Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) (36 page)

My dear Friend,

Having just received the dreadful news of the death of your most dear mother, I hasten to write that my deepest sympathy is entwined with your sorrow at every moment. I know your nature and how its sweetness and sensitivity also make it vulnerable to the most profound feelings of loss. Let me express the idea that I hope will be consoling to you that even as you ache for your loss you are honoring her.

I know perhaps better than anyone that you have the ability to continue an intimacy based on spiritual affinity; thus, your spirit and hers can never be truly separated. Death is not an insurmountable barrier, no more than are our earthly constraints of place and time.

I know this letter will be some weeks in reaching you across the waters of the broad Atlantic, yet as you hold it in your hand, now, in this moment, you are aware that my spirit is with you. What matter time and place?

So it is with your beloved mother. Look for her in your heart. You will find her there.

I can write to you now that my men and I are in good spirits. We have been forced to stay here in Rhode Island during the previous summer and winter while a heavily armed British warship patrols the harbor.

I have tried to imagine sometimes how the officers on the deck of the British ship are thinking. Surely, they must think they own the world. They take it for granted they have the right to hang any man who is not where he should be, and they have surely destroyed letters from my dear sister Sofie, whose health is always of great interest to me.

Our soldiers have been pinned down this long winter. I am sure you can imagine their restlessness and despair—so far away from their loved ones and from the nightlife of Paris. I have had to choose my words carefully in talking with the other officers. Otherwise, we get involved in pointless arguments.

Tomorrow, we set off for Philipsburg and then New York. There are hundreds of men in my force and Lafayette surely has a thousand more. Together with Washington’s army we will surely prevail.

In October, I met George Washington outside of Hartford. He is the most famous of men—a hero in our times. His beautiful face is mild and polite showing his moral character. He is cool, speaking few words and yet he is good-natured and kind. There is a sadness in his eyes that intrigues me. His men walk in the snow, many of them without shoes. If they must, they leave a crimson trail of footprints, yet they march on. All about me is the spirit of courage.

You, too, most dear of women, possess such courage. You are not alone, nor will you ever be.

Faithfully, your servant

My bravest friend,

It is exactly as you said. My eyes devour your words; my fingers hold your pages tenderly between their tips, and your spirit is with me. Inside myself, I always hold you dear, but with this tangible connection, I feel I exist inside the aura of your compassion. Light fills my soul when you remind me that you are with me and will be always.

I would have you feel my presence, despite the paradox of my absence, just as strongly. Sometimes I fear that you feel alone—that my spirit is not robust enough to be a real presence in your life. Yet, I do not want you to think of me too much! I want you to be free to meet whatever dangers lie in America with your full attention.

The loss of my mother sits like a stone in the base of my throat. At this point, it is a smooth stone, a weight, an impediment to happiness, but my swallowed tears have worn it smooth. In the first month, I felt the stab of the sharp edges and rough cruelty of her death.

To you, in whom I can safely confide everything, I can speak the truth of how I loved my mother and how I treasured every sign of her affection for me. At the same time, I was sometimes afraid of her. I feared not her person but her displeasure. With her death, I feel that she has forgiven me my shortcomings, that from her heavenly position she understands my human frailty and weakness.

It is particularly in relationship to my gambling mania that I feel forgiven. (What a luxury it is not to feel the need to conceal from you anything about myself!) I wasted vast sums of money at the tables. I cannot excuse myself. Never! But from this perspective in time, I do feel that I lived in desperation then. I felt like a toad. No wonder my husband shunned my bed. My fear of losing money, my desire to win astonishing riches were like an intoxicant. Worse, I’m sure, than any wine or spirits. At the tables, I entered a trance, as some are said to do when they communicate with the dead. There I escaped from my own body, my lack of charm, my bad chin, my too large lower lip, my uneven shoulders. You have seen them all, yet you never see my imperfections. You do not wish to change me.

But my mother always hoped for my improvement.

Sometimes I am filled with the anguish that I may have disappointed her. Then I think of you and bask in the glow of your affection.

I am grateful to God for allowing our bond to exist. That your friendship with my husband is as steadfast as that for myself makes my happiness complete.

I pray for your safety. I wish I could envision you more exactly in that raw country across the water. As my mother used to write to me, I delight in knowing all the details of your daily life. I think that you must find their General Washington an admirable leader? Though he lacks noble blood, I am sure he would be at home in the Hall of Mirrors here at Versailles, just as Monsieur Franklin was.

Sometimes I look at our nobility and think what a worthless lot they are! Have you ever felt so? Once the King said so, when he discovered us playing forbidden games at the gambling tables. He never scolds. I am ashamed to say how many times he paid my debts.

Our debt to you for your allegiance to France—yes—but for your personal friendship and devotion can never be paid. Yet you can be sure that it is met in kind.

