The Shadow Queen A Novel (18 page)

“Hold still,” the ancient hissed, trying—with fumbling difficulty—to tie the skirt on over Athénaïs’s underskirt.

Athénaïs dismissed the woman with an impatient wave. “Heaven help me,” she said, bolting the door. “My father threatened to send all three of my old maids along with me after I’m married, but my intended forbade it. It was the only thing the Marquis de Montespan had done that in any way pleased me—until I met the staff
he’s
hired to attend me. They’re even worse than the ancients! Mort Dieu, my life is a living hell.”

I felt wary of the affection I still felt for her, wary of the seductive comfort of her warm room, so full of luxuriant beauty. “I need you to stand on something,” I said, looking around. Hers was an enchanting, intoxicating world, a world of ease and privilege I dreamt of—but it was more than that, I knew. She was high, high nobility, yet she’d honored me with her confidence, her secret confessions. She’d even called me her guardian angel. There was passionate recklessness in her that was frightening, true, but also dangerously entrancing. In truth I felt blessed in her company—one of the blessed.

Scooping up her train, Athénaïs shuffled over to the bed and kicked a little stool out from under it. I placed it in the middle of the room. She slipped her feet into a pair of heeled mules and stepped onto it. “You’re not married, Claude,” she said, turning slowly as I directed. “How did you manage that?”

I winced, a pin piercing my thumb. I sucked it clean of blood, then dipped it in pooled candle wax. “I have my family to look after.”

She made a clucking sound, which the parrot echoed. “Your mother is a queen of the stage and your brother practically a grown man.”

“But he’s a child at heart.”

“There are places that take in people like that,” I heard her say from above. “You can’t look after him forever.”

I remained silent. Gaston
had
been a trial of late. Some of the players were furious with him, upset about props disappearing. There were times when I longed to be free, longed for a life of my own. Who could I talk to about such things? It was a betrayal even to think such thoughts. “The lace of your chemise should be showing at the hem in the front,” I said, sitting back, “but as to the length of the train … That depends on your title.”

“When I marry, I’ll be a marquise—” She made a mocking
la de da
look that made me smile. In spite of everything, there was still a feeling of intimacy between us.

“It’s two feet for a marquise,” I said. The rules on this were exact. “We have to know these things for the stage.”

“Ah, the
stage
! You don’t know how lucky you are to live without restriction. I sometimes dream of running away, becoming an actress.”

How curious, I thought. She lived a life I could only dream of, and I, in turn, lived a life she longed for. I unfolded my measuring stick. “But you’ll not be a marquise until after you marry, so your father is right. I could leave plenty of hem so that you could have it let out after.”

She looked down at me. “I’ve had word,” she said quietly.

My heart skipped.
Alexandre.
So that’s why I’d been summoned.

“He’s safely in Portugal,” she said.

“Merci Dieu,” I breathed, then bit my lips. My tender feelings were inappropriate.

“Remember the Marquis Henri d’Antin?” she asked.

How could I ever forget the sight of that young man with a rapier in his chest? How could I ever forget the sight of the soles of his boots sticking out of the bushes?

“The man I’m to marry … is his brother.”

Non! I caught my breath. But of course: they had the same sticking-out ears.

And then I recalled Alexandre’s letter to Athénaïs:
I
beg you to assuage his family’s sorrow.

I sat back on my heels, my hands clasped as if in prayer. “It’s what Alexandre would have wanted,” I offered with feeling. “To atone for the death of his friend.” And then I felt terrible. I’d been looking for tragic redemption, as if Athénaïs’s life were a play being performed on a stage. “Forgive me!”

“But that’s it exactly,” Athénaïs said, her huge eyes brimming. “
You
understand, Claudette. And you’re the only one.”

CHAPTER 31

O
n the day of Athénaïs’s wedding, I hovered outside the church of Saint-Sulpice, part of a gawking crowd.

I watched as the carriages slowly pulled up, one by one. Liveried footmen offered gloved hands to the bride, the groom, the members of the family. Athénaïs looked exquisite in her gown, but her eyes were red and her cheeks blotchy, even under powder.

