The French Mistress (10 page)

“Then let me speak of something else, I beg you,” he said earnestly, and for the first time he looked as young as he must be. He might be able to coax a pardon from the king, but even he knew there’d be little forgiveness for upsetting the pregnant duchesse d’Orleans. “Of how the rebuilding of the city progresses, or the new plays this season, or—”

“Thank you, Lord Rochester, but my brother writes to me of all that,” she said, then smiled winningly. “Tell me something of his Court, if you please, some scandalous scrap that he’d not tell me himself.”

He raised one brow, his smile bemused as he considered a score of possibilities, no doubt each less suitable for polite ladies’ ears than the one before. Yet as his smile grew, each of us polite ladies waited with eager, breathless anticipation, for who among us could resist news of a new scandal?

He tossed his hat lightly in his hand, making us wait, then leaned toward Madame. “Have you heard of Lady Castlemaine’s latest gambit for attention?”

“I’ve not.” Madame tipped her head to one side, indicating she was surprised, but most interested. This
was
scandalous, and most daring of Lord Rochester to mention. A thoroughly notorious lady, the Countess of Castlemaine had long been His Majesty’s mistress, and had borne him many bastard children. “What has the sly creature done now?”

“She is my cousin, you know, through the Villiers, so she’s few secrets from me,” he said, teasing out his gossip. “Or from anyone else, for that matter.”

“Indeed not!” exclaimed Madame, and when she laughed, we all laughed, too. The scandals of Louis’s Court were far too near for Madame to find much amusement in them, but the mischief at her brother’s Court was another matter. There’d been a time when such frank talk of wicked folk would have shocked me, but no longer.

The earl leaned forward, as if in confidence. “They say that as the lady’s corporal charms fade, she has resorted instead to flaunting her eternal soul for attention. She’s begun private instruction with a priest, with the goal of converting to the Romish Church.”

“But that is old tattle, my lord!” Madame scoffed, and rapped her knuckles on the arm of her chair to signify her disappointment. “I’ve heard that long ago, from Lord de Croissy. I suppose I should rejoice at another soul returned to the True Church, but that lady has proved herself so faithless in everything else that I cannot entirely believe her conversion.”

“You are not alone, Madame,” he said, and sighed for dramatic effect. “The French ambassador is famously knowledgeable, and famously willing to pay his sources, too. If I must compete with Lord de Croissy for fresh news for you, Madame, then I know I must fail. Unless you’ve not heard of the latest scheme of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham?”

“Buckingham?” Madame repeated, and though she smiled still, I sensed her instant uneasiness at the mention of His Grace. “What of Buckingham?”

“Not so much
of
him, Madame, as
from
him,” he said. “Having observed His Majesty’s interest in Lord Roos’s divorce, Lord Buckingham has seized the opportunity, and is once again strongly pressing for the king to separate himself from the barren queen, and remarry.”

“My brother would never treat Her Majesty so unjustly.” Whether she did so consciously or not, Madame’s hand crept over the small mound of her belly as if to protect the babe within. “It is hardly the poor queen’s fault if she’s not been blessed.”

The earl smiled with wry sympathy, for to him this was just more idle gossip and speculation, and no more. “Buckingham would say that the security of the succession must come first, Madame. Last year he’d believed he’d even found a suitably virgin beauty in Lady Frances Stewart, before she confounded them all and eloped with the Duke of Richmond. Quite the merry scandal that was, and I don’t know who was made more angry by it, His Majesty or His Grace.”

But Madame didn’t care to hear of the elopement of Lady Frances, not when compared to the sorry treatment Buckingham proposed for the queen.

“It will not happen, Lord Rochester,” she said firmly, reminding me (and likely everyone else) that she’d been born a king’s daughter. “For my brother to put Her Majesty aside simply because Lord Buckingham wishes it, and sees some path to personal gain for himself—that is against the laws of not only England, but of God.”

“But as the head of both the Anglican faith and the country, His Majesty can arrange matters to suit himself,” the earl countered, still blithely unaware of how very personal this conversation was to Madame. “If His Majesty comes around to Buckingham’s view, then he has the power to make it so.”

