The Rivals of Versailles: A Novel (The Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy) (26 page)

A Letter

From the Desk of the Duchesse de Pompadour

Château de Versailles

February 15, 1753

My dearest Daughter,

Fanfan, how delighted I was to receive your letter! Your handwriting has certainly improved; I must commend Sister Anne. And how exciting your last tooth has fallen out. Yes, it is true the convent is a house of God, but Mother Superior has assured me that an exception is made for the little pagan Tooth Mouse, and that you may soon expect a coin under your pillow.

Your Uncle Abel will visit Sunday, and bring with him some pears and a blanket for your lamb, as you requested. How wonderful it is that Agnes has lasted so long! I am sure she must be quite falling apart by now, so you must thank Sister Anne for keeping the thing clean and in one piece.

Darling, your mother is buying a house in Paris, only a short ride from your convent, and I will be able to visit more often. I will prepare a room for you and you must tell me what colors you would like. I suggest pink and green.

Though of course you won’t be married for several years—seven is far too young—it is never too soon to start thinking of your little husband! When you visit next month, I will bring you to the Hermitage, another of Mama’s houses, near Fontainebleau, and most delightful: a country house, really, with animals (including sheep and lambs!), but all properly washed and scrubbed. I’ve invited a little boy I want you to meet—he is the son of the Comtesse de Vintimille, once a great friend of our king. She is dead but I do hope you will find her son charming.

All my love,

Mama

Chapter Forty-Five

“
H
e is coming!”

I am lying on my bed, daydreaming. Idleness is a splendid thing; my sister Marguerite, whom my mother calls a lazy toad, says there is nothing finer than doing nothing. My bed is as soft as snow, the sheets just as white. I am adept at telling quality, and I know these sheets are certainly the best; they probably cost more than one hundred
livres
. If I could write, I would send a letter to Brigitte and to my mother, and tell them of the wonders of this house. But even if I could write, they do not read and Mama doesn’t approve of spending money on trifles like letter readers.

“Who’s coming?”

“The count!” says Madame Bertrand, bursting into the room. “We must get you ready.” She looks around wildly, as though the answer to her distress is to be found on the walls, or out through the windows.

“When is he coming?” I say, starting to untie my robe. “Shall I wear that new blue dress?”

“Yes, but first we need to wash you, and make sure everything is ready and— oh! Refreshments!”

I have yet to see Madame Bertrand in such a fluster; usually she sleeps in the afternoons, but in the evenings can be quite talkative and her little black eyes—like points of ink—glow feverishly. Now she looks as though she has just been woken from a deep sleep.

“He must be very important for you to be in such a state, Madame,” I say politely, but the woman only blinks at me and drags me down to the kitchen, where they are preparing a bath. As I
am being bathed by Rose, the kitchen girl with the angry scar on her face, I assure Madame that I am not nervous and that she should not be either; I have had the opportunity, I explain to her, to entertain some very grand men, several dukes and once even the brother of the King of Sweden (well, that was my sister, but perhaps my lie will comfort), and that I have never disappointed.

“No, no, I do not want to imply he will find you wanting. Of course not! You are charming, charming. It’s just—well, everything must be perfect. Now dry yourself and let’s rub you down with that oil they sent over—now where is it? Rose! Where is the oil?”

“I don’t know where you put it, Ma’am.”

“Find me the oil!” roars Madame Bertrand, collapsing at the kitchen table and reaching to drink from a large earthenware jug.

When I am dried, oiled (a lovely flower smell), and dressed and my hair has been pinned up, I am told to sit in the parlor, though Madame Bertrand is not sure whether I should be there or up in my bedroom. By this point Madame Bertrand is shaking visibly, as well as drinking visibly from the large jug.

“Her favorite apple gin,” whispers the kitchen girl Rose, and I grin and recognize the smell, which I could not place before, seeming so out of place in this prim and plush little house.

A man arrives and I recognize him from the painter’s atelier.

“Monsieur Le Bel!” I say in my delighted voice. “A pleasure to see you again!” Oh—perhaps the count is really the Duc de Richelieu in disguise? I remember his greasy grunts, the smooth feel of his pate under his wig, the fine pair of gloves he sent as I requested.

