By Honor Bound (29 page)

Honneure turned back to the carriage and held out her hand to Philippa. The child climbed down and grabbed her mother’s fingers. She looked pale.

“Are we going to see him now, Mommy?” she asked softly.

“Yes, Philippa. I think so.”

The stable was only a hundred yards away, but it seemed like a hundred miles. Honneure felt the woman’s eyes on her until she rounded the corner of the château.

The building was long and low, with a window for every stall. Horses’ heads appeared over sills to watch them approach, dark eyes large and curious. Double doors were open, and Honneure and Philippa slowly walked inside. Honneure thought her heart might explode.

Stall enclosures lined both sides of the aisle until approximately three-quarters of the way down. In the open space between the last stalls and the end of the barn was a muck pile on one side, feed and bedding on the other.

Philippe was forking straw into an orderly mound. He was completely unaware of their presence, and Honneure watched him for several moments. Though the light was too dim to pick out his features, she was able to see his hair, longer now, falling forward over his muscular shoulders. He had stripped off his shirt, and sweat glistened on his enlarged, rolling biceps. She licked her parched lips.

Nothing had changed. Nothing. He still made her knees weak, her mouth dry. She was as much in love with him as she had ever been. It would never change. Only the circumstances around them would change.

In her peripheral vision, Honneure saw Philippa looking up at her. She took a step forward and then another. Her heart raced, and her blood thrilled through her veins.

Philippe paused to wipe his brow and heard quiet steps. He turned in their direction and saw their silhouettes, a woman and a girl, backlit by the open doors. Curious, he put aside his pitchfork.

“Hello? Can I help you?”

Honneure didn’t reply. She couldn’t. Philippa looked up at her again and then at Philippe. “Papa?” she said softly into the lingering silence.

Philippe froze. Everything within him seemed to stop, the beating of his heart, the flow of his blood, his respiration. “Oh … my … God,” he breathed at last.

Philippa let go of her mother’s hand. She walked forward steadily until she stood just a few feet in front of her father. She cocked her head, studying him. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“You look just like Mommy said you would. You look just like me.”

Honneure heard a sound that could only be a sob. She moved closer until she could see Philippe’s expression. It was agonized. He glanced at her, then back at his daughter. He knelt.

“Philippa?” he whispered.

She nodded. “Mommy named me after you.”

“I … I know.” He couldn’t take his eyes from her. She was beautiful, perfect. She was his daughter. The proof of his love for her mother.

Philippe closed his eyes and felt more tears squeeze from beneath his lids. His face was wet with them. He felt his daughter’s fingers touch his cheek to brush the tears away.

“Don’t cry, Papa,” she said gently. “Mommy brought me here because she thought it would make you glad.”

He could only nod. Love surged through him, so powerful, so strong and pure, that it rocked him. He captured Philippa’s little hand and pressed it to his lips. “I love you,” Philippe whispered.

“I love you, too, Papa. Even though I didn’t meet you until today, Mommy and I have loved you our whole lives.”

It was almost more than Philippe could bear. He opened his arms, a prayer on his lips, but Philippa didn’t hesitate. She stepped immediately into the circle of his arms.

Honneure saw his shoulders shake as he silently wept against his daughter’s shoulder. Nearly blinded by her own tears, she moved forward until she had reached the embracing pair. Crouching, she put her arms around both of them.

A horse whinnied. Sunlight slanting through open windows highlighted dancing dust motes. The world continued to turn as mingled teardrops stained the cool, stone floor.

Chapter Thirty

January 1780

Though it was hardly past noon, the day was as dark as dusk. Angry black and purple clouds warred in the sky, ominous rumblings of thunder announcing each new battle. Honneure glanced out the window of the queen’s interior salon and winced. There were few things she disliked more than winter rainstorms. The weather was cold and gloomy enough as it was. She much preferred snow to the damp depression of winter rain.

A candle guttered, and Honneure fetched a replacement from a cupboard built cleverly into the wall. She took several extras as some of the other candles had burned partway down. Madame Thierry, however, stopped her.

“Remember the economies. We’re supposed to let candles burn all the way down now.”

Honneure nodded. “Thank you for reminding me.”

“So many things are changing; it’s hard to remember it all.”

“Yes, but the changes are necessary,” Honneure said loyally. “The king and queen wish to set the example. The Royal Treasury has made so many cuts in government that the king was able to reduce taxes. He wants his people to know that he and the queen are doing their parts as well. He does not want to be associated at all with his grandfather’s profligate ways.”

“We should just be glad, I suppose, that we’re not among the household servants who were dismissed. Did you know that over four hundred posts were abolished in the palace alone?”

“What about the King’s Hunt? Thirteen
hundred
of those posts were eliminated.”