“Lord Buckingham forgets that Her Majesty is Catholic, not Anglican,” Madame said, doubtless thinking of how she, too, was a Catholic wife who had failed to produce the son her husband desired. “The queen will never agree to such a divorce, were my brother so cruel as to attempt it.”

“Lord Buckingham would say that it is His Majesty’s solemn responsibility to England to sire an heir to his throne, Madame,” the earl said. “He would claim that the English people would much prefer a fertile Protestant queen to a barren Catholic one. He would say it, because he does. Being Buckingham, he tells it to His Majesty whenever he has his ear.”

“Then I would remind Lord Buckingham that even my brother must answer to God, not to England.” Suddenly Madame rose, catching us all by surprise as we belatedly stood with her. “Forgive me, Lord Rochester, but I find I am weary, and wish to rest.”

Without another word, she swept from the room, leaving the bewildered earl. Her ladies followed, fluttering with concern. They believed she was retreating to her bedchamber to rest, and murmured all manner of solicitous suggestions and advice.

But I guessed otherwise, and I was right. As soon as her chamber door was closed, Madame was at her desk, writing to Louis, and to Charles.

 

 

“You see how cleverly the letter is devised,” Madame said. “Monsieur Colbert de Croissy warned me that the Dutch raiders grow more bold all the time, and that I must needs take more care when writing to my brother.”

She held out the packet for me to see: several letters from her, folded and sealed as usual. But this time a length of silk thread had been stitched through the center of the three letters, binding them together. At the end of the thread was tied a lead plumb that now swung gently back and forth in Madame’s grasp.

“If the boat is boarded, then the courier will have my orders to toss the packet over the side,” she said, tapping the plumb with her fingertip. “The weight will act as an anchor, and send my letters directly to the bottom of the Channel, and a good thing, too.”

I nodded in agreement. While I was not privy to every detail in her letters, I did know that her role as an intermediary between the two kings had only increased in these last months. At her request, Charles had even sent her a code, known only to the two of them, to be used when writing back and forth regarding the alliance. She was wise to be cautious. Not only would the Dutch have wished to intercept her letters, but she feared the Duke of Buckingham, too, and with excellent cause.

She had repeated Rochester’s troubling report to both kings, and both had rejected them in their way: Charles by soothing her and promising he’d no intention of divorcing his queen, and Louis by denouncing Buckingham as a liar and an ass. Yet neither king had rejected the duke outright, and Madame could see for herself that Louis still welcomed him as an amusing and useful guest at his Court. She did not exactly consider Buckingham to be an out-and-out enemy, at least not yet, but he would always put his own cause first and, further, disparage and belittle whatever she did as the work of a piddling woman: as sorry a testimony to the other ladies of his acquaintance as it was to his own conceit.

Now I watched as she wrapped the weighted thread around the letters, and tucked them away into her desk for safekeeping.

“That is very clever, Madame,” I said, “and very wise, too. Will you be sending them by the ambassador’s courier tomorrow?”

She shook her head and smiled proudly. “I’ve made other arrangements. Do you recall the Abbé Prignani?”

“The Italian cleric,” I said, and no more. There was no forgetting a monk such as the abbé, who had come highly recommended to the French Court by the Electress of Bavaria. He was a member of the Theatines of Abruzzi in Italy, an order whose express mission was to combat the moral laxity encouraged by Protestantism, which explained why he’d become such a favorite of Madame’s. But he was also extremely worldly, and given to the dark practices of alchemy and astrology, with more of a taste for the intrigues of foreign courts than for monastic seclusion and reflection. He was even credited with being able to foretell the future by casting horoscopes and following the pattern of the stars and moon. Surely he was more wizard than monk.

My mother, the most pious lady I knew, would not have approved.

“Yes, yes, that’s the abbé.” Madame nodded eagerly. “He’ll be the one carrying my letters tomorrow, among other things. Ah, I do believe he is here now.”

I rose to withdraw and leave her alone with the abbé, as had been her preference whenever he visited her.

