The Rivals of Versailles: A Novel (The Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy) (2 page)

From Claudine de Saillac

Convent of the Ursulines

Poissy, France

March 10, 1731

Dearest Jeannette,

Greetings to you, my esteemed friend, and thank you for the letter you have done the honor of writing me.

Do you like my new handwriting? The nuns praised it—even Sister Severa! I am very sad that you will not be coming back. I miss you a lot a lot a lot. There is a new girl here, her name is Madeleine but the nuns made her change her name because Sister Severa doesn’t approve of Saint Magdalene, on account of her Sin. Well, she—Madeleine who is now called Marie—is very pretty but not as pretty as you.

Chester is well but he lost one of his feathers. I wanted to wear it on my sleeve, but Sister Severa made me offer it instead to Saint Francis, though why Saint Francis needs a feather I don’t know. How lucky you are to have dancing lessons! Who plays the music? I am sorry your mother does not allow you the harp, but it is true that playing it will give you a hunched back.

Write soon!

I remain your most respected and esteemed servant.

Claudine

Chapter Two

A
steady stream of tutors flows in and out of our house on the rue des Bons-Enfants. Apart from singing, my favorite subject is history. I now know that a lover is a mistress and I have studied the mistresses of kings past. My favorite is Diane de Poitiers, who was one of the most beautiful women in France. King Henri II loved her faithfully all his life.

Imagine—one day our king will love me as King Henri loved Diane! When I am allowed to daydream, which is not very often—Mama says I am like a bird, always up in the clouds—I imagine the king . . . but it is hard to imagine what he does, when he loves me. He will want to kiss me, and perhaps pull up my skirts, but then . . . I am not sure what it is that men seek beneath our dresses. The garters that married women wear? Mama has a beautiful pair of cherry silk ones trimmed with beaver hair. Perhaps that is what they like.

I do know that when a man loves a woman, he is very kind to her and will give her anything she wants. Last month Mama asked Uncle Norman for a new marble-topped table for the salon, and he was happy to buy it. If I were his mistress, the king would give me anything I wanted! I’m not sure what I would ask for; perhaps some new drawing books? Or, I think one day when I am in the kitchens and Sylvie is busy shooing away a beggar woman, I could ask the king to give all the poor people something to eat.

On Wednesdays I cross the river in Uncle Norman’s carriage for dancing lessons. I love dancing—it makes me feel as though I am on a swing, flying high and free—but I do not care for the other girls, mostly relatives of Uncle Norman. His family is far
grander than Papa’s, who was only the son of a butcher and who gave me my last name of Poisson, which means fish.

The little girls—Mama says I must call them cousins even though they aren’t—sneer at me and make cutting comments.

“Oh, it’s Jeannette Poisson. Do I smell something fishy?” asks Elisabeth, an older girl wearing an unfortunate mustard-colored dress. The others snigger, then remember they are supposed to be elegant, and titter behind their little fans.

“Your dress is very beautiful,” I reply to Elisabeth. Mama says one must never return rudeness; instead swallow it whole and offer only charm in return. Lying is a sin, but it is far more important to be polite. In truth, Elisabeth’s gown makes her face the color of morning ashes.

“A fish! A fish!” parrots Charlotte, a younger girl. She frowns, as though she wishes to add something, but cannot think what.

“Why aren’t you in a convent?” accuses Lisette. She is very pretty and has a beauty spot shaped like a star, placed under one eye. I am envious, for Mama says I may not wear them until I am sixteen, four long years away.

“I was at the convent at Poissy. My aunt is a nun there.”

“The Dominicans at Poissy? My cousin there never mentioned a bourgeois fish.”

“No, with the Ursulines,” I say softly. The girls say bourgeois as if it were a sin only to be mentioned in the confessional.

“So bourgeois! So dreadfully common!” shrieks Elisabeth. “As common as a . . . as common as a . . .” She flounders, chewing her lip.

“As common as a cold?” I say helpfully.

“Yes, as common as a cold.” She glares at me and takes a step back, as if my humble roots are contaminating.

“Your hairstyle is most becoming,” I reply in an innocent voice. Elisabeth narrows her eyes: thin frizzles of hair have escaped from their pins and one of her bows has fallen out.

