Quicksilver (91 page)

“Long live the King!” everyone said.

Father Huddlestone finished the rite and turned towards the door. Roger Comstock chose that moment to cross himself.

“Didn’t know you were Catholic, m’lord,” Daniel said.

“Shut up, Daniel! You know I’m a Freedom of Conscience man—have I ever troubled you about
your
religion?” said the Marquis of Ravenscar.

SUMMER
1685

For the market is against our sex just now; and if a young woman has beauty, birth, breeding, wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all to an extreme, yet if she has not money she’s nobody, she had as good want them all; nothing but money now recommends a woman; the men play the game all into their own hands.

—D
ANIEL
D
EFOE
,
Moll Flanders

To M. le comte d’Avaux

12 July 1685

Monseigneur,

As you see I have encyphered this letter according to your instructions, though only you know whether this is to protect it from the eyes of Dutch spies, or your rivals at Court. Yes, I have discovered that you have rivals.

On my journey I was waylaid and ill-used by some typically coarse, thick Dutchmen. Though you would never have guessed it from their looks and manners, these had something in common with the King of France’s brother: namely, a fascination with women’s undergarments. For they went through my baggage thoroughly, and left it a few pounds lighter.

Shame, shame on you, monseigneur, for placing those letters among my things! For a while I was afraid that I would be thrown into some horrid Dutch work-house, and spend the rest of my days scrubbing sidewalks and knitting hose. But from the questions they asked me, it soon became obvious that they were perfectly baffled by this French cypher of yours. To test this, I replied that I could read those letters as well as
they
could; and the dour looks on the faces of my interrogators demonstrated that their incompetence had been laid bare, and my innocence proved, in the same moment.

I will forgive you, monseigneur, for putting me through those anxious moments if you will forgive me for believing, until quite recently, that you were utterly mad to send me to Versailles. For how could a common girl such as I find a place in the most noble and glorious palace in the world?

But now I know things and I understand.

There is a story making the rounds here, which you must have heard. The heroine is a girl, scarcely better than a slave—the daughter of a ruined petty noble fallen to the condition of a Vagabond. Out of desperation this waif married a stunted and crippled writer in Paris. But the writer had a
salon
that attracted certain Persons of Quality who had grown bored with the insipid discourse of Court. His young wife made the acquaintance of a few of these noble visitors. After he died, and left this girl a penniless widow, a certain Duchess took pity on her, brought her out to Versailles, and made her a governess to some of her illegitimate children. This Duchess was none other than the
maîtresse déclarée
to the
King himself, and her children were royal bastards. The story goes that King Louis XIV, contrary to the long-established customs of Christian royalty, considers his bastards to be only one small step beneath the Dauphin and the other
Enfants de France
. Protocol dictates that the governess of
les Enfants de France
must be a duchess; accordingly, the King made the governess of his bastards into a marquise. In the years since then, the King’s
maîtresse déclarée
has gradually fallen from favor, as she has grown fat and histrionic, and it has been the case for some time that when the King went every day to call upon her at one o’clock in the afternoon, just after Mass, he would simply walk through her apartment without stopping, and go instead to visit this widow—the Marquise de Main-tenon, as she was now called. Finally, Monseigneur, I have learned what is common knowledge at Versailles, namely that the King secretly married the Marquise de Maintenon recently and that she is the Queen of France in all but name.

It is plain to see that Louis keeps the powerful of France on a short leash here, and that they have nothing to do but gamble when the King is absent and ape his words and actions when he is present. Consequently every Duke, Count, and Marquis at Versailles is prowling through nurseries and grammar-schools, disrupting the noble children’s upbringing in the hunt for nubile governesses. No doubt you knew this when you made arrangements for me to work as a governess to the children of M. le comte de Béziers. I cringe to think what awful debt this poor widower must have owed you for him to consent to such an arrangement! You might as well have deposited me in a bordello, Monseigneur, for all the young blades who prowl around the entrance of the count’s apartment and pursue me through the gardens as I try to carry out my nominal duties—and not because of any native attractiveness I may possess but simply because it is what the King did.

