by Karleen Koen
The prince drew back in horror. No one knew how this frightful scourge spread, but everyone was certain of its contagion. He’d order every stick of furniture in the small château in which the youth had stayed burned. The carriages conveying the boy would be burned, too.
“—and his only servants will be the monk and the musketeer, though I will send others, but they will never see the child. He is to live on the top floor of the keep.” He can walk the rampart of the roof, thought Louis, take off the mask, turn his face to the sun and sky there, become brown and whole. “If you keep my secret, I will honor you. You and your son will become my greatest friends.”
The prince bowed. “I was yours before your words.” Curiosity as to the identity of the boy had died with the word leprosy. He followed Louis upstairs, up long flights inside a square tower, until they stood on the roof. The view was magnificent, great blue sea to three sides, the green of an island forest on the other.
Louis walked the length and breadth of the roof. His brother could be free here, could be treated as the beloved son of a queen.
IN A BEDCHAMBER of the prince’s château in Monaco, Cinq Mars held his breath at what he was witnessing. The king of France had gently unfastened the mask from the boy’s face, removed it, and was looking down at this half-grown, drugged, sleeping child. Cinq Mars watched as Louis smoothed the boy’s hair, his forehead. He watched in amazement as Louis gave the boy a quick kiss on the lips, then knelt beside him to pray.
What have I done? thought Cinq Mars. He had given the letter to the château’s stable boy, told him to take it to a merchant’s house, any merchant, and pulled the gold saint’s medal on its necklace at his neck as payment.
Louis held tight to his brother’s hand. Pray God this prince would be as happy and free as he could be. Pray God he would never wear the iron mask again. Pray God he, Louis, find the compassion to forgive his mother. Pray God his enemies did not learn of this child and use the scandal to wrest the throne from him. Pray God his own son did not suffer the affliction of this boy. Pray God forgive him for keeping it all secret still.
He stayed long on his knees, the prayers inarticulate after a time, more feeling than thought. When he was finished, he opened his eyes to find Cinq Mars watching him. “I don’t even know his name. What’s his name?”
“Prince Jules.”
Prince de Mazarin, he would have made him, had circumstances been different. Perhaps, when his mother died, he’d do so. Louis pointed to a leather portfolio. “In there, you will find papers making you guardian for this child. You are made a count, Count de Cinq Mars, for your services, and more than enough for a fine life will be yours, if you continue to care for him as you have in the past. I’ll want you to come to court once a year to report on him. Who in your family do you wish rewarded?”
Cinq Mars named his sister.
“I’ll see she has everything she needs and more. I’ll see her children are brought to court. Have you funds?”
There had been a chest of coins, but who knew where it was now. “No,” he answered.
Louis almost smiled. “Yes. A chest of coins was found among your belongings and saved. We are nothing if not thorough. My treasury is empty, and I never overlook an opportunity to fill it. It remains yours. He’ll have every luxury but that of company. You’re to live with him on the top floors of an old monastery nearby. I’ve told the Prince de Monaco that he has leprosy. The few monks who continue to live there will be terrified, and it will keep the curious too afraid to satisfy their curiosity. There’s a rampart roof where he may walk free and see the sun and rain. I don’t want the mask on his face again unless you deem it necessary.”
Louis took a ring from his finger; it was set with emeralds. “Send me this ring should there be trouble. If I receive this, I’ll come to you myself.” He turned to Father Gabriel, who was standing near the sleeping boy. “Can you write?”
The priest nodded.
“Write down the names of those in your family whom you would wish rewarded, and I shall do it.”
How determined he is, how thorough, thought Cinq Mars. Do I tell him about the letter?
“Father,” said Louis to the priest. “Now will you hear my confession?”
The shock on Father Gabriel’s face was mirrored on Cinq Mars’s.
