“Be still my heart,” Nicole sighed.
“He’s grown a mustache,” Petite said, smiling. She liked that he didn’t wear face paint or a wig.
He halted directly in front to solemnly salute his mother. “Vive le roi!” the crowd cried out. He untangled a rose that had caught on his wide lace collar and held it to his nose. Then he stroked his horse’s neck and moved on.
He’s good with horses, Petite thought, recalling how he’d calmed the frightened colt at Chambord. Her poacher: her secret.
DAYS LATER, PRINCESS Marguerite returned from her daily twenty-minute interview with the Duchess incensed to the highest degree. “I’ve just been informed, by On High,” she announced, lifting her eyes to the ceiling, “that I’m to marry.” The Princess threw her fur muff to Petite and tore into the arduous task of unfastening the six buttons on one of her leather gloves.
“That’s wonderful,” Petite said, emptying the sweetmeat wrappers and junky trinkets out of the Princess’s muff and handing it to the maid of the wardrobe.
“To the Duc de Lorraine?” Nicole asked hopefully, taking over the task of the glove buttons. The Duke and his nephew Charles were visiting, and it was rumored that the old Duke had lusty intentions…on Nicole.
“No, Cosimo de Médicis.”
“The third?” Nicole glanced at Petite, one eyebrow raised. Cosimo de Médicis was heir to the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
“You will be a grand duchess,” she said with awe. “That’s almost as good as being a queen.”
“I’ll have to live in Florence.”
“It will be an adventure,” Petite said. Perhaps she would be going as well. She would learn Italian; she would read Dante.
“Florentines have unnatural habits and never bathe.”
“We don’t bathe either,” Nicole said.
“Plus they lie and cheat.”
Nicole frowned. “Don’t we?”
“I want to die.” Princess Marguerite covered her face with her gold-embroidered nose cloth.
“Can you refuse?” Petite asked. She suspected that the princess fancied Young Prince Charles, who was often in their company of late.
“Refuse to be a grand duchess?” Nicole said. “Are you crackbrained?”
Princess Marguerite burst into tears. “I have no say in this. The King wishes to bind Tuscany to France. I have no more freedom than a galley slave.”
Petite and Nicole did their best to soothe her. With tender words they removed the Princess’s tucker, her bodice and skirts, and helped her into a silk-lined morning gown. Settling her on a mountain of soft pillows, Nicole massaged the Princess’s feet as Petite read aloud from The Treasure of the City of Ladies. At last, with tearstained cheeks, Marguerite fell asleep.
Night had fallen. By the light of a long taper set in a silver candlestick, Petite headed down the long gallery to her room in the turret, her thoughts troubled. Marguerite might be a princess, the granddaughter of Henry the Great, yet she had no more freedom than any other girl controlled by a father or husband.
Petite paused, as was her custom, to admire the painting of Queen Marie de Médicis riding the White, its long mane reaching down below its belly. She hurried on, avoiding the image of the Devil in the next painting about to jump out at her.
Petite found her mother in her dressing gown, being prepared for bed by her maid. The Marquis was already propped up on his pillows, sleeping upright, his toothless mouth agape.
“Ah, there you are,” her mother whispered, following Petite into her small chamber. She sat on the spindle chair, clutching a folded piece of paper.
“The Princess needed me,” Petite explained, putting down the candlestick. “She is unhappy.”
“Why? It’s a prestigious alliance,” Françoise said. The spindle chair creaked, broken in the joints. “Although—”
Petite waited, puzzled. Her mother’s face in the candlelight looked severe.
“We have a problem. After the Princess is married,” Françoise said finally, “the Duchess intends to make economies.”
Petite wasn’t sure what that meant. The Duchess was always making economies.
“She’s going to cut staff, Louise. The Marquis, thankfully, will still have a position, but all of Princess Marguerite’s help is to be let go. You won’t have a position here any longer.”
“Maybe Princess Marguerite will want me to go with her,” Petite said. Both her and Nicole.
