The Heiress (11 page)

At the Trianon the King and his immediate party entered the theatre and took their seats in the Royal box which was hung with tapestries and decorated with hundreds of spring flowers. The audience clapped the King vigorously, and from the orchestra pit the first strains of introductory music sounded and the rustling, whispering crowd became quiet. Anne and Charles were seated on a narrow bench in the upper gallery, so crushed by others that there was scarcely room to move. He had seemed in a curiously good mood during the trip, keeping her arm within his, helping her to disembark with great courtesy. He looked extremely handsome and, as usual, very elegant wearing the Macdonald sash across his breast, and a fine diamond pin in his cravat.

The curtain rose on the first act of a well-known comedy by Molière, and there was more clapping for the appearance of the Dauphine in the principal part. Anne leaned forward to see her better; she was a pretty girl with a beautiful complexion and rather protruberant blue eyes of fine colour. Her red hair was hidden by a towering grey wig covered in feathers and jewels, and she spoke her lines clearly and enthusiastically so that all could hear her. She had little acting talent and no comic sense.

‘There's a rumour that she may speak to the Dubarry tonight,' Anne whispered to him. He glanced away from the stage for a moment:

‘I'll wager a hundred louis she does nothing of the kind. She's as stiff-necked as a mule, and an Austrian mule is the worst of the breed. She'll never acknowledge the woman; I don't know why the devil the Dubarry can't ignore her and let the damned business drop.'

‘She feels the slight, I believe,' Anne murmured. ‘I've been told many things about her and they say she's quite sensitive.'

‘There's a lot of the country simpleton about you still,' he said under his breath. ‘Come to one of her evening soirées and see her sitting half naked on the King's knees like a drunken whore in a bawdy house; then tell me how sensitive she is! Keep these judgements to yourself, my dear Anne. You're only a child and you don't know the world. Let's listen to the noble Princess and her ladies murdering Molière's lines!'

Charles sat through the remaining acts without paying any attention to the action on the stage. He felt relaxed and benevolent; he had not the least regret that Louise was not beside him, whispering and sparkling and demanding his attention. He was enjoying his wife's company, and he had also enjoyed the looks and comments which had followed them from the barge to the Trianon itself. She looked very beautiful; in the dim theatre she glittered when she moved as her magnificent diamonds caught the fitful candlelight from the walls. He was perversely amused to imagine that somewhere in the auditorium Louise was sitting through the interminable performance consumed with jealousy and rage. Charles knew every twist in her character, every devious impulse, every flash of temper and every spit of jealousy. She had needed a lesson. Thinking of the humiliation she had planned for his unsuspecting wife, he grew angry again.

Whatever there was between them, Charles would never permit his wife to be driven from Court by his mistress. It was a matter of pride. She bore his name and he alone had the right to abuse her if he chose. When the play was over, they went back to the barges and the whole glittering procession set out for the main Palace and a late supper. The King had remained behind at the Trianon with Marie Antoinette and a circle of friends especially invited. The Dubarry had not been included in the Dauphine's invitation to join her supper party, and while the King went back to congratulate her and the company, he declined to dine without his mistress, and the Court set out again for Versailles. Everyone was talking about the Dubarry's disappointment. Only Anne was silent; she had been happy for those few hours, happier than at any time since her marriage. It was the first time Charles had been nice to her without the interjecting of a single wounding sneer or curt rebuff. Now it was ending; as the boat drew into the landing stage, she felt tears in her eyes.

‘Will you have supper with me?' he asked her suddenly. They were standing together at the top of the steps leading up from the Cour des Marbres; people were pushing past them, talking and laughing, and the lackeys were leading away the carriages below.

She could see nothing in his face; it was quite cool and expressionless as he looked down at her.

