Enchantress of Paris

by Marci Jefferson

  “The king will choose.” I turned my gaze back to the window, to the sky.

  “You should eat now, my lady.”

  But I had no stomach for it.

  * * *

  I counted the passing hours by the toll of church bells announcing masses throughout Paris while Moréna roamed the Louvre for news. The king couldn’t visit. My sisters urged me to take bread, wine, sips of broth. Unable to eat, I sat in my chair at the window and waited. They bathed me, tended my hair and nails, and avoided talking. Even Venelle respected the cloak of quiet I’d wrapped around myself. On the third night, the king was admitted.

  I tried to stand but had no strength. “My love.”

  He sat at my feet, put his head in my lap. There were times when that gesture would have set my skin to tingling, and I’d have longed for him to slide a hand up my leg. Now his tears dampened my skirt, and I felt only sorrow. He had failed.

  Which meant I had failed. I failed to make him the powerful king he was destined to be. But I knew I was right. He would be the most glorious king of all time. I glanced at the stars. Perhaps if I had read them more carefully, I’d have understood his timing better. But I had let fear steal that opportunity, and now it was too late to be part of his life.

  “My love,” he replied. “Tomorrow you leave for La Rochelle.”

  “La Rochelle tomorrow, the next day Italy.”

  “No,” he said emphatically. “I know for certain they won’t move you, because they agreed to let me come to you at La Rochelle in a fortnight.”

  “When you are on your way south to your wedding.”

  He glanced away. “I will not cease trying to eliminate article twenty-three.” He removed a velvet bundle from his doublet and opened it on my lap. Out rolled a strand of huge, luminous pearls. “They belonged to my aunt the exiled Queen Henrietta Maria of England. She sold them to me.”

  Judging by their size and luster, they were worth a castle. “How did you get the money for this?”

  “I made the cardinal pay.”

  What the cardinal had ought to have been the king’s anyway. I smiled. “They are lovely, but I cannot wear them. They are fit for a queen.”

  “You must wear them. We will be together.”

  I didn’t touch the pearls. “My own Rinaldo, you give me this gift, yet you cannot wed me. What is your intention?”

  “You’ve lost faith.”

  “Don’t degrade me by asking me to be your mistress.”

  He stood and walked behind my chair. As he reached over me to take the pearls from my lap, his lips grazed my neck. “I will never give up.” He brought the pearls to rest, cool and heavy, above my collarbone. He knotted their ribbon behind my neck. “You shouldn’t either.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Moréna rose before dawn and packed. Mazarin arrived, standing in my doorway with a stream of servants trickling in from behind him like an army of ants. They disassembled my room, carting carpets and furniture down to the wagons.

  Mazarin leaned on his gold cane. “Here is how things will be.”

  “I won’t listen.” I turned away.

  “Because of the hold you still have on the king, I am handling you gently. The more intelligent side of you must know he is the only reason you are still alive.”

  Bile rose in my throat.

  “The king will write you letters. He will visit. He will even tinker with plans to help you escape and elope. You will ignore him. This relationship ends when you leave the Louvre. You will make a marriage alliance of my choice.”

  I should have let Moréna poison him. “I will not marry another.”

  “Today is your fall from favor. The king will marry, and you will be an outcast. Be wise. Accept my marriage alliance for you. Salvage the tatters of your life … or accidents may befall you.”

  Another threat? I glanced at his cane. “How is your health, Uncle? Do your bones ache as I warned you they would if you ever hurt me? Does your body wither?”

  He only stared.

  “As you steal our happiness, so shall you sicken,” I whispered. “You shall not live to see France made great.”

  He turned to go, ignoring my words. “The queen mother insists you should say farewell to King Louis. Find him in his apartments.” With that, he limped out.

  I stood in the empty chamber until Moréna nudged me. She fluffed my hair and straightened my skirts. “Hurry if you wish to see the king!” She pushed me through the doorway.

