“It’s open, yes,” he said, picking his teeth.
Petite heard a raucous chorus of jays. “I must go after the colt. He’s injured, and saddled. He could do himself harm.”
“The King is coming today.”
“I know.” It was possible he’d already arrived. Petite could just imagine the consternation at a colt running loose, causing havoc. “Are the trails marked?”
“There’s only one clear.”
Petite headed into the park. Stands of fine old oaks had been infested with worms. She stayed on the one trail that had been cleared: the colt would have as well. It was a sandy terrain, without marsh or bogs.
She came upon a woodland meadow. She could see the colt’s path through the long grass. Her horse whinnied…and a horse answered. The colt.
Petite allowed her horse his head. He pushed his way through a dense copse and over a rocky stream into yet another clearing. There, in the distance, she spotted the colt. A man was holding his reins. Thanks be to Mary!
Petite approached at a trot, then slowed. “Is he hurt?” she called out. The man was young, not much older than she was—in his twenties, she guessed. He was humbly dressed, but comely. Unhatted, his long hair hung about his shoulders. He was carrying a gun and a game bag—full, it appeared.
“He bucked his rider at the Blois bridge,” Petite said. She feared she looked a fright. Her hair had blown free during that long, hard gallop.
The man gazed up at her. “He has a cut on his right haunch,” he said.
Petite nodded. His eyes were hazel, and his skin was dark, much rudded by the sun. There was something of the Latin in him, something almost Moorish. He had a commanding figure—strong and athletic. “He was bleeding,” she said, her mouth dry.
“The cut’s not deep. I found some wild burnet and was able to stanch it. He should be fine.”
Petite tried to speak, but could not. She wanted to say that she knew all about burnet, that she had many a time gathered it with her father. She well remembered its large winged leaves, nicked at the edges, gray on the underside. In June, its small purple flowers made it easy to find, but now, late in July, it would have been difficult to see in the long meadow grass.
“Good,” she finally managed to say. He must think her an idiot.
“Mainly he’s just frightened,” he said, stroking the horse’s neck.
“His name is Helios,” Petite blurted out. She felt dangerously light-headed. She hoped he wasn’t a poacher. She admired the gentle way he was handling the skittish colt.
“Tireless Helios, the Greek sun god,” he said, glancing up at her again, smiling. “A fine name for a horse.”
Petite was surprised and pleased that he knew ancient mythology. Perhaps he was gentry. She wanted to tell him that she knew the Greek myths well herself, that she had named the colt after poring over the ancient texts in the Duke’s library. “How did you catch him?”
“Oh, in the usual way: I let him come to me. He was curious—like any youngster.” He handed her the reins.
“Thank you.” His fingers—which felt soft, not calloused at all—lightly brushed her wrist, sending a jolt through her. She thought of a line from the romance Nicole had been reading to the Princess: Adieu, my beloved. I know you not, and yet I know you. It did not seem like such nonsense to her now.
“My pleasure, Mademoiselle,” he said. “You ride exceptionally well,” he added, giving a salute.
“Thank you,” Petite repeated, moving away, pulling the colt after her. Adieu, adieu—would she ever see him again? “The King is coming,” she told him, as a warning.
“I know,” he said. “He arrived a while ago.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, spurring her mount.
At the edge of the woods, she looked back. He was watching her.
Chapter Ten
CHURCH BELLS BEGAN to ring and then cheering was heard.
“It must be the King,” Petite said, fastening the Princess’s veil with silver gilt pins. The inflammations from the bites were still visible, in spite of healing ointments.
The palace was a madhouse, and Petite was exhausted. She had been up late the night before, attending to the stricken Princess, and then she hadn’t slept. She’d put a pillow over her head to muffle the hourly cry of the night watchman. Finally, in the early hours, she’d dropped off to sleep, wrapped in reverie and sweet longing dreams—only to be woken by the return of the Marquis and her mother from Chambord.
