid. “Put it in Monsieur’s room, please.” The room next to my own.

  “Claudette—I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I must return to Versaie tonight,” he said, embracing me tenderly. “As soon as my horse is watered and rested.”

  “Then at least join us for dessert,” I said, crestfallen. It had been more than a week since I’d last seen him.

  “This,” Gaston said, rising as Xavier and I entered the dining room. “Is?”

  “Oui, Gaston, this is Monsieur Xavier Breton, who I’ve been telling you about. But he can’t stay long, unfortunately.”

  “I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to congratulate Claudette on her new home … and to meet you,” Xavier added with warmth. “She talks of you so often.”

  “Gaston, could you pour a mug for our guest?” I asked, noticing that Gaby was gesturing to me.

  “We have a problem,” Gaby said, letting me into the library, where my daughter was weeping.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, stooping down beside the girl, the twins looking on perplexed.

  Her shoulders shook. “I don’t remember the words.”

  “If you like, I could help you,” I offered, ignoring the fact that I was not supposed to know about the surprise. “I’ll whisper them to you. I used to do this for your grandmama. It’s what players do.”

  She looked at me in wonder. “You know the words?”

  “That depends,” I said truthfully, looking up at Gaby.

  “It’s a line from a scene—” Gaby wrung her hands. “But I don’t recall which play.”

  “It’s about a princess named Isabelle,” Sweet Pea said, starting to weep again.

  “Ah,” I said. The Illusion, a light romantic comedy, was one of my favorites. “A beautiful princess.”

  “The most beautiful princess in all the world.”

  “I might know the words,” I said.

  “They begin with her saying not to do what we’re told,” Sweet Pea said with spirit.

  I smiled. My daughter’s interpretation was … well: inventive.

  “But I can’t remember wh
at comes next.”

  “… not to do what we’re told, when we detest what’s been chosen for us,” I prompted, imagining that my daughter thought this speech had to do with refusing to eat parsnips, rather than marrying a man she did not love.

  “That’s it.”

  “Perfect,” I said, relieved that she had no intention of reciting the rest of Isabelle’s passionate speech.

  “And then Uncle Gaston is going to sing,” she said.

  “He is?”

  “He said he would. And then, at the end, you come on and play a clown.”

  “I do what?”

  “Monsieur Xavier says you do it wonderfully.”

  “Indeed,” Gaby broke in. “He’s been saying so for years.”

  “And I’ve never ever seen it,” Sweet Pea said, striking an indignant pose befitting an actress.

  I LIT THREE lanterns as everyone got settled in the library.

  “Xavier …?” He was deep in conversation with Monsieur Pierre. I stooped down beside his chair.

  He turned toward me, lightly touching my hand. (Oh, how I love this man.) “Did you say something to Sweet Pea about me acting a clown?”

  “Some time ago, perhaps,” he said—but looking a bit guilty, I thought.

  “She’s insisting I perform … tonight.”

  “This woman is the most exquisite clown imaginable,” Monsieur Pierre said, pointing an accusing finger at me.

  I’d never seen Monsieur Pierre so garrulous. I wondered what Monsieur de Maisonblanche had been putting in his mug.

  “She’s every bit as good as Molière,” he went on, “may he rest in peace.”

  “That I’d like to see,” Père Petit said, finishing off his third helping of snow custard.

  I bowed my head at the reference to Molière. The wonderful playwright had practically died onstage, playing the part of a man who was convinced he was dying. That the Church had refused him a proper burial enraged me still.