The Enemies of Versailles

by Sally Christie

  “Ha, will you remember this, dearest?” asks Louis, hugging little Élisabeth. “Will you remember the day the King of France stuck his tongue out at you?”

  Élisabeth giggles shyly and he lets her slide off his lap. Before she can slip away, Madame Adélaïde stops her with a hand to her shoulder. A fearsome gray tongue snakes out of her mouth and the little girl shrinks back in fear. She looks about to burst into tears, or worse, when Marsan whisks her away; the lutes have arrived.

  Clothilde and Élisabeth take their instruments and the great tenor Jélyotte bows grandly. The halting music begins, Victoire clapping in time to the painful rhythm, Louis tapping his foot and regarding them fondly. The choice of music is odd—a funereal piece of Bach—but the two princesses play passably well, and their solos are not as painful as expected.

  “Well, that was delightful,” says Louis when the concert is finished. His granddaughters, praised and kissed, have been dispatched and he rises creakily from under his mound of blankets. “Simply delightful. Not much can capture the heart as a fine melody does.”

  Maupeou materializes from an antechamber, flanked by two of his minions.

  “Sire, a wonderful concert to brighten even this frightfully cold day.” Maupeou tries hard to be a courtier—Louis likes his advisers to mince as much as they minister—but his impatience with flowered niceties causes him to rush his words. “Now, we must beseech Your Majesty to listen to Monteynard’s proposal about the Americans.”

  “The Americans are revolting, they are indeed,” says Adélaïde, looming like a dark shadow beside her father.

  Louis ignores his daughter and looks at the pile of papers Maupeou is hopefully proffering. He yawns. “Come now, my good man, it has already gone five!” It hasn’t—the clock has barely chimed three—but no one dares contradict the king. “I would take a rest—we can meet after Mass tomorrow. Come, dearest,” he says, searching for me in the crowd around his daughters. “Let us repair to your rooms and take a nap.”

  “That was lovely,” I whisper when we are up in my bedchamber, the small room heated nicely from a daylong fire, the windows hung with heavy drapes to block the cold. We burrow under a pile of furs and snuggle against each other. “Your granddaughters are charming.”

  “Élisabeth is certainly a pretty little thing,” agrees Louis, absentmindedly picking at a ribbon in my hair. “Sadly, Clothilde resembles her father, and for a girl, that is no compliment.”

  “And her grandfather,” I say, kissing him and unbuttoning his shirt. “You’re becoming quite the rotund bear.” Since his fall from the horse last year, he is not hunting as much as usual and his paunch, long a source of distress, has increased. He is also troubled by dyspepsia—indigestion—and though he limits his meals, he still grows in girth.

  I loosen his shirt but stop there. Yesterday, yes, but two days in a row? Sadly, no. His doctors are urging him to slow down and I no longer share his bed every night, something that pains Louis to no end. Some doctors even insist that abstinence is the only solution, and urge him to unyoke from me. Unyoke—as though I were an ox!

  So we lie fully clothed, resting in the waning of the afternoon. Louis is thinking the same, and he murmurs, his face buried now in my hair: “Once I would not have kept my hands off you—could not—yet here we lie like an old married couple. What tragedy when the flesh is willing, but the body is weak!”

  “Ah, you’re just tired,” I say kindly. In Louis’ mind, this weakness where he was once so strong and virile portends another kind of death. Chon, able to find the positive angle in any situation, says I should be glad the king is feeling his age, for the doctors would be against a new marriage for him.

  “I sometimes wonder if this is God’s message to me,” he says sadly.

  “Nonsense! It is a natural thing. All men are a little diminished in their later years.”

  “Diminished—what an ill-chosen word, Angel! And not every man,” he says. “My stamina may be failing, while Richelieu, fourteen years my senior, maintains his.”

  “Ah, that old dog is more bark than bite, and has been for many years now.”

  “I fear I have greatly displeased Him in my life,” continues Louis, slipping down into his favored melancholia. “God, that is to say, not Richelieu.”

  I am silent; God looms ever larger in Louis’ thoughts these days as his health troubles increase. Even a mild case of indigestion sets him thinking beyond the burps and into mortality. And now his sixty-third year approaches, a significant year the Greeks called the climacteria, when death was supposed to be on the horizon.

