IT WAS IN THE margin on the eleventh page that Petite saw it: Please, I must see you. L. She pressed the book to her heart. Then, with an effort of will and a prayer to the Virgin, she handed the volume back to Clorine. “Return this to Monsieur le Duc de Gautier, with my regrets.”
EVENTUALLY, OF COURSE, Petite had to rise. There was a limit to how many purgings and bleedings a healthy young woman could endure.
“You look like a ghost,” Clorine chided, trying to entice her to eat a little of the cake she’d gotten the cook to make in honor of Petite’s seventeenth birthday.
“Thank you, Clorine, but I just can’t.” The linsey-woolsey bed gown hung from her thin shoulders.
There was a knock on the door. Petite turned to see Nicole with four oranges in her hands.
“When are you coming back?” Nicole demanded. “I’ve had to take over reading Don Quixote to Madame and I’m tired of it.” She gave Petite the fruit. “I stole them from Henriette’s table,” she said, pleased with herself. “She’s not angry at you anymore, by the way.” She turned to see if Clorine could hear. “I suspect the Princess has another interest,” she hissed, her black eyebrows arched suggestively. “She even asked after you. Are you dying, or what?”
“I’m ill,” Petite said, confused. She was relieved that Henriette was no longer angry, but what did Nicole mean by “another interest”?
Nicole put her hand on Petite’s forehead. “You must have caught a chill in that storm. You came back soaked through.” She regarded Petite with enquiring eyes. “The King, as well, and both of you rather flushed. Where did you go off to, anyway?”
“Clorine?” Petite got her maid’s attention. “See if there’s a bowl I could use—something to put these oranges in. Listen,” she told Nicole as soon they were alone, “I don’t want you saying anything about the King, not in front of my maid.”
“So something did happen. Mon Dieu, I don’t believe it.”
Petite put her hand on her friend’s arm. “It was only a kiss, but you can’t tell anyone.” Well…three kisses. Three swooning kisses.
Nicole put her hands over her heart. “The King kissed you?”
“Promise, Nicole. It’s never going to happen again. You’re not to say a word.”
“We need a code. How about Prince Chéri. No, too obvious. How about Ludmilla? I’ll say, ‘Have you seen Ludmilla?’ And you’ll know who I really mean.”
“Except that there will be no further need to speak of her,” Petite said, as Clorine returned with a cracked wooden bowl.
“Alas, my dear friend, I must return to my duties, to tiresome Señor Quixote,” Nicole said, rising. “Take care of yourself and get well. There seems to be some sort of ague going around. Ludmilla looks rather unwell herself.”
“Ludmilla is no concern of mine,” Petite said, seeing Nicole out before she could say more.
“Who is Ludmilla?” Clorine asked as soon as the door slammed shut.
“Nobody you know,” Petite said. She startled at yet another tap-tap on the door. She hoped it wasn’t Nicole again.
“Zut. Now that must be the Duke.” Clorine stepped out, but returned immediately. “Just as I thought,” she said. “He desires a word with you, Mademoiselle.”
“Tell him no,” Petite said weakly.
“You’ve lost a stone, but I can pad you out.”
“That’s not the reason.”
“Don’t you ever want to get a husband?” Clorine grabbed Petite by the shoulder. “Get out there—and be nice.”
MONSIEUR LE DUC de Gautier tipped his hat and bowed his head. Mademoiselle de la Vallière had been a mere minikin of a girl when he’d first known her at Blois, four years before. Now she was a young woman, slim and graceful as a flower…a delicate wild-flower, as he thought of her, out of place amongst the exotic flora of the Court.
He looked up and down the dimly lit hall and leaned in toward her. “His Majesty has asked me to speak to you on his behalf,” he whispered. He put up one hand. “Please, Mademoiselle, just hear me out. Will you not agree just to talk to him?”
“No, Monsieur.”
