The French Bride (20 page)

CHAPTER SIX

The evening reception in the Oeil de Boeuf was as crowded as usual; the warm weather increased the discomfort of those who had spent all day hurrying from one part of the palace to another, and following the tireless King's hunt for the whole afternoon. Everyone was hot and ill-tempered and the plight of the women in their heavy headdresses and enormous, swaying gowns was pitiful. Even the prettiest were scarlet-faced and limp. The Baroness de Vitale, usually so cool and elegant, was fighting her way through the press of people, her face drawn and white with fatigue.

‘The Comte de Tallieu,' she demanded, again and again, ‘have you seen him?' At last someone obliged her; the comte was in a corner by one of the enormous windows, all of which were tightly closed against the dangers of fresh air. Louise saw him leaning against the wall, fanning himself wearily and talking to the Duchesse de Luynes. He saw Louise coming, without appearing to take his eyes off the illustrious lady to whom he was speaking; and he noted her extreme pallor and the shadows under her eyes and decided they had nothing to do with the foul atmosphere and the hot weather. Louise, as he often spitefully remarked, had the constitution of a horse and the energy of a man. Something was wrong. She endured a few moments of agony while the duchess, ignoring her existence, continued to talk to De Tallieu and finish her assault on a mutual friend's reputation. The duchess enjoyed the sinister creature's company in much the same way as she was amused by a pair of grotesquely deformed little pages. Both were perverted by Nature, both possessed intelligence of a high degree. Their innate malice made them the best companions in the world when one was bored.

‘Ah,' the comte said at last. ‘My dear Louise; how disarranged you look! Isn't this place infernal? I don't know why one puts up with it, year after year.' And he sighed and fanned himself.

‘I must speak to you,' Louise said. ‘I've been looking for you since this afternoon when that damned hunt was finished. Something terrible has happened. Can't, we go out into the corridors; it's impossible to speak a word here without being overheard!'

Together they pushed their way through the crowds, edging along the side of the salon until they reached the doors; there still remained the Salles de Venus and de Diane which were as crowded as the Salon Oeil de Boeuf itself.

At last they were in the corridors, and there were recesses there where it was possible to speak in private; by the great marble Ambassadors' Staircase there were places more private still, covered by curtains and furnished with a couch for the convenience of lovers who needed a half hour or so alone. There had even been instances of rape carried out in these niches. As its devotees said, everything one needed in the world to be amused was at Versailles.

‘Now,' De Tallieu said. ‘Speak out, my dear, and tell me what has chased the roses from your charming cheeks.' He giggled.

Louise held out a creased and dirty piece of paper. ‘This came this afternoon,' she said.

The comte, unrolled it with distaste; he was fanatically clean in his person and caused much amusement by frequent washing of his hands and regular bathings of his whole body, which as everyone know was extremely dangerous to the health.

‘Ill-spelt and ill-written, but I think I can make it out,' he said. ‘Mme. Macdonald is in an interesting condition.' He gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘It may revolt me, my dear, but I fail to see why you're distressed. You have the husband safe now, they've separated and the word is it will reach the courts. What do you care if she's as swollen up as a balloon or not? I suppose it's the mercenary's bastard?'

‘No,' Louise said slowly. ‘It isn't. She was never his mistress. Charles believed that and he's no fool. This child is his.'

The reptilian eyes glittered at her.

‘How can that be,' he said softly. ‘If he took no notice of her, as you so often told me?'

‘I lied,' she said fiercely. ‘I didn't want you to know; I knew how you'd sneer at me. He used to visit her here. He told me. When I objected, he laughed in my face and said he liked variety. As for possessing him now—' She turned her back to him; she had begun to tear her handkerchief to shreds. ‘He's like a tiger since she left him. He's so difficult, so quarrelsome and cruel. I don't know how to bear it.'

One thing she still kept back; no one should ever know that often when they came together now, Charles threw her off and would not touch her.

‘He isn't happy, then?' De Tallieu enquired.

‘No,' she admitted, ‘he isn't. His family have all disowned him. His father threatened him with the Bastille if he molested his wife again. I should be more patient.' She was desperately trying to calm herself and recover the composure that had deserted her completely when she received that note.