“Ah, of course, little one, of course you remember me. You look ravishing, my dear, ravishing. I did not doubt the blue would look good on you and no petticoats”—he lifts my skirt up with his cane—“excellent, excellent. Now, this is looking very fine, to your credit, Madame,” he says, looking around the parlor, his eyes resting briefly on the jug Madame Bertrand is still clutching. “But I do believe the count would prefer the visit to start in the intimacy of the bedroom. There is a fire and chairs there as well?”

“Oh yes, sir, oh yes, sir,” says Madame Bertrand, bobbing frantically. “Rose! Rose! The fire in her bedroom! Everything upstairs!”

The count arrives at dusk as the town is falling silent after the bustle of the day. Madame Bertrand looks fit to faint and actually falls down as she shows the count into my bedroom, where a fire blazes and a fine cinnamon cake sits proudly on a plate. Cook says she is the finest baker in three towns, and that the count will never have tasted such heaven.

The count is older than I was expecting, but he is still a handsome man with a kind face and the soft jaw of a man in the prime of his life. He has a mass of dark brown hair, pulled back in a lace-wrapped bag, and is wearing a magnificent turquoise coat, threaded with gold and silver. I feel a rush of excitement, for I know the signs of deep wealth. That coat could have cost five thousand
livres,
I calculate. Perhaps the count is richer than even the Marquis de Lamonte, a great friend of my sister’s!

“Madame is a little happy on the drink, I take it,” he says easily after Madame Bertrand has picked herself up and stumbled down the stairs. He comes across the room to kiss me.

“Mother Mary!” he exclaims, lifting a candle and holding me at arms’ length, his face greedy with excitement. “You are simply ravishing. So small, and petite, and what a perfect, perfect face!”

I smile up at him, then go to bury myself in his arms, affecting shyness.

“Oh, a kitten, a charming kitten!” I take the candle from his hand, blow it out slowly, then press myself against him. Suddenly he is pawing and pushing up my skirts with fevered intent, as hurried as a well-whipped horse.

Only when it is over does he ask me my name. “They never told me,” he says in wonderment. “Or perhaps they did and I forgot.” His voice is deep, rich and treacled. I climb out of my dress, shaking my long hair loose from its pins and draping it over my naked body. I serve him some champagne, and a small slice of the cake, and come back to the bed.

“It’s Louise, if it pleases you, sir,” I say with a curtsy.

“Ah, unfortunate name. No, that does not please me.” The man frowns.

I laugh and straddle him. “Why is that?” I take a strand of his hair, free of grease or powder, and twirl it around my finger.

“Ah—some memories there.”

“What would you like to call me?” I ask, leaning down to kiss one of his nipples. I tug at it gently and his eyes widen. “By God, you may be a kitten, but you are a sexy one at that!”

“My nickname is Morphise. That means
beautiful
in Latin.” I take his other nipple in my mouth.

“You might mean Greek, but that is true. Ahhh. Now I remember—you are Irish, with an outlandish Irish name.”

“Yes, sir. O’Murphy.”

“Tell me of Ireland,” he says in a deep, contented voice and pulls me back close to him under the luxurious covers. I snuggle by his side and tell him of the green hills, the smell of peat, the sheep and the whiskey. Though I have never been there I bring him along with me on a journey remembered from my father’s tales. As I talk my words take him far, far away from his important life as a count, a life that is already beginning to etch fine lines on his forehead and around his mouth.

Chapter Forty-Six

“
I
think,” says Thérèse, her voice rising to a conspiratorial whisper, “I think our count might be friends with the
king
.” Thérèse has been brushing my hair for an hour now, dipping her comb in what she claims is argan oil, but I think it is just cooking grease from the kitchens. Thérèse’s aunt is a hairdresser, and the first thing she did, upon her arrival at the house, was to show me her hair and then compare it to mine. Thérèse is very pretty but she has bad teeth; they have been painted but to an odd effect. Everything else about her is rather perfect, from her sharp, elegant features to her wide mouth and beautiful skin and her flowing cloud masses of light hair. I run my own tongue over my teeth, which are perfect and natural.