The enormous church doors closed. I waited until the bells pealed in celebration, then turned away. She was a married woman now, the Marquise de Montespan, whose husband forbade her to have anything to do with me. I found myself inexplicably close to tears. I threw the amulet in a cesspool: clearly, it wasn’t working.

IT WAS A
busy time at the theater—and I was thankful for that. The Bourgogne was at war with Molière. In response to the outpouring of jealous criticism of
School for Wives
(which was, without a doubt, a triumph), Molière staged a satirical piece,
The Critique of School for Wives.
In turn, we staged
The Counter-critique of School for Wives,
followed by a short piece,
The Husband Without a Wife.
Written by Montfleury, it hinted that Molière’s new young wife was unfaithful. Molière, in turn, ridiculed some of our players (
not
Mother, merci Dieu) in a performance before the King, singling out Montfleury, mocking him as fat and pompous.

How to fight back? The answer came in an unexpected way.

MOTHER AND I
arrived for a theater meeting just as someone was being introduced. He was a slight young man in his mid-twenties, yet wearing a fusty wig. There was both terror and arrogance in his wide-set eyes.

“That’s Jean Racine, I think,” Mother whispered.

“Molière’s protégé?” My mind was on other things. Earlier that morning, I had glimpsed Athénaïs and her husband entering the church of Saint-Eustache. Her husband’s smug face, long as a fiddle, shot daggers at the beggars at the door. He raised his silver-tipped cane at them in warning. Athénaïs, who followed behind him, looked drawn—and my heart beat high in sympathy. I’d been plagued by ominous dreams in which she screamed out to me for help.

Floridor signaled for silence and then introduced the playwright. “Monsieur Racine has proposed that we produce his tragedy,
Alexandre the Great.
”

Several of the players gasped.

I was confounded. Racine’s
Alexandre the Great
was soon to be premiered by Molière’s troupe at the Palais-Royal.

“He wishes it prepared quickly—and, needless to say, under the circumstances, secretly.”

How was that even possible?

“There are a number of things to be considered,” Floridor went on, squinting down at his notes, “not the least of which is the scheduling. We would have to have it mastered in a matter of weeks—”

Someone close to me groaned. As it was, the players had just begun to commit Monsieur Pierre’s newest play,
Agésilas,
to memory. An experiment in irregular verse—eight-syllable lines mixed with alexandrines and other rhyme schemes—it was proving to be a challenge—even for Mother.

“So we’ll need to talk it over.” Floridor paused, letting out an exhale. “Do you wish to address the troupe before you go?” he asked the young playwright.

Jean Racine stood, clasping and unclasping his hands. His mouth was small, almost prim, a hint of moustache above his upper lip. He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Do you have any questions?” His accent was refined, educated, but his voice hard to hear.

“Do you have any questions?” Floridor repeated in his carrying voice.

Why didn’t anybody speak up? My heart pounding, I stood. “Monsieur Racine, please explain:
Alexandre the Great
is in rehearsal with Molière’s troupe.”

“I’m not happy with their approach,” Racine said.

“Of course not!” Montfleury jumped up. “Monsieur Racine wishes his masterpiece produced by
real
players of tragedy.”

“We’re better, it’s true,” Mother whispered.

“That’s not the point!” I said, heated. Molière had taken a chance on young Jean Racine, producing his first play. It had not done well, yet even so Molière had encouraged him to write another tragedy:
this
one, about Alexandre the Great. From what I’d heard, Molière had invested a small fortune in what was going to be a lavish production. And now Racine was offering it to
us,
just as it was about to be premiered?

“In a natural cadence, the poetry of the lines is lost,” Racine went on, straining his voice so that he might be heard.

“Forsooth! What do comedians know about dramatic declamation?” Montfleury was obviously still furious over the way Molière had ridiculed him before the King. I wondered if he’d gone so far as to lure the young playwright away from Molière.

“It is here that I would have my verses spoken,” Racine concluded, the twelve syllables constituting an inelegant alexandrine. “This is the true home of tragedy.”

