by Karleen Koen
Louis considered her. She stood with her back to a window. As the sun set, a last ray shone around her, highlighting the paleness of her hair. The eyes that met his were grave. She was blushing her vivid hue, but he didn’t mind that. He said, his face hard, “This will make a good story when you tell it.”
“I would never tell of it—”
“It’s been suggested you place notes from someone to me when you go to visit my dog, put them on my pillow, other places, when La Porte isn’t looking. Tell me the truth. I won’t be angry.”
“I don’t. I haven’t. I swear. I would never be disloyal to you! There’s no one who could make me be.” She straightened her shoulders as she spoke, a spark in her fine eyes.
“Do you know who the boy is?”
“No. Yes. I heard him called a royal highness. He’s a cousin, isn’t he?” She gazed at him solidly, truth in every angle of her face, line of her body.
God, thought Louis, when was the last time he’d seen anyone with eyes that showed all the way to the soul? “Yes, he is, but now I must ask you to do something for me and for your kingdom. You must never speak of this. On your deathbed, you must keep silence about this, about all of it, this day, what you saw, what you conjecture. Will you swear to me you will do that?”
She knelt and looked up at him with the earnestness of a knight pledging fidelity. “Yes.”
Her terrible blush had receded. “No matter what, my death, yours, you are never to speak of this.” Louis was grim.
She nodded, and he helped her to her feet. Frowning, considering, weighing one thing against another, he watched her exit. He’d meant to make her a bargain. Coins for silence. An excellent marriage. A place at court for her brother or mother. But none of those offers would go past his lips. Not when he looked in her eyes.
Outside, Louise walked forward to the musketeer holding her horse. He helped her seat herself in the saddle. The shock of everything that had happened was finally seeping out from her in tears.
“Escort her to Fontainebleau,” Louis ordered from the doorway.
Later, when the wagons were on their way, he mounted his horse, nodded to D’Artagnan, who stood near the carriages.
“I hate to see that good wine go to the Bastille,” D’Artagnan said. His majesty had ordered that it be sent there, instead. Someone might see the barrels at Fontainebleau, he’d said, and it was true, but it was a shame.
“I’ve ordered a cask put in your carriage. Drink my health when you arrive,” Louis answered.
D’Artagnan saluted, stepped into a carriage, and they began their journey.
For the next few hours, Louis worked as hard as any musketeer with him, inspecting every inch of ground, moving hay and firewood into buildings, spilling lantern oil everywhere throughout the chapel, the house, the barns, the sheds, while other musketeers herded livestock, oxen, pigs, chickens, mules, horses, what dogs and cats they could, outside the gate and into the gathering night. He’d ordered the vineyard burned too, and musketeers moved among the trellised vines. Satisfied that everything that could be done had been, he gave the signal to light the fires.
They’d made a bonfire in the middle of the yard, and a musketeer holding a burning torch ran into each building. The barns and sheds burned fastest, and eventually flames were licking at the roof of the chapel and the house. And then a wind came up, lifting sparks, and the fire roared through opened doors and windows.
At his order, they quit the yard, went outside the wall because inside the fire had become a beast eating anything in sight with yowls of red flame and cinders swirling everywhere. The vineyards were burning, and the forest was aflame, but Louis didn’t care. At last, after midnight, when all that remained was the rubble of brick and blackened stone, he signaled for them to leave, and they rode silently through the woods, away from the fire, away from what had been. It began to rain, but they rode on through it. When the lanterns of Fontainebleau could be seen in the distance, Louis shuddered, as if a ghost were walking over his grave. It was the ghost of his beloved cardinal.
Chapter 25
OMEHOW, HE MANAGED TO CATCH AN HOUR OF SLEEP HERE and there the next day. No one seemed to find his absence or manner unusual, this when he felt disoriented, wild, and ill at ease inside himself every time he pictured the boy’s face.
“We missed you last night,” Henriette told him that evening as he stood by her and tried to pretend all was well.
