Enchantress of Paris

by Marci Jefferson

  Lully turned to him. “Sire?”

  The king grinned. “Put her in a shepherdess costume and set her to dancing. She’ll outshine even me.”

  Lully feigned a look of surprise. “Outshine the Sun King? Is that possible?” Our crowd of observers dissolved into laughter.

  Just then Philippe appeared. He bowed, then took hold of my arm. “Sister, shall we dance?”

  The king nodded his consent. My brother led me out, and the courtiers parted. They watched as we began the steps of a sarabande.

  I kept my expression passive. “Why would you take me away from the king?”

  “Were you able to get to Mazarin’s chest of letters?”

  “Not for lack of trying. I assume that means you were unsuccessful, too?”

  “Mazarin assigns me menial tasks, copying letters or adding rows of sums in ledgers.” He sounded frustrated. “They never leave me alone.”

  “The pressure weighs on me, Philippe. What if Mazarin consigns King Louis to marriage with the infanta before I have a chance to expose his affair with the queen mother? I need those letters.”

  “It’s going to be harder to get your hands on them now.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “Why?”

  “While you’ve been twittering around on your toes, our eminent uncle moved to his apartments at the Louvre. To free up space at Palais Mazarin for a particular dignitary to inhabit.”

  “Tell me this dignitary isn’t from Spain.” I let my guard down, pausing in the dance.

  My brother quickly swept me back into step. “No sense getting upset. Don Antonio de Pimentel is here on behalf of King Philip of Spain.”

  “He’ll live at my own house? The humiliation!”

  “Pimentel will never leave his wing. He’ll be concealed from the court’s thousand eyes. Mazarin will come daily to Palais Mazarin to work with him on peace negotiations.”

  “If our uncle moved his offices, does that mean…”

  My brother shrugged. “I don’t know whether he moved his chest of letters. Everything is in disarray.”

  It was too much. “How will we ever get them now?” I couldn’t breathe. I stopped dancing to grab the fan from the gold chain hanging at my waist. Philippe immediately walked me toward a door. Every head turned to follow us, pointing and talking. “They watch me constantly now. Those thousand eyes are ever upon my skin like twisting blades.”

  “Hold up your chin and show them you have the dignity to be queen.”

  I did it, and dropped my fan.

  Armand de la Meilleraye appeared out of nowhere with a goblet of watered wine. He must have run for it as soon as I’d stopped dancing. “Can I get you something? Show you to a chair? Are you well?”

  Lully and Somaize and the Prince of Lorraine and a few other masked faces gathered behind him, acting concerned. Other curious masked faces appeared.

  I was not used to people seeking my favor. I took a courteous sip of the watered wine as King Louis approached. “Perfectly well. Why wouldn’t I be?” I held out my hand.

  King Louis kissed it right there in front of everyone. “Is anything wrong?”

  “My brother told me the most tedious joke about a Frenchman brought before a judge and charged with stabbing someone’s dog with his scabbard. The judge asked why he didn’t just hit the dog with the hilt of his scabbard instead.” I paused.

  Finally the king asked, “What did the man say?”

  “He told the judge that’s exactly what he would have done if the dog had been trying to bite him with his tail end.”

  Laughter rose up like a windstorm, and I let King Louis walk me to the floor for the next dance. My brother departed with a knowing look. Though I danced a courante with enough grace to elicit praise from Lully, I couldn’t stop thinking about those letters. With Pimentel under my own roof, could I afford to wait any longer to make King Louis overthrow my uncle?

  Hours later, we stumbled from the Tuileries carrying half-empty wine bottles to the carriages.

  “We shall sssuit you up in the cossstume of a shepherd girl,” said Lully, slurring his words. “You shall be the ssstar of the Ballet de Raillerie!”

  “Can I carry a great crook to hook the king if he ventures too far away?”

  Some tipsy old marquis in need of favor interrupted. “Can I play one of your lost sheep?” He fell on all fours and cried, “Baah Baah!”

  The king laughed so hard he could hardly climb into the carriage.