“Leave us,” Louis ordered Cinq Mars, then he knelt before the priest.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned—” and Louis recited the litany that had begun weeks ago with his toying with the affections of a dear princess and thus hurting both her and his brother, that moved on to falling in love with and seducing an honorable girl, and that ended with exiling another brother to a nearly deserted island to live in obscurity. His spirit felt lighter as he confessed. Thank God for that; there was still so much to do.
NICOLAS REREAD THE letter that had arrived from his secretary. The trail of the wandering D’Artagnan and the mysterious prisoners led to Monaco. His majesty, so Monsieur told the Chevalier de Lorraine, who told Nicolas, went on a secret pilgrimage to the Magdalene’s cave, which, if Nicolas was not mistaken, was close to Monaco. Do I really believe in coincidence? he thought. He considered the sloping, inked letters of the words, spread on the page before him. What do I do with this? He was ordering his secretary off this quest and to Belle Isle. He wanted the latest word on the state of its fortifications, a recount of men and weapons, of ships. He did not wish to pick up a saber and wave it at his majesty, but he would. But perhaps his fête, its magnificence, its abundance, its wealth of guests, would be saber-rattling enough. Shining little Louise de la Baume le Blanc was his majesty’s new lover. An interesting choice, the choice of a man with a tender heart, but he possessed a lion’s heart, too. Nicolas could hear its faint roar. La Grande Mademoiselle had returned to court. He sent me away because he thought I wrote disgusting old Mazarinades to him, La Grande whispered. As if I would.
LOUISE SAW HER musketeer standing in an arch of the open-air gallery and excused herself from her circle of friends.
“And where are you off to?” asked La Grande, shading her eyes and looking at Louise.
They were embroidering, but at least Madame had declared the queen’s gallery too stuffy and marched her ladies outside to the garden, and other courtiers were there, young men, drawn to the sight of the ladies, holding long skeins of thread for them or making suggestions about color, all the while winking promises with their bold eyes. Madame’s charming laugh kept ringing out at frequent intervals, and Catherine made no pretense of embroidering at all, but walked arm in arm in the distance with her cousin.
“To the nearest close stool, highness.”
“Oh, very well.”
Louise walked past garden statues and into the cool shade of the garden’s open-air gallery. Her musketeer waited. Had he a letter from his majesty?
“It’s the dog, miss,” he said. “La Porte sent me to find you.”
Skirts in her hands, she followed him up twisting stairs. La Porte’s face told her everything.
“Is she—”
“Very nearly.”
Inside the king’s closet, Belle lay in a nest of fine linen. Louise settled herself on the floor, put her hand on Belle’s nose. Her children were there, all lying close, their noses pressed into their mother’s side.
“I don’t know what else to do,” said La Porte.
Louise could see how upset he was. She kept her hand on Belle, began to repeat the rosary, and La Porte and the musketeer knelt, their voices joining hers. After a time, Belle’s legs jerked and she made a whiffling sound, and her children lifted their heads, rose, and began to circle her, sniffing every inch of her.
“I think it’s over.” Louise bent forward and put her head against Belle’s. “He’s going to miss you very much,” she whispered. “You were a fine dog.”
La Porte had to sit down he had begun to cry so hard.
Louise made her way back toward the garden. When would his majesty be back? She longed t
o see him, to lie with him in bed again. The pretense at embroidery had ended, and everyone was playing a game of blindman’s bluff. There were giggles and shouts of laughter, and La Grande was the blindfolded pursuer, and her laughter was loudest of all.
“Come and join us.” One of the king’s gentlemen whirled her into La Grande.
“You’re it! You’re it!”
She let them tie the handkerchief around her eyes. She would have to pretend to enjoy this, when all she wished was to sit quietly by herself for a time. So, she thought, this is what it is like for him.
