Bitter Greens (32 page)

Athénaïs, gorgeously dressed
en déshabillé
, was surprised in her salon, eating strawberries and cream, with a little dog curled by her side.

‘Sire! What a lovely surprise.’ She rose, the dog nestled against her soft breast.

The King could not take his eyes off the white swell revealed by her loosely laced bodice. ‘Yesterday, you surprised me. I thought it was my turn to surprise you,’ he answered with ponderous gallantry.

She glanced at the crowd. ‘Yes. So nice to see so many old friends.’

She caressed the fur on the dog’s chest, and it lifted its throat in pleasure.

‘You know that we must only meet in company,
madame
.’

Athénaïs interrupted him, throwing up one hand beseechingly. ‘Please, sire, say no more. It is useless to read me a sermon. I understand that my time is over.’

‘It is my responsibility to consider my throne and my country above all else.’

She smiled sadly. ‘Oh, sire, say no more. You know I wish nothing but your glory … and your happiness.’

‘A king must think of his duty.’

‘Of course. But I am just a woman. All I can think of is my poor heart.’

The King grasped her hand. ‘Ah, Athénaïs.’

‘Sire, can we … can we at least talk in private?’

‘Of course,’ he said and withdrew with her into a window alcove. She put the little dog down beside her. The King lifted it to the floor so he could take its place. Athénaïs turned her face away. Gently, he took her chin and turned her face back towards him. The Queen left the room, murmuring something about a headache.

‘Dear Charlotte-Rose,’ Françoise said to me with a strained smile. ‘How have you been these past months? It seems an age since I last saw you. Shall we … shall we take a turn about the room? Madame de Montespan has some wonderful art.’

‘Indeed she does,’ I agreed and let Françoise lead me down the great
salon, pausing to stare at a painting not very far from where the dark head and the golden head were bent so close to each other in the window alcove. Pretending to gaze at the painting, I strained my ears to listen, conscious that Françoise beside me was doing the same.

‘The King must act as he wishes the state to act,’ the King said.

‘Is the King not a man too, sire?’ Athénaïs said.

A murmur too low to hear. A sigh. A giggle.

‘Very fine brushwork,’ I said, edging closer to the alcove.

‘Yes. Um. Lovely colours,’ Françoise said.

‘You are mad,’ Athénaïs sighed. ‘Think what you do, sire.’

‘Yes, I am mad, since I still love you.’ The King stood up, drawing Athénaïs up with him. He bowed to the court, all wide-eyed and gasping with incredulous laughter, and hurried Athénaïs to her bedroom, where the door was shut tight and the curtains emphatically drawn. The little dog ran after them and scratched miserably at the door, whining, until the thump of what sounded like a thrown boot discouraged it and the dog lay down, nose on paws, tail tucked between its hind legs.

Françoise did not speak, her lips pressed hard together.

‘Perhaps a stroll in the garden?’ I suggested.

She did not respond but gathered up her dark heavy skirts with both hands and went out of the room. I followed, to find Athénaïs’s footmen distributing pineapple ices in the garden, where the scent of orange blossom and tuberoses hung heavy in the air.

When the King and Athénaïs came out, flushed and languorous, some hours later, it was as if the past fifteen months’ absence had never been. Athénaïs rode back to Versailles in the same carriage as the King and the Queen, and, soon after, a long baggage-train arrived carrying her dresses and jewels and shoes and fans and shawls and maids and pets, Athénaïs taking up her old suite next to the King.

The King was still the King, however. In the summer of 1676, the Princesse de Soubise caught his eye. Soon, she was to be seen hurrying through the dark corridors of the palace to the King’s apartments, a carelessly wrapped veil showing shining glints of her famous strawberry-blonde hair.

Unfortunately, the Princesse de Soubise was soon struck down with toothache and had to face the barber-surgeon, who wrenched the offending front tooth out with a pair of pliers. With a black gap in her teeth, the Princesse was not so attractive any more, and the King returned to a radiant and smiling Athénaïs, who soon proved her devotion to him by once again falling pregnant.

Then, in the early months of 1677, when Athénaïs was as big as the elephant in the King’s menagerie, His Majesty began a dalliance with one of the Queen’s maids of honour, Isabelle de Ludres. Nearly as voluptuous as Athénaïs – and six years younger – she caught the King’s attention while dancing the minuet with him, by the simple expedient of pressing close to his body and lifting her blue eyes to his.

