Mistress of the Sun (27 page)

He embraced her carefully, as if she might break.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

He seemed strangely at a loss. “My mother must not find out.”

“Or the Queen,” Petite said, chagrined that the Queen Mother was more of a concern than his wife.

“Or the Queen,” Louis echoed with a wince. He sat Petite down beside him and took her hand.

“I’ll talk to Colbert tonight.”

Petite was taken aback. Monsieur Colbert was Louis’s new minister of finance, a humorless, dutiful man who kept lists.

“His wife is about to have their fifth child. He’ll know what to do.”

“Louis—” Petite paused, collecting her thoughts. She’d had a daydream—a foolish one, she knew—of living in a little cottage in the woods at Versaie, raising the baby herself. She could be happy with a simple life. “Is there no way that I could…keep the child? I’m serious,” she said, in response to his look of alarm.

“You know that’s not possible, Louise.”

“But why?” This was not how she’d imagined the conversation would go.

He opened his hands in frustration. “You don’t understand the dangers. This isn’t just any child. You’d be found out, and the baby—” He shook his head. “He could be spirited away.”

He.
Petite smiled. They would have a son; she thought so too.

“Listen to me.” Louis took both her hands in his.

Petite watched him solemnly.

He looked up at the ceiling, as if the words he was seeking were there. “The blood of a prince is believed to have magical qualities. It’s only a superstition, of course—but that doesn’t make it less powerful. People believe what they will.”

Petite nodded. She was saddened to hear Louis say that it was only a superstition. She wondered about the other beliefs.

“Even your birth secretions will have to be guarded,” he went on. “The after-burthen can be sold for a high price. It’s disgusting, but it happens. One learns to be realistic.”

Petite recalled the care that had had to be taken with the Queen’s placenta.

“So, you see? It’s just not possible for you to keep the baby. He must be carefully hidden away.” He opened his arms. “You’re not to worry: Monsieur Colbert will find a good home for him…and a house for you,” Petite heard him say as he stroked her hair. A hideaway for her confinement. “I’ll see to it that you have everything you need.”

Everything you need…

Petite listened to the beating of Louis’s heart.

She needed
him
—now more than ever. She’d half imagined that Louis was immortal, but now she couldn’t afford that luxury. Now there was too much at stake.

She looked up at him. “What would become of me if you were to die?” Or be killed: the common fate of kings. Without Louis, she’d be at the mercy of the queens.

He smiled. “Are you plotting?”

“I’m serious.”

He frowned in thought. “Your brother needs a rich wife,” he said finally. “That way, you will always be taken care of—no matter what happens to me.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Petite said with quiet passion, keeping the Devil at bay.

T
HE WEDDING TOOK PLACE
at the Church of the Assumption. Over sixty of the most noble men and women of France were to be present—even the King, even the Queen, even the Queen Mother. The bride’s family had insisted.

Petite took her place beside her mother and stepfather in the chairs of crimson velvet set in front of the pews.

“Soon it will be you,” Françoise whispered in a consoling tone as Jean and his bride advanced to the high altar.

Petite bowed her head at the sound of the organ. The statue of the Virgin stood before her, glowing in the light of six massive candles. She felt light-headed, fatigued to her core. She was three months along now, and she recalled women saying that it was hardest at the first. The air reeked with the sweet scent of the flowers that had been strewn in the bride’s
path.
With child.
She would never marry, never wear the bridal wreath.

Jean, well shaved and dressed in military attire, rocked on his heels nervously beside his bride. Gabrielle Glé, a plump brunette with a cupid mouth, stood stiffly encased in white satin, a high ruff extending up to her ears. A wreath of tiny pink roses sat atop her dark curls.

“She is comely,” Françoise said, fussing with the gauze shawl Petite had given her the year before.

Petite nodded, watching as Gabrielle Glé bowed her head for the priest’s blessing. Privy to the secret—a secret the family had vowed to keep (on pain of exclusion from all material benefits)—they had bargained hard with Louis, demanding that the Vallière property near Reugny be designated a Marquisate (giving Jean the title Marquis), that Jean be named captain-lieutenant of the Dauphin’s Light Horse, that Gabrielle herself be made maid of honor to the Queen and given the privilege of sitting at the head table with the royal family as well as the right to ride in the royal coach.

“And so rich,” Françoise said with awe. “She has three country manors. Jean is going to take me to visit each one of them.”

Petite nodded. She and Jean had thought it wise for their mother to be out of Paris until after Petite’s baby was born.

“And each one
furnished
,” her mother went on.

Petite put a finger to her lips. She could feel the dagger eyes of the courtiers in the pews behind. Envy was a lethal emotion at
Court. Louis had bestowed his royal beneficence on the Vallière family. She knew that the puzzled courtiers would be trying to figure out how this had come about. Why would Gabrielle Glé de la Cotardais—noble, beautiful, young (seventeen), and rich (worth forty thousand livres a year) give her hand to a nobody?

Jean and his bride knelt at the altar as the priest intoned benedictions and prayers.

“But then, Jean is charming and handsome. Who can resist him?”

