The French Bride (7 page)

‘Let's walk awhile now; I'm beginning to feel tired!' He looked round at her and laughed. She was extraordinarily handsome in her riding habit of blue velvet, and her face shaded by sweeping plumes from the brim of her velvet hat. He had spent a long and arduous night with her; they had seen the dawn come up, and still there was no end to her craving for him, or her passionate abandonment to his demands.

‘You deserve to, my dear Louise. I've never known anyone so improved by a little absence! I must go away again.…'

‘Why must you, when you can be so happy here?' she said softly. ‘Didn't I please you? Didn't I drive all thought of that dull creature out of your mind?'

‘She was never in it,' Charles said. ‘I have been intolerably bored. But I am returning for the marriage at the end of the month.'

‘You are determined, aren't you?' Louise said angrily. ‘I've told you again and again there's no need for it. I'm not badly off—' She managed to laugh as if it were a joke. ‘If you're that desperate for money, why don't you marry me?' He did not see her face; it was in shadow, and her tone betrayed nothing of the desperate anxiety in her heart. After last night when they lay in each other's arms, she had experienced a tenderness that was entirely new to her, a warmth towards this selfish, unscrupulous man that was an undiscovered side to love. And that was when the idea came to her; he wanted money. He could have every sou that she possessed, if only he would give up Anne de Bernard.

Charles turned and looked at her, his pale eyes full of mockery. ‘Only a fool marries his mistress. And you're not a tenth as rich as my wife-to-be. Her wealth is beyond counting – she lives like a princess of the blood. If she wore some of the jewels she owns she'd rival that glittering whore over there! Do you see how ridiculous a comparison is between you? Oblige me, my dear heart, and don't mention it again!'

‘As you wish.' Louise answered him lightly; she had turned pale. ‘But one day I shan't receive you back. One day when you're bored to the point of death with your rich wife and her possessions, and come hungry for a little pleasure to me – then, Charles my love, I shall send you away!'

‘I doubt that,' he mocked. ‘Besides, I don't intend to spend a long honeymoon away from Versailles and all its diversions. I can accomplish my duties in regard to her quickly enough and return to you. Why aren't you content with that?'

‘I am content so long as I see you,' she said slowly. ‘God knows, I am in no position to make the terms with you.'

‘You're an incomparable mistress and a clever woman.' He bowed to her from the saddle. ‘I adore you. Hurry, Louise, we're being summoned.'

‘One of the King's personal guards,' she pointed out. ‘I know who it is – it's De Legnier, he's a captain of musketeers and a great favourite.'

Louis had halted his horse, and the whole company of huntsmen, gentlemen and ladies in waiting, and the rest of the field were waiting for His Majesty to move on. In her gold coach the Du Barry leaned out of the window; she had stopped in a clearing by the roadside, and some of the royal household were riding among the carriages of the ordinary spectators, ordering them to halt.

The King waited without speaking for the two riders to come up to him. He looked far older than his age; under the plumed hat his face was sallow, the dark, sad eyes half hidden by pouches of skin, the legacy of years of vicious indulgence; he was worn out with debauch and the furious pursuit of pleasure that eluded him more and more, the harder he searched for it and the viler the avenues he explored in the course of that search. Yet he governed his kingdom, held audience, and hunted every morning of his life; his energy was like a fever, driving him to the limit of his weakened strength, urged on by the challenge of his youthful mistress who had not got the wit to see that his health was as necessary to her survival as any of the boisterous amusements she arranged for him. Like many libertines, he was a prude concerning the moral attitudes of other people.

‘M. Macdonald, sire, and the Baroness de Vitale.'

Charles dismounted, and Louise bowed low, from the saddle.

‘M. Macdonald.' The deep voice was irritable. ‘Where is the Marquise de Bernard?'

‘She is at Charantaise, Your Majesty, preparing for our marriage.'

‘Then may I ask why you are not there with her? Are you aware, monsieur, that I gave special permission to your father for this alliance? I am not pleased to find you neglecting your duties even before your marriage. Be good enough to leave Versailles and return to the marquise.'

