The courtiers surged out into the night, wending their way through fragrant parterres lit by thousands of beeswax candles, and down an avenue of spruce trees to a terrace at the base of a fountain. There, chairs had been set in front of a large platform.
Petite and Nicole took their positions behind Madame’s litter, next to the thrones set up for the King and Queen Mother—and Fouquet. Now and again Petite glanced at Louis. He was jovial with his host: playing a part, she knew—and playing it chillingly well.
After an overture, Monsieur de Molière appeared on the stage in street clothes. With frenetic despair, he apologized, bowing before the King. “Some of my actors have fallen ill, Your Majesty, and I’ve not had time to prepare a divertissement.”
There was a stir of consternation, when suddenly there were grinding mechanical sounds and a pastoral landscape magically appeared. In the midst of water cascades, an enormous rock broke open, revealing a shell within, out of which stepped a long-haired nymph. The audience cheered and applauded.
“The heavens, the earth, all of nature stands ready to bow to the King’s command,” the nymph proclaimed, as dancing dryads, fauns and satyrs emerged from the trees.
The play—called The Bores—soon had everyone howling with laughter as first one and then another of the Court’s more notorious fools were lampooned. Lauzun’s donkey bray sounded with each roar of recognition. At one point, when the joke was clearly on Gautier, the old man stood and made a dignified bow. Everyone cheered and hooted.
Between each act, they were entertained by light ballets. Petite had never seen such a spectacle, such a brilliant melding of theater, dance, music and song.
After the entertainment, the guests returned to the château for more music and refreshment. In the grand withdrawing room, stalls had been set up like a market. Ladies swarmed as trinkets were handed out: jewel-embellished pocket mirrors, musk-scented pigskin gloves, lace mantillas, fans of carved ivory. Saddle horses and diamonds were awarded to the highest nobility.
Petite excused herself from the party to go to the necessary set up in Henriette’s suite. Her courses had started, at last (she’d been worried). She lingered for a moment in the quiet of the library—taking in the extensive collection of manuscripts, treatises, rare books—and then headed for the stairs.
“Ah, there you are, Mademoiselle de la Vallière.”
Petite turned to see Monsieur Fouquet rushing to catch up with her.
“May I help you?” He placed his gloved hand lightly on her sleeve. “Is there anything you desire?” he asked with the gracious manner of one born to a very old family.
“No, thank you,” Petite said evenly. “This is a marvelous fete, Monsieur.”
Fouquet pressed his hands to his heart. “I am devoted to His Majesty, Mademoiselle,” he said, his voice unctuous. “I sincerely wish to please him,” he added, his eyes on hers.
“Of course,” Petite said, a giveaway tremor in her voice. She dipped her head and turned away, hurrying up the stairs in a panic of confusion. The words had been intended for Louis, she well knew.
After midnight, everyone returned to the gardens, now dim in the weak light of a third-quarter moon. Louis, the Queen Mother and Fouquet mounted the royal carriage and proceeded to the center of the garden, just above the cascades. Musketeers sounded their trumpets and fire rockets were set. The horses of the royal carriage bolted—mon Dieu!—as the night sky lit up like day, the landscape showered in blazing images of fleurs-de-lis, stars, the King’s name spelled out in fire.
A swarm of footmen quickly quieted the panicked horses. Louis jumped from the carriage, followed by Fouquet. The Queen Mother stuck her head out of the coach and smiled bravely, at which everyone cheered.
“Morbleu!” Nicole exclaimed, grabbing Petite’s hand.
A mechanical whale-like shape was moving slowly down the canal, fireworks exploding from its belly, sending streams of fire across the water. Rockets shot up from the dome of the château, a grotto nearby exploded into light and the garden became a vault of fire. Louis stood watching the sky, his face illuminated. Fouquet came up beside him and put his hand on Louis’s shoulder, as if he were a familiar.
As if he were his superior, Petite thought.
The two men—the most powerful in the kingdom—were now silhouetted against the light of a carriage lantern. Louis, tall and in the bloom of youth, towered over the distinguished Fouquet. Slowly, Louis removed the minister of finance’s hand and put his arm around the aristocrat, giving him a familiar shake. Their laughter resounded.
