The Hurlyburly's Husband (22 page)

In the dormitories of Charonne people moaned, half dead, and sought help in the boiling heat of this Christian stronghold.

‘Last year, my mother passed away, and she had been very concerned about her granddaughter,’ said Montespan. ‘Her will is proof of her unquiet solicitude over the fate of the child. Despite five hundred thousand
livres
of debt which meant that I was obliged to renounce her legacy, she was careful to ensure Marie-Christine’s happiness, or at least her peace and security, and she ordered that she be brought to the convent with Dorothée as her companion.’

Madame Larivière’s daughter, standing to the right of the doctor, looked down at the floor.

‘“… And this for many considerations that I cannot express,”’ quoted Louis-Henri. ‘She arranged every detail of my daughter’s existence: a private room, firewood, access to the infirmary; and granted her the sum necessary for a future marriage or taking the veil; but all of that was idle fancy. I sent a letter to my wife to alert her. Has she come to see her?’

‘We have informed both of the girl’s parents,’ said a nun on the doctor’s left. ‘But whilst
you
have been appalled by her fever and decline, and judged it meet to come immediately in your terror at the thought of losing your child, we have not seen the marquise …’

‘Last month,’ sighed Marie-Christine, ‘when she was returning from taking the waters at Bourbon-l’Archambault, in a painted golden boat bedecked in red, with a thousand streamers, she stopped at Moulins to visit Louis-Antoine for a few minutes at his Jesuit boarding school.’

‘She did?’ exclaimed her father. ‘But how do you know that?’

‘My brother wrote to me. “It is the first time I have had this honour. She was very amiable to me but reasons of court prevent her from seeing me more often, for which I am extremely mortified.”’

‘Perhaps she is very busy,’ said Louis-Henri, trying to find an excuse.

‘“Very busy …”’ echoed the doctor with a sigh as he walked around the bed to whisper in the marquis’s ear, ‘Come and find me tomorrow, at four o’clock in the afternoon, outside the construction site at the chateau of Versailles. I shall lend you my spyglass and then you shall see what this exemplary mother is busy at whilst her daughter…’ The physician departed, followed by the nun, who took Dorothée by the arm. ‘Let us leave the two of them alone now.’

In the convent’s spartan bedroom with its red hexagonal floor tiles, there wafted a smell of incense mingled with wax. Marie-Christine was twelve years old and now, with her eyes closed, she was dying as a consequence of her mother’s absence. She had stopped speaking and did not seem to hear. Her father watched as gradually the spirits of life withdrew from her. But like all the dying who feel their soul departing, images of her life played before her eyes and she opened them once again.

‘Father … do what Maman used to do…’

‘What did she used to do?’

‘Grrr … grrr…’

‘Ah, yes.’ Louis-Henri recalled the happiness of former times, a family with its laughter. ‘Frrr … oh, oh, oh!’ he murmured gently, like a distant echo. ‘Frrr … oh, oh, oh … grrr, grrr!’ he continued, raising his voice slightly. ‘Watch out, for I am a demon!’ Sitting on the edge of the bed now, he rolled his eyes and made faces at his daughter. ‘Frrr … oh, oh, oh! Grrr … grrr! Watch out, I’m the devil!’ he shouted in the convent. He slipped his tongue into his lower lip and pushed it forward, imitating a toothless old tramp, then placed his thumbs against his temples and wiggled his fingers in the air. ‘Frrr … oh, oh, oh!’ He stuck out his tongue at Marie-Christine, thumbed his nose at her with both hands, this time waggling his fingers as if playing the trumpet, and imitated the sound of diabolical farts, vibrating his lips. ‘Brrr!’ He spoke in a squeaky voice, comically imitating Françoise: ‘Frrr … oh, oh, oh!’ and launched into an amusing charade that knew no bounds, puffing out his cheeks like a blowfish, then abruptly emptying them, sucking them in exaggeratedly and crossing his eyes, his pupils trained on the tip of his nose. ‘Watch out, ’tis I, your mother Beelzebub. If I catch your heart, you—’

Marie-Christine, smiling, turned her head on her pillow and did not raise it again. Her nightdress stopped moving.

