Before Versailles

by Karleen Koen

  “Where’s her majesty?” Fanny asked Athénaïs, as the carriage and horsemen finally disappeared from sight and there was nothing to do but walk back into the king’s courtyard.

  Athénaïs rolled her eyes. “Sleeping.”

  “Well, she has the heir to protect,” Fanny answered.

  “Now don’t forget you promised you’d walk with me in the queen’s garden later.” Athénaïs smiled in a friendly way at Louise. “Please, you come, also.”

  Louise and Fanny walked up the gatehouse staircase by themselves.

  “When did you become friends with her?” Louise asked.

  “We both notice things, and we noticed that we notice, and we’ve decided to compare notes. She’s quite nice, not at all with her nose in the air, like others I could name.” Fanny shook her head. “Poor queen. Athénaïs says she stayed in bed today. I almost feel sorry for her. It’s as if she lives in another world.”

  “Choisy told me the only man the queen saw until her marriage was her father.” The Spanish court, said Choisy, keeps its maidens locked away and guarded close.

  Fanny shuddered. “I’m glad I’m not Spanish, then. What are we going to do with ourselves while she’s gone?”

  Plenty, Louise thought but didn’t say.

  INSIDE THE CARRIAGE, Anne watched Henriette across the short space separating them. Louis rode beside a window, and Henriette hung out of it, talking to him about this and that, the ballet to be performed in a few weeks, how pleased her brother was with his coming marriage to the Portuguese infanta, and Catherine leaned forward more than once to join the conversation.

  Have you always been this delightfully lighthearted? thought Anne, as she considered Henriette. Let me marry her, Philippe had suggested, before her brother was crowned king of England, when it looked as if that prince would roam a vagabond forever. Philippe was eager for his inheritance, for his own household, eager to move out of the shadow of his brother, and even if Henriette was poverty-stricken and without influence, her mother was a princess of France, a daughter of France. And their dearest cardinal agreed. It was best that Philippe not possess a foreign princess with foreign connections, so the engagement was allowed. And then there’d been all the bustle of Louis’s splendid wedding, a new queen to be presented to one and all, and her own dearest ill, so ill he could not stand up. There had been his dying to deal with, and so she’d withdrawn her gaze from court, from family, from Philippe’s new marriage. Anne put a handsomely gloved hand to her throat, to the knot of grief that lived there. She’d withdrawn her gaze, and look what had happened. Her bereft heart was not allowed its quiet. There was misbehavior and poor judgment.

  She brooded on that grievance until, midway on their journey, the carriage stopped. Anne watched as Louis dismounted, opened the carriage door himself.

  “I bid you adieu,” he said directly to Henriette. His face was somber. “I’ll be counting the moments until you return to grace my court again.” He turned to Anne. “Majesty, have a care for my dear sister, for I would not wish to see her have anything but the most pleasant of visits.”

  He warns me, thought Anne. She swelled with anger. Philippe was behind Louis, and Louis moved aside, watching his brother with hooded eyes.

  “Madame,” said Philippe, grasping Henriette’s gloved hands and kissing them. “I await your return with eagerness. Majesty my mother, you’ll give the duchess my kindest regards, won’t you? You’ll like her, my darling. The stories of her are extraordinary. If my mother does not share them, I will, when you return. Well,” he looked from his mother to Henriette, sensing the coldness in the carriage, feeling guilty for his part in it, “enjoy your visit.”

  Guileless, thought Anne. The victim in all this. My precious waif. She leaned forward, taking his chin in her hands, kissing him on the lips. The occupants of the carriage were silent as men called to one another. They listened for a while to the sound of retreating hooves and then to the silence of the country around them. Philippe’s lieutenant of the musketeers appeared at a window and suggested they commence their journey. The carriage made a lurching movement, began to roll forward. Even in this, the best of carriages, the ride was jolting.

  “I have a headache,” Henriette said to no one in particular.

  “Dear Madame, do let me tell you about the Duchess de Chevreuse,” said Catherine. “It’s most amusing. His majesty, the late king, hated her, but our dear majesty here felt only adoration. They were best of friends.”

