Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow (9 page)

“When was the last time the king visited your bedchamber?” Mercy asked me pointedly, settling into the chair. Sometimes I think he looked at me and still saw a child of fourteen, his countrywoman and a foreigner in the Bourbon court, in need of a father figure to maintain discipline.

“Shall I check my journal for you?” I rose from the divan. “It is not in this room.” I gestured beyond one of the walls of the octagonal salon. “I keep it locked in the escritoire in my library.”

Mercy crossed one leg over the other, making himself comfortable.
“If it is necessary to review your journal, Madame, then it must be some time since you and His Majesty have been
intime
.” He cleared his throat. “I understand that you have not encouraged him of late to visit you. I have heard that you have a thousand excuses to keep him from your bed nowadays: that you have the headache; that you are fatigued from dancing; that you overexerted yourself with walking earlier in the day; that you must rise early to meet with Mademoiselle Bertin to discuss some new fashion, or to order another eighteen pairs of scented gloves from Monsieur Fargeon.” He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “May I suggest,
Votre Majesté
, that the truth lies closer to your passion for
riding
?”

Startled, I said, “I don’t take your meaning, monsieur le comte.”

Mercy smiled. “I think you do.”

I glanced at the golden clock on the marble mantel, then at the turquoise silk drapes, then at the black marble figurine on the table across the room, then at my satin slippers, before meeting the ambassador’s gaze. “I-I have never even kissed the duc de Lauzun,” I confessed. “And he has never so much as touched me, except when we dance. But,” I breathed, “he is all I can think about.”

The comte chuckled avuncularly. “When you and Louis first were wed you lacked the maturity, physically as well as emotionally, to become parents, even though it was possible for you to bear a child. Your mother and Louis Quinze grew concerned when the union was not immediately consummated, but accepted the delay because you were both so young and inexperienced. However, more than four years have passed and little has changed.”

I was certain Mercy knew that when Louis’s physician, Monsieur Lassone, examined him in the autumn of 1773, he measured his height and his burgeoning girth and, putting the problem
down to an excess of rich foods and exercise, had instructed my husband to curtail his appetites. But that only made him grumpy; and when the pain persisted nonetheless, Louis refused to submit to another examination.

“Need I remind you, Madame, that you must do everything possible to encourage an already reticent husband to come to your bed? The one thing you have managed to do, which I confess has surprised us all, is to form a true friendship with your
mari
, something that is not to be lightly dismissed. However, withholding your body from the king might dull his genuine affection for you and set back the consummation of your marriage even further, something France—and the Hapsburg court—can ill afford.”

The ambassador helped himself to a pistachio macaron from a silver tray piled high with confectionery. “Allow me,
Votre Majesté
, to offer a word or two of advice from a man of the world: Entice your husband to resume his conjugal visits as often as possible. And, in the dark, behind your closed eyelids, if you imagine that the face and body beside you belong to someone else, as long as you do not give voice to these fantasies, your secret remains buried in your soul. Not even God will guess it. And perhaps,” he added, as a sly smile crept across his narrow lips, “France will thank you for it in nine months’ time.”

He rose from the chair and made a shallow bow. “I hope I have made my position clear, Madame. And that of Austria.” Wordlessly, I watched him depart the Méridienne, then sank back onto the divan.

Austria meant Maman. And everything I was I owed to her. The last thing on earth I wanted was to disappoint her.

Eleven days (I counted,
bien sûr
) passed before the duc de Lauzun appeared again at my
lever
. It was difficult for me to speak to him with any degree of intimacy because my salon was always
so crowded and noisy, and it took some persuasion, despite my rank, to convince him to come riding with me the following day. This time, accompanied by the princesse de Lamballe, who made a discreet exit once we reached our destination, we went only as far as le Petit Trianon, for I wished to find a private place to speak with him.

Sunlight filtered into the airy salon that I intended to redecorate and employ as my music room. I stood by the window where I knew that the light would most flatter my complexion.

“Where have you been?” I asked the duc. “I missed you greatly.”

He remained on the opposite side of the room. “I had to return to my estate. I don’t know if the news has reached your ears,
Votre Majesté
, but the harvest was a bleak one this year and the people are afraid they will starve. Fueled by rumors that they will not have enough flour to make bread, there have been rumblings of discontent.”

I hadn’t heard. Louis had brushed aside my attempts to glean any knowledge of current affairs. “And is everything settled now?” I asked gaily.

The duc chuckled. “If only things could be resolved as easily as Your Majesty would wish it.” He parted the cerise-colored drapes, focusing on something out of doors. “People would sooner believe a silver-tongued rabble-rouser than their own eyes. I fear it will develop into a genuine crisis. I will need to return to my regiment there.” He paused for several moments. “It may take a number of months to maintain order and keep the peace. I will not be coming back to court for some time.”

I felt my chest tighten. A gasp escaped my lips. “Oh,
non
! Can’t someone else”—I began to fight for words—“make the situation better in the countryside?” In three strides I was across the room and had clasped his arms. “Why must it be you?”

The duc gazed deeply into my eyes. “People are talking about us,” he said quietly, firmly.

“There is nothing to say,” I replied, my voice quavering.

