Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) (8 page)

But, the duc adds, the wind is rising, and storm clouds are gathering in the west.

The King compliments me again and again (while the Dauphin is silent) and tells me and all the table that I look every inch a daughter of the Caesars. I think the King loves my high birth as much as he loves me, which, my mother the Empress would say, is as it should be. King Louis XV is pleased that to his grandson I bring the name of the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, six hundred years old. With all my heart, I embrace and reflect the love of Papa-Roi, whatever its origin and basis may be.

An enormous clap of thunder, and then a torrential downpour.

There can be no fireworks. The King frowns.

To our table, the King remarks pleasantly, “I would think the heavens would be more cordial to the goddess of love.” He tips his wineglass at me and says gallantly, “To Venus,” and then to his grandson, jokingly, “To Vulcan too.” But it is not a pretty comparison, for Vulcan was ugly and impaired—lame-footed.

“I fear the populace is disappointed,” I say.

I know the people are soaking wet already and miserable, and it is three hours back to Paris. Here in the town of Versailles, the Parisians will know no one who might give them dry clothing.

“I’m afraid they’re cold,” I add.

“I’ll send flagons of hot ale,” the king says, “in your fair name.”

Even we inside the château can feel the cooling breeze invading these rooms.

“To bed,” says the King. He reaches out his arm to touch his grandson. “To bed, Monsieur le Dauphin.”

My heart flitters into my throat and beats like vibrato.

I
WALK BESIDE
the Dauphin, who duly takes my hand. The passage leading through room after linked room to our chambers is long and damp. Far ahead, so far ahead they seem tiny, two members of the Royal Guard patrol. Each holds a leash against which two small spaniels lean. I think of Mops and say that I would like to pet those doggies. The Dauphin looks down at me fondly and explains that the dogs are at work.

“At work? Tonight? What is their work?” I ask.

The Dauphin very quietly explains that the palace is so vast, it is searched each night for any who might enter during the day and hide in its nooks and crannies. Though the spaniels are not fierce, they have excellent noses and are trained for this duty. Far ahead, the two men and the four dogs suddenly step out of our line of vision, which follows the aligned doors of stately rooms opening into stately rooms, their doorways framing a seemingly infinite regress of other doorways. By entering the rooms more deeply, the Guards and the spaniels are lost from our sight.

I hold the Dauphin’s hand more firmly.

When I glance at his cheek and noble nose, my hand becomes warm and wet. In the backs of these public rooms, away from the windows beside which we walk, there are almost invisible small doors cut cunningly into the walls. These secret doors lead to other private rooms and secret staircases and hallways that form a labyrinth deep in the interior of the palace. The Empress has described that kingdom of hidden connections deep within the château and called it the Land of Intrigue, which I am to eschew, but I am curious and vow to go there someday.

Led by the King, we walk and walk. Our shadows, thrown by candlelight, move with us as we pass along the edges of the public rooms, named for the gods of antiquity. At our left, sometimes my elbow brushes the closed curtains of the high windows. The curtains hang like the drooping wings of doleful archangels. Sometimes a puff of storm air causes them to stir. Once, I fancy I see the toe of a boot—a worn and muddy shoe such as a peasant might be grateful to wear—protruding from the hem of a curtain. Ahead, I can see that doors have been closed; this walking will end.

We stop at an immense closed door, the one to our nuptial chamber.

Now will come the ritual of the royal bedding.

Here are no proxies. Here we play the roles of our own real selves. I myself must meet his expectations.

There is the broad bed and the high embroidered canopy that roofs it. Inside this room, it is the King himself who hands the Dauphin his nightshirt; the Duchesse de Chartres, the most newly married of all the noble ladies, places my folded nightdress in my hands. The Dauphin and I, with our attendants, step behind two screens and are helped into our nightclothes. Perhaps my life is but a series of moments of disrobing and robing again for the task at hand. Perhaps all lives could be measured in such terms. For me, it is a long process, for I have many layers to be removed. I am grateful for the helping hands that move like small animals around my body, unhooking, untying, tugging, and sliding my garments away from me. I could not emerge from this brocade chrysalis by myself.

