The French Mistress (23 page)

“Ah, that is an easy choice, Minette,” he said, smiling. He leaned forward toward the casket in my hands as if to pluck one of the jewels his sister offered. But instead he reached out and with his long fingers cradled my chin, turning my face up toward his so I could see his smile.

“I’ve made my choice, Minette,” he said, looking squarely at me so his meaning could not be in doubt. “This is the only jewel I wish to keep with me.”

I was stunned, overwhelmed, shocked into speechless silence. Could this possibly be true, or only another of my fervent imaginings? He wanted me so much that he’d claim me here, with his sister and his Court to bear witness. He wanted me to stay in England, he wanted me with him, he wanted to rescue me from my hopeless future in France, he wanted—

“Oh, Charles, no,” Madame said impatiently. “Don’t be ridiculous. Mademoiselle de Keroualle is a young lady of a good French family, not some sort of heathen slave girl to be bartered on your whim.”

“But you asked my wish, Minette, and I answered,” he said, feigning ingenuousness. “She’ll be safe enough here with me.”

Madame’s scolding scowl said more than any words, and gently but forcefully she removed his hand from beneath my chin.

I felt instantly bereft. It was not my place to beg, of course, or plead my own wishes before royalty, yet I prayed silently that Madame would somehow understand that this was a possibility I might wish for as much as did the king. Selfishly I forgot my loyalty to her, as well as my responsibilities. All I could remember was how the king had kissed me that afternoon, and how much I wanted him to repeat the experiment.

As, I suspect, did he.

“Sweet sister,” he began anew, coaxing. “Sweet, dear Minette—”

“No, Charles,” she said again, so firmly that all the others who’d been watching our little tableau with breathless delight now tittered to see their much-indulged king denied like a naughty puppy. “Her parents gave her over to my safekeeping, and I won’t disappoint their trust. If you had offered Mademoiselle de Keroualle a respectable place at your Court as an attendant in the queen’s household, then we might have discussed it, but not like this.”

“Then I’ll make her one of Catherine’s maids,” he said quickly, seizing the only possibility Madame offered. “She can have her own lodgings at Whitehall.”

“Lodgings at Whitehall,” Madame repeated skeptically, making it clear that she believed those lodgings in the royal English palace would be much closer to the king’s quarters than the queen’s. “No, Charles, I am resolved. Mademoiselle de Keroualle will be returning to France with me tomorrow, and that is an end to it.”

But it wasn’t, not for me. I didn’t care that the English courtiers regarded me with fresh licentious interest, perceiving sin where there was none. They were courtiers, and it was their custom to assume their great king would never bother to claim me publicly like this if he hadn’t already enjoyed my favors.

No, what grieved me most was the dreadful quandary that the king’s rashly public declaration presented to me. With the optimism of youth, I’d already decided that the English Court offered me a more welcoming opportunity than the French one ever had. I believed that my beauty, my graces, my talents would receive more appreciation in London, and that the attentions paid to me in Dover would only continue as my due.

But if I were now to seize the English king’s offer to join his wife’s household, the only real position I would be accepting was one lying beneath him, as his mistress. All London would know it, too. There would be no other possibilities. With everything so predestined, the king’s infatuation with me would likely soon fade and be done, and with little reward to me. I’d seen enough of the world to predict what my fate would be after that: to survive, I’d be forced to accept the advances of some other eager gentleman who desired to go where His Majesty once had been. I’d serve as his mistress until he, too, tired of me, and another lesser fellow would follow, over and over as I slid down the precipitous decline of fashion and rank to abject ruin and death.

In short, His Majesty’s impulse had made me pause and consider. As much as I might wish otherwise, I was but a fledgling in these games of courts and kings. I’d still a great deal more to learn, and if I were to prosper, I must take care to suppress my own desires, and heed the warnings of my head, rather than the longings of my heart.

“I saved you, Louise,” Madame said later that night, when we were at last alone. “I love my brother beyond all measure, but for him to ask for you like that was wickedly wrong of him, and wrong for you, too. You may not realize it now, but I did save you. I saved you both.”