“Why do you think he is friends with the king?” I ask. Thérèse appeared last month and though the count often visits her, I note in satisfaction that my visits outnumber hers, and that hers are often only when I am indisposed.

Madame Bertrand supplied us with tapestry boards, which she wants us to work on when we are not otherwise occupied. “Imagine,” she said, “how you could surprise him with a gift—a nice bag for his hair, with an embroidered bow, or a handkerchief—think how he would be delighted to receive that.”

“I think he’d rather receive something else from us,” Thérèse said impishly, pushing her hips forward.

Madame Bertrand’s face hardened. “Little mattress thrashers,” she said in disgust, “your care may be in my hands, but I would have you know I am not by nature a brothel keeper. I am the widow of a former clerk in the War Office.”

“And so would that make you, Madame,” asked Thérèse in
her innocent little voice, which I envy and try to copy, “a camp follower?”

Now the tapestry frames sit unused in the corner of my room like two reproaches. Madame Bertrand says she is responsible for our education (“But what would
you
teach
us
?” inquires Thérèse in her silky voice, innocent yet insolent), but when I broach learning my letters, Madame Bertrand directs me again to my tapestry board: “Stitches are a woman’s writing,” she says smugly, and I suspect she can’t read or write herself.

“Why do you say he is friends with the king?” I ask Thérèse again, returning to the subject of the count and wincing as she works on an impossibly small braid behind my ear.

“Well, he’s ever so important—you see the way Madame Bertrand curtsies to him, and how her hands shake so—well, perhaps that is the gin, but they shake even more when he comes. That man Le Bel often bows to him, and everyone knows Le Bel is very powerful and intimate with the king. They are both very deferential to our count.
Deferential
means respectful.”

“I know what deferential means,” I say. “The count has not been here for almost two weeks, and Rose from the kitchens told me the king and all his daughters have gone to Choisy for a week. Oh! Perhaps that explains why he has not come; he had to accompany the king.”

“You see,” says Thérèse triumphantly. “I told you he was important.” She jabs a pin into my hair and twists. I’m not sure I like Thérèse, with her rather sly and bossy air. She has taken to marching around and giving orders, even though the count certainly prefers me.

“I’m not even sure he’s Polish,” I say as she coils a braid onto my head and pins it up. The oil smells like lamb; I’m sure it’s from the kitchen. “His French is rather perfect.”

“Well, anyone’s French would seem perfect to you,” Thérèse snaps back, a jab at my Rouen accent. Thérèse says I must listen to her, because she is Paris born and bred, and older.

“Not at all,” I cut back. “I have been exposed to some very
high-ranking people and have a good ear for language.” Thérèse was nothing before she came here, just a two-bit public girl from the Rue de Lappe whose aunt took little financial persuasion to part with her. Rose the kitchen girl told me; she is adept at listening and talking to Madame Bertrand when she has drunk too much and becomes voluble and loose. But on the subject of the count, she is closemouthed; I have to agree with Thérèse that there is more to his story than we know.

“Well perhaps, and his French is rather perfect. My
tante
had a client who was Russian—very close to Poland, you know—she had very thin hair, and her accent was difficult to understand. There! Feel that.”

I run a hand over the heavy braids, piled on my head, sopping with oil.

“Are you sure all the oil is necessary?”

“Of course,” Thérèse says smoothly. “My aunt had a high class of clientele and swore by this oil. I am certain he is not Polish. I actually think he’s French, on account of his energy.” She jams a cork into the jar of oil and wipes her hands on the sheets. “Don’t move your head so, or the oil will drip off. It needs time to soak in. Only Frenchmen are ready to go again within the hour. I have heard it takes British men all day to rest, and everyone knows Polish men can only do it once a week. Still, his fucking is rather quantity over quality.”

“Of course,” I say, but I am confused by her words, for I am not sure how one would judge the quality of sex—it is not a pair of shoes or a coat that can be easily valued.