  “Didn’t the Comtesse de Séran look pretty this afternoon?” I suggest, to distract him from his grim musings. Usually I can keep him aboveground quite easily, but this winter it seems he is ready to slide into the depths of depression at the least provocation. “Her green cape matched her eyes perfectly!”

  “‘The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away,’” quotes Louis mournfully, refusing to meet me in the meadow with the Comtesse de Séran. “Seventy is but seven years away, Angel, and how I hate the number seven! Our days are made to seventy,” he repeats dolefully.

  “Pish—look at Richelieu; seventy-seven and still going strong! And your great-grandfather lived to seventy-seven, and Broglie celebrated his eightieth last month.”

  “Really? The Duc de Broglie? He looks like a young man, not more than sixty!”

  Chon even found the case of a butcher in Rheims who lived to be a hundred, a fact well attested to by church records, but Louis was unimpressed: “A butcher; I fear there is no comparison, for his life was spent surrounded by blood and meat, and that strengthens a man.”

  “We had roast for supper last night,” I remind him lightly.

  “Ah, pumpkin, if I could have my years to live over again.” He dandles an uninspired hand over my breasts, more out of habit than lust. “Though it is true my great-grandfather lived to seventy-seven. We Bourbon men are long-lived.”

  “Yes, you are, dearest.” I do not remind him of the premature deaths of his grandfather, father, elder brother, and son.

  “And my Cardinal Fleury,” he says hopefully. “That dear old man. He lived to be ninety. And he instructed me so well; might such things be transferred?”

  His birthday passes and he eases into his sixty-third year without incident. The Gazette de France publishes a list of centenarians to please the king, but then Easter approaches, a time when the tentacles of God reach down from the heavens and the thoughts of men turn to sin and mortality. The Abbé de Beauvais delivers a scathing sermon comparing the king to Solomon, sated with sensual indulgence, and even implies the king’s turn has arrived. The dratted monk so scares Louis that he considers giving up sex for Lent.

  His visits to his daughter Louise at the convent increase; when he returns, he is thoughtful and sad, sometimes for days after. She corresponds with his spiritual advisers, including the offensive Abbé de Beauvais, and wields a surprising amount of influence. God becomes a permanent and unpleasant presence in our lives.

  “Who is the better fighter?” ask the wags, buzzing about the king’s rediscovered piety. “Who will win: his daughter Louise on her knees, praying for his soul, or Barry on her back?”

  Myself, on my back, and on my knees. Definitely.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  In which Madame Adélaïde receives an unexpected visitor

  I regard the Duc d’Aiguillon coldly as he bows and seats himself before me. The duke is one of her people and I was surprised when he requested an audience. What—another supplication for my friendship? But no; the harlot has never wooed me, not like she is trying to woo the dauphine—her most recent offering was a pair of magnificent diamond earrings, rightly ignored by Antoinette.

  The harlot knows the futility of any overtures to me, I think in satisfaction; she understands my fixity of purpose. Though she did present V
ictoire with a crate of gooseberry cordial last month, from her estate at Louveciennes. Victoire sang—and drank—its praises, and I deigned a sip, but then recoiled in disgust, for it tasted like whore.

  Narbonne fusses over the tea set the footmen are laying out, then leaves with the Comtesse de Lostanges trailing behind her, talking about one of her brood of children. As Aiguillon helps himself to a cup of tea, I regard him coolly, remembering how flustered I was to receive Choiseul alone. But that was years ago; I am now past forty and with that age comes a new sense of confidence and courage.

  “Serving ourselves, in the English style,” says Aiguillon energetically. “My cousin visited London, and declared it quite a useful system! No need for clumsy servants.”

  I know my brother admired Aiguillon greatly, and he is still a champion of the religious party, which has become sadly intertwined with the harlot’s supporters. Does he wish my forgiveness? I curse Narbonne again; Civrac would know what he wants, but she is absent in Paris this week.

  “Are not the gardens so very fine this time of year?” says the duke, taking a prim sip of tea. “The roses in Diana’s Grove cannot be more admired; they say it is the late frost that has produced such a veritable orgy of flowers.”

