BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis (7 page)

A double line of coaches, all loaded with guests, turned the broad rue de Richelieu leading to the Palais Royal into a river of light. Outside the home of the regent of France, the roof was covered with candles and the marble fountains flowed with wine.

The masked ball was by invitat
ion only, yet, if the usual number were issued, a woman could depend on her dress being torn by the crush. At the last ball, several people had actually died of heat or cold or fatigue or asphyxiation—or at least so went the gossip of Paris.

Arm in arm, Philippe and Natalie entered the main ballroom. Outside it might be winter, but inside spring had blossomed. The walls of pink marble and trellis work were filled with vine leaves, bunches of grapes, and flowers. Real palm trees, trunks garlanded with roses, flanked buffets draped with pink velvet fringed in gold. Everywhere one looked there were pictures and statues of the royal family.

Upon their entrance, those closest to the couple turned to stare. The new arrivals might be wearing demimasks, but they were immediately recognized as the Golden Couple. Only a dolt would not have heard of the enviable pair.

Both were blessed with that white-gold
shade of hair that powder could never duplicate. Philippe accepted his beautifully chiseled features and ivory skin with complacency. He had long been Paris’s—no, France’s—most eligible bachelor until his marriage. That night Natalie thought he was particularly handsome in a coat of pale blue satin damasked within the bounds of good taste. Behind the matching demimask, his brown eyes caressed her with warm passion.

She counted herself more than merely fortunate to have married him. He was literally her paladin. Originally one of the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne’s court, a paladin had come to represent a heroic champion, a knight—and Philippe had been her knight since the afternoon he had ridden up to the Poissy Convent with his entourage of aristocratic ladies and their partners, noblemen of the court.

She had been gathering apples that had dropped from the branches outside the convent walls with Sister Beatrice. It had been impossible not to stare at the handsome Philippe, nor to be unaware of the tittering and sneers of the court ladies. Indignation had simmered in her. Why should she shrink? Was not her father of the
noblesse campagnarde
? Was she not a Mortemart on her mother’s side, and who, after all, were the Bourbons when compared with the Mortemarts?

Her head had come up imperiously, her back had straightened, and in that moment the apples had gone tumbling from her apron. As she scrambled to regather the apples, the ridiculing laughter of the visitors had shamed her. Heat had flushed her face. Then, suddenly, she had glanced up to see Philippe, sitting on his heels before her—helping her to collect the scattered apples!

From that moment, she was hopelessly in love. When he courted and married her in a whirlwind of a few weeks, she felt she was truly the most blessed of women. All of Paris was charmed by the Golden Couple. Well, not quite all. Among the court were the usual ill-wishers of a couple who seemed blessed with everything: good looks, health, wealth, and love.

For appearance’s sake, however, the outnumbered foes put on their best faces and mingled with the friends of the couple in greeting. Natalie counted the du
c’s eldest and favorite daughter, the Duchesse de Berry, among her friends. When the poor woman had lost her husband five years earlier, she had simply added to her lovers—and her weight.

Philippe tugged Natalie away
from conversation with the duchesse to search out his uncle, who was in actuality his mother’s cousin. Since Philippe’s grandfather had died before Philippe turned thirteen, the intimidating knight had acted briefly as executor for the Marchesseau estates. Even after Philippe reached his majority, he still leaned on his uncle for advice.

The man was not difficult for Natalie to spot despite the crush of masked guests. Claude Fabreville continued to wear the black robes of the knights of Malta. A well-curled wig covered his close- cropped hair, which was now thin and gray as was his waxed moustache. She pitied his frumpish wife, whom he had married for her modest fortune. He openly acknowledged the deed, having needed the king’s dispensation to marry. For years, he had neglected his wife, leaving her to wilt at her family’s country estate.

Perhaps there was something in the smothered rumor that he had once been an “intimate” friend of the late Monsieur.

Still, he was the only relative Philippe had left and, as attorney general, had procured tax rebates and other privileges for the Marchesseau silk industry. “Uncle,” Philippe said, “I have the best of news for you.”

“You took my advice?” Claude asked. “You purchased the Compagnie des Indes stock?”