“That won’t be possible. Once married, all her staff must be Florentine and chosen by her husband.”
“But who will she talk to?” Petite wondered out loud. Marguerite had no talent for languages—she didn’t even speak Latin. How would her maids know that she could not sleep without her rabbit’s foot charm under her pillow, that three candles must be left burning during a thunderstorm to prevent evil from happening while spirits were at war?
“This is the way it is.”
A night watchman outside called out, “Ten of the clock, sleep in peace. I am watching.”
“I understand,” Petite said, but with a tone of defeat.
“The problem is, where will you go? You can’t stay on here, and…” Françoise sighed wearily. “We’ve yet to find a husband for you.”
The eternal problem. Petite couldn’t remember a time when her mother had not been distressed over the impossibility of getting her married. She didn’t mind that bleak prospect as much as she supposed she should. “Perhaps I could join a convent,” she suggested.
“You’d need an even greater dowry for that,” Françoise said, rolling her eyes. “No, we must persevere. I’ve recently had the good fortune to find a matchmaker whose fees are reasonable. She has one client, an elderly widower, who might be a possibility.” She unfolded the sheet of rag paper. “He’s in trade,” she said, handing it to Petite, “so the Vallière name might interest him, she said.”
Dumbfounded, Petite held the paper to the candlelight.
“It’s not an ideal match—but what can we do? He’s not a young man, so at least he wouldn’t live long.” Françoise stood to leave. “That would be a consolation, believe me,” she said, pressing her dry, powdered cheek to Petite’s.
Petite closed the door after her mother. She felt despair through and through. Abruptly, she took up the candlestick and headed out into the corridor. Her candle aloft, she felt her way down the steep, winding stairs. The passages were forbidding in the dark. The moon was new, a dark moon, and no light shone through the small openings. She thought of the Devil, his leering eyes. The Dark Lord, Prince of Darkness. She dared not whistle, for that was how he was summoned. Instead she made a low hissing sound to scare off rodents. O rats and other crawling creatures, in the name of God, leave this place and go outside to a field. Amen.
With relief, she knocked on the door to Nicole’s dormitory. “It’s Louise—to see Nicole,” she said through the planks. She heard bolts sliding and the door opened a crack.
“My God. I prayed to see you, and here you are.” Nicole’s face was covered in a mud plaster and her hair done up in curl-papers.
There were six trundle beds in the narrow room. One girl was sitting up having her hair combed out by a maid, two were under their covers and two more were playing cards by the light of a lantern. A maid was preparing her pallet on the floor near the fire grate. It was not a time to come calling.
“In here,” Nicole said in a low voice, opening a door to a small trunk room under the eaves.
Petite set her candle into a wall sconce, dripping candle grease onto the stone floor. “We’re going to be let go,” she said.
Nicole shrugged. “I’ve decided to leave in any case,” she said, settling herself on a trunk.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to tell the Duchess that my mother and father are dying and that I have to return home immediately.”
“Both your parents are dying?”
“It makes a good story, don’t you think? If I don’t disappear, I’ll be
trapped into marrying the Duc de Lorraine, I just know it.”
Petite made a face. The disgusting old man had been grabbing every maid within arm’s reach. “My mother thinks she has found someone to marry me,” she confessed.
“That’s a relief.”
“But he’s in trade, and he’s—”
Nicole made a sputtering noise. “A merchant?”
Petite didn’t mind the trade part so much, but the letter her mother had shown her revealed that the man was practically illiterate. “He’s seventy-six years old,” she said, revolted.
“Maybe the Duke would marry you,” Nicole suggested. “The addled frack is desperate, and at least he’s noble.”
“I’d rather die,” Petite said.
NICOLE WAS GONE the very next day, leaving Petite to look after the stricken Princess.
“I have a favor to ask of you,” Marguerite whispered to Petite after Mass, pulling her into a window alcove.
“I’m always at your service, Your Highness,” Petite said, taken aback by the Princess’s deferential tone.