“By the time I’d finished walking the grounds, it was easier to stay the night at Versailles.” Louis spoke his lie absently. He couldn’t take his eyes from his mother. The Viscount Nicolas was at her side, standing behind her right shoulder the way Mazarin always had. He was her new Mazarin, wasn’t he? Louis closed his eyes at all that was in him. What have you done? he thought, staring at his mother. What is the truth? Am I not a king’s son?
“Will you make improvements to it, do you think?”
Versailles was his father’s hunting château. He wished to retire there to live once you became ten and five, Mazarin had once told him. He was going to turn the kingdom over to you. He was so tired, so ill that he couldn’t conceive of ruling into old age, said Mazarin. Yet the king his father had been well enough to spawn a child?
Louis excused himself abruptly and walked over to Fanny, who was in the middle of a sentence, and, at the sight of him, swallowed it whole. Athénaïs, to whom she’d been talking, backed away so that they might speak privately.
“Where is Miss de la Baume le Blanc?”
“Ill, sir.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh, as to that, I can’t say, sir.”
“Tell her I asked of her.”
Fanny’s eyes were as wide as tarts the cooks made. “I will, sir.”
“Good. We hunt tomorrow. Tell her I expect her to join us. All of the maids of honor. Tell them it’s my personal request to be there.”
“Yes, sir, of course, sir.”
Louis narrowed his eyes, and Fanny’s excitement became nervousness.
“I would prefer it if you did not speak to anyone of my interest in her. You do me and her no favor.” He was stern.
“No, sir, I won’t, sir. My lips are sealed, sir. Boiling oil couldn’t get a word from me, except screams, perhaps. I’m sure I’d scream if I were boiled in oil.”
He smiled suddenly, and Fanny felt like drooping and wished she hadn’t chattered to Guy about Louise’s absence yesterday.
“Thank you, Miss de Montalais. I hope you will become a friend to me. I have need of them.”
“What did he say?” asked Athénaïs breathlessly the moment he was far enough away not to hear.
“He asked me to save a dance for him tonight,” Fanny lied.
“Oh, Mother of Jesus,” said Athénaïs. “Are you ready to die for joy? Here. Wear my pearl earrings. They’re nicer than the ones you have. You have to tell me everything he says. Promise?”
“Promise.”
LOUIS WENT THROUGH the ceremony of being undressed for sleeping, put on his gown, climbed into his bed. His valet drew the curtains, and he listened to footsteps and murmurs as courtiers left the bedchamber. When his valet coughed three times, he was out of bed, and his valet had his riding boots and leather pantaloons and doublet ready. He knelt down and held Belle’s face between his hands, fighting a panic that was like dark water rising over his head. Everything he had always believed in seemed slippery under his feet. Worlds were collapsing in him. What he thought he’d known, he did not know. What he thought he’d felt, he did not feel. There was no middle ground in this coming fight for supremacy. If there was the least shadow on his legitimacy, he was lost before he began, forever at the mercy of the cunning and discontented. He went to the wall and pressed the wooden carving of a dove that opened to a secret passage. The young musketeer who was assigned to him in D’Artagnan’s absence waited at the other end, his face grave but excited. Louis didn’t realize it, but all his musketeers were newly invigorated. Yesterday
was already legend among them. Some spirit, some new sense that they were his elite corps and that he had secret and necessary tasks for them to perform on his behalf, had spread itself among them. There would be wars to fight, secret missions—were not half of them already upon one?—for the honor of this young king, who was the symbol of the kingdom, and, as they were coming more and more to see, a splendid, intriguing symbol.
Louis emerged near a garden wall where his horse was waiting. It was the grand Spanish stallion that he’d heard Miss de la Baume le Blanc had soothed. She soothed dogs and horses, it seemed, and wild, frightened boys. He would have to ride hard this night to be back at dawn, his second day and night of very little rest. Another man stood in the darkness, the snort of his horse alerting Louis to his presence. Colbert. He was entrusting Colbert with a portion, if not all, of this. He had to rely on someone. This was larger than he could carry alone.
