The Sisters of Versailles (21 page)

We are at Rambouillet, only an hour from the palace. A small group of us have come on ahead and now it is evening and the king arrives. He joins us in the wood-paneled library, peevish and peckish.

“What a day, what a day. How nice it is to be gone from that tiresome place. Man, bring me a cup of something hot. Bouillon.”

“Darling, what is it?” Louise reaches up for a kiss. Since her position became known last year, Louise does not hesitate to make public her affections. Charolais tells me that everyone
finds it insufferable and all preferred her when she had to keep her love secret.

I watch them, curious. Louise clings to the king as a barnacle to a ship. Even when it is plain the king only wants to be with me, she refuses to leave, no matter how surplus we may make her feel. All the while Louis and I are growing more intimate and there are many evenings after supper when we retire, just the two of us, to one of his even more private rooms, where we are free to talk alone and kiss as we will. Louise never asks about these evenings; I think she prefers to pretend they never happen.

The king sighs again. “All Fleury can talk about are the peasants and the lack of flour at the markets. It appears serious.”

“The flower market?” asks Louise in a worried voice.

“That is right, my dear, no flour at the market. A cause for grave concern.”

“But why do the peasants need flowers? I don’t understand. Can’t they just gather them in the woods if they need them so badly?”

Meuse sidles up to join the conversation. “It is dreadful, sire, dreadful. Ruffec returned from the country with news that the situation is dire—hard to even have a peaceful dinner without the peasants gathering in the courtyard and crying their misery. Even worse, the only bread available was an inferior gray stuff—eating it caused his wife to chip a tooth.”

“And I’ve heard the peasants are eating grass, like animals,” adds Madame d’Estrées. “Shocking, simply shocking—have they no manners?”

“Ah, we must not believe these reports. We all know it is the peasants exaggerating and making drama as usual. Surely these are only fanciful tales, grown with the telling?” The Duc de Duras is another of the king’s intimates, a genial man with a tiny, prim mouth.

The king shakes his head. “But still, it worries me, worries me to no end. Of course, it is not my fault—nature I cannot control! We must have more public prayers, perhaps a whole week this time.”

“There is another solution, sire,” I say loudly, and the room falls silent.

“Now,
what would your pretty little head know about such matters?” queries the king, coming over to where I am seated by the hearth.

“Anything of interest to my sovereign is of interest to me.”

“Oh, Pauline, you mustn’t bother His Majesty with work, not here at Rambouillet. We must talk of lighter things.” Louise scuttles over and possessively puts her hand on the king’s arm. He casually detaches it, then removes his gloves to fret his hands over the fire.

“And so, Mademoiselle de Nesle, what would you propose?”

“The government should buy grain and store it, then resell it when it is scarce. If you don’t do that, grain speculators will, and they will keep the prices too high,” I reply promptly. I have become an avid reader of the
Gazette de France
and often pigeonhole Orry, the king’s controller general, to test my theories. I think the man replies to my questions more out of shock than anything else.

“An interesting proposition, mademoiselle; I have heard Orry talk of the same. You must tell me more, later. But for now I would change and ready myself for the evening’s entertainment.” He takes a glass of warm bouillon from a footman and signals to Bachelier. “I hope there will be duck on the menu tonight? And something tart for dessert, gooseberries perhaps?” I hear him say as they leave the room.

By the fire Louise stares at me with rather an empty look. One of the king’s greyhounds wanders over and nuzzles at her skirt. She tries to push it away, her eyes still on me.

“He really doesn’t like to talk about work once he leaves Versailles, Pauline,” she finally whispers. “Oh, get off me, dog. Why won’t it leave me alone?”

“You mustn’t confuse what you like, dear sister, with what the king likes. You’re not the only one who knows him well.” It is a deliberate arrow, but it is also the truth; we are daily becoming
closer, and try hard as Louise might, she is a fool if she doesn’t see it. Soon . . .

Charolais swoops in. She was in the carriage with the king; I had forgotten she was coming.

“So you presume to know what the king likes now, do you, dearest Mademoiselle de Nesle?” She is wearing an enormous cream cloak, patterned with purple and blue flowers, and she brings with her the cold and a strong scent of violets.

“I do know what he likes. He has become a good friend,” I say more smugly than I should. Sometimes triumph feels good, and anything that trumps Charolais makes me feel simply
superb
.

When we talk of the future—our future—Louis is most concerned about Fleury and what the “people of France” will say if he takes a new mistress.

“The people of France?” I quiz him. “What do you mean by that?”

“The common, ordinary folk. A lawyer or a shopkeeper or something. A peasant, even. They are a highly moral people, and I do not wish them to see or think of their king as a . . . libertine.” Louis has a deep, sonorous voice, water flowing smoothly over well-rounded rocks.

I don’t snort as I might for I see he is deadly serious. He really cares what a lawyer or a peasant might think of him! How strange. Certainly it would be nice to have the love of his subjects, but his right to rule comes from God, so at the end of it all, why should he care what “the people” think? This is not England: it is not as though they can chop off the head of their king if they are unhappy.

