The Sisters of Versailles (19 page)

“Oh, Pauline, I am so glad you are here. This is just like old times! Do you remember when there was a fire in the nursery, and Diane’s bedcovers were ruined, so she slept in Hortense’s bed, and then we all piled in, coughing dreadfully?”

“No, I stayed in my own bed.” Away from Marie-Anne.

“Oh. I don’t remember that. I thought we were all in bed together.”

Eventually Louise falls asleep. I lie awake, listening to the strange sounds of the Versailles night, so different from the convent—dogs barking and whimpering, the sound of marching guards in the courtyard outside, carriages coming and going, giggles and whispers floating in from the rooms around us as people flit and fly through the night, the magnificent palace giving up its secrets and its whores.

This is going to be fun.

From Hortense de Mailly-Nesle

Hôtel de Mazarin, Paris

November 10, 1738

Diane!

Tante is at Versailles for two weeks, so if you want to come and visit, please do. You must be lonely at the convent without Pauline. Tante has not expressly forbidden you to step foot in her house (as she did with Pauline), so please come if you can on Thursday or Friday.

I trust Pauline is having a good visit with Louise at Court. Tante has not seen her and she says that that is just as well. She heard that Pauline has dreadful manners and that she insulted the king! Well, not to worry, it’s only a short visit.

If you come next week you can see Victoire’s new puppies. One is very, very small and has the strangest red fur. I also received a letter from Marie-Anne; I will share her news with you.

Please, when you reply, just write yes or no so I can understand if you are coming or not.

Hortense

Pauline

VERSAILLES

Early Winter 1739

V
ersailles
is an enormous place but everything that is important is small. Hidden amongst the peacocking of the courtiers, beneath the winking lights of a thousand candles reflected in a hundred mirrors, the devil, as they say, is in the details.

Little scratches at the door, smaller for some, louder for others. A greeting that is a second too long, or a second too short—what does it imply? A look given or withheld. A coat worn one too many times; lace used inventively but too often on the same bodice; the crackle of a fresh satin gown, where before there was only wool. Where one sits at Mass, where one sits to dine, in which carriage you ride—second behind the king, or third? The room assigned to you when the Court is at Compiègne or Fontainebleau: larger than last year, or smaller? Minuscule details yet so infinitely, infinitesimally important.

What a strange life! What a strange existence! The day after my dinner with the king, this country (as the courtiers like to call Versailles) was all abuzz and I saw how here, gossip travels faster than a carrier pigeon. Louise’s rooms were crowded with people eager for a glimpse of me. I heard whispers, caught stares, and felt enormously content.

“They are in vogue, these strange creatures, like those monkeys at the exhibition in Paris.”

“Novelty and newness; I suppose that has to count for something.”

“I shouldn’t be so direct, my dear, it’s not proper, but: I just don’t understand. I. Just. Don’t. Understand. Where is the attraction?”

The snipes don’t bother me at all; I very quickly see that it is just the language of Versailles, one that I don’t think I’ll bother to learn.

The king likes a small group around him at all times; Louise tells me he feels alone if he is with fewer than four companions. All vie, often in vain, to be one of the chosen few. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people who would give their teeth, real or not, to be included on the magic lists of invites, be it for the hunt, a supper, a night of games. And when one is on the list? What power!

There are endless petty struggles over precedence, mounted with the precision of military campaigns. The battlegrounds are the pews in the chapel, the sacred stools, the queen’s table, the king’s antechamber. Such things as who may be carried through which rooms, or who should have the honor of taking off the king’s boots, are matters of central importance. And any contact or access to the king, no matter how humble, is considered worth more than a dozen diamonds.

Frankly, I am feeling very rich right now. I am part of the chosen few, along with all who are fashionable at Court: Charolais and her sister, Clermont, equally evil; the Duchesse d’Antin, whom Louise claims is a good friend, and the Comtesse d’Estrées, both harmless ninnies whose only virtues are their pretty faces and bland, easy conversation.

Oh, and there is Louise, of course.

The footmen fluff the white cloth and it descends like snow over the vast gaming table. Outside, real snow blankets the world: we are in the middle of the harshest winter in living memory. As cold as a dead man’s cock, as Charolais so charmingly puts it.

Outside, there are reports of starvation and even death, but inside, in the king’s private salon, the world is toasty with a fire blazing and the heat of too much hope steaming up the windows. On top of the table the footmen place an enormous
cavagnole
board
surrounded by candelabras covered in golden and green acanthus leaves. The guests gather around the table.

There are those privileged with entrées to the King’s Apartments, and then there are those that the king has decided may join us for this night of gambling in his private rooms. Many are scandalized that I am here tonight, for I have not been officially presented and am therefore nothing in their eyes. Most refuse to address me, or even look at me. Fools.

I decide I prefer to watch, since I don’t have money to gamble, and besides, I don’t like games of chance. Silly games like
cavagnole
, solely dependent on luck and cheating, bore me rather completely.

“It is perfectly all right if you don’t want to play, sister. You can sit by the fire and enjoy the warmth.” Louise is dressed in a heavy cream gown sewn with blue fur, which she insists is fox but that looks rather like squirrel to me. Charolais sneered at it earlier and told me it was dreadfully passé.

“No, Bijou, what are you thinking? Mademoiselle de Nesle is our guest here, and she must partake of all the pleasures that we offer.”

Well, if the king insists.

I sidle into place between him and Louise, poking her with my closed fan to push her over enough.

“But, Pauline, you have no money to bet with,” says Louise, slipping around to the other side of the king and displacing the old Princesse de Chalais, who snorts in disapproval and moves down the table, taking a plate of cheese tarts with her.

