Judith Rock - Plague of Lies

The audience chamber’s door opened and the crowd turned as one. A liveried footman nodded at Père La Chaise. Charles took the reliquary box from Jouvancy, who, with Le Picart and Montville, crossed the antechamber close behind La Chaise. Suddenly dry-mouthed and feeling his heart thud like any provincial’s, Charles brought up the rear. With a mental shrug, he silenced the acid-tongued part of himself before it could comment and gave himself up to the experience. The footman spoke their names as they entered a large chamber that Charles registered only as a brief blur of color before La Chaise stopped halfway down the room and led them in their révérence to the woman who waited for them in a chair upholstered in yellow brocade. She wore a ribbon-edged, rose-embroidered black satin gown that covered her shoulders, with a filmy black scarf partly covering her abundant dark hair. Behind her, a dozen young courtiers and two brown-robed Franciscans stood in a rough semicircle, their eyes flicking from her to the Jesuits. Among them, Charles recognized the three young people he’d seen playing ball last evening in the courtyard: the king’s eldest legitimized son, the Duc du Maine, his sister, Mademoiselle de Rouen, and the Condé child. Mademoiselle de Rouen’s eyes swept dismissively over the Jesuits until they reached Charles. Then they widened, and she smiled and whispered something in the Duc du Maine’s ear. Maine shook his head and hushed her, but she shrugged a round white shoulder at him and kept watching Charles.

Madame de Maintenon nodded to La Chaise, who stepped to the side, and Jouvancy led the other three in their approach to her. Clutching the box and walking carefully on the polished floor, Charles tried not to stare. He hadn’t expected the king’s secret wife to seem so youthful. She was more than fifty, but her round cheeks had natural-seeming color and her eyes were as large and dark as an Italian madonna’s. They were also full of a cool, assessing intelligence as she watched the Jesuits.

The three in front halted, Charles hovering a step behind Jouvancy’s right shoulder, and they all bowed their heads to her again. As he raised his eyes, Charles realized from her expression-or lack of it-that she was simply waiting for this to be over. Jouvancy made his short, perfectly composed presentation speech, claiming Madame de Maintenon as a fellow educator and praising her school for young noblewomen, flattering the king’s children she’d raised, and reminding her briefly and delicately in the course of it all that they were kin (which brought, if anything, more frost into the atmosphere, Charles thought). Then Charles handed Jouvancy the box, and Jouvancy held it toward Madame de Maintenon, open like a book to show the reliquary. Her face thawed into a slight smile as she gazed at it. She nodded graciously and crossed herself, everyone else doing likewise. Then she made a brief response, praising the beauty and holiness of the gift and commending the young people present to the protection of St. Ursula. Dragging his lame leg, the Duc du Maine stepped forward and courteously took the box from Jouvancy. La Chaise added graceful thanks for the honor the lady had done them in receiving their gift. Madame de Maintenon listened politely and then, at her gesture of dismissal, the Jesuits made their exit.

“Well,” Jouvancy said, with a shaky sigh, when they were through the door and back in the antechamber. “Thank the Blessed Virgin that’s over!”

His words raised a ripple of laughter among the waiting courtiers as the Jesuits started toward the guardroom and the stairway. Behind them, the reception chamber’s door opened and closed again and a light voice said, “I beg your pardon, mes pères .” A young man in rich black velvet and a beautifully curled dark wig passed them hurriedly. He looked back, smiling, his smooth face unmistakably Bourbon. “Very prettily done in there, if I may say so.” Sudden mockery flashed from his eyes. “But you’ll need more than a virgin’s little finger to touch that lady’s heart.”

That brought a louder and harsher ripple of laughter from the courtiers, which made Charles stand solidly on both feet, stifling an urge to trip the man as he swept from the room. The sudden harsh clash of weapons made Jouvancy startle and gasp, but La Chaise said, “It’s only the Swiss; they always present arms to a Prince of the Blood. Come.”

“And which Prince was that?” Jouvancy said indignantly, when they were on the stairs and out of anyone’s hearing.

“His Serene Highness, the Prince of Conti,” Le Picart replied noncommittally, exchanging knowing looks with La Chaise and Montville.

So, Charles thought, running an appreciative hand along the stair’s yellow-veined marble balustrade, that was the man the police chief La Reynie had asked about as Charles rode out of Paris. Charles tried unsuccessfully to place this Prince of the Blood in the Bourbon family. Conti, Condé, too many branches, too many royal sprigs to keep track of.

“The Contis are a younger branch of the Condés,” Jouvancy said, seeing Charles’s confused frown. “And no better mannered, either, as you saw.” He looked up at La Chaise, walking beside him. “Do you think we will see the king again before we leave?”

“His first valet de chambre told me earlier that tomorrow morning he receives the envoys from Poland, coming to negotiate Mademoiselle de Rouen’s betrothal agreements. If you are still here, you can be present with the court for that.”

Jouvancy looked hopefully at Le Picart, who smiled indulgently at him.

“I think we can stay for that. After all, we have schools in Poland.”

Montville nodded his pleased agreement and Charles admitted grudgingly to himself that he, too, would like to see such a ceremony.

“How many valets de chambre does the king have?” Montville asked curiously.

“Only one sleeps in his room at night,” La Chaise said. “But there are household officers without number, from dukes to little Parisian barbers who have bought some minor post.” The king’s confessor sighed. “I must say, I had the unhappy feeling in the audience chamber that we still rank somewhere below the barbers.”

The others commiserated ruefully and Jouvancy said, “Our gift isn’t going to help much, is it?”

“I think,” Le Picart said judicially, “that it will weigh in our favor. The lady is reputed to be more often just than warm. Is that not so, Père La Chaise?”

“On the whole, yes.”

Le Picart smiled and shrugged. “Let us trust, then, to her sense of fair play and believe that our little occasion went off well enough.”

“And we did have a goodly gathering of witnesses,” La Chaise said. “So let us leave it in God’s hands and turn to happier things. Such as dinner at the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s Table of Honor.”

His companions’ faces brightened, and they followed him gladly through more of the palace corridors. When at last they reached the north wing’s garden front, the opposite side of the building from La Chaise’s modest chamber, they found the gallery thronged with richly dressed men and women making their way into La Rochefoucauld’s rooms. Charles tried not to stare at the women. Tall headdresses, confections of ribbon, lace, and starched linen, waved above discreetly padded puffs of hair and curls like bunches of grapes, and scarves like woven air fluttered on their bare shoulders. The men’s gold-embroidered waistcoats glittered beneath open black coats, their sticks tapped, and their dark velvet and wool coat skirts hung nearly to their knees. Precedence-the prescribed order of entrance by rank-was taken, given, and rearranged with narrowed eyes and coldly honeyed words.

The Jesuits’ turn finally came to greet their host. Francois VII, Duc de La Rochefoucauld and grand master of the king’s wardrobe, was an urbane, tired-looking man who passed the Jesuits on to a footman, who seated them at the large horseshoe-shaped table draped in white linen. When all twenty or so guests were seated, La Rochefoucauld took his place at the table’s center and invited La Chaise to return thanks, and the meal began. After a pigeon bisque so delicious that Charles wanted to find the kitchen and sing an aria to the cook, they began on roast chicken with olive sauce, served on silver plates. Charles was savoring the sauce, which reminded him of his home in the south, when his neighbor on the left said into his ear, “You saw him fall, I believe?”