Enchantress of Paris (34 page)

He laced his fingers in mine, pressing our palms together. “No fortune-telling. We'll write our own destiny, you'll see.”

We spoke no more of our future, and for an hour tried to discuss books and music. Neither of us could keep up the dissembling, and finally we just sat together, quiet, still.

*   *   *

King Louis stayed with me until two in the morning, when I made him go to his own chambers for fear of upsetting his mother. He returned to my rooms at dawn, where we sat together before a table that the monks loaded with cheeses, fish, eggs, fruits, and peas and an arrangement of sunflowers. We were too anxious about the upcoming meeting to eat.

Midmorning, we had word that the queen mother had heard mass and was prepared to leave. The king walked me to her antechamber. “You must curtsy when you ask. Stay low,” muttered the king.

I nodded, feeling weak, and he ushered me in.

The women stopped what they were doing to curtsy.

King Louis called out, “Mother, my favorite has a petition to make of you.”

The queen mother turned from her table to face us.

I dipped low, this time commanding my legs to hold firm. “Most Gracious Majesty,” I said, “with a humble and broken heart, I beseech you, please allow me to follow your court south so that I might be present for the upcoming celebration of peace.” I didn't stand; I didn't even look up. The room was silent. I knew her answer before she spoke.

“Since it is clearly what my son desires, I admit I would allow you to follow me.” Everyone held their breath. “But first you must get permission from your guardian.”

I stood, keeping my eyes downcast. Her answer was as good as a refusal.

“Mother—” started the king.

“Sire,” she said, interrupting, “even I cannot overturn her guardian's rights over her.”

I gathered my skirts and curtsied quickly, backing from the chamber, then fled to my rooms. The king's shouts seemed to shake the very walls, but I didn't comprehend a word.

The queen mother's train left within the quarter hour. Without me.

King Louis came to my chamber, red-eyed and hoarse. I felt blown apart, as if I had taken a musket ball to the chest. Marianne stared at us for a long while. Hortense cried. Even Venelle seemed forlorn. Finally Marianne bawled earnestly, something I'd never seen her do. I soaked the king's doublet with my own tears. I didn't know how long we stood together.

“I cannot bear to say good-bye to you again, sire,” I heard myself say. “Please … go.” I led him to the entrance hall and out the door.

“I won't give up. Remember my instructions.” He kissed me on the mouth, warm and lingering, before the gathered monks and townspeople.

I tasted his tears. The only sound was Marianne's wails rising above the courtyard. He got on his horse and tore off like lightning around the corner, musketeers galloping after. The world went black, and I had a faint sense of hitting the ground.

 

CHAPTER
44

 

We returned to La Rochelle, and the king's letters streamed in, two a day. Marianne didn't bother spying anymore. I had Hortense read them aloud.

“He says the cardinal is furious about Saint-Jean-d'Angély. Olympia complained that you and King Louis spent hours alone in the reception room before the queen arrived. She suggested you did more than talk.” She gasped. “The cardinal is making arrangements to send you to the Benedictine Convent of Santa Maria in the Campo Marzio quarter of Rome!”

I sighed. “Shall I placate the cardinal?”

Hortense looked confused. “Didn't the king tell you to flee?”

“We just need a little more time.” And a little push to make Mazarin show his vile side. I moved to my table and wrote Mazarin a letter full of reassurances that I would obey him, that I trusted him to decide my future, and that I would never write to the king again. Lies, all. Then I dipped my quill into ink and wrote to the king, confessing love and adoration in the most affectionate terms.

I gave the cardinal's letter to his courier.

Then I slipped the king's letter to Terron, saying, “This letter should fall into the wrong hands.”

“Are you sure?” Terron asked.

It would cause a firestorm. “I am.”

*   *   *

Days later, Venelle paced my chamber like a caged cat. “Cardinal Mazarin has both of your letters.” She didn't catch me hide my smile. “He calls you the most deceitful woman ever to live and breathe. He wrote to tell King Louis so in a scathing letter.” She stared at me. “Marie, I really would rather not be forced to travel all the way to
Rome
!”

