The Shadow Queen A Novel (25 page)

We jumped up when the doctor emerged. My heart sank, seeing his eyes. “I’ll accompany you down to the street,” I offered.

It was raining, so we stood under an arch in the courtyard.

“A cold humor is dripping from your mother’s head into her lungs.”

What did that mean?

“She has consumption,” he said, swallowing.

I recalled the stories told by country people in my youth, how a dog demon would take over a person’s body and eat his lungs. “What can we do?”

Docteur Baratil looked miserable. “Opium pills, if you can afford it. Laudanum, a new liquid form, is almost as effective and costs considerably less. Give her as much as she needs to be comfortable. Don’t hesitate.”

So.
Only comfort—not cure. Was she dying?

GASTON TURNED FROM
the wash-up area.

“The doctor says Maman is sick.” I slipped off my cloak.

“No. Blood,” he hummed.

I nodded. He hadn’t bled Mother—but then he hadn’t seen the point. “He said … He said it’s going to take time.” I kicked off my clogs, sending one flying.

I sat down, drumming my fingers on the table, staring at Mother’s annual contract. “Gaston, I’m going to suggest”—strongly, emphatically!—“that Maman not sign this contract.”

He stared, puzzled.

“Not this year.” Maybe, with a long period of rest, Mother would recover. Maybe Docteur Baratil was mistaken.

CHAPTER 43

A
thénaïs expected me back. She was approaching her final month and would be anxious, no doubt. After scrubbing Mother’s room clean; after hiring a neighbor’s daughter to come in every day to clear the garbage, gray water, and chamber pots; after deciding, yet again, not to tell Gaston—much less my mother—what the doctor had said, in truth; after persuading, with difficulty, Mother not to renew her contract for the year; after obtaining a vial of opium tincture and instructing the girl how to measure it out; after kissing my mother farewell and tucking her rosary under her pillow—I sadly took my leave.

“I’ll be back soon,” I promised. As soon as I could. Floridor and his wife, who lived close by, had kindly promised to look in every day, which was a comfort—but even so, I was heavy with concern.

I delivered the remaining silver écu to the Widow. (“There will be another coming,” I assured her, mentally figuring the necessities I would have to forgo in order to save that much.) Then, heart- and bone-weary, I instructed the driver of my hired coach to head back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It was raining again, a spring shower. I closed the cracked blinds against the dreary landscape.

Easter was coming. I would make my first confession, do every penance required for my many sins. I would pray for Mother’s recovery. (Surely the Virgin did not care if Mother was a player. Surely the Virgin knew her good heart.) I closed my eyes, tears spilling.

The rough tumbling of the coach wheels over cobbles jolted me awake. I wiped my cheeks dry. In the castle courtyard, a footman handed me down, protecting me from the rain with a leather ombrella.

I felt a guilty relief, stepping back into the ease of the Court. Perhaps here, in the realm of the blessed, prayers would be heard. Perhaps here, miracles were possible. I headed up the stone stairs to Athénaïs’s suite.

“The Marquise is in her chamber,” one of the maids informed me coolly.

I heard a man’s voice from deep within the apartment, the faint sound of a woman crying. “What’s happened?” I asked, alarmed, but the maid had insolently turned her back on me.

I hurried into the salon, burning at the slight. Athénaïs’s staff were in league against me, resentful that I was in a position of confidentiality and favor: the daughter of an actress, no less. Fortunately, I ate with Athénaïs, and not below in the kitchens with the others, where I would be left to starve, no doubt.

I paused, puzzling over a bumper of wine that had been spilled onto the Turkey carpet. Five thick candles were burned down, the wax pooling. Cats were sniffing at a broken dish, helping themselves to cake crumbs and pâté. (Pâté? During Lent?) I had only been gone for one day, and the place was in shatters.

Apprehensive, I headed toward Athénaïs’s bedchamber. I scratched three times on the door. No response. I tapped again, more insistently.

Monsieur Blucher opened the door. The
midwife
? Thunder. Had …?

“It’s your maid,” he said, turning to Athénaïs, who was stretched out on the bed, her arm dripping blood into a bowl, her other hand pressed against her mountain of a belly.

