by Karleen Koen
He sent for Lieutenant d’Artagnan, and when the lieutenant appeared before him, Colbert said, “Did you know there was a monastery near the viscount’s estate?”
“Yes. They make excellent wine and an even better brandy. I’m surprised the viscount didn’t order it moved. He has leveled more than one hamlet, I hear, for his estate, but then, he probably likes their wine.”
“Anything of note to tell me about Miss de la Baume le Blanc?”
“She visited the monastery a few days ago. Saw the viscount, too. Apparently his guards found her on the property and took her to him, poor thing, though I’m certain he was suitably polite.”
Colbert sat unmoved, and D’Artagnan felt challenged. “She is little more than an innocent child. She wondered onto his property by mistake.”
“There are no innocents at court, lieutenant.”
“She’s a good girl.”
“She moves among the highest in the land, goes to see after his majesty’s ailing dogs, his horses, visits with his most personal servant. I think she’s a spy for the viscount.” Colbert was cold, like the ice people said was in the place of his heart.
“She’s a good, kind girl. I’ll bet my first child it isn’t her leaving the Mazarinades. It’s La Grande Mademoiselle.”
“Who you have yet to catch in the act. I smell a rat. Make certain you know where Miss de la Baume le Blanc is at all times,” said Colbert.
D’Artagnan puffed out. “As I already do, do you mean?”
“Where is she right now?”
“Walking Madame’s dogs and avoiding the Count de Guiche.”
“What has the Count de Guiche to do with anything?”
“He flirts with her, but she won’t have much of it. That is unusual for the count, who has at least one of the maids of honor misbehaving.” D’Artagnan enjoyed court gossip, enjoyed the romantic adventures of the young. He and his friends had had many an adventure, romantic and otherwise, in their day. “Miss de Montalais isn’t behaving as she ought.”
“Miss de Montalais is the dark-eyed one who is always with Miss de la Baume le Blanc, isn’t she?”
D’Artagnan watched Colbert write something on one of those papers of his. He heard himself say, as if he were driven to defend, “They’re very good friends. They both come from the Orléans household.”
“Nest of snakes, those Orléans.”
Colbert waved him away, but D’Artagnan didn’t mind. A man like Colbert loved very little, his wife and family likely, his God for certain, and the king. D’Artagnan had no doubts of that anymore. Every ounce of Colbert’s incisive, aloof, and broad mind was in service of his sovereign. His majesty had found another Mazarinade last night, pinned to his pillow, an ugly little piece of filth.
“The Cardinal,” and here the first initial of an extremely graphic word was used, its meaning clear, “f---- the Regent, and what’s worse, the bugger boasts about it; to make the offense less grave, he only f---- her in the ass,” it said.
Who continued to bring up again those turbulent times when the kingdom howled that a Spaniard queen and an Italian lackey ruled badly? Had pretty little Miss de la Baume le Blanc a part? She didn’t compose them, D’Artagnan would bet on that, but she might be one of the means by which La Grande Mademoiselle, an Orléans to her fingertips, aimed such perfect, poisonous darts at his majesty’s peace of mind. Colbert thought it was the Viscount Nicolas, but D’Artagnan put his money on the royal cousin.
LOUISE DELIVERED MADAME’S excuse to an attendant and then hurried away, down broad stone steps, and then she was out of the palace buildings, into the bright sunlight of the courtyard to take a moment for herself. She sat down on a bench to watch the officials and clerks that worked in this part of the palace. What would happen now that Madame had returned? She felt fretful and worried for everyone, Madame, Monsieur, his majesty. But she couldn’t linger all day thinking about that. She must return to her duties.
She ran through a ground-floor arch of the staircase called the horseshoe because of its shape, her mind on the play Molière and his actors had performed upon it before Madame had left. Tell me with your eyes, don’t explain, the actress had said. His majesty’s eyes had told their tale today, she was thinking, when suddenly a man hidden in the shadows stepped in front of her. Louise took an instinctive step backward and almost screamed. It was the musketeer from that day she’d been in the woods. The shock of seeing him nearly paralyzed her. I don’t know him, she told herself. I’ve never seen him before, she thought, as he caught her arm in a bold and rude gesture.