Fortunately the King has not seen fit to grace me with a noble title yet or I should never be left alone long enough to write you letters. I have reminded some of these loiterers that Madame de Maintenon is a famously pious woman and that the King (who could have any woman in the world, and who ruts with disposable damsels two or three times a week) fell in love with her because of her intelligence. This keeps most of them at bay.

I hope that my story has provided you with a few
moments’ diversion from your tedious duties in the Hague, and that you will, in consequence, forgive me for not saying anything of substance.

Your obedient servant,

Eliza

P.S. M. le comte de Béziers’ finances are in comic disarray—he spent fourteen percent of his income last year on wigs, and thirty-seven percent on interest, mostly on gambling debts. Is this typical? I will try to help him. Is this what you wanted me to do? Or did you want him to remain helpless? That is easier.

My dark and cloudy words they do but hold The truth, as cabinets enclose the gold.

—J
OHN
B
UNYAN
,
The Pilgrim’s Progress

To Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

4 August 1685

Dear Doctor Leibniz,

Difficulty at the beginning
^*
is to be expected in any new venture, and my move to Versailles has been no exception. I thank God that I lived for several years in the
harim
of the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople, being trained to serve as a consort to the Sultan, for only this could have prepared me for Versailles. Unlike Versailles, the Sultan’s palace grew according to no coherent plan, and from the outside looks like a jumble of domes and minarets. But seen from the inside both palaces are warrens of stuffy windowless rooms created by subdividing other rooms. This is a mouse’s-eye view, of course; just as I was never introduced to the domed pavilion where the Grand Turk deflowers his slave-girls, so I have not yet been allowed to enter the Salon of Apollo and view the Sun King in his radiance. In both Palaces I have seen mostly the wretched closets, garrets, and cellars where courtiers dwell.

Certain parts of this Palace, and most of the gardens, are open to anyone who is decently dressed. At first this meant they were closed to me, for William’s men ripped up all of my clothes. But after I arrived, and word of my adventures
began to circulate, I received cast-offs from noblewomen who either sympathized with my plight or needed to make room in their tiny closets for next year’s fashions. With some needle-work I have been able to make these garments over into ones that, while not quite fashionable, will at least not expose me to ridicule as I lead the son and daughter of M. le comte de Béziers through the gardens.

To describe this place in words is hopeless. Indeed I believe it was meant to be so, for then anyone who wants to know it must come here in person, and that is how the King wants it. Suffice it to say that here, every dram of water, every leaf and petal, every square inch of wall, floor, and ceiling bear the signature of Man; all have been thought about by superior intellects, nothing is accidental. The place is pregnant with Intention and wherever you look you see the gaze of the architects—and by extension, Louis—staring back at you. I am contrasting this to blocks of stone and beams of wood that occur in Nature and, in most places, are merely harvested and shaped a bit by artisans. Nothing of that sort is to be found at Versailles.

At Topkapi there were magnificent carpets everywhere, Doctor, carpets such as no one in Christendom has ever seen, and all of them were fabricated thread by thread, knot by knot, by human hands. That is what Versailles is like. Buildings made of plain stone or wood are to this place what a sack of flour is to a diamond necklace. Fully to describe a routine event, such as a conversation or a meal, would require devoting fifty pages to a description of the room and its furnishings, another fifty to the clothing, jewelry, and wigs worn by the participants, another fifty to their family trees, yet another to explaining their current positions in the diverse intrigues of the Court, and finally a single page to setting down the words actually spoken.

Needless to say this will be impractical; yet I hope you will bear with me if I occasionally go on at some length with florid descriptions. I know, Doctor, that even if you have not seen Versailles and the costumes of its occupants, you have seen crude copies of them in German courts and can use your incomparable mind to imagine the things I see. So I will try to restrain myself from describing every little detail. And I know that you are making a study of family trees for Sophie, and have the resources in your library to investigate the genealogy of any petty nobleman I might mention. So I will
try to show restraint there as well. I will try to explain the current state of Court intrigue, since you have no way of knowing about such things. For example, one evening two months ago, my master M. le comte de Béziers was given the honor of holding a candle during the King’s going-to-bed ceremony, and consequently was invited to all the best parties for a fortnight. But lately his star has been in eclipse, and his life has been very quiet.

