The Hurlyburly's Husband (27 page)

From the middle of the courtyard they could hear raised voices exclaiming from behind the old guardroom door, which the marquis now opened, wiping his brow and explaining to the painter, ‘I also want her to have her theatre. She is so fond of it. Alas, it’s not the Comédie-Française – there are only eight chairs in white wood that I have had painted in gold – but she will be able to applaud the performances of passing thespians who will perform for two hundred and fifty
livres
.’

Louis-Henri put his index finger to his lips and whispered, ‘They are rehearsing … to be sure, ’tis not a play by Corneille, but … Pray come in, and note the walls that I should like you to decorate with flowers, foliage, acanthus. I imagined shades of nasturtium red and a bluish grey. Would that be possible?’

‘Naturally, although ...’ warned the modest painter with a smile, ‘do not expect the likes of Le Brun, obviously!’

‘That doesn’t matter. And in our bedchamber I would like a ceiling with plaster figures depicting symbols of love: quivers and arrows, and cupids. But let us sit, for I am weary, and listen to this comedy. A little marquis, a courtier at Versailles, is preparing to marry the youngest daughter of a moneylender who has provided a sack of pistoles as a dowry. And he is educating the girl in advance, and she is greatly surprised by what she hears.’

Walking over planks placed on trestles, a young actress came from the back of the stage towards an actor all in ribbons, and she placed her hands on her hips.

‘Her hair is not in the
hurluberlu
style,’ Montespan sighed regretfully in the painter’s ear, ‘but…’

‘That is the La Fontanges style,’ replied the decorator.

‘Who?’

The actress, whose long hair flowed onto her shoulders, was absorbed by her role; she was expressing her astonishment.

MONEYLENDER’S DAUGHTER
:
Is there harm in loving my husband?

MARQUIS
:
At the least, there is ridicule. At court a man marries to have heirs, and a woman to have a name; and that is all that she has in common with her husband.
DAUGHTER:
To take one another without love! When love is the means to having a good life together!

MARQUIS
:
One has the best of lives together, as friends. One is smitten neither by tenderness, nor by the jealousy, which demeans a man of refinement. A husband, for example, might encounter his wife’s lover: ‘Hello, good day, my dear chevalier. Where the devil have you been hiding? I’ve been looking for you for so long. By the way, how is my wife? Do you still delight in one another? Is she amiable, at least? Upon my honour, if I were not her husband I feel that I should love her. Why are you not with her? Ah, I see, I see … I’ll wager that you have quarrelled. Come, come, I will send for her, to ask her to sup with us this evening: you shall come and I will set things right again betwixt you.’

DAUGHTER
:
I confess that everything you have said seems most extraordinary.

MARQUIS
:
I well believe it. The court is a new world for those who have only seen it from afar. But we are at ease here, for we are the natural inhabitants of this country.

Montespan applauded, seeking the painter’s approbation. ‘It’s not bad, is it?’ The door to the old guardroom – the theatre – opened and the cook came in, carrying an infant in her arms. She was looking for Cartet or Dorothée to give the swaddled child to whilst she did the ironing.

‘I’ll take her,’ offered the Gascon. ‘Come, Marie-Christine ...’

Louis-Henri smiled and cooed at the infant in the crook of his arm. The tiny girl had Lauzun’s pointed nose.

‘Françoise will love her too. With the eight or ten she gave the King, she has a great love of infants.’

‘Your wife is a monster.’

‘What did you say? Take that back!’ growled the fierce Gascon, suddenly looking at his decorator as if he were a Turk at Gigeri, but the artist would not back down.

‘There is something rotten in the state of France; something your wife found in the wretched neighbour-hoods of Paris has infiltrated Versailles …’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘The court is drowning in a sea of hysteria and witchcraft; it is teeming with poison and tales of murders. The Princesse de Tingry, the Duchesse de Bouillon, the Comtesse de Soissons, the Marquis de Cessac, the Vicomtesse de Polignac, the Marquise d’Alluye, the Duchesse d’Angoulême, the Comte de Gassily, the Duc de Vendôme: all have been charged. At their trials the spectators bombard them with miaowing cats.’

Louis-Henri got abruptly to his feet, holding the new Marie-Christine in his arms.

‘My wife has nothing to do with those madmen!’