Madame Thierry shook her head and returned her attention to her mending. “We are fortunate, indeed, that the queen returns the loyalty of those who have been so devoted to her.”

“She is a woman deserving of our devotion. I only wish her subjects knew her the way we do.”

Madame Thierry glanced up. “I know. But there are always grumblings against people in high places, aren’t there? Even royal courtiers, people who should know better, whisper their calumnies about her.”

Honneure flushed with a surge of anger. “They seem to be able to twist anything and everything she does. She had Madame Bertin make her simple gowns, use smaller amounts of material and less expensive materials, and do you know what people say to that?”

“I certainly do. They say the only reason she uses the inexpensive material is because it is Austrian made and therefore benefits her country, that she is not selfless, merely conniving.”

Honneure could feel the pulse pounding in her neck. Her response, however, was preempted by a low rumble of thunder. She glanced out the window again.

“I’d better check on Philippa and walk the dogs before it starts raining.”

“How is she?”

“Better, much better. Her stomach seems to have settled, and she’s eating a little now.”

“It went through the nursery like wildfire, didn’t it?”

“Yes, I believe your boy was the only one spared.”

“So far.” Madame Thierry chuckled. “But I really wouldn’t mind if he got just a
little
sick. Then he could pass it on to me. I could stand to lose a kilo or two.”

“You look fine to me.” Honneure smiled and touched her friend on the shoulder as she passed. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

Honneure entered the sitting room quietly so as not to disturb Philippa if she was sleeping. But one of the queen’s dogs, startled out of a nap, yipped sharply.

“Mommy, is that you?” the child called from their bedroom.

“Yes, my love.” Honneure entered the small room. “How are you feeling?”

Philippa pushed herself to a sitting position and rubbed her eyes. “Tired,” she said grumpily. “And I missed you.”

“Are you hungry?”

Philippa shook her head.

“Maybe later,” Honneure said hopefully. “Why don’t you lie back down and try to take a little nap? I’ll stay with you until you nod off.”

“I’ve been sleeping all morning.” Philippa pouted. But she lay back.

“You’ll feel better when you wake up next time. I promise.” Honneure sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed and smoothed strands of dark hair from her forehead. “Just close your eyes and go to sleep.”

As Honneure stroked Philippa’s brow, she could not help but notice the two small pockmarks. She was fortunate the beautiful little girl had not been scarred more severely. Both of them were. Honneure fingered the marks on her neck. They were fortunate simply to be alive, and she would never, ever forget how frightened she had been when the disease had been initially diagnosed.

It had been near the end of the previous August, in the midst of the unrelenting and oppressive summer heat wave. She had heard there were a few cases of smallpox in the town of Versailles and a handful at the palace. A more general and widespread outbreak did not seem likely. Honneure had breathed a sigh of relief when no more victims were reported and everyone afflicted recovered. Then, all of a sudden, Philippa had become ill. In a few days Honneure had been down with it as well. How she had cursed herself for not having the inoculation the king himself had tried to promote.

Philippa stirred briefly as she drifted out of consciousness. Honneure laid her hand atop the child’s smaller one.

They were so lucky it was only a mild form of the disease that had struck and then retreated. But that would not always be the case. Though she and Philippa were now immune, her foster parents were not. And despite the fact that even Madame Dupin had been inoculated, they refused to take the preventive treatment.

“I’m too old to try anything new,” Jeanne had said as they had sat at the scarred oaken table in the kitchen of Chenonceau. “I’ll take my chances.”

It was October. The Court had gone to Fontainebleau, but Philippa and Honneure had still been too weak to return to work and travel as well. The queen had urged Honneure to take the opportunity to visit her family when she felt well enough. A month later, she had taken her daughter and made the journey home.

The reunion had been bittersweet at first. Jeanne and Paul had been overjoyed to meet their grandchild. But the mere fact of her existence was a reminder of the love Honneure and Philippe had shared and lost. They had learned, of course, of her visit to Philippe. It had been almost unbearably painful to describe that day to them. They shared her grief over the tragic timing of events that had conspired to keep them apart but had been glad to know he was well and apparently prospering. They asked, awkwardly, about Philippe’s wife and her son, but Honneure had had little to relate. Her time with Philippe had been so short, a few stolen moments in the fragrant gloom of the barn. He had spoken briefly with his daughter. He and Honneure had gazed at one another with agonized longing. Neither of them had been able to bear anything more. She and Philippa had left, and she had not seen the woman or the boy again.

Honneure sighed and dashed an errant tear from her cheek. The rest of their visit had been far less emotional.