  Everyone standing too close barked the exuberant laughter natural to the shallowest of courtiers. Even drunk, none of them sounded genuine.

  * * *

  I was not drunk. My carriage drove me, sober and determined, to Palais Mazarin. We halted in the court behind the cardinal’s carriage and another I didn’t recognize. They are here together. The moon shone full, making my satin gleam as I mounted the steps three at a time. I considered pausing to invoke the moon goddess to deliver the letters to my hands. What would the stars tell me about my quest? I had ignored their position for so long now I couldn’t guess. I was too impatient to stop and slipped quietly inside so as not to stir the servants.

  The whole house was still. The gilded clock in the hall read three of the morning. I kicked off my slippers, gathered up my skirts, and crept to the library. As usual, a sliver of golden candlelight spilled from beneath the door. If the cardinal was still here, there was a chance he hadn’t moved his letters to the Louvre yet. I put my ear to the door and closed my eyes, making out a muffled male voice, presumably Pimentel.

  “Losing their vibrant young Sun King would have been a terrible blow to the French people.”

  “It’s true his recovery was slow,” said my uncle. “But he is well now.”

  “He’s grown strong,” said the man. “With an appetite for more than the physician’s healing broths. He seems to have recovered his appetite for pretty women.”

  My uncle chuckled. “It is no cause for concern. You can assure your master King Philip that King Louis keeps company only with women I trust.”

  “But can you trust your king? Everyone in Spain talks of the mistress who broke up his engagement to Margherita of Savoy.”

  Mazarin laughed. “The mistress you fear is my own beloved niece.” I bit my lips together to keep from snorting at the word “beloved,” and my uncle went on. “She does my bidding.”

  A pause suggested Pimentel’s uncertainty. “I hear he wants company with no other. He reads what she reads. He rides in fields where she rides.”

  “After his grave illness, it was necessary to prove to the French people that King Louis was strong in all ways. He must keep their admiration and faith. I admit I’ve allowed the relationship to carry on overlong, but it was to a political end.”

  My fury mounted with each word. Mazarin’s skill at exploitation seemed boundless.

  “Does King Louis love your niece too much to become another woman’s husband?”

  “King Louis will wed the woman I tell him to. I will keep the girl only as long as necessary.”

  “Why keep her at all?”

  In my mind I saw my uncle’s sly grin. “When you come to the Louvre you will see how every mother slathers her daughter in face paint and stuffs her into low-cut bodices. Every father positions himself near the king waiting for a chance to thrust his girl forward. They would run this country into the ground if I let them close enough to the king to take it over. You will see the purpose my niece serves.”

  “An alliance with Spain will strengthen the king’s position.”

  There was a thumping sound, as if my uncle were pounding Pimentel on the back. “Exactly, good man! We shall work together to achieve it.”

  Footsteps sounded. I hid behind a statue of Circe, gathering my skirts, making myself small. The door creaked, and the two men walked out together. Pimentel carried a taper while Mazarin leaned heavily on a new gold cane, no longer light of foot.

  I forgot my anger. They are leaving the offices empty at
last!

  “Remain here, out of sight,” said my uncle. “We must give gossips no cause for speculation as we draft the preliminary terms of the agreement.”

  “When we have our draft, you will dismiss your niece?”

  “In good time, Monsieur Pimentel,” said my uncle as they turned a corner. Their voices faded to echoes and their light disappeared.

  There was no time to waste. I grabbed a candle from a sconce and slipped in without touching the door. I shoved the taper into the usual candlestick and went straight to the bust of Julius Caesar for the key. I needn’t have bothered. The doors on the bookcase stood slightly open. I scanned the tidy rows of books and found the letter box. The very same letter box. I’m saved! I popped the catch.

  Empty.

  I lit another candle, locked the door, and spent hours dismantling the chamber, searching, then putting everything back. The seal with the letter S repeated four times was nowhere to be found. I searched in vain for letters mentioning the queen mother’s crimes of treason that made the old king despise her. The physician’s ledgers proving the old king had been too ill to sire a child were gone. I tried to find letters addressed to Mazarin in Paris during the year of 1637, but the only sign of his correspondence were scratch marks on the floor where the chest that housed it once stood. At dawn I retreated to bed with nothing.

