The Rivals of Versailles: A Novel (The Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy) (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

A
t the end of 1749 Madame Infanta finally departs for Parma, taking the Duchesse de Narbonne—I worked hard on a sapphire engraved with a flourishing
F de N
—and much of the king’s buoyancy with her. My brother, Abel, also travels south with them. He will spend a few years studying Italian art and architecture; though many scoff and say that Italy is good for nothing but pasta and poison, I know that what he learns there will benefit French artistry.

Madame Infanta’s departure leaves a magnificent empty apartment. I now have almost fifty servants in my household, from my beloved Dr. Quesnay to my steward, my equerry, my chef and all his kitchen; footmen and porters, valets and torchbearers; numberless female attendants headed by Nicole; women for my wardrobes and clerks for my accounts, not to mention my coachmen and all the men in my stables. And two Senegalese pages, sent by the governor from the island of Gorée.

I need a new apartment.

I need to tell the world that though things are changing, I am going nowhere.

Louis’ daughters and their growing households also covet Madame Infanta’s apartment, so I must work fast. Versailles has changed me: I have become craftier and less forgiving of my enemies. There are limits to natural goodness and I now understand that once I am ahead, most everyone behind is my enemy. Sometimes I think of the trusting girl I once was, that naïve young woman who thought that everyone would be charmed by her. How wrong I was, how
foolish
.

Louis has more than once complained of the stairs leading up
to my apartment, so I have Collin, my faithful steward, lever up a stair board when I next expect the king. As anticipated, Louis arrives grumpy and limping, complaining of a stubbed toe. I wrap him in sympathy and a clean white bandage, then insist I move somewhere more convenient for him, with no more of these dreadful accidents.

Louis agrees. “Yes, I did slip last year, didn’t I? But whose apartment? Villemur died last month—he was inoculated three years ago, and there you see the danger—but his rooms are far too small. You need a table for at least sixteen, and of course your own kitchen.”

“There must be a— Wait, I have it! The apartments of the Comtesse de Toulouse! With our dear Madame Infanta leaving, it is the perfect solution. Just a short trip down the marble stairs, well lit and spacious. No more dreadful accidents.”

“Still small,” observes Louis. “Perhaps we could add a few rooms from her son’s suite?”

The news astounds the Court: the exile of Maurepas and now this. The largest suite on the ground floor, traditionally reserved for princes of the blood and royalty.

Those magnificent rooms will announce most solidly that I am still at the center of his world, despite what is happening, or not, in the bedchamber. And on the surface things remain as they always were. He still adores me and flatters me and defers to me. I am still the most powerful woman at Court and I control all access to the king, all appointments and all preferments.

I have woven, I think in a moment of clarity, a soft and invisible net around him. The net is very fine and very tight, and so is his illusion of liberty.

“The coldest winter since ’09,” says the old Duc de Broglie. He regales us with stories of frozen peasants and icicles on cow udders.

It is the second hard winter in a row and the peace, after so many years of war, has not afforded any economic relief. Crops have failed for several summers and famine stalks the land.

Amidst continued grumblings about the expense, I cancel the Little Theater. In truth, I am glad, for it had become more and more exhausting. I also increase my charity and continue to support French craftsmen and artists, but my efforts are just little drops in an enormous ocean of need. Even if I am the most powerful woman in France, I am powerless against the waves of poverty and discontent that grow stronger with each passing year.

In Paris, street children disappear and rumors spread that they are taken to be drained of their blood, used to cure leprous princes. When the king travels to Paris to celebrate the Feast of the Conception at Notre Dame, the mobs call him Herod and accuse him of bathing in the blood of the disappeared children.

He is not the only target. I visit the Paris convent where Alexandrine is to be educated, and my carriage is pelted with stones and we must flee through backstreets to Uncle Norman’s house.

There is even talk of burning down Versailles.

The king strides into the council room, white as a bone and shaken. Rarely have I seen him so upset. I take the note from his trembling hand:
You travel to Choisy and Crécy; why don’t you travel to Saint-Denis?

Saint-Denis is the traditional burial place for French kings. This is a direct threat, not a witty joke or a cruel sally, full of allusions and mostly directed at me.

“Now, now, Sire, not to worry,” soothes Argenson. “Berryer will find the author of this outrage.” Berryer is the head of the police, a man of great loyalty but still unable to stop the flow of vitriol that continues unabated in the wake of Maurepas’ departure.

“On the mantel. In the Wig Wardrobe! Who put it there, I say, who would dare?” Louis’ face is yellow and waxy and there is an emptiness in the lovely deep eyes that once so delighted me. In five short years he has become a far cry from the handsome man who took me in his arms in front of the fire at my mother’s house. He is only forty but in tired moments appears a decade older.