Louis had sent a messenger ahead to expect him, and at the gate of the château’s courtyard, a servant hurried forward at the sound of hooves, his lantern like a single eye in the dark.
“This way,” he whispered, and Louis dismounted, Colbert following. The Duchess de Chevreuse waited in her chamber of books, a long, comfortable room with one wall of windows and one wall lined with shelves of books. It was rare to have so many books in one place. Louis looked around at the handsome leather bindings, the gold lettering, and thought, I’ll have these if she denies me in any way. It will be the first thing I strip from her. Anger, which lay crouching in his heart, reared up on all four legs.
The duchess, Marie, remained silent, waiting for the king to speak. She’d missed nothing, his purposeful gait and tense expression as he entered the chamber, the musketeers who immediately paced the perimeter, checking for anyone else who might be hiding there, who nodded to him that all seemed well and took themselves away again, the silent, cloaked figure of Jean-Baptiste Colbert standing just at the door. What a handsome, vibrant man the king had become. All her intelligence, her interest in mankind and its innumerable permutations, all her sense for intrigue and the game of court, rose and spread in ever-expanding waves within her. This was a contest between them already. For what, she had no idea. But she knew its importance, which hovered over this young king like an unseen specter. Still he said nothing. Silence gathered and bunched and filled the distance between them.
“May I offer refreshment, your majesty?” She finally spoke, listening to the sound of her voice echo out into the room.
He scowled, with a fierce, even baring of teeth, and her heart began to beat. For the first time, fear moved in her. What could this grim young man want with her, and she without a shred of beauty to protect herself? She rose, poured a goblet of wine for herself, drank several large swallows. Had he come to arrest her? For some old rebellion? Some old betrayal? To lock her up and throw away the key? His presence seemed enormous, dominating the chamber, dominating her.
“How may I be of service?” she asked. I’m an old woman now, she thought. Old women can do no harm.
“By telling me the truth.”
An enormous demand. What, after all, was truth but one man’s, one woman’s version of a fleeting moment? “I am always truthful.”
That lie hung for a time between them. He did nothing with it, which made her respect for him grow.
“Leave us,” he said to Colbert, and when the man was gone, when it was only the two of them, “There was a quarrel between their majesties the year of my birth.”
“Yes, a terrible one. Her majesty’s correspondence with the kingdom of Spain was found, and your father was furious.”
“Yet they were on terms close enough to conceive a child?”
“A man needs to drop his guard only once.”
“Twice. I have a brother.”
“Twice,” she agreed. She drank another deep, long, slow swallow of wine. His rage, contained though it was, radiated out from him in invisible waves.
“Did you ever perform a service for my mother that was of great delicacy, great danger?”
“Many times.”
“Now would be the time to tell of them.”
“I spied for her, wrote secret letters to Spain. And I plotted against Cardinal Mazarin, but not because she asked it. Surely you know all this.”
“Nothing more?”
“I stood guard when she and the cardinal made love.”
“Before I was born?”
Her mind went reeling. “No.” She’d been in exile then. Would he banish her for this conversation?
“You didn’t like the cardinal?”
“His influence was too pronounced.”
“With my mother?”
“With your mother.” She was too old to make a new place, as once she’d done, going off jauntily on a new adventure. She wanted to end her days here. It had always been rumored Queen Anne had married the cardinal. It must be so. What did he want of her? She could not verify the marriage. If anyone could, surely it was this king.
“Why did you intrigue against him?”
“It was what one did. Intrigue. It was my duty as a courtier, as a daughter of the Rohan-Montbazons.”
There was a long silence between them.
“May I sit down, your majesty?” she asked. He didn’t answer her, and the trembling in her voice moved to her body. She clasped her hands together in an attempt to control some of her shaking.
“At my command and under my direction, you will convince my mother that a certain friendship she treasures must be sundered, that my will is paramount.”
