The Sisters of Versailles (51 page)

Marie-Anne rolls over and spills some of her brandy. “Oops.”

The last candle snuffles itself out in a pool of wax. The abbey is frugal with their light; once it is dark, it is time to sleep. After the sun is gone the only thing that moves are the dogs in the streets and all is silent until the bells toll for matins.

“When do you think we should leave?” I ask. Part of me wishes to go back; I am beginning to press against my clothes and it would be nice to be at Lauraguais’s Paris house in August. Take a cool bath every day in that marble room and order everything I
crave from the kitchen. Apricot jam, lots of it. A whole pie filled with it.

No one answers.

“Summer is the worst time to be pregnant,” I announce to the darkness. From the hot blackness Aglaë murmurs in agreement; she has six living children. To be so hot, and so uncomfortable. Pauline generally complained about everything, but now I understand her better. I hope I don’t die in childbirth, as she did.

“I don’t know when we should leave.” Marie-Anne’s voice is far away and I wonder what she is thinking.

“But it’s not like you not to know,” says Elisabeth in surprise. She’s lying beside Marie-Anne and I thought she was asleep.

“I don’t know everything. I’m not a witch. Despite what those men at the inn said.”

“You must wait until you’re older to be a witch,” I say. “When you’re an old crone, you can be a witch. Witches aren’t young and pretty.”

Louise

PARIS

August 1744

A
ll night long
the bells rang, and in the morning I rise early and send Jacobs out for the news. She came back with an ashen face, and even before she falls to her knees to weep out the truth, I know. Louis. Our king.

The news came to Paris last night: the king lies sick in Metz. He was ill three days when the horses left for Paris and we do not know how his health fares on this day. We can only hope and pray that he still lives. All around the city, bells toll and the news is read to the masses from the church steps. People cry in the street and the pews are packed: the whole city is praying for their king. On the streets they call Marie-Anne an incestuous bitch, the cause of France’s woes. When I hear those harsh words I don’t even cover my ears or turn away. She deserves that name. Bitch.

The Comtesse de Toulouse heard from Noailles that Marie-Anne and Richelieu have barricaded themselves around the king and allow none but the doctors in, not even the generals, the princes of the blood, or the bishops. When I hear that I wail. How can Marie-Anne nurse him? She has not a bone of kindness in her body. I would have been a good nurse. Oh, how I wish I were an angel that I could fly from this room to be by his side!

Hortense arrives from Versailles with more dreadful news: the king’s confessors are urging him to take his final sacraments. I fall in a faint and Hortense calls my women to help me to my
chair. There is shouting in the street as news of the latest tragedy spreads. The king sick unto death! For all we know, he may be dead already. The thought is unbearable.

“The queen plans to travel to Metz,” Hortense says softly as my maid wipes my brow. “She must be there, if . . .” She does not finish her sentence but we both know what she means. “She thinks to leave tomorrow if there is no further news.”

“And Marie-Anne?” I ask.

“She persistently refuses to leave.”

Louis must renounce her before he takes the final sacrament; if he does not he will die in a state of sin.

“Please, please, reason with her, and make her leave! She must do it for his sake. She cannot imperil his soul!” I rail awhile and feel better for the release my anger gives me.

“This is her retribution,” says Hortense. “For her sins. Do not fear; she will be banished. I pray she is not there when we arrive, but if she is, you can be sure I will do all in my power to reason with her and get her to leave. Not that she ever listens to me.”

“She never listens to anyone.” I hate Marie-Anne with a fierceness I am surprised to still possess; I thought I had long forgiven and purged my ill will for her. That the king might be denied Heaven because of her! It is unbearable.

Hortense holds my hands tightly. “I will write to you from Metz,” she promises. “I have asked Mesnil to come daily for comfort. He is a good friend.”

“
You
are a good friend.” We hug fiercely, then Hortense leaves and I am left alone with my grief and my anger. I wish Marie-Anne would die. A shocking thought and a shocking hope. Bitch. Whore. I say the words out loud and they echo off the plain white walls. There is a line, a finite end to the goodness inside us, no matter how we may aspire to virtue. I have been good enough.

This is the end for her. If the king is as sick as they say he is, she must be banished before he can receive the sacraments. Then he will recover, for he
must
recover, but he cannot go back on a
deathbed promise. He will be reformed and live the rest of his days in harmony with the queen.

But first, he must get better. I spend the day and the night on my knees in the crowded church and allow some small, vicious thoughts to creep through the piety of my prayers. Where shall Marie-Anne be sent? It should be far, very far. And very austere. Perhaps one of the orders that observes silence? It should be cold in winter and hot in summer and surrounded by a dark forest, thick with wolves. Yes, a cold, far convent, where even the nuns will hate her.

Marie-Anne

METZ

August 1744

L
ouis was
fine. He passed the afternoon inspecting the fortifications on the outskirts of town. Then a pleasant evening; the talk was of recent victories and the fireworks the governor promised. Later we made love and I noticed nothing amiss: it was but a night as any other. After we lay together, Louis traced his fingers along my belly and asked me when I was going to give him a child. “I’d like a little daughter,” he mused. “With her mother’s mouth. We’ll call her Rose.”

