Enchantress of Paris
Page 30
EPILOGUE
Madrid
February 1689
Just look at the four Mancini sisters: what wandering star rules them!
—MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ in a letter
The hour had advanced from late night to early morn at my casa in Madrid while Olympia and I reminisced about Paris.
Olympia had nearly emptied a bottle of wine, and now packed Virginia tobacco into a long, slender clay pipe. “Do you regret it?”
“I regret losing the king,” I said. And I often wondered if he’d felt torn in half the rest of his life as I had. “But I do not regret leaving.”
She nodded. “You would have hated being his mistress. He isn’t constant to any of them for very long.”
I had known it would be so. His palm lines had warned me. “When King Louis didn’t have the strength to make me his queen … it changed us.”
“He was never truly happy again.” She blew smoke rings into the air. “Oh, I tried. Heaven knows every woman at court tried her utmost to please him. Any pleasure he found was fleeting, gilded by his new palace at Versailles and ceremony, tedious pomp, nothing substantial. I often think he spent so outrageously to fill the void you left. You’d hardly recognize Paris with all the changes he made, all clean and lit up at night.”
I stared past the smoke to the window. The dark sky paled with the imminent sunrise.
Olympia watched me carefully. “You do regret leaving.”
I shook my head. “I threw such glorious pageants and parades with Colonna in Rome and never had such fun as during our carnivals in Venice. No palazzo was more opulent than ours, with our opera and our artists. Colonna granted my every whim.”
“Why did you leave Colonna? You caused more scandal in your escapades to escape him than you ever would have as the French king’s mistress.”
I’d worn ermine in Rome, dressed myself as the sorceress Circe, the goddess Venus, and the witch Armida for portraits and parades. I’d published my own astrological books, patronized opera singers and painters. I’d been myself, but never truly free. I crossed my arms. “He’s a murderer.”
She gaped.
“Don’t look so surprised. He is Italian. I might have overlooked it … if he hadn’t tried to murder me. He wanted me for my gifts, but he didn’t realize how strong I’d be. Colonna decided he wanted a less stubborn wife, and I decided I wanted to stay alive.” Olympia said nothing. “King Louis kept his word. Everywhere I roamed since leaving Colonna, the ambassadors and nobles knew the king supported me. It enabled me to stay one step ahead of my husband’s assassins. But that is a story for another day.”
Olympia put aside her spent pipe, and we walked through my front hall.
“Men think they can beat and mistreat wives,” Olympia said with a frown.
She meant poor Hortense. I was glad I hadn’t been in Paris to witness Meilleraye abuse her, grateful she had escaped him, and delighted when she moved to England. Her old admirer King Charles had showered her with gifts, shared her bed, and used his reclaimed crown to shield her from Meilleraye. “Hortense came to Rome and helped me run away from Colonna. You should have seen her in men’s breeches, a pistol in each hand, ready to kill anyone who tried to stop us.”
Olympia laughed. “You should have seen Marianne and me at the witchcraft trial in Paris a few years ago. The Chambre Ardente was draped in black, alight with torches and candles. The tribunal charged Marianne and her lover with poisoning her husband. She walked in with her lover holding her right hand and her husband holding her left. The charge couldn’t stand!”
Philippe fared best. With a rich wife and houses in Rome and Paris, he helped us when he could. Each of my sisters had not only paid the price for our family name, but for taking control of our own destinies. “Our stories are told in broadsheets all over Europe. Women talk of us. They see how we defend ourselves, liberate ourselves, and wonder if they ought to do the same.”
Olympia snorted. “Nonsense. The world will call Hortense a king’s whore and Marianne a pagan.”
I laughed. “You’re the poisoner.”
She pointed. “You’re an astrologer!”
We leaned on each other, shaking with silent laughter.
Finally Olympia embraced me. “You carry the loss of the king’s love within you. I am sorry for my part in it.”
I nodded.
“You shared a prediction with me tonight,” Olympia whispered. “So I leave you with one of my own. One that will lighten your heart. A messenger. Shortly after dawn you will know you were never forgotten by the man to whom you gave your heart.”
I gave her a questioning look. She turned, disappearing into the carriage. I was too tired and too sad to pursue it. I watched the carriage disappear down the street. Lord, keep her safe.
I returned to the parlor and collapsed on the divan. Moréna brought me a cup of hot Spanish chocolate. I finished it just as the sun touched the terra-cotta tiles of Madrid’s rooftops. That’s when I heard the carriage. I stood.
Normally I wouldn’t receive visitors at this hour. But Olympia’s prediction rang in my mind.
Moréna entered the parlor. “It is the French ambassador.” She straightened my skirts and smoothed my hair.
I nodded. “Show him in.”
Comte de Rebenac, the French ambassador to Madrid, presented his leg and bowed, sweeping his hat so low it brushed the floor. “Constabless Colonna, you are gracious to admit me so early in the morning.”
“Stand, sir, for I am most anxious to hear you.”
He gripped his hat nervously. “I come in the name of His Royal Highness, King Louis the Fourteenth of France. Because he considers you his cousin and because of the esteem he holds for you, he bid me to warn you of measures being taken against your sister Olympia, the comtesse de Soissons.” He spoke softly. “The Spanish Guard is preparing to arrest her and charge her with poisoning the Spanish queen. Some suspect her of witchcraft.”
I relaxed. “Thank His Royal Highness for this generous warning. I am aware of the situation and have taken necessary precautions.”
He seemed stunned. “How did you know?”
I glanced out the window to the brightening sky, where my stars had faded for the day. “I have my sources.”
He nodded, but seemed hesitant.
“Is there something else?”
