Enchantress of Paris (6 page)

I greeted her in the front hall with a deep curtsy. “I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

Scudéry seemed confused. “What have I done to deserve such thanks?”

“Your novel
Clélie
provided hours of entertainment at the Convent of the Visitation.”

She beamed. “I had no idea they read my work in the convent.”

“Oh, yes. And they always shall.” I winked at her. “As long as we don't tell the abbess.”

Scudéry laughed all the way upstairs, where Victoire insisted I entertain them with dramatic recitations of
Clélie,
and we laughed and supped into the night.

The next week Scudéry brought another writer. Comtesse de La Fayette, seasoned courtier and matron of honor to the queen mother, studied me up and down. They supped with us, then sat around Victoire's bed, politely debating the merits of marriage.

“Marie,” said Scudéry, “what say you?”

I hesitated. “I would rather not subject myself to a husband. I long to embark on sweeping adventures to distant lands and live on my own terms.”

La Fayette eyed Scudéry. “She speaks her mind.”

I tried to make a joke of it. “Blame it on my too-big mouth.”

Scudéry ignored me. “Yet I sense restraint. She lacks flair. She needs to visit
her.
We must take her to a rare meeting at the Hôtel de Rambouillet.”

The others nodded in agreement. I felt like some doll they were about to toy with. “To meet the Précieuses?”

Victoire smiled triumphantly. “The most famous salon of all.”

 

CHAPTER
6

Those things that cannot naturally bring about the effects for which they are employed are superstitious and belong to a pact entered into by devils.

—JACOBUS SIMANCAS,

Institutiones Catholicae

A few weeks later I stood on the rue Saint-Thomas with Scudéry on my right and La Fayette on my left. The Hôtel de Rambouillet's red brick, stone facing, and steep roof matched the other houses between the Tuileries and the Louvre. They took me straight in and directly up a circular staircase. I gripped the wrought iron balusters, suddenly anxious.

La Fayette took my hand. “Be at ease. We aren't ostentatious or crass like courtiers at the Louvre. You'll find in us the quality of
honnêteté,
restraint and decorum.”

But what will they find in me?

We passed through a dining room, a bedchamber, then entered a grand salon. Walls of robin's-egg blue matched blue and gold tapestries hanging between bright windows that stretched from floor to soaring ceiling. The famous
chambre bleue.
It was like entering a new world.

A woman arranging hothouse flowers in a crystal vase turned to study me. Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet. Bright eyes suggested a sharp mind despite elderly age. “This is the Mancini you claim is worthy?”

La Fayette nodded but didn't curtsy. Scudéry pulled me into the small gathering of men and women, but there wasn't time for introductions. Rambouillet swept her hand over the red-covered divans, stools, and armchairs, and her guests seated themselves. Scudéry sat beside me, whispering the names of people who spoke.

The first was a shabbily dressed actor known simply by the name Molière. He held out a roll of paper. “I would like to discuss a new play. A comedy to take Paris by storm.”

A self-satisfied-looking man, Isaac de Benserade, shook his head. “Poetry and tragedy are the order of the day.”

Molière looked defeated, but Rambouillet ignored them both. “Today we will discuss palm reading. Is our destiny to be found in our hands?”

I froze. Of all topics! Did Rambouillet know about my family? My father's prophecy? My gift for divination?

Marguerite de la Sablière, a Protestant, answered first. She held out her hand and spoke in a soft, elegant manner. “Only simple country people still practice such things. Brittany women sweep dust from the church to their homes for luck. Autun villagers sacrifice bulls to the Virgin Mother to protect against plague. Every French farmer has a horseshoe over his door and a rabbit's foot in his pocket. These are not the ways of nobility.”

The widowed little marquise de Sévigné seemed surprised. “Members of high society merely practice different arts. Some buy potions from a sorceress named La Voisin off the rue Beauregard outside Paris.” Everyone stared at her. “Not me, of course. But I know courtiers who buy charms for health, wealth, beauty, and love.”

“La Voisin is no mere sorceress,” said François, duc de La Rochefoucauld, an old noble who had fought against my uncle in the Fronde. His presence made me even more nervous. “She's a witch in league with the devil, performing black masses sanctified with infant blood. Pay renegade priests to consecrate your charms instead. Everyone knows the miracle of the mass activates certain spells.”