“Enough chatter,” says Monsieur Guibaudet mildly. “Form into pairs and walk in front of me. Demoiselles, two at a time, and
one, two, three, and one, two, three . . . Mademoiselle de Tournehem, a little lighter on the feet! Mademoiselle de Semonville, do not bob your head so—you are a young lady, not a duck. Mademoiselle Poisson—beautiful, beautiful. The rest of you—notice the carriage of her head as she glides, arms at her sides, grace implied in every step.”

I pass Elisabeth and the other girls and smile lightly.

Back at home I run to Mama’s room, sobbing. Mama is on the bed with Abel, who is attacking our cat Freddie with his tin soldiers. I fling myself down beside them and burst into tears.

“Why do I have to go there? They are so hateful. They look down on me!”

“Now, dearest, no complaining. We are grateful to Norman for introducing you to his family, for they are very well connected.”

“They called me a smelly fish.”

“Even I will admit your father’s name is unfortunate, Reinette, but you must learn to bear cruelty with grace. The world can be a hard and hateful place.”

I bite my lip. “I don’t want the world to be a hateful place! Why can’t they just be nice to me? I’m nice to them!” Well, mostly, I think, remembering Elisabeth’s hair. But she probably didn’t even know I was mocking her.

“Don’t bite your lips, dearest, you will wear them away to nothing and then they’ll be as thin as Madame Crusson’s upstairs.” Mama sighs and runs her fingers through Abel’s hair. “I know how you like to be admired, dearest, but life is not always a fairy tale.”

“We should change our name, and then they won’t make fun of me anymore.”

Mama laughs, bitterly. “Never think that would change anything; they would just find something else to torment you with.”

“Fish are excellent creatures,” observes Abel. “Silent, and smart.” Abel is seven and is as annoying as little brothers are wont to be.

Mama leans over and fixes one of my pins back above my ear.
“I fear you are too soft, dearest Reinette. But don’t worry, one day you’ll make a brilliant marriage and then you will change your name.”

“I’ll probably marry a
Monsieur Poulet
—Mister Chicken,” I say glumly, thinking of my drawing master. I hate having a horrid name.

“Reinette! Don’t be so sulky. Smile, please. Now, I must go and find Sylvie—it’s almost six.”

Mama leaves but Abel stays behind and continues to besiege the cat with his tin soldiers. Despite his protests I grab one away and throw it on the floor, the hateful words of the girls still caught in my head. I chew my lips. And I have to go there again Wednesday.

I lie back on the bed and think about crying, but then I think of the king and I brighten. Those silly girls, they aren’t called
Reinette
and they don’t have a special destiny like mine. And when I am the king’s lover, they will have to be nice to me, and won’t ever call me nasty names again.

The clock strikes six and I roll over on the bed. Tomorrow the famous opera singer Monsieur Jelyotte comes for my singing lessons and I have four new songs to practice. He wants me to learn one hundred songs; I’m already at fifty-nine or sixty—I can’t remember which.

Chapter Three

I
wear my best dress, so stiff and formal I feel like I am being hugged by an iron mother. Uncle Norman has arranged a special dinner with my godfather, the great financier Jean Paris de Montmartel, who is also a good friend of my mother’s. My father used to work for Montmartel before he was exiled. An escaped goat, Sylvie in the kitchens told me, but I’m not sure what that means, and besides, Papa used to sell grain, not animals.

Uncle Norman is also in business with Montmartel; they lend people money and collect taxes, and own ships and companies. According to Uncle Norman, my godfather and his three brothers are so powerful they have all of Paris in their pockets. Montmartel is very rich and always splendidly dressed; tonight he wears soft white boots and a fine velvet coat embroidered with crimson lace. He brings with him the scent of a grander, more luxurious world.

During the meal Montmartel compliments me on my table manners and the dainty way I eat my asparagus.

“Thank you, sir.” I smile—Mama always says a pleasant smile is the best of dress and should be worn on all occasions. “I admire the way you boned your duck.”

The men laugh.

“She’s no shrinking violet, is she?” says Montmartel to my mother. “And fourteen: what a delightful age.”

Mama smiles at him, almost as widely as she smiles at Norman, and says that I am very independent, though soft when occasion demands. When the meal is over she turns to me and says, “Now, Reinette, as we prepared.”