Athénaïs was furious. She began a rumour that Isabelle was riddled with sores from the English pox. Isabelle tearfully begged the King to examine her from head to toe to prove she was free of any sores. An hour later, the King emerged, smiling, declaring her blemish-free. Athénaïs could no nothing but pace the floor and rage. ‘That sly, back-stabbing, upstart
putain
. I’ll show her! I’ll make her wish she’d never been born,’ she cried, both hands supporting her huge belly.

‘What will you do?’ I asked in interest. I was at court at that time with the Duchesse de Guise, who had come for Christmas and had been persuaded to stay a little longer by Françoise, who hoped for her help in breaking Athénaïs’s hold over the King.

Athénaïs cast me an irritated look. ‘Just wait till this baby is born. I’ll crook my little finger and the King will come crawling back.’

In early June, Athénaïs swept back to court, and Isabelle’s power over the King was suddenly and inexplicably broken. He had eyes only for Athénaïs, who leant her head against his shoulder at the gaming table and ordered a flurry of new gowns, a pair of dancing bears, orange trees in silver pots and a giant gilded birdcage to keep her turtle doves in.

‘He cannot even wait for us to undress her,’ Mademoiselle des Oeillets, one of her ladies-in-waiting, told me. ‘All she has to do is untie her bodice and he is upon her. He is insatiable.’ She looked away, her face hardening.
‘She knows he’ll take his pleasure elsewhere if she is not here, ready and waiting for him. He’ll not be denied by anyone.’

Desperately, Isabelle practised all her flirtatious arts, but it was as if the King did not see her at all. In September, she sent an unhappy message to the King, asking if she might retire to a convent. The King yawned and replied, ‘Is she not there already?’

After that, the King dallied with a young girl from the country, who fled back home in tears after a bruising encounter with Athénaïs’s wit; an English countess, who declared she found Versailles too stuffy after a week of enduring angry stares from Athénaïs’s blue eyes; and my own newly acquired sister-in-law, Mademoiselle de Théobon, who received such a furious letter from her brother that she left the court in some confusion, wondering all the while who had written to let him know.

It was me, of course, writing an account of court gossip to my sister, Marie, with the line, ‘Oh, la, have I told you Théobon’s sister has caught the King’s eye? I’m sure it’ll amount to nothing, though
mordieu!
There are more royal bastards littering this place than unwanted kittens now, and the King making no move to legitimise any except for the Torrent’s.’ (My sister knew that the Torrent was one of Athénaïs’s nicknames.)

Some may think it malicious of me to write such a letter, but I knew it would grieve my sister to have her young sister-in-law become the latest of the King’s mistresses and, besides, Athénaïs was not someone you wished to become an enemy.

Meanwhile, my own life was unendurable. The Duchesse de Guise would not permit me to leave her side. I spent all day standing on cold marble floors, my legs and feet aching, listening to her sour voice listing the faults of everyone I knew, except for the King, of course. Then all night I was expected to answer her every call, helping her to the chamber pot, rubbing her cold feet, reading to her from the Bible, fetching her a hot posset that she would then refuse to drink, complaining it was too hot or too cold, too spiced or not spiced enough.

Something had to be done. The next time we went to Versailles, for Easter in the year 1678, I went at once to Athénaïs’s apartment – a series of
twelve rooms, each a symphony of pale blue and gold and rose, filled with the scent of fresh flowers, face powder and expensive perfume.

Athénaïs was lounging on a velvet couch, her swollen feet stuffed into a pair of high-heeled slippers. Her maid of honour, Mademoiselle des Oeillets, was curling her hair with a hot poker (and I’d always thought those ringlets were natural) and she was eating sweetmeats from a violet satin box.

When I had first met Athénaïs, she had been twenty-six and angelically beautiful. Now, she was thirty-seven and once again pregnant to the King. Her face was round as a wheel of cheese, and her blue eyes seemed to bulge above her plump cheeks. Her belly was so enormous she could have used it as a rather unstable table for four, and her cleavage was so deep she could have kept all the silver cutlery safely stored within.

She raised her eyebrows at the sight of me. ‘Charlotte-Rose. What an unexpected pleasure.’

‘I need to talk to you!’ I clasped both hands near my heart.

‘Always so dramatic. What’s wrong?’