 

 

By every possible standard, Madame’s journey to England would be judged a success. The next day she returned to Louis with the Secret Treaty, signed by her brother and safely in the Marquis de Croissy’s keeping. She had triumphed where so many other experienced diplomats had failed, and she was assured of Louis’s favor and endless gratitude for her achievement. She had won the fickle English Court anew with her boundless charm and spirit, and with it helped swing their favor toward France. She’d had a blessed respite from her intolerable marriage. Most of all, she’d had a month’s holiday in the land of her birth and in the company of her family, led by her favorite brother—a month where she’d been feted and cherished and loved with a devotion she’d never have in France.

Thus it was little wonder that Madame’s departure was miserably unhappy, and as washed with tears as any funeral cortege. No one wanted their darling, delicate princess to leave or, worse, to be given back to the French, who did not appreciate her. Countless vows were sworn that she must return to England again at the soonest possible convenience, while final kisses were given and embraces made, and so many bouquets of English flowers were tossed to us that the deck resembled a floating garden.

Madame was so overcome with sorrow that the king was forced nearly to carry her aboard the yacht, and the tenderness with which he held her on the deck made even the most jaded courtiers weep anew. When at last the captain could wait no longer or miss his tide, the king refused to disembark, and remained on board with us as the anchor was weighed. Still he stayed with us as our little vessel left the harbor and made its way into the open sea, and we were nearly out of sight of the land he ruled before, finally, he left us for one of the other boats that had accompanied us.

The other ladies tried to persuade Madame to come below with them to the cabin where she would be dry and warm, but she shook them off, and sent them away. Yet I understood. I kept to her side, just as I had on the first night of our arrival. Blindly she took my hand in hers, her teary gaze never wavering from the boat that carried the king.

He was likewise standing at the rail, the wide brim of his hat pulled low and his dark hair blowing back from his broad shoulders. His gentlemen, too, stood apart from him a respectful distance, and I was certain I’d never seen a more lonely figure of a man. Who would ever have dreamed a great, powerful ruler would feel such grave melancholy? I longed to ease his suffering, or somehow lighten the burden that bowed those manly shoulders, and as I stood with Madame, I could no more look away from him than she herself. My heart wept for Charles as surely as did my eyes, tears shed in perfect sympathy to both sister and brother.

“I will come back,” Madame whispered, as if her brother could hear her still over the ever-widening breach of the sea between them. “I swear it, Louise, and mark my words for me, lest I ever dare forget. I
will
come back.”

“So shall I, Madame,” I said softly, still unable to look away from the distant dark figure that was the king. “So shall I.”

Madame’s little fingers tightened into mine in wordless response. Truly, what was left for us to say? Together we remained side by side in the gray mist, long after England and her brother had both slipped beyond our sight. King, princess, and me: our lives had become curiously twined, we three. Yet on that gloomy morning I could never have imagined how much more tightly my life would be bound in with those Stuart siblings, plaited together one over the other.

 

 

Our return to France was as anyone could have predicted. We were met at Dunkerque by a guard supplied by the king (ah, how hard it was to remember that that simple word referred once again to Louis, not Charles!), and they escorted us back to Paris. The weather was hot and sunny, and where on our earlier journey we’d fair drowned from the chilly rain, now we felt as if we were baking, our elegant coaches turned to rolling ovens. But at least the heat meant that the roads were dry and passable, and we were soon in Paris once again.

Madame’s reunion with Monsieur was predictable, a heated battle before us that doubtless led to him enforcing his marital rights in the most hateful way possible once they were alone. Her meeting with Louis was far more pleasant, for he praised her accomplishments lavishly before the entire Court. That was beyond bearing for Monsieur’s jealous nature, and within the week he took us away to Saint-Cloud, where he hectored Madame constantly for details of the treaty that had made her more important than he.

