Before Versailles (3 page)

T
HE HALF-WILD
, lanky boy in his iron mask was all she could think about on the ride back to the château where she was visiting. She couldn’t wait to find her cousin, Choisy, to tell him what she’d seen. Leaving the groom in the château’s stable, she walked through ornate halls and antechambers looking for her cousin, but he was not to be found. His mother was busy with guests in the grand salon.

“Women’s virtue is man’s greatest invention,” she heard Madame de Choisy say to a burst of laughter. Madame de Choisy was one of those women who knew everyone and thrived on the whispers and webs of intrigue that were court life. The only way she had consented to leave Paris was to make certain a steady stream of visitors would journey out into the forest—in the middle of nowhere, she’d lamented, but my suppers will be worth it—to visit her. The Choisys were an important family in France, swirling around the throne like bees, and Louise felt fortunate that Madame de Choisy had taken such a liking to her. She peeped into the salon and saw guests gathered around their hostess, as always, enthralled and amused by whatever it was that she was saying—and she was always saying.

She had an opinion about everything and everyone, her family having been near kings and queens for generations. But she was so good-natured and so genuinely amused by life and its variables that no one minded. Certainly not Louise. There was a kind vibrancy about her that Louise found irresistible. Madame de Choisy’s humor and laughing eyes were like balm, especially when contrasted to Louise’s mother’s tight, thin smile and tight, thin heart. Your mother’s a merchant. As she had said those words, Madame de Choisy had held up a hand to stop any argument that might come from Louise. I hate to say it, she had continued, but it’s true. Blue blood does not guarantee a noble heart. For her, all is transaction. Truth had shown its face then in such a blinding flash-of-light kind of way that Louise hadn’t been able to respond. She was wordless at this older woman’s succinct summation of her mother’s character. So that’s what it’s been, she’d thought to herself, transactions between us all this time. Of course.

In her bedchamber, Louise sat down on the stool in front of her dressing table, thinking about the boy. There were worse sights in Paris on any given day, weren’t there? So she’d seen a mad, nearly grown boy escaped from his captors. It didn’t have to affect her the way it had, as if someone had hit her on the heart. You’re too touchy by far, my girl, she could just hear her mother say. Don’t take your softness to court, her mother had warned. It won’t do there. I certainly hope you are on your knees thanking the saints every night that you attracted Madame de Choisy’s eye. She has launched you, my girl, in a way I could never have done.

It was true. At the end of this month, she would join the new Madame’s household as a maid of honor, something so amazing she couldn’t quite yet imagine it.

This new Madame—well, the fact was she wasn’t Madame yet because she wasn’t officially married—but anyway, she was a princess and would soon be the second most important woman in the kingdom because she was marrying the only brother of the king. Everyone was talking about it. That’s what they’d been speaking of in the salon when Louise glanced in. Talking about how happy Monsieur—which is what the king’s brother had to be called and thus his wife must be called Madame—was, saying how much in love he seemed.

It was as if some delightful spell has been cast over the court, said Madame de Choisy. Never has there been so much fun. An enchanting world is just ahead on the horizon, beckoning, smiling, promising things unnamed, things delightful and beguiling. And you, my Louise, shall be right in the middle of it, she’d said. Everyone must see your charming eyes, and Madame de Choisy had taken Louise’s chin in one hand. Rings all over her fingers—she always wore all her rings; one must exhibit one’s jewelry, she said; our jewels are our medals of valor; the tales I could tell—she had smiled at Louise, as excited as if she herself were going to court for the first time.

I should call my servant, thought Louise, the small mirror propped on the table before her showing her the tangle her hair was in, but she didn’t want the company of another just now. So even though a lady wasn’t supposed to do her own hair, so said Madame de Choisy, scandalized at Louise’s self-reliant—and truth be told, rather shabby—upbringing, she began to search for any pins that might be left among her curls, concentrating as she did so on counting her blessings, as she’d been taught when troubled, so that the echo of the boy’s yowls would still inside her.