‘Where, Doctor?’

‘There, to the left of the terrace, in the King’s wing. No, not there, Monsieur de Montespan! You have your spyglass trained on the Queen’s wing … On the other side, first floor, seventh window from the left.’

‘The one that is open?’

‘Aye, that’s it. Are you there?’

‘It’s not possible, I cannot believe it!’

‘Then you are there …’ smiled the physician, standing by the flabbergasted marquis, who had his right eye pressed against the optical tube.

Louis-Henri adjusted the sharpness of the image in the telescopic lens. ‘Françoise, what are they making you do!’

‘“Making her do, making her do ...”’ said the physician, putting things in perspective.

In an antechamber boasting bronze statues and Chinese vases, Montespan’s spouse could be seen on her knees, sucking the royal member. Somewhere a clock chimed four o’clock in the afternoon.

‘His Majesty is always on time,’ said the physician appreciatively, looking at his watch. ‘From east to west, the way in which the rooms of the palace are laid out corresponds to the rhythm of a typical day in the life of the Sun King. At four o’clock, like a mechanical puppet, he stops in the antechamber where his mistress awaits him on her knees, with her mouth open.’

The monarch stood with one hand out to the side, majestically holding the knob of his walking stick, and looked straight ahead with his chin raised whilst the marquise sucked him. Although Louis-Henri was hopping mad, he pulled out the seven sections of the spyglass to have a better view.

‘Go to,’ the physician said encouragingly. ‘It enlarges up to fifty-four times. I am referring to the telescope, obviously,’ he added maliciously.

‘A man who has bathed only once in his entire life … It would be hard not to be disgusted.’

‘I do not believe your wife is.’

Beside himself, the cuckold had blurred the view through the eyepiece; now he focused again. Françoise was wearing a low-cut gown with six layers of fine lace on her sleeves, and in her blond hair were woven ribbons and rubies. Louis-Henri recognised her well-formed, attractive mouth, which he knew to be voracious, then he noticed something white and sparkling dangling above his wife’s lips.

‘What is that? A pearl necklace? Does he wear a pearl necklace around his—’

‘Precisely! Now watch what happens. You’ll see how the King, who hates to be asked for jewels, will offer them to your wife.’

The mother of the deceased Marie-Christine released the streaming genitalia – what a wash! (but her kisses, henceforth, must have a different taste). A magnificent pearl necklace encircled the King’s arrogant little penis at its base and tapped against his balls. Françoise gave a few flicks of her tongue then took in the whole length.

‘And off they go again,’ said the cuckold sorrowfully.

‘Ah, she makes a good whore, does Madame Quatorze!’ The marquise’s head, facing the King’s crotch, moved rhythmically backwards and forwards until His Majesty stiffened and his fingers opened convulsively on the knob of his walking stick. A few seconds of immobility, then Françoise swallowed. Her husband’s knees were shaking above his too-short pink hose. The mother of his children now placed her upturned palms beneath the Bourbon member as it went soft and drooped. The pearl necklace slid downhill and fell into Françoise’s outstretched hands; she straightened up and fastened the pearls around her neck whilst the King, doing up his breeches, walked away and opened a door.

‘He is leaving the antechamber,’ announced Montespan.

‘… to go into the council chamber where his ministers are waiting for a brief interview,’ surmised the doctor from the Charonne convent. ‘Someone must be opening a window.’

‘Indeed,’ confirmed the Gascon, adjusting the telescope’s field of vision to the left, along the façade of the King’s wing.

‘His Majesty cannot bear to be in an enclosed space. Summer and winter alike, the moment he enters a room a window must be opened, and too bad for anyone who feels chilly or unwell.’

Louis XIV sat in an armchair, striking a theatrical pose, playing with the knob of his walking stick, whilst three ministers came up behind him waving their arms, certainly with some important events to relate. The monarch heard them out without interrupting, then turned his bewigged head to each one of the three, undoubtedly giving orders, and then he got up.

‘Look! He’s on his feet again,’ said Louis-Henri.

