The Shadow Queen A Novel (20 page)

“You no doubt wonder why I sent you a cryptic note, why you’ve been asked to come here, and why, for that matter, that crow of a maid addresses me as Madame de Sconin, when she deigns to address me at all.”

“You are a woman of mystery,” I said, and was relieved to hear her chuckle. We’d been jocular with each other in the past—in our youth, our foolish youth—but things were different now.

“Obviously, I am going to have a baby—soon, I hope, for I am weary of this burden. The child, however, is not my husband’s.” Her azure eyes were teasing.

“This happens, Madame.” I was hot now, too close to the fire. I wished I could slip off my cloak.

“More often than one would guess,” she said, touching a silver key hanging from a chain around her neck. “But most of the time it is easy enough to fob it off as the husband’s.
My
husband, however, was unfortunately many leagues away at the time of … conception, let us say? He has been banished—”

Banished?
I was startled to hear this.

“—for publicly casting judgment on the King’s choice of a tutor for the Dauphin. That he tried to throw the tutor’s wife and then me out a window had little to do with his punishment, apparently.” This with a wry tone. “It’s something of a relief to have him out of the country, to tell you the truth—although he took my two babies with him.” She stroked the cat, her hands trembling. “He’s a lunatic.
Verily.
But by law he has a right to do whatever he pleases with my children—as well as the child I’m carrying now. I have reason to fear what he might do were he to find out.” She looked at me, her eyes impossibly large. “Curious—isn’t it?—how life plays out?” She threaded a long strand of the fringe of her shawl through her fingers, twisting it. “I’ve had word that Alexandre is dead.”

Non!

“In battle in Portugal apparently—” This with a weary tone.

I felt robbed: angry even. I had risked so much to save his life. How could he die?

Athénaïs shrugged with a show of indifference, but I recognized fragility in her gesture. “In any case:
now.
” She put her hands on her belly. “Not only do I have a lunatic husband to hide from, but there’s also the problem of my lover’s wife—as well as his
other
mistress,” she added with amusement, removing the silver key from the chain around her neck and using it to open a black enamel cabinet. “Monsieur Mysterious, let’s call him, would rather
they
not discover my present predicament.” She slid out a shelf and withdrew a small velvet bag. “Hence, this curious abode, my false name.” She looked at me, her eyes so alluring I had to glance away. “Claudette,” I heard her say, “I have dire need of someone I can trust.”

I stared into the fire as she spoke. The proposition was a simple one. I would move in for a few months, tend to the birth, the baby. It would be a temporary position until she found a suitable governess (someone from the aristocracy it was implied, but not said).

“But confidentiality is key,” she said. “Nobody—and I mean that rather literally, I’m afraid—nobody must know.”

The cat meowed plaintively at the door.

“I’m honored, Madame,” I said, sitting back. I put my gloved hands to my throat. “But …” But I’d vowed to forsake her! I’d worn an amulet to break her spell over me, vowed to put her memory behind me, forsake my longings for her world. My longing for
her.
“The Bourgogne is about to get back into full production. I have commitments.”

“I’ve neglected to mention one thing,” she said with a smile, tossing the bag from one hand to the other. “Well,
two
—” She spilled out the contents of the little pouch onto one hand. Two gems sparkled in her palm. “I’m now in a position to reward you rather well.”

I had never seen such stones. They were clear, yet threw out shards of light.

“They’re Indian stones called diamonds.” Her voice was reverent. “These are worth quite a lot, I’m told—two, three thousand livres? Yours, should you accept.”

Sacré coeur. With that much money …! “You know you can trust me, Madame,” I said, sitting forward.

“DON’T LOOK SO MOROSE,”
I told Mother and Gaston. I’d been able to sell the diamonds, but only for a little over one thousand livres, a third of what Athénaïs had estimated. Even so, it was a very great deal. I’
d finally
paid off our debt to Monsieur Martin, paid the back rent owed, and still had enough to hire back Gaston’s tutor. “It’s only temporary, and it’s not as if I won’t be visiting often.”

Still, it
was
a big step. In all my years, I’d never slept apart from them. “Kiss me now,” I said gruffly, taking up my worn portmanteau. The gray wool gown I’d scrabbled together—a respectable sort of ensemble suitable for one in service—felt like a costume.

