by Karleen Koen
“She’s the one that kept me from Madame’s household. And now his majesty is in love with Madame.”
“There are three things I must say to you. First, her majesty must never know your suspicions. It would be unkind to her majesty and very, very unwise, I think, to stir his majesty’s wrath. Do you think he would allow upset to his queen and not punish the one who caused it?” He reached across the carriage and took the balled-up fists of her hands and smoothed them out as he continued. “Second, there’s nothing yet but speculation. I don’t think Madame has him captured as completely as you imagine. Three, it wasn’t the Princess de Monaco who kept you from Madame’s. It was me. You are too important to me where you are, and no other position reflects your grandeur. To go from superintendent to lady-in-waiting is ridiculous.” He pulled her from the seat across the space to him, made her sit close, holding her hands tightly in his. “There’s no one like you. You can capture his heart. Don’t despair.”
“I don’t despair. I hate.”
Nicolas shuddered. So did Athénaïs. Nicolas pulled Olympe into his arms, ran his hands up and down arms covered by the cloak, as if to soothe the savagery evoked. “You’re the most desirable woman at court,” he assured her. “His majesty can’t help but see that. Make him jealous. Find a lover.”
ONCE AT FONTAINEBLEAU, they descended from his carriage.
Athénaïs felt the weight of the clay figure in the pocket in her cloak. Ahead loomed the entrance to the king’s courtyard. Two enormous square columns, the massive head of a Roman god upon each, marked a small bridge she must cross. Under the bridge was a moat. The king’s grandmother had built the moat to protect from invaders. But envy, deceit, jealousy, and malice could never be repelled. If she were very, very good and gave extra to the poor and said her prayers with fervor and blessed Madame at Mass every day, the curse she’d summoned would somehow work but hurt no one, and all would be well. Yes. She shook her shoulders and summoned a smile and walked forward, conscience quieted.
LOUISE PULLED HER horse up short before a walled compound as a bell in its church tower pealed, filling her ears, vibrating out into the summer’s air with a toll of the day’s hours.
This, thought Louise, must be the monastery on the map. Roses had been planted in neat lines along the outside of the high brick wall, and they’d grown long arms, espaliered with fastidious precision to the wall behind them, dotted now with heavy blossoms. The groom accompanying her pointed, and she saw a vineyard some distance from the compound, monks and servants toiling in it, walking among trellised grapevines.
Louise pulled a mask from a silk bag attached to the saddle and tied it around her eyes.
“Remember,” she told the groom, “we’re fretted that perhaps my horse had thrown a shoe. Take your time with it, so I have a chance to look around. There’s a gold louis for this.”
The groom rode up to the wooden gate, pulled on the bell there, and after a moment, a face peered out of the grate in the gate, took in the sight of him and behind him, a masked Louise, her gown cascading down the sidesaddle.
“I think my lady’s horse has thrown a shoe,” the groom called. “Have you a smithy where I might repair it?”
The face disappeared. After a time, Louise and the groom heard the sound of wooden slats being pulled back. The gate opened on one side, and they trotted their horses through it. There was a large garden to the left, and a number of boys working in it. They wore simple short robes that showed their bare legs and feet. I wonder if they’re initiates, Louise was thinking, when they caught sight of her, and the next thing she knew, her horse was surrounded by the boys, all of whom were saying words she couldn’t quite understand, pointing at her and pulling at any piece of her skirt they could grasp. Something was wrong with them. Everywhere she looked was a young boy’s face that was not quite as expected. Some of them jumped up and down, shrieked at her. The groom leapt from his horse and tried to push as many of them as he could away from her. Louise was so frightened she couldn’t breathe. Her horse began to snort and twist its head.
“They’re idiots,” cried the groom, pulling one after another away from her, but there were too many others crowding around. A boy had Louise gripped by the boot. She could feel herself slipping out of the saddle. She lashed out with her riding crop, and then she was pulled off the horse to the ground, and they crowded around her, jabbering in words she couldn’t understand, pointing and pulling, and she fainted.