  There, waiting on my pillow like a threat, was the Colonna book from the cardinal’s letter box. Strife of Love in a Dream.

  CHAPTER 29

  In important affairs we ought not so much apply ourselves to create opportunities as to make use of those which present themselves.

  —FRANÇOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Maxims

  In the afternoon I awoke to the sound of Moréna crushing snail and egg shells with mortar and pestle for my weekly beauty unguent. She would mix them with onion and sulfur and other stinking, secret ingredients when I wasn’t looking.

  “I don’t have time today.” I pulled the covers over my head. “I have to think of what to do.”

  She whipped the covers down and pulled me by the ankle until I had to stand to keep from hitting the floor. “There’s a new man under this roof with an aim to wed your king to Spain. So I’ll tell you what you do. You get up, you make yourself perfect, and you tell the king everything. And it won’t hurt to look beautiful while you tell it.”

  Defeated, I gave in to her ministrations.

  She clucked her tongue at the dark circles beneath my eyes and brushed her foul mixture all over my face. It slowly hardened as I soaked in a rosewater bath. I leaned back while she poured silver vats full of water on my hair so it wouldn’t mess up my mask. She buffed my finger- and toenails until my face mask was crispy and fell off in little flakes. She rinsed my face, then rubbed almond paste and lily water in tiny circular motions over my forehead and cheekbones. I brushed my teeth with orris powder and a silver-handled toothbrush while she put drops of belladonna in my eyes to make them bright. She blew handfuls of violet-scented Venetian talc onto my skin, and by then my hair was dry enough to set. The smell of overheated hair filled the chamber as she moved around me, twisting and rolling long strands, darting back and forth to the hearth to exchange curling rods.

  Philippe walked in as she stitched a stiff beaded stomacher over the front laces of my bodice. “Only the empty letter box is here,” I said to him. “Mazarin took what we need to the Louvre.”

  He put out his palms as if to soothe me. “You know I won’t give up.”

  “I’ll tell the king everything tonight. But he believes only things he can see and touch.”

  “Mazarin left the letter box empty as a message. He knows you’re searching. What if he burned the letters?”

  He was right. Mazarin left the Colonna book for me as a warning. “We have to find something.”

  Philippe ran his hands through his hair, and it seemed he’d aged a decade in the year since our uncle eliminated him as heir. He needed this leverage as much as I did. “The papers in His Eminence’s offices are legion. I could search for weeks and find nothing, yet I’ve not been allowed a single moment.”

  “You have no place in government. No title. No home of your own. No wife and sons. No money. The cardinal will see to it you never have these things unless you help me take him down.”

  His face turned a ruddy red. “Tell me what to look for. Even if I have to sell my soul … I’ll find it.”

  * * *

  Madame Venelle fussed with Hortense’s hair as we rumbled along in my carriage to Bois le Vicomte for the evening’s fête, given by the duc de Richelieu, nephew to my uncle’s predecessor, Cardinal Richelieu, and a man much in need of royal favor.

  “You should have worn it straight, Hortense,” said Venelle. “It’s a mess of curls. Don’t you want to look your best for the dances tonight?”

  “Leave her alone,” I said, trying to shield her while I could. Hortense had agreed to help me this evening. “This is a private party. Only a handful of people will be there.”

  Hortense merely shrugged. She hadn’t bothered with herself much since Savoy left us in Lyon. She had resigned herself to her fate as a Mazarinette, which made my heart heavy.

  We reached the end of the lane, and I climbed from the carriage first. King Louis spotted me before my slippers touched the ground and met me in front of the château. “Hortense is going to help us break away from Venelle so we can be alone,” I whispered.

  He glanced at Venelle, who seemed torn between straightening Hortense’s wrinkled skirts and catching up with me. “We haven’t been alone in far too long.” He winked.

