Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow (39 page)

“Undoubtedly,” Jeanne replied.

“But … what if he should desire still more?”

The comtesse laughed. “I hardly think that probable,” she assured the young woman. “You are merely to come with us to Versailles tomorrow evening, where, at a certain spot, you will encounter a great man; when he approaches you, near enough
to be heard when you whisper, you will hand him this note and speak the words I tell you to utter.” She showed Mademoiselle d’Oliva a folded missive, sealed in red wax with a crest bearing two initials, and told her to return the next afternoon, when she would be attired for her grand role.

While the demimondaine was ensconced in a lavish hotel room for the night, courtesy of the comte and comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, the couple entertained the cardinal, summoning him from the Hôtel de Rohan on the right bank of the Seine.

“I have tremendously exciting news for you,” Jeanne told him, removing the crystal stopper from the decanter of brandy and pouring a generous goblet for her illustrious guest. “Your patience and generosity these past several months have finally paid off. The queen herself will meet you tomorrow night below the terraces of Versailles in the bosquet they call the Grove of Venus. A white handkerchief lying at the base of a hedge will mark the place.”

The prince de Rohan was well aware that Marie Antoinette’s nocturnal strolls along the parterres had for years been the stuff of considerable gossip. And when Jeanne informed the cardinal that the queen remained anxious to ensure his discretion, he, too heady with excitement and ambition, did not question why they were to meet outdoors at midnight on a moonless night.

He saw himself as the hero of a grand adventure, he said to the comtesse, and at that moment would have clasped her to his bosom and smothered her with kisses, had not her husband, puffing away at his clay pipe, been present.

Jeanne smiled and sighed prettily, pursing her lips in a petulant moue at the sight of the cardinal’s moist gaze and trembling hands, and pretended to be quite put out that her husband (not to mention Monsieur de Villette), would not quit the room so that she could properly fling herself into the cardinal’s arms in a triumphant
embrace. A “grand adventure” was indeed about to be staged, not unlike one that had made quite a sensation that season in Paris, when Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais had penned a romantic comedy that skewered the nobility of France. The king had banned all further performances of
Le Mariage de Figaro
, but after a public outcry, led by the very aristocrats whose class was being mocked, the production was reinstated.

Being the sort of woman who liked to be seen at first nights, the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois was extremely familiar with the scene in which the Countess Almaviva disguises herself as her maid Suzanne in order to catch her own husband in the act of arranging a moonlit assignation in the palace gardens with the maidservant. But the cardinal, for all his worldliness, was too blinded by his own ambitions and his desperate need to be reconciled to the queen to notice the similarities between the stock comedy of Beaumarchais and the plot that Jeanne had contrived.

The following afternoon, the faux baronne d’Oliva was attired by her trio of benefactors in a filmy white dress with a wide blue sash that mimicked the queen’s infamous
gaulles
. A flowing cape of white silk completed the ensemble. Nicole’s blond hair, lightly powdered to disguise the fact that it was more ash than strawberry, was dressed in fat sausage curls that cascaded from a teased and frizzled coiffure. The comtesse tied a large straw bonnet under her chin; her face was obscured by a
thérèse
, a heavy veil of white lace that was attached to the brim.

Just before dusk, Mademoiselle d’Oliva, with the secret letter in the pocket of her cloak and a pink rose clasped in her hands, was bundled into a coach beside the comte de Lamotte-Valois and the mysterious man whom she had first encountered while sipping chocolate and eyeing prospective patrons outside a café adjacent to the Palais Royal. The carriage clattered out of the rue Neuve Saint-Gilles and into the night.

The coach was left outside the gates and the trio entered the palace grounds, skirting the shadows like so many mice along a baseboard. Just below the Great Terrace and the Hundred Steps was a maze constructed of overlapping
charmilles
, trellises of greenery fanning out every three feet. Less familiar with the gardens than he pretended, Nicolas, guiding Mademoiselle d’Oliva toward the destination appointed for the rendezvous, nearly became lost within the maze of trellises.

“There you are!” he whispered when he spotted another man, who was wearing a voluminous dark cape and a tricorn pulled down over his brow. He was in the company of the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, who made a discreet fluttering motion with her hand and nodded her head. The prey was in the trap. She approached Mademoiselle d’Oliva and, leading her into a leafy arbor, cautioned her, “Remember, the queen and her maidservant will be watching and listening from behind that hedge. To please her, you will perform this service. You will hand the letter and the rose to the lord who will come to meet you, and as you do so, you will speak only these five words:
You know what this means
.”

She lifted the veil and kissed the girl’s cheek. “Wait here. He will arrive presently.
Bonne chance, ma chère
.”

As Nicolas and Rétaux retreated into the darkness, the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois briefly abandoned Mademoiselle d’Oliva and set out through the maze to locate the cloaked and masked cardinal. He was to have waited within the hedges of the Bosquet de la Reine at the spot where she had discreetly dropped the white handkerchief prior to his arrival. She was late for their rendezvous and the anxiety was palpable on his face as he at last recognized her from the voluminous black moiré domino she had promised to wear.

The prince de Rohan clasped her gloved hands in his bare ones. Even through the kidskin she could feel the dampness of his palms. His face was perspiring profusely and she handed him the
handkerchief that had lain by the hedge, suggesting that he might wish to make himself more presentable for the queen.

“I apologize for my tardiness,” the comtesse said breathlessly, taking the cardinal’s arm to guide him through the maze. “I have just come from the queen. She is quite incommoded that Madame and the comtesse d’Artois insist on taking the air with her tonight. They never accompany her, and this has made her quite suspicious. Nevertheless, she insists upon keeping her appointment with you, but it will have to be much briefer, for now she must devise a means of escaping her
belles-soeurs
and they will grow wary if she is absent for too long.”