“Don’t leave, Louise, please,” she said, motioning for me to remain. “I would that you remain.”

I bowed my head, and stayed before my chair, as she’d bidden. I understood her purpose without any explanation. Ever since my first day in her household, when I’d inadvertently watched that terrible scene between her and Monsieur, she had asked me to attend her in certain private matters, such as this one. Just as on that first day, she wanted me to act as a witness, and prepare myself to recall it later, if needed. I guessed that she feared herself in danger, whether from her husband or from others. Peril was often the partner of those who played their lives on so grand a stage, whether by choice or by fate. Because Madame asked this of me, I did it, though it troubled me mightily.

The abbé joined us, a small man with heavy-lidded eyes that missed nothing, including my presence.

“You’ve come from His Majesty?” Madame asked him at once, with no civilities. “You understand what you are to do while in England?”

He glanced so pointedly in my direction that I blushed, but Madame impatiently waved away his objection.

“Mademoiselle de Keroualle remains by my wish,” she said. “Now tell me. His Majesty explained your role?”

“His agents did, Madame,” the monk said. “I have already accepted the invitation of His Grace the Duke of Monmouth, and will be his guest in London. While there, I am to insinuate myself into the good graces of His Majesty the English king, using whatever methods I judge best for the circumstances.”

“Speak to him of chemistry and mathematical calculations,” she urged. “He keeps a private closet at Whitehall for his laboratory experiments and studies, like some fusty old don.”

Prignani bowed his thanks. “I will, Madame. I am to speak to His Majesty however I can, to persuade him to smile with favor on the French as allies.”

“Yes, yes,” she said eagerly, pressing her hands together over her belly. “And the rest, too.”

“Of course, Madame,” he murmured. “I am to counsel His Majesty in private about the True Faith, and all he would gain for himself and his soul by renouncing the folly of Martin Luther. I am also to explain to him how, as a king, he is responsible for the divine welfare of his people, and the holy magnificence he could achieve by returning all England to the Church.”

“Exactly so.” She sighed happily, sitting back in her chair. “Exactly.”

He raised his hand, a curious mixture of regard and beneficent blessing. “I cannot thank you enough for the honor of your trust, Madame.”

She smiled, and blushed with pleasure. “The honor comes from His Most Christian Majesty for accepting my suggestion,” she demurred, “and not from me.”

With Madame, everything was complicated like this, twisted back and forth and into itself like a silken knot without end. This little plot of hers involving Prignani was devised to assist both the kingdoms of England and France, yes, but also to preserve the greater Kingdom of Heaven by bringing the Church back to her native country. While she wished to bring both success and comfort to her dearest older brother and prove herself worthy of his love, her old affections for Louis were at play as well, and she longed to show him the strength of her devotion and fealty. Finally, she always looked for any way to vex Monsieur (this by feeding his jealousy regarding her and his brother), and to display her own political wisdom and acuity as a Stuart princess.

All of which I would present to any man fool enough to believe that diplomacy is too taxing for a woman’s intellect, or that we’ve not the fortitude to manage the complexities of politics. Others gazed at Madame and saw only a slight, fragile lady of surpassing sweetness. I saw beyond to the strength and intelligence, and learned more from her than she, poor lady, would ever know.

“I understand that there is one more way I might oblige you, Madame,” the abbé continued. “His Majesty’s agent made mention of a special errand.”

“There is.” She retrieved the little packet of weighted letters from her desk and handed them to the abbé. “These are for His Majesty my brother the King of England. No one else must ever see them, ever. If you are challenged on your crossing, if there is so much of a glimpse of an unfriendly vessel on the horizon, then you must at once toss this over the side. Better to commit my words to the waves than to have them read by the wrong eyes.”

“Yes, Madame, I understand entirely.” He bowed, and tucked the letters into the leather pouch he’d carried with him. “You may rely on me to deliver these to His Majesty, and no other.”

“It won’t be an easy journey for you, abbé,” she warned. “You’ll learn soon enough. I fear that, from ignorance, most common Englishmen will despise anyone of our faith.”