“Sir! Unhand me!”
He didn’t reply.
“I am a lady of Madame’s, and you may not treat me so!” Valiantly, she strove for arrogance, disdain, playing the Princess de Monaco, the way she had at the monastery, but her teeth were chattering. “I-I’ll call a guard and have you arrested.”
“But there’s no one about, is there? And I have only to do this.” With one insulting yank, she was pulled inside the shady overhang of the stairs, pushed against its harsh stones, a calloused hand over her mouth. “Must I continue?”
Her strength broke, and she shook her head. He dropped his hand. She began to shake so badly that she thought she’d fall.
“You’re a sly one, giving your mother’s name. I went to Paris. Your mother thought I was a madman, nearly had me thrown out on the street. But for the right amount of coin, servants always talk, and when I learned she had a daughter, I knew it was you. I thought you understood that I wished you to forget that day in the woods. Your friend, the oh-so-changeable Choisy, delivered my message, didn’t he? And coins?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t have if she’d tried. Standing so close to him, Louise could see the puffiness under his eyes, the way the sun had dried his face to leather. She began to cry very quietly. She knew it would do her no good, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Miss de la Baume le Blanc, your curiosity is dangerous. How do I make that clear to you?”
“I won’t say anything! I promise!”
“It would be best for us both if I believe you. So I will, for now. This,” his voice was soft, as menacing as if a river snake were slithering around her body, “is your last warning. I knew your father. I give you a last warning for his sake, for the honor due a fellow soldier, nothing more.”
He stepped out into the sunlight, which made every angle on his face as rough as the stone on the staircase around them, but fortunately Louise didn’t see that. She was weeping too hard. She listened to his retreating footsteps. She had to sit down on the bench that was pushed back into the underside curve of the staircase. She had to cry for a long time before she could compose herself enough to simply find the wits to stand up and walk away.
THAT NIGHT, HENRIETTE swept into the ballroom to see her mother sitting at one end on the raised dais between the huge bronze satyrs there, an irony considering how pious Henriette’s mother was. Radiant in midnight blue and matching dyed feathers and wonderful dark pearls Philippe had given her, Henriette moved forward smilingly and people watched, as always they did, but it seemed to her their eyes were upon her in a new way. You’ll be blamed, said the duchess, not he. Well, why wouldn’t they stare after Louis’s impulsive behavior this afternoon?
“Finally, I see you,” her mother said to her.
Her mother was the daughter of France’s renowned King Henri IV, was sister of King Louis XIII, was widow of England’s King Charles I, queen of England until her son married. Once a beauty, bitterness had eroded into age. She turned her cheek to be kissed, and Henriette did so.
“I have duties too, now, Mother,” Henriette said. “And I wasn’t feeling well. The journey didn’t agree with me.”
“It didn’t? Only his majesty’s regard pleases you these days?”
It begins, thought Henriette. She ground her teeth and sat down on a stool at her mother’s feet in a liquid rush of satin skirts and petticoats.
“As it must all of us. We all
are his loyal subjects.”
“Who knew when I bore you,” her mother lamented, “that God would leave me only you and your two eldest brothers? Who knew the heartache I would suffer? Not that I complain. I bear all things as the will of God. Not my will but His. Always.”
Henriette saw Guy looking her way and made a signal with her fan. He was standing before her in moments, frowning down at her, but she didn’t care as long as he rescued her from her mother.
“I have a private message for you from the Duchess de Chevreuse,” she said to him.
“Do I interrupt?” Guy asked, looking from mother to daughter.
“You do,” said Henriette’s mother.
“Nonsense,” said Henriette, speaking over her mother.
“You will call on me tomorrow, my dear. Early.” Her mother’s voice was icy.
“Of course, Mother.”
