The French Mistress (13 page)

Given my audacity, it was just as well that Madame was so lost in her own musings that she didn’t seem to have heard me.

“I do so much want to see my brother again,” she said softly, little more than a whisper of the most heartfelt longing, as her fingers toyed restlessly with my own. A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye to slide down the curve of her cheek, echoing the drop-shaped pearls she always wore in her ears. “Charles, and England. I wanted to see them one more time before I died.”

“You won’t die, Madame,” I said quickly, shocked she’d speak such a thing aloud. “It’s God’s will when He takes us for His own to heaven, Madame, not ours. You won’t die, not yet.”

“Such faith, my little Louise.” She smiled wistfully, another tear following the first along her pale cheek. “It is His decision when we die, yes, and not our own. But sometimes, in my heart, I believe it would be better if I did.”

 

 

Madame did not die then, of course. Yet her melancholy was only part of the ill fortune and sorrow that seemed to overhang us all that summer, and beyond.

In early June, Charles wrote to Madame with guarded joy to inform her that, at last, his queen was pregnant with a royal child. Madame could scarce contain her delight for her brother, writing letter after letter to him and the queen with advice for her health and that of the babe. But before the month was done, the queen’s pregnancy ended in another miscarriage. Charles was devastated, and Madame shared his grief for so unfortunate a loss.

Alas, more was to come. In early summer, word came from the Mediterranean that the lengthy siege of the island of Candia had collapsed, and with it the Christian hopes for that land. The Turks took full possession, a defeat that struck Louis particularly hard. The losses to the French troops who had helped defend the island were severe, and the French warship
La Thérèse
, the flagship of the fleet, exploded and sank. Among the many fallen was my first benefactor, the Duc de Beaufort. I’d never forgotten his kindness to me, or how I’d repaid it with the post that had now led to his grievous death. I wept bitter tears for him, and for the unkindness of fate, which had stolen away such a fine gentleman.

In August, Madame was brought to bed of her child. Her labors were long and hard, and made more perilous by her fragility. At last she was safely delivered, but the babe was another girl, not the desired son. In disgust, Monsieur departed Saint-Cloud at once with the chevalier, without waiting to see either his wife or his new daughter.

I felt a thousand pities for Madame, not only for her suffering, but for her disappointment as well. Baptized Anne-Marie d’Orleans, the tiny girl was strong and fair, with a lusty cry that delighted her nursemaid, yet she seemed to bring her own mother little joy. How could she, when her very presence reminded Madame of Monsieur’s jealous, abusive demands upon her person, both in the past and, inevitably, once again in the future?

Only a few weeks later, Madame’s mother, the Dowager Queen of England, died at Colombe. Still weak from childbed, a devastated Madame insisted on attending the funeral and leading the mourners. Of the seven Stuart children, Madame had been her mother’s favorite and her namesake. Though admirably pious, the queen was also known to have a demanding and difficult nature, and Madame was the only one of her children who’d remained close to her throughout her tragic life. Madame felt the death keenly. The depth of her grieving was remarked with concern by all who saw her at the funeral, and many feared she’d soon follow her mother to the grave.

Monsieur was irritated by the inconvenience of the funeral, forcing him to interrupt a monthlong season of hunting at Chambord for the services in Paris. To no one’s surprise, he denounced Madame for calling him away from the hunt for such a reason. Louis heard of his brother’s ill-mannered selfishness, and chided him soundly for it. Yet in his perverse way, Monsieur convinced himself that His Majesty’s displeasure was somehow Madame’s doing, and that, too, became one more excuse for him to torment her further.

Torment:
that would seem a strong word to be used in regard to a royal marriage. But I assure you that to those of us who were privy to that marriage, torment was perhaps too generous a word to describe Monsieur’s treatment of Madame. Consider as well how Madame’s body had been racked by a difficult birth, with little time to recover before her soul, too, had been grievously wounded by her mother’s death. Reduced to a wraithlike figure in shrouded mourning, Madame was so distraught that Bishop Bousset, His Majesty’s own spiritual adviser and confidant, judged it wise to begin to help her prepare for her own demise and final judgment.