‘Yes, I would be glad to.' She had completely forgotten that Francis O'Neil was waiting for her in the Salon d'Appollon. He had not been asked to the Trianon, and after that week he had told her he would be forced to leave Versailles as his money was finished and he was no further advanced in his search for a commission than on the day he arrived there. Only as they passed into the supper-room did Anne remember and she saw him standing in the distance, looking for her. He was her constant companion now; her shield against the attentions of the men who knew she was to all intents alone, her companion, her provider, her hunting partner. They had grown very intimate in those long days and she knew all about him, from the bleak childhood in Rome with the exiled Stuarts to the life of dirt and privation suffered by the mercenary soldier. Not a word of impropriety had passed between them; he had never done more than kiss her hand, and yet she sensed that there was something more.

‘Oh, Charles, I forgot; there's poor Captain O'Neil. I promised to have supper with him and we thought perhaps the King might speak to me and I could present him … Can't we ask him to join us? Please?'

Charles looked across at the man standing half turned away from them, searching among the crowd streaming in; one of the Irish mercenaries, no doubt, hanging about in their pathetic search for favour from a singularly ungenerous King. He saw the handsome face at that moment, and the fine breeding in the features, and was stung with the first feeling of jealousy he had ever experienced.

Turning to Anne he said coldly: ‘No, my dear. You may pick up with what rag-tags you choose when I'm not with you, but I don't care to eat with money soldiers. He must find someone else to sponsor him tonight.'

They supped in the long room, where Francis had sat with her the night they first met, and in spite of herself she felt happy; the moment of coolness was gone; she could force herself to forget the unkindness in that refusal; instead, she held on to the precious time they spent together, and her heart ached and yearned for this to be the normal way of life between them. Perhaps she bored him still; it was so difficult to tell, that thin dark face was such an impossible page to read except when it was full of mockery and illuminated by his savage temper. The eyes which considered her said nothing either, occasionally they grew light as he smiled, but it was not a change she trusted. And yet he was all she wanted, even the uncertainty and fear of being with him was more than the tenderest attentions from any other man.

When the supper was over there was dancing in the Salon d'Appollon and the King made an appearance with the Dubarry, whose little doll's face was flushed with wine and her voice a tone above its usual pitch. When she was bored or unhappy she drank, and she had been both that evening. She was ready to burst into tears and shout a stream of fishwife language at the smirking courtiers who had witnessed yet another snub delivered by Marie Antoinette that night.

For a moment Anne thought again of Francis O'Neil, but though she looked among the crowd she could not see him, and again the King passed quickly through the company and spoke to hardly anyone.

When he left, Charles turned to Anne. ‘It grows late, and I grow weary,' he said. ‘It was an interminable play, intolerably acted. I pray to God we shan't have to sit through another for a very long time.'

‘I enjoyed it,' Anne said unsteadily. ‘I wasn't bored at all.'

For a moment the pale eyes gleamed at her, with laughter, with contempt—it was impossible to tell. He lifted her hand and kissed it. ‘As I said, there's much of the country simpleton about you still. Good night, Madame.'

She made her way out of the stuffy room and when she came to the corridors beyond the Galerie des Glaces, Anne began to run, and as she ran the tears were flowing down her face. At the doorway to her rooms she paused; in all her life she had never so far forgotten herself as to cry before a servant; none but her old nurse had ever seen her weep. With an effort she composed herself and opened the door. The maid Marie-Jeanne was dozing on her stool; she sprang up, blushing and stammering at being caught asleep.

‘Undress me quickly,' Anne said. She felt intolerably tired. Her legs ached from standing and she now felt the full weight of her heavy dress. The dress, the petticoats, the corselet, the panniers, at last they were laid aside and a lawn nightgown, warmed by the fire, was slipped over her head. The jewels and false hair pieces were taken off and Marie-Jeanne brushed her long hair as she had done since her mistress was a child.

The bed was warmed by a pan filled with hot coals; there was a hot brick wrapped in flannel at the bottom for her feet. Anne lay back and closed her eyes while the maid drew the covers up and tucked them in. Then she curtsied.

‘Good night, Madame.'

‘Good night, Marie-Jeanne. Blow out the bedside candle.'