She woke choking and light-headed. She lay in someone’s arms, and someone else was attempting to make her drink something. Her arms flailed, and she struggled to sit up, crying out, “Stop!”
“My humblest apologies, my lady.”
A white-robed monk knelt before her. “My children have frightened you, and I am so sorry for that. Our dear boys aren’t used to seeing a woman. They aren’t used to seeing anyone. We live in seclusion, you see.”
The boys had been herded back into the garden, but they weren’t hoeing or weeding. They stood staring at Louise, still pointing, still making those sounds she didn’t understand.
“They miss mothers and sisters,” the monk said. “You’ll forgive my gracelessness of words. I am so seldom in company.”
But he spoke like a courtier, fluidly if simply, a slight accent to his French that Louise could not identify but which seemed familiar.
“Will you take another sip of our brandy? We’re famous for it, I’m told.”
She sat up straighter, looked around. There was a chapel with wings on each side. Of brick and marble and sandstone, the chapel was extraordinarily beautiful, rivaling anything in Paris or built by the great families for their estates. Figures of saints decorated its roofline, its small cupola was covered in gold, and the Holy Mother spread her arms wide above gilded double doors. Sets of stained-glass windows glinted their magical colors. Nearby was a house of brick and marble as handsome as the chapel. Other buildings near the chapel had long arbors built to shade their fronts, ivy and columbine twining up to form leafy shelter. A kitchen building, an outside oven, a well, and several barns and sheds stood within the walls. And there were old trees everywhere, their thick canopy reaching upward and outward like the benevolent arms of green angels.
“I think her horse has thrown a shoe,” the groom repeated. “Might my lady rest somewhere while I see to it?”
“Of course,” the monk answered, but it seemed to Louise that there was something reluctant in his answer. He stood and whistled. When several monks appeared, he pointed to Louise’s horse, making a series of gestures with his hands. She remembered the old groom at the stables had said that they were an order of silence.
“I forget my manners. I am Monsignor de Reyes, abbot of this community.” He held out his hand to help Louise from the ground. “If you will follow Father Edoardo, he will take you to a chamber where you may refresh yourself. Because we are an order of silence, only I may speak, and I speak now to bid you farewell.”
She followed the younger monk into the shade of the porch of the building near the house, then into a broad hallway with stairs leading to another floor. The hallway’s furniture, chairs and a chest, was hand-carved and simple, its walls whitewashed, a cross with the crucified Christ dominating all. There was nothing here of the majesty and baroque decoration of the outside of the chapel and house. At the stairs, he motioned for her to precede him.
Upstairs, she stood in a long hallway into which a series of doors opened. The monk opened the closest door for her. She stepped into a pleasant room, chairs covered with embroidered cushions, a rug on the floor, a harpsichord in a corner, a fiddle nearby. He made a motion indicating the chamber was hers, and she nodded her head as, bowing, he left her.
She went at once to the window and looked out. From this height, she could see the vineyard and the monks working there. It wasn’t servants working with them, as she’d thought, but the larger children of this place, this monastery of broken boys. She opened the door. No one was in the long hal
lway. Doors lined its length like sentinels. Did she dare open them? Were there monks behind each one? Or more of the boys?
You’re being foolish, she thought. All the monks would be working. That was the way of a monastery, everyone with his duties. There was no stopping until prayers and supper and dark.
She crossed the hall and eased open the first door. A simple chamber, with a bed and a table holding a basin, hooks on the wall to hold clothing, a crucifix, no more. She opened all five of the doors on that side of the hall, her heart beating like a drum in her ears each time the door creaked open. Inside were monks’ cells, one after another. She was at the end of the hall now. She stood at its opened window, and for a moment, she couldn’t believe her eyes. There in a horse corral were the musketeer and the boy with the iron mask on his face. The two were fencing, rapiers zinging as the blades met.