When I stand naked, I feel as though I should ask them to shine and burnish my flesh so that I will gleam for him.

The nightgown tickles my skin like butterflies.

As has been orchestrated by our attendants, the Dauphin and I step shyly forward at the same instant from behind the screens.

How fragile, almost naked we seem, draped like ghosts in loose gauze. In the midst of all the court finery of the others, we alone seem simple and natural.

The bedcovers are pulled back, and the Archbishop of Rheims blesses the bed with holy water. I see water droplets spot and wet the bed linen here and there. Outside it is raining hard, and I think of the fireworks that lie dormant and are sadly wasted. The archbishop rapidly intones the Latin as the rain drones mournfully.

Now the King offers his hand to the Dauphin to lead him forward, to mount the bed.

And I wait my turn, standing in my simple nightgown, the lace knitted by nuns.
In face and form
, Sister Thérèse said,
you are a perfect princess
. I am helped into bed by the Duchesse de Chartres. Her hand is icy cold, and what has been the experience of her wedding night to leave such a chill? My mother spoke of rapture in one’s joyful pain. But this hand is one of fear.

Have
courage
, my mother has instructed me, gently touching her own heart and then mine, as though to give some of what has been in her to me.

I refuse the portion of fear that nature would hand me.

No matter what happened in the nuptial bed of the Duchesse de Chartres, I
will
fill my heart with hope, but the duchesse is about my size—also slight and graceful—and for her, I feel pity.

“I thank you for your kind service,” I say to her and smile with grave modesty.

Her eyes flicker recognition, but she does not smile.

All is done with utmost seriousness with all the attention of the State, for it is in our bed that France and Austria unite. No, even a peasant girl would greet her marriage bed with seriousness.

The court, the King, the most royal core of the vast court, turns in all its finery and makes its exit.

Vanished!

We are left alone, for the first time.

Our heads find the pillows.

Most soft and divinely comfortable, my pillow cradles my neck and head.

On his side of the bed, the Dauphin’s head sinks like lead into the softness. Automatically, I half sit up again, to fluff the downy feathers a bit more, as I did as a girl. When I glance toward him, my eyes find his, gazing curiously, with strange calm, at me. His body in the horizontal posture, the Dauphin’s jet eyebrows seem strongly handsome. Across the room, twelve candles long enough to burn all night are glowing. Settled again on my pillow, I turn my face toward him and wait. He stares now at the ceiling.

My mother said that he might first reach out his hand and take my hand in his. Perhaps my father did it so, on her wedding night. I wait.

His eyelids slide down. I listen to the rain drum and moan. As I wait, the rain falls steadily and beats against the glass of the windowpanes. I listen and wait. And wait.

Suddenly, the wind snorts. No, it is not the wind.

The Dauphin snores. The raucous rattle of air in his nostrils wakes him, for a moment. “Pray, excuse me,” he says.

And he is asleep. Have I failed to please him?

I seem to hear the snuffing of a dog at the door.

I too drift toward sleep.

Whatever happens or doesn’t happen
, the Empress told me,
you are not to worry.

W
HEN
I
AWAKE
to morning sunshine, 17 May 1770, a new day, I see my husband is already dressed. I notice the stubby row of dead candles with their tiny black wicks bent this way or that.

The draperies have been parted, and the sunshine streams in. Illuminated by a shaft of sunlight, the Dauphin sits at his desk and opens a book I know to be his diary, his hunting journal. He writes in it very briefly, the quill scratching into the paper.

Though I am still in the bed and I would never read his private accounts, I know what he has written; the word that he chooses to represent futility in a day of hunting is chosen now to represent the wedding ceremonies of yesterday and last night and our marriage bed.

He writes the word
Rien
, which means
Nothing.

Later, to my mother, the Empress, I must tell the truth. I will
allow
myself to tell the truth, that he did not even do so much as to touch my hand.

Again, both our heads,
at the very same moment, touch our pillows. But this time, his face is turned toward me, as mine is toward him, and we look more longingly at each other.

