Before Versailles

by Karleen Koen

  “Very well, thank you, viscount.”

  “I’m told you ride in the morning, early.”

  How did he know that? Who noticed what a maid of honor like herself did? She didn’t answer, just stared up at him, looking like a village idiot, she was certain, remembering some snippet of talk from somewhere, from someone, Fanny, probably. Spies. He was said to have spies everywhere, knowing all things there were to know about the court and its inhabitants.

  “I offer my presence should you ever wish company. I, too, sometimes like to ride in the mornings. I go several times a week to see my château.”

  “Thank you. You’re very kind.” She moved away, weaving in and out of people until she was standing behind Fanny. She didn’t want his attention, his notice. She didn’t want anyone’s. But that wasn’t true. It was complicated, something she didn’t understand herself, all she didn’t want, and all she did.

  Nicolas remained where he was. It was clear this rebuff was not as alluring as the first one she’d made.

  Olympe, her perennial pout in place, detached herself from the queen’s cluster of ladies and made her way to Nicolas. “You’ve been avoiding me,” she accused.

  “Your happiness is foremost on my mind.”

  They both turned to watch the royal family dine for a time. The king was eating pheasant now. He’d just finished a stew. From her own plate, the queen fed her dwarves, who stood a little behind her. One could just see their hats and foreheads.

  Olympe shuddered. “When I’m mistress, I’ll have those dwarves sent back to Spain. Look at them. She feeds them as if they were dogs.”

  “Their majesties seem on good terms.” The queen looked placid to Nicolas, like the surface of a lake undisturbed, no sign that just on the other side of her husband danger sat eating with the appetite of a small bird. For his majesty to pursue this love affair with his sister-in-law was going to shock the Christian world. It was considered by church law to be incest. He was going to have enormous need of his superintendent of finance, who would become his superintendent of finesse.

  “He’s still visits every night, if that is what you’re asking. What does Madame say? Is she agreeable to my serving her?”

  “I haven’t asked yet,” he replied, and at her furious intake of breath, “I’ve been singing your praises and talking about what a blessing you are to the queen. Your presence must be desired by Madame, pined for, as a pearl above price. That will give you more influence.”

  “It’s the Princess de Monaco, isn’t it? She doesn’t like me.”

  Ah, the divine Catherine, thought Nicolas. His eyes found her standing with her cousin Péguilin, and she caught Nicolas’s look and answered with a small smile and a lift of her chin. What a handsome creature she was, statuesque, dark-eyed, certain of herself. She’d ridden out to Vaux-le-Vicomte, and he’d shown her its chambers, both of them aware she made a reconnoiter for Madame. He’d taken her to his own bedchamber on a top floor, even though he’d had a chamber built specifically for his majesty, and she’d stood with her back to him as she’d inspected the bed, its magnificent embroidered hangings, and he remained behind her, his eyes on her neck rising out of her gown, the soft swell of her bare shoulders. The primitive desire he suddenly felt had startled him. He could have pushed her to the floor and taken her with the brutality of a ravaging soldier.

  She had turned at the precise moment such thoughts were in his mind and met his eyes in a long, heart-stopping moment in which they’d both known they would make love sooner or later. Then she had moved past him to the doorway, and they had continued on as if such a moment had never occurred. But it had. I will visit again soon, she’d told him as she’d extended a delectable arm through the carriage window to allow him to kiss above her glove. How ironic and sensual that he and she would very likely christen the bed his majesty and Madame would lie in.

  Feeling a tug on the elbow of his very tight, very well-fitted jacket, he looked impatiently into another pair of dark eyes, eyes that didn’t move him in the least.

  “I know it’s the princess who’s against me,” Olympe repeated.

  “Not at all,” said Nicolas. “She has the highest regard for you and your family.”

  “She thinks we’re parvenus.”

  Well, and so you are, thought Nicolas. The princess’s family had served kings for a number of generations, while Olympe’s family’s rise began in the previous reign, when the son of a simple notary had moved from nobody to cardinal.