Blessing one: She might have been stuck forever serving the whining Orléans princesses if not for dear Cousin Choisy. No more ennui. No more complaint. No more endless prayers and pulled-down faces and long days of nothing to do.

Blessing two: She was going to meet Monsieur, the younger brother of the king, great fun, promised Cousin Choisy, there is no one like him. A prince, a worthy child of France.

Blessing three: Cousin Choisy was fairly certain that the new Madame-to-be was nice. What would that be like? Kindness had not been a feature of the bitter household she’d left. Then there again in her mind was a thought of the boy. It wasn’t kind to put a boy in an iron mask. Why would anyone do so?

She brushed out her hair until it was vibrant with life and springing like a blonde mane all around her head. He had howled like a wolf, like a ghost, like a banshee, sorrow and fear in the sound. She had had the sense that he was near her age. As she began to tame curls around her fingers, to bunch them so they would hang properly, she mulled over what she’d seen. Gangly. Perhaps in that awkward spurt of growth that came to boys somewhere around ten and four—

“Let me do that.”

She leapt off the stool.

Her cousin, Choisy, closed the bedchamber door behind him.

She frowned. “You startled me.”

He motioned for her to sit back down, selected a comb to his liking, and began to create the required long bunched ringlets for the other side of her face. “Your hair is so biddable. Mine always requires a curling iron,” he complained.

It was the style for men to wear their hair long and flowing, but her cousin had his own style, to say the least. The truth was, it was his habit to dress as a woman. Right now, for example, he wore his mother’s dressing gown and diamond earrings and rouge and beauty spots, those little bits of shaped velvet one pasted to the face. During Carnival—when everyone masked and wore costumes and went to party after party as a matter of course—Louise had watched him flirt with other men, none of them aware that the pretty young thing dressed in a low-cut gown and batting eyes behind a fan was a man. It’s a game, he had told her, my particular game. A game his brother despised, which was why they were in the country for a while. There had been an escapade in Paris, something that had enraged his older brother, now head of the family, and his mother, who cosseted Choisy, had whisked him out of sight and reprimand and had brought Louise along to keep him company. Besides, she’d said, I need to train you for court, my dear.

“You were gone a long time,” he said, pouting at her. He was as pretty as she was. They’d compared faces in the mirror and agreed on that.

“I fell from my horse.” And then the story spilled from her pell-mell, the wild gallop, the jump over the tree, the boy in the mask, its terrible simplicity hiding his face, his heartrending howls, the fall, her opening her eyes to see a musketeer, his strange command. A tear rolled down one of her cheeks as she finished.

Intrigued, Choisy pulled a chair forward, sat down so that they were knee to knee. “Describe the thing on his face again.”

She did so.

“Like a disguise,” Choisy said, “a mask made by demons. An iron mask. I love it, the boy in the iron mask. Are you sure he was a boy? Might he not have been a small man, like me? Look how slight I am. The man in the iron mask. Yes. That sounds better. More dashing. And the musketeer was wearing the cardinal’s colors, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, my sweet, you really had best keep silent. It’s a wonderful story, but I’d hate to see something happen to you just when you’re on the threshold of your grand new life because you’ve been foolish enough to repeat it.”

“What could happen?”

“You could disappear like that!” Choisy snapped his fingers. “Do you know what a
lettre de cachet
is?”

She didn’t know. “A love letter?”

“It is a letter signed by the king that places a person in prison with no record of the arrest. A carriage appears outside your door. Musketeers drag you off, and it’s over. You’re never heard from again. Trust me, the cardinal has used it more than once.”

Choisy would know things like this, thought Louise. His family had been up to its neck in all the intrigue and warfare between the king’s mother and uncle. Not pretty on anybody’s part, as Choisy liked to say, dismissing disloyalty with a shrug.

“And if you do disappear, don’t you dare tell them you said a thing to me, or they’ll take me away, too, and I’d die in prison like a flower plucked before its time.”

He stood up and pantomimed being dragged off by guards, standing in his lonely cell, weeping silently, then he folded forward. “I was meant for the stage. Unfortunate that actors are cursed by the church.” Still folded, he spoke to his knees, his long, dark hair sweeping the stone floor.