“I need to have a talk with Prince Charles this evening.” Marguerite’s lips were shiny with the lip salve they’d made out of egg whites, pig lard and sheep feet. “A private talk.” She arched her eyebrows. “The prince will call at seven. Before that, I’d like you to leave—by the window, so that it will be assumed that you’re with me. You can climb down the tree.”
“I’m to climb out?” In the dark?
PETITE LEANED AGAINST the wall and looked out over the great woods, and the gardens rich with scent. The moon cast an eerie light. All was silent but for the occasional hooting of an owl. She loved the stillness, in truth, the feeling that she was alone in the world, the chance to be with her thoughts.
Soon the Princess would be married by proxy and go to Florence to meet her husband. He would embrace her and then she would have babies. Petite thought of Nicole, who had lied in order to flee an old man’s lusty interest. She thought of her own dilemma, her awful future. What choices did they have? They were all of them ensnared. She recalled a fox she had seen as a child, caught in a trap: it had tried to chew off its leg to get free.
Petite recited Latin conjugations to distract herself from such thoughts: nolo, I am unwilling; nolebam, I was unwilling; nolam, I will be unwilling.
Nolo, nolebam, nolam.
Nolo, nolebam—
She started at the sound of footsteps on the cobblestones, and saw the shadowy figure of a night watchman. She crouched down, holding her breath, and heard him making water into the bushes. Then she saw something that made her heart stop: the dark figure of a dog, ambling along the path. It raised its head, sniffing the air. Then she heard it growl.
“What is it, Bruno?” she heard the man say.
“It’s just me.” Petite stepped forward. In a second, the dog would be upon her. “Mademoiselle de la Vallière.”
“The chief steward’s girl?” The guard took hold of the mastiff’s collar.
“Her Highness thought she heard something in the bushes outside her window,” Petite said, raising her voice so that the Princess might be warned.
Marguerite stuck her head out the open window, her hair disordered.
“Your Highness, you may rest safely,” Petite called out.
PETITE WAS IN THE Commons eating pigeon and chine of suckling calf with two of the Duchess’s waiting maids when Clorine appeared, her long face flushed.
“The Marquis de Saint-Rémy and your mother wish to speak with you—now, in their chamber.”
Petite stood and excused herself. “Do you know why?” she asked Clorine as they rushed down the gallery.
“I think it’s something to do with a letter they just got,” Clorine said. “It had a royal insignia on it.”
Petite paused at the first stair landing. Had she been found out? There had been blood on the Princess’s underskirt, even though it was not her time of the month.
“Entrez,” she heard her mother say in a tired voice.
Petite stepped into the room, alone.
The Marquis was sitting in his cracked leather armchair by an unlit fire. “You may procure a stool,” he informed Petite, signaling his wife to join him and the maid to depart.
Petite lowered herself onto a footstool beside her mother.
The Marquis adjusted his hippo-tusk teeth. “This has to do by way of the matured widower.”
Françoise sat forward. “The matchmaker has finally contacted us.”
Petite’s initial reaction was relief (her collusion in the Princess’s sin had not been discovered), only to be overtaken by a deeper despair.
“The candidate of whom we discussed previously—” The Marquis took his teeth out and frowned at them.
Petite waited with silent dread. Nolo, nolebam, nolam.
The Marquis put his teeth back in and sucked to position them. “He has,” he began, swallowing, “regretfully, begged to be excused from further negotiations.”
Petite glanced at her mother. What did that mean? “The widower has…declined?”
Both the Marquis and her mother nodded.
Sing ye! Petite did her best to appear crestfallen.
The Marquis cleared his throat. “The matchmaker proposes to persevere—she projects that the widower would annul his decision were he to see you in the flesh, but providentially we have had a more advantageous alternative.”
“Oh?” Petite said, confused, as usual, by her stepfather’s odd way of speaking.
“Yes,” her mother said, “it seems that you’ve been awarded a position as—”
“Maid of admiration to the imminent Madame,” the Marquis said.