I could name a dozen such spells. Molière looked bored to tears. Benserade seemed to be sleeping.

Sablière tipped her head in thought. “From what I know of your Catholic faith, that is sacrilege, treason against God, a capital crime. Such priests could be put to death.”

An old man named Charles de Saint-Évremond said, “Priests are consecrated to mediate between visible and invisible realms. But take heed. Merely inverting the technique turns curative spells into curses, turning superstition into dangerous magic.” He had a bulbous protrusion of flesh between his eyes, but it didn't detract from the wisdom in his words.

Rambouillet turned her bright old eyes to me. “What say you, worthy Mancini? Is our destiny to be found in our hands?”

I fought the urge to squirm and tried to seem relaxed like them. “The ecclesiastical nature of my uncle's office prevents me from engaging in any such pagan practices.” They stared blankly, still waiting. I cleared my throat. “But I agree in a sense. We
use
our hands to forge our own destiny.”

The women broke into smiles, the men nodded their appreciation, and I felt a rush of relief. Antoine Baudeau de Somaize, fingers smeared with ink, glanced at Rambouillet from the table where he'd been recording our conversation. “It seems we have another cunning Italian blazing her way into French society.”

Rambouillet is Italian?
I stared at her in surprise. She winked and changed the subject.

An hour later, we made farewells at the front door, and even the unimpressed Molière dismissed himself politely. On the steps Rambouillet muttered to me, “You are surprised that I, too, was born in Rome.”

“How did you rise to influence the French?”

“There is no end to what woman is capable of when she aspires.”

I thought of those words all the way back to the Hôtel de Vendôme.
What might I be capable of?

*   *   *

Conversation in the salons of Scudéry and Sévigné moved to safer subjects like Homer, Virgil, Plutarch, Philostratus, and Plato. For the first time in my life, I knew the simple joy of friendships and society. A month passed in a flurry of salon engagements, and Victoire finally insisted I spend an evening with her.

She propped herself on plump velvet bolsters for a game of chess while the governess, Madeleine, dame de Venelle, from an educated Provençal family, read aloud. Within an hour Victoire put me in checkmate, clever girl, and the next moment she fell back in a faint.

Venelle and I jumped up and threw back the chess table, and the duc de Mercœur ran to fetch physicians. I held my sister's hands and said a prayer to the Virgin Mother. Those foolish old physicians in their black robes came in, muttering incomprehensible jargon, peeling back her eyelids and prodding her belly.

She woke before they could make a pronouncement. “The baby is coming,” she said. “And fast.”

“Hortense and Marianne, go wait in your room. Moréna, find clean linens.” I flew to the kitchen and ordered vats of hot water, snatched dried witch hazel and yarrow from the rafters, and bundled them into cheesecloth pouches. Papa had made similar pouches to stanch Mamma's bleeding after Marianne was born, but he'd assembled his under a full moon and cinched them closed with strands of Mamma's hair. I glanced to be sure no one was watching, put a hand over the pouches, and silently implored the Virgin Mother to make them potent. Surely there was no harm in such a prayer.

Venelle propped Victoire up, and Mercœur held her hands. My sister grimaced as she pushed, and the physicians leaned in so far their heads disappeared between her knees.

“Stay strong, Victoire!” cried her husband. But she looked so pale, so tired. Her chemise clung to the sweat on her chest. She grunted with pain, and we urged her to push. The maids prepared basins, the wet-nurse arrived, and I held the linens ready. At long last, the baby slipped out in a rush of bloody fluid. The physicians handed it to me and turned their attention to the cord. “A boy!” I cried.

But Victoire didn't look right. The left side of her mouth drooped. “I can't move my arm.”

Mercœur took his newborn son from my arms, cooing, and I moved to Victoire's side.

“I'm so tired,” she said.

“Lay her down,” grumbled a physician. “Clean her up and let her rest, and soon she will mend.”

I positioned her limbs, arranged her infant in the crook of her arm, and went to work cleaning blood and pulling soiled quilts from beneath her. So much blood, and when I pushed on her belly to help shrink her womb, more trickled out. I pressed the herb pouches on the tear between her legs.