Charles bowed low. ‘As Your Majesty commands.'

‘And you, madame.' The King's heavy eye considered Louise with such displeasure that she turned white. ‘You will oblige me by joining the Duchesse de Gramont and riding the rest of the way with her.'

He touched his horse and moved away.

Those few words had ended Charles's stay at Versailles and made it impossible for him to see or speak to Louise again before he left. The penalty for disobeying Louis, when Louis gave a personal order, was exile to some isolated country village. If the King was really irritated, the culprit might find that his destination was a fortress.

When De Charlot had threatened Charles with a
lettre de cachet,
he was invoking a weapon from which no man or woman in France was safe. In its minor form it was an order of banishment or house arrest until the offender was forgiven, but the signed order, obtained in secret from the King, sentenced its victim to a lifetime of imprisonment in the Bastille. That was the terror and virtue of the
lettre de cachet.
It was procured in secret; whoever's name was on it was arrested in secret and taken to a prison where he vanished from the world without trace. No one knew what became of him; on one dared to ask. Men had fallen victims to the
lettre de cachet
for crimes as varied as speaking against the King, pressing a nobleman for a debt, attempting to marry a girl above his station, or merely exciting the jealousy of someone with a friend at court. Imprisonment without trial was often no worse than coming before one of His Majesty's judges who by custom bought his appointment and interpreted the law according to the prisoner's ability to bribe him.

Injustice, for so many centuries the lot of the common people of all nations, was meted out with equal vigour to the middle classes in France. Medicine, the law, the army and navy, and all court offices were closed to those not born of the nobility; some of the finest brains wasted their capacities in menial positions or took to the arts as protégés of the very class who had refused to admit them upon equal terms. Writers and philosophers abounded as they had always done in that country of singular genius, and they served to put into words the seething discontent of the masses of the people of France. Privilege: it was spat at the nobility and the clergy like an oath, and in its abuse of power and its blind injustice, it had indeed become obscene. Since the reign of Louis XIV, the final degradation to which the French monarchy lent its authority was the dreaded
lettre de cachet,
empowering arrest and imprisonment without trial or hope of release. Charles rode away from the forest at Versailles, rebellious and angry, and his mistress spent the rest of the day in tears, unable to reach her friend, the Du Barry, and ask her to soften Louis' anger. The favourite was shut up with her lover, dissipating one of his moods of fearful depression.

Charles rode back to Charantaise and there was nothing Louise could do but send a messenger after him. He stopped the coach on the main road some miles out of Versailles and passed a package through the window. Charles unwrapped it and found there a diamond pin. The note in which she had wrapped it was short and ill written; Louise had never been interested in the finer points of education. As a young girl she had amused herself by seducing her tutor and ignoring his lessons. Charles lit the small wax taper in the side of the coach; he turned the pin over in its light, and the large diamond flashed and sparkled. He knew that jewel; it had belonged to her husband the baron. It was a fine diamond. He fixed it in his cravat and glanced at the note she had written.

‘My Beloved. I send you this in tender anticipation of your return. Accept the diamond; you already possess the heart and soul of her who sends it.
Adieu,
my tears will flow until I see you once again. Louise.'

He screwed up the letter and threw it out of the window.

On the twenty-fourth of October, Anne de Bernard was married in the chapel at Charantaise. The chapel was two centuries older than the great château; it was small and dark, and full of white and yellow flowers that came from the splended greenhouses. The marquise's family maintained their own priest and assistant but there was only room for a hundred guests in the little chapel, and Charles's parents, his sister, and Anne's guardian knelt immediately behind the bride and groom, while the rest of the chapel was filled with close friends and some of the more privileged servants, such as Lady Katherine's Annie Fraser, and the marquise's old wet nurse who could hardly walk.