“Mademoiselle, His Majesty has not slept or eaten in days.” The King, whose appetite was legendary! At one meal, it wasn’t uncommon for His Majesty to consume three or four bowls of different soups, several platters of spiced, strong meats, plus a plateful of cakes—but now he wouldn’t take even a bowl of soup. On retiring, he usually took iced orange-flower water—but even this he had refused. His doctor was worried. “Please, Mademoiselle?” Gautier was prepared to beg if he must.
She shook her head.
“He’s wasting away,” he persisted. “He hasn’t attended Council meetings or gone out hunting. He is suffering, I tell you.” Tears came to her beautiful azure eyes. How like an angel she was. Gautier sensed her weakness: she was in love. “He asks only for a few words with you.”
“Would you be present?” she asked.
“Trust me.”
SEEING THE KING privately was not an easy matter—his was a public life—so it was arranged that he and Petite would meet in Gautier’s room. “Today at four of the clock,” Gautier told Petite, providing her with a dressmaker’s cloak. Dressmakers were often to be seen coming to his quarters due to the theatrical productions he directed. He gave Petite a diagram showing the way. The château was a labyrinth; one could easily get lost.
Petite set out as arranged, in disguise. She’d had to lie to Clorine, had told her that she was going to Henriette’s, that all the ladies would be dressed as menials, that it was just another fanciful notion the Princess had come up with, one of her crazy ideas. “You know how she is.”
Clorine had frowned, puzzled, but returned to mending Petite’s riding overskirt.
“I’ll be back soon, to change for the evening,” Petite said, pulling her hood on at the door. She listened for footsteps, voices, the rustle of skirts, and slipped out, hurrying down the narrow stone steps. At the first landing she turned left, heading down a passage lit by torches. I am going to meet the King, she thought.
She stopped by a narrow window to examine Gautier’s drawing. It shook in her gloved hands. No, she was going the wrong way. She reversed her direction, making a passing reverence and lowering her eyes as she met a party of noblemen. At the next stairwell, at the statue of Venus set into an arched alcove, she turned left, and then right, and then…there it was: a door with a small brass plate bearing Gautier’s name.
She paused before knocking; it was not too late. She could turn back. “O Mary,” she whispered, and the door opened before her, as if thrown wide by the Devil himself.
“It’s you.” Gautier looked relieved.
Petite didn’t remove her hood until she was safely inside and the door shut behind her. The shutters had been closed; it was dark in the room, only three candles burning. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. The chamber was small, but tastefully furnished. A bed hung in pale blue brocade took up most of it. Petite set her wicker basket on the floor and took off her gloves.
“I got lost,” she said, unbuttoning the cloak, starting with the big wood button at her neck.
“His Majesty should be here soon,” Gautier said. “I’m sorry that I don’t have a chair for you to sit on. May I offer you a dish of veal broth?”
Petite shook her head, leaning against a curio cabinet for support.
“It’s refreshing, flavored with mint.”
“Thank you, but no, Monsieur.” She didn’t want to have to use the necessary.
There was a light knock at the door. Petite closed her eyes. If she started to feel dizzy, she would lower her head, breathe deeply.
The King entered, disguised as a seller of sheet music, wigged, cloaked and hooded. He’d shaved off his mustache. “What do you think?” he asked, holding out his arms. “I even have some good songs.”
“Nobody recognized you, Your Majesty?” Gautier asked, wiping his brow.
“Not even the Duchesse de Navailles,�
� the King said, taking off the wig and shaking out his hair.
Mercy. Superintendent of the maid-attendants? Petite pressed her hands against her pounding heart.
“Your Majesty, by your leave, I will go now.” Gautier placed the song sheets on a small escritoire under the window. “Open the shutters when you wish me to return.”
Petite looked at Gautier in horror. He’d lied to her. “I’m going with you,” she said, reaching for her cloak.
Gautier stepped in front of the door, his hand on the iron latch.
“You promised,” Petite said.
“Mademoiselle de la Vallière, please.” The King’s voice was gentle. He held his hat in his hands like a penitent. “I don’t mean to alarm you. Truly, I only wish a moment with you.”
