Enchantress of Paris (31 page)

Mazarin shrugged. “Think what you will. You're leaving either way.”

“You've been lying to me since my birth,” said King Louis. “About my father, your love for my mother, my sovereignty. Why didn't you ever tell me you're my real father?”

The cardinal looked puzzled. “I have never wronged you.”

“I never should have trusted you,” said King Louis.

Mazarin put his hands out again, palms up. “There is none you can trust more than me. My son.”

The king stared in utter silence. The anger in his stance melted. Neither man moved on the declaration. It dangled between them like a hangman's noose.

Finally, King Louis took my hand. “If I am your son, I am not the rightful king. I can marry whom I choose for the sake of love rather than country. I choose Marie.”

“The boy I raised cannot choose Marie over France.”

The king hesitated for a wisp of a second. “I already have.”

The cardinal shook his head. “Think it through. If you are my son, then you are kin to Marie. You cannot wed her in the eyes of God without a dispensation from the pope. Obtaining one would reveal your paternity to the world. Parliament and the law would brand you an imposter, a bastard. The people would tear the crown from your head. They would tear your very head off with it. Every greedy noble and monarch in Europe will encroach on France.”

“I'll wed her without dispensation.” He squeezed my hand hard. “God knows your own marriage wasn't sanctioned.”

Mazarin shook his head again. “You'd need more than a dispensation. You'd need permission. From her guardian.”

“Grant it, Cardinal. If you ever had an ounce of love for me, grant me her hand in marriage.”

Mazarin took two steps toward me. “I would kill her first.”

The king and I took a step back. Though I squeezed his hand as hard as I could, it seemed King Louis was slipping out of my grasp. We glanced at each other.

He turned back to the cardinal and said, “Swear you won't send her to a convent.”

“Louis!” I cried.

The king ignored me. “We can revise our demands. I'm willing to make concessions if King Philip is not. Swear you won't send Marie to a convent while we remove the marriage article.”

The cardinal curled his mustache.

King Louis went on. “I will call off the peace and muster the army for a campaign in the west tomorrow if you do not assure me Marie remains within
my
realm while we work on the treaty.”

At last the cardinal nodded. “She may remain in France, but not in Paris. She's leaving.”

“To a city of her own choosing.”

I pulled his arm. “Louis!”
It cannot end this way!

“Very well,” said the cardinal. He turned to go, calling over his shoulder, “She leaves within the week.”

King Louis grabbed my shoulders and whispered low, “I've never seen him this way. He would have sent you to Italy, where I might never find you.”

“The cardinal's prediction was correct,” I said in disbelief. “He made you send me away.”

“I've bought time. I can convince him.”

“Once Mazarin gets you to himself he will make you forget me. He'll let you argue your cause all the way to the altar, and it will be too late.” I sat on the floor in a heap of silk and tears. “Recruit Condé. Invite him into France with his Spanish troops to overthrow Mazarin.”

The king knelt beside me. “Condé would overthrow me in the process, my love.”

“Ally with King Charles of England. He'll soon be restored to his throne, and then you will have the might of the English army.”

He shook his head, unbelieving.

He'd made up his mind—he had outgrown my influence. But if King Louis couldn't use his power to keep me at the Louvre, would he ever have the power to marry me? “What can we do?”

He took a deep breath. “I'm going to try talking to my mother.”

 

CHAPTER
39

Evil will not depart from the house of him that pays evil for good.

—PROVERBS 17:13

King Louis left. I remained on the floor, leaning on the window casement. “The cardinal has bewitched him! Moréna, you must obtain the king's urine, bake it in a cake, and feed it to a stray dog to break the spell.”

“You think I haven't tried?” she asked. “The king's valet is in the cardinal's pay.” She grabbed her birch besom and swept the cardinal's evil residue out the door. “I could finish him painlessly. A tasteless potion.”

“You cannot kill my uncle. We wouldn't be able to live with ourselves.”

“I would,” she said proudly. “It's no worse than his kind have done to my people in slavery.”