  “We are best of friends,” corrected Anne.

  “In her day, she plotted against Cardinal Richelieu and the oh-so-worthy Cardinal Mazarin, and our gracious majesty is so large-hearted, so full of tenderness and Christian charity—such an example to us all—that she forgave her. I swear it. Perhaps the duchess will instruct us in statecraft, in how to plot, yet never be punished.” Catherine’s mocking laugh filled the interior of the carriage.

  “Is this true, majesty?” asked Henriette. “Not only do you sweep me away like some disobedient child, but I’m to be lectured by a traitoress?”

  “Who said anything of lectures? And I will not allow her to be called a traitoress. Those were treacherous times, times you cannot imagine.”

  “Do you think I can’t imagine treachery?” asked Henriette. “I, whose father was beheaded? Let us make no more pretense, if you please.” She sat up straight-backed and pale on the carriage seat opposite Anne. “You blame me for his majesty’s affection.”

  Anne felt Madame de Motteville, sitting beside her, stiffen. “You’re overwrought,” said Anne, reeling a little at Henriette’s defiance. “That’s why I take you from court. To divert you. You aren’t thinking clearly just now.”

  “I am here only because Monsieur asked me. I obey him in all ways, even if you don’t believe it.” With that, Henriette turned her head to look out the window.

  Catherine watched Anne with an arrogant glee.

  This was off to a bad beginning. Anne looked down at her hands, held tightly together so that she would not put them around Henriette’s throat and strangle her, after, of course, she had strangled Catherine.

  THE OTHERS LEFT behind, Louis galloped toward his stables, and when the buildings were in sight, he pulled the reins of his horse, his mind playing, as it always did, over the business of his kingdom. The Dutch had fifteen thousand merchant vessels in their fleet. France had twenty, and that number was both war and merchant ships. How to rebuild? The other thought in his mind was Henriette. What if his mother, his mother’s clever friend, should convince her not to love him? How would he endure?

  An elderly groom limped out to take the reins of his horse. “Left them in the dust, didn’t you, your majesty?” he said. Others could be seen in the distance galloping forward. “Well, if I were riding that handsome beast, I’d do the same.”

  “So, you give tribute to the horse and not to its rider’s skill?”

  “Now, now, sire, I didn’t say naught about skill. Everyone knows you could ride a whirlwind. It’s just that’s a fine fellow you’re on. He keeps the grooms hopping, he does. Likes to kick a man now and then.”

  “He’s Spanish.”

  “Don’t I know? That’s why he kicks, I say. We may be at peace, but a Spaniard never stops fighting. They’ll lash out in death.”

  The others were close now. Louis expected a musketeer in the lead, and several were, but alongside them was Guy.

  “Sire,” called Guy, as he reached Louis and trotted his horse in a circle around him. “I didn’t hear the signal for a race to begin.”

  “I didn’t give it.”

  Guy laughed. “That is one beautiful horse. I might have beaten you if I’d had a better mount.”

  “Just what I was thinking,” said Louis.

  Some distance away, Philippe leapt from his horse and threw the reins toward a groom. “You didn’t give a signal to begin. That isn’t fair,” he called.

  “Keep him occupied,” Louis said to Guy, “as you so well know how to
do.”

  Guy’s jaw clenched. Louis was beginning to push at everyone; a space around him was widening into an unseen circle into which no one could step. He was beginning, really, to become king. In all the time Guy had been at court, that role had been a ghost, Louis’s father indecisive off a battlefield, and Louis himself deferring to the cardinal and to his mother. He stared after this man, this king, walking away from him toward the palace, this boyhood friend whom all the court said he so favored, to whom he had never yielded an inch. He had yielded to Madame. Did Louis really expect him to yield all?

  THE CARRIAGE ROLLED into the gravel courtyard of the duchess’s estate, and Marie, the Duchess of Chevreuse—a true legend in her time, married or lover to the most important men in the kingdom, once superintendent of the household of the very queen who now came to visit her—stood waiting on the château’s stone steps. At the sight of the carriage, she ran down the steps with the grace of a girl and curtsied and then kissed Anne on her cheeks when the queen mother descended from the carriage.