She fell asleep immediately; not long afterwards, she woke with a sensation of someone touching her, and found that it was not a dream. She tried to sit up with a cry of fear, and Charles's voice said out of the darkness: ‘Lie still my dear! Who did you think it was? Your Irish money soldier?…'

Four

The Hôtel de Bernard had been closed for many years; after the old Marquise's death the great Paris house had been shut up, its furniture shrouded in sheets, its treasures packed away, and Anne had never intended opening it again. Now it was full of servants cleaning and polishing and re-laying the Aubusson carpets and hanging the priceless tapestries. Gold and silver plate, superb porcelain and some of the loveliest furniture made by cabinetmakers to the King at the beginning of the reign were arranged in the reception rooms, and Anne had engaged a steward to supervise the large staff of servants and he had secured one of the best chefs in the city. Horses travelled up from Charantaise for her stables, and she had ordered a magnificent new town coach with special springing to withstand the abominable cobbled streets of Paris. Versailles was full of rumour and speculation about the ball which Anne was giving to celebrate the opening of her Hôtel; it was predicted that the King himself would honour the occasion and there was much jealousy and angling for invitations.

The appointment of Captain O'Neil as her agent added a delicious spice of scandal to the whole affair, and some of the more malicious, including the Comte de Tallieu who was revelling in the gossip, insisted that Madame Macdonald shared her favours between the handsome Captain and his hideous, one-eyed servant Boehmer.

Only one person betrayed no interest in the Hôtel or the ball, that was Charles. He neither discussed it nor permitted it to be discussed. He preserved a stony silence which discouraged comment to his face and caused a furore of talk behind his back. What was even more extraordinary about this most tantalizing situation was the rumour, gained by the indiscretion of Madame Macdonald's simple little maid to another servant, that the husband was in the habit of visiting his wife, entirely capriciously, and staying the night with her. It was this last rumour, coupled with Anne's preparations to make her stay at Versailles and Paris permanent, that tortured Louise as effectively as if she were being racked. She and Charles were reconciled again, but it was an uneasy reconciliation; there were times when it took all her considerable skill to hold his interest and all her charm to keep him in a good humour. On the surface their relationship was unchanged; he spent most of his spare time with her, he made her presents of jewels and dresses, they appeared in public together and they made their rendezvous as usual. But all Louise's female instincts sensed a withdrawal in him, and she loved him so intensely that she was not deceived by what he irritably insisted was his contempt for, and indifference to, his wife. One night, driven by jealousy and suspense, she had unwisely asked him whether he indeed made love to Anne, and the curt answer made her bitterly regret having asked the question.

‘You don't own me, and I shall sleep with whom I please!'

And yet she had allowed him to make love to her after he had said it, hating him and needing him and loathing her own weakness.

Marie, the stolid maid who had been through so many phases of her mistress's life and watched the course run by all her love affairs, considered that the Baroness was bewitched. Marie was not only her maid, now she was her closest confidante, the recipient of Louise's fears and disappointments and outbursts of jealousy, the one to whom every word and gesture of Charles, the most intimate secrets of their relationship, were poured out by her mistress.

‘She's going to stay here,' Louise said again. ‘And he has encouraged her! He could have ordered her to go away, I know he could! Now this Hôtel in Paris, a ball to which the King will go.… She's established at Court! I shall never be rid of her!'

‘Perhaps it is the Irishman who keeps her here,' Marie suggested. ‘If they are lovers all this must be to please him, Madame.'

‘I wish I knew,' Louise turned round to her. ‘If it were really that; if I could prove that she was this mercenary's mistress … But in my heart, Marie, I don't believe she is. I think it's to make Charles jealous!'

‘And is he?' Marie asked her.

‘No,' Louise almost spat the word. ‘Because he doesn't believe it either! But if it were so—ah, my God, Marie, he may not want her, but I should hate to be in her place if he found out that she was deceiving him with that beggar! She'd leave Versailles soon enough then!'

‘It should be easy enough to find out,' Marie said. ‘All you need is a servant in that household who can watch them. I could ask Pierre if he knows anyone, preferably a woman, who could take employment at the Hôtel de Bernard. You would have to pay her, Madame. These people are not cheap if they're going to be reliable.'