“Maid of honor,” Françoise corrected. “And she’s not ‘Madame’ yet.”
“Madame who?” Petite asked, incredulous. Maid of honor was a step above a waiting maid.
“The English princess who is to unite with the King’s brother,” the Marquis said.
“Henriette?” Petite asked. Surely she had misunderstood. Henriette, daughter of the Queen of England, the beautiful princess with the flaming red hair?
“Yes,” her mother said.
“Are you sure?” Petite was stupefied. To be maid of honor to this Princess was impossible to imagine; such positions went to the daughters of the highest sword nobility. Her own father had been merely a knight, the lowest status of nobility in France.
“You’ll have to live with the Court, of course,” Françoise said, as if dazed herself. “They summer in Fontaine Beleau.”
So far away! Petite recalled staying at that hunting château the year before, on the long journey to Paris with the princesses. It had been dark when they had arrived, and dark when they left. Their room was vast and unfurnished and had smelled of burnt sealing wax. They’d had to sleep on pallets on the floor.
“The disbursement is a mere one hundred livres per annum,” the Marquis said.
“But if you’re clever,” Françoise said, raising a finger, “and save toward a dowry, you should be able to make a more suitable match.”
“ARE YOU NOT over-happy, Mademoiselle?” Princess Marguerite asked the next morning, her smile teasing.
“You know, Your Highness?” Petite took up a silver tray of half-eaten black pudding and artichoke pie. She was, in fact, tingly with excitement. She’d not slept at all, thinking of her good fortune, dreaming of the wonders that lay ahead. She would be living at Court—with the King.
“Who do you think got you the position?”
Petite put the tray aside and clasped the Princess’s hands. “Your Highness, I owe you my life.” She bowed to the floor and considered kissing the Princess’s feet—as was done, she knew—but decided against it. The Princess was still in her stockings.
“Come, come,” Marguerite said, tapping Petite on her head with her fan. “I command you to rise.” She’d been practicing being regal. “It’s your numeration.”
“Remuneration?”
“For being helpful
about my adorer.”
Petite felt chagrined.
“I want you to have this, as well.” Marguerite handed Petite a cambric nose cloth embroidered in gold. “Blessed with my own tears.”
“Your Highness, I don’t deserve this.” Petite stared at the crumpled square of fabric. “How can I ever repay you?”
The Princess fluttered her fan. “By going out the window again—tonight.”
MARGUERITE WAS MARRIED by proxy to Cosimo de Médicis on the nineteenth day in April. The solemn, unhappy ceremony took place in the chapel at the Louvre.
Petite made a profound reverence before the future Grand Duchess of Tuscany. That evening, Florentine attendants would prepare the Princess for bed, turn back her sheets. “I must take my leave of you, Your Highness,” Petite said, a catch in her throat. The royal coach would come in the morning to take her away to Fontaine Beleau.
“Beware the pleasures of Court, my friend,” Marguerite said in a tragic tone, her eyes red-rimmed.
Petite kissed the Princess’s hands. “I have something for you, Your Highness,” she said, presenting her with a small stoppered vial. “It’s for your wedding night,” she whispered.
The Princess held it to the light. “Face paint?” she asked, for the contents were crimson.
Petite, her face growing hot, explained in a low voice that it was blood of a pig for the Princess to spill on her marriage bed. “To save you from your husband’s wrath, Your Highness.” Then she embraced the Princess, blinking back tears. Little Queen.
THE NEXT MORNING, Petite paced in her room. Her new boots (with one raised heel) pinched, but she didn’t give it a thought. Her trunk was packed and ready to go. Clorine was in the basement, saying farewell to her friends on staff. She would alert Petite as soon as the coach arrived.
Her mother entered and Petite curtsied.
“We must talk,” Françoise said.
Petite offered her mother the chair.
“No, you sit there.” Françoise sat on the edge of the bed. “The matchmaker agrees that your having a position at Court will improve your chances, but she warned that you must be exceedingly careful of your reputation. Court society is known to be riggish.”