“Hush, Mother.” Petite inclined her head toward the crowd of courtiers behind.

“Why should I care?” Françoise said, tipping up her chin. “We’re richer than most of them now—thanks to Jean.”

Petite glanced up to see Louis and the Queen taking their seats in the tribune above. She thought with sick apprehension of the baby she was carrying. The sooner she went into hiding, the better.

P
ETITE WAS QUITE FAR
along by the time Monsieur Colbert, the new minister of finance, managed to find her a hideaway. He’d been busy, he explained, preoccupied by the responsibilities of his new position.

Petite sympathized, but it had become increasingly difficult to hide her condition. Clorine laced her painfully tight, and the bone-chilling cold allowed her to wear layers of heavy woolens, but even so she feared discovery. It had helped that Henriette (at Louis’s command) provided a cover—enlisting Petite to perform
the quieter tasks, not asking her to perform in her ballets, and, ultimately, letting everyone know that she was giving her maid of honor leave for reasons of health—but the time, “her” time, was drawing near. She was greatly relieved when, at last, a house was secured.

“Two floors, twenty-four paces long, eight wide,” Monsieur Colbert said, unlocking the door to the Hôtel Brion. “Small, but sufficient.”

Petite entered, followed by Clorine. The entry was basic, it pleased her, and the location, looking onto the park of the Palais Royale, was excellent, hidden yet close. Louis would be able to see her often.

“Guard room and kitchen are on the ground floor,” Monsieur Colbert said, leading Petite up a circular stair. “There are four chambers for domestics beyond the kitchen, but your personal maid will have a chamber near you, on the floor above.”

The sitting room was bright, looking down upon the garden on one side and a small courtyard on the other. The furnishings were opulent, the chairs gilded, the lemon-yellow damask curtains tasseled and fringed. A bookshelf was filled with classics: Aristophanes, Homer, Plutarch.

“Cardinal Richelieu used this little house as his library,” Colbert said, breathless from the climb up the stairs. “Hence all the shelves.”

The sitting room was lined with books. A handsome white marble figure of a horse was used as a bookend. Petite touched
its cool, smooth surface.
Diablo
, she thought with sorrow: for her lost youth.

She ran her hand over the spines of the tooled leather covers. She was not due for two months, so she would have time to read. “There’s even a set of Virgil,” she said. Abbé Patin would have been pleased, she thought, recalling his lessons at Blois when she was a girl. She wondered where Abbé Patin was now, and then shame filled her, thinking of where she herself was now, and why.

A large rosewood and ivory lute—a theorbo with a long neck—was set on a stand in a corner, a guitar propped beside it. Notation for a duet by Robert de Visée was on a stand. Petite ran a finger over the theorbo’s many strings. Later, she would tune it.

“His Majesty thought he would like to practice here with you. The guitar was made by Checchucci of Livorno in the reign of Henry the Great. His Majesty selected it for you himself.”

The slender instrument had a vaulted rosewood back with ebony fluted ribs. The peg box, circled in ebony, opened into a layered rosette. Petite strummed the gut strings; the tones were rich, resonating.

“Fit for a king,” Colbert said matter-of-factly, opening the door to the bedchamber.

A gold perfume burner, set on a tripod in one corner, scented the air with attar of rose. Petite could see elm trees through the window facing the massive poster bed. Our child will be born in this room, Petite thought, feeling the baby stir.

Clorine pushed open the double doors to the dressing room. A small basin on claw-and-ball feet was set on the black and white marble floor.

“For washing feet,” Colbert explained, pushing open a door to a small chamber. “And this is your maid’s room.”

“Zut.” Clorine had never had a room of her own.

“It’s lovely, Monsieur Colbert,” Petite said, following the minister of finance back into the sitting room. She lowered herself onto the chaise longue, her hand on her corseted belly. A fire had been lit to ward off the fall chill. “You’ve gone to such trouble.”

Monsieur Colbert had been nicknamed “The North” by the courtiers because of his cold demeanor, but Petite found his manner refreshingly direct. He was from the mercantile class—his grandfather had been in trade, a cloth merchant—yet she respected him.

“My wife helped me,” the finance minister said, pacing, his hands clasped behind his back. “The brocades and linens are of the finest quality.”

“His Majesty will be pleased,” Petite assured him.

There was a pounding at the door on the ground floor. “It’s likely the men with your belongings,” Monsieur Colbert said as Clorine headed down the stairs. “I suggest you withdraw from view,” he told Petite. “One of the movers might recognize you.”

Petite found the necessary closet in the dressing room. She sat perched on the seat, listening to the sound of men grunting. A few minutes later there was silence.

“You can come out now,” Clorine said through the slatted door. “Monsieur Colbert left with the movers.”

“Did they bring everything?” Petite asked, emerging.

“Even the dirty laundry,” Clorine said. She was going through Petite’s trunk.

Petite saw, with relief, the statue of the Virgin and her keepsake box. She looped her rosary around the Virgin and set it on the prie-dieu. “I’m famished,” she said, opening the keepsake box and taking out the branch (only two leaves on it now). She wedged it into the frame of a mirror.

