The Sisters of Versailles

by Sally Christie

  Excuse me but I am going to lie down. It’s too hot for the wax to seal properly, so do not worry if the letter arrives half-open.

  P

  From Hortense de Flavacourt

  Hôtel de Mazarin, Paris

  August 1, 1741

  Dearest Louise,

  I am glad to hear that you are enjoying the summer at Choisy. And what wonderful news about Pauline’s condition—the Comte de Vintimille must be very proud. Now you will be an Elder Aunt twice over!

  Thank you for inquiring after my husband. I have not seen him for two months, with all the trouble with the Austrians. He writes me from Silesia—I dread to think where on earth that place could be, with such an outlandish name! I pray every night for France’s enemies to be afflicted by an act of God. An earthquake would be very suitable, or a fire to consume the whole city of Vienna. I am sure God will hear my prayers.

  Poor Marie-Anne has still not passed from the grief over her husband. She snaps at me—you remember she was never very patient—and claims she is not missing her husband, only dying of boredom. I know that is the grief speaking. I sometimes think I pray more for her husband’s soul than she does, but you know Marie-Anne, she is very private. I am sure she spends much time on her knees when she is alone.

  We see Diane now occasionally. Tante is never very keen—she says Diane is as badly brought up as Pauline—but she is allowed to dine with us once a month. Though she does eat an awful amount, her manners are fair, much improved since she has been living with the Duchesse de Lesdiguières.

  Thank you for the lovely handkerchief with the doves for the baby. They looked black but I am sure they were not; perhaps just a very dark blue? Freddie took it with him to Picardy, where he will be cared for by his wet nurse. I miss him terribly.

  I enclose a crate of lemons; freshly squeezed they make a very refreshing drink, perfect for this heat. Cook recommends adding honey and a touch of salt.

  Love,

  Hortense

  Marie-Anne

  PARIS

  August 1741

  Widowhood is supposed to be the one time in a woman’s life when she is accorded some degree of freedom. For those who escape unscathed from childbirth and the caprices of a husband, widowhood is a season cherished by many women.

  It seems that Tante is determined to ruin even this for me.

  Life back at Tante’s house is almost as unbearable as it was before I went away. While I have changed, Tante has not. She is as dour and disapproving as ever, though the scandal and antics of my two sisters at Court enlivens her slightly; it seems her hate has given her new reason to live. She forbids Hortense and me from visiting or corresponding with our sisters. Like convent girls we must obey, for we are in her house.

  Hortense is only too happy living here, content with visits to friends in our neighborhood, writing to her husband, her endless needlework projects. She will hardly even accompany me to the opera or the theater—the last time I dragged her she complained bitterly of the immorality so celebrated in Tartuffe, and I realized I had chosen the wrong play.

  I miss JB, and it was terrible that he had to die so young, but his memory recedes rather quickly. Now it seems that the mourning dresses that I must wear are the only memory I have that I was ever married. I am sad, of course, but I am not drowning in my grief as Hortense likes to think; rather it is boredom that plagues me and makes me snappish and irritable.

  Sometimes I find myself longing for Burgundy, though it felt like a prison while I was there. I suppose, I think in moments of sad clarity, or when I have drunk too much wine and wake later to stare at the walls of my bedchamber, for a moment forgetting where I am, perhaps I am the sort of person who will never be happy, anywhere. I am like those sheep, I think bitterly, that only and forever seek greener pastures. Was that Aesop?

  “As large as a swollen sow, though with a touch of fever these last weeks. They’ve been bleeding her constantly. Next week she returns to Versailles and will be installed in the apartments of the Duc de Rohan. Five rooms.” The Duc de Richelieu raises his eyebrows at the guests assembled around the dinner table; I think he knows quite well my sisters are the great unmentionables in this house, but his broad smile to Tante implies no artifice. Do continue and tell us more, I want to say, but of course I can’t.