  “My dear friend,” said Anne. “I have such need of you,” she whispered.

  Henriette was the last out of the carriage.

  Marie ran her eyes over this new Madame’s face. “But how wonderful to meet you at last,” she said, smiling and gracious and displaying a charm that had initiated many plots and lured many a man into them, “you are even more darling than I have heard. Let me—”

  “I have a headache and need to go to my chambers immediately,” interrupted Henriette. She moved past the duchess, following the major domo into the house, and Catherine, with a quick curtsy to the duchess, followed behind her.

  Anne and Marie walked slowly up the steps.

  “So,” said Marie, “my task isn’t to be an easy one, is it?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Marie linked her arm in Anne’s, a great breach of etiquette, but etiquette wasn’t needed between these two. They had run through the halls of the palace of the Louvre together as girls of fifteen and sixteen; they had, more often than not, been on the same side in the maze of plots that had been the reign of Louis XIII and his Cardinal Richelieu. They knew each other to the bone.

  Anne went through the ceremony of greeting family and friends and faithful servants gathered in the hall, but at a signal from Marie, everyone melted away, and Anne followed Marie into her most private of chambers and sat down with a sigh as Marie poured wine. She unpinned her hat. “Is it possible that we’ve gotten old? I feel quite ancient.”

  “You’re ageless. How does his majesty?”

  “Well.” Anne took off her leather gloves, smoothed the fingers of each one. She had asked Louis to allow Marie back at court after her dearest had died, but he’d refused. Marie never mentioned it. For some reason, that made Anne love her all the more.

  “One hears he meets with his council twice a day.”

  “Yes.”

  “Most enterprising. Most unusual. Will it last, one wonders? You’ll forgive me if I say I was surprised you weren’t named to the council.”

  “I didn’t want it. All that fuss, all the decisions,” Anne lied. “Time to read my prayers and count my grandchildren.”

  “Ah, yes, my congratulations. And when is the dauphin expected?”

  “In November.”

  Marie took a small sip of wine. “And her majesty? Does she suspect?”

  “The queen is an innocent child.” As simply as that, they were at the crux of the reason Anne traveled from Fontainebleau and dragged her reluctant daughter-in-law with her.

  “And this one?”

  “She is a heartless minx!”

  So I would be too, thought Marie, if I held the heart of the king of France in my hands. She looked down at those hands. Once they’d held hearts, and other parts of men, and made them do her bidding. Now all that heat was cooled in her; sometimes it was hard to remember the passionate woman she had once been, never mind that she had married again. It was for reasons other than passion. Her husband told her that the naturals of the new world across the sea were advised by their old women as to when to make war or treaties with other tribes. An old woman’s heart was wise if it wasn’t too bitter. The duchess could feel her wisdom now, coiled, sitting dispassionate, interested in its cool way, waiting to put her mind, her talents, to this task Anne brought her, first in a hurriedly dashed-off letter delivered by a musketeer, now in a visit.

  “She has his majesty’s regard?”

  “I’m certain of it,” answered Anne.

  “Have they bedded?”

  Anne gasped and crossed herself.

  You’ve gotten lazy, thought Marie. Jules Mazarin allowed you to become lazy so he could gather all the power in his hands. I knew he would. “If they’ve bedded, you have no need of me. There is nothing I can do.”

  “Surely they haven’t! It’s a sin before God!” Anne cried.

  “Did we not sin in our time?”

  Anne didn’t answer.

  “The English ambassador will call in a few days, as you requested,” Marie said. “I’ve a confessor who is all that is discreet and will guide her in the right direction, should she choose to confess. And I must add, he’s quite handsome. I find it easier to confess to a handsome man myself.”

  “Discretion.” Anne laughed without merriment in the sound. “That would be a blessing. She insults an infanta, not to mention the Mother Church!”

