The school of mirrors, p.18
The School of Mirrors, page 18
I extended my hands.
I remember the warm softness of my daughter’s skin as the midwife put her in my arms. I remember every fold around her eyes, dark, dark blue, like her father’s. I remember the narrow fingers, clutching around mine, a funny tuft of hair.
Auburn, just like mine.
Such a soft sound, my baby’s whimper.
“Perfect,” Mistress Leblanc said, and I knew that if anyone would be punished it would not be her.
There was a scuffle at the door. Lisette was standing with her back against it, her feet planted on the floor. Madame du Hausset was demanding to be let in. “Who do you think you are?” she seethed.
The midwife sighed and motioned to Lisette to open the door.
I wailed, I begged, I sobbed. I sank my teeth into my lips, drawing blood. “Don’t let them carry her away,” I pleaded. “Not yet.”
Useless words, impotent, futile.
“Where will they take her?”
“There is a wet nurse waiting.”
A kind, clean woman, Mistress Leblanc called her, her own child just weaned. Not a blemish on her skin.
“It’s for the best, Miss,” Lisette whispered in my ear.
* * *
Marguerite Leblanc has seen it before, the little drama enacted in front of her and the wet nurse. The godparents supposedly on their way, failing to arrive. Replaced by some strangers who had to be recruited from the street, paid enough to please them but not enough to make them suspect that the father might be someone important. Four sous each, a good day’s work earned in an hour. The whispers she is meant to overhear. A Polish count, who has left for his estates, but not before providing for the mother and child. “Ah, the consequences of sweet passion. Oh, the recklessness of the young,” Madame du Hausset exclaimed, holding her hand over her heart.
Véronique was asleep when Marguerite Leblanc left, her afterbirth safely extracted, her limbs and belly massaged with oils and salves. There have been no signs of lethargy, convulsions or more forceful bleeding than usual. “She’ll be crying a lot in the next few days,” she told Lisette. “The body has to come back from where it has been.”
The baptism is a sad affair. The parish church of the town of Versailles is freezing cold. The priest is in a hurry, the altar boy who holds the tray with the holy oil sniffles and stomps his feet. The godparents are curious and solicitous by turns, and Marguerite Leblanc cannot decide who irritates her more: the red-haired godmother who giggles as if someone pinched her buttocks or the beefy godfather with gin on his breath?
The thought that the two will be gone as soon as the ceremony ends is a relief.
At the baptismal font, the priest clutches the hem of his stole embroidered with golden crosses. In spite of the heavy coat under his chasuble, his cheeks are reddened, and each breath forms a little white cloud.
“The baby I’m holding in my arms,” Marguerite Leblanc testifies, “is a girl, and I, the midwife, have witnessed the birth.”
Washed in wine and smeared with butter, the tiny thing quieted down. The wet nurse, bless her, has swaddled her but left her legs free to kick, so that she won’t be bandy-legged.
Filius nullius. A child of nobody.
The godmother stifles a hiccup. The priest frowns. Marguerite Leblanc hands the baby to the godmother. The godfather lays his hand on the girl’s head.
The priest intones a prayer.
Marie-Louise, who desires to obtain eternal life in the church of God through faith in Jesus Christ, quietly renounces the devil, and all his works, and all his pomps. Only when the priest pours a stream of holy water over her forehead does she wail in her second protest. As robust and as loud as her first.
The name to inscribe in the parish book?
Du Hausset has the name already, all written out on a slip of crumpled paper she extracts from her pocket: Marie-Louise Bosque.
Marguerite Leblanc believes in the wisdom of counting your blessings. Marie-Louise Bosque sounds much better than Marie-Louise Blanc, which is what the foundling hospital would’ve named her and where she would have been lucky to survive even a few days.
* * *
“A gift from the count.” Madame du Hausset handed me a small wooden box tied with a silver ribbon.
I turned it in my hands.
“No need to open it now,” she said. “It’s yours to do with as you please.”
I was in bed, shivering in spite of the blazing fire. Madame sat beside me, cleared her throat. Her face was flushed, and she pulled on her fichu, exposing her neck. Wrinkled like a turkey’s throat, I thought.
It was time to talk of my future, she said.
She spread it out in front of me, as if it were a dress in my mother’s stall, showing only its best side. A good marriage, a merchant with prospects . . . willing . . . ready to take me. A respectable life . . . of comfort . . .
“There will be other children,” she also said, to clinch her bargain.
My fingers searched the hem of my sleeve, the lace I once admired so much.
“I don’t desire marriage,” I said.
“Don’t be foolish, girl,” she said. A deep sigh followed these words, a twitch of her nostrils. I could imagine her whispering into la marquise’s ear. Bemoaning my theatrics, the delusions of those unwisely encouraged to think themselves important.
I pulled at the lace. Then I pulled again.