I could easily mention Mazarin's mustache comb, where she'd find stray hairs to mold into a wax poppet that she could drop in the River Seine. “Whatever harm we wrought in this life comes back to us. Leave Mazarin to God.”

She went back to arranging my things. I stayed on the floor and watched a sliver of sky turn from afternoon pink to twilight ink. Would it make any difference if I brought out all my tools to read the stars now? Perhaps I shouldn't have resisted using magical elements to attain my desires. After all, I'd been trying to alter fate.

When the servants came in with supper, Venelle arrived with Hortense and Marianne.

“We're to stay with you,” said Hortense, crouching beside me.

I didn't move. “Venelle must take the other chamber with Marianne. I don't want her in here.”

Hortense gestured to Venelle, who moved to the adjoining chamber with no argument. Her job would be easy now.

I clung to Hortense's hand. “Do you remember how to make that charm for protection Papa always made for us? The one of rue and a cross of brown agate?”

She left to find the necessary objects. But she never uncovered a cross of brown agate, and brought a cross of jet instead. I stayed put as she wrote the prayer, mixed the bag, and hung it around my neck. She sat with me until everyone else had gone to sleep and her own eyes drooped heavily. “You must come to bed,” she said.

“I won't.”

She took me gently by the hand with such a sweet look that I couldn't argue. She led me to bed and tucked herself beside me and held me while I cried myself to sleep.

*   *   *

Venelle and Marianne's chamber had the larger dining table, which is where we broke our fast in the morning. The cardinal sent up servants with asparagus soup and dainty pastries and ham in parsley and butter. Moréna looked terrified when I accepted a porcelain dish full of a prized golden brew from the east called tea.
She's leery.
I loved tea; it smelled heavenly. Then I thought back to all those Italians traipsing in and out of Palazzo Mancini back in Rome, with their stories of poison and the ease of disposing of rivals. I wondered how well I knew Mazarin, a cardinal who'd torn my room apart looking for a book on necromancy. I thought of the look in his eye when he'd said to King Louis,
I'd kill her first.
I shuddered, dropping the porcelain dish. Venelle rushed to clean the mess. I left my food untouched and moved to a chair Hortense had dragged to my post at the window.

A commotion arose beyond my door midmorning. The voices of the musketeers standing guard outside mingled with the king's. The king denounced them angrily, and it was quiet again. I glanced at Moréna, who nodded. She slipped out through the servants' passage to learn what she could. She didn't return for hours.

*   *   *

“The king has gone from the cardinal to the queen and back again in a rage,” said Moréna when she finally returned. My sisters sat in the other chamber for dinner, and Moréna arranged herself at my feet by the window.

“The cardinal will travel to Saint-Jean-de-Luz to meet the Spanish prime minister, review the treaty, modify it, and finally ratify it,” she said. “The process will take months. The king and queen mother will accompany him as far as Bayonne, so they will be nearby if difficulties arise. A large portion of the court will go.”

“So I can stay at the Louvre?”

She shook her head. “You leave before anyone else.”

“Why? What happened?”

She hesitated. “After the king railed at the cardinal for denying access to your rooms, the king went to his mother. He begged her to order the cardinal to grant your hand in marriage. She insisted he couldn't choose you over France. He … he threw a fit. Yelling, screaming, and crying, he threatened to elope.”

“Really?” I felt a glimmer of hope that faded as its meaning sank in. He was willing to give up France. “I suppose she cursed my name.”

Moréna shook her head. “No. She became so alarmed that the king might elope, she followed the king to the cardinal's chamber. She actually urged the cardinal to let you go to Bayonne. To not separate you and King Louis.”

“She wouldn't. She hates me.”

“She
fears
you. And fears what the king might do if he can't keep you.”

“Keep me? You mean as a mistress?”

Moréna nodded. “The queen mother considers it a compromise.”

“That is an an insult after being promised a crown.”

Moréna looked down. “The cardinal refused anyway. You leave for a city of your choosing in two or three days.”