So
: the baby hadn’t yet birthed, I realized with relief. But why was she being bled? Some women believed that being bled when pregnant would make the child quick and smart—but Athénaïs was not of their number, I knew.

“You’ve taken enough out of me, Blucher,” Athénaïs said, rousing.

“Patience, Madame, the last bit is important.” Blucher checked the contents of the blood-bowl.

“Don’t ‘patience’ me, you idiot.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. I’d had a lifetime of experience steadying a wavering temper. “He’s going to do exactly as you say, Madame.” I glared at the doctor.

Blucher’s hands shook as he strapped Athénaïs’s forearm to stop the flow, then wound a long strip of linen around her wrist. “His Majesty wishes me to return later this afternoon,” he said sullenly, gathering his tools.

Athénaïs did not answer, her unbandaged arm now covering her eyes. I was startled to see that she was weeping.

I stepped into the parlor after the doctor. “Do you have anything to calm her?”

“We’re in Aries?” He checked the astrological charts in his girdle book. “Bleeding from the forehead is ill advised. A sleeping remedy, perhaps?”

“Thank you, but we have that.” Athénaïs was right. The man was a dunderhead. But why was she so distraught? “What happened, Monsieur?”

“There was a fulmination in the night, that’s all I’ve been told. When the emotions are strong, the life of a womb-infant is endangered.”

Truly! “You know the way out? Through La Vallière’s suite?” It wouldn’t do to have a midwife seen coming and going through the door to Athénaïs’s rooms.

MERCIFULLY, ATHÉNAïS HAD
fallen asleep. I set the bloodied bowl and rags outside the door for the chambermaids to deal with. I found a stick of incense in a dish on the cluttered toilette table and lit it to cover the lingering smell of blood.

Athénaïs stirred, opened her eyes, but then closed them again. “It’s cold,” she murmured, turning onto her side, pulling a feather comforter over her.

I refreshed the fire and lowered myself onto the chair close to the bed. Something had happened, but I would have to wait to find out. I would have to wait, too, before I could ask leave to return to Paris. I had been foolish to imagine I could absent myself so close to the baby’s birth. Patience, I told myself, leaning my head against the back of the chair, listening to rain pelting against the shuttered window, the wind howling.

ATHÉNAïS WOKE IN
early evening, as the call for Vespers was sounded. “Those damned bells,” she said, stirring.

“How do you feel?” Blood had soaked through her bandage: I would have to change it.

“I dreamt I tried to kill the Limping One with a knife,” she said with a loopy smile. “The holy whore.” She laughed weakly.

“Why would you have done that, Madame?” Had it only been a dream? “Hold still, please. I need to change this bandage.” I looked around for the supplies the doctor had left behind.

She laid her head back against the pillows. “Unfortunately, I didn’t succeed,” she said, using her free hand to wipe her eyes with a corner of a covering sheet.

I set her rebandaged arm down. “Keep it low, below your head.” I gave her two opium pills and a glass of wine.

Athénaïs downed the pills with big, gulping swallows. “Tant pis,” she said, handing the glass back to me.

I noticed a raised bruise on her cheekbone. She was regarded as the most beautiful woman at Court, but there were times, like this, when she looked not unattractive, but … I thought of the demons that could take over a soul. She was only twenty-nine, yet already she’d started to coarsen.

“The Limping One is with child,” Athénaïs informed me, her voice thin. “By His Majesty.”

I groaned in sympathy. The King had vowed to her that he no longer had relations with Louise de la Vallière, that she was his mistress in name only.

“He tried to stop me,” she said, closing her eyes.

It hadn’t been a dream. “What happened?”

“I tried to kill him too.” Her voice tremulous.

Mon Dieu. I’d seen the scorn Athénaïs sometimes showed His Majesty—treating him like some slow-witted shopkeeper—but to strike out at him! “You must rest, Madame,” I said breathlessly.
Calm.

NINE DAYS LATER,
Athénaïs’s throes came on while she was with the King. Her cry was sharp, helpless—different from her moans of passion.

“It’s begun,” I told Xavier. “Her pains,” I added, clasping my rosary. “She’s early.” Athénaïs wasn’t due for at least another week.

I heard another cry. The King appeared at the door in his frilly linens. “Her waters—” He held up his soaked sleeve.