Paul had been eager to learn all he could of the king. “Is it true he disguised himself and visited the Hotel Dieu unrecognized?” he had asked eagerly, referring to Paris’s notorious hospital.

“He did,” Honneure had replied. “And he was appalled. He made a tour of the wards and found patients four to a bed three and a half feet wide. When two wanted to sleep, the other two had to get out and lie on the floor. When a patient died, sheets were not changed, even if they had had a contagious disease. Suzanne Necker, wife of the Minister of the Treasury, heard of people hustled to the cemetery before they were dead and now has a morbid fear of premature burial.”

Paul and Jeanne had been appropriately horrified. “But the king ordered reforms, didn’t he?”

“He issued a decree that at least three hundred patients should have a bed to themselves. Wards were to be established for each category of disease, and separate wards for men and women. To provide extra beds, Louis, Madame Necker, and the Archbishop of Paris put up money for a new hospital in the Saint-Sulpice quarter.”

Paul had shaken his head. “It’s hard to believe. From the excesses of the grandfather, to the economies and good sense of the grandson.”

Honneure had smiled. “He is truly a good man. He reformed the prisons also, you know. He built a place for civil prisoners so they wouldn’t have to be confined with criminals. Again, he had sexes separated. He paid for the food and clothing of those who had no private means and founded a prison infirmary run by the Sisters of Charity.”

“No wonder you’ve always written in such glowing terms of the king and queen,” Jeanne had said. “The depth of the king’s compassion is almost unbelievable.”

“I think his most important reform, though, is the one having to do with torture,” Honneure had continued, “As you know, an examining magistrate had the right to use physical force in order to get an accused man to confess his supposed crime.”

It was Madame Campan who had related the terrible details to her, having heard them from the wife of one of the palace guards. Honneure had recoiled anew as she had described to her foster parents the torture, how the prisoner, now tired, haggard, bearded, and vermin-covered after days and perhaps weeks in custody, was seated on a stone stool. His wrists were tied to two iron rings, two and a half feet apart on the wall behind. His feet were attached by long cords to two other rings twelve feet from the wall. The cords were fastened tight and then made even tighter by placing under them a low trestle. After the examining magistrate seized the prisoner’s nose, an assistant forced water down his throat from a drinking horn. Up to four quarts were forced down the wretched man’s throat; as his body swelled, the cords tightened further still, stretching his limbs. A surgeon knelt beside him and, if the prisoner’s pulse began to fail, ordered him to be carried away and the torture resumed later.

“Louis found this practice barbaric,” Honneure went on. “He said he always wondered whether, when the question is applied, it is not the strength of a man’s nerves which usually decided whether he was guilty or innocent. He put an end to the torture of accused prisoners, and no longer will any Frenchman be racked.”

“Wonders never cease,” Paul had said, arms crossed on the old wooden table. “The King of France, a humanitarian. And to think, we used to sit around this same table and talk about him when he was just a little boy.”

Honneure remembered well. She recalled all the tales of the Royal Court Madame Dupin had brought home to her, the stories of the young Duc de Berry and his brothers, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d’Artois, his sisters Clotilde and Elisabeth. In a way, she had grown up with them. Now she knew them as living, breathing people.

From the very first, Honneure’s mother had instilled in her a love of history. She remembered a cold winter’s day in Amboise, when she had climbed to the tower and looked out over the château and the town below. She loved recalling and reliving the historical details of the past. Now she was actually living history in the making as servant to the Queen of France. Never, in her wildest dreams, would she have imagined such a thing to be possible.

“The wonder to me,” Jeanne had said with a chuckle, drawing Honneure from her reverie, “is not that our king is so compassionate but that my husband has stopped complaining about our queen. Remember how you used to feel, Paul, about the dauphin marrying that upstart Austrian?”

Paul’s already florid cheeks had deepened another shade. “How was I supposed to know she’d turn out to be so … so … so
nice
?”

Laughter around the table had been interrupted by the arrival of Philippa, who had been playing in the gardens by the Cher. She was a dripping, sodden mess from head to toe.

“Philippa,” Honneure had exclaimed. “What happened to you?”

“I fell in the river,” she had replied evenly. “But it’s not so bad. It’s not as cold as the ocean in Normandy.” She had licked her lips. “And not as salty. I like it.”

“Oh, Philippa …” Honneure threw her arms around her daughter. Philippe was lost to her, and the pain of the loss would never end. But at least she had his child, and the joy of that love was enough to carry her to the end of her days.

A series of thunderclaps drew Honneure sharply away from Chenonceau and back into the present. She glanced down at her daughter, but nature’s percussion had not wakened her. Honneure pulled the cover up to the child’s shoulders and looked out the window. She would have to hurry to beat the rain. Calling softly to the dogs, she left their small apartment.