  From Vienna, Richelieu procured for Tante a small piece of a finger bone, rumored to be part of the hand of Saint Septimus, that she desires to present to the queen as a New Year’s gift. To thank him Tante invited him to dine when he was next in Paris. With us are Tante’s silent, dwarflike daughter, Marie Jeanne, and her husband, the Comte de Maurepas. We are seated in the freshly renovated dining room, a room dedicated to the art of eating, a riotous procession of newly painted nymphs on the walls, others hiding in the clouds on the ceiling. Tante’s decorating style shows no restraint. The windows are open to the gardens at the back of the house, the summer evening wind affording some relief from the relentless heat.

  “I must update you on the latest decisions,” says Maurepas in his reedy voice, turning the conversation, to my dismay, away from Pauline and her pregnancy. Maurepas launches into a pompous screed; he is the minister of marine and on the state council and likes to boast that the king depends on him more than on Fleury. I doubt that, but then again I have also doubted, in the deep dark recesses of my mind, the king’s judgment.

  “And so, we must consider, and His Majesty commends me for my prudence, whether increasing the number of ships . . .” Maurepas drones on as the main dishes are served—a rather dry roast beef, two great sides of sauceless pig, a few vegetable dishes. I take some green beans and a slice of pork. Maurepas is rumored to be the author of many of the dirty ditties and songs that make their way from the street, pass through the kitchens, and eventually—thankfully—reach us in our rooms on the upper floors. It’s hard to believe he has the imagination to write them: he probably employs a playwright.

  I wish one of our guests would tell me what is really going on at Court, with the king and Pauline and Louise. But Maurepas—never. I’ve only met him and his bat-faced wife a few times and I am not impressed with the man, with his ill-fitting mustard breeches and affected voice. Instinctively I dislike him—there is a shadow about him, and I would not trust a word from his mouth. His wife sits beside him, small as a midget and morosely silent. I don’t know what she is thinking, but then decide I don’t care.

  One of Hortense’s women is the sister of Maurepas’s valet; apparently Maurepas is as impotent as a frog. Hortense didn’t say impotent, of course, only whispered that his member finds it impossible to rise to sin; sometimes Hortense has a hard time reconciling her love of gossip with her full-time piety.

  But Richelieu—now, that is an interesting man. As Maurepas drones on about the expansion of the navy, I study the duke. He is a relative, distantly, through my mother. Shorter than expected; a handsome face with a high-beaked nose and large eyes; ruby buttons down the front of his elegant coat, and a wig that shines like silk in the candlelight—white horsehair, I think; no need for powder. He is a man well into his forties but still good-looking, and one who . . . Holding a forkful of beef in midflight, he turns toward me and smiles, a thin, supercilious smile. He knows he has been under scrutiny. Without seeming to, he interrupts Maurepas and steers the conversation away from ships.

  “Soubise could be an interesting appointment, but he once told me he gets seasick,” he says. “And speaking of Soubise, I heard he was courting our lovely young widow? I’ve noticed he has a dance in his step these days, and it’s not those heels he wears.”

  I smile and cast my eyes down to the pork on my plate, playing the demure widow. His first wife dead in childbirth, it’s true that the Prince de Soubise had been courting me, though rather halfheartedly. He declared me lovely, but he was more intrigued by the dowry of our neighbor Anne-Thérèse de Carignan. She can have him; I’ll marry again, someday, but this time it will be my choice. And it will be someone I love. T
ruly love. That will be my freedom.

  “I do not believe he is serious,” I murmur.

  “Poor man—I will be reproached when he learns that I had the opportunity to dine here and feast on his lovely lady.” Richelieu’s voice is languid and drawn out, and I have a sudden, shocking image of him eating me. “Feast my eyes, if I am to clarify.”

  “Not too disappointed,” I say, willing myself not to blush. “He ate here last month. But now it seems his . . . affections . . . are better placed with Mademoiselle de Carignan.” Though he is young and good-looking, I found Soubise rather boring and boastful. An intimate of the king’s—a fact he alludes to constantly—and as arrogant as the rest of his family: the Rohans are said to be even more pompous than the Noailles.