  He wished Olympe a hundred miles away so that he could concentrate on Madame, who sat there at the great table at her ease, laughing and chatting to the royal family as if a crowd did not watch her every move. No wonder the king was entranced. How charming she was. How civilized and chic. If she was going to become the king’s mistress, he, Nicolas, was going to be a part of that equation. If she was going to become the king’s mistress, Monsieur must have a place on the council, a consolation prize, so to speak. That would put Monsieur firmly into Nicolas’s pocket and make yet another ally in the royal family.

  “I’ll show her a parvenu. Colbert, for instance, my uncle’s minion. It’s said his majesty and Colbert meet late at night before his majesty visits the queen.”

  Nicolas’s heart stopped. There was a literal stop in all his body, but Olympe didn’t notice.

  “Maybe he prefers men like his brother. Maybe Colbert does to his majesty what the prince’s pretty boys do to him so he can rise higher in his majesty’s regard—”

  “Who told you that his majesty and Colbert meet in the evenings?”

  “A footman complained to one of the dwarves, who told her majesty because she was upset at how late the king comes to her bed, and I overheard.”

  He excused himself, trying not to show the jolt of what she’d so casually—like a cat with its kill—laid at his feet. If Colbert were meeting with the king, it meant only one thing. They were looking at the register of finance. Nicolas touched at the slight perspiration that had beaded across his lip. Colbert was a bloodhound, never moved off course. He’d tried to ruin Nicolas before and failed. Had he begun another attempt?

  The wildest notions took hold, notions of going to his majesty and confessing all and seeing if the forgiveness the king had promised in the first days of his rule was truly meant. Of fleeing in the middle of the night, holing up at his island to watch as the kingdom staggered to its knees in bankruptcy. Of stockpiling gold in the hold of one of his ships and sailing away, of letting everything go, just like that, stopping it all, the tightrope of financial tricks and games he played, so many he no longer knew them all.

  One of the other ministers on the king’s council tapped him on the arm.

  “Come and meet my nephew,” the man said. “He’s just in from England with some delicious gossip about King Charles and Lady Palmer.”

  Nicolas allowed himself to be pulled away to listen to the latest salacious gossip about the knight’s wife who had the king of England following her like a dog in heat, but his mind was in another place altogether, thinking taxes have to be collected, which could not be done without him, and if taxes weren’t collected, there were no funds at all.

  A dozen other financial matters imperative to the kingdom came to his mind, and he calmed. Whatever Colbert might be implying, the presence of the Viscount Nicolas was so necessary for the financial well-being of the kingdom that any fool knew it. And he was tied to the Paris Parlement, that stiff, proper, ambitious body of men who formed a high court of justice, in a way that made his disgrace dangerous. And he was linked to everyone inside and outside this chamber in a dozen ways, all of them paved with gold. His majesty was young, eager, but finance was a morass. He would tire of it. All monarchs did. Nicolas couldn’t keep himself from looking toward the dining table, and he saw that the king was watching him.

  Deeply, reverently, Nicolas bowed. Louis smiled. People noticed, and Nicolas felt their admiring glances. I can outwit Colbert, he thought. His majesty was about to c
ommit behavior that would have other courts gossiping the way they did now of England, but France was far more important in the scope of the world than England. His majesty was about to commit behavior that would call down the wrath of the Holy Father in Rome, and relations with the Holy Father were not at their best. His majesty was about to commit behavior that might force the prince his brother into rebellion. Nicolas’s presence was, in fact, imperative, more imperative than this young king could possibly imagine.

  How many people pay their respects to the Viscount Nicolas, Louis thought, the smile on his face but not in his heart. He walks through my dining chamber like a king.

  NOT EVERYONE WAS watching the king dine. In that part of the palace where the king’s ministers and officials had their offices, the oldest groom in the stable shifted awkwardly, uneasy to be where he was. His life was the stables and the public courtyard where for years before his injury he’d brought horses for the courtiers to ride. His life was the smell of dung and fresh straw and the sounds of jingling harness or a horse’s whinny. It was an open life of sun and rain and moor and forest. He was uncomfortable standing in his crooked way in a small chamber with fine, polished wood for its floor and velvet draperies at the windows.

