C. Harris - Why Kings Confess

“No, I didn’t know,” said Sebastian.

The Bourbon’s eyes practically disappeared behind his puffy, smiling lids. “Hendon never told you about his salad days in Paris, did he?” He tried to laugh, but it quickly degenerated into a rasping cough. “Golden years, those were. Golden. Horses, jewels, chateaux, carriages, wine. . We had it all. I once ran up a debt of a million livres, and my brother the King paid it off. Think of that! A million livres. What I wouldn’t give for that kind of money now. We thought those days would never end. But they did.” He cast Sebastian a quick, sideways glance. “I suppose you think we should have seen it coming, and so we should have-so we should! I tell Marie-Therese all the time that when two percent of a nation has all the wealth and the other ninety-eight percent of the people pay all the taxes, a bloodbath is inevitable. Inevitable!”

Sebastian had heard that an intense and at times acrimonious disagreement raged within the French royal family. The Comte de Provence favored a limited, parliamentary monarchy and was willing to give numerous concessions to the people of France if they would only allow him to return. But both Marie-Therese and Provence’s own younger brother, Charles, Comte d’Artois, were ultraroyalists, stubbornly adhering to their belief in the divine right of kings and insisting upon nothing less than a reimposition of absolute monarchy.

Sebastian said, “In my experience, most people tend to believe even in the face of all evidence to the contrary that things will never change.”

The Bourbon sighed. “True, true. Although I’ve been exiled from France for more than twenty years now. So, God willing, this is one state of affairs that will change, and soon. I would not like to die on foreign soil.”

“The news from the Continent sounds encouraging-if you can call the slaughter of half a million men encouraging.”

The Bourbon’s jovial face went slack. “Ghastly, is it not? All those dead men, strewn across Russia.”

The genuine depth of his grief took Sebastian by surprise. He found himself wondering if Marie-Therese had ever spared a moment’s sorrow for the war dead of the nation over which she hoped one day to reign as queen. Somehow, he doubted it. She was too busy hugging her own misery and loss to herself.

As if aware of the drift of his thoughts, Provence said, “But you did not come all the way out here to discuss either philosophy or my long-lost youth, did you?”

Sebastian smiled. “No, sir. I wonder, have you ever heard of a young French doctor named Damion Pelletan?”

“Hah.” Provence slapped the arm of his chair in triumph. “That’s why you’re here, is it? Told you so, Ambrose; didn’t I?”

Sebastian glanced at the courtier, who kept his gaze trained straight ahead, his features composed in an expressionless mask. “So you did know him?”

“Me? No.” Provence nodded toward a small redbrick building half-hidden by a nearby stand of oaks. “Look at that. See it? I’m told that at one time, it was a rectory. Now it is home to a duke, two counts, their wives and children, their aged mothers, and their unwed or widowed sisters and their children. There isn’t an outbuilding on the estate that isn’t overflowing-barns, stables, even an old Gothic folly in the gardens. In the main house itself, we’ve had to divide chambers and erect partitions in the gallery. I occupy what was once a small study off the library; Marie-Therese has an apartment next to the muniment room, and the exiled King of Sweden is in the chapel. More than two hundred people live here. Think about that! Aristocratic men and women raised in the finest chateaux of France, now sleeping in stalls and chicken coops. Believe me, in such conditions, very little happens at Hartwell House that is not soon known by all.”

The spires of the estate’s neo-Gothic chapel rose before them, delicate and somber in the cold winter light. Provence stared at it for a moment, then said, “What I’m trying to say is that even though she hugs the truth of it to herself, it’s well-known that my niece sees many physicians. Even after all these years of marriage, she still hopes for a child. God knows, this family will never get any heirs from my loins, and nothing is more important to Marie-Therese than seeing the House of Bourbon restored to France for all eternity.”

Sebastian said, “She is still relatively young.”

“She is, she is. And there’s no denying her mother took long enough to begin breeding.”

Sebastian kept his gaze on the soaring spires of the chapel before them. It was well-known that Marie Antoinette’s long delay in childbearing was due entirely to her husband the King’s failure to consummate their marriage for seven years. A number of rumors had circulated at the time, although most had eventually been laid to rest.

But the same rumors continued to swirl around the Comte de Provence’s own marriage. Some said his wife repulsed him, while others claimed he preferred his mistresses. And then were those who said that Louis Stanislas’s interest in women had always been tepid and had waned completely in his later years.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” said the uncrowned king, his head tilting back, good-humored pleasure suffusing his plump face as his gaze moved with obvious appreciation over the delicate tracery of the chapel’s arched windows.

But Sebastian was looking instead at the courtier, Ambrose LaChapelle.

The man was a bundle of contradictions. The tales of his courage as a volunteer in the Prince de Conde’s army of counterrevolutionary exiles were legendary. A superb horseman, expert marksman, and skilled swordsman, he had once supported himself as a fencing master.

But there were whispers of another side to the French nobleman. Some said the courtier was known to don women’s clothing and cruise the darkened arcades of Covent Garden and the Exchange, where he was known as “Serena Fox.” And Sebastian found himself thinking about the mysterious, unknown man and woman who had sought out Damion Pelletan on the night of his death.

And about the bloody footprint left by a woman’s shoe on a broken slat in the noisome passage where the physician had met his grisly end.

“I ain’t ne’er seen nothin’ like them stables,” said Tom, his voice hollow with disgust. “They only got two ridin’ ’orses in there. Two! An’ one of ’em is reserved special fer the Princess. ’Alf the stalls ’ave been turned into rooms and ’ave people livin’ in ’em. There was some old woman kept tryin’ t’sell me a straw ’at she’d made, all the while claimin’ she was the Comtesse de somethin’eranother.”

“She probably was,” said Sebastian, turning his tired team toward the nearby village of Stoke Mandeville, where he intended to make his next change.

“Huh. Queer lot, if ye ask me, even fer foreigners. Most o’ them stableboys is French too. I ne’er seen such a close-mouthed set. Couldn’t get no one t’ give me the time o’ day.”

“Unfortunate, but probably predictable,” said Sebastian.

He couldn’t begin to understand how Marie-Therese’s consultation with Dr. Damion Pelletan might possibly have anything to do with the physician’s death. But neither could he get past the haunting coincidence that Pelletan’s murder had fallen on the anniversary of the execution of the last crowned King of France.

Tom said, “I thought this Marie-Therese is s’posed to be a princess?”

“She is. The only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI of France.”

“So why’s she called a duchess?”

“Because she’s married to a duke, although at the moment he’s off with Wellington in Spain.”