Before Versailles (22 page)

I
T WAS COOL
in the vestibule, unlike outside where June’s early afternoon heat was high. Louise walked up wide stone steps that led to an upper floor, feeling some of the blush that had rushed into her face recede. She owed Choisy no explanations, but she hated that he remained angry with her. I don’t know why I feel compelled to search, she would have answered if she’d stopped long enough to formulate the words. Your stubborn streak will bring you no good, her mother always said. You’re like your father. Worse things to be, Louise thought now, hearing the king’s violins singing their lovely song. She stood a moment to fully catch her breath, to smooth her hair, pull ringlets tighter in their pins.

It was an age-old tradition to watch the royal family dine in public, but the courtiers also liked that royal forks were lifted to the sound of violins. Wildly fond of music, the king was growing his orchestra to a size not seen before and insisted that they play at every meal. Choisy had nattered to her about someone named Lully, apparently a musician of great skill among the king’s musicians, who sat among the violinists now, sawing away, his face full of the emotion the music engendered in him.

At one end of the antechamber sat the royal family, the king in the exact middle of the table, the queen and Madame on either side of him, his cousin La Grande Mademoiselle on the other side of Madame, Monsieur and the queen mother on the ends. Footmen were everywhere, behind each chair, moving back and forth in a line from the distant kitchen courtyard. Louise had passed several of them on the stairs.

After tasting for poison, a favorite method of disposal for at least a century—folklore blaming the Italians for having brought that art along with others—a gentleman of the king’s household took each platter from a footman and served the king himself on bended knee. Louise had been told that in Paris anyone might see the king dine, if properly dressed, and walk in and out of chambers in the palace to gawk at will. Choisy said the Parisians adored their young king’s large appetite. They consider it a sign of virility, he’d said. Slowly, unobtrusively, she made her way toward her friend Fanny, but someone blocked her path.

“Miss de le Baume le Blanc,” said the Viscount Nicolas, smiling down at her. “How do you do this day?”

“Very well, thank you, viscount.”

“I’m told you ride in the morning, early.”

How did he know that? Who noticed what a maid of honor like herself did? She didn’t answer, just stared up at him, looking like a village idiot, she was certain, remembering some snippet of talk from somewhere, from someone, Fanny, probably. Spies. He was said to have spies everywhere, knowing all things there were to know about the court and its inhabitants.

“I offer my presence should you ever wish company. I, too, sometimes like to ride in the mornings. I go several times a week to see my château.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.” She moved away, weaving in and out of people until she was standing behind Fanny. She didn’t want his attention, his notice. She didn’t want anyone’s. But that wasn’t true. It was complicated, something she didn’t understand herself, all she didn’t want, and all she did.

Nicolas remained where he was. It was clear this rebuff was not as alluring as the first one she’d made.

Olympe, her perennial pout in place, detached herself from the queen’s cluster of ladies and made her way to Nicolas. “You’ve been avoiding me,” she accused.

“Your happiness is foremost on my mind.”

They both turned to watch the royal family dine for a time. The king was eating pheasant now. He’d just finished a stew. From her own plate, the queen fed her dwarves, who stood a little behind her. One could just see their hats and foreheads.

Olympe shuddered. “When I’m mistress, I’ll have those dwarves sent back to Spain. Look at them. She feeds them as if they were dogs.”

“Their majesties seem on good terms.” The queen looked placid to Nicolas, like the surface of a lake undisturbed, no sign that just on the other side of her husband danger sat eating with the appetite of a small bird. For his majesty to pursue this love affair with his sister-in-law was going to shock the Christian world. It was considered by church law to be incest. He was going to have enormous need of his superintendent of finance, who would become his superintendent of finesse.

“He’s still visits every night, if that is what you’re asking. What does Madame say? Is she agreeable to my serving her?”

“I haven’t asked yet,” he replied, and at her furious intake of breath, “I’ve been singing your praises and talking about what a blessing you are to the queen. Your presence must be desired by Madame, pined for, as a pearl above price. That will give you more influence.”

“It’s the Princess de Monaco, isn’t it? She doesn’t like me.”

Ah, the divine Catherine, thought Nicolas. His eyes found her standing with her cousin Péguilin, and she caught Nicolas’s look and answered with a small smile and a lift of her chin. What a handsome creature she was, statuesque, dark-eyed, certain of herself. She’d ridden out to Vaux-le-Vicomte, and he’d shown her its chambers, both of them aware she made a reconnoiter for Madame. He’d taken her to his own bedchamber on a top floor, even though he’d had a chamber built specifically for his majesty, and she’d stood with her back to him as she’d inspected the bed, its magnificent embroidered hangings, and he remained behind her, his eyes on her neck rising out of her gown, the soft swell of her bare shoulders. The primitive desire he suddenly felt had startled him. He could have pushed her to the floor and taken her with the brutality of a ravaging soldier.

She had turned at the precise moment such thoughts were in his mind and met his eyes in a long, heart-stopping moment in which they’d both known they would make love sooner or later. Then she had moved past him to the doorway, and they had continued on as if such a moment had never occurred. But it had. I will visit again soon, she’d told him as she’d extended a delectable arm through the carriage window to allow him to kiss above her glove. How ironic and sensual that he and she would very likely christen the bed his majesty and Madame would lie in.

Feeling a tug on the elbow of his very tight, very well-fitted jacket, he looked impatiently into another pair of dark eyes, eyes that didn’t move him in the least.

“I know it’s the princess who’s against me,” Olympe repeated.

“Not at all,” said Nicolas. “She has the highest regard for you and your family.”

“She thinks we’re parvenus.”

