The Sisters of Versailles (13 page)

Back in the real world, Pauline continues to bother me with mountains of letters that arrive with constancy every week. She wants me to find her a husband and bring her to Versailles. Or just bring her to Versailles. But that, as I have explained to her often, is much more difficult without a husband. And poor dear Pauline, she was never pretty and I’ve heard she has not improved with age. Though that is very unkind of me to say, it is the unfortunate truth.

I do not know who will take charge of her marriage. Papa is in Paris but unwell and unable to help his family; he seeks a cure
with an actress, who has experience playing the role of a kind nurse in one of Molière’s plays. And while Tante Mazarin got Marie-Anne married, I cannot ask for her help as we are no longer speaking; our relationship has gone from cordial to chilly to cold. She knows I have another lover and is constantly dropping her pincushion in front of me when we are sewing with the queen.

Of course, I could ask Louis . . . but I would rather not. Here is a little secret: though I am the mistress of the king, and should perhaps be very rich and powerful, I am not. Louis hates, but just hates, when people pester him for favors or seek advantage from him. This is understandable; people ask him for everything every day, at all moments. Just yesterday, the Marquis de Créquy was included in the hunt as a special favor over the death of his mother—a great friend of Louis’s old governess, Madame de Ventadour. He made Louis’s afternoon very difficult by continually talking about a court case involving a dead horse that he wanted settled. Louis was indulgent because the man was in mourning, and has two excellent staghounds, but then he made the mistake of not letting the matter drop.

“Yes, I could have easily granted his request, Bijou,” he complains later, stopping by on a visit. He won’t stay, but when he is irritable or worried he likes to wander the halls at night, disguised as a doctor with a silly old wig and accompanied by one of his valets. He has a secretive side to him; I know he likes to roam unknown, pretending he is a servant or a simple nobody.

I anxiously serve him a cup of hot coffee, glad that I bought that stove last week from the Duchesse de Rohan-Rohan. It is made of Meissen porcelain and was frightfully expensive, but it is useful that I might serve Louis something hot and quick on his nighttime promenades.

I bring him a plate of pastries from the afternoon. “Have an apple butter tartine, dearest. I know you love apples.”

He waves them away. “No, no. But I would have some duck. Oh, how I long for some duck!” He hasn’t taken off his cloak and sits in dejection at the table. I hate to see him like this, peevish
and irritable. I feel I should say something, urge him to stay and seduce him, but I am not very good at things like that. Instead I rub his back and murmur in his ear, until he shifts in annoyance. He sips his coffee then complains it is too hot.

“I should have him sent away. Créquy. Harsh, but it would send a message. A message, Bijou! My time at the hunt, it is sacred. When I am in the forest I am not the king, I am just a man on a horse. No one knows the burden it is to be a king.”

“I do, Twinkles, I understand.”

“Perhaps.”

“What a burden!”

“A burden. To be pestered thus, at all hours of the day and night.”

“Stay . . . please. I will . . . make you feel better. I could . . . ah . . . could . . .”

“No, no, enough. I would be alone. I shall walk the palace awhile, perhaps go up to the roofs. And it is so noisy here. Those dogs! You should really speak to Matignon.” He gets up. “Tomorrow . . .” He sighs. “Tomorrow the Hungarians again. Will I ever know peace?”

He leaves and I sit alone in the room and drink the rest of the coffee. The dogs in the apartment above mine continue barking; a pack of rangy wolfhounds as tall as my shoulders. I should ask the Comte de Matignon to take them away and board them at the kennels, but I don’t have the courage. I could ask Louis, of course, and in one lift of his finger he would take care of it. Could a
lettre de cachet
be used for a dog? But I cannot ask that favor of him. I vowed long ago never to ask him for anything, for why would I want to distress the man I love?

Marie-Anne

BURGUNDY

1736

I
must confess that
I am becoming intrigued by the physical side of our relationship. It is very amusing to see a man become a pleading mess if denied the touch of a certain part of one’s body or if one’s finger presses ever so slightly on another part. My goal these days, in addition to finishing all five volumes of Piganiol’s
New Descriptions of History and Geography of France
, is to see how far and how fast I can reduce JB to quivering quince jelly, and for what length of time. The advantage is that now he will do anything for me, so instead of having a husband whom I must obey, I now have a husband who will obey me.

I find myself waiting eagerly for his trips home. Before, JB never visited Burgundy more than once a year, preferring to spend his free time at his Paris house with his atrocious mother—who, I am pleased to report, is now ill and bedridden—but these days he makes every effort to come to Burgundy and see me. I await him with anticipation, for as the months pass, I am beginning to understand what all the fuss is about. Between the sheets. I have caught the shadows, so to speak, or JB has caught them for me.

Now I spend the time between our reunions scouring the library for inspiration and education. Unfortunately the books there tend to much drier matters, but I did find one very interesting little tome, from India I think. I could not understand the writing, but oh, the pictures! Very informative. So much to do! Even with only two bodies the number of possibilities is quite extraordinary.

Soon we are well practiced and are spending rather too much time in the bedchamber. I have moved our bedroom into a tower room—for the views, I say, but also for the privacy; at the best of times the château still teems with far too many people and the doors are old and ill-fitting.

I open the door a crack to the impatient knocking.

“He’s still indisposed,” I say serenely to JB’s steward. JB is only home for a week this time and I have no intention of allowing him to be dragged into boring estate discussions with servants. I close the door firmly; I will not relinquish JB a moment before I need to.

I go back to the bed and JB pulls me to him.

“Only old Viard.”