Henriette dragged Guy across the ballroom and out its doors and through a corridor until they were at the private balcony. “I am going to scream at the moon, and you are going to watch me silently,” she told him.
In spite of himself, Guy smiled. “I wish I didn’t find you adorable,” he said.
“I do too.” She lifted her face to the stars, the half-circle of moon there. It was that bewitching hour before complete darkness. What am I going to do? she thought. I can’t bear all these people picking at me. Can Louis command them away? Can he command their silence? I am already a scandal. I can see it in Guy’s silence, in my mother’s face, in Louis’s mother’s face. Can I bear it? Do I wish to? Can love bear all things? On her visit to England the previous year, a young duke, flirting to woo her, had read to her from the English Bible, translating into French as he read each verse about charity, about love, which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Could it be true? She heard trumpets sounding. Louis had arrived. He’d be looking for her. And where was she? Off on a balcony with the wild Count de Guiche. And then an idea occurred to her.
“You’re with child,” said Guy.
“If I am, it is no concern of yours.”
“I beg to disagree. Whatever you do is my concern. I love you.”
The second man this day to say those words. When Louis said them later, that would be three. Oh, she didn’t wish to deal with Philippe in bed tonight. How late could she encourage the court to stay up? Forever?
“Let’s go for a ride.” She felt impulsive, wild, trapped.
“What? Now?”
“As soon as we can. Go and ask his majesty if he will bear with Madame’s wishing a twilight ride under the rising stars.”
“You’ll ride in a carriage, not on horseback.”
“I will?”
“For the child’s sake. Monsieur must have his son and heir.”
“I will if you go away and do as I say.”
“Kiss me.”
“No.”
He laughed again.
“Make certain Monsieur drinks too much tonight.” She faced him squarely.
Knowing they were bargaining, that someday he’d demand a payment—there was a part of her that liked that in him—they met each other’s eyes; then he went away to do as she asked.
Men ready to do whatever I command, she thought over a restless nervousness that threatened to send her into fits. I do like that. When am I old enough not to be lectured? she asked the stars. Now, they answered, just the way they had at the duchess’s estate. You are Madame.
Chapter 20
ATE THAT NIGHT, LOUIS WAITED FOR HENRIETTE IN FRONT of the palace’s garden grotto, tucked away at one end of the queen mother’s wing. Everyone else was on the pond, in boats and gondolas, masked, at his order, to make this tryst easier. When he heard her hurrying steps on the path, his heart began to beat in his ears. He felt like a starved animal scenting sustenance. He would die if he didn’t kiss her. He stepped back into the dark of the grotto itself, a wonderful Renaissance fantasy of a cave with hundreds of pieces of tile and shell overhead marking out dogs and fish and other beasts. What stonework there was had not been smoothed to an even surface as it was everywhere else in the palace. Here it showed its harsh birth from larger stone. The stonework, the beasts, the tumble of rocks outlining ovals in the ceiling were in a style called “primitive,” and that’s how he felt this night, urgent and desperate to take her. A candle or two burned in the niches of the walls and on the edges of the opening so she wouldn’t stumble over her long skirts.
She came into view, stepped hesitantly into the grotto, looking all around her, not seeing him. He reached out a hand and dragged her into the dark where he kissed her like a savage, letting his mouth travel to her ears, to the long sides of her throat. He fell on his knees, pressed his face into her stomach, groaning. Henriette ran her fingers over his face, over the mask there and then his mouth. He bit her fingers.
“I feel like a deer being chased by hounds, Louis. Your mother was cold to me the entire visit, and the English ambassador called at her insistence—”
Louis raised his head. “He didn’t—”
“He did, and the Duchess de Chevreuse’s priest invited me to confess, and when I replied I had nothing to confess, he said, pride might be foremost, and spoke to me about the wiles of the world. Only the Duchess of Chevreuse was kind to me.”
“Kind to you?”