Gaston, ever the boy, embraced me.

“Remember …?” I’d had a long talk with them both the night before about all the things that needed to be looked after.

Gaston nodded, but the expression in his eyes lacked confidence.

I turned to my weeping mother. My heart ached with how unhappy I was making them both. “Maman, dear Maman,” I said, rocking her in my arms, “remember that you can simply send Gaston for me if ever you need.” But not just because you can’t find your lace mantilla! Not just because you can’t get off your white-face and rouge!

I stepped back, my eyes overspilling.

And then, with wrenching last embraces, I began down the winding stone stairs, my free hand on the splintered rail. I stopped at the ground floor to wipe my cheeks dry with my knit mitt, then set off through the slush, heading toward the river.

CHAPTER 35

I
put down my bag: a room of my own—a
bed
of my own. I pried open the shutter and looked out the window: between two buildings, I could see the glittering river.

Already I wanted to go home, hear Gaston’s infectious giggle, Mother murmuring her lines. I was thirty now—an old maid by any account—and for the first time in my very long life, I was alone.

I turned at the sound of the door opening. The hag tossed a skirt, apron, bodice, and cap onto the narrow bed and slammed the plank door shut.

I held the bodice to my chest. The fabric was an ugly shade of brown. It looked to fit a girl, certainly not a woman, not even a small-breasted one. The tips of two of the bones—made of crude wood slats, not whalebone—had worn through. I picked up the skirt, which was stained at the hem. Even with the laces fully out, I couldn’t get it on over my hips. I felt like a giant in a circus show.

The apron was ridiculously frilly and not perfectly clean, but at least it had a patch pocket. I emptied it of its contents: lint, a soiled nose cloth, a small, rusty nail. I examined the enormous cap for vermin before slipping it on over my coiled braids and pulling the ties. If this were a play, I would be the clownish servant, the one everyone mocked.

Athénaïs burst into unrestrained laughter when I entered the room. “Mort Dieu,” she gasped, bolting the door and taking off her mask. “You look like a half-wit.” She could hardly speak for laughing.

“Damnation!” the parrot squawked.

“Take that apron off … and the cap too. Was this the wench’s idea?” She wiped tears from her cheeks with her sleeve.

“I’m relieved, I confess,” I said, smiling now myself. The brocade drapes had been drawn back to let in light, but even so, ten scented beeswax candles were alight. (Such extravagance!) “I was preparing to run away.”

“Over an apron and cap? That will never do. Come, sit, join me for some wine and sweetmeats. I promised my confessor I would not imbibe spirits—at least not alone.”

Served in a crystal goblet, the pale pink liquid had bubbles in it, which alarmed me.

“It won’t hurt you,” Athénaïs said, perceiving my concern. “Dom Pérignon, the Benedictine monk I order it from, keeps trying to get rid of the bubbles, but I rather like it this way,” she said, taking one of the little cakes that circled a pyramid of bonbons set on a gilded platter. “He gives me an excellent price because of the flaw.” She pushed the plate across to me.

“Thank you.” My mouth watered at the sight of the delicacies, but my rough hands shamed me.

After three goblets of the strange wine, I felt more at ease. Athénaïs liked to chatter, and it was easy enough to be a good listener. Her father had recently sold his post as First Gentleman of the King’s Chamber for a million livres (a million!), four hundred thousand of that going to buy her brother Vivonne the post of Generalship of the Galleys. The King’s ministers Colbert and Louvois were at each other’s throats, vying for His Majesty’s favor. When Colbert got ill recently, it was whispered that Louvois had tried to poison him. (The awful Louvois! The cat man.) Her friend the Duc de Lauzun lost his prized stud at the game tables, Athénaïs chatted on. She’d advised him to go to a witch for charms to improve his chances, as so many others had been doing—with success. “Do you go to witches?” Players knew all about such things: I must know of a good one.

“I’ve heard tell of several,” I said. Players were fond of good-luck charms, enchantments to ensure a good performance. I thought of the cunning woman who had sold me the amulet. (Money wasted, considering.)

