The Enemies of Versailles

by Sally Christie

  “Do you think we’ll see the Pompadour?” I shout in his ear.

  “Too sick,” he shouts back, shaking his head. “Dying, they say.”

  A magnificent new statue of our king is unveiled in the middle of the square. Louis XV as Victory on a horse, surrounded by statues of the four virtues. Four vices, whispers Paris, and names the ladies who sustain him: Mailly, Vintimille, Châteauroux, and Pompadour.

  A man held up by his mistresses.

  “And why should he pose as Victory?” hisses someone in the crowd behind us. “That man has only ever killed stags, not enemies.” The rain starts to beat down and someone else whispers that even the heavens disapprove of this man, our king, and his scandalous, wretched ways.

  Finally the royal procession arrives, the king in an open carriage, ignoring the rain. I catch his eye, or at least I think I do, and a flicker of what seems like recognition passes between us.

  “I think he noticed me!” I say in astonishment, turning to du Barry. “Imagine me, being noticed by the king!” Our king was once the most handsome man in France but now he is very hated. I thought he looked nice enough, not the monster I was expecting.

  “Now, why are you so surprised? Even someone as ignorant as you, my little dear, must know the king enjoys his women. And you such a fresh beauty of twenty,” he says, slipping off one year to show his manners. Du Barry puts his arm around my waist. Heaven. “I know men in his employ—I shall see if you have made an impression.”

  I am flattered, but what do I want with the king? I know who I want, and he is right beside me.

  There are no cheers for the king, but when the queen and his daughters pass, the crowd applauds. The queen looks old and sad, and then we see Madame Adélaïde looking regal and rather fine in a starchy red dress, her three younger sisters cowering in her wake. After the last of the fireworks, the crowds start to get drunk and rowdy, and du Barry insists we leave the danger of the streets. Finally—the invitation I have been longing for.

  His apartment on the rue Neuve Saint-Eustache does not disappoint. We sit down to supper in a gold-paneled room, his footman serving us silently.

  “Do you own the whole house, sir?” I inquire, sipping my soup, my insides tightening. It is the first time I am alone with a man, and what a man! Tonight he is wearing a dark green coat, the color of old moss, that perfectly matches his penetrating eyes.

  “Ah, what a question, my little one. Try an oyster.”

  “And this is such a fine dining service!” I finger the porcelain. “Is it rented, or do you own the lot?”

  “You have a charming bosom,” he replies instead, and I blush at the inappropriate compliment. I’m too nervous to eat much, but I do drink quite a bit, and once the oysters and caramel cream are finished, he rises and offers me his arm.

  “Let me show you my paintings.”

  I take his arm, reassured by its solidity. With him, I’ll be fine. He leads me through to the next room, and shows me the grand paintings that adorn the panels.

  “You are quite the collector, sir,” I say politely.

  “I like collecting women more,” he says, and stares at me. A strong riptide of danger pulls me forward. What do I want with boring men?

  “And that one is a Caravaggio, and I do admire this one,” he says, pointing to a painting of a serene woman.

  “Oh, she’s beautiful!”

  “She is called the Mona Lisa, from the great master da Vinci. You know Leonardo da Vinci, my dear?”

  “Of course,” I lie.

  He takes my arm and steers me into the next room. “No, you don’t, silly girl. Now, now,” he says, raising a hand, for he knows how I pout when he calls me thus. “A paltry education is no hindrance to one as lovely as you. And it has left you so free and natural.”

  I laugh. “I’m never accused of being timid.” I lean closer, willing him to put his arm around my waist as he did earlier.

  “Delightful, in many ways. A woman as beautiful as you are can be forgiven many, many sins.” He takes a step back and I can’t help myself: I step forward.

  “Now, mademoiselle, I have shown you all my paintings but one. In my bedchamber hangs the greatest treasure I own—Christ and the Fallen Woman, by Cranach the Younger. Do you wish to see it?”

  Though it’s dark in the room, I can see his eyes glowing and the lust that is starting to ooze off him, joining with mine. I know where we are going, and suddenly I want to go there. Very much.

