The Sisters of Versailles (41 page)

“So, congratulations,” purrs Charolais, kicking the cat away. “The Duc de Lauraguais. Not bad, not bad at all. You are indeed fortunate in your influential friends and relations.” She glances over at Marie-Anne and Richelieu, laughing together under the portrait of Pauline.

I giggle in nervous surprise. “How do you know?”

“Oh, mademoiselle, I knew before you did. I knew it on Tuesday.” It’s Saturday today and Richelieu informed me only yesterday. Since then I’ve been floating on a particularly happy, fluffy cloud. I am to be married!

“I’m not sure how his family convinced him—his first wife, Geneviève, was a great beauty. Her eyes were extraordinary,” continues Charolais.

Louise comes to rescue me, bringing Snowball back to the table. “It’s wonderful, wonderful news.” She beams, and I know she is truly happy for me. “Diane to be married, and to be a duchess! Soon she’ll be at Court full-time. Her husband has a very spacious apartment. Very spacious.”

“Mmm.” Charolais looks disdainfully at Louise then turns back to me. “We thought it would never happen. I don’t know
anyone
who married for the first time at the age of twenty-eight. Remarkably old. Let’s just hope it hasn’t
closed over
,” she adds in a low whisper before slinking away.

“Don’t mind her, Diane.” Louise squeezes my arm again and I smile back. I see Louise is nervous, but I don’t know why. She has been looking a little lost and gray this last week; she says it is because she is bored, now that she is no longer in attendance upon the queen. She frets her fan and watches Marie-Anne and Richelieu.
She has little black circles under her eyes that she tried to disguise with white powder, but it hasn’t worked very well.

Hortense is sitting in comfort with a smile on her face, wearing a loose gray gown that flows over her in a river of chiffon. She is now very pregnant but even more beautiful than before: her face is innocent of rouge but somehow her cheeks glow perfectly. The other ladies, even Marie-Anne, pale in comparison, and I notice that Charolais keeps well clear of her. Hortense is enjoying Court life and declares often that even one as beautiful as she is can be pious here. It’s not a very humble thing to say—Madame Lesdig always says that the pride of the peacock is an abomination before God—but I suppose it’s true.

Marie-Anne is also very beautiful tonight, though she too takes care to stay away from Hortense. She is very simply dressed in a white silk gown with black bows—I tried to get her to add some flowers or lace, but she says that sometimes simplicity is the greatest grace and that there is a difference between elegance and fussiness. She sounds just like Madame de Lesdig! She’s very confident, and seems even prettier here than she did when she was living at Tante’s: it is as though the grandeur of Versailles suits her. Marie-Anne tells me it was she and Richelieu who arranged my marriage; I’m not sure how she did that but I am beginning to think that she can do anything.

“But what is going on?” The king strides into the room and extricates Snowball from a bowl of salad on the side table. The cat meows piteously. The king recoils at the smell of alcohol: his senses are as refined as his manners. “Is this cat drunk?”

“Sire.” The footman Jonglon bows, laughing and sweating. “Snowball turned out to be a right
bon viveur
and enjoyed his champagne greatly.”

The king frowns and the atmosphere shifts and the air fills quickly with opprobrium for the thoughtless Jonglon and his dreadful prank. The cowed footman retrieves the cat from the king’s arms and exits, with a promise to sit by the animal’s side until she is fully sober.

No! I don’t want Snowball to go. “Oh, but, sire, it was so
funny, you would have laughed if you had seen it, Snowball tried to shred the celery and . . .”

The king smiles at me lazily. Everyone tells me it is inappropriate for me to talk to him when he hasn’t addressed me first, but he never seems to mind. And he’s the only one who matters, isn’t he? Sometimes I feel him looking at me, and when I catch him he always apologizes, even though he needn’t, and says I remind him of Pauline. I am like a sketch, a shadow, he says, for the painting that would become Pauline. I think that is a compliment?

The king sits at the head of the table and with a wave indicates that we should seat ourselves at will. I giggle to watch everyone falling over themselves to appear polite, yet wanting to sit as close to him as they can. Only Louise smiles like a saint and takes a place at the far end of the table. Zélie was right: humility inspires admiration. Hortense is helped to the chair of her choosing by the gallant Duc d’Ayen. I am torn between following Snowball and taking a seat, but I suppose I’d better sit down—Louise was telling me all day what an honor it is for me to be included tonight.