“Don’t you have daughters enough already?” I say tartly. I have decided I only want sons, two at most. His face clouds and I know I have erred. Louis loves his daughters greatly; his devotion to them borders on the bourgeois.

“I jest,” I say quickly. “One can never have daughters enough. I would like four at least, delightful girls with their father’s character and their mother’s face. We shall call the first two Rose and Anne.”

Louis smiles, my blunder forgiven. He wants to be happy and it is not difficult to prod him back to cheer. I have noticed a change in him since he is here at Metz; he is more confident and less reserved. Amongst the generals and the men he is easy and relaxed, and some of his shyness, that once built such tall walls around him, is gradually disappearing.

That night before he slept he asked for water and I poured him a glass from the pitcher by the bed. He drank thirstily and I was going to call for more but he shook his head and fell back on
the bed. He went to sleep quickly, then fell even quicker into sickness.

In the morning when he woke it was obvious he was very ill. His fever was high and his eyes already glassy. I felt a terror like I have rarely known, that things could turn so quickly. A stag alive one minute and pierced the next, but without the premonition of the chase. His ashen face and already wandering eyes told us this was no quick and easy fever, raging for a day then disappearing. This was serious.

Richelieu barricades the bedchamber and allows only us ladies and a few doctors in. The generals and the ministers, the pompous dukes and princes grumble against us but we hold the doors fast. I tell them it is a brief fever, and that the king needs peace and quiet, not a crowd with stale odors and incessant chatter. Most of all I don’t want their carping looks and quick calculations, the glee they would not try to hide as they size up the gravity of the situation. Maurepas is among them, having oozed his way to Metz over the summer.

Diane takes up duty on her knees by the bed, praying for hours. I am grateful to her. I feel a strong urge to pray myself but I want to give more practical help. I pester the doctors and hover while they administer their endless bleedings. Louis does not improve but continues to burn, and though we drench him with water and fan his body, he is as hot as the evening embers. I hold on to his hand, pressing, squeezing, exhorting him to listen to me and to become strong again. I forbid him to leave me. If he leaves, my world is over. I need him. And so it passes for six days and then I remember the folklore from Burgundy: five days in a fever. Beyond that, no cure.

Louis’s mind wanders and his eyes run with a curious yellow liquid. The doctors bleed, then bleed again, as if the little leeches can slay this demon of a fever. They consult and confabulate and then bleed again. I call them the leech masters, and the chief doctor, Peyronie, snarls at me, as he would never have dared snarl
before. Another doctor, a thin, swarthy man reputed to be from Turkey, pleads to be allowed to administer an emetic, but the others ignore him and order more jars of leeches. I keep Louis well sated with water and diluted wine, but the truth is that he has eaten nothing—nothing—for six days. His skin is stretched and he looks like an old man. A dying old man.

I succumb to terror and fall to my knees and implore and beseech God. “If not for me, then for France. Louis is too young to die. We cannot be parted.” For one awful moment my imagination leads me to the scene of Louise being banished from Versailles. In a snap I know her pain as it hurtles toward me and knocks me off my knees. I am being punished, and I deserve it.

On the seventh day the generals, princes, and religious men force their way in, encouraged by the doctors who have turned against me. They shout at me to leave the room and to leave the king in peace, but I ignore their bluster and hold my ground. No one knows what to do; to foretell the death of a king is treason, yet the king may be dying. Only Maurepas, my sworn enemy, hisses that I shall be banished, once the king comes to his mind and takes the final sacrament.

“It’s the end, girl, do you understand that?”

“You are a fool gambler, Maurepas.” I muster as much odium as I can. “And you are gambling on the king’s death. I say it
will not
come to that, so think what will happen to you, talking thus to me.”

Maurepas sneers and waves a hand toward the bed. “He’s dying and you know it as well as the rest. The time for his final confession is coming. And when it comes, girl, then you go.”

The king’s confessor, Perusseau, is that most unusual of creatures: a sympathetic and kindly priest. I demand of him if it is true that the Bishop of Soissons, who circles me like a vulture over carrion, will force me to leave.

“I do not know, madame,” he says softly, looking everywhere but in my eyes. But I want to know. I want to know the worst, so I can be prepared. To fail to plan is to plan to fail. I must not fail.

“Tell me!”

“I cannot, madame, I cannot, for I do not know. The king . . .”
Perusseau stands helplessly before me. Diane rubs my shoulders and my back and suddenly I whirl around as though demons are forcing me to turn.

“Well?” I shout, not caring who can hear or not. They all know what we are talking about. “Tell me, just tell me, or damn you!” I swear, not caring that I am in the abbey and surrounded by monks, brown-suited ghouls with centuries of censure clinging to their skirts. No one answers, for what if the king does not die? They know I will remember clearly everyone who said I should go, and everyone who wanted me to stay.