Most husbands would have treated a wife suffering from such despair with tender understanding. But Monsieur was more monster than loving husband, and he seized upon Madame’s weakness like a savage beast will sink its teeth into wounded prey. He used any excuse to challenge her, and instantly escalated their quarrels into shouted oaths and threats of violence. He let the chevalier come between them, and always took his favorite’s side against his wife. He jeered and taunted her about her thwarted journey to England, and just as she’d confessed to me, he vowed to impregnate her again to keep her in France. One night at table he swore before us all that Madame had become so distasteful to him that he’d require the chevalier to join them in her bedchamber before he could perform his husbandly duty.

I am not certain whether Monsieur acted upon this disgraceful threat or not; as much as Madame would share with me, there were mercifully some matters she kept to herself. But I do know that when he finally wearied of cruelly debasing her body, he began to do the same to her soul. He complained to his confessor that Madame had ill treated the chevalier, contriving so many artful lies in his case that the misguided confessor chastised Madame, accusing her publicly of a lack of Christian charity toward her husband’s lover. If Monsieur could have contrived it, he would have had Madame banned from their chapel and the comfort of prayer until she apologized to the chevalier for her imagined sins and slights.

My poor lady was always near to tears, of grief, pain, anger, and resignation. To the rest of the world and the Court, she tried her best to be serene and honor the mourning she wore for her mother. Only in her letters to her brother did she reveal the nightmare that her life had become. Helpless from afar, he in turn wrote to Louis, ominously demanding that something be done to ease his sister’s plight. As the hope of the alliance became more and more tenuous, Louis ordered his brother to show more kindness to Madame. But once again Monsieur misinterpreted his brother’s words, the king’s concern spurring him into another rage of unfounded jealousy toward his wife. It was as if the gilded walls of the Palais-Royal had become a battlefield, rife with hostility and attacks and no peace for any of us.

And then, to my own grief, the true meaning of war became sharply, shockingly clear.

There was nothing outwardly different about my mother’s letter, written in her familiar hand and sealed with the same shiny blob of green wax. Inside, she’d covered only a single sheet, each sentence short and without comfort.

My brother, Sebastien, had been serving with the French forces at the siege of Candia. He had been attached to the Duc de Beaufort’s men. He had fought in the same battle in which the duc had been killed. Sebastien had been wounded, a long, deep splinter wound from a shattered mast, but survived. He had been among the last Christians the Turks permitted to leave the island. He had returned to France with the fleet. On the voyage, his wound had not healed, but festered. He had grown feverish and declined. Only his desire to see France again had kept him alive. He had finally died as he’d been carried ashore in Provence, the waters of France splashing on his cheeks.

My mother told me to pray for his soul, and to be confident that he had died a hero, secure in God’s love and now among the saints in heaven.

All I knew was that if I’d not come to Court and garnered the post for my brother with the expedition to Candia, he would be alive now, and eager to celebrate his twenty-third birthday in November.

Heedless of the tears streaming from my eyes, I ran to Madame’s rooms, and threw myself sobbing on the floor at her feet, too distraught to explain myself. A servant took my mother’s crumpled letter from my hand and gave it to Madame. She read it swiftly, understanding all.

“My poor Louise!” she cried softly, lifting me up into her arms. She held me close and let me weep against her shoulder. My tears soaked the silk of her bodice, my grief mingled forever with the scent of her perfume. She stroked her hand over the back of my curls, over and over as she did with her little dogs, calming me as best she could.

“Such a blow, such a blow,” she murmured. “Ah, ah, your poor parents, to lose their only son.”

That made me weep all the harder. I had come to Court to help my family, and instead, I had destroyed its very future.

“Your mother is wise, you know,” Madame said gently. “Your brother is safe among the angels, in a much better place than this mortal world. But I shall have a mass said for him to ease his soul’s way, and more prayers read for him by the sisters at Chaillot. Will that please you?”

“Yes—yes, Madame,” I said through my sobs. “Thank you, Madame. But I—I must return home, to Brittany. I—I must go to them now.”

“Leave Court, Louise?” She stared at me, incredulous and, with her black-bordered handkerchief, dabbed at the wet blotch my tears had left on her bodice. “Leave me?”