Just after three of the clock in the dead of night, Athénaïs gave birth to a son, who emerged with some difficulty, the wrong end presenting. He was small, with one leg dwarfed, shorter than the other, and strangely turned. (Yet another deformed infant from Athénaïs’s womb: what did this signify?)

As soon as the baby was cut free, I swaddled and handed him to Xavier, who handed him in turn to Monsieur de Lauzun, Commander of the King’s Household, who was waiting at La Vallière’s door. Lauzun was to rush to an unmarked coach by the gate to the park and give the baby to the woman within—the masked Widow Scarron. The stealth procedure had all been worked out only days before. “Hurry!” I hissed. Before the baby began to howl.

Xavier disappeared, heading for La Vallière’s suite.

“Well done, Monsieur,” I told the midwife.

Blucher turned expectantly. I handed him a velvet bag of coins: the hundred gold louis were heavy. My own “reward” was only a tenth as much, but at least it would cover my family’s expenses for the next little while. “From His Majesty and La Marquise,” I said, looking over at Athénaïs, who had fallen, finally, into a deep slumber.

ON EASTER SUNDAY,
I pushed my way through the throngs outside the Convent of Récollets. I’d made my first confession. I’d revealed my concern that I wasn’t doing enough for my mother and brother, confessed to a slice of beef eaten during Lent, my sinful attachment to life at Court—the fine clothes, the food, the gaming, and partaking of spirits. I did not mention my visit to Madame Catherine. Athénaïs would not have wanted that revealed. I was keeper of her secret.

“I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life,” I said, fingering the coin I had brought to buy a prayer for Mother.

“Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.”

“For His mercy endures forever,” I intoned.

As I sat listening to the priest’s words of absolution, I tried not to think of his garlic breath, vowing, instead, to improve, to curb my eating (I’d gained yet another stone) and save my earnings in order to provide for Mother and Gaston.

I was assigned penance for my sins—one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and one Glory Be—yet even so, I felt burdened. Two nights before, La Vallière’s cries had filled our rooms. She miscarried, but quite violently, very nearly dying. Athénaïs’s response had seemed theatrical to me: staged. Something was amiss. She had woken several times in the night, tearing at her hair. “Catherine,” she’d hissed several times over.

“No, it’s me, Claudette,” I’d assured her soothingly, yet wondering: had Madame Catherine something to do with what had happened to Louise de la Vallière? Was it possible that Athénaïs had given her rival
poison
? I was Athénaïs’s confidential maid, but there were things even I did not know.

As I descended the church steps, lost in thought, a woman grabbed my arm. “Attendez!” A solemn procession was approaching. The King, dressed in a fox-collared robe, was accompanied by men of the Church.

Of
course
: he was touching for the King’s Evil that day, dispelling the disfiguring disease with a pat of his royal hand. That explained the hundreds of grotesques on the streets. They bowed their heads, murmuring prayers as the silent procession passed by—a powerful display of spiritual kingship.

I stood watching the ritual healing, the King’s solemn laying on of hands as he moved among the sufferers, sprinkling them with holy water, touching their tumors and making the sign of the cross over them. His Majesty went slowly through the motions of the ceremony with purpose. It was clear to see that he was moved by such suffering, clear to see that he longed to offer relief. With each cure—and there were many—people cried out with joy. It was proof—was it not?—of the miraculous nature of kingship, the Christ-like power of our good King.

Yet I knew all too well that players were often hired to perform the role of the “miraculously” healed—I’d done it more than once myself. Even so, I wept at the sight of a girl leading her mother away, embracing her so tenderly.

Was the miracle of the King’s touch nothing more than a performance? I longed to believe in wonders. How joyful I would be in the presence of a miracle. More than anything, I wanted my mother to be well. I wanted her to live.

CHAPTER 44

I
turned the handle of Mother’s door and pushed, but it held firm. I rapped several times, then pressed my ear against the planks. Not a sound. I put down my bags and rummaged for my big iron key to let myself in.

The door creaked open. Mother was standing before me like some ghostly apparition, dressed in a tattered nightdress and cap, a counterpane comforter hanging over her shoulders. “It’s
you,
” she said, reaching out for a wall to steady herself.

I embraced her. She was bone-thin in my arms.