  The dour man dressed in black questioning him assured him he had done nothing wrong, but he already knew that. His caution was instinctive.

  Colbert cleared his throat, and the old groom brought his eyes from the open window to this man, making notes about what was said, seated behind a table. The making of letters at every word spoken also disturbed the groom.

  “So she asked about the countryside. You’re certain that’s all?”

  “Yes. And then she went riding. My son accompanied her.”

  “Your son.” Colbert looked down at his notes and said the groom’s son’s name.

  For some reason, hearing his son’s name, knowing it was written down on paper right there between them, made the old groom even more cautious. He’d seen a hare go perfectly still, hoping to blend in with its surroundings, when a predator was near, and at this moment, he felt like the hare.

  “You’re to let me know whenever she goes out riding.”

  The old groom raised his hand in a gesture of obedience. There was another long silence as Colbert’s eyes drilled into him, but it was no crime to saddle a lady’s horse or for her to go out riding, and they both knew it.

  “You may go.”

  The old groom nodded his head and limped to the door, but Colbert stopped him. “This is king’s business. Don’t speak of this to anyone, or the consequences will be severe.”

  “Has the young lady done something wrong? She is such a kind young lady.”

  “Likely not.”

  “She rode out this morning.” Head lowered, eyes gleaming like a wise old boar hiding in the forest, the groom gave Colbert the information reluctantly and only because he said it was king’s business, and the groom loved his young king, had put him upon his first horse, in fact. “She’s back, now.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Rode an hour or more northeast of here.”

  “Did she meet anyone?”

  The old groom shook his head.

  “You may go now,” said Colbert, and the old groom glanced back once to see the man, the crow he was called behind his back, staring down intently at all the words that were written on the paper before him.

  Chapter 10

  T WAS MADAME’S BIRTHDAY; SHE WAS MIDSUMMER’S PRINCESS in all ways. Everyone knew the king would acquiesce to no entertainment without her presence or approval, though few yet suspected what lay behind their intense friendship. And now her husband gave her a birthday fête. The fountain courtyard and suspended garden were filled with courtiers, many of whom had driven from Paris in their carriages to pay their respects to her.

  In the famed suspended garden lantern after lantern had been lit for night’s strolling. The courtyard was a fairyland with light spilling in soft patches everywhere from candles and torches. In the carp pond around the garden gondolas floated, footmen at the oar to row courtiers to the small open-air summer pavilion built on a little manmade island at the pond’s southern end. It was late dusk, when dragonflies made a final flurry of flight, and their wings caught the tints of the setting sun, while all along the pond’s edge frogs chirped.

  Henriette looked wonderful, dressed in white, but with a flame-colored sash pinned with a huge diamond cross at her shoulder. The sash splashed across her gown in a burst of drama. White feathers were pinned in her hair and trailed down into her curls. And there was one patch, a single patch, at her mouth. Her ladies all wore the same dramatic white feathers in their hair fastened with little pearl dragonflies she’d given them as gifts, and tonight, once more, they all wore a single, forbidden patch upon their faces.

  “We’re so lucky,” Fanny said as they walked among the crowd. “Do you remember six months ago when I was crying out of boredom?”

  “You’re up to something. I know that expression, Fanny. What mischief are you plotting?”

  “Hello! Hello! You there, La Baume le Blanc!” Waving a large scarf shot through with silver thread, one of her tiny, badly behaved, growling dogs tucked in her arm, La Grande Mademoiselle advanced across the courtyard. The princess, towering over nearly everyone around her, called greetings, nodded approvingly or ignored as if she were deaf, and accepted the bows and curtsies around her as her due as she approached.

  “Pretend you don’t see her. Follow me,” hissed Fanny, and she immediately thrust herself into a group of chattering courtiers and vanished from sight. But Louise wasn’t quick enough. The next thing she knew La Grande was at her side.