I plop down in the middle next to the Marquis de Meuse, whom the king likes but no one else does. Marie-Anne goes to sit beside Louise at the far end of the table but at the last minute she looks back at the king. He smiles at her and she comes shyly back toward him, as though unable to resist his lure. The king grins heartily and leans forward, and Marie-Anne blushes. I think Marie-Anne is a very good actress, which I suppose is a good thing—didn’t Zélie always say we should hide our real emotions? But what is she trying to hide?

“All of us, here together,” observes the king as the footmen fill the table with plates from the warming room next door. Oh, good—the centerpiece is a pair of roasted rabbits, smothered in sage and onions. Delicious. “All of my favorite family.” He looks around the table: Marie-Anne, Hortense, Louise, me, the portrait of Pauline watching over us. His gaze comes back to linger between Hortense and Marie-Anne. “To the charming Nesle sisters,” he says. “Each with their own charms, each unique. I would
that I had known your mother well, ladies, that I could have thanked that most honorable woman for her efforts in producing such angels.”

“I knew the mother well,” remarks Richelieu with a vicious grin. I once overheard Madame de Lesdig talking to one of her old friends about him; she called him a rabbit racing around, mating with everything that moved.

“I’m sure you did, Richelieu,” answers the king neutrally. “We would be hard-pressed to find mothers of any of our guests here tonight you
didn’t
know.”

We all laugh dutifully but the king still seems fixed on us four sisters. I suppose it is rather exciting for him: all of us here together, and he does seem to like our family so. Louise says he holds us in kind regard, for his love of her and the memory of Pauline. But he does seem to be liking Hortense and Marie-Anne quite a bit—last week he chose to ride to the hunt with them in his carriage and left Louise back at the palace. Louise said she was glad, because it meant she could spend more time with me, but I don’t think she was very happy.

The king raises his goblet. “To my favorite sisters. All so different, yet all so charming. Would that we could be together like this, every evening.” He commends us to drink to the health of the perfect Nesle sisters and to our lost Pauline.

I drink quickly, hoping the dinner will start soon. Rabbit is not nearly as good when it is cold; it gets tough and the sauce will soon start congealing. I see Louise smile, as deeply as she can, and I relax a bit, for she seems genuinely happy at the king’s words. Hortense blushes an even more perfect shade of pink and lowers her eyes. Marie-Anne trembles with delight.

“And why can we not, sire, have more evenings like this?” asks Hortense in a shy, silky voice, and the king swallows hard and looks as though he is straining against his breeches. In her hair she has sewn three perfect pink lilies and I think she looks like a living flower. “It is indeed delightful to be so entertained, and I
would count myself the happiest woman in the world if it could be thus every night.”

Marie-Anne frowns. She and Hortense are not getting on very well these days. I am staying with Marie-Anne in her fine apartment, and Hortense rarely visits. When I ask where she is, Marie-Anne just waves her hand and says she’s probably pretending to pray or something. It’s surprising, because they were very close before. I hope they don’t become enemies, like Pauline and Marie-Anne were. I like both of them and wouldn’t want to have to choose.

“But too much of a good thing—what is that quote?” asks Marie-Anne, drawing the king away from the angel in the middle of the table.

“ ‘Can one desire too much of a good thing?’ ” supplies Richelieu helpfully.

The king nods. “An excellent question, as posed by Shakespeare, my friend, but I think the answer to be no. In this case I do not think I can desire too much of a good thing, too much of these beautiful sisters.”

I want to giggle but I hold my tongue. I must be silent like a fish! I must not even splash. But it’s true; the king certainly likes our family. I wonder if Marie-Anne will become his mistress? Or Hortense? And Louise—would she be sad? What if the king wants to sleep with
me
? I’ll be married soon, and then I can probably sleep with anyone I want—apparently my future husband has a dozen mistresses—and of course if the king asked, it would be hard to say no. But how strange that would be, if the king slept with
all
of us? Had all of us as lovers?