JB sighs. He has a very skinny neck and a prominent Adam’s apple and his ears stick out far from his head like two small pies. He might be a good-looking man when he is older, but for the moment he is rather gangly and unformed. But strong and eager.

“I suppose I must go to the docks. He has been writing me constantly—too many regulations.” JB’s land includes some fine timber and the logs are cut here and float all the way up the river to Paris.

“Friday, darling, Friday. Visit with him on Friday. And take care of the village priest while you’re out—tell him he’ll have his roof next year—he’s been bothering me far too much. And be sure to pick up some eels when you are at the river; they are supposed to be superb. Now, let’s focus on your eel.”

JB laughs and lies back. “Sometimes you talk like a camp follower. Not only the words, but the mind as well.”

I encircle him gently and gaze into his eyes. I hold the gaze as I feel him growing between my fingers. He gulps and I breathe deeply.

“Do you . . .” I know what I want to ask, but do I want to hear the answer? “Do you—have a camp follower?” I tighten, ever so slightly.

He shakes his head and I believe him.

“Why should I make do with a camp follower when I have
you? You, madame my wife, are far more glorious than any camp follower. Besides, they’re usually fat, and rather dirty. And they don’t have your breasts . . .” He reaches out for mine and I let him caress them for a while. Oh. I feel my breath quickening.

“Wait.”

I push him back on the bed and straddle him. He starts to shake his head.

“No, I cannot, it’s too soon.” The sun hasn’t reached the height of the sky but we have been at it all night.
It
—what pleasure.

“Shhh . . . You have more in you than you can consider. I know your bone like the back of my hand. And I want to give you a gift. Better than pickled cherries.”

He shakes his head again. I lean in to kiss him then I slide my tongue down his chest and want to go farther south still.

“No, cherish, not that. We have already discussed this. I am sure, quite sure, the priest would not approve.”

I chafe at the hands that hold my hair: if I can’t explore the world, at least let me explore the body of my husband. I continue my journey, pulling against his hands. Besides, I know he never resists for long.

“No, no, it is not clean. The priest . . .”

A little nibble as I reach my target. A sharp intake of breath from JB. He tries to pull my head away but at the last minute pushes me in. I close around him and I know all the thoughts of the priest are gone.

“Oh,” sighs JB. “Oh, Heaven.”

Then he leaves and I feel empty inside. I’m not in love with JB—I fear I am a cold person and will never truly be in love—but I certainly like him, and he is a welcome and pleasurable distraction from the monotony of country life. I have ceased to be interested in visits and suppers with the provincial
comtes
and
marquis
that JB knows from childhood. In fact, I rarely leave the château these days, and I especially avoid the village priest when he comes knocking with his endless petitions about the deplorable state of
the stone church in town. I have a few small domestic concerns to occupy me; JB made me promise to make sure that Cook would pickle enough cherries to last through the winter. I did that.

The library continues as solace—and my current passion is for books of exploration and far lands. After I finish Piganiol, I read Las Casas and learn about the savages in New Spain, and then I devour Matteo Ricci’s
Christian Expeditions to China
. Fascinating. That people and places could be so different. There is a globe in the library, similar to one we had in the nursery in Paris. Sometimes I spin it and trace my fingers until it stops, and declare that that place shall be my destination. If I were a man I would join the navy and sail around the Cape of Good Hope and on to India, and then I would go to America and grow indigo in Saint-Domingue, and then I would . . . Everything. I would see the world.

Instead, I am in Burgundy, dying ever so slowly of boredom. I do, however, have a new hobby. Our cook interested me in a scheme to grow herbs and spices in a disused set of stables close to the main château. Garnier is a very enterprising young man, and, frustrated by the high prices of the spices demanded by the dishes he wished to prepare, he decided to try growing them himself. Though the cultivation of spices is but an extension of farming and peasant work, I am discovering that there is a limit to the life of the mind. Too much reading has left me hankering for something a little more
real
. If that is the right word.

The roof of the stable had fallen in, so we replaced it with a series of windows to let in the sun. We insulated the rooms and heat them with a collection of braziers. We have a row of ginger root, some precious vanilla orchids as well as many herbs, including mint and marjoram. I am not sure if the whole undertaking is actually economical; the cost of the coal for the braziers must be taken into account . . . but nonetheless I take a strange delight in tending to the plants as they emerge from the ground and begin their struggle for existence, some of them so far from their native lands.

Often I spend solitary afternoons in our little hothouse, surrounded by the spicy pungence of the plants and herbs. I like to imagine I have traveled a long way, to the hot islands where they belong and which I shall probably never see.

Sometimes when we work in the greenhouse together I can feel Garnier’s eyes on me. He is a young man, not much older than me, and he speaks with a husky voice that is both rough and tender. Something inside me wants to turn and meet his gaze, to uncover and to learn: Would it be the same as with JB? But too much holds me back. He’s a cook, of course, and smells, though not unpleasantly, of sweat mixed with spices and fruit. But what if we were discovered and JB decided to keep me here, forever, as punishment? No, the risk is too great.

I think.

From Louise de Mailly

Château de Versailles

November 16, 1736

Dearest Pauline,

Thank you so very much for all your letters! The nuns must be very generous with their paper, but please do not waste ink and quills on my account.

I am glad you are enjoying life in the convent and that both you and Diane continue in good health. I too am fine; I had a slight toothache last week but nothing that clever Monsieur Pelager, a very renowned dentist, was not able to cure. He prescribed a powder of lead and mint, and it was just the thing. Please let me know if you would like me to send you some, and how your teeth are doing.