Chapter 35
OUIS RODE BACK INTO FONTAINEBLEAU AT DAWN, HAVING woken in the dark and summoned those musketeers with him out of sleep. The blue tiles of the roofs and the chimneys loomed in the distance, and in a short time he rode past palace walls. He slipped off his horse, glad to have arrived. The surface of the carp pond was still. His fish slept. The row of long windows in the ballroom blinked at him as sunlight touched their panes. He’d gone to the cave of Mary Magdalene. Pulling the hood of his cloak over his head, he had joined the other penitents standing in line to light a candle, to leave prayers and supplications with her. He’d prayed on his knees for himself, for all the women he’d loved, his mother and his wife and Louise and Henriette, he’d prayed that she should forgive him, that he had not harmed her too deeply, and finally, for her for whom he had been reared, whose glory and honor he must sustain and increase, France, his kingdom. He’d prayed that he should rule wisely.
The leagues he’d traveled in the last days fell away from him as he dismounted in his private courtyard. He had been unflinching, riding longer and harder than any of his musketeers, rolling up in his cloak and sleeping on the ground when he became too tired. His endurance and strength of will as well as his visit to the shrine were already adding to his growing legend among his men.
“A council meeting this morning,” he informed his master of the household, as he sat in a bath, “and a hunt afterward. Inform the queen and Madame that I’d like their ladies to join me.” He waved the man away. “Tell me how she died,” he said to La Porte.
“Quietly, her children with her and Miss de la Baume le Blanc. I hope I did not displease by doing so.”
“No.”
Belle lay wrapped in finest linen, waiting for him in a basement. La Porte brought him notes from Louise, one for every night he’d been gone. He read through them hungrily, kissing the signature of each one, especially the one in which she described Belle’s death.
“And this,” said La Porte.
And there it was, another Mazarinade. He didn’t even read it all the way through.
“It was lying near Madame Belle in the basement.”
Louis folded Louise’s notes and put them inside his shirt next to the flesh of his heart. The Mazarinade he put in a pocket in his doublet. Hold your friends close and your enemies closer, said his beloved cardinal. If not La Grande, then who? The viscount. It must be.
His gentlemen shared the gossip of the last few days.
“Where’s Monsieur?” he asked. No one seemed to know. He stopped by his wife’s chambers to greet her and give her a quick kiss. He could see from her face, from her ladies’ faces, that everyone thought they knew where he’d been. He led Maria Teresa to a window and told her about the cave and shrine. Her eyes glowed so sweetly that he had to drop his.
“My dog Belle died,” he said.
“Your valet sent me word. I’ll have my father send you a dog from Spain.”
I don’t want a dog from Spain, he thought, but he kissed her hand and thanked her.
“YOUR MAJESTY’S JOURNEY went well?” asked Nicolas, when the council assembled.
Louis surveyed the three men with him, the men the cardinal had bequeathed him to run this kingdom, men who had served for years, who knew its every secret, one of whom was the lynchpin. When he fell, what would the others do? One Louis was certain would stay by his side, but the other?
“I made a pilgrimage,” he said, deciding that a portion of the truth was the best lie, “to the grotto at Saint-Baume to pray for the queen and the dauphin. I had a dream to do so, and the affection I bear the queen and my unborn son made obeying the dream imperative, but I don’t wish this spoken of. I went as a private man, not as sovereign.”
“Did you go to Monaco, sire?” asked Nicolas. “Being so close …”
“Yes, I did stop to see the prince, but only to rest my head on a soft pillow for a night.” Nicolas knew something, he thought. How much?
Nicolas pushed forward a paper that showed taxes collected thus far. “From the reports I’m receiving,” said Nicolas, “the harvest will not be a plentiful one.”
Yes. Many of those at the shrine had been there to pray because they feared the scarcity in their fields, feared surviving the winter. His hood drawn over his face, he’d moved among them and listened. The ribs of my cow show through her skin. My one good pig died. There is nothing for fodder. What will we do?
“Perhaps we need to purchase wheat and corn for the winter,” said Louis. “Will you request the intendants of each province to send a report about their best estimate as to the harvest and those most in need? And will you obtain prices from the Dutch and the English and Swedes as to what they’d charge us for grain?”
Nicolas wrote down the instructions.