*   *   *

In the morning we couldn't wake her.

Mercœur sat by her bed and bawled.

“Is it apoplexy?” one physician asked another, who replied, “We must cup her.”

I interrupted. “She's lost enough blood—”

They glowered so fiercely I feared they'd send me away. “Set up the table.”

I made Mercœur leave and used the chess table to set out their gruesome knives and glass bowls.

One used tongs to hold a bowl in the fireplace until it glowed red-hot. The other barked, “Hold her still.” He rolled Victoire to her stomach, yanked the back of her chemise up, then sliced her lovely skin. Her lids flew open. She cried out in pain. Blood poured forth. The other physician put the hot bowl over the cut, and my sister screamed. The bowl filled with blood, a grotesque sight.

Victoire clung to me and wept. “Stop!”

One physician smiled. “She is alert. It worked.”

Victoire stared, distant and helpless, and I knew it hadn't. I turned to Moréna. “Get Mercœur. Wake their sons and my sisters. Send messengers for Olympia, Philippe, and my Martinozzi cousin.” I turned to Venelle. “Find the cardinal.”

*   *   *

“Please don't let them cup her again,” I begged the cardinal when he arrived. Our entire family gathered in shock.

The physician interjected, “Cupping saved her. She is in no danger.”

The cardinal frowned at me. “Don't interfere with the physicians. We must all pray.”

Olympia and I glanced at each other. I'd shown her the healing laceration between Victoire's legs. She'd felt the shrinking womb herself. She agreed Victoire's weakness was caused by a problem in the brain and cupping wouldn't help. Nevertheless, we fell to our knees with the rest of the family, and His Eminence made the sign of the cross.

They cupped her. She cried out. Victoire's sons wailed at the sight of their mother's bloody back. Marianne sat in the corner with her face in her hands, yelling, “Make the physicians stop!”

Finally, Mercœur put his ear beside his wife's lips as she whispered, and his face crumpled with grief. With her good hand, she gestured for her sons. The light around her seemed to fade, as if her life were draining.
She is dying.

We positioned her with the baby cradled in her good arm. Philippe and each of my sisters knelt for a final kiss. I started to approach, but the cardinal ordered the last sacraments. A priest drew wine and lit incense while Mazarin spilled a litany of Latin. Victoire took a crumbled bit of communion wafer, but it fell from her lips.
Rumors be damned! Why hadn't I followed Papa's example and hung a protective amulet over her bed?

I stepped in front of the cardinal and put my lips to Victoire's cheek.

Her eyes met mine. “Live well for my sake.” Her next whisper came out in a rush. “Wherever it leads, your star is your own. Let no one conceal its brilliance.” She didn't draw another breath.

Cardinal Mazarin shook her. She was limp. Olympia started wailing.

“She's gone?” asked Marianne between sobs.

Hortense clung to one of my hands, and I put my other in Olympia's. We stared in disbelief. The angelic one was gone. I felt an abyss of grief, yet it slowly filled with the command in her whisper. A Mancini whisper. Last words of the dying hold power, and she'd uttered hers for me.
It is time for me to live.

The wet-nurse took the baby, Mercœur took his other sons into his arms, and servants covered Victoire. Olympia looked at me with tears streaming down her cheeks.

I whispered, “I have had enough of death.”

Mazarin heard. “Get your sisters and brother,” he muttered to me. “The Mancinis must come to Palais Mazarin.”

We backed out of the room together, slipped out of the Hôtel de Vendôme, now a house of mourning, and piled into the cardinal's coach.

I was the first to speak. “Without Victoire, we Mancinis have no alliances. Olympia must wed.”

Mazarin nodded. “Olympia will marry within a fortnight.”

Olympia quieted at that, but Marianne and Hortense continued to cry softly. Philippe put his arms around them.

Mazarin studied me. “The king inquired after you. He thinks you should stay at court.” He went on before I could question him. “I intended to send you away after the birth. But now … you will help Olympia prepare for her wedding. Give orders to the cooks, request my carriage if you have need, and for God's sake try to dress better.”