“Unless you have a vocation to take the veil,” Madame du Hausset continued. “That, too, has been arranged before. The Sisters of Charity will take you with open arms.”
Since I still did not answer, Madame du Hausset said, she had no other recourse but to make herself plain and straightforward. It was a mystery to her what I was counting on or what others may have told me. The truth is that she has had to take care of many other girls like me before. In the same predicament.
One more pull at the sleeve and I dislodged a thread. I pinched it with my fingers and the lace gave in.
“What are you doing, stupid girl!” du Hausset screamed, slapping my hand. “You’ll ruin it.”
The slap made me raise my eyes. Something in them must have frightened her for her voice softened. “Nothing needs to be decided today,” she said.
Not in the state I was in, sensitive, prone to hysteria and flights of fancy.
When she left, I opened the box and found an aigrette studded with small diamonds. No letter accompanied the gift, and I wondered if the king of France knew that he had another daughter. And if he would be with me now if I had given birth to a son.
* * *
Take good care of your mistress, the midwife said.
To prevent milk fever Lisette must serve her mistress bouillon every three hours; never from veal, which causes diarrhea. Then some broth-soaked white bread, cut thin and small, easy to digest. To drink, lukewarm water with a little wine, or syrup of maidenhair fern. Lisette must also check the sheets for blood clots, keep her mistress’s breasts covered and warm. Rub them with olive oil with flax and honey in it.
And then comes the warning. Don’t leave her alone, she might do something foolish.
Véronique has been saying a lot of foolish things. Like asking if they took her baby away to punish her for her sins. Or swearing that she can hear the baby crying in the other room and asking Lisette to check on it. Not just once but again and again. Even though Lisette has told her the wet nurse took the baby to the country where she would be under good care.
Véronique does not sleep well, either. Night after night she wakes up sobbing that something has happened to the baby. The wet nurse has dropped her or left her all by herself to cry.
“How would you know that, Miss?” Lisette asks.
Véronique might not wish to think of Brest and her new life, but Lisette is already making her calculations. She will ask for eighty livres at first, which is what the Deer Park maids have been getting. But as soon as Véronique realizes how much she needs her, Lisette will demand a raise. Every family has its secrets. Every house has its share of scheming.
You need a trusted soul to know what is what.
* * *
“What name did they give her?” I asked Lisette. I knew my daughter was no longer in the house as I had not heard her cry for a whole day.
“Marie-Louise,” she said, and I turned the name in my mouth, rolled it on my tongue. Nothing of me in it, I thought bitterly. As if I never existed. As if nothing of me mattered.
Mistress Leblanc came back. She wrapped me in sheets dipped in some smelly lotion, to stop me from bleeding. Showed me how to squeeze the unwanted milk from my breasts. Held me when I cried, coaxing me out of despair, chasing away my fears. My daughter was with a wet nurse, she said, a kind, honest woman, from a village just outside Paris. “I know her well,” the midwife said. “She has plenty of milk. With her your baby will lack for nothing.”
When I wouldn’t stop crying, she told me of babies left at the church door, sent to a foundling home. Babies fed pap from oats and sour wine, dying by the dozen. She made me picture tiny bodies bundled in old rags, buried in a mass grave. Tossed a prayer if they were in luck.
Your child has a name, Véronique, she said. Your child has a future.
Her words are still in my ears, the lapping of sea waves, their promise.
“You, too, have a future, Véronique. You are only fourteen, your life is still before you. Your real life.”
1757
MADAME VICTOIRE IS holding her throat. “Just a bit sore, Papa,” she tells the king, who is sitting at the edge of her bed. “I’m afraid you’ve come all the way from Fontainebleau for nothing.”
Lebel is inclined to think so as well. Nothing really has warranted this rushed escapade to Versailles that the queen has provoked with her alarming note. Yes, Madame Victoire has a fever, but there are no signs of pustules or rash. The doctor who examined her found the source of mischief in the throat. She has been bled and purged, given salvia rinses and caramelized onions for the coughing. The lingering smell in the room is that of burned gunpowder, which has cleared it from contagion. If there was any in the first place.
“Maman says I was foolish,” Madame Victoire continues. “I took a walk in the garden without my pelisse. But the day seemed so mild.”
“Mild for January,” the king says. “Not really mild.”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Madame is eating exceptionally well,” adds the doctor, who has been standing a few steps away ready to answer the king’s questions. She and her royal mother, who has so dutifully remained by her daughter’s side, will be able to join the court at Fontainebleau in a week.
“Coche, is it true? Are you stuffing yourself like a goose before Christmas?” Louis asks, and Victoire smiles back at him with girlish mischief.