“Oh yes. She understands and is my friend, our friend, but she counsels discretion. And now my mother is here. Louis, I can’t bear it, the lectures, the gossip! I love you, but perhaps we’re being foolish.”
He felt stunned and held tight to her hands and didn’t reply.
“Everyone is watching us now. And today, well, you made your regard so evident. Everyone saw it and is talking about it tonight, talking about me.”
Louis pulled her to kneeling in front of him, gripped her shoulders. “It’s a sin before God, but it doesn’t feel a sin in my heart. I don’t know if I can give you up!”
“Listen, my sweet majesty, my dear love, I’ve had a thought. It came to me tonight when I was out on the balcony with Guiche. We could flirt with other people, particularly you, make the court, your mother, think you admire many.”
Pride reared its head, under it hurt and confusion. “What are you saying? Is this a way to tell me you don’t care for me anymore?”
“It’s a way for us to have what we want. We’ll see each other in secret just as we’ve been doing, and we’ll remain great friends in public, but you’ll notice others. Only you have to promise me you won’t fall in love with any of them,” and then she laughed that same arch laugh she’d made in the summer pavilion, and he felt himself grow a little remote from her, which was a good thing, because he needed his wits not to grovel at her feet and beg her not to break his heart. He kissed her hard again, put his hand under the bell of her gown, felt the softness of her leg above her gartered stocking, began to move his hand farther. A part of him felt as cold as ice. He almost wanted to hurt her.
“I have to tell you something,” she said. “I’m with child.”
His hand stopped where it was. When he could speak, he said, “I congratulate you.”
“What is it? Are you jealous? It’s wonderful, don’t you see? We may—” she hesitated, then rushed on, “do as we please, and there will be no problems. And now we have another place to tryst. The Duchess of Chevreuse offers her château.” She smiled brilliantly into the dark, but Louis didn’t answer.
That old intriguer, he thought, puts her hands on our love?
“You’re angry? Oh, tell me you’re not angry! It’s for the best, don’t you see?”
Louis brought her hands to his mouth and covered them with kisses to disguise his feelings. He’d thought she’d let him finally take her tonight. He’d thought she was as anxious for their coupling as he. With child? He tried to wrap his mind around those words. And the Duchess de Chevreuse as friend? Too much was happening. It was like being swept along in a raging current. He was having trouble keep
ing his head above water. “Perhaps your idea is a good one.”
She hugged him. “Oh, it’s the only way, my love! I’m convinced of it!”
“You must tell me who to notice. For me, there is no one but you.” He spoke slowly. Despondency made him thick-witted.
“Madame!” Candles showed Louise, a darker shadow in the shadows of the grotto’s entrance.
Henriette kissed Louis boldly, her tongue flicking and daring. Her hands swept his thighs. “The viscount will help us,” she said. “We have the use of his château at any time. Or the duchess. Good-bye, my darling,” and then she touched him in a way she never had before, a way that left him gasping like a fish flung out of the pond.
“Where’s the Princess de Monaco?” Henriette asked Louise, as they hurried toward the pond to join the others.
“I don’t know, Madame.”
CATHERINE SIGHED AND arched back into the tree while she ground herself into Nicolas. They were like two moths mating, their cloaks surrounding them like wings, their hoods covering their heads.
“Harder,” she said into the well of darkness their hoods made.
Nicolas bit her neck, his hands under the skirts of her gown, on her naked hips, holding her in delicious balance for the pleasure they were enjoying.
“My breasts,” she said, “touch them.”
He couldn’t do that; their intricate geometry would go awry and spoil everything, but the command made him feel as if he were cold steel and he would pierce her in half. The legs around his waist held him tighter, and she groaned and began to bite at his neck.
When she began to scream a little, he covered her mouth with his, and continued to move against her until she shivered and clawed him and said “oh” over and over again. A few final thrusts, and he was done himself. They dropped to the ground, still tangled, their cloaks belling around them, their hoods covering them. He put his hands to the wet all around her thighs. She held onto the edges of his jacket, as if she would drop somewhere if she let go.