  “He should have come and talked to me,” says Maurepas in disapproval, not bothering to look at me. “Far too early for Madame de la Tournelle to be thinking of remarriage.” I roll my eyes, ever so slightly, and Richelieu catches my look and grins. There is cordial dislike running between the two men.

  “Ah, carrots in cream! Delightful!” exclaims Richelieu as the footman sets a large tureen on the table. “My favourite dish. The fame of your table reaches far and wide,” he says to Tante, who inclines her head and absorbs the false compliment.

  “Needs more seasoning,” says Maurepas in his high, reedy voice. “I find them a little bland.”

  “Well, perhaps my niece has some suggestions,” sniffs Tante in her vinegar voice. “Apparently Marie-Anne was quite the little gardener down in Burgundy.”

  “I grew some spices,” I concede.

  “I still remember those vanilla pods you sent,” says Hortense dreamily. “Cook made such a heavenly pudding with them. I think he even called it Heavenly Pudding. Or was it Pudding of Heaven?”

  “Ah,” says Richelieu, looking at me with some interest. “A fellow horticulturalist. And what spices would you recommend to enliven this delicious dish, madame?”

  “Cumin,” I say promptly. “The earthy tones would complement the cream very well, and enhance the flavor of the carrots.”

  Richelieu’s eyes almost bulge out of his face. They quickly recede but his expression remains greedy and alive. It is a look I can’t place, but suddenly he is very interested in me. Very interested. What have I said?

  “Carrots cooked in cream and cumin? Madame, an excellent choice. Nothing, nothing,” he emphasizes—why is he looking at me like that?—“could be more delightful.” He takes an enormous forkful to his mouth and deliberately allows a slim stream of cream to dribble down his chin. He dabs at it with his handkerchief, his eyes still on me—still feasting on me.

  I wonder how he would be as a lover. I remember JB’s gangly body, his strong arms and large hands; while the duke is smaller and more compact, I sense energy, muscles and more beneath the silken finery of his elaborate Turkish coat. He is said to be the most accomplished man in France, both in the bedchamber and out.

  “What’s cumin?” asks Hortense. “It sounds horrible. Definitely not something found in biblical lands, I’m sure.”

  “I just think a little more salt would do it. Nothing wrong with good old salt,” says Maurepas rather pompously. “All these newfangled spices from the Orient and other places, I just can’t—”

  “Yet you command the ships that bring those spices in; is the trade not good for France?” I ask, boldly interrupting.

  Maurepas keeps eating as though I had not spoken.

  “Carrots cooked in cumin. An excellent choice, madame,” Richelieu repeats, bringing the conversation back, his eyes still on me.

  “Cumin has many uses,” I reply. I feel as if I am flirting with him, but about what I am not sure. Carrots? It’s flattering, though, and I’m enjoying it. “Good for the complexion, when used in a face cream, or so my Gar—my cook in Burgundy used to say.”

  “It can be an excellent face cream,” says Richelieu, staring straight at me. “Massaged well into the face—yes, it has its uses.” It is as though we are having two conversations, one spoken and the other not, but I don’t know which one we say aloud. Extraordinary.

  After dinner Richelieu apologizes and takes an early leave, saying he will be late for the showing of Tartuffe. We all know that the play is no longer in the theater and that he is off to see his mistress, or mistresses: it is common knowledge that he has a soft spot—or is it a hard spot?—for the wives of the Parisian bourgeoisie.

  Maurepas watches him leave with a look of frank envy. We settle down in the salon with Tante and a book she will read aloud to us: A Treatise on the Persecution of the Freemasons. I keep my emotions better hidden and primed, but I am envious too.

  “Thank goodness that man is gone,” whispers Hortense to me as we take our chairs. “Though he said nothing untoward, he fair reeks of sin.”

  The next week a book arrives for me, courtesy of the Duc de Richelieu.

  “Illuminations on the Virtue of Goodness,” I read in puzzlement—now, why would he think I would be interested in that? Hortense and Tante both receive copies of the same title as well, and I am piqued to be burnished with the same brush of goodness as them. But then I open mine and find the book has been re-covered; it is actually an illustrated copy of The Academy of Ladies, a book the priests call Sodom and Gomorrah, combined.