“Dearest, you are the
king
. You are above the opinion of the people—they have no right to cast judgment on you.”

There is silence. We are in the room assigned to me at Rambouillet, a cozy room, decorated in the Turkish style; the ceiling is painted a deep midnight blue dotted with a hundred silver stars and the thick stone walls are hung with luxurious tapestries.
Louis lies on the sofa looking up, lost in the heavens above. I am sprawled by his feet on the plush orange carpet with my hair unpinned. Charolais has shown me how to wash it with Moroccan oil to soften it, and make it less bristly.

The king runs his hands through my hair in a distracted circular motion. I appear relaxed but in fact I am ever alert. Though Louis likes to be pushed, even the most pliant branch must eventually break.

“But what judgment . . . what judgment it would be. Incest . . .”

“Louis, you mustn’t read those pamphlets!”

“It is rare I agree with them, but you know the injunction against sleeping with one’s wife’s sister. A law embedded in morality since the beginning of time.”

“But you aren’t
married
to Louise.”

“I know, I know. I am not sure if that makes it better, or worse. Still, the priest . . . He did mention incest.”

This is serious.

“Louis, you are not
married
to Louise,” I repeat. “If I were the queen’s sister, then perhaps there might be some concern—”

The king shudders and holds up a hand to make me stop. “Were that you were just Louise’s cousin, or unrelated. Then there would not be this added . . . complication.”

“But then you might never have met me. Nor I you,” I say lightly. I don’t like where this conversation is heading. If only I knew who was starting and spreading the stories around Paris. I tried to talk to Marville, the lieutenant general of police and a man fast becoming a friend, but he said that trying to stop the pamphlets and songs would be like trying to stop the wind: an impossible feat. Charolais claims they come from Maurepas, one of the king’s ministers and the son-in-law of Tante; needless to say, I don’t think we will be friends.

“I see, darling, that nothing bothers you, but I . . . I cannot say the same. My soul . . .” Louis is pensive and I see his mind is far beyond the room, far beyond the scattered stars and deep blue
depths of the painted sky above. “Sometimes I fear for my soul. It is not so much the judgment of the French people I fear, but the judgment of One much higher.” He sighs, the deep melancholy gloom of a much older man. “Sometimes I think I would give all the rest of my days if I could just turn back the clock to the time when I was a faithful husband to the queen, when I was a man who could stand straight before God. But then there was Louise . . .”

Louis was recently forbidden Communion by his confessor, a rat-faced old Jesuit called Father Lignières. Without confession he can no longer touch and cure the leprous. A small thing, I would think, and something he should be glad of—disgusting lepers!—but it weighs heavily on him. I smell Fleury behind this; everyone knows Father Lignières lives under Fleury’s scarlet robes.

This is dangerous and rather unexpected territory. I run my hands softly up and down his legs; we are not fully intimate, yet we are close in many ways. Louis knows the rules as well as I do and assures me he will find me a husband soon. This melancholic, spiritual man is a new Louis, and a rather worrying one. Louise had warned me of his black moods but I had assumed they were just a reaction to her company.

“But dearest, God understands. You cannot, you must not be chained to the queen, a woman who rejects you from her bed. God understands.” I make a mental note: Lignières must leave.

Louis continues to talk up to the ceiling. “When I was first with Louise, we would spend hours together, asking for forgiveness for our acts of sin. Hours we prayed, even as we sinned before and sometimes after. But gradually . . . I believe I have lost the way of the righteous, and that the only path ahead of me is the one that leads straight to Hell.”

But Louis’s moods are like spring winds that blow inconstant. He soon abandons his religious qualms, and his insistence on finding me a husband increases. I cannot agree more: What is taking him so long?

From Marie-Anne de la Tournelle

Château de la Tournelle, Burgundy

May 2, 1739

Dear Louise,

Greetings from Burgundy! I trust you and your husband are well and thank you for your news of Court. My news is not very exciting: my husband was home over the winter, but he has since gone again and will not be back for some time. We are deep in rains this spring: last week the river beside the château rose and flooded the kitchen cellars; our stores of apples and vegetables were completely ruined. Soon we may even be as hungry as the peasants! That is only a joke, of course.

How are you and, if I may be so bold, how is the king? I do apologize, but news of your relationship is quite open knowledge, so I do not think I am being impolite. We are sisters, after all. Hortense writes that Pauline is now at Court—how curious! She had heard some strange rumors—
very
strange rumors—but I am sure they are not true.

Is Pauline as ugly and foul as ever? Well, I suppose I should not write such things—imagine what Zélie would say!—but you all know that Pauline and I are not as close as perhaps sisters should be.

Thank you for the book you sent at New Year’s—how nice that you remembered I like La Fontaine’s poems!

Please accept this box of cardamom seeds that I send to you, grown by my own hand. Well, not my own hand, but Cook’s, though I did supervise everything and am very pleased at what we have been able to accomplish in our humble greenhouse. At the end of the summer I will send you some more of our quinces; the orchard here grows the most abundant and delicious fruit.

Please send me news of Court and Pauline.

Love,

Marie-Anne

From Louise de Mailly

Château de Versailles

June 15, 1739