She shouldn't have admitted that.

*   *   *

King Louis sent me the scathing letter a week later. The cardinal had actually called me uncontrollable, ambitious, contrary, unreasonable, and worse, claiming I possessed not a single good quality. I read it to Hortense.

She frowned. “An ambitious woman makes weak men feel threatened.”

“The cardinal says he will resign and take me to Italy himself.” The final gauntlet.

“What did the king write back?” asked Hortense.

“He wrote Mazarin with rebukes for treating me harshly.” I looked both letters over. “But that is all the king shared.”

“Is
this
what you were hoping for?”

“My only choice was to force the matter or run.” Now either the king would send for me, or the cardinal would come for me.

*   *   *

That night I made my sisters drag my bedstead to the window so I could watch the hills. My very skin crawled. Half of me wanted to run to Brouage, and half of me wanted to run straight to the king. But I stayed. I waited. And I watched the dark horizon.

The king's messenger rode down the hills at midnight. He was alone, guiding himself by a torch he held aloft. I leapt from my bed and met the man at the door. He handed me a short letter, panting. I read it while running back to my chamber.

Your uncle offered his resignation if I didn't give final instruction in the matter of article twenty-three. I told him to be gone if he wished. Then, to prevent him from sending agents to accost you, I aimed to placate him by ordering him to keep article twenty-three with a postponed wedding date. It was an attempt to borrow time and be neatly rid of him, which rebounded in ways I failed to foresee. He altered the date, pretended this was my consent, then signed the article as if I had approved it. He dispatched an embassy to Madrid with the official offer of marriage before telling me. My love, I beg you to forgive me, for in trying to trick the man into letting me have you, he has signed my freedom away. I am beside myself, nay, I would rather fall on my sword than go through with this, and I beg you to tell me what you would have me do.

L

I didn't drop to the floor and cry. I didn't rage and tear out my hair. I grabbed the bell and rang it like hell for the servants. I called for Hortense and Venelle, Moréna and Marianne. Everyone ran in at the same time.

“Pack essentials. Call up the carriage. Do not wake Terron. We leave for Brouage immediately.”

Venelle put out her hand. “It is the middle of the night. Besides, we go nowhere without the cardinal's permission.”

I must have looked frightful, all skin and bones in my shift, clinging to that letter. “The cardinal has bested me. He has the king's marriage proposal signed and dated, and my security has dried up fast as the ink he used to forge the king's signature.”

Venelle waved me off. “He is your uncle. He wouldn't hurt you.”

“Clearly you haven't known many Italians,” I said. “The cardinal has what he wants. He no longer needs to be good to me in order to appease the king. He will come for me. We flee for Brouage or
you
will be disposed in Rome with me.”

It took Venelle only a moment before jumping to action, packing and dressing.

I flashed gold coins to the servants. I promised them payment to conceal our destination from Mazarin's men and follow us to Brouage with our belongings in a week. Moréna dragged my
cassone
to the courtyard. I ordered the coachmen to harness Trojan at the head of the team.

“Please,” begged Hortense, hugging a frightened Marianne as the driver whipped the horses into motion. “Wake Terron. They'll never let us enter the citadel of Brouage alone.”

“We mustn't make our uncle suspect Terron. He is my only link to King Louis.”

As we raced south of the city walls, we spotted torchlights moving down the hills toward La Rochelle. Venelle gaped in amazement, but I leaned from the window and screamed to the coachman, “Drive like the devil himself is at your back!”

 

CHAPTER
45

The coachman knew the way. We reached the salt marshes of Hiers-Brouage well before dawn, and the white walls of the citadel loomed along the moonlit bay. Lights gleamed from the watchtowers.

Hortense studied the angular demibastions of the hornwork and said, “There's no way in.” She looked back the way we'd come, but I knew we hadn't been followed.

I called to the driver, “Take us along the bay side to the Royal Gate.”