She plied me for tittle-tattle on players, particularly Thérèse du Parc, whose father had been a witch, she’d heard. A charlatan, I told her—not quite the same thing. Was Du Parc really thirty-five when she died? How many lovers had she had? Athénaïs suspected her father and even her brother might have been of their number. Did I know that the actress’s stepsisters—who worked at the Hôtel de Soissons—were proclaiming that she’d been poisoned by the playwright Racine?

“That’s not possible,” I protested. Jean Racine had been grief-stricken at Thérèse’s funeral. Even I had been moved.

“Word is that the child she was carrying was not his—but that of the Chevalier de Rohan.”

Heavens.
Rohan had been one of the many noblemen who had courted Thérèse. I recalled his painted cheeks. He’d been more persistent than all the others, reserving a chair on the stage every time she performed. It was said he’d wanted to marry her, but his family forbade it. Still, I could not credit the rumor.

When eventually Athénaïs’s stream of gossip ran dry—“Cloistered like this, I hear nothing,” she lamented—we got down to work, fortified by yet another goblet of faulty wine.

I was to begin my search on the morrow for a wet-nurse, someone who wasn’t nursing children of her own, Athénaïs emphasized—
her
baby must not be obliged to share milk.

I was accustomed to working hard, used to the constant demands of theater life—scheduling rehearsals, mending costumes, counting out office receipts—but this was an entirely different realm. Instead of searching out lengths of worn fabric in the used-clothing stalls, I was to assemble tailclouts, swaddling bands, biggins, and bibs. Instead of prompting players with their lines, I would be sitting in a luxurious room, eating rich delicacies, drinking Turkish liqueur and bubbly wine while listening to tales of Court life—tales from the Land of the Blessed.

January 25, 1669

Dear Claudette,

Thank you for your letter. However, you need not worry. Your mother and dear brother seem to be managing. My wife and I will alert you if there are any problems.

Alix claims the new prompter reads too softly, yet I can hear him from the parterre. You are greatly missed.

The world of the theater carries on apace, with all the usual uproar. As you know, Molière near died of vexation over the Company forcing His Majesty to forbid his play
Tartuffe
from being performed. Now there is talk that the King is going to allow him to stage it again, which will have the bigots in a lathering fury, no doubt. One must be so careful. I have to admire Molière for persevering.

We did not earn out on
Marius,
unfortunately, but we’ve begun to prepare for a new tragedy by Racine, which we anticipate will be well received. He is being hailed as the new King of Tragedy—which irks dear old Pierre, of course.

The rivalry between the Racine and Corneille factions has become bitter, in fact. Racine supporters openly attack Corneille’s work as archaic, and Corneille supporters denounce works by Racine as unheroic. Such rivalry is not bad for the door take, frankly, but it’s hard on the players when confronted with one or the other faction’s noisy claque, whistling disapproval. You will be pleased to know that the claques remain silent whenever your mother performs.

Believe me yours faithfully,

Monsieur Josias de Floridor, Theater of the Bourgogne

Note: The rumor about the cause of Thérèse du Parc’s death is outrageous. It is impossible for there to be any truth in it. Fortunately, Racine seems unaware of the accusations.

BEFORE LONG
I had taken charge of managing Athénaïs’s household, the baby to come, and everything in between. I fired the old hag—curtly, without remorse, throwing her rags after her, fair riddance!—and hired an energetic girl to do the cleaning. I found a violinist to help soothe “Madame de Sconin’s” frayed nerves, and lined up an excellent wet-nurse in the country, where the air would be beneficial to a newborn. The woman, a peasant (but clean, I checked), was due to wean her own infant in a week. I made her husband vow on a Bible not to have relations during the years of nursing.

The baby was to be delivered not by a midwife, but by Monsieur Blucher, a surgeon. It seemed strange that a man would be involved in such an intimate matter, but Athénaïs said that the father of the child—“Monsieur Mysterious”—insisted. A surgeon was permitted to use surgical instruments, should such be needed, and instruments were forbidden to midwives. “He’s promised I’ll stay nice and tight.”

I met with Monsieur Blucher at his office on the rue Saint-Honoré. He is short, with hair on his knuckles. He agreed to be brought to the residence blindfolded—for a fee.