  I splutter on my tea.

  “Ah, Madame Adélaïde, forgive me! You are too important and too busy a woman to waste time on such frivolities. I shall be direct: We need your help.”

  “Indeed.” We—does the harlot need my help? How I would turn down that base supplication, as Arachne turned down the spider! I only wish I had had time to prepare a suitable quote to demonstrate my unwavering hate and firm resolution.

  “A dreadful plot is under way, concerning your father’s marriage,” continues Aiguillon, staring at me as though in understanding, and I see his left pupil is odd, shaped like a star; a defect I had not previously noticed.

  A chill sweeps through me. Has Rome changed its mind and agreed to a divorce? But Aiguillon is one of her creatures, and so he would hardly call the divorce a dreadful plot.

  “The wolf from Chanteloup,” he says, referring to Choiseul, who still attempts to wield influence from his exile, “has fixed upon a certain Madame Pater, formerly the Baroness de Neukirchen, as a suitable bride for your father.”

  “And how is this woman suitable?” I ask coldly. “A baroness?”

  “Certainly, her birth is humble when compared to your august highness, but she is of noble birth. Very beautiful and caused quite a stir in Paris some years ago. She was obliged to return to Holland, but now she is returned, no longer married and suitably mature—the widow of a merchant.”

  I grasp the edge of my chair for support and inhale sharply at the monstrosity of what he is suggesting. A merchant? A luminous dark shadow, something hooked, something grasping, rises before me.

  “She is J-Jewish?” I gasp weakly, almost unable to say the dreaded word.

  Aiguillon looks confused. “Madame? Not Jewish?”

  “But she was married to a merchant? A merchant . . . Jewish . . .” Oh. To even say that word, and the horrors it conjures up!

  Aiguillon stifles what sounds like a snort but must surely have been a sneeze, and dabs his eyes delicately with a handkerchief produced from the pocket of his stiff blue coat. “No, Madame, no, not all merchants are Jewish, certainly not, there are some fine Catholic men who have taken up that calling. Perhaps I should have said a commercial gentleman.”

  I breathe easier. “But Dutch . . .” I say dubiously. Another thought strikes, almost worse than the first: “Then she is Protestant! What heresy is Choiseul suggesting?”

  “No, Madame, indeed not. Albertine—I mean to say Madame Pate—was Protestant but has now seen the inevitable light and is a new Catholic. She is at this moment studying her catechism. Here, in town, in fact, in a house Choiseul has provided for her.”

  “I see.” New Catholics are always a little suspect, but I suppose it is not their fault they were born into the wrong faith.

  “But despite being Catholic—or soon to be—and not, ah, Jewish—we are afraid the lady is sadly unsuitable. We were hoping that a word from you to His Majesty, against this lady, will help turn his thoughts away from matrimony.”

  I bristle with pleasure that my influence with Papa is still considered great; perhaps the estrangement that I fancy is but a function of my imagination. How wonderful! The bond between father and daughter can never be severed, I think in satisfaction.

  I purse my lips as I absorb the news. A baroness, widow of a commercial gentleman. A baroness is not a born whore like the harlot, and it could be a morganatic marriage, one that would save Papa from sin but keep precedence and rank intact.

  “Well, I have heard worse ideas.”

  Aiguillon looks frankly astonished, then he remembers his manners and puts his emotions back where they belong.

  “But, ah, Madame! I thought you would have disapproved of the match? A commoner, a foreigner?” he says hopefully.

  “A baroness is still noble, though I’m not sure Dutch nobility counts for much. I believe she would be suitably humble, and tractable, and willing to be guided in this new world. Father might do worse.”

  “I had not thought you would be in favor, Madame! We were counting on a word to your father from you, to set him against the match.”

  “You thought wrong, monsieur,” I say coldly. “I consider Choiseul’s idea to be perfectly acceptable.”

  Aiguillon looks confused, then mutters something about lost time, then leaves, exhorting me not to talk to Papa.

  I sit awhile, alone, a nagging doubt growing in me that I have missed something. Why was Aiguillon appealing to me? Confounded man, I think. So inconstant—one minute wanting my influence with Papa, then the next minute urging me not to talk to him. And Civrac heard that Aiguillon has been corresponding with Choiseul, an unlikely alliance, but the shifting sands of Versailles always bring new surprises.