I reread this letter and see that I have not accounted for my escape from the bouts of hysteria that could be dissipated only by immersing myself in gambling. Becoming a mother has given me fulfillment. Being known by the dearest of friends is like having an angel who guards my happiness.

A new happiness is that I am pregnant again. Of course we hope that this child will be the longed-for heir to the throne, but in any case I await with impatience the moment when I lie down to begin my labor. Almost, I want the pain of it. I relish the thought of being filled—brim-full—with my pregnancy.

At no moment do I forget you! The thought of you—just the thought—makes all my moments joyful.

The so-called Nords
arrive today, but they are really the heirs, traveling incognito, to the throne of the Tsarina Catherine of Russia. It is one thing to act the part of the Queen of France among mere nobility, another when royalty are to visit. As I watch their splendid coach approach the Marble Courtyard, I drink a large glass of water to try to steady my nerves. At least my Rose Bertin has been so kind as to tell me the “Duchesse de Nord” has ordered the most fashionable clothes possible in which to appear so that she will not be nervous about her clothes during her visit to Versailles.

Suddenly my stage fright melts away, and I feel every fiber of my body vibrate with confidence and graciousness. This is Versailles, built to daunt visitors from any part of the world.

I
T IS THREE O’CLOCK
in the morning and still they have not left, but the supper was exquisite, and in the Peace room I arranged for a performance of Gluck’s beautiful music from
Iphigénie en Aulide.
Many more fetes are to follow, and of course each must be more magnificent than the one before.

H
EAVENS
! The tsarevitch has confided the most inappropriate information about his mother to me. My face must have blushed scarlet. Certainly the Hapsburgs never stoop to revealing such private secrets. And then the tsarina has had the effrontery to mention the name of Madame du Barry. I simply reply that she has been provided for with a lavish home at Louveciennes.

“And when did she move there?” the Duchesse de Nord inquires.

“I believe it was about two years after the death of Louis XV,” I reply. “I do not keep track of her life.”

“But your brother visited her, did he not? Joseph II reported she was happy.”

To that stunning piece of information I make no reply. Can they not detect that silence signals detour! New conversation, please.

Instead, the tsarevitch adds, “I understand the Duc de Brissac has made her happy and that his sickly wife takes no notice.”

“De Brissac is said to be of a sweet disposition, as well as handsome and tall,” the tsarina gushes.

I wish that I could pinch her lips closed. “For the final night of your visit,” I announce, “we will have a grand masked ball in the Hall of Mirrors.”

I
COULD NOT
be more pleased with my costume for the ball. In a dress of shiny silver gauze, my head topped with enormous white ostrich plumes, fastened by diamond pins, I represent Gabrielle d’Estrées, the mistress of Henri IV. My pregnant state is not overly noticeable, as the outline of my figure is diffused in the misty gauze.

With our reflections in the mirror and the reflections of the thousands of blazing candles, the Hall is enchanting with its glow and sparkle. In a way it seems a simple thing—that the Russians should come to call from St. Petersburg, that so much distance could be traversed, and all of us, for all our glittering finery, are after all mere people. How could I have forgotten such a fact a few days ago when I watched their coach arrive and wondered if I could adequately play my part? Still, I will be glad for their departure.

Just as the customary fireworks begin to ignite the sky, another color catches my eye: red. The red of stockings! And who would wear red stockings to this occasion? And who would dare to come without an invitation? The Cardinal Louis de Rohan! Would that he lived in Strasbourg or even Vienna!

Immediately, I demand to know who admitted him. How contemptuously pitiful that when he found himself not welcome at the ball for the Nords, he should so much desire to be present that he would stoop to bribery!

The answer is that he bribed a porter. His deceased uncle, the old cardinal I met in Strasbourg, would turn crimson with shame.

O
NCE THE PORTER
was identified, I had him dismissed from service, but dear Madame Campan has had him reinstated. She did it so simply. One evening after the departure of the Russians, Madame Campan was reading me to sleep with a fairy tale about a serving boy who offended a queen. Her dismissal of him caused his family to suffer terribly from hunger. I shed a tear or two, and my dear Reader asked if we could not allow our porter to resume his duties after all.

I am glad that I said yes. A slight, wise smile hovers at the corners of Madame Campan’s mouth. Everything about her balances: the two corners of her mouth, her smoothly curved cheeks, her mild eyes, the poufs of powdered hair on each side of her face, the simple sheer white scarf that encircles her shoulders and is tied in a knot between her bosoms, her inclination to balance justice and mercy. She offers no excuses for the intrusive cardinal and his telltale red stockings but just for the porter who accepted the cardinal’s bribe.

I awake to
gentle rumblings in my belly. These subterranean grippings are certainly recognizable to me: a child wishes to be born. But I do not attend to the process immediately; instead I drift back to sleep. (Perhaps I am remembering how long the process of giving birth took with my first child; just now, I do not wish to rush headlong into this protracted event.)