The display ended in a shower of ash, and the acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air. Petite pulled her shawl around her shoulders, chilled in spite of the heat. You don’t understand, Louis had told her. Yet she knew her history well: she knew kings were toppled.
RETURNING TO FONTAINE BELEAU the next day, everyone saw the royal château in a new light. The vista was hemmed in. Many of the fountains stood dry, and the two that had water were stagnant, covered with green scum. Where was the magic? Where the grandeur? Indeed, the château appeared shabby, a worn remnant of glory long gone.
In Henriette’s withdrawing room that night, all anyone could talk about was Fouquet’s marvelous fete, the brilliance of the entertainment, the elegance of the architecture. The canals, the cascades, the ornamental gardens. The food, the gifts, the cost.
“Twenty million livres is rather a lot to spend on one night,” noted Claude-Marie.
“I heard one hundred thousand.”
“Either way, it would be a lot to spend in a year,” Yeyette said.
“Did you see the purse of gold set on Madame’s dressing table?”
“The Queen Mother got one as well.”
“With the exact same number of coins,” Henriette said, gloating.
With new respect, everyone bowed to the ground as the minister of finance was announced. Even Henriette’s spaniel Mimi was attentive, sniffing at Fouquet’s boots.
Shortly after, Louis appeared, and even he showed Fouquet marked esteem. Is it possible he is pleased with him now? Petite wondered. She knew it could not be. She was beginning to see how skilled Louis was in the theatrical arts. She opened her fan to the side painted with an image of the Apollo. This was their signal. She longed for a private moment—a moment with the real Louis. It unnerved her to see him so false.
But Louis was preoccupied, and private moments were difficult to arrange, so it wasn’t until the end of August that at last they were able to meet. Louis seemed distant, tense.
“I must make a trip west,” he told Petite after congress—a rather businesslike procedure this time. “To Nantes.”
Petite found that curious. Fouquet’s island—the fortress of Belle-Île—was not far from Nantes.
“The women are not to come,” he said.
WITH A FEELING OF foreboding, Petite watched from a window as Louis departed, surrounded by his men and musketeers—his small flying camp.
The château was ominously silent during the long hours that followed. Without the sound of the men’s spurs on stone, their boisterous jests, it seemed a world abandoned. “Only us girls,” Henriette said that evening, pouring out a glass of her husband’s best brandy.
“THE MINISTER OF FINANCE has been arrested,” Henriette announced nine days later, her face pale. Petite helped her to the daybed as Nicole measured out laudanum. “He’s in prison,” she said, taking the dose and then bursting into tears. “Dear Fouquet.”
The news raced through the château. Minute by minute, courtiers arrived, many with questions, and a few with answers.
“Fouquet’s house was ransacked and the door sealed,” one of the Queen’s maids reported.
“A manuscript was found behind a mirror—plotting an uprising against the King.”
“That can’t be,” the Duchesse de Navailles said.
“I heard that poisons were found in his house,” Claude-Marie said.
“That’s doubtful,” Athénaïs said.
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Petite listened quietly, her thoughts in turmoil. I’m not the dupe he imagines, Louis had said. She understood why the minister of finance had been arrested. The senior aristocrat had mistakenly assumed that he could carry on in the corrupt ways of the past. His arrest was just—Petite believed that—yet it was unnerving.
“His wife is under arrest as well. She was sent to Limoges—”
“In her condition?”
“—with only fifteen louis-d’ors in her purse, poor thing.”
“Everyone’s property was confiscated—Fouquet’s wife’s, his sister-in-law’s. Vaux, of course.”
“Even Suzanne du Plessis-Bellièvre was arrested, her correspondence seized.”
Petite was horrified to imagine Fouquet’s bumbling spy in prison.
“Imagine what His Majesty will do when he reads through Fouquet’s correspondence,” Henriette said weakly, stretched out on her bed as Nicole and Petite fanned her.
At this, a number of women paled, and in the days that followed, several quietly left Court, anxious, no doubt, to destroy all traces of an association with the former minister of finance.