  My silk slippers made no sound on the stairs, the marble tiles of the gallery, or the parquet floor in the antechambers. My slow steps didn’t rustle my skirts, didn’t bounce my curls.

  Every courtier and noble man or woman living near Paris had come. They clutched together in the galleries and crowded the chambers. They did not sneer. There were no frowns, no whispers. No fluttering fans or haughty looks. I had fallen. I had the king’s favor, and I had still fallen. I was like each of them: at Cardinal Mazarin’s mercy. Footmen opened both doors to the king’s bedchamber. I walked in, and they closed the courtiers out.

  The king sat at the table, eyes swollen and red. “Is it time?”

  I didn’t speak.

  He stood and handed me a leather purse of coins. “I have secured messengers and will write every day. Please tell me you’ll write back.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I will see you in a fortnight. If I can delay the peace treaty, Mazarin swears he will let you choose your next residence. You are to choose Brouage.” He waited for me to answer, and continued when I didn’t. “Brouage is by the sea. If Mazarin sends men to take you into Italy, use this money to escape by boat. For God’s sake, do nothing to provoke him.” He studied my face. “Do you hear me? Tell me you understand.”

  The doors swung open again. The time had come.

  King Louis pressed his eyes, and I knew he was hiding tears.

  “Sire,” I finally said, “you weep, you are king, and yet I am leaving.”

  He didn’t respond. He slowly lowered his hands. He avoided looking at me but gave me his arm. Together we retraced my steps through the courtiers. This time they lowered themselves, curtsying into satin skirt puddles or presenting their legs and bending at the waist as the king and I passed. We walked to the Cour Carrée, where carriages waited.

  From the steps I glanced up at the façade of the Louvre and saw faces peeping down from every window. Mazarin glowered from his carriage. Hortense, Marianne, and Venelle climbed into the one designated to carry us. The world seemed strangely still. As if we were in a painting, no church bells tolled, no birds sang. It was as quiet as a theater full of spectators watching the end of a tragic play.

  Tears ran down my king’s face. Our eyes met.

  What is left to say? I turned, climbed into my carriage, and didn’t look back. I put my head in Hortense’s lap. We started rolling, and I heard myself cry out, “It is over. I am abandoned.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Take a toad, whip it, and make it swallow arsenic, and then kill it in the silver vessel that you want to poison.

  —MARIE BOSSE,

  accused witch and condemned poisoner burned alive in Paris in 1679

  The rain started falling before we were out of Paris. It fell on the commoners who stood along the road watching our departure. They didn’t sling mud. They didn’t shout hatred for Italians. They let the rain pelt their hair and their smocks. Did they feel the ache of lovers torn apart? Did they love their king so much that they would have accepted me as his choice? We rumbled past the city gates. The rain no longer fell on people but on meadows and trees and fluffy sheep. We must have stopped at Vincennes, for my uncle separated from our train there. But I was hardly present. My mind, my strength, my whole being had dripped from my body. Venelle complained of discomfort. I felt none. Marianne huffed with boredom. I felt none. Hortense clung to my hand, squeezing it every once in a while in some gesture of affection. I felt none. I could’ve slit my very wrists and felt nothing.

/>   We made it as far as Notre Dame de Cléry. Town officials gathered us beneath the shadow of the great basilica and the relentless drizzle for a welcome harangue, but I hardly heard. The Cardinal’s Guards directed us to the King’s House across the street, a long white building in the Italian style.

  Moréna arrived to ready me for bed. “My lady…” She looked concerned.

  “I failed you. I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “I know I’m right about you, but I must have been wrong about the road we would travel.”

  I wanted to assure her we would find some new means of gaining the freedom she deserved, but no words would come.

  “When did you last eat?” she asked.

  I crawled onto the bed, looking forward to being alone. “I don’t want anything.”

  “Nonsense. Your uncle sent his cooks, and I’m fetching them up.”