Marie-Anne laughs lightly. “Oh, Shakespeare was a fine writer, but he is not a god. I think that too much of anything leads to boredom. And, Your Majesty, I would hate to think of you bored. Besides, Diane leaves tomorrow, so we shall lose one of our
members
.” There is a little husky trill on her last word and the king puts his glass down sharply and again looks as though his breeches have just popped.

Finally we start to eat—apart from the roasted rabbit there are
rashers of juniper-smoked bacon and an excellent venison pie that everyone declares is the finest they have ever eaten, made as it is from the stag the king killed that afternoon.

“Victory mingles perfectly with the tender meat and spices,” ventures Meuse in his craven, high-pitched voice.

The conversation turns to the scandal of the day: the death of the old Duc de Nangis, who left twenty thousand
livres
to his chief valet. A debate rages about whether they were lovers or not. I want to inform the other guests that such a thing is not possible, but the shadow of Madame de Lesdig falls over me and keeps me silent. I concentrate on the food and help myself to a sweet lemony sauce, perfect when poured over the rabbit and mixed with the onions.

Later, when the meat is eaten and the champagne is near finished from the bottomless bottles, the room grows warm and close with the fire and the sweat of the restless courtiers. The king stops the talk and raises one finger.

“Do you sing?” he asks Marie-Anne. She opens her rosebud mouth a touch, just a touch, and looks at him with soft, quizzical eyes. I know she has a beautiful singing voice, so I am not sure why she doesn’t just say that.

He looks down the table to Louise. “Bijou, I know you can sing, a bit. What about your sisters? I would love nothing better than to have the four of you sing before me. An aria or a country ballad. Anything.”

“Oh, sire, a magnificent idea!”

“Splendid thought,
Majesté
!”

The courtiers twitter their approval. Richelieu picks his ear and looks around in amusement. Louise laughs a little nervously. Her voice is fair enough but a little thin, and certainly not as fine as Marie-Anne’s. “I’m not sure our education extended that far, sire,” she says with pleading in her voice, which the king ignores. Marie-Anne doesn’t agree and she leaps up.

“What fun!” she declares, and simpers at the king. “The four of us, singing for our king. It would be our honor. Come, Diane, stand, and Louise, you too.” We gather around Hortense’s chair.

“Let’s sing ‘Souvenirs de Pauline’!” I cry, realizing as I speak
that I have drunk too much and that my voice is even louder than usual.

“No, no,” hisses Marie-Anne, pinching my arm. “Shut up.”

Hortense suggests “Le Mari et la Mariée,” and all declare that the perfect song.

“Yes, yes,” cries the king. “But you must get closer, closer. With your hands around each other’s waists. Hold each other, touch each other. Yes, like that, closer.”

Like crippled marionettes we bunch together, panniers crushing, laughing and starting to sing. I’m not a good singer but I do like it, and so I sing lustily. Next to me Louise speaks the words softly and I can see the unease running down her cheeks, wet with champagne perspiration. Marie-Anne’s fine voice trills above the others, her face turned to the ceiling, while below her Hortense sings with the voice of an angel. The king’s eyes dart between the two of them.

Poor Louise, he’s not looking at her at all. I grab her tighter and pull her close to me, for I think she needs comforting. Funny, because she is the elder and I so much younger.

From Hortense de Flavacourt

Château de Versailles

October 22, 1742

Darling Husband,

Greetings from Court. I am glad you insist on these daily letters; they are a good time to reflect on my love for you and my desire to be a devoted wife. I swear to you, again, that I am not being changed by this scandalous place and that I remain faithful to you in heart and body.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for everyone. I am afraid that Marie-Anne may follow the path of Louise and Pauline (and possibly Diane, though this I cannot ascertain and certainly do not want to spread gossip). The king is a handsome man; not as handsome as you, my dear husband, but a good-looking man nonetheless, and I think Marie-Anne is infatuated with him. I don’t think he is that excited by her; he has spoken to me alone several times and declares me the fairest of all my sisters. Please do not be jealous or angry—you must know that I have only you in my heart—but if my sovereign wishes to compliment me, I cannot prevent him.

I pray for Marie-Anne, that she will not follow the path of our harlot sisters, but she seems impervious to my pleas.