Everyone, it seemed, was vexed: the Marquis had panicked on learning that the delivery of fish for the banquet was delayed, and her mother had an attack of nerves on discovering that her only ball gown no longer fit. At terce, the Duke and the still-hobbling Duchess had returned from Chambord, causing yet more commotion. All the while Monsieur de Gautier, the dance master, had been running to and fro, trying to get the stage effects to work properly.
Trumpets sounded. “It is him,” Nicole said.
Princess Marguerite popped an anise pastille into her mouth to sweeten her breath. “How do I look?”
“Lovely, Your Highness,” Petite lied. She felt on edge herself, jittery as a colt in a storm. She couldn’t believe that she was actually going to see the King.
They headed for the grand staircase, where Monsieur de Gautier was positioning everyone to create the best effect. Princess Marguerite was put in the front, on the first step, her sisters on the step behind, flanked by the Duke and Duchess. Most of the attendants were placed within the château, out of sight. Nicole and Petite were told to stay in the deserted guard room (where at least they had the advantage of a window enclosure).
A gilded, domed carriage with scarlet wheels entered the courtyard, the coachman, footmen and pages all clothed in matching scarlet livery. A footman opened the carriage door and let down the stepping board, bowing deeply. A young man emerged in a brown justacorps and breeches, a cloak flung over one shoulder. All they could see was the top of his tricorn hat with its red cockade.
“That must be the King,” Petite said. “Everyone is bowing.”
“Be still my heart,” Nicole breathed.
GASTON, THE DUC D’ORLÉANS, showed his nephews, Louis and Philippe, and the Queen Mother to the three upholstered armchairs in the vast salle des états. Anyone else with the right to sit had to make do with stools—even he…yet another annoyance. It irked him to have to sit on a stool in his own château in front of all these guests, over a thousand of the local gentry, dressed in outdated finery. That it wasn’t even really his château made him even crosser. That God had not graced him with a legitimate male heir meant that everything—everything—would be reclaimed by the Crown upon his death—which, given his temper of late, was no doubt rapidly approaching. Perhaps I should die now, he thought, before the performance.
Ah yes, the performance. His overwrought daughters had been practicing for weeks. At least he wouldn’t have to sit through any more tedious rehearsals, endure their tantrums and tears.
The violinists gathered up their instruments. Gaston braced himself. Finding good musicians in the province had been impossible. Romas with pipes and tabors could be had for a sou—but no, his guest was his nephew the King, and Romas simply would not do, even for a festival that (he hoped) was to have a charming air of the Middle Ages.
The expense of all this! Economies were causing him no end of grief. It was simply too much to have to keep track of all the candles and foodstuffs, to count each bale of hay, each bushel of oats, to track the pennies spent shoeing and nailing, to chart the expense of keeping sixteen running dogs and five greyhounds. Where was he to trim costs? The stabling alone required by his nephew the King was costing him a small fortune.
“We should begin, Your Highness?” Monsieur de Gautier gave him a look. “You know: the performance.”
Gaston groaned as a footman in shabby livery helped pull him to his feet. His eldest daughter by his first marriage (la Grande Mademoiselle—the old, bossy and rich one) insisted it was the damp air at Blois that ma
de his bones ache. She’d persuaded him to take powdered St. John’s wort, which did help, he had to admit, but it made him fart, so he’d refrained for the purpose of the Visitation.
The Visitation. Mon Dieu, you would think it was the Lord Jesus himself the way everyone was carrying on. Louis was King, true, but he was also Gaston’s twenty-year-old nephew, the one who had bagged all the pheasants the Duke had been cultivating for two and a half years, the twenty-year-old over whom his daughters swooned. Was the boy so good-looking as all that? He was fit, certainly, but what twenty-year-old wasn’t? A bit of a bumpkin, in Gaston’s view—not unlike the dolt his father had been, always on about horses and hounds.
It irked him—it did! Gaston himself might have been king several times over. Were it not for the smallest turn of fate—his hapless brother finally getting his wife with child (after twenty-three years: was that not suspicious?)—he, Gaston, would have been the one in the armchair, everyone bowing and scraping, turning themselves inside-out to please. But no, he was merely the old uncle on the stool, pulled to his feet by a perspiring footman in worn-out livery. His life was coming to an end—he was sure of it—and what had it all amounted to? Daughters.