I dream of the latest visit of my brother, the Emperor Joseph II, a short visit. At that time, I was seven months pregnant. My brother was as kind to me as ever, indeed in my dream he is so proud that he struts as though he himself were the father.

Then the dream turns dark, and he is replaced by my friend Yolande de Polignac. “Never mind,” she says, “I am the true father.” I gnash my teeth with anguish, for I imagine these words emerging from her mouth in a little balloon, as in the crude drawings of the obscene pamphleteers.

Then a birth pain rocks me, and I wake up. I puzzle for a moment as to what has yoked my brother and my friend in this distasteful way. And I remember. The dream is my revenge: she has been critical of him. No wonder, perhaps. Even at his first visit, in the midst of my joy at our reunion, my brother had scant good to say of my new friend’s character or of her circle. He only wished to guide me because he loves me; however, I find that I do not tolerate her criticism of him very well. I feel the cooling of my love for her because of it.

The thought terrifies me, and I vow to make some appropriate gesture that will bring her back close to me again. I banish the impulse to plan: I have work ahead of me, and I wish to be of clear and pure mind while I do it.

Another cramp seizes my abdomen. Still it is not severe. How strange to be in no hurry—none at all. I ask for my bath.

As I luxuriate in the warm water, I think that I resemble a great turtle, with its humped shell on backward. I think lazily of how I float in the tub, and the babe floats in me.

“Shall I cancel the hunt?” I hear the King say at the door.

I rake my spread fingers through the bathwater. I envision the King riding through the forest in pursuit of a wild-eyed stag, its antlers lifted high.

“Yes,” I say, and realize I have meant to say no, but that none of it makes any difference. Yes, I am in the soft grip of my body now, and what the rest of the world does or doesn’t do is of little concern. Soon, nature will squeeze me hard. I hold out my hand to be helped over the edge of my tub, for it would not do to take a fall now.

I allow myself to be dried, my big belly buffed a bit with towels. It is a rich moment. I feel like a pomegranate and wish that my skin could take on its hue, a blend of orange and red and rose, a streak of gold, some drops of black, the little crown on its top fit in shape if not in size to sit atop the head of a royal babe, a boy who would be king. I am a pomegranate mother.

Yes, I think, it has come about, it is coming about—all these events—as my mother promised before I left my country. I see her now, a dark wedge at her desk; she rises:
You will copulate, you become pregnant, nine months later you give birth, you will give France an heir. They will say I have sent them an angel.

Suddenly I shake my head to clear it of these dreamy thoughts.

“This time,” my husband says, “only a few will be present. The Princesse de Lamballe, the Comte d’Artois, Mesdames Tantes…” He goes on to name only a few more, and I think of his goodness to break with the traditions of over a hundred years, to give me a modicum of privacy.

“No.” I smile at him. “Not like before, this time.”

Again, I approach the little white birthing bed and lie down, unafraid, curious as to how this birth will resemble and not resemble the earlier one.

“There will be plenty of fresh air,” my husband says, “and no fainting for lack of breath.”

He himself pushes the window out, and I note the smells of dusty autumn leaves, nothing of the frigid winter breath of December almost three years ago.

The pains are strangely close together, and much less terrifying because they are familiar. I hear the long bonging of a clock, and though I do not count the strokes, I am familiar enough now with this sequence, in a musical way, to know that the noon hour must have been struck. “Twelve?” I say, and my husband looks at his watch and nods.

T
HE BIRTH COMES
. And it is greeted with silence. Ah, I know what this silence means. The child is a girl, but I hold my counsel, smiling to myself.

She will be the friend of Marie Thérèse. I picture them holding hands, running through the rooms of Versailles, as Charlotte and I did, when I was the happy little sister, at Schönbrunn. I see again the lovely painted lattice walls of our playroom, with ivy twining through the interstices and painted birds here and there: blue, red, yellow. I think there is a little gap in consciousness, though I do not faint. A painted hibiscus flower trumpets orangey red; all in a cluster, the golden pollen points in its center thrust beyond the petals, awaiting the legs of bees. I am aware that the King and the babe have left the room. I wish for my mother. I see the mild, kind eyes of the Princesse de Lamballe, wide spaced and wet with emotion, but I cannot interpret what they say.
Let my new daughter live
, I pray.

The King enters, and I look at him with the new baby, small and well swaddled, a beautiful child. A sweet and tiny face.

“You see I am behaving very well,” I murmur to the King. “I have asked no questions.”

“Madame, you have fulfilled our hopes and those of France; you are the mother of a Dauphin.”

My heart brims full and overflows. Leaning forward, I kiss the cheek of my mother. Promises and hopes
fulfilled
! I cannot speak, for joy. I feel her cheek against my lips.

The King fills the silence. “At precisely a quarter past one—for I looked at my watch—you were delivered successfully of a boy.”