Outside, the sun was streaming down; it was a perfect day, cloudless and warm; within the cool chapel, Anne felt almost cold in spite of the weight of her wedding dress. It was made of white brocade embroidered with silver, and white ermine lined the long train that fell from her shoulders. The veil in which many generations of De Bernards had been married, covered her face, and a circle of enormous diamond and pearl flowers held it in place. It had taken nearly three hours to dress her after her hair was powdered, from the glittering dress down to her white satin shoes with buckles that blazed with diamonds as she walked. Jean and Lady Katherine had spent most of the morning with her; she wore her husband's wedding present round her neck. The chain and the locket with its single sugar-pink diamond was brought to her by Charles's valet, with a formal note in his writing, but the exquisite jewel belonged to his mother, and Anne knew it.

They were already married, both had taken their vows: she so quietly that it was done in a whisper; Charles in a clear, almost arrogant voice. He had put his ring upon her finger, sworn to love and cherish her in fidelity until death, and she had promised to obey him and serve him as long as she lived. She had lost her name, her title, her identity; the Marquise de Bernard had entered the chapel, now Mme. Macdonald stood in her place with a husband beside her who had not once looked at her during the ceremony. Charles wore a white tunic; a vivid sash of tartan crossed his breast, caught on the shoulder with a cairngorm brooch, and his breeches were silk tartan. Sir James Macdonald and his wife were both in Highland dress; in his bonnet he wore the eagle's feather of the chief.

The nuptial Mass began and bride and groom knelt in front of the altar; while the service proceeded Anne hid her face and prayed. Her parents had been married in this same church, the pretty, frivolous little mother she hardly remembered and the unbending father who was only a name to his child. They had not been happy; perhaps her father had loved his bride as passionately as she loved her bridegroom, perhaps he too had prayed for happiness as she was doing, and not known that he would never touch his wife's heart.

When Charles came back almost immediately from Versailles, she had not dared to question him, his mood was so savage. He had been curt with her in public, ignoring her plea that he should observe the conventions before others. The night before the wedding he excused himself, and the gossip all over the château was that he had got drunk and struck his valet while the man was trying to put him to bed.

Now it was done; she had accepted the challenge of his hatred, risking all on her determination to change it into love. She glanced at him and saw that he was staring straight ahead, unmistakably bored and in an ill temper, his handsome face as hard as stone. Now the power was his; power to spend her fortune, power to go where he pleased and regulate her movements accordingly. She had no redress against any restrictions he chose to place upon her, no claim upon the law which recognised only the husband's rights and regarded the woman and all her possessions as his chattels once she married him.

At the end of the Mass they knelt again to receive the priest's blessing: ‘And now, my children, leave this holy place in the unity of God's blessing and the sanctity of your married state; love one another and obey God's laws. I will pray for you both.'

The priest had known Anne since childhood; he was a kindly old man, singularly uncorrupted by the reverence paid him. For a moment the shrewd brown eyes smiled at her, and then they glanced keenly into the face of the man she had married, searching for some sign of emotion. She could tell by the way in which he turned from Charles that he had seen nothing.

At the door they hesitated; there was a long line of servants and tenants waiting for them and Anne blinked in the bright sunshine.

‘Come, madame. Let us run this gauntlet as quickly as possible.' They were the first words he had spoken to her that day. There was a long wedding banquet; Anne ate almost nothing. Her steward fussed behind her chair; he had served Mme. la Marquise since she was old enough to sit at table and he was worried that she might faint after the long ceremony. She looked as white as her dress. Suddenly Charles looked up at him over his shoulder. ‘Your ministrations to Madame are disturbing me. Go away!'

‘Charles,' Anne whispered. She saw the steward turn red and still he stood behind her as if her husband had not spoken. ‘Charles, please. I need some wine.…'

‘You need a new steward,' he remarked. ‘I shall find one for you in the morning. I told that one to go and he's still there. He must be growing deaf. Have a little command of yourself even if you haven't over your servants. You can cry as hard as you wish when we're alone.' He raised his glass to his sister who was sitting further down the table, watching them and unable to hear what had been said. He did not look at his wife again; his head ached and he felt tired and furiously angry, angry with her because she was beautiful enough to rouse in him a kind of irritable desire, angry with his parents who had married him against his will, angry with everyone sitting round them, celebrating and smirking and wishing them well.