‘Outside my lodgings on Rue Saint-Antoine, a drunken poisoner boasted between swigs of wine: “What a fine trade! And such a clientele! I see none but duchesses and marquises and princes and lords coming through my door! Three more poisonings and I shall retire having made my fortune!” The Poison Affair is turning into a political nightmare. At court, be it in soup or wine or perfume, everyone is administering enough powder to everyone else to make them sneeze one last time. We have reached the dregs of the century. It is said that Racine poisoned his mistress, the actress Madame Duparc.’

‘That scarce surprises me, coming from him! ’Tis what he deserves for writing tragedies! But Françoise!’

‘La Reynie has laid his hand on a veritable hornet’s nest. He is able to destroy the worker bees but is fearful of attacking the queen: Athénaïs de Montespan.’

‘Have you lost your senses? Françoise …’

‘… poisoned the stupid long-haired Mademoiselle de Fontanges – whom she had shoved into the King’s arms without thinking, to try to lure him away from the widow Scarron.’

‘You’re insane!’

‘She offered her a nightdress impregnated with cyanide. During the night, the poison mingled with La Fontanges’s sweat and permeated her skin, and she died on 28 June last, spitting a most horrid pus.’

‘This is calumny! Françoise had nothing to do with it!’

‘The young woman had just enough time to deliver a diatribe against your wife: “You are the one who has poisoned me! But they are waiting for you, tigress, in Tartary, where the poisoners go, a terrible place where the wretches scream and grind their teeth. There you shall join the ranks of La Brinvilliers and the others who have taken the lives of innocent creatures!”’

‘Proof! What proof do you have?’ shouted the marquis.

Frightened, Marie-Christine began to cry. The cook came running into the theatre. ‘Oh, dear me! What are you doing to this poor infant to make her cry so? Give her back to me!’ She left again, whilst the painter continued his assault.

‘The King has ordered that no autopsy be performed, which shows that he, too, has his doubts: “If you can avoid opening up the body, I think that would be wisest.” But he has ordered an investigation. We’ll never know the exact contents of the documents that were delivered to Louis regarding the involvement of the mother of his children in the Poison Affair – after reading them he burnt them with his own hands.’

‘What of it? That proves nothing! It’s not true!’

‘She doesn’t just eliminate the women who are in her way. Not far from where I live in Montlhéry, in the chapel of Villebousin, she does far worse.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘Would you care to come and see?’

Wearing a cassock and leaning on a table, Montespan gazed out of the window of a deserted inn between Paris and Orléans and looked first at the quiet waterlogged countryside. A windmill overlooked the fields. The disguised marquis then turned to look at the isolated chateau of Villebousin, whilst the painter Sabatel, who was seated next to him, said, ‘You haven’t forgotten the purse with the pistoles?’

‘No,’ replied Louis-Henri, putting his hand in his pocket to pass it to him.

‘It’s not for me,’ said Sabatel, refusing it. ‘At the last minute, you must give it to the monk I’ve managed to bribe, and whom you shall replace.’

‘Who will be there?’

‘Abbé Guibourg will preside over the ceremony, and will go in first. You can’t miss him: he has a ghastly face, the stuff of nightmares. He’ll be followed by Lesage and Abbé Mariette, then by four cowled monks in single file with the shortest first and the tallest last. You’ll replace the last one. When you have taken your place, you’ll wait for Athénaïs de Montespan to arrive.’

Louis-Henri’s heart began to pound as if for a lovers’ tryst.

‘Keep your cowl well over your face,’ the painter insisted. ‘Whatever happens, don’t try to interfere. You have promised me. My life is at stake should you be discovered. Look, there’s the first carriage. Go on.’

The marquis went out in his habit, crossed a path and entered the courtyard of the chateau that had been deserted for the afternoon, heading for the chapel. A fifteenth-century tower backing onto a wall marked the entrance. Louis-Henri lowered his head to go through the little door. He hid in a dark recess in the doorway. To his right a corridor led to the place of worship. This feudal demesne belonged to a relative of Mademoiselle des Oeillets, Athénaïs’s maid of honour.