“What insolence! Everything, all of it, the names, the accusations,” the king continues to rail. Rarely does he show anger and
the ministers watch him carefully, following his movements like apprehensive hawks. “They called me Herod—a madman who murdered his family!”

“Perhaps they were alluding to Your Majesty’s many architectural achievements. I believe Herod was also a great builder?” offers Machault hopefully, but he is quickly silenced by an almost lethal glare from the king. I give him a grateful smile for his efforts: Machault, as predicted, has remained a loyal friend.

Argenson suggests seeking a scapegoat to divert the ugly rumors about the missing children.

“Any man, we can say we found the bodies of ten children in his cellar—that would exonerate Your Majesty completely.” The evil of his words chill me, as do the murmurs of assent from the other men.

“But to even react to these rumors—no, I cannot have it,” I say firmly. “To engage them is to give them credence.”

“They already have credence,” says Argenson quietly, staring at me with his hooded eyes. For once his eyes do not lower to my chest but remain firmly fixed on my face. I am struck by the menace in his voice and the tension in the room, as thick as unswept dust.

“They are like children, believing in fairy tales.” The king sits down and starts to fiddle angrily with a button on his cuff.

The men watch him silently.

“They are indeed your children,” Machault finally ventures.

“I will not hesitate to punish my children,” says the king grimly.

“I am not sure, Sire, that that is the right—”

“From now on I shall not visit Paris if I need not! Not ever. No more opera or balls or ceremonies. I shall not travel there unless I am required at the Louvre. Or at Saint-Denis, as they so ardently wish.”

“But, Sire, the capital of our great country, they need to see their king. As your illustrious predecessor once said, ‘We owe ourselves to the public.’ ”

“No.”

Only the futile buzzing of a wasp against a window breaks the silence in the room. I jerk my head in irritation to a footman and there is silence as we watch his attempts to kill it. He finally brings it down with a well-placed swish of his tasseled cane.

Louis turns to me. “Then how will we get to Compiègne?” he asks, referring to one of his favorite summer hunting places.

“A consideration, dearest, for one must pass through Paris to get there.” I know he is overwrought and I don’t want him to say anything he will regret later. Louis is already far too removed from his people, perhaps more so than any king before him.

“We’ll build a road, a road around Paris,” says Louis with the spite of a spoiled child. “Yes, that is what we will do. And it will shorten the time between Versailles and Compiègne. Most satisfactory, really.”

“The expense . . .” says Machault quickly. “What with all the murmurs against extravagance that surround us these days—”

“The expense is nothing compared to the outrage I have suffered. Herod! A Herod they called me.”

Louis gets up again and stalks around the room, looking for something, anything, to hit with his anger. He pushes a footman out of the window alcove and stands to look out over the snow-covered gardens. I know there is grief and sorrow there too, buried beneath the anger. Once they called him Louis the Well-Beloved; now, not six years later, they talk of Louis the Well-Hated.

From the Reverend Mother Marguerite of the Angels

Convent of the Assumption, Rue Saint-Honoré, Paris

April 1, 1750

To the most esteemed Marquise de Pompadour,

Honored greetings to you, Madame. Your daughter is well settled, the room furnished as provided, and the kitchens have their instructions. We do not usually allow stuffed toys, as the good Lord prohibits the worship of idols, but a lamb is a holy animal, next only to doves in saintliness. We scoured the thing and one of the eyes fell off, but as soon as it was replaced your daughter ceased her crying.

As per your instructions, she is to be called Madame Alexandrine. One of the younger nuns complained, saying that such a mode of address for a young girl should be reserved only for royalty. You can imagine, Madame, the punishment she received for her insolence. Also as instructed, only the most select of the other pupils will be considered as her playmates. Her education will be in the hands of Sister Anne, of the Noailles family; a more suitable tutor could not be found.

She will be learning her letters and I am confident she will soon be able to write her beloved mother a letter of her own.

I am, Madame, your most humble servant before God,

Mother Marguerite

Chapter Twenty-Nine

S
ummer mercifully arrives and I invite Louis to my new château at Bellevue. It is the first house that I have built from the ground up, the first one that is truly my own. It will be our perfect retreat, away from the worries of Court, far even from Choisy, which has always been poisoned for me. And Crécy: even if Boucher’s panels were repainted, I would still know what ghosts and sorrows remain behind the whitewash.

The grumbling continues; critics say Bellevue is too small and lessens the majesty of the king, yet at the same time it is deemed too expensive. I will never satisfy everyone, and perhaps I should not even try.