  “Yes, show it to me.”

  “Oh, had I known, had I known,” he says, his face flushed, his hands caressing my naked body. I am trembling, filled with so many strange emotions. The black-wimpled faces of the nuns rise, then sink down again and disappear into the sheets, and all I can do is giggle. Such pleasure! How mistaken they were, how mistaken the whole world is. This should never be bad.

  “What a mistake,” he says sadly, shaking his head. “Had I but known.”

  “Known what?” I ask, marveling at his hardness and muscles and coarse hands, so different from my own softness and curves. I lean in and kiss a nipple. How extraordinary—I had never considered men might have nipples! “And you have made no mistake—I too desired this.”

  “But I had not thought you a virgin! Who would believe an angel such as you would be untarnished at your age? What a missed opportunity.” He sits up and shakes me off him. “Ten thousand livres,” I hear him mutter. “At a minimum.”

  I’m not sure I fully understand. “You jest? Of course you’re jesting. I think I love you.”

  Barry—as he insists I call him—shakes his head and his wonderful smile reappears. “Mmm, of course in jest. I am not one to brood over spilled milk, not when the future awaits in all its magnificence. Ah, my dearest Angel—I was a man searching for gold in these dreary streets and then I found you, so exquisite, so pure. Are you mine, dearest Angel, all mine?”

  “I am,” I say in adoration, pulling him back toward me, eager for his touch and the newness of his embrace. I wonder if we’ll do it again?

  Within days, I am quit of Labille’s—what do I want there now? Madame is sad to see me go, but she kisses me and even allows me to keep my peach dress. I hug little Adélaïde and she presses a sketch of me to her heart, and then a carriage comes—his own carriage, and a handsome one at that! With two horses that almost match—and I am carried off to my new and wonderful life.

  Barry is charming, exquisite, funny, fascinating. I don’t miss Labille’s at all; strangely, though I loved it while I was there, all I can remember now is the jealousy of other girls, Labille bickering over the accounts of the day, the envy I felt when a customer bought something I coveted but could not afford.

  Barry makes me an allowance. To dress myself in the grandest fashion, that I might be a compliment to his ancient and proud name. The Barrymores! Above the mantel hangs a giant coat of arms—he tells me he is descended from that ancient Irish family—and I feel flushed and excited.

  Life is suddenly perfect. I am the mistress of an important man. My life is beginning and in what a grand fashion! I am, as they say, swept off my feet. And straight onto my back. It is a fall, but a fall cushioned by pillows and a duck-down mattress is no hard fall at all.

  Yes, I have fallen, but into the middle of a fairy tale.

  Chapter Seven

  In which Madame Adélaïde says good-bye to the fish

  It has been raining for a week, as though Heaven were crying, and now her funeral cortege has left Versailles. The Marquise de Pompadour breathed her last yesterday on Easter Sunday: how fitting, say her friends, and what an abomination, say her enemies.

  Though I despised her and all she stood for, there was a certain harmony of opinion that she served a purpose. She kept my father happy, and possibly out of the hands of more heinous women. My mother the queen even visited her on her deathbed, and today a curious feeling hangs over us, as though all is unmoored, the palace a giant ship that had just pulled anchor and is creaking off into seas unk
nown.

  Papa is devastated—he remained in his apartment all day—but there is no official mourning. I consider this to be a great day for France, and her death is a blow for our enemy the minister Choiseul, an evil man out to destroy our country and break the power of the Church. It is unimaginable that he has not been excommunicated by our pope for his banishment of the Jesuits, the most holy of orders.

  Choiseul was the fish woman’s crony—her limpet, I think in satisfaction, and applaud myself for my witticism—and now that she is gone, he will have nothing to cling to. The dévot party, led by my sainted brother, with ourselves as his godly foot soldiers, will once more rise to prominence.

  While it is unchristian to delight in death, I feel that without that pernicious leech at his side, Papa will return to the godly life. Her death is also an opportunity for my sisters and me to regain the favor and the intimacy with our father that we have lost in recent years. Sometimes I think he is growing bored with us, but such thoughts are nonsense: How can one be bored by family?