  “Are your ears filled with wax?” said the princess. “Come with me at once. We’ve a mission.” Raising heavy skirts and marching up the broad, wide, outside steps, she left the fête behind her, and Louise suppressed a sigh and followed obediently.

  She trailed the princess down halls and through antechambers, La Grande never looking back to see that she was there or addressing a word to her. In the princess’s mind, Louise was simply one of the legions of lesser nobility who were hers to order about. Musketeers stationed along various walls saluted her, and Louise realized with a start that they were in the king’s chambers.

  “Here we are,” La Grande sniffed once they were inside a bedchamber, everything about it magnificent, from the thick, intricately embroidered hangings on the bed to the gilt in the woodwork to the size of the surround of a fireplace large enough for Louise to stand in. La Grande’s little dog began to yap. She put it down, and it ran in circles until it stopped and, to Louise’s horror, urinated on the floor. I should never have cured her, thought Louise. All of a sudden, dogs came leaping over the ruelle, the low railing that separated his majesty’s bed from the rest of the chamber. Barking and growling, they surrounded La Grande’s dog.

  “Silence!” commanded La Grande. “Sit! Come here, my precious Odalisque, come to Mama.” La Grande opened the gate of the ruelle and stalked to the bed.

  “Come here,” La Grande commanded, and realizing she, not the dogs, was being summoned, and in spite of the fact that she didn’t wish to obey, Louise walked into the sacred space that only a king and those he allowed might enter. She saw that another dog lay in the center of the king’s bed. The dog was large and tawny with a handsome head. Everyone knew her. She was his majesty’s favorite, Belle, his best hunter.

  “My father gave her to his majesty,” said La Grande, “and the king tells me she’s sick and that though his physicians have given her an emetic, she seems no better. I told him I knew someone who had a way with animals, that you’d made my little Odalisque all better. What do you think, La Baume le Blanc?”

  Louise sat on the bed, put her hand out, and felt the dog’s muzzle. “She feels warm, a fever, perhaps.” She lightly caressed the dog’s back and haunches, pulled her front paws. “Where does it hurt, Miss Belle?” she whispered, and Belle turned over, exposing
her belly, and when Louise caressed that, a low growl was the response. At once the three other dogs were on the bed, barking furiously at Louise.

  La Grande batted at them with a pillow. “Get down! Down, I say! They won’t hurt you.”

  “I think it’s her stomach,” said Louise. “Run your hand just here, princess, but be careful. I think it hurts her for us to touch it.”

  La Grande did as Louise suggested.

  “A hint of swelling, don’t you think?” asked Louise.

  “I don’t feel it, but I haven’t your touch. La Porte!” The princess walked away from the bed bellowing the name. Her little dog went scurrying away to the fireplace, where it hid behind one of the elaborate silver fronts of the andirons. The other dogs leapt back upon the bed and walked around Louise, who held out her hands so that they could smell them. She knew them from the hunts, but she’d never been this close before, and she was an invader in their territory. Her smell would reassure them; she knew that. It always did.

  A boy entered the chamber, clapped his hands, and all the dogs but Belle bounded off the bed and to him. Belle’s tail whipped back and forth. “You’d go to him if you felt better, wouldn’t you?” Louise said to the dog. “He’s a friend, isn’t he?”

  “There you are, La Porte,” said La Grande. “I’ve brought La Baume le Blanc to see the dog, at his majesty’s request. My little Odalisque wouldn’t be with me today if it weren’t for her. I need to wash my hands. Tell his majesty that Belle has a swelling on her stomach. A poultice should do the trick, I think. And tell him she has a fever. I’d give her whatever he takes for fever. Odalisque! Where are you, darling sweetness?”

  La Grande remained exactly where she was until he brought a basin of water. Then she dipped her hands in it, waiting, those same hands outstretched and dripping, until the valet brought a cloth to dry them. The dogs growled and pawed at a fireplace andiron. The boy, Louise realized, wasn’t a boy at all, but a very small, very trim man, hair pulled back into a neat tail.