But Madame was changed. I could not say precisely how, or even when this had occurred, despite all the time I spent in her company. She was more restless than I’d ever before seen her, finding no peace at any task or amusement for longer than a few minutes before she rose with impatience, eager for something else. She did not sleep at all, instead wandering the château’s vast gardens like a phantom wraith imprisoned by the moonlight. Her ethereal beauty and charm seemed of a sudden to have vanished, and her face had grown frighteningly plain. She who had never complained suddenly gave voice to an unending litany of pains that plagued her, concentrated in her stomach and her side.

Physicians were called and consulted, and duly proclaimed Madame to be suffering from the results of the impoverished English diet. They advised her against bathing and walking, and she ignored them. Yet clearly something was not as it should be with our dear princess, and those who loved her prayed for her deliverance, for it seemed far better to entrust her to God’s hands than to those of mere mortal men.

On the last Sunday in June, she dressed early as was her custom and met with Monsieur, who was leaving for Paris. She visited her older daughter, Marie-Louise, who was sitting for her portrait, and dined with her ladies. Feeling unwell, as was sadly usual, she called for a cup of chicory water to ease her discomfort. No sooner had she emptied her cup than she began to gasp and clutch at her side.

“My God, what pain!” she cried out, sinking to her knees as two of her ladies hurried to support her. “Oh, preserve me, I’ve—I’ve been poisoned!”

“Poisoned, Madame?” exclaimed one of the ladies, her eyes round with a horror shared by us all in the room. In a Court so full of enemies and plots, poison was a constant fear, and there was not a one of us who did not think at once of Monsieur and the chevalier.

“Yes, yes, I am sure of it!” cried Madame, her face twisting with agony. “Oh, merciful Mother in Heaven, save me!”

At once she was undressed and carried to her bed, while the distraught waiting woman who’d prepared the chicory water was seized and questioned. Before several witnesses, some of the remaining water was given to a dog as a test with no ill effects. That should have been proof enough of innocence, but still no one believed it, and when the silver cup that Madame had used was found to be missing, there was no reason not to believe the worst. Monsieur’s passionate hatred of her was too well-known to be ignored. Of course Madame had been poisoned: she’d said so herself. The only question was how it had been arranged.

Yet the physicians and surgeons who rushed to her bedside were reluctant to agree, and I cannot say I blamed them. Who would wish to be the one to tell the king that his brother was guilty of such a dreadful crime? The physicians first declared Madame was in no danger, and suffering from no worse than her usual digestive complaints. But as her obvious agony intensified throughout the evening, they could no longer ignore the obvious, and finally admitted her life might be in peril.

Amidst so much feverish activity, my only role was to stand by the wall of her bedchamber with Madame’s other attendants. We were there to support her if she needed us, but our main purpose was to serve as witnesses, whatever the night’s outcome might be. Some of the ladies prayed, a soft murmur of beseeching to match the beads slipping through their fingers, and some sobbed openly to see such suffering.

Overwhelmed by my own helplessness, I watched as the physicians tended my poor lady, one holding her leg steady while another used his knife to cut her for bleeding, the recommended location and course for pain of the abdomen. Her small foot was as white as alabaster in his hand, and almost as lifeless, as the physician squeezed the blood from her heel—livid red drops against the pallor of her skin—until the porcelain cup he held beneath her heel was filled.

When the bleeding brought no change, the physicians next forced Madame to swallow powder of Spanish vipers. This was a rare and costly decoction prepared from the skins of those snakes, and considered the very best antidote to most poisons. Alas, all it did now was induce a violent vomit, a terrible purge that made Madame writhe and weep in pain. Finally the physicians conceded there was nothing further to be done, and having failed to save her mortal body, gave her over to the priests, who would try to do better with her eternal soul. Reluctantly (or so it seemed to us), Monsieur sent word to his brother.

All too fast, Madame’s bed was transformed from the spot where she’d sipped chocolate and played with her daughters and her spaniels into the solemn place where she must await her death. Any such unhappy farewell has its rituals, but for royalty, everything was magnified until it almost seemed a tragic play whose inevitable climax would be the heroine’s death.