“
Reinette
—I always thought nicknames vulgar, but this one suits our little girl entirely.” Uncle Montmartel settles back with
a spear of asparagus in one hand—he didn’t let the footman take the plate away—and a pinch of snuff in the other. Uncle Norman doesn’t like snuff; he says it causes excessive sneezing and he once knew a man who sneezed out his brains, right through his nose, and all because of too much snuff.

“Dear sirs, I shall now sing an aria from
Hippolyte et Aricie
for your pleasure.”

I stand and curtsy, then launch into the song, using my arms to declaim the most important lines, looking to Heaven and clasping my hands when I sing of my invincible heart.

I note that the men are staring at me with parted mouths and glazed eyes; I hope I am not boring them. Oh no—Mama also looks worried.

“Did I not do well?” I whisper when the evening ends and Norman is showing the great man to his carriage.

“No, darling, you were charming. But that dress—it is getting a little tight.”

I blush and turn away. It is true: I am starting to grow small breasts but I hoped no one had noticed.

“And that,” says Norman, reentering the room, “was the most powerful man in France.”

“Surely you jest, Uncle! The king is the most powerful man in France, and then there are his ministers, and all the dukes and princes? The cardinals?”

Norman shakes his head and sits back at the table, popping a grape into his mouth. He takes a gold coin from his pocket and spins it on the cloth.

“He certainly liked his asparagus, didn’t he?” says Mama in disapproval. “There’s hardly any left.” She takes the last stalk and drags it delicately through the spice dish before chewing it thoughtfully.

“You see, Reinette, that man, that man who ate nearly all the asparagus, as your mother has so rightly pointed out, well, he and his brothers have more of these”—Norman catches the spinning coin, glittering in the candlelight—“than anyone else in France.
Including our king. And so that makes him, and his brothers, the most powerful men in the country. Titles, birth, rank . . . those do not matter as they once did. Their power pales before the power of this here coin.”

Mama shakes her head and pours herself a glass of brandy.

“In my youth,” says Norman, flicking snuff grains off the tablecloth, “the great financier Crozat, as rich as Croesus but the son of a peasant, sold his daughter in marriage to the Comte d’Evreux. Poor girl—the comte refused to make, ah, I mean kiss her, saying he’d never debase himself with the daughter of a commoner. Though he did make full use of her enormous dowry.”

“Oh! Poor little girl!” How horrible: her husband would not even kiss her, and just because she was not a noble. Like me. But while the little Crozat girl was a great heiress, I am penniless. As enchanting as a sunset, Uncle Norman likes to say, but I don’t have any money.

“Those high nobles—they have their own way of looking at things. They are very resistant to change.” The old nobility are disdainful of the rich bourgeois like Uncle Norman, but also envious. Uncle Norman likes to say the starved old nobles carry their prestige and their birth around with them, as though it would feed and clothe them. Which it won’t, he always adds with a smirk. “But one day we will intermarry and rule, in a nobility based solely on merit.”

“Oh, tush, Norman, you do talk nonsense!” says my mother.

I am doubtful as well; everyone knows that rank and birth are very important. I think of the loathsome Poirot sisters at the convent and the special way the nuns treated them, and all because their uncle was a marquis with a position at Court. The way the nuns shunned the poorer girls. The shame I feel at the dancing lessons with the better-born girls.

I explain these things to Norman, but he just guffaws and over my mother’s protests plies me with brandy that makes me glow and giggle.

From Claudine de Saillac

Convent of the Ursulines

Poissy, France

June 10, 1737

Dear Jeannette,

Greetings to you, my esteemed friend, and thank you for the letter you have done the honor of writing me.

I am sorry to report that Chester flew away after that loathsome Julie Poirot forgot to close his cage. Now we have a new bird that Sister Ursula bought for us, but he has white feathers and is much smaller. Then he laid an egg. And he with no wife! Marie said that the Immaculate Conception might even happen to birds, but Julie said that if a bird has no soul, then how could it have an immaculate conception? No baby has come from the egg, yet, though we keep it warm in a nest of ribbons.

I am to leave the convent in September and return to Honfleur. My sister is staying behind; she wishes to consecrate her life to God and my parents have finally agreed. How I should love you to visit me in Honfleur! What I wrote last summer about the leaking roof and how boring it was and the wolves that ate my dog, I didn’t mean it; it is really very nice there and you must visit.

Write soon!

I remain your most respectful and esteemed servant.

Claudine