LOUIS RETURNED ON the ninth of September to a different world, his Court no longer gay. Now everyone courted solitude. Devotional prayers and pilgrimages to shrines had taken the place of evenings at the gaming tables.
He was a different king now, in any case. He had shown his strength, punished corruption—yet peace did not reign. With the confiscation of Fouquet’s correspondence, a truth had been revealed that shocked even him. It was as if a rock had been lifted, revealing a teeming underground world of trysts and treasonous dealings.
Turbulent weather ruined crops all across the land, and a famine was predicted. Fear tightened purses, and suddenly money was scarce. As the Queen’s belly grew, Petite and Louis lay twined, his cries of release drowned by horrendous storms.
THE QUEEN’S LABOR began in the early hours of All Saints’ Day, a good omen. The château came alive with torchlight, courtiers rushing to the Queen’s chamber to witness the birth.
Clorine, up by candle, helped Petite into her gown, pinning her braids up under her nightcap. Petite poured some water into a china bowl and rinsed her hands, running them wet over her face. She felt sluggish, heavy on her feet. O Mary, may his baby be well, she prayed.
Eight days earlier, she had persuaded Louis to forsake their clandestine afternoons in Gautier’s chamber until after the birthing. He needed to prepare for Confession, take Communion, commend his soul to God. So much had gone awry, she feared the worst. The fall weather had been stormy, ruining the harvests throughout the land. It was only the first of November, and already peasants were starving, swarming at the gates.
When had the gods stopped smiling on them? Had it been with the arrest of Fouquet—the arrest and ruin of Fouquet’s wife, his brothers and sisters, his friends and supporters, his innumerable spies?
Had that been the turning point? Or had it been earlier, Petite wondered, taking up a candle—when they had become sinners? Or earlier even still? She’d had a dream of monsters swimming in dark waters. Gone to the river. Had a demon put that in her thoughts? Was the Devil following her even now? O God, I beg you: the Queen is innocent.
“Pray, Clorine,” she said at the door. “Pray for the Queen.”
“Wait,” Clorine said, taking the simple rosary hung over the betony statue of the Virgin. “You’ll need this.”
THERE WAS QUITE a congestion in the antechamber to the Queen’s rooms. Petite spotted Athénaïs, leaning against a pillar. “Are you all right?” Petite asked, alarmed by how pale Athénaïs looked.
“It’s stifling in there.” Athénaïs smiled wanly.
The Queen could be heard screaming. Mercy.
“Les douleurs de l’enfantement,” Athénaïs said, raising her eyes to the ceiling. “It’s not going well for her.”
Petite followed Athénaïs into the dark and airless birthing chamber, packed with courtiers staggering about in a sleep-deprived state, wigs askew. She scanned the crowd, looking for Louis. She spotted him sitting in an armchair to one side of the Queen’s bed. The Queen was writhing in agony as the midwife, a stout woman of middle age with a pockmarked face, applied steaming cloths to her great belly.
“The baby’s posterior presented first,” Athénaïs whispered, pressing her way through the loudly praying courtiers.
Petite’s heart sank. Women died from such a birthing.
“The midwife almost had apoplexy. One of the Queen’s maids fainted and Claude-Marie upheaved. Everyone’s dropping like flies.”
Petite saw Yeyette and Philippe, but where was Henriette? “I should see to Madame.”
“She’s already retired,” Athénaïs said over the Queen’s piercing screams. “She couldn’t take it.”
Petite held back.
“Don’t worry—Nicole is with her. Stay: we may need you. You’ve foaled horses, haven’t you?” she asked with a wink.
Petite followed Athénaïs through the crowd to the Queen’s bed. Louis looked up, startled to see her. Petite lowered her eyes and made a deep reverence to the Queen, now silent and panting.
She looks like a girl, Petite thought, like a mere child with a giant belly. Her face was flushed, her eyes bulging. She clutched her amulet, the dried heart of the deer that had been slayed on a hunt. The midwife, her hands soaked in oil of white lily, was stroking, kneading, pushing and plying her—trying to turn the infant around.