  Now my formal couchée is done and I am alone in my bed. I cannot sleep and I get out to roam the room, curiously restless. I sleep alone; unlike Sophie, I am not tormented by night terrors and do not need women sleeping at the foot of my bed. My lips curl at her weakness, for I can’t image where her fears come from, though Victoire told me the nuns once locked her up in a crypt as punishment. I scoffed at Victoire’s foolish lies: impossible that bland little Sophie could have done anything worthy of punishment.

  I circle the chamber a few times then hover over to the window and peer out, cautiously, in case the guards pass. She died at Versailles, and there have been processions day and night but now all is quiet, and so it will remain. She might be mourned by her friends but I know that life moves quickly on. I saw it with Henriette and Élisabeth: everyone crying that their grief will never end, then somehow, and quite suddenly, forgotten as life rolls on.

  I must broach the matter of her apartment, next door to my own, with Papa. It would be suitable for Louise, whose rooms remain far from us in the Aisle of the Princes. It might be nice to have us all together; Louise still needs watching over.

  A crunch of gravel outside and I shrink back from the window, but it is just a guard on horseback, riding slowly around the terrace. I gaze out at the night gardens; all is in blackness save for the lights gleaming from the second floor of the palace at an angle to my wing.

  Where is she now? Yes, she confessed, but aren’t there some sins that cannot be forgiven, no matter if confession is made? But then my father . . . I quickly squash that line of thought. No, she is in Heaven, of that I am certain.

  She was only forty-two, not old at all. Sometimes I have to strain and remember I am already thirty-two—only ten years younger than she—and the sad realization that time, which I once thought I had so much of, is passing fast, with no way to stop it.

  I stare out at the black night, resisting my bed. I have a strange urge to flee, to open the windows and step out into the great unknown of the rest of the world. Foolish thoughts. A movement on the second floor, from a lighted room where a window opens and outlines the shadowy form of a man and a woman. A peal of laughter, the woman pushing the man away, then his arms tightening again around her.

  A memory rises, unbidden, of a small girl. A foolish girl, but one with determination to spare. Many years ago, when she heard the English were her father’s enemy, she decided to go and fight them. I had read the story of Salome, and had thought to bewitch the English king, then cut off his head while he slept. I blush at my folly—I didn’t realize what bewitch meant. I was a fool, but an energetic one, I think sadly, and one beloved by my father. Vivacious even.

  That little fool made her way out of her sleeping chamber, over her woman who snored too much, and out beyond her apartment into the halls, past sleeping guards and indifferent idlers. Papa would be angry, but after I had killed the King of England, I knew he would be proud of me.

  I had almost made it as far as the stables when one of the guards recognized me. What a commotion there was! But I gained my father’s admiration—indeed, in a way I had not done before, nor since. I can still remember his indulgent laughter and sweet concern as I was admonished the next day.

  My hand is on the gilded brass handle of the long windows. I feel its cold metal beneath my fingers, and I slowly turn. I remember that night so vividly, as though it were yesterday and not seventeen years ago. The emptiness of the sleeping palace, that curious feeling of being completely alone. A magical time. Slowly I turn the handle of the window, then realize I don’t know if it is locked or not—I have never thought to ask. Then a rumble of thunder in the distance and a pair of foxes run across the gravel, skittish and afraid, and disappear down the steps of the terrace. I release the handle and draw back, and realize I have been holding my breath.

  “Strappare il tuo occhio—pluck out thine eye,” I correct Victoire.

  We have started studying Italian—Sardinian princes still menace, but only faintly. Louise, the youngest of us, is almost twenty-seven and can confidently say she has never, in all her study of history, found a French princess married at that late age—the eldest she has uncovered was twenty-two. Her shoulders have straightened out completely, and I thought the time prudent to turn from Greek to Italian.

  “Don’t you think we’ve done enough?” says Victoire, flinging down her book and stretching out on the sofa, her skirt falling back to reveal two mismatched shoes.

  “Madame de Civrac!” I cry, calling over her dame d’atour, who rises rather slowly from her chair by the fire. “Look at Madame Victoire’s feet!”