“The king will choose.” I turned my gaze back to the window, to the sky.

“You should eat now, my lady.”

But I had no stomach for it.

*   *   *

I counted the passing hours by the toll of church bells announcing masses throughout Paris while Moréna roamed the Louvre for news. The king couldn't visit. My sisters urged me to take bread, wine, sips of broth. Unable to eat, I sat in my chair at the window and waited. They bathed me, tended my hair and nails, and avoided talking. Even Venelle respected the cloak of quiet I'd wrapped around myself. On the third night, the king was admitted.

I tried to stand but had no strength. “My love.”

He sat at my feet, put his head in my lap. There were times when that gesture would have set my skin to tingling, and I'd have longed for him to slide a hand up my leg. Now his tears dampened my skirt, and I felt only sorrow. He had failed.

Which meant I had failed. I failed to make him the powerful king he was destined to be. But I knew I was right. He
would
be the most glorious king of all time. I glanced at the stars. Perhaps if I had read them more carefully, I'd have understood his timing better. But I had let fear steal that opportunity, and now it was too late to be part of his life.

“My love,” he replied. “Tomorrow you leave for La Rochelle.”

“La Rochelle tomorrow, the next day Italy.”

“No,” he said emphatically. “I know for certain they won't move you, because they agreed to let me come to you at La Rochelle in a fortnight.”

“When you are on your way south to your wedding.”

He glanced away. “I will not cease trying to eliminate article twenty-three.” He removed a velvet bundle from his doublet and opened it on my lap. Out rolled a strand of huge, luminous pearls. “They belonged to my aunt the exiled Queen Henrietta Maria of England. She sold them to me.”

Judging by their size and luster, they were worth a castle. “How did you get the money for this?”

“I made the cardinal pay.”

What the cardinal had ought to have been the king's anyway. I smiled. “They are lovely, but I cannot wear them. They are fit for a queen.”

“You must wear them. We will be together.”

I didn't touch the pearls. “My own Rinaldo, you give me this gift, yet you cannot wed me. What is your intention?”

“You've lost faith.”

“Don't degrade me by asking me to be your mistress.”

He stood and walked behind my chair. As he reached over me to take the pearls from my lap, his lips grazed my neck. “I will never give up.” He brought the pearls to rest, cool and heavy, above my collarbone. He knotted their ribbon behind my neck. “You shouldn't either.”

 

CHAPTER
40

Moréna rose before dawn and packed. Mazarin arrived, standing in my doorway with a stream of servants trickling in from behind him like an army of ants. They disassembled my room, carting carpets and furniture down to the wagons.

Mazarin leaned on his gold cane. “Here is how things will be.”

“I won't listen.” I turned away.

“Because of the hold you still have on the king, I am handling you gently. The more intelligent side of you must know he is the only reason you are still alive.”

Bile rose in my throat.

“The king will write you letters. He will visit. He will even tinker with plans to help you escape and elope. You will ignore him. This relationship ends when you leave the Louvre. You will make a marriage alliance of my choice.”

I should have let Moréna poison him. “I will not marry another.”

“Today is your fall from favor. The king will marry, and you will be an outcast. Be wise. Accept my marriage alliance for you. Salvage the tatters of your life … or accidents may befall you.”

Another threat?
I glanced at his cane. “How is your health, Uncle? Do your bones ache as I warned you they would if you ever hurt me? Does your body wither?”

He only stared.

“As you steal our happiness, so shall you sicken,” I whispered. “You shall not live to see France made great.”

He turned to go, ignoring my words. “The queen mother insists you should say farewell to King Louis. Find him in his apartments.” With that, he limped out.

I stood in the empty chamber until Moréna nudged me. She fluffed my hair and straightened my skirts. “Hurry if you wish to see the king!” She pushed me through the doorway.

My silk slippers made no sound on the stairs, the marble tiles of the gallery, or the parquet floor in the antechambers. My slow steps didn't rustle my skirts, didn't bounce my curls.