O Mary, I implore you. Petite clasped her rosary.
“The baby has turned, Your Majesty,” the midwife announced at last. The welcome news reverberated throughout the crowd.
But even so, challenges remained, Petite knew. The Queen was practically a dwarf and the baby locked within. The midwife gave the Queen an enema, but it failed to widen the birth canal. Eel liver powder failed to alleviate her pain. A sneezing powder only produced convulsions. Even ergot fungus did not give the exhausted Queen sufficient strength to push the baby out.
But strength for yelling? Yes, this the little Queen had aplenty. Petite was in awe of her vocal strength, the violence of her expression. The timid young woman threw herself violently from side to side with amazing vigor, her screams rattling the horn window panes. “No quiero dar parto, quiero morir!” she cried out in Spanish with each contraction. I don’t want to give birth, I want to die!
“Hold her down,” the midwife barked at Athénaïs, who appeared senseless with fear.
“Santa Virgen!” the Queen cursed in Spanish, shaking free.
“Get her to drink this.” The midwife thrust a glass of milky substance into Athénaïs’s hands.
Athénaïs spooned some into the Queen’s mouth but the Queen spat it back in her face. “Quiero morir!”
Petite placed her hand on the Queen’s damp, cold forehead and turned to Louis. He looked terrified. “Your Majesty,” she said softly, “perhaps it would help if you told her that this fluid will ease her pain.”
Louis stared at Petite, dumbfounded. “Esto facilitará tu dolor,” he repeated, standing over his wife.
“Touch her,” Petite whispered. “It will calm her.” The King’s holy touch.
Louis placed his hand on the Queen’s shoulder and she quieted…but dangerously so, her breathing becoming irregular.
As priests approached, droning sonorously, Athénaïs spooned the liquid into the Queen’s mouth.
She stopped breathing.
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
Everyone stared. Had they lost her?
Then the Queen gasped, as if drowning.
The midwife was checking the Queen’s pulse when her assistant called out. There it was—a slippery, bloody infant emerging from between the Queen’s legs. The nobility craned their necks to see the genitals.
Louis lowered his head, praying.
“A prince, Your Majesty,” the midwife said, deftly cutting the cord.
“Glory to the Father, to the Son and to the
Holy Spirit,” Louis prayed out loud, taking his naked and squalling son in his hands.
Petite blinked back tears and joined with all the courtiers as they echoed the King, “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.”
“Amen,” the courtiers said, falling to their knees. “O Lord, let us rejoice.”
“Un príncipe sano, Your Highness,” Athénaïs whispered to the Queen, who lay weeping in a pool of blood. “A healthy prince.”
“Gracias,” the Queen whispered, then fainted dead away.
The squalling baby was cleaned, wrapped, blessed yet again and presented to the King. The great balcony doors were opened to a riot of cheering, ringing bells and fire rockets. The courtiers parted, heads bowed, hats pressed over their hearts, as Louis stepped out onto the balcony with the infant in his arms. A prince!
Amen, my love, Petite prayed silently, weak with relief.
Chapter Twenty-One
THE WEATHER THAT CHRISTMAS season in Paris was wet and gray. A chill came off the dank stone walls of the Tuileries Palace that no amount of burning wood could ease. Petite’s garret room was so cold, the water in the wash basin froze. Clorine had to jab it with her finger to break the film of ice. She was adding salt rocks to it when there was a familiar tap-tap at the door.
Gautier stood in the dim hallway, a wall sconce candle illuminating his lively eyes. He was wrapped in layers of wool, bringing to mind a swaddled baby. “I must be quick,” he said, closing the door behind him to keep out the cold. Under his arm he clasped a cloth-wrapped bundle. “I’ve come to deliver His Majesty’s invitation to Mademoiselle de la Vallière to join a hunting excursion in the country.”
Clorine frowned. “In this weather?”
“When?” Petite asked. She’d had little chance to see Louis since the birth of the Dauphin and the Court’s return to Paris. Gautier had been assigned a room next to one of the Queen Mother’s valets, so meeting there hadn’t been a possibility.
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