“I beg you, Madame, only for a short time, only until I—”

“But I fear that’s not possible, Louise,” she said, sadly, as if it weren’t really her decision to make. “You are too dear, too necessary, for me to do without you, even for a short time.”

Bewildered, I stepped back. Even as the tears still filled my eyes, I remembered to curtsy and show my gratitude, and remembered, too, that she was the duchesse d’Orleans, born of kings and queens, while I—I was not.

“Thank you, Madame,” I whispered through my misery. “I am honored.”

And at Court, that was all that mattered.

 

 

On Christmas Day, our household was to attend holy mass in the King’s Chapel at the Louvre, with Bishop Bousset presiding. As was usual, Madame and her attendants had gathered for the coaches in the front hall of the Palais-Royal. Madame’s elder daughter, Marie-Louise, was joining us, having been judged sufficiently old enough at seven years to sit with the adults. Though the little girl was dressed exactly as her mother in miniature from her lace cap and arranged curls to her black velvet gloves and fur muff, she still could not contain her excitement, no matter how many times her governess chided her.

“Is Papa coming, Maman?” she asked Madame, bouncing lightly on her little heeled slippers as she looked up at her mother. “We can’t leave without Papa.”

“I’m sure he’ll join us soon, my dear.” Madame smiled for her daughter’s benefit, but still she glanced anxiously up the stairs, looking for Monsieur. “He won’t wish to be late on Christmas.”

“Christmas!” echoed Marie-Louise with relish, for that word is magical to every child, even a royal princess. Later, after mass and dinner, I knew that she’d be given the lady doll she’d so longed for, and that her mother had ordered with such care. “Here comes Papa, Maman. I can hear him coming!”

But the footsteps she’d heard belonged not to Monsieur, but to one of his servants, who came to bow solemnly before Madame.

“Have you word from Monsieur?” she asked, though of course we all knew that he did. Monsieur was never prompt, and this humiliating ritual of a servant or one of his gentlemen appearing to bear his excuses was more often repeated than not. “I trust he will be with us soon?”

The servant bowed again. “I regret to tell you that His Highness says he is unable to attend Your Highness at present.”

Madame sighed, as she too often did. “Did he say when he will be able to join me?”

The man hesitated, obviously aware of the unhappiness his message would bring Madame.

“His Highness regrets that he will be unable to attend or accompany Your Highness,” he said slowly, taking care to recite the Monsieur’s message exactly as it had been given, “not until you come to his rooms and apologize to His Lordship the Chevalier de Lorraine for the cruel scorn you have shown him.”

“Thank you.” Madame’s voice, usually so mild, now crackled with anger. It was one thing for Monsieur to shame her, but another entirely for him to do so before their daughter.

She took the little girl’s hand, and with visible effort, put aside her own frustrations and smiled warmly at the little girl.

“Come, my sweet,” she said with forced gaiety. “If Papa won’t come with us, then you shall have his cushion in the pew, and sit directly beside me.”

They entered the Louvre’s Royal Chapel together, the little lady taking her father’s place in the ordered procession and in the royal pew. The tenderness shown between mother and daughter was much praised, with many noting how sweetly Marie-Louise held the prayer book open for her mother, and how Madame rewarded her daughter by clasping one of her own extravagant pearl cuffs around Marie-Louise’s tiny wrist to wear as a treat.

Still, it was Monsieur’s absence that was most remarked and discussed and wondered over. The first speculation was that he must be gravely ill, to have missed such an important occasion. But soon the scandalous truth was rippling through the crowded chapel, each courtier whispering to the next when they should have been attending to the service and the bishop’s sermon.

It did not take long before the king himself had heard the reason for his brother’s absence, and from the grim set of his features, his reaction was not an understanding one. Instead he kept glancing back to where Monsieur should have been sitting, the white ostrich plumes on his hat fluttering with each turn of his head, as if that alone would somehow belatedly produce his wayward brother. Most times the king would find a way to excuse or ignore Monsieur’s behavior, no matter how outrageous or wicked it might be, and much to Madame’s sorrow, too. But from Louis’s stone-faced glance, it was clear that at last Monsieur had stepped too far beyond propriety, and the next round of eager whispers in the chapel were set to guessing how and when a royal chastisement might take place.