“Indeed.” He pulled a fold of black velvet from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to me.”
I didn’t open it. “What is this?”
He cleared his throat. “A message,” he said. “One so delicate the king dared not put it to paper, but rather entrusted it to me. He bids you to take my next words as if they were from his own lips.”
My breath caught. I sat abruptly.
The poor man cleared his throat again. “It has been a goodly number of years since your relationship with the king ended. He bids you to know that he still thinks of you every day. When constructing a palace, he considers your tastes. When he hears the most moving music, his thoughts turn to how you used to dance. When he reads something interesting, he longs to discuss it with you.”
I slowly opened the folds of velvet. There in the morning sun, a frame of diamonds sparkled like so many precious memories. Within it was a miniature portrait of the king himself. To receive a portrait of the king was a symbolic mark of favor.
“He says no other woman can beat him in a horse race. He will never return to Lyon, for he would feel the loss of you too acutely. He cannot live at the Louvre because your image haunts every chamber. He rules in a manner that he hopes would make you proud.”
I held the portrait aloft so my tears wouldn’t stain it. He didn’t look the same, but he had aged well. Neither of us was the same. We could not go back, but we would always treasure what we had shared.
“And, my lady, above all, he wanted me to tell you that yours was the brightest star he ever had the privilege to love.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
King Louis XIV is known f
or having a string of beautiful mistresses, yet he never expressed such an outpouring of emotion for anyone other than Marie Mancini. Some historians believe she was the one true love of his life. None of the numerous letters they wrote to each other were preserved. Every mention of Marie in the king’s memoirs was removed, though some were known to exist. Only they knew what really transpired between them that would cause Marie to leave France rather than accept the opportunity to become his mistress.
There are no fictional characters in this novel, though some liberties were taken where facts were unknown. For example, historians consistently call Marie’s father a necromancer, and though I couldn’t uncover the primary source of this claim, I incorporated it because of other indications that the family embraced mystical ideas. Contemporaries did record that Marie’s father was a great astrologer who had discovered an evil star in her horoscope. This horoscope has never been found and cannot be accurately redrawn because we do not know the time of her birth. Her horoscope in the novel was based on a birth time of noon with loosely applied precepts from William Lilly’s seventeenth-century publication Christian Astrology. I was unable to pinpoint an “evil” star. The “unnamed star” that suggests Marie might leave her husband in the novel is actually Uranus, which hadn’t yet been discovered by astrologers and was unfamiliar to Lilly. Marie herself wrote books on astrology, refers in her memoirs to having premonitions, and was known to costume herself as mystical characters. No one can know to what extent Marie practiced magic if at all, so I only put books into her hands that an Italian necromancer-astrologer of noble blood might reasonably have access to. The maid Moréna’s personality and heritage were largely fictionalized, for little is known about her other than the color of her skin and her inability to enter convents due to her religion. The witch known as La Voisin may not have been practicing the dark arts at the time of Marie’s fictional visit to her home. But Olympia did visit her, and details illuminated in those scenes came to light years later in the Affair of the Poisons. The theory that Cardinal Mazarin was the Sun King’s biological father is debated by historians. Author Anthony Levi makes a fair case for it in his book Louis XIV. The bold and brilliant Mancini sisters embarked upon too many adventures to detail in one novel. To anyone wishing to study Marie’s story in further detail, I recommend starting with the indispensable Hortense Mancini and Marie Mancini, Memoirs, edited and translated by Sarah Nelson, and Five Fair Sisters, by the late H. Noel Williams.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The enormous task of completing this novel would not have been possible without the constant and complete support of my husband and our patient children, and I am immensely grateful to them. Gratitude goes also to my mother, for always being there; my trusty agent, Kevan Lyon; editor Toni Kirkpatrick, who always makes me smile; publicist Katie Bassel, whose reliability enabled me to focus my energy on this project; Thomas Dunne, for coming up with the concept that inspired this novel in the first place; keen-eyed copyeditor India Cooper; author Sara Ann Denson, whose advice and insight I hope never to be without; my circle of friends and family—I would be lost without you; Julianne Douglas, for researching countless French resources at my every whim; the Allen County Public Library, for its vast resources and for Nancy Saff’s assistance with difficult research; author and Mancini expert Elizabeth Goldsmith, Ph.D., for reflections on the Mancinis and for her wonderful work The Kings’ Mistresses; and finally Marie Mancini, for having the courage to stand up for herself in a world that did not yet value women.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marci Jefferson is the author of Girl on the Golden Coin. She grew up in a nomadic Air Force family, but her passion for history sparked while living in Yorktown, Virginia, where locals still share Revolutionary War tales. Jefferson graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medical College as a registered nurse. She now resides in the Midwest with her husband and two children in a home full of books and toys.
Visit her Web site at www.marcijefferson.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY MARCI JEFFERSON
Girl on the Golden Coin
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Dramatis Personae
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Marci Jefferson
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
ENCHANTRESS OF PARIS. Copyright © 2015 by Marci Jefferson. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Cover design by Kerri Resnick
Cover photographs: woman © Victoria Davies/Trevillion Images; Chateau de Fontainebleau © Gavin Hellier/Getty Images
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Jefferson, Marci.
Enchantress of Paris: a novel of the Sun King’s court / Marci Jefferson. — First edition.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-250-05709-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-6074-2 (e-book)
1. Louis XIV, King of France, 1638–1715—Fiction. 2. Mazarin, Jules, 1602–1661—Fiction. 3. France—Kings and rulers—Fiction. 4. Divination—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3610.E3655E53 2015
813'.6—dc23
2015017353
e-ISBN 9781466860742
First Edition: August 2015