  She was gone before I could protest, and returned within the quarter hour with a silver dish of ham broth. She propped herself behind me and put it to my lips. The savory and sweet hit my tongue, and my stomach growled for more. She fed me the bowlful, and that was all I could take. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  She blew out the candle and settled on the floor pallet. I lay motionless, wishing I hadn’t eaten, too exhausted to get up and purge myself. I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to waste away into nothing until my soul could separate from my body and fly up to the heavens, free from the cares and the sorrows and the rain and the disappointments of this life.

  * * *

  I could not wake up. Hortense’s voice came as if my ears were underwater. She said I had a letter from the king. A great long letter with the king’s seal, brought by his private messenger. I fought to sit up, but my limbs were heavy logs. It alarmed me. I tried to speak, to order them to read the letter, but my voice would not sound. I tried to scream! But my body wouldn’t obey. All I managed was a flicker of my eyelids, long enough to see Moréna and Hortense leaning over me. One of them shook me, but then everything went murky and soundless for a long time.

  Thoughts drifted in the darkness. Had I died? Had I made my wish come true and sent my soul soaring to the heavens? I searched frantically for the stars, but there was only black expanse. I waited an age for my father’s shadowy phantoms to grab me, but they never came. I felt heat and looked for hell’s fire, but I was still drifting in obscurity. Once I thought I saw my mother’s ghost. Voices seeped through saying “fever,” “don’t move her,” and “don’t tell the king.”

  But I wanted to tell the king. I struggled to scream, “Fetch the king!” But I couldn’t, and fell into the darkness again. How long could I linger?

  Hands lifted me. Opened my mouth. Put something tangy and warm on my tongue and rubbed my throat. A voice said “poison,” and I welcomed it. If only it would speed my release.

  * * *

  I saw red that hurt my eyes. I opened my lids and the red gave way to bright white. It took several blinks, but I soon made out a chamber. I was on a strange bed, and Hortense sat in a chair beside me.

  “My lady!” cried Moréna. She dropped a heap of linens and rushed to me.

  Hortense jumped up. “Drink this. You must drink, Marie.”

  I tried to ask her what it was, to decline if it wasn’t the poison that would end this suffering, but my lips only twitched.

  They took it as consent and shoveled the liquid in. “It is broth from our own cook this time,” said one of them. “We mixed it with orviétan.”

  An antipoison.

  * * *

  The next time I opened my eyes it was dark, with the dim flicker of a candle on a nearby table. Hortense was gone, and Moréna slept on the floor. There had been a letter. I looked around, seeing none. Hadn’t someone said the king wrote me a letter?

  “M—” But my voice sounded like air.

  In the chair where Hortense had been, there sat a flask. Was it the poison? The antipoison? My mouth felt like a dry creek bed, and I didn’t care what it contained. I was obviously on the mend. It took every ounce of resolve to reach out and grab the flask. Could that hand be mine? So thin and trembling? It obeyed and brought the flask to my lips. Watered wine poured out, wetting my face, pooling on my tongue. I swallowed what I could before I passed out.

  * * *

  A great commotion went up in my chamber. A basin scraping the floor. Pots clanging. Female voices. I opened my eyes. Venelle carried my feet while someone hoisted me by the armpits, dragging my limp form out of bed. They lowered me into the tub, and my chemise floated off my skin to the surface of jasmine-scented water.

  “She is awake,” Hortense said. She appeared beside me with bowl and spoon in hand. I opened my mouth for the soup she fed me.

  Venelle massaged and stretched one of my legs. “You must get well, child.”

  How long had it been?

  Moréna poured water over my hair and scrubbed my head. It felt luxurious.

  “We thought he killed you!” blurted Marianne. She handed a vat of water to Moréna.

  “Hush,” said Venelle. “It was just a fever.” But the look on her face spoke of uncertainty.

  Hortense said, “After Moréna fed you that ham broth, our uncle’s cook disappeared. You wouldn’t wake up.”

  Marianne refreshed the vat of water from a pot in the fireplace and handed it to Moréna again. “The king went raving mad when he learned you were ill. He accused the queen of poisoning you. Everyone heard him.”