The count comes silently, on foot or in a chair, no clatter of hooves to signal his arrival. He often arrives accompanied by Le Bel or another I do not recognize, and the other men stay in the downstairs parlor while he comes up to the bedchambers.

Thérèse is newly pregnant and has been sent to the country—to the house of a cousin, says Madame Bertrand. I am happy she is gone, of course, but I wonder what will happen to her child—will
the count provide? And will she come back here after the birth?

A new girl replaced her last week, but already I sense the count is tired of her: Claire has a boldness and a sarcasm I do not think he cares for. She has glorious curly brown hair, which I know Thérèse would have fallen in love with, and an angelic beauty, just like the nymphs on the wall panels. Even though she is perhaps my age, already the street has hardened her mouth and her eyes. Mama always said that we must take care to put our hardness away, and never let it slip out. A man is hard, and a woman is soft, she would always say, in her hard voice, when one of my sisters snorted or grimaced or told a story in too shocking a language.

“This,” I say to the count, “is a very fine, very particular shoe.” I hold up the red-heeled little mule, soft kid leather covered with three rows of yellow satin ruffles.

“Indeed it is,” he says slowly, and takes a sip of wine, watching me. He has been here all afternoon—only twice, but I’ll tell Claire it was three times—and now he is lingering in the coziness of the bed; I sense he has a lot of work back at the palace and is loath to return there. Sometimes his valet will knock on the door, and whisper to Monsieur le Comte that procedure will not wait, and then he will sigh and stand up with the weariness of a grandfather, kiss me, and whisper to me that I am the only thing that keeps him alive and young. But today there is no summons and he is peaceful and torpid on the bed.

“I’ll wager this pair cost you more than four hundred
livres
.”

“Perhaps you are right, my dear.”

“Or even six hundred. You see this, here”—I turn over the shoe and show him the red silk inside
—
“this is the finest craftsmanship. You see how fine the stitches are? And the lining is pure silk, a mark of true quality.”

“I never realized a shoe would take such skill.”

“Oh yes.” I nod seriously. “Making shoes is a very skilled profession, and much care goes into the making of a pair.” When my father wasn’t in prison or running away from the law, he was a
shoemaker, and I remember vaguely from when we were young and still living in Rouen, the smell of burnished leather in his shop, the piles of soft skins and the bucket of wooden heels.

“So how long did that one take to make, do you think?” the count asks with interest.

“Mmm . . .” I consider, turning it over in my hands. My father never made such fine shoes; his clients were not amongst the wealthy or the nobility. I hazard a guess. “About four months.”

The count whistles, as I have taught him. “Four months! Fancy that. And just for a pair of shoes. Now, child, put them on.”

I slip them on; the soft lining greets my toes like a friend being welcomed home. I parade about, naked, with only the red-and-yellow shoes on my feet. The count follows my progress with lazy, appreciative eyes.

“Are those the finest shoes you have ever worn, little one?”

“No,” I say truthfully. “Once the Duc de Lau—oh, I shouldn’t say his name, let me just say a very nice Monsieur presented me a pair edged with pearls, real ones, sewn all around the toe puff. They were most fine, but Mama unpicked the pearls to sell, and then they were rather ordinary.”

I sit down on the chair by the fire and lift my legs, wiggling the shoes at him, allowing him a peek between my legs. One of the shoes falls off and then I kick the other one over to him on the bed. He chuckles and picks it up, turns it over in his hands, takes an appreciative sniff, and lobs it gently back. “Put them on again, and come and stand here.”

I do as bidden and stand in front of the bed, awaiting my next instructions.

“And what would you have to match those wonderful shoes, child?” He reaches out and traces my stomach, sticks a probing finger in my belly button.

“I should like a dress, of course, made of silk and . . . and lace. With velvet trim. It should be yellow, to match the ruffles on the shoes, and with sleeves in the pagoda style.”

“In the pagoda style? What does that mean?”

“Cropped and cut, here and here.”

He laughs. “I’ll let my valet know, and he will take care of it.”

A few days later the yellow dress arrives and I parade about the house in my finery, and ask Claire over and over what she thinks of my splendid new gown.