‘He will settle down with me eventually,' she went on. ‘I know that. Everything would have been all right between us – if this hadn't happened!'

‘And now it has,' the comte said. ‘Tell me the truth, Louise, or I won't lift a finger to help you. No lies now, I warn you. What will this news mean to him?'

‘It'll bring him back to her,' she said. She turned to face him once again, her eyes blazing in her ashen face. ‘You want the truth, my friend? Then you shall have it. He loves her. He doesn't realise it yet himself, but I know that he does. He's lost her now, you see, and he never really meant to let her go. If he discovers this, nothing will keep him from getting her back. I told you once' – her voice was almost a whisper –‘if I lose him, I shall die.'

‘Hmmm.' The comte closed his fan with a sharp snap. As a boy, his tutor had made private reports to his parents that their son showed remarkable mathematical powers and a truly amazing quickness of mind which might well advance him in the service of the King. Unfortunately, these gifts lay fallow, unsummoned except in the pursuit of a piece of feminine mischief or the necessity to extract money from his neglected estates. ‘You really need to get rid of her, don't you?' he said at last. ‘Before the happy news is conveyed to her husband.'

‘Yes.' Louise swung around on him, grasping his sleeve. ‘Yes, that's what I want – to get rid of her! But how? I know she's leaving for her damned château, but that's not far enough away! What am I going to do?'

‘Let go my sleeve, you're making horrible creases,' he said, ‘and listen to me for a moment. I can tell you what you will have to do, but I haven't yet thought out how you're going to do it. You need Madame to disappear for ever, she and her child together, isn't that so?'

‘Yes,' Louise said. ‘For ever, where he can never find them.'

‘Then you must get a
lettre de cachet.
'

The comte took out a little gold snuff box and inhaled a few grains. ‘From the King,' he went on. ‘We must think of some favour to do him, some little kindness.… You dare not offer yourself, for fear that your dear friend the Du Barry might wreak her vengeance upon you, or rather that cur D'Aiguillon; he watches over her interests like a panther. It would have to be something else. Or someone else.…' As he talked, his mind was speeding ahead with a dozen alternatives, discarding one after the other. The woman opposite him had not said a word, only her lips formed the dreaded words –
lettre de cachet
– silently, as if they were too terrible to speak aloud. The
lettre de cachet.
The means of having her rival arrested in secret, taken in a closed coach to any fortress in France – no, not any fortress, the one fortress from which escape was impossible – the Bastille itself! The power to bury her alive in a cell, deprived of identity, without word from any living soul outside, abandoned, forgotten, her fate a secret which would never be divulged. She leant back and closed her eyes.

‘Show me how to get it,' she whispered. ‘That's all I ask. Show me how to get a
lettre de cachet
for her as soon as possible.'

‘Give me until tomorrow,' the comte said. ‘I have an idea, but it needs thinking out; I don't want to spoil it.' He turned and smiled at her. ‘What a diversion! Getting rid of that insufferable creature who had the ill manners not to ask me to her ball, perhaps even doing a little disservice to someone else whom I can think of – apart from being a kind friend to you, my dear … I feel like a guardian angel! Come to this place at ten tomorrow morning. I shall have something definite to propose to you by then. Now let us go back and speak no more about it. One word gets out and we are lost you know, and he will be back with the wife of his bosom. Keep your tongue still from now on, except to me.'

At the entrance to the Oeil de Boeuf, he turned to her once more. ‘You are quite sure you have no scruples about this?' he whispered.

Louise gave him a look from blazing eyes.

‘Scruples? Don't be ridiculous!'

‘That's what I thought,' the comte said gaily. ‘You really are a wicked bitch, my dear.' Then the crowd swallowed them and they disappeared into the salon.