  I pinched his arm. “Not for that. There are things I must tell you.” I caught my sister’s eye and gave her a little nod.

  Hortense immediately put the back of her hand to her forehead and leaned into Venelle. “Oh, I feel faint!”

  Venelle ushered her past us toward the château. The duc de Richelieu called for his wife, who cooed and clucked as she examined Hortense. An overeager Meilleraye appeared with both a blanket and a fan. They disappeared inside. King Louis took my hand, and we ran down a tree-lined path. We kept running, laughing, until the path met the bend of a little ravine. We stopped to catch our breath. The sun was slipping beyond the blue-gray horizon. The twilight and the trees, even in their naked winter form, were just enough to hide us from view of the château. King Louis kissed me. I pressed against him, driven by the heat of our run, and we were soon out of breath again.

  “We must talk,” I said, fighting the urge to draw closer. Even Hortense would soon get sick of playing sick.

  He took a deep breath. “Very well, I will resist devouring you. I couldn’t help but try.”

  I laughed. “You can devour me every night in our wedding bed. But there is an obstacle.”

  “I will cut through this obstacle with my scabbard.” He put a hand on the hilt of his sword in a pose of mock defense.

  “It will take cunning rather than brawn. The obstacle is my uncle.”

  He turned serious. “What has he done now?”

  “He lies, cheats, bribes, and embezzles, and everyone who understands the governance of France sees it. He and his tainted money are why you weren’t elected Holy Roman Emperor. He is why your countrymen revolted in the Fronde wars. He is why Burgundy refused to vote your taxes.”

  “For all the trouble he causes, he manages to turn things favorably. You have to admit his genius.”

  “You are the king. You alone should rule.”

  “What would you have me do? Exile him? He is my godfather.”

  I took a deep breath. “No he isn’t.”

  “I think I know my own godfather, Marie.”

  “He is more than that. Have you never wondered why your mother trusts him so?”

  “He is an able minister.” He pinned me with a hard stare. “What are you getting at?”

  I shook my head. “Have you never heard the rumors?”

  He frowned. “You are not the first woman to fill my ea
r with sour stories about my mother and His Eminence. I warn you now, each of them failed to supplant him.”

  A wave of nausea washed through me. I bent forward.

  King Louis put his hand on my back. “Marie?”

  I understood my reaction—his comment made me jealous. And knowing he had reduced me to a sickly, jealous mistress made me furious. “If you are so willing to sweep me into the category of past conquests, I will call for my carriage.” I started for the path. He caught my arm. I tried to pull away, but my hand hit the jeweled hilt of his scabbard. “Ouch!”

  He let go. “Did I hurt you?”

  We studied the scrape on the back of my hand that would soon make an angry welt.

  “Damn it!” King Louis unsheathed his scabbard. He took a few steps and, grunting with the force of his might, hurled it into the stream. The jewels and steel made a glittering twilight arc until it splashed and sank out of sight. He came back, knelt, and kissed my injured hand. “Forgive me. There is no one like you, Marie. None so bright, wise, nor bold.” He kept kissing my hand and, like no magic I’d ever encountered, it made the pain melt away. But I still had to tell him.

  I raised him up and put my arms around his neck. “They are lovers. Married, some say.”

  He laughed nervously. “A cardinal cannot marry.”

  “Priests cannot marry. He was never a priest.”

  A shadow passed over his features. “Everyone knows a cardinal cannot marry, even if it is not plainly written in law.”

  “Theirs is a union you won’t find documented in a parish register.”

  He sighed. “I admit, I have heard the rumors from—well, it doesn’t matter where I heard them. But that is all they are. Rumors.”

  “Your mother allowed him to act as your father.”

  He pulled away. “Because it was necessary. I was so young when my father died and I became king.”

  “There is evidence that the cardinal is your real father.”

  He took a few steps away. “Show me.”

  “He has hidden the proof, but I will find it.”

  He turned to me, angry. “Do you hear yourself? If what you say is true, I’m no king.”