  Marie remembered a long ago time when another infanta had allowed a young and handsome and ardent English duke into her bedchamber. That, too, had been a scandal. You will like this Mazarin, Cardinal Richelieu was reputed to have said, when he introduced an upstart Italian wise enough to change his name from Giulio Mazzarino to Jules Mazarin to Anne, the frustrated queen of France. He looks like the Duke of Buckingham, purred Richelieu.

  “After all we’ve done,” Anne ranted on. “His Eminence died from laboring too hard to arrange the details of the peace. To marry his majesty to the infanta was all his hope.”

  It was your hope, your ambition, thought Marie, and Jules died of greed.

  “For the future, he said, of both kingdoms. All the others must bow before France and Spain. The infanta is a pearl beyond price, a gentle, well-bred girl. I won’t have her hurt!”

  A gentle, well-bred girl content to stay in her chambers all day and snack on Spanish almonds and play cards. Did that really do for a vital young man who held the destiny of the kingdom in his hands? “And Monsieur?”

  “Monsieur is willing to trust my guidance in this.”

  So, Philippe had little or no importance in this. Had he ever? “And one had heard he was so in love with his wife—”

  “He was! Is!” Anne’s mouth tightened. “Monsieur will make no trouble, that I promise.”

  Broken already, is he? thought Marie. But of course he would be. You above all people know how dangerous a brother to the king can be. She picked up a fan left lying on a table, moved it gently to stir the air. Alliances were so interesting; the way they could break on a whim or cross word. If she’d been younger, this would have been perfect fodder to start another civil war, another Fronde, as they liked to call such skirmishes, where those ennobled kicked against the traces of the king and thus won more privileges, taking their rightful place by his side. A wind from the Fronde is blowing, blowing, blowing and Monsieur Mazarin will be going, going, going. So they’d sung in the streets and in the court once upon a time. Long live the princes of the blood, they sang, but murder him who knows neither joy nor law nor religion. Murder, murder, murder Mazarin.

  “I depend on you to show her the error of her ways,” said Anne. “It is not acceptable for her to conduct a love affair with the king of France, and I want her to understand that in no uncertain terms! I will be her enemy if she does so, an implacable enemy!”

  “You give me my head in this?”

  “I bow to you. No mind is more supple than yours.”

  “Well, then, leave all to me. You are here as my
guest. You must rest and not fret about a single thing during your stay,” Marie said. “My cook has a new dish to present for your supper.”

  “Oh, I can’t think of food at a time like this.”

  “Come and see my chapel,” Marie said soothingly. “It’s the only thing I’ve done to this old barn. We’ll have vespers there this evening, and perhaps you and I might pray for wisdom and forbearance before I escort you to your chambers.”

  “I already have wisdom and forbearance!” Anne snapped.

  “But I haven’t,” smiled Marie. “We’ll pray for me.”

  Anne walked beside her to the chapel. “His Eminence always said you were the most intelligent woman he knew.”

  Then why did he end as adviser and more to you, while I was exiled? thought Marie, but her thoughts weren’t angry. She’d seen other lands and other ways; she’d played spy over and over and yet over again, changing sides like a chameleon does color. She’d driven Richelieu to swear and almost brought down his successor, the Italian turned Frenchman, Mazzarino who styled himself Mazarin, and then she had ended on his side. Ah, it had all been great fun. So many men, their lust often larger than their wit. So many men, with their wit larger than their lust. So little time. Time, the hussy who weakened us all. Even someone who was a hussy to begin with. Was this Henriette a hussy? If she was, Marie could only wish her well. What was the saying? It is extremely useful to die in God’s grace, but it is extremely boring to live in it. Would God take a hussy? A woman who had been crafty and faithless and lied as easily as she smiled? Who looked in her mirror now and could no longer find herself? Who longed for something more and had discovered that it could be found not in men or wine or ambition or diamonds but only sometimes in prayer. Ah, she must meet this God whose sense of life, of timing, was so ironic. She had a feeling His smile was as wide as the sky, His love as deep as the ocean, that they would get along, she by amusing Him with her past, and He, by bringing her restless heart, a lioness that stalked the plain of her being, peace.