Her mind raced. She’d never thought past this point. What on earth did she do now? The musketeer hit the boy’s blade and sent the rapier flying through the air. The boy stood a moment, his head lowered. Then he ran straight at the musketeer, hitting the older man hard enough to send him sprawling backward. Louise watched the boy begin to pummel the musketeer, who, with one quick motion, pushed the boy to the ground and sat on his chest.
“Stop!” the musketeer said. “Stop it now, highness! I command it. Your mother commands it.”
The boy stilled. Carefully, the musketeer stood. The boy sat up, began to howl. Then he leaned over to hit his head against the ground and howl as he did so.
“Father Gabriel! Father Umberto!” Shouting, the musketeer ran to the edge of the corral, just as Louise heard steps on the stairs and turned in panic. Had she time to run back to the first chamber?
No.
She walked forward down the hall, pulling at the fan that was tied by a silk ribbon to her waist. Her heart was beating so hard that for a moment she literally couldn’t hear over it. A monk appeared with a tray holding a goblet and two pitchers, but with him was the abbot who’d rescued her from her faint, Monsignor de Reyes. She walked forward, fanning herself in what she hoped were confident strokes. The memory of Choisy’s warnings told her it wasn’t a good thing she’d seen the musketeer and the boy and that it wouldn’t be a good thing to tell this abbot so. Pretend you’re the gargoyle, she told herself. What would she do?
“It’s stifling hot,” she heard herself say. “I thought the hall would be cooler. Whatever are those howls? One of the boys?” Silence, she told herself. Don’t say another word. Be as proud and cool as the princess.
“Yes,” the abbot said, his eyes searching her face. “Those we nurture sometimes have fits, as you may imagine …”
Spanish, thought Louise, he has a Spanish accent, like the queen mother’s.
“… and I fear you’re hearing such a fit now. Alas, as you see, our humble monastery is difficult on its visitors.”
She followed him into the chamber where the harpsichord and fiddle were. Did music soothe the boys? she wondered, as she watched him pour wine into a goblet and then indicate the other pitcher, which held water.
“We train our boys to grow and tend grapes. No one has such gentle hands as our children. I think the grapes thrive on their touch. How did you stumble upon our little monastery, my lady?” he asked.
My mask, thought Louise. She’d just realized that it was no longer on her face. It must have come loose when she fainted. It was all she could do not to fall to her knees and confess everything to him. The Princess de Monaco, Louise repeated to herself. Act like the gargoyle.
“I did not think to see you again, monsignor,” she said, haughty and bored.
“I was afraid the noise would disturb and frighten you, and since I am the only one who may speak …” He shrugged and held out the goblet of wine to her, and Louise drank it almost empty.
Now perhaps her hands would stop trembling, and her heart would quit trying to leap out of her chest. The howling had ceased.
“So how did you find us, if I may again so inquire? Did you come to buy brandy?” he asked.
“Find you?” She laughed without mirth, the way the gargoyle did. “By not attempting to, I must suppose, else why visit this—” she searched for words, a brow lifted, “—place of sorrow. I scarcely know where I am and must depend on you to point us toward …” at the last moment she said “Paris” instead of “Fontainebleau.”
“What a long way you’ve ridden.”
She shrugged. Great ladies never bothered to explain themselves.
“If I may, who have I the honor of addressing?”
She gave her mother’s name, put down the goblet and walked to the door. “I’m going downstairs to summon my groom,” she said. “We’ve a long journey back.”
“Indeed you do.”
She stood at the door waiting the way the gargoyle would have done, and after what seemed forever, the abbot opened the door for her. In his open hand was her mask. She snatched it from him, was over the threshold and down the stairs in the blink of an eye. She was out the open door, into the shade of the porch, and walking as fast as she dared toward the barns and sheds. Inside one, her groom stood with the horses.
“Did you hear that howling?” he asked her, his eyes wide.
“We have to leave at once,” answered Louise, tying the mask in place.
He held his hands cupped, and she stepped into them and then onto the sidesaddle.
“They’re watered and rested a little. They’ll get us back,” he told her.
“Just let them get us out of here.”
She could hear the edge to her voice, and so did the groom. Blessed Mother, she prayed, let me leave here without being seen by the musketeer. Please, Blessed Mother, I beg you.
