Before Versailles

by Karleen Koen

  It was as if some delightful spell has been cast over the court, said Madame de Choisy. Never has there been so much fun. An enchanting world is just ahead on the horizon, beckoning, smiling, promising things unnamed, things delightful and beguiling. And you, my Louise, shall be right in the middle of it, she’d said. Everyone must see your charming eyes, and Madame de Choisy had taken Louise’s chin in one hand. Rings all over her fingers—she always wore all her rings; one must exhibit one’s jewelry, she said; our jewels are our medals of valor; the tales I could tell—she had smiled at Louise, as excited as if she herself were going to court for the first time.

  I should call my servant, thought Louise, the small mirror propped on the table before her showing her the tangle her hair was in, but she didn’t want the company of another just now. So even though a lady wasn’t supposed to do her own hair, so said Madame de Choisy, scandalized at Louise’s self-reliant—and truth be told, rather shabby—upbringing, she began to search for any pins that might be left among her curls, concentrating as she did so on counting her blessings, as she’d been taught when troubled, so that the echo of the boy’s yowls would still inside her.

  Blessing one: She might have been stuck forever serving the whining Orléans princesses if not for dear Cousin Choisy. No more ennui. No more complaint. No more endless prayers and pulled-down faces and long days of nothing to do.

  Blessing two: She was going to meet Monsieur, the younger brother of the king, great fun, promised Cousin Choisy, there is no one like him. A prince, a worthy child of France.

  Blessing three: Cousin Choisy was fairly certain that the new Madame-to-be was nice. What would that be like? Kindness had not been a feature of the bitter household she’d left. Then there again in her mind was a thought of the boy. It wasn’t kind to put a boy in an iron mask. Why would anyone do so?

  She brushed out her hair until it was vibrant with life and springing like a blonde mane all around her head. He had howled like a wolf, like a ghost, like a banshee, sorrow and fear in the sound. She had had the sense that he was near her age. As she began to tame curls around her fingers, to bunch them so they would hang properly, she mulled over what she’d seen. Gangly. Perhaps in that awkward spurt of growth that came to boys somewhere around ten and four—

  “Let me do that.”

  She leapt off the stool.

  Her cousin, Choisy, closed the bedchamber door behind him.

  She frowned. “You startled me.”

  He motioned for her to sit back down, selected a comb to his liking, and began to create the required long bunched ringlets for the other side of her face. “Your hair is so biddable. Mine always requires a curling iron,” he complained.

  It was the style for men to wear their hair long and flowing, but her cousin had his own style, to say the least. The truth was, it was his habit to dress as a woman. Right now, for example, he wore his mother’s dressing gown and diamond earrings and rouge and beauty spots, those little bits of shaped velvet one pasted to the face. During Carnival—when everyone masked and wore costumes and went to party after party as a matter of course—Louise had watched him flirt with other men, none of them aware that the pretty young thing dressed in a low-cut gown and batting eyes behind a fan was a man. It’s a game, he had told her, my particular game. A game his brother despised, which was why they were in the country for a while. There had been an escapade in Paris, something that had enraged his older brother, now head of the family, and his mother, who cosseted Choisy, had whisked him out of sight and reprimand and had brought Louise along to keep him company. Besides, she’d said, I need to train you for court, my dear.

  “You were gone a long time,” he said, pouting at her. He was as pretty as she was. They’d compared faces in the mirror and agreed on that.

  “I fell from my horse.” And then the story spilled from her pell-mell, the wild gallop, the jump over the tree, the boy in the mask, its terrible simplicity hiding his face, his heartrending howls, the fall, her opening her eyes to see a musketeer, his strange command. A tear rolled down one of her cheeks as she finished.

  Intrigued, Choisy pulled a chair forward, sat down so that they were knee to knee. “Describe the thing on his face again.”

  She did so.