Well, and so you are, thought Nicolas. The princess’s family had served kings for a number of generations, while Olympe’s family’s rise began in the previous reign, when the son of a simple notary had moved from nobody to cardinal.

He wished Olympe a hundred miles away so that he could concentrate on Madame, who sat there at the great table at her ease, laughing and chatting to the royal family as if a crowd did not watch her every move. No wonder the king was entranced. How charming she was. How civilized and chic. If she was going to become the king’s mistress, he, Nicolas, was going to be a part of that equation. If she was going to become the king’s mistress, Monsieur must have a place on the council, a consolation prize, so to speak. That would put Monsieur firmly into Nicolas’s pocket and make yet another ally in the royal family.

“I’ll show her a parvenu. Colbert, for instance, my uncle’s minion. It’s said his majesty and Colbert meet late at night before his majesty visits the queen.”

Nicolas’s heart stopped. There was a literal stop in all his body, but Olympe didn’t notice.

“Maybe he prefers men like his brother. Maybe Colbert does to his majesty what the prince’s pretty boys do to him so he can rise higher in his majesty’s regard—”

“Who told you that his majesty and Colbert meet in the evenings?”

“A footman complained to one of the dwarves, who told her majesty because she was upset at how late the king comes to her bed, and I overheard.”

He excused himself, trying not to show the jolt of what she’d so casually—like a cat with its kill—laid at his feet. If Colbert were meeting with the king, it meant only one thing. They were looking at the register of finance. Nicolas touched at the slight perspiration that had beaded across his lip. Colbert was a bloodhound, never moved off course. He’d tried to ruin Nicolas before and failed. Had he begun another attempt?

The wildest notions took hold, notions of going to his majesty and confessing all and seeing if the forgiveness the king had promised in the first days of his rule was truly meant. Of fleeing in the middle of the night, holing up at his island to watch as the kingdom staggered to its knees in bankruptcy. Of stockpiling gold in the hold of one of his ships and sailing away, of letting everything go, just like that, stopping it all, the tightrope of financial tricks and games he played, so many he no longer knew them all.

One of the other ministers on the king’s council tapped him on the arm.

“Come and meet my nephew,” the man said. “He’s just in from England with some delicious gossip about King Charles and Lady Palmer.”

Nicolas allowed himself to be pulled away to listen to the latest salacious gossip about the knight’s wife who had the king of England following her like a dog in heat, but his mind was in another place altogether, thinking taxes have to be collected, which could not be done without him, and if taxes weren’t collected, there were no funds at all.

A dozen other financial matters imperative to the kingdom came to his mind, and he calmed. Whatever Colbert might be implying, the presence of the Viscount Nicolas was so necessary for the financial well-being of the kingdom that any fool knew it. And he was tied to the Paris Parlement, that stiff, proper, ambitious body of men who formed a high court of justice, in a way that made his disgrace dangerous. And he was linked to everyone inside and outside this chamber in a dozen ways, all of them paved with gold. His majesty was young, eager, but finance was a morass. He would tire of it. All monarchs did. Nicolas couldn’t keep himself from looking toward the dining table, and he saw that the king was watching him.

Deeply, reverently, Nicolas bowed. Louis smiled. People noticed, and Nicolas felt their admiring glances. I can outwit Colbert, he thought. His majesty was about to commit behavior that would have other courts gossiping the way they did now of England, but France was far more important in the scope of the world than England. His majesty was about to commit behavior that would call down the wrath of the Holy Father in Rome, and relations with the Holy Father were not at their best. His majesty was about to commit behavior that might force the prince his brother into rebellion. Nicolas’s presence was, in fact, imperative, more imperative than this young king could possibly imagine.

How many people pay their respects to the Viscount Nicolas, Louis thought, the smile on his face but not in his heart. He walks through my dining chamber like a king.

N
OT EVERYONE WAS
watching the king dine. In that part of the palace where the king’s ministers and officials had their offices, the oldest groom in the stable shifted awkwardly, uneasy to be where he was. His life was the stables and the public courtyard where for years before his injury he’d brought horses for the courtiers to ride. His life was the smell of dung and fresh straw and the sounds of jingling harness or a horse’s whinny. It was an open life of sun and rain and moor and forest. He was uncomfortable standing in his crooked way in a small chamber with fine, polished wood for its floor and velvet draperies at the windows.

The dour man dressed in black questioning him assured him he had done nothing wrong, but he already knew that. His caution was instinctive.

Colbert cleared his throat, and the old groom brought his eyes from the open window to this man, making notes about what was said, seated behind a table. The making of letters at every word spoken also disturbed the groom.

“So she asked about the countryside. You’re certain that’s all?”

“Yes. And then she went riding. My son accompanied her.”

“Your son.” Colbert looked down at his notes and said the groom’s son’s name.

For some reason, hearing his son’s name, knowing it was written down on paper right there between them, made the old groom even more cautious. He’d seen a hare go perfectly still, hoping to blend in with its surroundings, when a predator was near, and at this moment, he felt like the hare.

“You’re to let me know whenever she goes out riding.”

The old groom raised his hand in a gesture of obedience. There was another long silence as Colbert’s eyes drilled into him, but it was no crime to saddle a lady’s horse or for her to go out riding, and they both knew it.

“You may go.”

The old groom nodded his head and limped to the door, but Colbert stopped him. “This is king’s business. Don’t speak of this to anyone, or the consequences will be severe.”

“Has the young lady done something wrong? She is such a kind young lady.”

“Likely not.”

“She rode out this morning.” Head lowered, eyes gleaming like a wise old boar hiding in the forest, the groom gave Colbert the information reluctantly and only because he said it was king’s business, and the groom loved his young king, had put him upon his first horse, in fact. “She’s back, now.”