  “Oh, it’s not Civrac’s fault,” says Victoire, sitting up so her skirt covers her ankles again. “I just have a corn on my left foot, and my red shoes are rather tight and I thought a larger shoe might be more—”

  “Enough! I do not need the genealogy of your foot complaints. Now we must finish this verse. Monsieur Garibaldi will be here tomorrow,” I say, referring to our Italian instructor, “and we must impress him with our reading.”

  “Why?” asks Louise. Louise once said she thought our study sessions a “waste of time” but I had no idea what she meant—how can the meaningful pursuit of knowledge waste time?

  I gape at her—she never ceases to confound me. “Why must we impress him? What sort of question is that?”

  “A true one, sister.”

  “You are most vexing, Louise,” I say, and turn back to the Bible, where Matthew is commanding us to gouge out our eyes. But in truth it has been almost twenty minutes since we started, and even I will admit it is quite hard to concentrate in the midst of such a momentous week. It is not five days since the Marquise died, and it is quite possible we have not examined the matter to satisfaction.

  “Very well—a short break that we may discuss the current situation,” I announce, and Victoire sighs happily. Not gossip, I tell myself, but the mere art of being informed; as the first daughter of France, the one and true Madame, I feel this is within the purview of my duty. The Court can talk of nothing else than who will replace the Pompadour. Every brain is busy; such a matter has not been equaled in importance since we wondered who would replace Benedict as pope.

  We close our Italian Bibles and I call to Civrac to join us, as well as my lady Narbonne. Civrac has an infuriating ability to ferret out information, far surpassing my Narbonne’s abilities. Her base blood no doubt contributes to her gossipmongering talents: she comes from a very minor branch of the Durfort family, a twig really. Narbonne sometimes disdainfully calls her Grubble, because she has managed to worm her way into the very highest of circles.

  “Come now,” I say, “we shall discuss this matter of supreme importance. We have been the laughingstock of Europe for having a bourgeois mistress in the palace, and we must ensure this never happens again.”

  “Are you sure that’s why we are the laughingstock?” asks Louise, in her infuriatingly calm voice, placing rather too much emph
asis on the we.

  I look at her in astonishment. “What else would Europe have to laugh about? Father’s sins are for reproach, not laughter.” I think of England, where George III sits on the throne, faithful to his wife. Distressing, really, that the model of morality should be an Englishman, and a Protestant to boot.

  “So, who’s at the top?” breathes Victoire, opening a cupboard herself and gathering a bottle of cherry cordial and a plate of Malaga raisins. Victoire is a lost sheep as far as decorum is concerned and her ever-present vial of sickly cordial—which she insists is just nectar and not wine—is an indulgence that should be a foreign concept to a daughter of France. She knows my disapproval, but she pays it no heed.

  She pours herself a glass and looks around eagerly. “Is it the Duchesse de Gramont? She was at Mama’s cavagnole yesterday and looked rather flushed and happy.”

  “No, she’s far too old,” I dismiss. “What a crone!” I speak of the minister Choiseul’s sister Beatrice; a viler, more barren woman I cannot imagine.

  “She’s about your age,” observes Louise. “I believe.”

  Narbonne shakes her head, picking at her pox scars as she does when she is excited. “No, there is no doubt that the Gramont woman is out. Especially after that incident . . . the forced . . .” she hisses in a low voice, reserved for the greatest of scandals.

  “Really, Narbonne, you must remember you are in the presence of sheltered ladies,” I say, gesturing to my younger sisters. That we live in a palace of bestial vice is without doubt; equally without doubt is my role as protector of my sisters’ virtue.

  “Oh, everyone knows that story,” says Louise with a giggle. “Such a funny one about that woman raping Papa!”

  “Rape,” breathes Sophie, choking on a raisin.

  “No need for words like that!” I glower at Louise. In truth, I was confused by the story, circulated even before Pompadour’s death: the libertine duchess—best known for her seduction of her twelve-year-old nephew—ensured my father had too much to drink one night and then, by force . . . had her way with him?