Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) (7 page)

Anne of Austria is a mutual ancestor of both myself and Louis Auguste. In her gift and by her blood, he and I are already united—kin. Her Versailles was little more than a hunting lodge, but she has bequeathed this collar to all the queens of France that follow her. Because Maria Josepha is dead, though I am only Dauphine and not yet Queen, the collar comes to me, through the wish of Louis XV, Papa-Roi, to honor me. When my fingers brush the smooth roundness of the pearls, I think of river stones magically transformed.

I hope that someday I will leave something of wondrous beauty to all the queens of France who are to follow me. To those who may come to France from afar, as I have, and as Anne of Austria did, to marry my sons and grandsons and generations beyond. I think of those women as sisters; we join hands in a circle that grows larger and larger and look across time into one another’s eyes.

And here are many gifts sent by the King. Drawer after drawer built into the sides of the immense cabinet is filled with dazzling gifts, but the one among them that I love most is a fan, crusted with diamonds. When I wave the glittering fan, heavy with gems, it twinkles and sparkles in the light as though it were fashioned in a sultan’s fairyland. Its moving surface is all a ripple of light, but it wags heavy in my hand. I know I use a fortune merely to stir the air I breathe.

My breath catches to see my own cipher, an
M
imposed on an
A
—how beautifully those letters fit together—on the clasp of a diamond bracelet. This
M
and
A
stand as well for
Maria Antonia
as for my new self,
Marie Antoinette.
My diamond monogram is set in a clasp of deep blue enamel. This bracelet itself is a band of diamonds wide enough to warm my wrist. When I wear this bracelet, if I like, I can turn my hand over, and there at the wrist where the pulse beats closest to the surface, I have as my shield, the cipher of myself:
MA
, intertwined in one beautiful design that comprises, almost, a single
new
letter of the alphabet, uniquely mine.

Here is Elisabeth, a new little sister for me, nudging close to my body again, to look with me at the contents of the myriad drawers. I let her pull several of them open for me, and Clothilde does so as well. Clothilde says
Ooooo
, in a very practiced way, a parody of courtly exclaiming she’s heard from older ladies. But Elisabeth merely sighs in her own childish voice when she sees some startlingly beautiful brooch or necklace.

The fairy Elisabeth leaves the room and returns with something, I think, held behind her tiny back.

“Toinette,” she says, for so I have instructed her to call me, despite the glances of bored disapproval of my governess, Comtesse de Noailles. “Toinette.” (The word fairly twirls off her tongue; she is the first at this court to use it.) “My brother the Dauphin has asked that I give you this.”

From behind her back, she charmingly presents a pink rose, so perfect I think at first that it must be fashioned of silk or porcelain.

“Smell,” Elisabeth says.

I bury my nose in the aroma, such as no jewel of any price can produce.

“My brother, the Dauphin, says there will be many more. To tell you so.”

Quickly I glance at the door, where, yes, a large and lumbering figure passes, ignored by all, even on his wedding day.

Again I bend to the little princess.

“Please pass this gift to your brother, the Dauphin,” I say, softly kissing her petal cheek. “Just like that.”

I instruct her more minutely: “Ask him to bend over, so you can speak in his private ear. First the kiss, then whisper, ‘She, too, says there will be many more.’”

Before she carries out her charge, Elisabeth steps back, then pauses, to look at me, and Clothilde joins her. Elisabeth is a bit puzzled by my promise of future kisses. I myself am a bit surprised; yesterday, I would not have thought of such an
amusant
message.

As though dancing, I turn from side to side to show them how the dress becomes me, though my hair is still loose. I would like to spin around and take their hands and truly dance, but I know I would become entangled in finery, so I merely look left and right, raising my arms accordingly in
port de bras,
as though I were about to leap, to throw, to toss myself across a lighted stage—
un grand jeté
.

“Your dress is very big,” Clothilde says. “And beautiful,” she tactfully adds.

“You look almost as small as myself,” Elisabeth mentions, wonderingly.

“Are you really only twelve years old?” Clothilde asks. “I heard someone say so. ‘Not above twelve,’ he said.”

Clothilde does not wait for an answer but goes on to inform me further of the gossip. “All of them, every single one of them says of you, ‘Her bearing is superb!’”

T
HROUGHOUT THE
R
OYAL
C
HAPEL
, the May sunshine, transformed by the stained glass edging the clear windows, illumines the two levels of the structure. People of astounding splendor fill the building. I am entering a Kingdom of Light and Joy, prepared for me by the Heavenly Father. Marble arches on the ground level, where I stand, lead toward the altar, where Christ lies dead, in golden bas-relief, taken from the cross.

I cross myself in reverence.

Borne atop the heavy pilasters of the white marble arches, on the second level, the fluted columns are of a simple white, crowned with Corinthian capitals. Those airy, fluted columns prepare the eye for the multitude of organ pipes hanging in glorious array above the altar. Like fingers stroking my racing heart, this splendor quiets me and fills me with joyful humility.

