The Sisters of Versailles (37 page)

Agénois does not have to think about his costume; he is going as part of the king’s entourage and this year they are all dressed as bats. He is very pleased; he says all the ladies will want to dance with him, on the chance that their bat is actually the king. Especially this year, as the bat is perceived to have a great hunger. For fruit and other delights. Agénois says the ladies will positively flock to the bats; it is rumored that many will be dressed as the peaches they are known to love. Then he bows and says he is sorry, my sister being so recently dead.

“Not at all,” I say. “You know how I felt about her. Or didn’t feel about her.”

“But she was your sister.”

Poor Pauline. Still, I am glad she is not around; I don’t think I would even contemplate going if she were there.

Agénois has high hopes for the ball. He leaves for Languedoc soon and has been courting me ardently. Though my feelings for him grow stronger, we have not progressed further than many long hours of kissing in the library. I don’t want a quick roll in the hay, as they say in the country. How would it be done? Bent over one of the sofas or up against a bookcase in the library, watched by the statues that stand guard at the door? I shudder. No. But Agénois has been alluding to his very private quarters at Versailles and the back corridors we can take so no one will see us leave.

“Even the most private of exits will not fill my bed,” I counter. “Tante will do a head count.”

“We don’t have to wait until the end of the ball,” he says passionately.

I look in his dark blue eyes and think how nice it would be to spend the night with him. Naked. With no one else, not the ghost of JB or the image of Agénois’s wife, to impede our pleasure.

“You smell delicious,” declares Hortense. “Like a fantastic cake.”

I am dressed in a simple white gown, and green satin pouches, filled with caraway, coriander, mint and more, hang around my waist. My women thread ribbons with cloves and nutmeg nuts and drape the strings around me. Tante’s hairdresser is doing our hair and I have a handful of juniper berries and some bay leaves I want him to glue to my curls. The cook is not amused; he wants everything back by tomorrow, untouched by my sweat.

“Excuse me, madame, I meant
perspiration
. Untouched by perspiration.”

Hortense twirls around in her toga, enjoying the lightness. No panniers for this Roman! She is in a rare lively mood; she told me this morning she thinks she might be pregnant again.

“I know it’s indecent, but I think the Romans were very smart. This would have been quite the thing to wear in hot weather.”

“You look naked,”
I tell her as the hairdresser weaves pods into my hair. “It looks like you are wearing your chemise.”

“I don’t look naked,” says Hortense, a little timidly. “I look like a Roman?”

Tante clucks nervously, for it is true you can see the outline of Hortense’s body rather too well. “I am not sure this is appropriate.”

“But, Tante,” says Hortense, “we will be masked. No one will know who I am.”

“You look naked,” says Hortense’s husband, entering the room. Hortense sways across the room—you can see her hips move!—and gives him a kiss on the cheek. Usually a dour man, tonight Flavacourt is in a surprising good mood and insists only on her donning a big cape, which he forbids her to remove. He is supposed to be dressed as an Arab, but I think he is far better as Glowering Husband; he looks as though he will reach for his curved sword should any man so much as smile at Saint Agnes.

When we finish with our hair we put on our masks—mine decorated with dried vanilla pods painted white—and descend to the carriage. It’s a cold winter afternoon: the drive from Paris should only take two hours but today the rutted road is clogged with carriages, all going to the ball. It will likely take four.

Agénois swoops in on me immediately, for he knows my costume. He looks faintly ridiculous, swathed all in black—even his stockings are black. “My dearest,” he whispers, and spreads his arms, revealing two stretched wings made from black velvet. “Boning from a pannier,” he whispers. I giggle, but I’m not sure I like the idea that I may be making love to a bat tonight; there is something sinister, if not ridiculous, there.

“My dearest,” he says, enveloping me with his black wings. “You smell delicious. I could eat you.”

The crowd parts around us, and a murmur runs through it—is this bat the king? The sense of possibility and anticipation is high with the freedom that a masked ball brings to those who are always watched. Will tonight be the night? Before Agénois can pull me
away to get in line for a
contredanse
, a Roman general takes my arm. “Another Roman!” I exclaim. “There are so many this year.”

“It is the year of the Romans,” the man declares, and I recognize Richelieu’s voice. “Come, there is someone who wants to meet you.”

I dip a finger in one of my spice pouches and hold it up for his inspection. “First you must tell me what spice this is.”

Richelieu sniffs. “Coriander,” he concludes quickly. “Or, as they say in the native language of the Hindoos,
dhania.
”

He is a most astonishing man.

He leads me down a small corridor and up two flights of stairs and we turn into a small room, paneled in white with a window overlooking the Marble Court. From this height, the crush is enormous; the giant courtyard a menagerie of people and colors, spilling out from the main rooms. Though the night is chilly, steam rises from all the perspiration and even the lanterns seem to flicker in the heat. Against my will I feel my heart starting to beat faster—I think I know who it is that Richelieu wants me to meet.

“Sire, I come bearing this delectable platter I have been telling you about.”

A tall bat, one who has discarded his wings and stands alone in solemn blackness, turns to me and bows deeply. That it is the king there is no doubt; beside him, the rest of the colony shrinks in comparison, and even his mask cannot hide the shine of his velveteen eyes. He bows and brings my hand to his lips. My knees go weak and I think I am going to faint, something I have never done before in my life.