  “Like a disguise,” Choisy said, “a mask made by demons. An iron mask. I love it, the boy in the iron mask. Are you sure he was a boy? Might he not have been a small man, like me? Look how slight I am. The man in the iron mask. Yes. That sounds better. More dashing. And the musketeer was wearing the cardinal’s colors, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, my sweet, you really had best keep silent. It’s a wonderful story, but I’d hate to see something happen to you just when you’re on the threshold of your grand new life because you’ve been foolish enough to repeat it.”

  “What could happen?”

  “You could disappear like that!” Choisy snapped his fingers. “Do you know what a lettre de cachet is?”

  She didn’t know. “A love letter?”

  “It is a letter signed by the king that places a person in prison with no record of the arrest. A carriage appears outside your door. Musketeers drag you off, and it’s over. You’re never heard from again. Trust me, the cardinal has used it more than once.”

  Choisy would know things like this, thought Louise. His family had been up to its neck in all the intrigue and warfare between the king’s mother and uncle. Not pretty on anybody’s part, as Choisy liked to say, dismissing disloyalty with a shrug.

  “And if you do disappear, don’t you dare tell them you said a thing to me, or they’ll take me away, too, and I’d die in prison like a flower plucked before its time.”

  He stood up and pantomimed being dragged off by guards, standing in his lonely cell, weeping silently, then he folded forward. “I was meant for the stage. Unfortunate that actors are cursed by the church.” Still folded, he spoke to his knees, his long, dark hair sweeping the stone floor.

  “I asked the fairies to bless him.”

  He straightened. “Who?”

  “The boy in the iron mask.”

  “A word to the wise, country mouse. I wouldn’t mention forest fairies when you join the new Madame’s household.”

  Louise wished she hadn’t mentioned them to him. “Because they’ll laugh at me?”

  “Far worse. They’ll scorn you.”

  “Do you scorn me?”

  “My darling cousin, I adore you.” He stood in front of her, put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed the top of her head.

  Louise felt confused. There was nothing feminine in the grip of his hands on her shoulders. Usually, he was soft and purring, but she didn’t have that impression now.

  “Your hair smells sweet,” said Choisy, “as if it has been washed in clear spring water. You’re so pure, so sweet and clean-hearted. I’m half in love with you—”

  The door swung open.

  “There you two are.” Madame de Choisy walked in and didn’t bat an eye at the sight of her son standing a little too close to Louise, still in his nightgown with her own embroidered and heavily laced dressing robe atop it, as well as her best earrings in his ears.

  “Cardinal Mazarin is dead,” she announced. “The Duchess d’Orléans has sent a letter by special messenger. We return to Paris tomorrow. You, my precious, are riding out this afternoon so that you can present our regards to the viscount tonight. Yes, I know your brother will do it, but he’ll wait until everyone in Paris has been there before him, and he’ll say the wrong thing.” She rolled her eyes at Louise, as if everyone knew what a fool the head of the family was. “I should never have left Paris, but I truly thought the cardinal would last longer. You are to present our regards with all the grace and polish imaginable. It is to be your finest performance. Change your clothes, my boy. At once.”

  She clapped her hands together, the way one would summon dogs or servants, and obediently, her favorite child left the bedchamber. She turned to Louise.r />
  “We thought he’d live forever,” she said. “Such changes ahead. And here you are about to join the new Madame’s court where you’ll be in the midst of everything. If I were your age, I would be half dead with excitement.” She spoke affectionately.

  “Will Monsieur’s marriage be delayed because of the cardinal’s death?” The thought of returning to serve in the household of the Orléans family again was too awful. She couldn’t go back to being a piece of furniture, taken for granted and ignored, after the fun and liveliness and kindness of the Choisys.

  “I very much doubt it. Monsieur’s marriage is important for many reasons.” Madame de Choisy reached out to caress Louise’s cheek. “So,” she said, “it’s true.”

  “What is?”

  “That your cheek has the texture of a rose petal, or so my Choisy says. Has my son told you he loves you yet?”