  Oh.

  I remember the knowing way Richelieu looked at me, the way his eyes casually discarded the stuff of my gown to bare my breasts, and worse. And that strange conversation about carrots and cumin. It was almost as though he knew me, though we had just met that night. But perhaps he does know me, I think, flicking open the book to a rather disturbing picture of a woman, her skirts up, bent over an altar—I snap it shut, then reconsider. He does know me, and why should I hide it?

  I wonder again what it would be like to have him as a lover.

  I write him back and thank him for the book, and tell him I have passed many pleasant evenings with only it for company. But—rather disappointing—I don’t hear anything more from him.

  Pauline

  VERSAILLES

  September 1741

  His name will be Charles-Emmanuel-Marie-Magdelon de Vintimille. In truth, my baby should be named Louis, for he is the spitting image of his father. But that buffoon boy Vintimille carries on as though the child were his own, ignoring the sneers and loud whispers proclaiming him both a blind man, and a stupid one.

  The birth only took an hour, two at most—very efficient. After the birth both fathers collided in my chamber, both exclaiming over the perfection of the baby. It was quite funny really, and I even felt a rush of tenderness for Vintimille—after all, it’s thanks to him that I am married and with the king. I suppose I should allow him his small moment of triumph. Perhaps he can move back into his apartment when I move into my new one?

  Vintimille assumed naming rights, and so Charles it is. But I call my precious babe Demi-Louis. And how delighted the king is with his son! Just hours after he was born Louis was at my side, kissing me and stroking my arms. He held up the baby and examined every perfect inch of him. He laid him out in the crimson cradle and crowed over him as though he were a new dauphin. For all his children with the queen, Louis has only one son living. I feel such triumph that I could give him this ultimate gift.

  He was there beside me almost every hour before the birth and now he showers me with letters and tender visits. He promises my new apartments will be ready by the end of the month, and I have already met the man Degas who will be my personal chef—he prepared me a white cake with coconut, prescribed by doctors for building strength after a baby. Though plain, it was quite delicious, but I only managed a few bites.

  I am resolved to be a better consort to him in the coming years. He is truly a magnificent man. The king, I mean, not the chef. He truly loves me. And I . . . I might even be falling in love with him. He is so patient with me, so enamored of me—how can I resist? We are a true partnership, lovers yet also friends, and now we share this miraculous l
ittle baby.

  The wet nurse comes to feed Demi-Louis several times a day. I watch him as he suckles and then I take him in the bed and spend hours marveling at his flawless little fingers and tiny, tiny toes and his soft white skin. My passion for this child is stronger than anything I had imagined; had you told me I would be among the most maternal of women, I would have knocked you over with my laughter. But that was before Demi-Louis was born.

  I was delighted when I became pregnant, of course, but mostly for the additional power a son for the king would bring me. But now . . . can love be stronger than even power itself?

  Did my mother feel like this at my birth? Daughters are not sons, but still. Did she marvel at our perfection? Did she fall in love with each of us in turn and forget for a time the world outside the doors of her bedchamber? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But oh, what a wonderful feeling. For the first time I feel as though I understand the purpose of my life: to provide this precious little son of mine with all that the world can offer.

  Now Demi-Louis is starting to fuss. I hand him to the nurse then ask the attendant for a cup of weak wine. I eat one last mouthful of the white cake, spitting out the little shards of coconut that I care not for. My head is beginning to ache and I feel uncomfortably hot. I will see Louis in the morning and I am determined to be up and at his side within the week, even though my insides still hurt and my ankles are swollen like a pig’s.

  But now my head is aching terribly and I feel so very tired. I seem to hurt everywhere. The nurse closes the curtains and leaves me in darkness. I hear Demi-Louis’s whimper as he is taken from the room. And that is the last sound that brushes my ears before I fall into sleep, and darkness.

  Diane

  PARIS

  September 1741