“When has that stopped tongues from speculating? We spend time alone; you have clearly marked me for your favor. And try though you might, you do not conceal your delight when I am in the same room. My amorous reputation is well known. And it will only tarnish your own unblemished one. I cannot let that happen. Especially when it is fully within my power to prevent it.”

I threw my arms about Armand’s neck and pressed my face to his chest. “Do not abandon me. I beg of you—what will become of me if you abandon me?” If he departed, leaving me nothing to look forward to each day but the temporary thrill of selecting my wardrobe from the
gazette des atours
and the applause that greeted my arrival at the Opéra, I was convinced I would go mad before I turned twenty.

He held me until my sobs subsided. “It must be this way,
Majesté
. In time you will understand why. And I am honored, touched beyond all measure that you hold me in such esteem. Surely,” he added with a hint of a chuckle, “I don’t merit such regard.” When I began to protest, he placed a finger to my lips. His riding glove smelled of almond and clove. “
Shh
. It is all for the best this way. The unrest in the country is much talked about in certain circles and it will come as no surprise that I have had to return to my estate.” He pulled away and regarded my tearstained face. “But perhaps you will give me a souvenir to remember you by.”

I reluctantly broke our embrace and fetched my riding hat from the little console table. Removing the white heron feather, I playfully stroked his cheek with it. “My panache,” I said softly, presenting the plume.

He took my hands in his and pressed his lips to them, not once, but three times. With a tinge of melancholy, he said, “
Merci, Majesté
. I will cherish it forever. And I will cherish, too, our friendship.”

He thought it was best if he departed alone, and so I waited while he cloaked himself; then I followed him outside and watched him mount his horse. With a quick kick of his heels and a spray of gravel he spurred his mare toward the Château de Versailles, growing ever smaller, until he was just a tobacco-colored speck on the horizon.

I dried my tears and stood for several minutes in the courtyard of le Petit Trianon. Armand had been right; that I knew. So, too, was the comte de Mercy. And the princesse de Lamballe. I had risked my untested heart on a handsome courtier because I was lonely and eager to be loved. But the passion, or even affection, that I dreamed of would not come from the duc de Lauzun and I could not hazard a scandal. It was a bitter cordial to swallow, but where was it written that this precious and lofty commodity called love was a queen’s prerogative? As Mercy had so succinctly reminded me, I had allowed myself to become distracted from my primary obligation. It was time to adjust the compass before my marriage was blown off course completely.

Within the vast hive of Versailles, it was nearly impossible to maintain a secret. As we had done nearly a year earlier, on the first occasion when Louis had been persuaded to be examined by his physician—after considerable haranguing by two sovereigns, his
grand-père
, and my maman—we waited until the small hours of the morning when even the most inveterate of wagerers had laid down their cards and gone to bed. Our night rails masked by heavy cloaks, lanterns in hand we tiptoed up the narrow staircase that led to the King’s Apartments, the informal private suite that Louis had redecorated to his own taste. As we climbed the wooden treads our lamps illuminated the walls of the dark stairwell, casting an eerie glow on the unseeing glass eyes of my husband’s hunting trophies, the antlered heads of half a dozen majestic stags and a pair of wild boar. Although I had joined the hunt on occasion, I would never get used to it. What must these noble creatures have thought in their final moment when the fatal blow came? To display their heads on the wall, stuffed with sawdust, was an insult to their dignity.

We crept noiselessly across the thick Aubusson that carpeted the floor of Louis’s library, a room decorated entirely in pale blue and gold. It was twice the size of the others in the private apartment, for it had to accommodate his eight thousand volumes. Unlike me, my husband was a great reader and possessed not only the classics of antiquity, countless treasures of history and verse that stood like so many Spartan soldiers in serried ranks, spine to spine with his initials embossed in gold, but Dante and Shakespeare and Hume and hundreds of volumes in English—even spicy novels like
Tom Jones
, which Maman would have a conniption if she caught me perusing—and the writings of some of our own philosophers whose views were often anathema to the Crown. I knew my husband had read Diderot, Voltaire, and
Rousseau. I would not have said Louis’s mind was quick, but it was curious.

He turned the gilded handle on the library door and led the way into his study. The eyes of the Dutch humanist Erasmus in Holbein’s portrait seemed to follow us as we crossed the room, wending our way about the globes and maps and armillaries that so fascinated my husband. Louis’s passion for order was evident everywhere: atop the enormous writing desk neat piles of portfolios on one side awaited his perusal; on the other, a stack arranged just as tidily represented those he had already reviewed. There must have been hundreds of documents, and I had never been invited to take so much as a peek at a single one. My role as a mere consort was clear—which made this clandestine appointment all the more vital.

As we approached the king’s bedroom, with each step Louis grew more anxious. I slipped my arm through his.
“Sois courageux,”
I whispered. “Be brave. The remedy might be simple.”

We entered the chamber and Louis rested his lantern opposite the canopied bed. He began to pace, while I clutched my cloak to my chest and stole a glance through the draperies. The late autumn night was clear; the crescent sliver suspended in the indigo sky reminded me of the hair ornaments that became all the mode after my childhood music master Herr Gluck presented his
Iphigénie
at the Paris Opéra.