If you are reading this it means you detected the key from the
I Ching
. It appears that French cryptography is not up to the same standard as French interior decoration; their diplomatic cypher has been broken by the Dutch, but as it was invented by a courtier highly thought of by the King, no one dares say anything against it. If what they say about Colbert is true, he never would have allowed such a situation to arise, but as you know he died two years ago and cyphers have not been upgraded since. I am writing in that broken cypher to d’Avaux in Holland on the assumption that everything I write will be decyphered and read by the Dutch. But as is probably obvious already, I write to you on the assumption that your cypher affords us a secure channel.

Since you employ the Wilkins cypher, which uses five plaintext letters to encrypt one letter of the actual message, I must write five words of drivel to encypher one word of pith, and so you may count on seeing lengthy descriptions of clothing, etiquette, and other tedious detail in future letters.

I hope I do not seem self-important by presuming that you may harbor some curiosity concerning
my
position at Court. Of course I am a nothing, invisible, not even an ink-speck in the margin of the Register of Ceremonies. But it has not escaped the notice of the nobles that Louis XIV chose most of his most important ministers (such as Colbert, who bought one of your digital computers!) from the middle class, and that he has (secretly) married a woman of low degree, and so it is fashionable in a way to be seen speaking to a commoner if she is clever or useful.

Of course hordes of young men want to have sex with me, but to relate details would be repetitious and in poor taste.

Because M. le comte de Béziers’ bolt-hole in the south wing is so uncomfortable, and the weather has been so fine, I have spent several hours each day going on walks with my two charges, Beatrice and Louis, who have 9 and 6 years of age, respectively. Versailles has vast gardens and parks, most of which are deserted except when the King goes to hunt or
promenade, and then they are crowded with courtiers. Until very recently they were also filled with common people who would come all the way from Paris to see the sights, but these pressed around the King so hotly, and made such a shambles of the statues and waterworks, that recently the King banned the
mobile
from all of his gardens.

As you know, it is the habit of all well-born ladies to cover their faces with masks whenever they venture out of doors, so that they will not be darkened by the sun. Many of the more refined men do likewise—the King’s brother Philippe, who is generally addressed as Monsieur, wears such a mask, though he frets that it smears his makeup. On such warm days as we have had recently, this is so uncomfortable that the ladies of Versailles, and by extension their attendants, households, and gallants, prefer simply to remain indoors. I can wander for hours through the park with Beatrice and Louis in train and encounter only a few other people: mostly gardeners, occasionally lovers on their way to trysts in secluded woods or grottoes.

The gardens are shot through with long straight paths and avenues that, as one steps into certain intersections, provide sudden unexpected vistas of fountains, sculpture groups, or the château itself. I am teaching Beatrice and Louis geometry by having them draw maps of the place.

If these children are any clue as to the future of the nobility, then France as we know it is doomed.

Yesterday I was walking along the canal, which is a cross-shaped body of water to the west of the château; the long axis runs east–west and the crossbar north–south, and since it is a single body of water its surface is, of course, level, that being a known property of water. I put a needle in one end of a cork and weighted the other end (with a corkscrew, in case you are wondering!) and set it afloat in the circular pool where these canals intersect, hoping that the needle would point vertically upwards—trying (as you have no doubt already perceived) to acquaint Beatrice and Louis with the idea of a third spatial dimension perpendicular to the other two. Alas, the cork did not float upright. It drifted away and I had to lie flat on my belly and reach out over the water to rake it in, and the sleeves of my hand-me-down dress became soaked with water. The whole time I was preoccupied with the whining of the bored children, and with my own passions as well—for I must tell you that tears were running down my sunburned cheeks
as I remembered the many lessons I was taught, as a young girl in Algiers, by Mummy and by the Ladies’ Volunteer Sodality of the Society of Britannic Abductees.