I am loving the caress of the cool linen against my cheek and hope his pillow gives his cheek the same smooth pleasure.

I feel my lips part, but no sound disturbs the air. Ever so slightly, the corners of my mouth suggest a slight smile.

“Your lips are the same shade as the flower so aptly named the rose,” he says to me.

“Thank you,” I say modestly. And nothing else, for every instinct tells me
Wait.

I feel myself to be beautiful in his eyes. Pearly pink.

His hand is moving toward me. Slowly, palm first, the hand approaches the soft gathers that cover my chest. He has guessed the right place, and the palm presses against my slight mound of flesh and my small nipple.

He withdraws his hand.

“They will grow,” I say shyly.

He only looks at me. His eyes, though sympathetic, are sleepy.

“I
am
a woman,” I say. “Inside my body, I’ve changed already.”

I would like to embrace him, but I dare not move. Steadily, I must present a docile manifestation of my charms. Waiting, barely breathing through parted lips, I slowly lick my lips, and then, with his flat palm, he touches my chest again, as though wondering if, before, his palm landed, perhaps, on the wrong quarter of my frame.

“They
will
grow”—I say with a slight smile—“as surely as the resurrection.”

He throws back his head and howls with laughter.

“The resurrection?”

“The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” I explain, for he has not understood my reference.

He controls his laughter for a moment, and then it squirts out of him again. He tries hard to tuck down the corners of his mouth into the proper seriousness for the congress of France with Austria.

“You are devout?” he says.

“I have no wish to be a nun,” I reply.

Now he rolls away from his side onto his back. He stares at the ceiling. All mirth has left his body.

“I see you are a wit.”

“Oh, no,” I say sincerely. “That is something I have never wished to be, for wit is cruel, and my first wish is always to be kind.”

“I believe you, Marie Antoinette.”

Again, he turns onto his side, the better to look at me. He cocks his elbow and props his head up with one arm. I think he has a noble nose, very large, and powerfully arched.

“I like best to be called ‘Toinette.’”

He places his hand on my waist, but he does not draw me to him. His fingertips amuse themselves by making small swirls in the fabric of my loose and mobile gown. He speaks slowly. “If you have not wit, most certainly, you have will. You tell me what you like.”

“I like best to please you,” I whisper, for I do not want to frighten him again.

“With saucy talk of resurrection?” he asks.

I remain silent, waiting.

“—when I have none to offer,” he concludes.

I am puzzled and wonder at his meaning. Before I ask for explanation, I remember my mother’s caution: I must curb my curiosity. A tear forms at the corner of my eye, and I feel ashamed. I am failing her. It is ever my duty to be light, cheerful, and encouraging. He sees the tear and touches it.

No, he
takes
it, on his finger.

The Dauphin of France puts his finger in his mouth to taste my tear.

“You need not cry,” he says, and his voice is chilly and restrained. He sighs. “I would not have you cry, Little One.”

It is my mother’s pet phrase for me, her youngest daughter. But he must not think maternally of me. “I am…,” I begin, but as I unspool those words I remember the wanton, languishing look so openly displayed by Madame du Barry. Before my lips have completed the phrase “…the Dauphine,” the sultry expression of the du Barry inhabits my own face, for I have been well taught the arts of the theater.

My husband plops down and rolls again onto his back. Staring at the ceiling, he says wearily, “You need not try to look like
her.”

It is a shocking moment, for he has divined my thoughts.

“The fault does not lie with you,” he says, but he speaks to the ceiling.

I think I see a tear forming at the corner of
his
eye.

I touch his shoulder gently. “Would you like to hold my hand?”

Without a word, he reaches toward me, and our hands find each other as though by magic. Like two magnets, our hands fly together. But he does not turn to me. I roll also onto my back, and our firm-clasped hands lie between us with fingers entwined in a pleasant knot. I think of the sarcophagus coverings of kings and queens who lie in marble majesty side by side. His large hand perspires against my flesh.

“Another night,” he says.

“I am sorry for my awkwardness,” I say.

There is silence, but then he replies, “And I for mine.”