Before Versailles (55 page)

He tried to control the shaking that had hold of him. “I think I have a headache,” he said. He must lie in bed, close his eyes with Belle’s dear head under his hand. She was a queen in all senses of the word, his mother, an infanta of Spain, the pride of the Hapsburgs. That blood ran through his veins. The other … well, he’d not think on that for a bit, rest, so that he could be king in all senses of the word, as he must be, as his beloved cardinal who might be so much more, had trained him to be.

“Don’t touch me,” he said to his musketeer when he stumbled again. He’d make it to the bedchamber on will if nothing else. He was his mother’s son. The world was fraught with missteps, wasn’t it?

T
HE NEXT DAY
Anne dropped an invitation from the Duchess de Chevreuse to visit on a silver tray. “I don’t wish to go.”

Motteville continued her packing of what the queen mother would need, gowns for evening, favorite rosaries, brushes and combs, an embroidered bed jacket, shoes of all kinds. Haven’t I always known this moment was coming? the lady-in-waiting thought, moving silently among the queen mother’s litter of beautiful things: leather gloves, prayer books with ivory covers, silver hairpins, ribbons, gauze bows, great collars and small caps of handmade lace.

“I’m not going,” said Anne.

“His majesty’s command.” The last was a whisper.

Anne stopped shredding to pieces the paper upon which the invitation was written and watched her lady-in-waiting. Motteville didn’t speak, did not look in the queen mother’s direction once.

“So,” Anne finally said, “you’ve been ordered to spy on me, haven’t you?”

Motteville continued her organized whirl from one thing to another.

Anne laughed, but there was no joy in the sound. “It’s like old times.” How they’d watched her, Cardinal Richelieu, her husband, but they hadn’t been able to stop her. Spain was her first love then, not France. There was no survival for a queen without an heir, so she’d given the kingdom one and saved herself and then held as best she could the kingdom she’d once betrayed, because her son, Louis, was France.

There was another emotion underneath her rage: respect. He knew what he wanted, and he walked straightforwardly toward it, or as straightforwardly as a king was able. So, she’d done as queen. All right, she’d go and listen to what her old and dear friend had to say. If Louis had pulled the duchess over to his side, that was a triumph. How amazing, that Louis thought he could vanquish the viscount. Even Jules had been afraid to make the attempt.

Chapter 27

ELLE’S LICKING OF HIS FACE WOKE HIM FROM HIS NAP
. H
E
opened his eyes and saw that his valet was standing at his bedside.

“The Viscount Nicolas requests your presence in the courtyard, sire.”

He dipped his hands in the cool water that was in a silver bowl, dried them. La Porte ran a comb through his tousled curls, straightened the lace at his neck and sleeves. He picked Belle up from the bed and carried her to her cushion in the antechamber at the window. Her daughter and sons swirling around his legs, he ran downstairs and out into his courtyard, crossed through the elaborate gatehouse that had been built to celebrate his father’s birth and walked across the bridge that overhung the moat into the common courtyard.

Men pulled hats off their heads. Women began to curtsy. His dogs started barking immediately at the cats sitting on the wall, but Phaedra, his female, ran straight to the horse the Viscount Nicolas sat upon and began to sniff the beast’s legs. The viscount dismounted and made an elaborate bow. Louis noted the men with him, his private guard, gathered behind a coach. They wore matching tabards, like his musketeers, no cross emblazoned on them, but the color of the cloth all the same. The viscount’s face was smiling, joyous almost. Louis realized his other ministers were there, standing at the coach. They, too, were smiling.

“I bring you your heart’s desire, majesty,” the viscount said, and he slapped the coach with one hand, then opened its door, and stepped back for Louis to see what was inside.

Chests, on the floor, on the seats, piled atop one another.

“Your million,” whispered the viscount in his ear.

“Into my courtyard,” ordered Louis, then, “Not your guard, viscount. Leave them in the common courtyard.”

“Of course.”

“Wine for the viscount’s guard,” he called out, and he led the way across the bridge, through the gatehouse, into his private sanctum. The coach’s wheels were loud on the paving stones.

People stood along the upper colonnade that mirrored part of the oval of his courtyard, a maid of honor or two, some of his gentlemen talking with them, his mother, dressed for travel, a Spanish shawl tied around her shoulders, her perennial lace widow’s cap on her head. He met his mother’s eyes, and they stared at each other unsmiling, each aware of the distance now between them.