“We’ll take the funds necessary from the dauphin’s birth celebration.” Louis smiled one of his rare smiles. “I’ll make it up to my son later. I’ve been thinking, what is the state of fortification on our coasts? Being upon it, if only for a night, has put concerns in my mind. How many of our galleys are attacked by pirates? Will you have the new commander of my Mediterranean fleet come to court? I’d like to question him. Who was the old commander?”
“The Marquis de Richelieu,” answered Nicolas.
“Summon him to court, also,” said Louis.
“They’ll be here for my fête,” said Nicolas.
Louis nodded his head. “Excellent. Inform them I wish them to call upon me. Mister Le Tellier, I understand you have the ordinance prepared that will make certain there is regular payment of my troops. All of you have a copy. Please read it and report any discrepancies you see before I sign it. If I may, Le Tellier, have you the breakdown of troops once we cut back?”
“Household troops, ten thousand; infantry, thirty-five thousand; cavalry, ten thousand.”
“Fifty-five thousand,” said Nicolas. “Still extraordinary when compared to other kingdoms.”
“And you, my superintendent of finance,” Louis faced Nicolas, “you must give me a report of your trade armada soon and that island to the west—what is its name, now—”
“Belle Isle, sire, which is the base of my whaling company, such as it is. I regret to report that we have as yet to kill a single one.”
“You must capture one before your fête and bring it to swim in your landscape canal.” To general laughter, Louis pushed away the papers before him. “That’s all for now. Viscount, will you give me the pleasure of your company just a while longer.” As the two others left the antechamber, Louis said, “Monsieur was not at my rising from bed this morning.”
“Perhaps he was unaware that you had returned.”
“There has been quarreling between us. I think you must know that.”
All his courtier’s instincts up, Nicolas spoke carefully. “I am fortunate to be counted among Monsieur’s friends.”
“Will you tell him for me that I wish to settle the quarrel between us.”
Nicolas bowed. “I will do what little I can.”
“As always, I thank you. What service you are to my family.”
At the door of the antechamber, Nicolas turned. “I’ve heard you lost your favorite hunting dog. When you visit Vaux-le-Vicomte, let me show you the pups in my hunting stable. Perhaps one may take your eye.”
“How kind of you.”
Nicolas walked through antechambers, looking out windows to see who was in th
e king’s courtyard. He should have been reassured by his majesty’s flattery, but he felt more wary than ever.
LOUIS, SURROUNDED BY dogs, stood in the dim of the basement staring down at the linen-wrapped sweetheart that had been his favorite. La Porte had uncovered her head, and Louis touched it once before motioning for the valet to re-cover her.
“We’ll bury her this evening, after I return from the hunt.”
The hunt, the kill, would be in her honor. He’d bring the stag’s heart and bury it with her. He’d send notes to Maria Teresa, to Henriette so that they might join him when he had her buried. Henriette’s presence would ensure Louise’s. They’d bury her near the spring that was the source of Fontainebleau’s name, the spring that had been found by an ancestor’s favorite hunting dog, Bleau. He was burying his boyhood when he buried this dog.
“You have much to live up to,” he told the dogs swirling around his legs as he left the basement. They barked and ran toward a figure in the distance. Colbert waited near the orangery.
“I have some bad news, your majesty,” he said.
Was there any other kind? “Tell me now.”
“I’ve unearthed the existence of another of his spies.”
“Well?”
“It’s your mother’s confessor.”
IT WAS ALL over Fontainebleau that the king had returned and wished to go hunting. Those who’d seen him go to Mass this morning with the queen spread the word. Maids of honor and ladies-in-waiting went scattering to dress. Louise felt almost ill with impatience and excitement. She had dragged out the trunk from under her bed and was rummaging through it wildly to find something special, something unique, anything that would catch his eye.
Fanny sat on the bed.
“Aren’t you going to dress?” Louise asked her.
“You must ask him!”
Louise stood, grabbed Fanny by the wrist, pulled her out into the hallway.