‘And now, still heading west, the window in the next room must have been opened in turn …’

‘So it has,’ said the marquis, ‘and … oh! There is a golden four-poster bed with floating curtains, and a woman is on all fours on the edge of the bed. She has just pulled her skirts up over her back and her head. Such a big bottom!’

‘’Tis yet again your wife.’

‘Really? But how did she get there?’

‘Through a secret passage. The palace is full of them.’

‘She has gained weight,’ said Montespan.

‘Nine times with child and an excessive fondness for victuals have got the better of her figure, which had a natural tendency to plumpness to begin with,’ diagnosed the physician.

‘It suits her rather well … Nine times with child? Since our marriage my wife has had nine children? That I did not know,’ said the cuckold, astounded, whilst the King entered Athénaïs’s many-mirrored chamber.

Louis XIV continued on his solar trajectory, again opening his breeches embroidered with scenes of battles he had won. Hard once more, he headed straight for Françoise’s vast bare bottom. Montespan slapped his left palm over the end of the spyglass. He had seen enough.

On the rocky hill with its cross overlooking the chateau of Bonnefont, the lavender that Marie-Christine had sown had taken root. It had spread along the slope, but it looked as if fate had dealt a blow upon the marquis’s lands, bruising the landscape. Louis-Henri, stretched out on the wall of the moat, closed his eyes and dozed off or, rather, pretended to.

When in the early hours of a baking summer afternoon the cicadas had paused in their song, because they had heard the sound of approaching hooves, Montespan had felt the cool shadow of a horse gliding over him, but he had not even deigned to sit up.

Madame Larivière had come out of her kitchen and crossed the courtyard, waving her arms and stirring the air. ‘Sshh, he’s asleep…’

The horseman dismounted and asked in a hushed voice and an English accent, ‘Is … Is this Monsieur de Montespan, this bare-headed man?’

‘Now what do they want from him?’ whispered the cook. ‘What disaster this time?’

‘I bring good news.’

‘Ah, then if it’s good news… He’s in great need of it. For months, since he brought his daughter’s body home to be buried next to his mother, he has been … as if stricken. And not long after that came the news of the death of his uncle, the Archbishop of Sens. It was also as if he saw something he ought not to have seen during his journey to Paris …’

‘He dared to come out of exile without the King’s permission,’ asked the visitor, surprised, ‘despite the risk of beheading or being sentenced to the galleys?’

‘What?’ asked the cook, annoyed. ‘Of course not, you’d make me say anything!’

‘What did he see?’

‘That I don’t know, but it was the final straw for him. Nothing interests him any more. The steward of the chateau even has to keep the books and do the rounds to collect the rents … which grow fewer and fewer, moreover, since he renounced both his parents’ inheritance. Now you’re very smartly attired, have you come from the court, is that it?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘I hope you’ve not come to harass him?’

‘No, indeed, ’tis to offer …’

‘If it’s
écus
you’re offering, you may leave again with them. He has already said that his wife was not for sale.’ ‘That is not my business.’

‘Ah?’

And so reluctantly Madame Larivière gently nudged the cuckold’s shoulder.

‘Monsieur le cuck—Monsieur le marquis …’

Louis-Henri was breathing deeply and regularly, his eyelids closed. Flies buzzed all around him, and finally he opened his eyes and sat up on the edge of the wall. He yawned and stretched whilst the visitor introduced himself.

‘Chancellor Hyde, originally from the court of England, now in the service of the King of France …’

‘A chancellor now?’ said Montespan, dumbstruck, rubbing his hair, which was completely dishevelled. ‘It would seem I’m entitled to increasingly prestigious emissaries. Does Louis XIV plan to come in person? Tell him I am ready to challenge him to a duel, there, on the planks of my drawbridge and beneath the horns of stone I have added to my coat of arms on the gate.’

‘Here we go,’ said the cook, annoyed with the chancellor. ‘You haven’t come to harass him, but you make him spout such gibberish. Ah, if the steward were here, he’d already have taken you by the scruff of your neck with one hand and shoved you back on your horse, and gee up! With one hand. That’s how he is, Cartet, he’s strong, he—’