“Wine for my ministers,” called Louis, looking away from her. He felt fatalistic, what would be would be.

Soon the courtyard was filled with people, as many of them surrounding the viscount as surrounding him.

“A present for his majesty, a token of my regard,” the viscount said over and over when asked about the coach. Louis had ordered musketeers stationed at the two gatehouses that fed into this courtyard, and musketeers stood on either side of the carriage.

His mother came downstairs to mingle before her departure. He watched Nicolas take her a goblet of wine and present it on bended knee, watched her drain it as if it were ale and thank him. Will her friendship with him, her fear, win over her love for me? he wondered. It was possible. In statecraft, love was often trampled.

“Are you going on a journey?” Nicolas asked Anne.

“To visit my old friend again. As we age, we have such need of friends.”

“I am always your friend.”

If she answered, Louis didn’t hear it.

“Monsieur, can you move everyone to the fountain courtyard?” Louis asked, and in no time, Philippe and his gentlemen had laughing courtiers and ministers following them through an arched entryway as if they were the pied pipers of the folk tale.

Silently, he walked his mother to her waiting carriage, which was just outside the golden gate. Madame de Motteville stood at the door, awaiting her queen. Once inside, Anne put a gloved hand on the ledge of one of the carriage’s openings. Louis put his hand atop hers. “I have need of your loyalty,” he said.

The sun was in his eyes; he couldn’t read her face, but he thought he heard her say, “You’ve always had it,” before the carriage lurched away.

L
ATER, HE RAN
upstairs to his chambers, thinking as his footsteps echoed on the stone of the staircases that he ought to have his entire army dress the way his musketeers did, the way the viscount’s guard did, the same uniform for all, so that on a battlefield, one knew a Frenchman from a Spaniard or an Englishman. It was what the Roman legions had done, but somewhere in the following centuries, the practice had been lost.

As he passed through his antechamber, he saw a woman sitting with Belle and realized the woman was Miss de la Baume le Blanc. Joy blazed in him, for she had been avoiding him. “What a wonderful surprise!”

“I—we come to visit sometimes. I assumed you were—”

“In council? Does my presence distress you?”

Appearing from wherever he hid himself, La Porte suddenly joined them. “You know Miss de la Baume le Blanc, sir. Madame Belle likes it when Miss de la Baume le Blanc visits.”

Yes, Louis could imagine laying his own head in Louise’s lap and having her fingers stroke his forehead, and his eyes met Louise’s. Love me, he told her silently.

“She’s leaving us, your majesty.”

La Porte grimaced at Louise’s words, and she saw it and began that blush of hers. “I’m—I’m so sorry, your majesty. I shouldn’t have spoken,” she stammered.

Louis crouched down so that he was on their level. Louise’s blush was growing. Belle made a soft whine, and he put his hand out, and she licked it. She was going to die, wasn’t she? His physicians wouldn’t say so, but it was true. A king wasn’t allowed to stay in the presence of dying, but this was one death he had every intention of witnessing. How would he bear it when the most loyal being he knew no longer existed? He’d bear it like he bore everything else, wouldn’t he, hiding its true depth from the world because there was no one who would not take advantage, except this lovely, blushing young woman who had come to visit his sick dog more than once and never bragged of it, never told others so that her kindness would be noticed, and now told him a truth few dared. She avoided him, but not dying Belle. It had been a long while since he’d been around someone innately kind. Kindness had, in fact, left his life with the cardinal’s death. He stood up, walked into his bedchamber, La Porte following.

“I won’t allow her to visit again, sire,” La Porte said to him.

“No, it’s all right. It touches me that she sees after my dog, and someone has to tell me the truth.” And I have to be man enough to bear it.

T
HAT EVENING, HE
danced with Henriette, who was sparkling, really, full of the coming ballet she was hostessing for the court. She was arch and flirting, her fingers playing a sensuous little tapping against his wrist when they stood a moment together after the dance was ended, but for him, it was over. Now he must face the task of telling Henriette. He had loved her to madness, and now, he didn’t. He understood none of it. He lifted her hand upward and made the motion of kissing it to stop her touching him.