“Monsieur Colbert said his wife will be back in one hour with a cook. In the morning one of his maids will come with more linens. She’s to be our chambermaid.”

A staff: Petite now had servants to manage. She would have to make sure that they didn’t drink or gamble and that they said their prayers. She winced, realizing that she was hardly in any condition to insist on the religious piety of others.

Madame Colbert arrived promptly. Petite waited upstairs as the finance minister’s wife installed the cook in the rooms below. Petite was not to be introduced, she’d been informed. Only Clorine and the chambermaid would ever be allowed to actually see “Mademoiselle du Canard,” the consort of a noble who would always arrive masked.

“There now,” Madame Colbert exclaimed, as breathless after climbing the stairs as her husband had been. “The cook’s nothing
to look at, but she appears to know the pots from the pans, so I doubt that she’ll poison you.” The finance minister’s wife was a short, round woman adorned with frivolous gewgaws. The daughter of a wealthy family from the Tours region, she still spoke with a Touraine accent.

“I remember meeting you at Blois,” Petite said. “Long ago, during one of la Grande Mademoiselle’s visits.” It had been quite early on, during Petite’s first Easter there.

“Were you the skinny little girl with a limp?” Madame Colbert gave Petite a warm embrace. Her cheek was creamy soft.

“Has Colby explained everything? He can be a bit terse.”

Petite couldn’t imagine this outgoing woman in the embrace of the stern finance minister, yet they’d produced five children, the eldest thirteen and the youngest only a few months old. “He told me you were a big help.”

“I do what I can. He works sixteen hours a day, every day of the week, even feast days.”

“The King speaks highly of him.” The honest, hardworking and frugal new finance minister was performing miracles—creating a new Rome, it was said, without the corrupt dealings of the past.

“It’s a wonder he’s had time to give me any children at all.” Madame Colbert chortled. “So he leaves the fiddle-faddle to me.”

Petite stood at the window. The sky was gray and a cold drizzle was falling. Louis had gone to Saint-Germain-en-Laye to make the
rounds with his keepers in preparation for a fall battue. In Paris, he became restless. She was growing accustomed to his moods.

“You’ll be happy to know that Monsieur and Madame Beauchamp, a couple who have been in our employ for some time, have agreed to look after the baby.”

Petite, heart heavy, pulled the drapes against the cold and returned to her guest. “Do they know?” That they would be caring for the King’s child?

“Of course not!
Nobody
must know. His Majesty made that very clear. Colby told them that his brother’s fiancée had found herself in a delicate condition, and that the family was under obligation to look after the child. As soon as your pains begin, a courier will be sent to alert them. They live in the parish of Saint-Leu, out near porte Saint-Denis. Their rooms are not far from the church.”

Petite put down her dish of tea, lest it spill. She had come to accept that the child would never be hers, but she hadn’t realized that he would be taken from her immediately. She recalled the stories she’d been told of the various mistresses of the kings of times past: Diane de Poitiers, mistress to King Henry II; Agnès Sorel, mistress to Charles VII; Gabrielle d’Estrées, mistress to Henry IV. Perhaps they too had had to hide away, give up their babies. Petite felt a sudden sympathy for these women who were regarded with such contempt.

“They will hire a coach?” she asked finally, her voice unsteady. The nights were bitter; a newborn could die in such weather.

“They will be provided with one. And a charcoal foot-warmer, as well.” Madame Colbert appeared to be as gifted in organization as her husband. “You don’t need to worry about a thing, my dear. Madame Beauchamp was wet nurse to two of my own babies. She is clean and her milk is excellent.”

“Porte Saint-Denis isn’t far,” Petite said hopefully. “I could walk.”

“You’d have to go through the cemetery to get there and the stink of the dead would make you faint—or worse. If you wish, I can make arrangements for you to see the infant, but frankly, it’s best not to think of it. I send all my babies out, and look—” She proudly raised her paps with her hands. “It will be difficult for one week, but soon you will feel your normal self again.”

Petite smiled grimly, concealing her dismay. Madame Colbert may have sent her children out to a wet nurse, but she got them back after a time and raised them herself. Didn’t she understand the difference?

Madame Colbert reached over to pat Petite on the shoulder. “Think of the King, my dear girl, think of his needs. Think of the glorious service you have the honor to provide.”

Petite put a rein on her tongue. It appalled her to think of her time with Louis as “service.”

“You’ve met with Monsieur Blucher, the midwife?”

“Yesterday—” Petite faltered. She had not liked talking to a man about such an intimate matter.

“Don’t be embarrassed. He attended my last lying-in, and he’s very, very good. He has promised the King that you’ll stay nice and tight.” Madame Colbert grinned, forming three chins.

P
ETITE WAS BORED
, desperate to go outside. “At least to Mass,” she told Clorine. “The help go to church at seven. I’ll leave shortly after. Notre-Dame de Recouvrance is not far.” It was a shabby little church—not even the servants went there. She would not be seen.

“And leave the house empty?” Clorine asked, considering. “What if one of them comes back?”