Kathryn Davis: Versailles

The King is dead! Long live the King! Hours had elapsed since that cry rang through the chateau's rabbit warren of hallways, its last echoes still trapped in vast stone reservoirs far below the ground. The sun had reached the height of its arc and now was plummeting past the Lizard Fountains and into the Grand Canal, setting the windows of the Hall of Mirrors aflame and filling the Marble Court with the building's own shadow. Ordinary birds were singing, larks and warblers; most of the carriages ferrying the frightened courtiers from the house of pestilence had arrived at their destination, and everyone was letting out deep sighs of relief. Checking to make sure no unusual blemishes lurked under their face powder. Toasting their good fortune.

Meanwhile in the royal bedchamber there was work to be done.

"You must open the King's body and embalm it," said the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the Chief Surgeon, who knew that to do so was to sign his own death warrant.

"I will if you'll help by holding his head," the Chief Surgeon craftily replied.

And so it happened that Louis XV's heart — unlike the heart of every other King of France before him — wasn't removed from his chest cavity and pickled in herbs and spices before being sent to one of the Paris churches, where it would be accorded the kind of adoration generally reserved for a piece of the true cross. No, Beloved was buried at Saint- Denis with all his organs intact, albeit liquescent, inside him.

Nor would his heart be among those royal hearts sold during the Revolution to a painter named Martin Drolling. It was said that Drolling pounded them into "mummy," and that they lent the pigment he used in painting L'Intérieur d'une Cuisine (a cozy view of peasants at work) unusual brilliance and luster.

The back scullery, jive A.M. A door is partly open, stage rear, letting onto a still-dark alleyway from, which issues the muffled sound of furtive activity, cats or rats or God knows what.

It is the summer of 7774. Two scullery maids, bothwearing juice-stained white aprons over dirty gray dresses, stand at a large work table, pitting cherries. One of them (Brigitte) is old and fat, the moonlike roundness and whiteness of her head accented by her mobcap. The other (Françoise) is young and pretty, her pale face surrounded by masses of auburn curls. The floor at the women's feet is crowded with baskets of cherries waiting to be pitted.

The door swings all the way open; enter Jean-Claude, a skinny youth with a bad complexion, carrying another basket.

JEAN-CLAUDE: This should be the last of them. He puts the basket down, then leans against the wall so that he is facing Françoise, his arms crossed over his narrow chest. Next it will be apricots.

BRIGITTE: TOO early yet. Next will be currants.

FRANÇOISE: Same difference.

JEAN-CLAUDE: Not if you have to pick them.

Françoise pouts a little, showing off her pretty lower lip, then deepens her voice, imitating Jean-Claude.

FRANÇOISE: Not if you have to pick them. She removes her apron and tucks the stained bib between her legs. Who am I? Three guesses.

JEAN-CLAUDE: Give us a hint.

FRANÇOISE, examining the bib: Oh boohoo! Boohoo! Another month gone and once again the curse of Eve upon me!

BRIGITTE: That will do, Françoise.

JEAN-CLAUDE: I still don't get it.

FRANÇOISE, holding the bib inches from her big blue eyes; If I don't produce an heir soon, they'll have my head.

Jean-Claude raises his hands, palms up, and shrugs. He doesn't have a clue, and Brigitte, by the disgusted look on her full-moon face, makes it clear to the audience that the French, unlike the British, find the village idiot anything but charming.

Throughout the scene the open door way has been gradually filling with the rosy light of dawn. A large pile of refuse becomes visible — a shapeless jumble containing here and there vaguely recognizable objects, part of a rib cage maybe, a pelvis, a forearm and hand, possibly even a head. Recumbent on the pile, the hazy figure of Bread, as far in the distance the rising sun turns Versailles butter yellow and glints off the gold blades of the palace gate.

BREAD, singing:

Featherhead, featherhead

Unfucked in your featherbed

Twenty years and you'll be dead.

JEAN-CLAUDE: Hello? Hello? Is there anybody there?

FRANÇOISE, dismissively; Probably just a croquant, looking for a nice place to die. Monsieur (leaving the table and calling through the door), if you think you will find any featherbeds here you are barking up the wrong tree.

She exits stage rear, ostensibly to chase the offending party a way, and returns with a discarded leek from the refuse pile. I will give you one last chance. She stares intently at Jean-Claude, positioning the drooping vegetable at her crotch and deepening her voice. Try as I might, my insatiable sweetheart, I cannot manage to hit love's bull's-eye.

JEAN-CLAUDE, shocked, as light finally dawns: Oh. But that is blasphemy. They are our King and Queen. The King and Queen of France.

BREAD, singing:

The King is a lout and

The Queen is a whore

Make them ride in the carriage

With thirty-six doors.

Françoise ornaments her hair with the leek, as if it were a feather.

FRANÇOISE: Kiss me! Fill me with your royal broth! But wait. I forget myself. You'd rather be pounding the royal forge.

JEAN-CLAUDE: As a woman, you should be sad for her, rather than making fun.

FRANÇOISE, pulling a solemn face: I am sad for her. She is so beautiful and clever, and he is a gluttonous dullard.

BRIGITTE: Allow me to remind you that, clever or dull, they'll both have our hides if we don't get these cherries pitted. Not to mention that what they do behind the doors of the royal apartments is none of our business.

JEAN-CLAUDE: Besides, she should be glad not to be saddled like my poor little mother with as many brats as there are holes in a sieve.

BREAD, singing:

Poor little mother

Poor little brats

Poor little Queen

With her million hats.

But oh! how exciting it was. You will have to take my word for it, really and truly exciting, the way even the smallest event of a life — like having your hair dressed, let alone being crowned Queen of France — can seem when you're young, before you've gotten a glimpse of the final shape of a thing, or even realized that final shapes exist.

When I first arrived at Versailles, everything was new to me. I would be out walking and I'd smell a flower of such astonishing sweetness it would take my breath away, and I would think, WHAT IS THAT? Or a little round object would suddenly fall on my head, and I would think, WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?

Later I'd discover that the one was jasmine from Spain, the other a black walnut from America, and I was utterly excited, as if no one had ever seen such things before.

Imagine! Antoinette, not so very different from Jacques Carrier, first Frenchman to clap eyes on a polar bear. As if a huge white creature that could devour you in one bite were the same as a walnut.

Of course I mock myself, but everyone knows what I mean. The first time you look out your window and see that it started snowing during the night and is snowing still — and when you fly down a hill on your sleigh it feels as if stars are beating against your face. You want it to happen again and again and again.

Which is how it was in the first days of my queen-hood as I watched the wardrobe women arrive with their basketloads of underclothes, handkerchiefs, and towels, as well as armloads of dresses from which to choose the ones I'd wear that day. The black? Or the black? Possibly the black. We were in mourning, but all of the dresses, being Rose Bertin's handiwork, were of the most exquisite fabric and cut.