  The question was casual, no heat or accusation in it, but almost cheerful.

  “N-no.” Unused to such directness, not wanting to make trouble for Choisy, yet not liking to lie, Louise stammered.

  “You really must learn to lie more gracefully, my sweet. He is always falling in and out of love, so don’t take what he says to heart.” Madame de Choisy spoke as if they were discussing the weather or the merits of a horse rather than her adored and spoiled child. “And, of course, you must wait until you’ve been to court before you settle on anyone. And when you do, as all girls must, find someone with more fortune than my Choisy. He is the youngest son, you know.”

  Louise could think of nothing to say to this worldly, kind, amusing woman. No one older had talked to her in this manner before with such unarmed frankness, laughter in its corners.

  “What lovely eyes you have, child! A man could fall into them. Those naughty boys at court will do so, bad things that they are. What fun. I do so like bad boys. Now come here and give me a hug so I know I’m forgiven for my lecturing. It’s the cardinal’s death that’s made me so dreary. We all knew it would come, and yet, now that it’s here, it is unimaginable.”

  Absently, she stroked the curve of Louise’s arm, not bothering to tell her what the kingdom owed the man now gone. The young never cared about the past, did they? she thought, looking past Louise to a window, not to its view, but to all that had been. The young saw only this moment, she thought. The cardinal’s presence had been controversial, war fought more than once because of it, but he’d kept the kingdom cobbled together for France’s young king. And now he was vanquished. All his diamonds, all his tapestries, all his statues from Rome, his palaces and musketeers and affectations, couldn’t keep the dark angel away. So it was now and forever, amen. How grieved the royal family must be.

  CHOISY, WHOSE FULL name was François-Timoléon de Choisy, ran upstairs, Louise’s tale of boys and iron masks forgotten. Born to privilege, he belonged to the cream of the nobility and was as attuned in his own way to the nuances of court as his mother was.

  The world as we know it is ending, he thought, initial excitement and surprise turning to elation as possibilities unfolded one after another in his mind. The cardinal was dead. Amazing. For Choisy’s entire life, the cardinal had been alive and in power either directly or indirectly. But there was more than that in his jubilance. For the first time in years, France was in the hands of the young. Did anyone but Choisy comprehend that? The king was only twenty and two. Monsieur, the king’s brother, was twenty. They were young and mettlesome and high-spirited, as he was. He’d ask Monsieur for a place on one of the king’s councils. Why not drop a young man who liked to wear earrings among the old graybeards? It would liven things up. Off with the old, on with the new.

  Once he was on horseback, gown gone, diamonds glittering sedately—for him—here and there among his clothing, he told his mother and Louise his intention, and his mother nearly snapped his head off.

  “Ask the viscount, my Choisy, not Monsieur! Have you lost your senses? Now, be your most silver-tongued, my angel, your most charming. Even if you have to wait in an antechamber for hours, see the viscount tonight if possible. And call upon the queen mother and tell her I return tomorrow and that I send her my deepest condolences.”

  As the sight of Choisy and his horse faded into the distance, Louise and Madame de Choisy turned to walk back, their heels crunching in the gravel of garden paths, birds filling the country silence with a sunset song, the château looming large and grand before them, forest just beyond its gates.

  “Does he call upon the Viscount Nicolas?” asked Louise.

  “Who else! There is none other who matters!” Madame de Choisy sounded scandalized, and Louise lowered her head in embarrassment as Madame de Choisy stopped right where she was and looked Louise over. “Mother of God, tell me you’re not completely ignorant. Did the Orléans never talk of court?”

  The family her stepfather served, this princely house of Orléans, talked of how they’d been wronged over and over again. “I didn’t pay much attention, I’m afraid.”

  “The Orléans’s great stalk of a princess could have been the queen of France, you know, only she fired a cannon at his majesty during one of the misunderstandings. I’m appalled that your mother has not prepared you for the court you will grace.”