‘I need help. I’m down on my knees and kissing your feet, metaphorically speaking. I will do so literally if you like, as long as you help me.’

‘Why, whatever is the matter?’

‘I cannot stand it any more. I’m a slave. The King might as well send me to the galleys. I’ll be in service to the Duchesse until I’m an old, old woman. My hair and beard will have grown to the floor and I’ll be bent in perpetual prayer, my back as bowed as that old hag’s. They’ll have to bury me kneeling.’

Athénaïs laughed. ‘She is rather pious.’

‘Pious! What a weak word. She’s not pious, she’s righteous, punctilious, sanctimonious …’

Athénaïs, smiling, held up one hand. ‘I get the idea.’

‘I will go mad if I’m to work for her any longer. She won’t go to the theatre or the ballet, she disapproves of the salons, she prefers Normandy to Paris.’

‘Indeed, a fate worse than death. My poor Charlotte-Rose.’

‘What am I to do?’

‘Well, that’s simple enough,’ Athénaïs answered. ‘You must marry.’

‘Who? Who would want me? I’m not beautiful like you, Athénaïs. No one wanted me when I was young and still a maiden. Who would want me now?’

I am twenty-seven years old, and I’ve already dragged my good name through the mud
, I wanted to shriek. Instead, I composed myself and said, ‘I have no beauty, no dowry, no land. I have nothing but my father’s name, and even that I have disgraced. Who do you suggest I marry?’

She coiled one of her bright ringlets around her finger. ‘You may go,’ she said to Mademoiselle des Oeillets, who at once rose and backed out of the room. For a moment longer, Athénaïs was silent, her eyes fixed upon me.

‘I like you, Charlotte-Rose,’ she said at length. ‘You never try to steal the King’s affections or stab me in the back. Although you are quick and clever, you are not malicious. And your blood is as noble as mine. It makes me furious, seeing so many commoners at court, seeking to creep higher by winning the King’s good favour. And you could be useful to me, yes, indeed you could.’ She spoke these last words so softly I could hardly hear her.

I stood silently as she gazed at me, coiling her ringlet about her finger. She seemed to come to some kind of decision, for she dropped the curl of hair and leant forward. ‘I know someone who can help you, but you must assure me that you’ll tell no one about her.’

‘Who could possibly help me?’

‘There is always a way,’ she answered. ‘You will need money, but I can help you there, as long as you remember that you owe me loyalty and discretion.’

‘Of course.’

‘You must have a strong spirit and a strong stomach too,’ she warned me.

I thought she must mean the strength to cold-bloodedly marry a man I did not love, probably an older man with a drooping paunch and the whiff of decay in his mouth. I tried to smile. ‘Am I not called Dunamis?’

‘You must be sure that this is what you want.’

I huffed my breath out. ‘I don’t know what I want.’

‘Of course you do,’ Athénaïs answered impatiently. ‘A young man of noble blood and good fortune, who knows the way of the court and will turn a blind eye to any affairs you have once you’ve delivered him an heir or two. Handsome enough that he does not turn your stomach, but not so handsome that he will treat you with contempt. Clever enough that he will not bore you, but not so clever that he will see through you. Rich enough to—’

‘Of course I’d like a husband like that. But where am I meant to find him?’

Athénaïs cast me an exasperated look. ‘The court is full of men like that, Charlotte-Rose. Take the time to look them over and choose one who you think will do. Pick one who is in favour with the King, if you wish to serve your family well.’ She spoke with a faint lift of her lip, for Athénaïs’s husband had been out of favour at court and she had had to rely on her own wiles to raise her family’s fortunes.

‘Oh, yes, a rich beauty like me can choose any man she wants.’

Athénaïs smiled. ‘Of course you can. Choose wisely, because once you begin you can’t go back.’

Curiosity was rising in me and a certain cold dread.

‘When you have chosen the man you want, then you’ll need something that belongs to him. A used handkerchief, a lock of his hair, some fingernail parings …’

‘That sounds like witchcraft.’

Athénaïs sat back, regarding me through half-slitted eyes. ‘Not at all. It’s just a little love charm. Would you not like to be married, with your own grand house and servants, a carriage and six, and as many gowns as you like? Wouldn’t it be sweet revenge, on all those who have mocked and scorned you?’

I hesitated. It would indeed be sweet.

‘And your days would be your own. You’d be free to do just as you pleased.’