“Yes. Your wish is my command.”
His eyes bored into her, and she felt pinned to the ground by his fierceness. “I very much hope so. I very much hope you’ve told me everything. If I am betrayed, I’ll destroy your husband, and then I will destroy your children, and then, and only then, I will destroy you.”
With those words, he left the chamber. She could see and hear men moving outside, hear the jingle of harness. She slumped into a chair. She felt as if she’d been savagely beaten. A discreet knock came at the door, then Monsieur Colbert entered the chamber.
“You’re to say nothing of this visit, this conversation, to anyone, not your husband, not even your confessor.” The words were flat, said with no emotion.
She could see Colbert’s immense intelligence shining in his eyes, his face. He works night and day, was the word, a drone. She had no sense of the dry emptiness of a drone. This man vibrated with will and determination and purpose, just as his majesty did. “Am I to know the name of this friend I am to convince her majesty to renounce?”
“The Viscount Nicolas.”
So, it is the viscount who is to fall, she thought. Will it bring war? She thought briefly of warning Nicolas, of playing both sides as once she’d done so well, but she lacked stamina. And Colbert would have her watched. From this moment on, her every move would be reported. She knew that as well as she knew her own name.
“His majesty has asked that I tell you why the Viscount Nicolas has fallen from favor. It is a high honor and a responsibility to be taken into his confidence. He has a great regard for your friendship with the queen mother. Your influence with her is legend. I trust it will live up to its reputation.”
In a few brief words, he told her about the lies and disarray in finance and about the island filled with weapons and soldiers. To behead the most powerful man in the kingdom was a brilliant stroke, she thought as she listened, the move of an intrepid warrior, worthy of a great king. It would awe the court. It was a perfect first move toward subduing the nobility. If she’d been younger, she’d have made this king adore her.
“What can I give his majesty?” she asked. “Some gift that underscores my loyalty and devotion.”
Colbert’s eyes flicked to the wall of books, several lifetimes of acquisition, her father’s, her first two husbands’, both dukes’, her own. The gesture did not go unnoticed.
Without hesitation she said, “Will you tell his m
ajesty that when I die he would do me a great honor if he would accept these books that my family has assembled, as a sign of my loyalty to his reign and my honor at the trust bestowed?”
“I will tell him,” said Colbert.
“Have you children?”
“I do.”
“An alliance between our families is not inconceivable to me.”
It was an extraordinary suggestion. Her family was one of the oldest, the proudest in France, and Colbert came from merchant stock. He was rich these days. No one who had worked for Mazarin went unrewarded. A brilliant tactician, he had managed the details of Mazarin’s life—including the king’s wedding—with verve, and thoroughness, but still, he was a lackey. Nonetheless, she decided to gamble with the brashness that was her best, and worst, feature.
“I would never betray a member of my family,” she said.
Colbert’s dark eyes had become velvety soft. Either he was at his most truthworthy or most dangerous. It didn’t matter, really. She’d thrown her glove over his garden wall.
“I shall consider your husband’s advancement a personal obligation,” he said to her. And then he was gone, disappearing with his black clothes into the night like ink poured on dark stone.
She sat down very slowly, very carefully. It had been a long time since anyone had made her afraid, not since Cardinal Richelieu. She hadn’t been afraid of Mazarin, who had believed that everyone had his price and had simply searched for that price. Mazarin hadn’t had the sheer ruthlessness of his predecessor, Richelieu, but this one—well, he might be the child of Richelieu instead of him whom it was once whispered he was the child of. So long ago, those whispers. She had forgotten them. Life, wasn’t it interesting, now? What excitement for her. And gray as she was, she was still necessary. Queen Anne was stubborn and ruthless when cornered. Even this young lion couldn’t quite handle her. God, her Beloved, was good. The minion Colbert would rise. She could sense it, and her family would rise with him, if she behaved herself, for once. Perhaps she would. She was, after all, old.