Iron-rimmed wheels rang on the cobbles in the courtyard. Soon the first figure entered the chapel, dressed in a white chasuble decorated with black pine cones. He was indeed extraordinarily ugly – his complexion and features were like those of a gargoyle, with long pointed ears – and he seemed to be the very incarnation of evil. An abbé wearing surplice and stole followed him, with another man holding a basket. Then came the monks in single file. When the fourth one lowered his head to go through the door, Montespan stepped out of his hiding place, handed the purse to him with a jangle of coins, and they changed places. The third monk, on hearing the clinking sound, turned round, but he was reassured when he saw he was still being followed by a tall ecclesiastic with clasped hands and bowed head.

A rectangular stone tomb dominated the centre of the little chapel. Abbé Guibourg, a crucifix and pocket knife in his hand, watched as Lesage covered the tomb with a sheet. Abbé Mariette sprinkled holy water as he murmured the Gospel of the Kings. All the monks were facing in the same direction, standing in the four corners of the gothic room. The Gascon, as he had come in last, was now near the door, his back to the tomb where the ceremony would take place. High, narrow stained-glass windows cast their heavenly light onto the flagstones. Montespan looked at the mural friezes and recognised Sabatel’s style. His vast brown hood, pulled down low, almost hid his entire head, and he lowered it still further when he heard the jolt of a carriage arriving.

Louis-Henri blushed every colour of the rainbow beneath his hood. One rainbow hue after the other.

Pink! The cuckold was pink with emotion: he recognised the rhythm of her small heels clicking. Athénaïs came into the chapel. Without raising his head, her husband shifted his gaze towards her: she was wearing a pleated gown in Point d’Angleterre with a jewelled fastener beneath a gauze cloak. She had put on weight and, like him, she had aged (they were both forty-nine). She brushed past him. For years he had not been this close to her.

Red! The marquis blushed red when he heard his wife removing her clothing behind him. He heard the rustling as all her garments slipped from her skin and onto the floor! He could just see that she was lying flat on her back on the tomb, and it was the belly of Athénaïs’s naked body that would serve as an altar.

‘Astaroth, Asmodeus, princes of Friendship and Love …’ – Louis-Henri recognised Françoise’s beautiful voice – ‘I beg you to accept the sacrifice that I shall offer you for the things I request.’ What sacrifice? And why had she begun by invoking the names of two demons? What was this mass celebrated the wrong way round? ‘I want the King to continue to show me his love, I want the princes and princesses of the court to honour me, and I want His Majesty to refuse me nothing I ask for.’ Then Montespan heard the creaking of a wicker basket being opened, and the cries of an infant that had been awoken, and then the sound of a knife, slicing … There were no more cries, only the dripping of liquid into a chalice. Then the sounds of someone drinking. Oh, the sound of that swallowing! Louis-Henri was green.

White … The Gascon turned deathly pale whilst his wife got dressed again, as if he was the one who had just been drained of his blood. His captain’s legs were about to crumble beneath him, and he struggled to stay on his feet. Once again there was the clicking of little heels over the flagstones, slowing down as they drew level with the Gascon, then stopping. Françoise sniffed the air. She seemed to pick up a scent and ask herself if … She looked at the monk’s hood, then left the chapel.

As for the husband, he was completely undone. He would never get over it.

‘Is it serious, Doctor?’

‘Very.’

The red-headed, potbellied, bearded doctor, in a red velvet robe with lace at his wrists, was taking Montespan’s pulse. With the other hand he picked up a glass phial containing the marquis’s urine and examined it.

‘When did this start?’

‘On the way back from a journey between Paris and Orléans; all this summer and autumn I’ve been unable to recover. I am prey to haemorrhaging. I am in pain. At night, my eyes stay wide open and I sweat with fever. I feel the end is near.’

‘It is.’

The dark surgery in the town of Toulouse smelt stuffy; only a single candle burnt as the man of science gazed at the contents of the phial. Through the fine glass, the candle flame projected upon every wall the fluttering glow of the Gascon’s urine as the physician analysed it.

‘Potent vapours from the spleen and the melancholy humour, most visibly marked by the sorrow they display. These vapours move through the arteries to the heart and lungs, where they cause palpitations, disquiet and considerable fits of breathlessness. From there they rise to the brain and converse, agitating the spirit.’

‘Which means?’

‘You are done for.’

Through the thick curtain masking the window came the street sounds of Toulouse, the voices of a carnival hullabaloo crying, ‘Death to all cuckolds!’