“I asked the fairies to bless him.”

He straightened. “Who?”

“The boy in the iron mask.”

“A word to the wise, country mouse. I wouldn’t mention forest fairies when you join the new Madame’s household.”

Louise wished she hadn’t mentioned them to him. “Because they’ll laugh at me?”

“Far worse. They’ll scorn you.”

“Do you scorn me?”

“My darling cousin, I adore you.” He stood in front of her, put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed the top of her head.

Louise felt confused. There was nothing feminine in the grip of his hands on her shoulders. Usually, he was soft and purring, but she didn’t have that impression now.

“Your hair smells sweet,” said Choisy, “as if it has been washed in clear spring water. You’re so pure, so sweet and clean-hearted. I’m half in love with you—”

The door swung open.

“There you two are.” Madame de Choisy walked in and didn’t bat an eye at the sight of her son standing a little too close to Louise, still in his nightgown with her own embroidered and heavily laced dressing robe atop it, as well as her best earrings in his ears.

“Cardinal Mazarin is dead,” she announced. “The Duchess d’Orléans has sent a letter by special messenger. We return to Paris tomorrow. You, my precious, are riding out this afternoon so that you can present our regards to the viscount tonight. Yes, I know your brother will do it, but he’ll wait until everyone in Paris has been there before him, and he’ll say the wrong thing.” She rolled her eyes at Louise, as if everyone knew what a fool the head of the family was. “I should never have left Paris, but I truly thought the cardinal would last longer. You are to present our regards with all the grace and polish imaginable. It is to be your finest performance. Change your clothes, my boy. At once.”

She clapped her hands together, the way one would summon dogs or servants, and obediently, her favorite child left the bedchamber. She turned to Louise.

“We thought he’d live forever,” she said. “Such changes ahead. And here you are about to join the new Madame’s court where you’ll be in the midst of everything. If I were your age, I would be half dead with excitement.” She spoke affectionately.

“Will Monsieur’s marriage be delayed because of the cardinal’s death?” The thought of returning to serve in the household of the Orléans family again was too awful. She couldn’t go back to being a piece of furniture, taken for granted and ignored, after the fun and liveliness and kindness of the Choisys.

“I very much doubt it. Monsieur’s marriage is important for many reasons.” Madame de Choisy reached out to caress Louise’s cheek. “So,” she said, “it’s true.”

“What is?”

“That your cheek has the texture of a rose petal, or so my Choisy says. Has my son told you he loves you yet?”

The question was casual, no heat or accusation in it, but almost cheerful.

“N-no.” Unused to such directness, not wanting to make trouble for Choisy, yet not liking to lie, Louise stammered.

“You really must learn to lie more gracefully, my sweet. He is always falling in and out of love, so don’t take what he says to heart.” Madame de Choisy spoke as if they were discussing the weather or the merits of a horse rather than her adored and spoiled child. “And, of course, you must wait until you’ve been to court before you settle on anyone. And when you do, as all girls must, find someone with more fortune than my Choisy. He is the youngest son, you know.”

Louise could think of nothing to say to this worldly, kind, amusing woman. No one older had talked to her in this manner before with such unarmed frankness, laughter in its corners.

“What lovely eyes you have, child! A man could fall into them. Those naughty boys at court will do so, bad things that they are. What fun. I do so like bad boys. Now come here and give me a hug so I know I’m forgiven for my lecturing. It’s the cardinal’s death that’s made me so dreary. We all knew it would come, and yet, now that it’s here, it is unimaginable.”

Absently, she stroked the curve of Louise’s arm, not bothering to tell her what the kingdom owed the man now gone. The young never cared about the past, did they? she thought, looking past Louise to a window, not to its view, but to all that had been. The young saw only this moment, she thought. The cardinal’s presence had been controversial, war fought more than once because of it, but he’d kept the kingdom cobbled together for France’s young king. And now he was vanquished. All his diamonds, all his tapestries, all his statues from Rome, his palaces and musketeers and affectations, couldn’t keep the dark angel away. So it was now and forever, amen. How grieved the royal family must be.