  The dreadful memory of my father’s harsh words in the wig chamber has receded safely into the void where it belongs, and though we see him but rarely, I believe his regard for me is still high. Safely married to a pious woman—new Catholics are always the most ardent—who would help him restore this Court to morality?

  Yes, I have heard worse ideas.

  Chapter Forty

  In which the Comtesse du Barry loses a number of things, including her temper

  “Traitors, traitors, both of you! Get out, I never want to see you again! Have you no loyalty? I’ll have you exiled, fried, I’ll get you a letter, you’ll be basted in sauce, I’ll make the king—”

  Aiguillon and the Abbé Terray are frozen in fright in front of me, their hats clutched to their bosoms like shields against my anger.

  “I’ll fry you in oil, you’ll wish you were never born, your mothers will wish you were never born, I’ll—”

  Chon pokes her head around the door. “Jeanne, dearest, are these gentlemen bothering you?” Her eyes dart between me and the men. It was she who brought me the news of the Dutch matter; she even went to visit the lady at her house in town, where every day she holds an open salon.

  Chon returned with the following description: beautiful; matronly; soft eyes; the most elegant hands one could imagine, and an air of perfect piety only a new Catholic could pull off. Rumors that the king has visited her twice already. A planned assault, coordinated by Choiseul from Chanteloup, with Terray and Aiguillon as its implementers here at Court. My Aiguillon—preposterous man! My Terray—traitor!

  “You!” I scream, ignoring Chon and pointing a shaking finger at Terray. “I know what you were trying to do with your daughter, pimp her out to the king, did you think me such a fool? And you, you cur,” I spit, turning to Aiguillon, who looks as though he might faint. “Your betrayal is the worst. You led that Dutch woman to His Majesty’s bed, and even held the candle! Don’t think I will forget this!”

  “Jeanne, Jeanne.” Chon is at my side, pulling me away from the two men. “You must c
alm yourself. Too many people can hear.”

  I am aware of milling masses in the antechamber, but I don’t care. “Get off me! I will not calm down!”

  “Gentlemen, you may leave,” says Chon quickly.

  “Traitors,” I scream one last time as they dash for the door. In his haste, Terray trips over the edge of the carpet and sprawls in an undignified mess, his wig flying off his head and into the fire grate. He has to be dragged up by a footman before he can scramble away, wigless but safe.

  Chon rolls down on the carpet, convulsing with laughter.

  “Oh, Jeanne, Jeanne. You should have seen their faces!”

  “I did see their faces!” I look at my hands and find them shaking. They thought to replace me with that Dutch bitch; they say her hands are the finest in Europe.

  “I don’t believe they have ever witnessed such a scene, and certainly not one directed at them!”

  “Nonsense, I am sure their wives get mad at them often enough,” I mutter, thinking of the look on Terray’s face when I called him a cursed capon. I pour myself a brandy and remember the fights I used to have with Barry. I take a deep breath and a deep swallow, but my hands still shake.

  “Never—can you imagine our dear Duchess Félicité raising her voice to a puppy, let alone her husband? No, my dear, you gave them the shock of their lives—I am sure they had no idea a woman could curse like that. Oh! I am laughing so hard I fear I shall wet myself!”

  I giggle, then remember the seriousness of the situation. It will be a long fight to get rid of them, but banish them I will. Traitors. Even if that leaves only Maupeou—though that malevolent bear might also be involved.

  “They will pay for this.” I sit down and slosh my brandy around in its glass. “They’ll see what their little plots bring. And Aiguillon—I thought he was a friend! I’ll exile them so far from Paris they’ll think they’re in Hungary.”

  “Don’t bother,” says Chon, sitting up and hiccupping, as she is wont to do when she has been laughing too hard. “Make what we just saw Terray’s only fall. My, that was a scene! And how he looked without his wig—like a pokey-faced turtle! No, just demand the banishment of the Pater woman. It will be quicker and easier; you know if you try to get those ministers dismissed, the king will be in a pother and it could take months. I’m sure the king will choose you over Pater, but act fast.”