  Misunderstandings? Louise was shocked in her turn by Madame de Choisy’s blithe description of what had been civil wars. This stalk, as Madame de Choisy called her, was the king’s first cousin who had taken up arms against him. So many of the king’s family had done so. It’s the history of our kingdom, her mother said, but it was a history of disloyalty that Louise didn’t understand.

  “Was the exile hard for you?” No longer scolding, Madame de Choisy’s expression had shifted from dismay to soft pity, both of which were uncomfortable to Louise.

  “You forget I was born in the country. I knew no other life until we came to Paris,” she answered.

  “You’ve been in Paris nearly a year,” countered Madame de Choisy. “Surely that’s given you some sense of court.”

  Some sense of court? thought Louise. How? The widowed Duchess d’Orléans must mourn by shutting herself away in the Paris family palace, where she must have endless headaches and need her head bathed in lavender essence and be read to and be irritable if the reader became tired, be angry if there were too much laughter or talk. Louise’s life had gone from the freedom of the country, where escape was easy—she might ride wherever she liked, for almost as long as she liked—to a cage bound by the four walls of a Paris palace garden. She knew all the world was just across the river at the palace of the Louvre, where his majesty lived, from which word came of fêtes and parties and dancing and marriage arrangements. The king and his new queen were all that were talked of. To hear of their comings and goings, to be so close and yet so far, had been hard. If Madame de Choisy—well, really Choisy; it was he who had taken an immediate liking to her—had not lifted her out of the purgatory she endured, she didn’t know what she would have done. Strange and very wonderful not to endure anymore, Louise thought, and some of the strain that had played across her face eased. Please, she thought to herself, may my good fortune continue.

  “What a dear you are,” said Madame de Choisy, who had missed none of the various emotions playing across Louise’s face, “not to complain. I find the Duchess d’ Orléans quite difficult, and as for those daughters of hers—well! I see you’re loyal. Not a word against them has escaped your lips. I commend you upon that; such loyal silence will make you a rarity at court, which I must explain to you—otherwise I will be dropping a lamb among lions, and that will never do.”

  Talking all the while about past intricacies of the court to which Louise was going: the queen mother’s widowhood, the cardinal’s rise, the fact that he had been the queen mother’s secret lover, Madame de Choisy swept Louise into a exquisitely appointed little antechamber with bowls of flowers and huge tapestries covering the walls and settled her into a chair as if she were an invalid. Her kind briskness touched Louise to the heart, and she
almost couldn’t listen to everything Madame de Choisy was attempting to make certain she understood.

  “You must upon all occasions be polite to him,” Madame de Choisy was saying of the Viscount Nicolas. “Cardinal Mazarin, God rest his soul, was his majesty’s foremost minister, and now it is the viscount’s turn. The man is handsome and well enough born and has an eye for art and an ear for music and an ability to conjure funds when there are none, all a first minister should be.”

  “Does his majesty desire the viscount as his first minister?”

  The sharp precision of that question made Madame de Choisy widen her eyes. “My word, does a mind reside amid all this dewy-eyed beauty I see before me? You surprise me, child. I think he has no choice.”

  “But he is the king!”

  Geniunely amused, Madame de Choisy laughed. “Your innocence is most charming, but such does not thrive at court. His majesty is not an innocent and is wise enough to do what must be done. I’m certain, therefore, the viscount will be first minister. None of us can get along without him, you know.”

  Louise sat up very straight, her clear eyes suddenly brilliant. “I saw his majesty once, when he stopped at Blois.” The moody face under its great hat was unforgettable.

  “I’d forgotten his majesty made a visit to the old duke. That was when the world and he traveled to Spain for the royal wedding, wasn’t it? So you saw the one and only, did you?”

  “Yes.” It had been the absolute romance of the kingdom, the royal wedding last summer. All the nobility had traveled to see it, one huge, merry entourage, but of course, that did not include the presence of the king’s once rebellious, once very dangerous uncle, the Duke d’Orléans, or his household or, therefore, Louise.