“WHERE’S MY TUCKER?” Princess Marguerite asked through clenched teeth, unable to move her jaw lest the white lead paste covering her face flake.
“I couldn’t find it,” Nicole told her, adjusting the Princess’s lace petticoat. The kitchen boys’ ballet was coming to an end; the girls would go on next.
“But I must have a dozen,” the Princess said, brushing white flecks off her exposed bosom.
“It’s a mystery,” Nicole said cheerfully.
Petite peeked out from between the makeshift curtains. The vast room was crowded. She spotted her mother standing off to one side beside the Marquis. Where was the royal family? If only she could see better through the swarms of servants.
Mercy! The Queen Mother was sitting directly in front with the Duke’s eldest daughter, la Grande Mademoiselle. As the big princess talked, the Queen Mother frowned down at her hands. (Petite wondered if it was true that she wore pigskin gloves at night to keep them soft.)
Where was the King? Petite thought he might be the man standing behind the Queen Mother with Philippe. With all the people moving to and fro, all she could get were glimpses. She thought it must be the King because of the brown justacorps he was wearing.
“Do you think the King’s brother paints his face?” Nicole whispered, looking over Petite’s shoulder.
Petite nodded. Philippe—known by the title “Monsieur”—was stylishly adorned in a beribboned periwig and ruffled petticoat breeches. “He’s powdered,” she said, watching as he turned to address the Duke. She wondered if he used powder of ground-up pearls, which, although dear, was said to be best for the skin.
“I didn’t expect the Queen Mother to be so old,” Nicole said. “Or the King so well made. Oh là là, his legs.”
So that was the King. He stooped down to say something to his mother. “His demeanor is so—”
“So manful,” Nicole said with a sigh.
“So noble,” Petite said. He looked up, and she gasped. It was him.
“What’s wrong?”
Petite put her hands over her heart. Her poacher was the King.
LA GRANDE MADEMOISELLE could not believe what she was seeing. True, the set was magnificent. The river waves were convincing (cleverly created by two men waving a painted cloth), and the sound of thunder (cannon balls rolled down tin-covered stairs) was so frightening it made the hounds bark. True, the kitchen boys’ ballet was vigorous and charming. Her half-sisters, however, simply could not dance. They stepped all over themselves performing a simple branle. Marguerite, who was supposed to be the star, was the worst. Why was her face covered in white paste? And where was her tucker? She looked like a harlot. And those maids of hers: one brawling and brazen and the other one, the thin one with a limp, stumbling around as if in a dream. What had come over them all?
She had been relieved when the performance finally came to an end and the platters of food carried in…or so she had thought at the time, for nothing could have been as shocking as her half-sisters’ comportment at the table—or rather, their lack of it. Marguerite, the eldest, wiped her nose with the tablecloth, then gobbled down five raw oysters with loud smacking sounds. The two younger princesses were even worse, fidgeting as they ate, poking at their teeth and sticking fingers in their ears. Hadn’t her stepmother taught them anything?
There was a clump of hardened something on her knife and her lap cloth was frayed. And where had the staff come from? Every single walleyed one of them had some sort of twitch, serving up platters with their thumbs in the soup. Was this her father’s idea of a royal banquet? La Grande Mademoiselle wished she could disappear.
MONSIEUR GASTON, THE DUC D’ORLÉANS, looked down at his plate. Was that even fish under the heavy sauce? It was a Friday, a fast-day, and the King’s maître d’hôtel had insisted that he send to the ocean ports for sole, sturgeon, turbot…limandes even. As if river fish weren’t good enough! Gaston cautiously took a bite. It was chewy, so perhaps it was cuttlefish. He couldn’t be sure. The light from the tapers was too dim to see by. Perhaps he should have allowed his bumbling chief steward to order more candles.
Years ago they had lived in light. Now things had changed; now he had “economies”—and all because of his nephew the King. The minute Louis was born, the minute it was known that he—Gaston, the Duc d’Orléans, son of Henry the Great—was no longer first in line for the throne, the laborers building his new wing had quit. They knew there would no longer be sufficient funds for their pay.