Hortense and Venelle exchanged doubtful looks, but the driver found the narrow archway tucked into the shadows of a curtain wall, and we soon halted. Our coachman pounded on the gate while we climbed from the carriage.

At last a door within the gate opened and a bearded man appeared, looking us over. The clink of keys hanging from his belt marked him as governor. “Be gone! We're in the service of His Majesty, and we don't welcome guests.”

Our coachman held his lantern aloft so the man could see me clearly.

I smiled. “But you will welcome me, for I come in His Majesty's name.”

The bearded governor squinted. “Who are you?”

“My name is Marie Mancini.”

The man's eyes widened.
So it is true. Everyone, even in the farthest reaches of France, knows of me.
He rubbed his face, considering. “Cardinal Mazarin's niece.”

I shook my head and tossed him a gold ecu. “Today I am His Majesty's guest. He will pay you and your men to house and protect me and my women.” I gestured to Venelle and my sisters. “But you're to keep your fortress closed to Cardinal Mazarin.”

He weighed the gold in his hand. “Never thought I'd see the king's woman at these gates.”

The king's woman.
Not queen. Not mistress. “What I am remains to be seen, sir, and depends on whether I have your protection.”

He nodded, stepped back. “Welcome to the citadel of Brouage.”

Soldiers showed us to quarters built for my uncle's predecessor. Damp and unused, they were mostly unfurnished. While the soldiers dragged in floor pallets, I sat at the cold hearth and wrote a letter to the cardinal.

“Why write to him when we've barely escaped him?” asked Hortense.

“We are protected here, though not for long. The only way I can hope for better terms from the cardinal is to submit.”

“Does that mean you've truly given up?”

I held my quill over the foolscap and considered it. “I don't know.”

*   *   *

Our servants arrived days later with Terron in the lead. The governor of Brouage asked my permission before admitting him.

“When the Cardinal's Guards didn't find you at La Rochelle, they left quietly,” Terron said to me as servants unpacked tapestries and carpets and bedding. “They feared a pursuit would be too public. You should have told me of your plans to flee.”

“I couldn't implicate you because I need you to help free my brother. I'm not certain how long I can hold out here without reinforcements.”

Terron shook his head. “Philippe won't be released until the king is safely married, and that wedding has been postponed until spring.”

It was what I suspected he'd say, but I had to hide my disappointment.

“Word has gotten out that you're here,” said Terron, tossing a packet of letters on the table. Most were to me from the king. Some were to Hortense.

“Tell Meilleraye to stop writing to Hortense. He may send his requests for her hand to the cardinal.” I paused. “I wrote to Mazarin agreeing to end my affair with the king.”

Terron seemed stunned. “The king is desperate to hear from you. You could still elope.”

I felt my soul rise up to the notion.
Elope!
“The king won't risk losing his kingdom for me.”

Terron leaned close. “He is making plans to marry you in secret. You could sail from Brouage to Bordeaux to meet him. Will you do it if he sends for you?”

“If we elope, what will happen to the peace treaty? Tell me the truth. What does your cousin Colbert say?” I glanced at Venelle, who cast us a glance from where she stood unpacking linens.

Terron hesitated. “Without the marriage, there will be no peace.”

Why am I hesitating?
“Forgive me, Terron, I must think it over.”

 

CHAPTER
46

The city of Brouage was mostly contained within the walls of the citadel itself, and it bustled with business. The market stalls and shops, run by soldiers and their wives, sold goods fresh off ships in the port. Venelle let us explore within the walls on our own, affording a confined sort of freedom. People went about their business and let us alone.

Few farms dotted the marshy horizon, but fishermen bobbed on the ocean, shell fishers dug on the shore, and men worked the interlocking salt ponds, raking damp salt beds and shoveling dry salt into barrows. New merchant ships drifted in and out of the port daily, sailing in from exotic eastern lands, trading for salt, and embarking to sell their treasures to the colonies of New France and Canada. Venelle let me ride Trojan down the shore and back once a day, instructing the soldiers to observe me from the watchtowers.