Petite shook her head. She remembered her mother’s caution, to never be alone with a man. But her mother hadn’t said anything about kings.
“Just to talk,” the King persevered. “Nothing more: on my honor.”
He smiled at Petite and warmth filled her. She nodded consent to Gautier, who quickly slipped out of the room, closing the door behind him.
And then there was silence. Petite didn’t know where to look, what to say. She shifted from one foot to the other. She was in a room alone with the King, a man she had kissed—and most willingly.
The King cleared his throat. “Why don’t you sit here?” He gestured toward the bed. “I’ll stand.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty, but I’m more comfortable this way.”
There was another long moment of silence.
“Please, Mademoiselle, sit down.” He put out his hand. “I insist.”
Petite gathered her skirts and perched on the edge of the bed. The King leaned against the dresser in front of her, his arms crossed over his chest. Petite waited, her heart doing strange flips.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Petite felt her cheeks heat up. “It’s nothing, Your Majesty.” Outside, there was the rumble of carriage wheels, footmen yelling, the clip-clop of horse hooves on the cobbles. She glanced up at him. O God. “You remind me of my father—your smile.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“He was a saint.”
“He’s no longer living?”
“He died just after my seventh birthday,” she said. Ten years ago now—on the King’s own birthday.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen, Your Majesty.” Seventeen years and three days. “I was born in Tours on the sixth of August—”
“A Leo.”
“Yes. In the second year of your reign.”
He regarded her thoughtfully.
I know you…
“Why do you smile?” he asked.
“I have a confession to make, Your Majesty.” Petite knew she should put a guard on her tongue, but she felt agitated, sparkling. An abounding joy was welling within her. There was so much she wanted to tell him. “When I saw you in the meadow at Chambord, I thought you were a poacher.”
He laughed. “Really? I like that.”
“I’ve been reading Virgil’s Eclogues,” she blurted out, and then was mortified by her clumsiness. “It’s similar to Idylls by Theocritus,” she persisted. “I usually prefer the Greek poets, but I took up Eclogues, thinking to improve my Latin, and now I’m quite enraptured by Virgil.”
“‘Now that we are…seated on the…soft grass,’” the King recited slowly, recollecting.
The third Eclogue. Petite knew it well. “‘Now that every field and every tree is budding.’”
“‘And the woods are…’”
“‘…green, Your Majesty…and the year is at its fairest.’” Sing ye!
The King smiled. “I’d like you to call me Louis,” he said.
“I couldn’t, Your Majesty.”
“Please,” he said with a look of inexpressible sweetness.
“Louis,” Petite said softly, and then had to lower her head and breathe.
THEY ONLY EVER talked, but Petite knew it was wrong for them to meet. She yearned for him in a way that frightened her. O God, have pity on me, remove the longings in my heart, protect me from thoughts of sin.
“I am enamored of a married man,” she told her confessor.
“Have you…?”
“No, Father.”
“Yet you desire him.”
She answered with a sob.
“This is a sin: you know that.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Pray for the strength to resist,” the priest said.
“I do, Father.” But she knew she was weakening.
In the early dawn, the mist still clinging to the lowlands, Petite went out into the fields. She sat at the edge of a meadow, seeking wisdom in the silence. Who was she to resist the King’s need? His love—for that was the word, finally, that trembled between them. Who was she to make light of such a gift?
PETITE SUCCUMBED IN the first hot week of autumn. She no longer had the strength to say no, no longer the will to deny fate.
“Don’t ever let me go,” she begged as Louis embraced her. The linens of Gautier’s bed had been newly washed and smelled of sunlight.
“I love you, Louise,” he whispered with stuttering helplessness. “I love you.”
Passages from the Bible came to her, inexplicably and unbidden, as from a song that would not leave, the words not quite known: and the mountain was altogether in smoke, and the mount quaked greatly, and all was thunderings and lightnings, and the noise of trumpets, and Fear not, for the Lord is come to prove you…
Prove you.