Outside, she saw that the gates through which they’d entered were closed. The boys in the garden looked up from their tilling.
“Give me the reins of your horse,” she ordered. “Run and open the gate.”
He obeyed, her voice making him swift. The boys in the garden stared. Louise looked around. The abbot had followed her outside, was crossing the front of the house, but she didn’t slow the gait of the horses.
“How will you find your way back, my lady?” the abbot called to her.
She kicked harder at her horse’s sides. “I’ll trust in the Lord.”
The groom had the long wooden slats that barred the gate pulled back, and one side of the gate gaped open. She tossed his horse’s reins to the groom as she trotted her horse through, and she looked behind once to see that the groom was astride his own horse, and seeing that he was, she whipped at her horse’s haunches with her riding crop hard enough to make the horse leap into a gallop. She intended to gallop all the way back to Fontainebleau if that were possible, but then she remembered that there was a hill that they’d come across earlier, and that from its top, it was possible to see the monastery compound. She wanted another look.
“What frightened you? The addled children?” asked the groom as he rode up beside her.
“Yes.”
“They mean no harm. My brother is such a one, sweet as a lamb.”
The musketeer had called the boy “highness.” A royal lamb. The musketeer didn’t see me, Louise thought. Thank you, Holy Mother.
The horses slowly climbed the hill, and at its top Louise could see again the vineyards and the monastery chapel’s cupola amid the trees. Forget, the musketeer had ordered Choisy. Noblewomen abandoned unwanted children to all kinds of fates. If the boy was an idiot, this was best, wasn’t it? Why did something in her say otherwise? She was so intent on her thoughts that she didn’t hear the sound of other horses approaching until it was too late, until her horse neighed, and she and the groom were surrounded.
“SIR?”
Nicolas looked up from a letter he was reading. One of his private guards stood outlined by sunlight and by the lovely columns of Nicolas’s open-air rotunda in this château he was building.
“We found trespassers, sir,” the guard
said.
Nicolas stood and saw two people still on horseback in the courtyard on the other side of his moat. He walked out into the sunlight, down the steps of his great porch. There were hundreds of workmen everywhere, around the house, on the roofs, in the gardens. The house must be finished as soon as possible for his fête, for his special guests, the king and queen and royal family. He was throwing the grandest fête ever seen, a fête worthy of a future chancellor. Everyone in Paris was coming. Everyone who was anyone in the kingdom was coming. Nicolas saw that one of the trespassers was a masked woman, and he was at once intrigued. Her groom had dismounted, was standing in front of her horse as if he would fight everyone for her sake. Smiling, he stepped forward and offered his hand.
“Forgive my guards’ zeal, miss. Won’t you dismount and allow me to offer you a cup of wine?”
Louise dismounted, said something to her groom, and Nicolas realized at once that it was Miss de la Baume le Blanc. Had she gotten lost? Surely this wasn’t a deliberate visit. And why the mask?
“If you will follow me, miss.” And he led the way back up the steps, across the terrace, into the beautiful rotunda, and then through a series of chambers on the right, until they were in a small chamber with very high ceilings, its walls elaborately gilded and painted and festooned. There was a huge impressive mirror, and under it, a long sofa with legs of gilt. Tall candlesticks the size of boys stood in the four corners. He gestured toward the sofa, covered in cut velvet, just delivered, in fact. The wagon that had brought it had only just rolled away. He stood near the window, enjoying both the breeze and Louise’s clear discomfort.
A servant brought wine, but she refused it. Was she not going to reveal who she was? Did she think he did not know? What a silly child she was. “Miss, I must ask why you trespass upon my land.”
“We were lost.”
Lost? This little horsewoman who rode out with a groom nearly every morning, who rode like an Amazon during the king’s hunts? Word was his majesty had commented on her skills just the other day. She must know the countryside by heart by now. He didn’t believe her. “Won’t you take off your mask, Miss de la Baume le Blanc? It feels so unfriendly.”