But there is one man I do need to satisfy.

“Darling,” I say as he weighs racquets for a game of
paume
he will play with the Duc d’Ayen, “I should tell you—the Comtesse de Forcalquier is coming tonight, for a few days. Alone. She needs a respite from her ape of a husband.”

The Marvelous Mathilde is back at Court and her delightful face never seems to age. I think of the words of Racine: I embrace my enemy, but only to strangle him.

Louis stares at me with such astonishment and gratitude that I want to laugh and cry at the same time.

“She’s coming?” he asks.

“Yes, she is.”

He shakes his head as though dazed.

“Is that the right racquet, do you think?” I say, pointing to the one in his hand. “What about this one?”

“No, this one is perfect, absolutely perfect,” he says, and
comes over to embrace me with a tender touch that thrills me as it drowns me in sorrow.

As the men play, a ball flies off Ayen’s racquet and hits Frannie on the arm. Elisabeth and I retire in sympathy with her to the terrace to fan the hot afternoon away. One of Argenson’s men, waiting since this morning to see the king, leaps forward in anticipation as we settle on the terrace. I shake my head at him.

“Where are your Senegalese?” asks Frannie. “They should be fanning you. Us.”

“Sick and died, poor savages,” I say. “Both of them.” We fan in silence awhile and from the corner of my eye I can see the messenger tapping his foot impatiently.

I take a deep breath and ask aloud what I have been wondering all day: “Was it courageous of me, or stupid? To invite Mathilde de Forcalquier?”

“It was very courageous,” says Frannie, nursing her arm. She is wearing an enormous straw hat, the size of a small table; she claims she has not a single freckle and doesn’t intend to start now.

“Well, let’s just hope her violent husband keeps her in black eyes,” says Elisabeth lightly.

I try not to smile. I am nervous. The benediction I gave Louis was wrong, yet right at the same time. Is this what resignation feels like? All I know is that if I am not in his bed, someone else will be. Must be. Making love for Louis is like air to other men; he would die without it.

“I think it had to be done,” I say. “One needs a certain . . . acceptance.” I lean back and close my eyes. The sun is high overhead and I feel as though I am melted to my seat.

Argenson’s man coughs loudly.

“Come here.” I wave him over. “Unless it concerns the dauphine”—after a series of miscarriages, the second dauphine has finally carried a child to term and is due next month—“His Majesty is not to be disturbed today. You may see him tomorrow after Mass.”

“But, Madame—”

“Tomorrow.”

He departs, reluctance dragging his feet.

“Was that a
moustache
on his face?” asks Elisabeth, squinting at his departing form. “Who does he think he is, one of Madame Infanta’s Spanish ladies?”

I am silent. I have a sudden premonition that something dreadful is going to happen. I listen anxiously for the sound of the ball in the distance, the shouts of the men. I pick up my fan again. Something is coming, something far worse than Mathilde. Or is it just my nerves over her arrival?

“You have nothing to worry about,” soothes Frannie, seeing me chew my lips. “Mathilde is my cousin by marriage, and so, in allegiance to my family, I should be plotting your demise.” Here she smiles, and I recall what a good actress she is. “But Mathilde is too silly for words. She’ll never keep his interest for long and she has the most irritating laugh. I cannot imagine the king tolerating her for more than a few . . . sessions.”

“But that complexion!” gushes Elisabeth. “The artless way she speaks, so charming in her innocence.”

The men come up the stairs and collapse down on the stone benches.

“Ayen has the most powerful back swipe,” says Louis, laughing at some private joke.

“Not as long as Your Majesty’s stick,” retorts the duke.

I rise in the heat and go to fan Louis. “Now, gentlemen, inside to change, for the guests arrive shortly. There will be cool drinks, and more, waiting in your rooms.”

After a week at Bellevue we return to Versailles, and as Frannie predicted, Mathilde does not last long. When I see Louis’ ardor for her is cooling, just a touch, a letter is intercepted by the police. Berryer shows it to the king, who does not recognize the writing as my own.

The anonymous note claims the young countess is seeking a divorce from her husband. There are still certain things that shock Louis, and divorce is one of them. The next day he is cold to Mathilde and the girl, not knowing what she has done, bursts
into tears and thoroughly embarrasses herself in public. She leaves Court, to flee both her disgrace and her violent husband. I drop a piece of tourmaline, carved with two double
M
s, entwined—my most intricate engraving yet—into the fishbowl.

It could get quite full in there, I muse, feeling slightly queasy as I look at the pretty array of stones winking at me through the water. But will there come a day and a rival who can’t be vanquished?