“I love you,” she wept, for the pain, and for the pleasure, and for the very great sin she was committing. She was ruined now, truly—and yet made whole. She wept, for she had found her one true love, but he was the King, and forbidden to her.
Part IV
MISLOVE
Chapter Nineteen
O GOD, I AM SORRY for having offended Thee. I dread the pains of Hell, and I resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to do penance, and to amend my life.
I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry.
If I say it enough times, Petite thought that night as she slipped under her covering sheet, maybe it will be true. For in truth she wasn’t sorry in the least. O God.
The next morning, she took her place beside the other maids of honor. As usual, she handed Henriette her slippers, held the mirror and read to her out loud. But she was changed entirely, and surely it was visible.
When Louis emerged from his cabinet to go to Mass, he caught Petite’s eye. She lowered her gaze. O God, forgive me. For feeling so wonderful, for feeling so proud.
Out of the corner of her eye she watched as Henriette kissed Louis on both cheeks—a privilege of the high nobility. Lower nobility were allowed only one royal kiss, one royal cheek. Petite flushed, thinking of their ardent kisses everywhere.
At Mass, Petite prayed for guidance. Did Louis? she wondered. She watched as he knelt before the altar. They were sinners—of that there could be no doubt. She closed her eyes: she must not look at him. She was a fallen woman, no different from a strumpet covered with spittle in the village stocks. Then why did she feel so brilliant, so clear, as if her very soul were alight? Was this the Devil’s magic?
That afternoon, after the hunt (she downed a buck with an arrow), Petite took special care with her toilette, choosing to wear one of the gowns Marguerite had passed on to her, recently altered by Clorine so that it fit. The golden bodice fell below her shoulders and laced tightly at the waist. She felt beautiful.
Athénaïs met her at the door of Henriette’s salon that evening. “You look lovely this evening, Louise.”
“And you,” Petite answered, her skirts swishing softly on the wood parquet. (Where was Louis?) The room was already crowded. The moon was at its fullest and the Princess had announced that there was to be a midnight excursion.
“Indeed. She has a telltale glow,” Nicole said, regarding Petite with enquiring eyes.
“I saw you on His Majesty’s new Irish charger,” Fouquet said, insinuating himself into the conversation. Powder had failed to hide the network of veins on his cheeks.
“Lancelot.” Petite nodded. Tall at almost sixteen hands, the stallion had the markings of a good hunter: his feet were tough and he bent his knees nicely over jumps.
“You ride often with the King, I notice,” Fouquet said, suppressing a sly smile. Fine linen and lace billowed from under his gold-embroidered doublet.
“We all ride with the King, Monsieur,” Petite said. Fouquet was the darling of the Court, a charming, witty and generous man—and cultured, she gathered, patron of playwrights and poets, including Corneille and Scarron. But arrogant, she sensed, and powerful, certainly. She was wary of him. “I and scores of others.”
“She most often rides ahead of His Majesty,” Lauzun piped up, joining the group.
“So I’m told.” Fouquet opened the end of his silver walking stick and inhaled an aromatic—as if his aristocratic sensibilities had been offended by lowly Lauzun.
“I understand that you are planning a fete, Monsieur Fouquet,” Petite said, changing the subject. The currents were dangerous; it was hard to know what to say.
“A magnificent entertainment, I’ve heard,” Athénaïs said, her eyes surveying the assembly.
“With a ballet and fire rockets,” Nicole added as trumpets blared and the doors were thrown open for the King.
For Louis. Petite bowed low as he entered with his wife on his arm.
Engulfed by an absurdly wide ruff, the Queen smiled timidly at the crowd. She was stocky by nature and even more so now that she was heavy with child. Her yellow hair was contained in an old-fashioned hair net and topped by a plain black cap. She frowned back at the three dwarves struggling to carry her train. One, a Pygmy, was only two feet high but perfectly formed. He tumbled and the Queen giggled, her teeth black. The courtiers laughed as well; later, they would ridicule her, Petite knew. Making fun of the Spanish Queen was a popular form of amusement at Court.
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