The floor on which I stand is a glory of colored marbles, rosy, gray, and cream, double circles in diamonds, a starburst in a circle. Soon my feet will pass over the length of them to the gleaming altar, where Christ lies slain.

On the high and vaulted ceiling is a vast painting containing all the colors imaginable in a tangle of human and angelic limbs, curved and bent like a great pinwheel, with Our Heavenly Father at its center. As the Almighty Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth, hovers in a patch of clear blue sky, I can see the sole of His naked foot.

The Heavenly Father’s arms are open in blessing for all of us below; the dead body of golden Christ on the altar will rise again, so promises our Heavenly Father, and I see the risen Christ is depicted, too, on the ceiling. Now organ music begins, and sight is drenched by sound like a whirlwind, most rich, most elegant, most powerful.

Dizzied by the music of Couperin, I am floating forward while everyone watches me; I am gliding swanlike within my alabaster silk. I am here, with my feet barely touching the marble floor, and I am also up there, high above, among the confusion of colors of the vaulted ceiling, watching myself as though I were another stepping lightly forward to encounter her fate.

The Dauphin kneels with me before the slain Christ. Our knees sink into the velvet cushion. Here the music is so loud and grand that I feel, rather than hear, my heart beating in my ears. Whether he can experience it or not, I see that the Dauphin, too,
my husband, my love
, is enveloped in the grace of God, though to others he may appear at this moment to be a sulky boy. Grace succors his very bones, just as it does myself.

To him, I believe I resemble a solitary rose, pink and fragrant, standing in a crystal vase awaiting his touch. His clammy hands tremble as he himself, not my proxy brother but my true husband, slides the binding ring upon my finger. But I dare not look into his heavy, hooded eyes or behold his bold black eyebrows, though I can imagine them black as raven wings. I look higher than our foolish heads at a canopy of heavy silver brought forward on ornate poles and positioned above us like a cloud ushered cumbersomely indoors.

We kneel and kneel. After many words of blessing, we rise to our feet and turn.

Cradled by the Royal Chapel, bathed in holy light, swaddled in the polyphonic voice of God, we have been joined in marriage and go forth.

D
URING THE SIGNING
of the contract, I too tremble, and I let my husband see my nervousness, with the hope that he will pity me. As he signs the agreement, as the first of us, the King, my grandfather, looks at me, and his dark eyes glow with encouragement and pride. His signature is simple: he needs no further attributes or identifying words:

Secondly, my husband signs his name, with perfect control of his pen:

And it is my turn to write. If only I could dance my signature, then it would be all grace. But I have hardly ever signed this new name, and I must try hard to get the spelling right. I press down too hard, and the tip of the quill catches and stumbles. I blot the page, and then the last half of Antoinette, the new part, slopes suddenly downhill. But there it is, for posterity:

As though in a dream, I next awake to the royal banquet, for six thousand, filling the Opera House from one splendid wall to the other. I cannot eat, yet again. I am numbed by the thought that all of this array of wealth and power exists to celebrate my wedding. I have never felt so small, not even among the snowy mountains of home. How different it would all be if I were a simple peasant girl marrying a boy of my village whom I’d known all my life.

No, this celebration dinner in the just-completed Opera House of Versailles is not for me, I remind myself, but for the union of Austria and France, and these thousands represent uncounted hundreds of thousands, and the blessing of their lives to be lived without the shadow of war clouds.

For all their nobility and allegiance to protocol, the guests press to see me, the stranger who has come to make their Dauphin happy and to assure the future of the kingdom: Marie Antoinette Josephe Jeanne.

Like last night at La Muette, the lightning visits Versailles and begins to shake the sky behind the curtains, though I cannot hear the thunder, for an orchestra of sixty musicians is playing Lully’s “Perseus.” I can hear neither the rather dull music nor the more interesting thunder except in patches because of the roar of conversation. Part of the chatter comes from my own lips, for Louis Auguste says scarcely a word, and I must make up for his silence and bubble with delight. I play the role so well that I believe in it myself.

There will be no mistakes, or hesitations, no blots on the dinner, just laughter and smiling lips and fond eyes: grace for everyone.

The Duc de Croÿ returns to us to say that he has climbed up on the roof of the Opera. “It is from there that the view is most glorious. Ah, Madame la Dauphine, to see Versailles from the roof!” I ask him to describe the spectacle, and he does, saying torches and hidden lights glow throughout the gardens, and the fountains play with complete exuberance. The Grand Canal, which I have not yet seen, is filled with illuminated boats bobbing on the water. Because we approached the château from the east, the town side, I have seen nothing of the vast gardens and basins that lie to the west, beyond the palace. The garden walkways and bosquets are thickly packed with people. On the town side, as far as the eye can see beyond the gilded gates, the Duc de Croÿ reports, people fill the streets, rejoicing and waiting for the dark to fall and the fireworks to follow that will explode against the night. Many have walked here from Paris.