Natalie slanted her husband a worried glance. He hadn’t told her of the purchase, perhaps because he believed her ignorant in matters of finance.

“
Oui
, but that is not my good news,” Philippe said, his arm encircling her waist tenderly as if already protective of her new condition. “We are finally to be blessed with a child!”

When there was no immediate response from his kin, Philippe covered the awkward silence. “Now that I’m to be a father, I thought I’d do something really worthwhile—perhaps purchase a seat in
Parlement
to pass on to my son.”

At that Natalie had to smile. “You are so certain it is a son?” she asked in a lowered voice.

“Let me offer my congratulations,” Claude said at last. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, the duc is desirous of my attendance.”

Once the old knight was gone, she asked, “How many shares of the Compagnie des Indes did you buy?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “A thousand. But the return will be ten times that much.”

With the paper value of the shares more than eighty times the total value of all the gold and silver known to be in France’s Banque Royale, it seemed to Natalie that the outcome of such a venture should be obvious. Still, she told herself, they could easily afford to lose the money. Before his death, Philippe’s grandfather had increased the family’s silk fortune through wise investments, and upon the death of Philippe’s father, Philippe had inherited the Canadian fur company, almost doubling the Marchesseau fortune.

Philippe caught her chin and tilted it upward. “Come, you must not worry,
chérie
,” he said, searching her face, his eyes tender.

How could she be annoyed when he looked at her like that? After the first blush of romance had worn off, she found to her surprise that she still loved her gentle and tender husband. He possessed the absorption in the moment without the tiresome prudence that always has to be looking ahead. She was constantly caught up in his spurts of joyous enthusiasm, his contentment with life.

“Will you dance with me now, my love, before your horde of admirers descends on us?” he asked, teasing her out of her pensive mood.

He led her out to join the gavotte that was forming. For a while, she enjoyed herself in the lively dance, was even able to ignore the lascivious leers of the male guests and the visually thrown daggers of
les femmes débauchés
. By midnight, the two sexes would be pairing off in search of the nearest unoccupied rooms— some even uncaring if the room was already inhabited.

The Palais Royal—indeed, all of Paris—was a virtual Sodom and Gomorrah. Natalie would no
t have been surprised had lightning struck and the entire city sent up in fiery smoke. The city of Paris had more mistresses than wives, and the Prince Regent, the Duc d’Orléans, was the Prince of Libertines.

Born bored, and accustomed to debauchery, the fat, myopic
Duc d’Orléans, nearing forty-seven, worked conscientiously enough during the day, but night meant retirement to more diverting tasks. When the doors of his rose-silk-upholstered private apartment were closed, he was no longer a regent, not even if Paris were on fire.

That did not mean that one ever underestimated the
duc. The great-grandson of Louis XIV was not quite eleven, and until the good-looking boy reached his legal majority, the duc ruled France as regent. He was highly intelligent and very subtle.

However, he was seduced more by pleasure than by power. He consorted with ladies of quality and ladies of the street. His intimates or companions he called his
roués
, men ordinarily broken on the
roué
, or wheel, for their blasphemous behavior. He was more an onlooker than a participant as life leaked away, and night after night repeated itself. Nothing was sacred, especially love.

Now he was annoyed at being drawn away from the gaming tables, but the shrewd old man who awaited him in the rear cabinet was usually a worthwhile diversion. The old knight had procured for him quite a few of the mo
st delectable teenage danseurs of the opera. The duc’s late father, Monsieur, had had a hand in giving the reins of attorney general to Fabreville. As such, Fabreville had the power to cut off parliamentary investigations of a financial nature that the duc might find embarrassing.

In the
arrière-cabinet
, the regent retired to write his instructions to his secret agents abroad or to study their reports. Here, his private diplomacy was carried out without anyone else’s knowledge. Fabreville waited beside a gilded, thin-legged, rolltop writing desk. The old knight laid a paper on the desk where a candle was kept burning for the sealing of documents with wax.

“Your grace, I find I must pr
eserve the honor of the Marchesseau name. Unfortunately, I have discovered that my late cousin’s son, Philippe du Plessis, is guilty of fraud involving black-market wheat. A
lettre de cachet
will be necessary.”