  Venelle gestured for Marianne to be silent, then spoke gently to me. “The cardinal sent a message saying you must get well. He comes today to check on you himself. He is bringing his physicians.”

  I laughed, and each of them paused. “His Eminence doesn’t want me well any more than he wants me on the throne.”

  They stared, probably more shocked that I could speak than at what I’d said.

  “Well, wash me and feed me. I’ve lost the battle, but I’ve no wish to give him the satisfaction of my death.”

  * * *

  King Louis had sent two dozen letters over a fortnight. I read them slowly, savoring his words of longing, hope, reassurance. He stayed at Chantilly so the court wouldn’t see his tears. When he learned they’d been concealing my illness from him, he rushed to his mother at Fontainebleau and accused her of trying to kill me. He informed Mazarin that if I died or disappeared, he’d figure out a way to confiscate Mazarin’s property. He’d signed each letter:

  Do not lose faith in he who truly loves you,

  L

  But it was over. Wasn’t it? Perhaps it was just the weakness in my body from prolonged illness, but I had no strength for faith. I slept, and in the evening awoke to sounds of the officials welcoming Mazarin outside. I shoved the letters under my pillow.

  He came to my room leaning heavily on his cane. “You are awake.”

  I grinned. “And alive. Sorry to disappoint you.”

  He frowned. Oh, how he hated me. “You must write to the king at once.”

  “Must I?”

  He paused. “Yes.”

  I looked about. “Where are your physicians?” There was a pause. “You brought no physicians because you know my illness was no illness. What did you learn from your collection of occult books besides poisons? Your enemies would love to know.”

  He looked away. “You talk nonsense.”

  “I talk from a position of advantage. If I don’t write, the king will come here, and I will tell him things. The king will prove himself his own master, and you can’t have that.”

  “Write a neutral letter of reassurance, or I will put Olympia in his bed.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “She knows how to blur his judgment. She will confuse and arouse him with her potions and destroy what he feels for you.”

  Had I not been lying down I might have fainted.

  “Write. My courier will take your missive to the king at dawn.” He left.

  I closed my eyes. Could I persevere? If I could send a priv
ate message warning Louis against Olympia, I could confirm the accusation of poisoning since the cardinal brought no physicians. Hadn’t Louis given me money to hire messengers? But he had also advised me not to provoke Mazarin. The fatigue crept in before I could work it out.

  * * *

  I wrote King Louis a neutral letter of reassurance just before dawn.

  CHAPTER 42

  The cardinal stayed with our party, but I remained in my chambers. Venelle stretched and massaged my legs every day. Moréna bathed me. Hortense fed me. I slowly regained my strength. But not enough to face the cardinal. I would surely lose any battle with him.

  When I could again endure travel, we resumed our journey to La Rochelle by way of Chambord, where we stayed a few days at Gaston, duc d’Orléans’s, deserted château.

  I did not like the Château de Chambord. With its keep and huge corner towers, it was certainly beautiful. Gaston had done what he could afford to restore it, but it still crumbled and echoed like a forgotten lover—a reminder of Gaston’s defeat that punctuated my loneliness. Marianne and Hortense ran up and down the double-spiral staircase designed by the old master Leonardo da Vinci, and I sat by the door, staring down the walk toward the moat.

  If the cardinal hoped our travels would stop the king’s letters, he was disappointed. Private messengers arrived almost daily. If they missed a day, they came the next day with two letters. One day the messenger brought a total of five letters of five pages each and a miniature portrait of His Majesty.

  “He sent Marie a picture of himself?” asked Marianne, breathless from her race down the fancy staircase.

  “It’s a marked sign of favor,” Hortense answered.

  I tucked in into my bodice close to my heart. His Majesty’s love was the only thing that kept it beating.

  * * *

  By the time we reached Poitiers, my uncle started showing outright alarm. “How many letters did the king send you today?” he asked, bursting into the bedchamber I shared with Hortense. There was no castle to house us here, only the hôtel of some minor nobility who’d welcomed us with looks of pity.