The silence at the tables was deafening. All that could be heard was the sound of the guests pushing food around their metal plates. Perhaps, Gaston thought…perhaps he should not have dismissed the violinists. A little music—even bad music—might have helped, despite the expense.
The Queen Mother, seated in the place of honor on his right, seemed to be studiously avoiding him.
Well. Gaston sighed: could he blame her? Likely it hadn’t been wise to doubt the King’s paternity so publicly all those twenty years ago—but having witnessed the baby emerging and seeing in the infant’s genitalia his own downfall, was it not understandable that he’d had something of a lapse in judgment?
He’d meant only to make a witticism, after all, say something clever to amuse the few who had dared to join him that evening. Of course he’d ordered his cellarer to bore his final cask of Italian white Trebbiano—the costly muscatel would be his last, after all. He could not, in fact, remember saying the offending words, but the next morning he was being quoted everywhere: I can vouch that the Dauphin came out of the Queen, but I cannot vouch for who put him in there.
It was a clever remark, was it not? Pity that the Queen Mother took it personally. In truth he had always loved his brother’s Spanish wife. Indeed, they had once mildly flirted. Her intoxicating beauty—sensual and yet virtuous, an irresistible mix—was wasted on his effeminate dolt of a brother, God rest his soul. No, there was to be no justice in this life. After that comment, the Queen Mother, his sweet Señora Anne, no longer blessed him with her lovely smiles. Even now…
Gaston glanced again at the Queen Mother. She’d taken a bite and seemed to be chewing for a long time. Perhaps she’d partaken of the same cuttlefish. Gaston wondered if she had problems with her teeth. She was still a beauty, in spite of her girth, her sober demeanor. Once she had been slender, and oh, so gay.
“Your Highness,” he said finally, addressing her, “tomorrow evening I have arranged to have a troupe of actors perform a comedy.”
“I’m afraid that we won’t be here,” the Queen Mother said evenly.
Everyone stared. Gaston’s wife at the far end of the table stopped chewing.
“We must depart for the south,” the Queen Mother announced to them all, placing her serviette on her plate.
“But…but we were told yo
u would stay at Chambord for three nights,” Gaston protested, stuttering. “I’ve planned entertainments for you every afternoon, and—”
“There has been a change of plans,” said the Queen Mother, rising.
Gaston leapt to his feet. There was a loud scraping of chairs and hurried bows as the royal party rapidly took their leave.
“No dessert?” the Duchess asked, bewildered.
“I will see to their coaches, Your Highness,” the dance master told Gaston, rushing after the royal guests.
“WHAT A MUDDLE,” Nicole told Petite, her pewter plate heaped with desserts. Indeed, there was food in abundance. The basement table for the upper staff was covered with dishes, but already the fish smelled off, in spite of the richly spiced sauce. The sweets, on the other hand, were tempting: bowls of melting crème glacée, platters of biscuits au chocolat, a vast compote de prunes grillées.
Nicole started to say more, but was drowned out by the parade of servants filing by, en route to the basement kitchens balancing trays of dirty dishes. “I told Princess Marguerite that it’s not too late,” she continued when it was quieter. “She could run away to Chambord, join the King’s entourage as a maid, and then, when he tries to deflourish her, reveal herself as a princess and demand he make an honest woman of her.”
“You must stop reading those romances,” Petite said. She was too elated and confused to care about the Princess, frankly. All she could think of, with a dizzying pang, was her last glimpse of the King. As the royal party had prepared to depart, she and Nicole emerged from the service entrance. The King had turned. His eyes—she was sure of it—had lingered, for a long moment, on her. Did he recognize her? Did he remember?
Chapter Eleven
THE CHTEAU FELL into gloom after the King’s departure, as if a spell had been cast. Even the announcement that a treaty had been signed with Spain was met with indifference. For the first time in more than twenty years there would be peace—but likely to be sealed by the King’s marriage to the Spanish Infanta.