With only a passing glance at the paper, the du
c dipped the quill in the inkwell. “You are a cunning one, Claude.”

Watching the regent affix his name, Fabreville’s mouth slitted into a sneering smile. A husband might obtain a
lettre de cachet
, or sealed letter, to imprison a suspected wife; a father, to prevent the marriage of a daughter to someone beneath her station; or, in this case, a concerned relative, to prevent the succession of an estate to an as yet unborn child. The accused would never be tried; the accuser, if he could prevail upon the monarch, secured the right of administration of whatever property was involved.

Fabreville had hoped that Fra
nce’s largest estate would naturally pass to him, and his son Robert, since for years Hélène’s son had seemed bent on leading the gay life of a bachelor. When Philippe finally took a wife, Fabreville was relieved to find that the woman apparently was barren. Such was not the case, after all.

He scanned the letter with satisfaction. The order was a simple one:

On behalf of the king: the Marquis de Marchesseau, Philippe du Plessis, and his wife, Natalie, are ordered to take themselves to the Bastille and the Salpêtriére, respectively, His Grace forbidding the said husband and wife to depart until further orders on his part, under pain of disobedience.

Signed this the
13
th
day of February 1720, the Duc d’Orléans, Regent
.

Natalie was with her wardrobe mistress, Emilie, when Philippe rushed into the
petit appartement
. His face was waxen; his lips taut. “The Royal Musketeers,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “They are waiting below with a
lettre de cachet
for us both.” The wardrobe mistress put her hands to her mouth in a smothered scream. Natalie blanched. The large folio containing fabric swatches of her gowns dropped from her suddenly inert fingers.

Philippe caught her clammy hands in his and said, “You must escape while I delay them!”

She shivered uncontrollably but said in a raw whisper, “No, I’m staying with you.”

He shook her shoulders with
fearful impatience. “Listen, Natalie. With you free, there is the hope of discovering our accuser and clearing my name.”

When she opened her mouth to argue, he pressed, “For the love of God, Natalie, consider our child!”

Reluctantly, she nodded in compliance, too stunned to disagree. Quickly, he laid plans for the loyal Emilie to don one of Natalie’s cloaks and to descend on his arm to meet the waiting guards. The ruse would be discovered all too soon, within minutes, but with luck Natalie would have a chance to get away.

Her husband had to pull himself from her grasp. “Philippe!”
she cried when he turned to leave. Her lips quivered, and tears brimmed unchecked over her lids. For too long a moment, she stood in the suddenly empty room, trying to find the strength to will herself to move. Her body seemed to have grown too heavy for her legs. The child! She grabbed another cloak from the immense armoire, any cloak—it was an ermine and velvet one— and hurried through the servants’ corridor.

Fearing that the coach’s crest of arms might attract unwanted notice, she took a
chaise à porteurs
. As the porters carried her through the crowded rue de Sevres, she was assailed by the ghastly recollection of a man rumored to have been imprisoned under a
lettre de cachet
by Louis XIV for forty years until the man’s death— his identity concealed behind an iron mask. Could that really happen?

With grief choking her breath, she urged the porters faster toward the Hotel de Soubise, the residence of Claude Fabreville. Surely, he, if anyone, would have the power to have the regent revoke the letter!

The old knight received her in his petit cabinet with the calmness she lacked. She babbled out her story, ending it with, “You must help Philippe!”

He removed her hands from where they clutched his robe, distorting the eight-point cross. “I will do everything that I can, Natalie. I will go at once to the du
c and petition him for clemency. In the meantime, you must rest and conserve your strength. All this excitement cannot be good for the child you carry.”

Feeling some measure of relief, Natalie obediently accepted the warmed wine brought by a servant. She paced the room, little noticing the art collected with discrimination: Poussin, Titian, Raphael, Veronese, del Sarto. Her steps slowed, her lids blinked away the sudden weariness. Then, with sudden suspicion, she flung the stemmed glass from her. It shattered in one corner of the marbled floor. The realization that she had been drugged came too late, and her body sagged, then collapsed onto the Aubusson carpet.