“My condolences on your sister,” he says, and I hear compassion in his deep treacle voice.

“Majesté.”
I sweep into a curtsy.

“Monsieur here is simply a bat, Madame des Épices,” says Richelieu reprovingly.

“Monsieur le Bat.” The king laughs. “Yes, I like that. To you, dear madame, I am but Monsieur le Bat.”

He leads me to a velvet-covered bench, and as we sit he leans
in and sniffs appreciatively. “Vanilla. Nutmeg,” he says in surprise. “And cinnamon?”

“All the spices of the Far East,
Maj
—Monsieur le Bat.”

“Armand, you told me she was beautiful but you never told me she was so intelligent. I can hear it in her voice. It is delightful, low and melodic.”

Richelieu is watching us, his eyes darting back and forth, missing nothing. “I have never met a more intelligent woman, sire,” he says, then catches my eye and winks.

At some imperceptible signal from the king the other bats and Richelieu fly away, leaving only one—the king—alone with me in the little room. We talk an hour, about my deceased husband, about his children, about his projects at Choisy and the progress of the hunt this winter, then embark on a lively debate about the merits of Voltaire’s
Letters on the English
. Though I try to pull away, something pulls me in. Sheer flattery, I think. Knowing that down in the crowd a hundred—nay, two hundred, nay, a thousand—perhaps every woman down there, married, single, widowed, is searching desperately for a certain bat. And yet he has called me here.

“May I ask a favor?” he asks suddenly.

“Of course, Monsieur le Bat.” I know what he is going to ask. I can see it in his eyes, childish hope mixed with arrogance. To prevent him from asking or even begging—for that would not a king make—I untie my mask and bare my face.

“By God, you are pretty!” he exclaims in delight.

He returns the favor and up close he is as handsome in person as he is in paint. It is strange to have seen so many portraits of this man and yet now here he is, in the flesh, seated beside me and leaning as close as my skirts allow.

Richelieu comes back and says that duty calls. “There is a little angel related to the spice woman who wishes to see you.”

So Louise is an angel. How unoriginal.

“Madame. Enchanted. Absolutely enchanted. I hope to see you at Court soon. Very soon.”

I lower my eyes demurely.

The king leaves but I stay; I don’t want to go back just yet to the crushed masses below, where sweaty hopes mix with perspiration and too much scent. I look down into the courtyard and spot a dejected bat leaning against a pillar—Agénois—and a small crowd around a rather naked Roman lady who seems to have lost her cape. I wonder what Agénois would say if he knew the king had been wooing me. Would he be as Flavacourt and declare he would run his sword through the king if he so much as looks at me again? I doubt it; where Flavacourt is a rough military man, Agénois is the consummate courtier and would as soon run naked to the queen than insult the king. No, Agénois would step aside quietly, of that I am sure. If . . . if that were required.

I stay by the window for another hour, trembling in the chill air and alone with my potent soup of emotions—flattered, confused, elated; flushed with the tumble of thoughts that the extraordinary encounter has inspired in me. The power that comes from being desired. Below I see a large black chaperone, looking like a bat herself, circling the sides of the courtyard, and I know Tante is looking for me. I’m no simpleton: by tomorrow, news of the king’s time with me will be all over the Court. Will he order me to come to Court? Can he do that? What would I do if he did? I try to imagine the king kissing me. What would it be like to be kissed by
France
?

Once I am back in the world, Agénois berates me for avoiding him all night. I can only offer a feeble excuse: the anticipation of our passion frightened me, and so I withdrew. Now the timing is wrong and we have no opportunity to slip away. There is a part of me that regrets not leaving with him by a back door when we had the chance, for he will be gone most of the spring and summer. He declares that the only thing that will sustain him through the lonely months to come is the thought that my sweet nectar will be here, a prize for him, when he returns. Rather silly words—I refused to blush when he declared them—but still, his departure leaves me as empty and hollow as an echo.

A few weeks later I am alone in the house—Hortense is visiting her son in Picardy, and Tante has remained at Versailles—when there is a commotion in the courtyard. I wonder who it could be, for it is past ten and visitors at a late hour only bring bad news. I brace myself as the footman enters and regally announces: “The doctors you sent for, madame.”

I haven’t sent for any doctors.

“Show them in,” I say.

Two men wearing voluminous black wigs, a ridiculous fashion left over from the previous century, enter the library. I recognize Richelieu first and am about to demand what he is doing when I realize who the other “doctor” is. Oh. I immediately curtsy and motion them to chairs. “Some . . . some spiced wine,” I tell the footman.

“Spiced wine!” chortles the king. “How I should love to drink that.”

That spring I am visited twice more by my “doctors,” and with each visit I sense possibility in the king’s eyes. I am not sure whether I should run toward that future or flee in the opposite direction. What would Tante say? Hortense? Louise? Do I care? Three sisters—improbable and potently impossible. And Agénois . . . ? Is it possible for a heart to be split in two? Surely I love Agénois, but as for the king . . . well, I have always longed for adventure.

One night as the “doctors” are leaving, Richelieu leans in and whispers that the king is so smitten, he is impervious to the scandal. “A passion quite strong enough to overcome the infamy of fucking three sisters—now what do you think about that?”

“I think your words are as filthy as your mind.” I stifle a smile; his boldness is sometimes attractive.