“Hear, hear!” Montfleury cried out, accompanying the playwright to the door, patting him heartily on the back (very nearly knocking the slight young man over).

Floridor frowned down at his notes, pulling at his ruff. “Well?” he said, once the chatter following Jean Racine’s departure had died down.

“It depends on the principal players,” someone spoke up. “They would have the most lines to learn, and quickly.”

“I’d need two weeks to master Alexandre’s lines,” Floridor said. “Montfleury would play Porus, of course, and Alix, Axiane. Could you two commit a major part to memory in that time?”

“Easily,” Montfleury said.

“Alix could have it mastered in days,” a player at the back called out and several clapped.

“So long as it’s not irregular verse,” Mother said, and a number of the players moaned.

“What about the sets?”

“Could we use the ones made for Boyer’s
Alexandre
?” someone asked. Not long before, we had produced a play about Alexandre the Great as well, but it was a listless script and the production had closed after only a few nights.

“Monsieur Racine thinks Molière’s backdrops are unoriginal, but our Boyer sets are not much better,” Floridor admitted. “So no: I think we would have to move quickly on that, and give some consideration to the expense involved. As for costumes … I suspect that with enhancements, your Boyer costumes might do.”

There was a murmur of relief. The elaborate costumes required for serious tragedy cost each player a great deal.

“There are other things to consider, however.” I raised my voice so that I would be better heard. I wasn’t a shareholder like my mother, so I couldn’t vote, but the members of the troupe allowed me to speak in meetings. “I’m told that Monsieur Racine is demanding and temperamental: some of Molière’s players wept at their first rehearsal.”

“They deserve to be miserable!” Montfleury roared.

“One other thing,” I persisted. “Monsieur Molière has been like a mentor to Racine—and now Racine is stabbing him in the back. How can we trust such a man?”

“Molière’s no innocent,” someone observed. “He produced
Sertorius
before it was published.”

“He married his own daughter!” Montfleury exclaimed.

“That’s not true,” I protested.

“Are you defending Molière?”

“He mocked us to the Court.”

“He mocked the Great Corneille!”

“And now he’s putting
us
out of business.”

Ultimately, it was no use. The arguments in favor of revenge won the day. All was fair in the War of the Theaters.

CHAPTER 32

M
onsieur Pierre stood to one side as Gaston hefted a crate of our belongings into our new apartment close to the Bourgogne theater. Monsieur Martin and his wife had been sorry to see us go, but with Mother’s success, we could finally afford something more than a dingy little room and a closet.

I hadn’t seen the playwright for months, not since the wild success of Racine’s
Alexandre the Great.

Mother stuck her head out of a door, her head wrapped in a cloth like a Turk. “Welcome to our palace, Monsieur Pierre.” We had three rooms and a necessary all our own in the courtyard.

He held out a bouquet of flowers.

Signs of spring were most welcome. It had been a grim winter, with constant prayer vigils for the Queen Mother, who had died of a cancer in her breast in January. “I’ll put them in a vase.” I hoped he hadn’t brought them thinking to mask the odors of our place.

“Sit, please sit,” Mother said. “You’re nobility now.” Corneille’s family had long ago been awarded noble status following the initial success of
The Cid.
It had taken all these years for the legal certification to come through.

“Thank you, Alix, but I can’t be long.”

“You’ll have to excuse the mess,” I said, digging out a small vase and making a space for it on the table. I stuck the flowers in and arranged them roughly. Water would have to wait.

The playwright had an air of gloom. “Is something wrong, Pierre?” Mother asked tenderly, pulling up a stool.

He opened his hands in a gesture of futility. “The troupe doesn’t want my new play.”

“We turned down
Attila
?” Mother and I had been so busy with the move, we’d missed the weekly business meeting.

“That can’t be,” Mother said, her hands on her flour-powdered cheeks.

“Turned it down flat. The Bourgogne lost money on my last play—as you know.”

Agésilas
had been an interesting experiment in irregular verse, but it had not gone over well with the public. The players hadn’t earned a sou. “But
Attila
is a completely different sort of play,” I protested.