Building the suspense, Jeanne waited a few more minutes, then disappeared into the maze as she told the cardinal, “I think I hear her footsteps! I dare not intrude upon such a private moment, and I am certain that Her Majesty would prefer her words to be for your ears only.” A nightingale sang. Or did it? Was it a cue? After the final note a woman appeared, veiled and cloaked, but her overgarment was draped so that it allowed the cardinal a view of a gauzy
chemise à la Reine
, the very style of gown the queen most favored. The woman approached and wordlessly extended the rose to the cardinal.

“
Majesté
, from this moment on, I shall call this the ‘rose of happiness.’ ” He pressed the long-stemmed blossom to his heart and reverently sank to one knee.

“You know what this means,” said the woman, finding her tongue at last.

“Oh, yes, Your Majesty,” the Grand Almoner breathed. “It means that my hope has been restored. Tonight you have made possible the pinnacle of my joy. To know that all is forgiven. And
you
must know that from this moment on, I am your willing slave.” Prostrating himself at her feet, he dared to press his lips to the toe of her silken slipper.

Jeanne decided it was best to end the charade before it exploded.

The nightingale sang again. There was a crunching of gravel and from a distant hedge, the sound of voices. From the opposite direction, she emerged with a “
Hsst
—we must leave quickly! The comte d’Artois is approaching with one of his equerries. Hurry, we must make haste! Take cover in the darkness.” She shooed the cardinal out of the grove; once she was convinced he had fled, she clasped Mademoiselle d’Oliva by the arm and ushered her toward the
charmilles
, where they rejoined her confederates and left the grove undetected. Only when they clambered into the coach did the courtesan, still a bit flustered by the night’s activities, realize that the letter she was supposed to have given to the great gentleman remained in her pocket.

The scheme had worked beyond Jeanne’s wildest plans. The cardinal had fairly eaten out of her hand. And from now on, she was convinced, he would never doubt a single word she said.

“Summon the surgeon—
vite! Vite!
The queen has injured her head!”

My horse had thrown me after losing a shoe in the Bois de Boulogne. I lay in the dirt, my skirts belled out about me; the canopy of trees overhead a blur of greenish blue.
“Mes enfants,”
I said deliriously. “I want to see my children.”

And then I was lying on my daybed in la Méridienne with my head swathed in a bandage, as I suppose the Queen’s Bedchamber was deemed far too public a location for the prostrate body of the sovereign of France. My green and blue décor was, however, just as blurred as that first view of trees and sky. Louis and the abbé Vermond were seated beside me, grave as judges of the Parlement de Paris. My head throbbed, as if someone had clouted me with a plank of wood. I was nauseous and asked for a basin. The king himself held the white Sèvres bowl as I endeavored to relieve myself of the queasiness that had completely overtaken me. I attempted a weak jest. “Maman always warned me about the dangers of riding.”

“You are not—?” the abbé left the question hanging in the air.

I smiled and touched my finger to my lips as I regarded my husband, who knew my secret; we enjoyed marital relations so infrequently now, but I knew I was quickening, perhaps a bit less than three months’ gone. I blushed for shame. What had I been thinking—going riding in my condition? I had already suffered two miscarriages; the loss of a third baby due to my own foolishness would truly devastate me.

“Où sont nos enfants?”
I asked Louis. “I want to see them.”

He exchanged glances with the abbé Vermond. “Do you think it a proper idea for them to see their maman like this?” He touched his own head, as if to illustrate his point.

The duchesse de Polignac was summoned with her charges in tow: the tiny dauphin, not yet three years old, and five-year-old Madame Royale. My daughter was sulking and defiantly sucking on her thumb, despite numerous admonitions to cease because it
was unbecoming for a girl her age, and moreover, would give her crooked teeth.

“Maman!” The dauphin ran toward me and tried to climb up beside me on the bed.

Rushing to restrain him and glancing at the bloodsoaked bandage about my head, the duchesse leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Perhaps this is too upsetting for them.”

I snuggled my son beside me, twining his soft, fine hair about my fingers and gazing blissfully into his open, smiling countenance. It would be my secret that he appeared to have four eyes.

Louis took Marie Thérèse onto his lap, where she immediately nestled into his heavy body as though he were a giant armchair. She regarded me through narrowed eyes, as I lay prostrated on the divan and holding the dauphin to my chest as though he were the most precious object in the world. Her brow furrowed and her rosebud mouth twisted into a frown as though someone had stolen something from her. “Do you regret having a girl, Papa?” she said, stealing a jealous glance at her younger brother.

“
Mon Dieu
, what a question!” Louis replied, genuinely shocked by her words. A tear formed in the corner of his eye. “How can you think such a thing,
ma petite
? I hope that no one stuffed such a notion underneath those brown curls.” He looked to me for confirmation and saw the hurt in my eyes. “I most assuredly do not regret for a moment that God and your maman gave you to us, for nothing in the world is prettier to a papa than the sight of his daughter.”

“
Mes enfants
, your maman has taken a bad fall,” abbé Vermond told the children gently, “but she will soon be all right.” He surreptitiously stole a heavenward glance. “Just as good as new. We are all very fortunate that she will be with us for a good while longer.”

Madame Royale squirmed in her father’s embrace, the better to address the abbé. “She makes me play with baseborn children and take my lessons and share my toys with them. I
hate
little
Ernestine and I
hate
Maman and I wouldn’t miss her if she was dead.”

The room grew suddenly silent as a tomb, but for the ticking of the seconds as the golden pendulum on the mantel clock swung to and fro. As the adults exchanged shocked looks, Gabrielle de Polignac poured me a glass of orange flower water sweetened with sugar—her usual remedy when she knew I needed soothing. But my head pounded harder than ever and I wished to vomit.