“Perhaps you could bet 7,500
livres
?” offers Charolais sweetly from across the table.

“No. I’ll play with this,” I reply as I unhook one of my pearl earrings.

“Oh, no, Pauline, don’t do that! Those are from Mama.”

“Ha! We are intrigued, mademoiselle, intrigued.” The king looks at me with admiration. “You are very brave. If you win, I shall arrange for the banker to give you sixty-four additional pearls, enough for a fine choker. Nothing would please me more
than to give you a pearl necklace.” I know from the way the king watches me that he wants to be close to me, to touch me. It is the first time I have tasted this particularly feminine form of power, and it gives me a rare giddy feeling.

“Bijou, you will hold the bag tonight, we all know you are dependable and honest, and you have not the money to be playing again. Besides, I dislike the bad humor you have when you lose.” Louise curtsies and takes the velvet bag, soft and minky like a little animal, and shines with misplaced pride. She told me she lost thirty thousand
livres
at cards last month, an enormous sum, and a debt that the king keeps promising to pay for her, but hasn’t yet done.

The king turns back to me: “So, what number shall be your lucky number tonight, mademoiselle?”

“Well . . .” I search his face for inspiration. We are very close, no more than the length of a candle apart and I can feel the lust rising off him.

“Fifteen,” I decide, and go to place my pearl earring on the board.

“Wait. Let me bless it with good luck, for this pearl has the number of my history on it.” He takes the earring from my fingers and touches it to his lips, all the while looking at me. I open my mouth ever so slightly. He hasn’t kissed me yet, but I know he wants to. And I want him to.

“Ah, Majesty, but that was my pick. I also thought to honor you in that way,” announces Meuse from the end of the table in his high-pitched, annoying voice. “Instead let me honor you by choosing the number of the boar Your Majesty killed this week.” He places his stack of counters on the number forty-eight.

“Indeed.” The king turns back to me and grins. I have noticed the king can be cold, even aloof, with those he doesn’t know, but once one is inside the charmed, magic circle he relaxes and becomes a very friendly, witty man. Louise keeps insisting he’s shy, but I don’t think he is, really.

“Now, mademoiselle, would you do me the honor of choosing my number?”

I raise my fan to shield us from the others, that none may hear my words and improper address. I lower my voice to draw him in even closer and whisper: “King, you will be twenty-nine soon.”

“Yes,” he whispers back. “And you, mademoiselle, you are twenty-six?”

“I am.”

“I believe fifty-five will be my luck tonight,” replies the king, catching my meaning quicker than a wink. “I like the way you think, mademoiselle. Together, we make the perfect number.”

Louise shakes his arm, intruding on our little world. “Fifty-five? Oh no, dearest, you must play your special number seven.”

“But all last month that number did nothing for me, nothing. I will change. Sometimes, change is just the tonic that is needed.”

The other courtiers decide their bets, the Marquis de Mezières ostentatiously placing a high tower of coins on three and thirty-six, announcing to no one in particular that he was blessed with a dream last night in which those numbers appeared. The Princesse de Chalais stops nibbling on a cheese tart long enough to place a bet on number twenty.

“Twenty—is that for the number of tarts you have already eaten, or for those you plan to eat?” inquires Charolais in a voice as smooth as an egg. The princess observes her with a cold, unblinking eye, then, without losing her grip on the gaze, slowly reaches for another tart. Madame d’Estrées and the Chevalier de Cocq banter obliquely about the number of times they “visited the Fountain of Venus” last month, and decide it was sixteen, though she claims she visited twice without his knowing. Soon, the board of seventy numbers is an uneven landscape of towered coins and porcelain tokens, low and high.

“The time has come!” announces the banker grandly, tapping lingering hands with a gold-tipped cane and collecting the list of bets. He gestures to Louise and she spins the bag delicately. All eyes are on her as she pulls a bead from the black velvet.

“Forty-eight!”

The young Princesse de Guémené squeals like a pink piglet
and jumps so hard that a pearled begonia falls from her hair. “Now I shall have that ruby ring! It has been denied me too long—I
knew
I would be lucky tonight.”

The Marquis de Mezières bows solemnly and declares some forgotten obligation, and departs the room with an unsteady gait. The Princesse de Chalais throws a half-eaten cheese tart on the floor in disgust.

“Ah, I am sorry, mademoiselle, the numbers were not in our favor.”

I shrug. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Besides, it’s just a game of chance and luck. They bore me.”

“So you do not believe in chance and luck?” The king raises one eyebrow in amusement.

“Oh, but I do. How else does one explain the success of people that have no merit?” I look down the table at Meuse, picking his nose while mindlessly rooting through a bowl of dried figs.

The king chuckles. “Ha! You are so unkind, mademoiselle, so very unkind. Now, if these games bore you—what do you suggest?”

“Chess,” I say promptly. Madame de Dray was a keen strategist and we spent many long evenings playing together at the convent.

“But that is not a game for a friendly evening!” declares Madame d’Estrées, contorting her lips into a ducklike pout as she attempts a flirt.

“Ah, chess—the game of kings. Fleury taught me, many years ago, but I must confess I have lost the knack in recent years. No willing partner, perhaps?”

“There is a set in the Wig Chamber, sire,” offers Meuse, hastily swallowing a fig. “The gift from the Spanish?”

“You are right as always, Meuse. Goodness, it has been a long while. But I must agree with Madame d’Estrées; chess is not the game for the group we have here tonight.”

I don’t murmur that I agree, but continue to smile at him. He hesitates a flinch, then makes up his mind: “But perhaps tomorrow evening—that concert in the Queen’s Apartments does not interest me. We shall play chess, then, yes, with Mademoiselle de Nesle!”