The King had been suffering from one of his blackest fits of melancholy. His ill-humour lay over the court like a blight. He had yawned through the performance of the opera arranged by the dauphine Marie Antoinette and sat in gloomy silence during one of the Du Barry's most lascivious evening entertainments. Even the favourite's gay spirits were damped by his continuing refusal to be amused, and his ministers suffered from his indifference to the most pressing state affairs. Even hunting palled on him and this was a bad sign indeed. There were rumours that his daughters, the implacable Carmelite Louise in particular, were plaguing him to abandon his mistress and be reconciled with the Church. It was a situation that occurred every Easter when His Majesty was unable to receive the Sacraments because of his scandalous private life with the Du Barry, and every year it had been fraught with danger for her. Worse still, there were the times when he fell ill and her enemies crowded round his bedside, warning him of eternal damnation if he were to die in mortal sin. But now there was no religious problem and no deterioration of his health to account for the change in his relations with his mistress and his obstinate depression.

The court had been whispering for weeks that if a woman able to cure his melancholy was introduced to him, Du Barry would be sent into retirement. As the palace clocks struck ten the next morning, Louise was waiting in the niche in the long corridor by the Ambassadors' Staircase. She had not seen Charles the previous night; her maid Marie had returned with a message undelivered. She was unable to find him and no one knew where he had gone. Louise had spent the night pacing her room in a fever of jealousy; only Marie's pleading restrained her from ordering her coach in the small hours and setting out for Paris to see if he had gone to the Hôtel de Bernard. The comte was a few minutes late and only her desperate need of him prevented Louise from berating him for keeping her waiting.

‘We must be quick,' he said, ‘or we shall be late for the royal Mass. I have thought it out very carefully and I am sure it can be done. Look over there, you see my little Gaston?'

Louise looked towards the young page boy who was the comte's latest acquisition, a handsome boy of fourteen dressed in his master's green and gold livery, his petulant face rouged and powdered like a young girl's.

‘He is a treasure,' De Tallieu murmured. ‘The best I have ever owned. I'm delighted with him. I have a special place where I purchase these little creatures, did you know that? No, well, I will tell you about it. There's a woman in the Quai d'Orée who has an establishment; not a very pleasant place perhaps, but stocked with the most interesting and – er – varied wares if one has the money to pay. That's where I found Gaston. I always go there. The Du Barry goes there too, and so do many others who have special needs. Now pay attention. The King is in a bad humour, yes? Before long, the charming comtesse will be on her way to the Quai d'Orée to find some little gift to cheer him up, some ornament for the Parc au Cerf. My plan is that you should go there first and make the purchase.'

Louise gasped. ‘You mean find a girl for the King? You must be mad … how could I introduce her …? It's impossible.'

‘Not at all.' De Tallieu smiled. ‘I can arrange the details of the introduction. There are a number of people who would be glad to help if they thought it would harm the Du Barry. But you must choose the girl, my dear. You must go there and explain to the creature who owns the place that you have a special friend in mind; none of her ordinary little pock-marked whores will do. This must be a virgin, and worthy of her destiny. Mme. Grand-mère will understand. It will cost you a fortune, but I beseech you, do not haggle or she will palm you off with something that won't do at all.'

‘I have money,' Louise said. ‘I can pay anything she asks.'

‘Good, good. Disguise yourself, of course. You have a great deal to do, my dear, and not much time. Go to the Quai d'Orée tonight and take a couple of strong fellows with you, armed in case of trouble. It's not a savoury part of the city.'

‘I know where it is – it's in the beggars' quarter, where every thief and prostitute and murderer in Paris lives,' Louise said. ‘Won't you come with me? You'd know better who to choose.'

‘Ah no.' The comte shook his head. ‘I will play my part here, and you must play yours. Besides, I have no idea what kind of woman appeals to men. I abhor the creatures myself.'

‘I'll go alone then,' she said. ‘I'll buy one of these girls and keep her hidden. Then what must I do?'

‘Give money to the lackeys you take with you and send them out of Paris. There must be no witnesses, no gossiping. I will arrange for you to bring the girl to the King's private cabinet tomorrow night. That much I promise you. If you have chosen wisely, you may ask for your
lettre de cachet
before the morning, and I swear you'll get it. It's been done before at such an hour. No one will ever know. How you apply it and where you place Madame for safekeeping is up to you.'