That the doctor has allowed the king inside the room is another indication that this is a mere indisposition, not an illness. When Madame Henrietta was dying, the king was not allowed beyond the threshold of her bedroom. Now he is permitted to feel Madame Victoire’s forehead, administer his favorite wormwood infusion. “Five drops,” Louis says, putting his spectacles on to read the labels of the bottles he has brought from Fontainebleau.
Victoire is dressed in a frilly nightgown and a lace-trimmed bonnet. Neither too becoming. Looking more like a stout merchant’s wife than my child, the king once said of her, and Lebel remembers it well. The kind of statement that means: Such are the manifestations of my children’s Polish blood, their temper polonaise. The queen’s undeniable fault.
“Yes, Papa . . . Thank you, Papa . . . Oh, it’s disgusting, Papa.”
They talk of how the winter darkness descends so early now, but the days will get longer soon. Louis praises the advantages of Fontainebleau over Versailles. Fewer duties, no need for grandes levées or eating in public. Only the most trusted servants around. “You’ll join us soon, Coche,” he says. “But I forbid all garden walks in winter. Even with a pelisse.”
Since Madame Victoire is in no real danger, the royal entourage will return to Fontainebleau this very evening. The carriages are already waiting. The dauphin will ride in His Majesty’s carriage, which makes Lebel uneasy. The king’s conversations with Louis-Ferdinand have been particularly strained recently. The dauphin persists with his thinly veiled admonitions, which leave the king testy for hours afterward. Our sacred duty to keep the monarchy pure, Sire . . . to provide an example for the populace. Someone must have told him of the latest bastard, Lebel thinks. Could it be that he has a spy at Deer Park? Or has found an eager soul clamoring for a reward? It might be prudent to offer that Lisette a small raise, just in case she is tempted.
“You must leave now, Papa. It’s getting late,” Madame Victoire says, quite sensibly, for the ride to Fontainebleau will take a good few hours. Her cheeks are flushed only because, on the queen’s orders, the bedroom is overheated. But how does one argue with an anxious mother? Even if she is unreasonable.
It is already six o’clock when the king, wrapped in his fur-lined cloak, descends the rear staircase, crosses the guardroom and walks out into the Marble Court. Torchbearers precede him, lighting the way. Behind him the dauphin and the duc de Richelieu, side by side. The duc d’Ayen follows. It’s a pity d’Ayen cannot replace the dauphin in the royal carriage. The conversations about botany would make the king much better disposed.
The evening is bitterly cold, with a full moon showing between the scudding clouds and the flames of the torches. The king’s soldiers are drawn up in two lines, leading from the palace door to the coach. Lebel, who walks a few steps behind d’Ayen, notes the usual idlers hanging around, gawking. “As if I were a circus monster,” the king has said on many occasions. “What do they think I am, Lebel? A bearded woman or a two-headed cow?”
The indistinct figure that springs forward seems to come from nowhere. A force spun out of darkness, a whirl of energy that has no solid shape, shoving two of the soldiers aside. A ghost, Lebel remembers thinking, before he sees the assassin’s striking hand.
The man, having delivered his blow, darts back into darkness.
“Someone has just punched me!” the king says to the duc d’Ayen, sliding his hand underneath the cloak where the blow has landed. When he draws it back again, his hand is covered with blood.
There are shouts and screams everywhere. “The one with the hat! Catch him! Quick!”
An equerry, a footman and some of the soldiers fling themselves on the man, pin him down. D’Ayen, shaken, repeats the same dumb question: “What’s happening? What’s happening?” The dauphin is crossing himself. Richelieu waves his hands as if he were about to fly away. From where the ghostly man struggles with his captors, the sound of thumping is followed by moans.
Lebel has pushed himself past them all. In the torchlight the royal face looks shadowy, grim. “Are you wounded, Sire? Does it hurt?” he asks, but the king looks right through him. “Bewildered and lost,” Lebel will describe the king’s countenance to Madame de Pompadour. But not for long, he will assure her.
The duc d’Ayen and the others gather to carry the king upstairs, but Louis waves them aside. He can manage on his own. It is just a scratch. He doesn’t feel weak in the least.
Seeing that His Majesty is heading toward the state bedroom, Lebel races there through the service stairs only to find the room in utter disarray. The bed has been stripped of all linen, the curtains and the carpet removed for cleaning. The room is cold, too. It will take time to warm up, panicky servants wail, even if they start the fire right now. A sorry lot, all of them, Lebel thinks. The regular staff is at Fontainebleau. So is the royal linen. And the royal surgeon.
“Get any surgeon then,” Lebel snaps at a sniveling page who crouches as if threatened with a beating. “Just be quick about it.” Two other pages, disheveled as if caught drinking or whoring behind service stairs, are staring at him with wide, blinking eyes. Neither has ever been trusted with serving the king before.
The door opens, the king enters leaning on his son’s arm. The dauphin leads his father toward the bare bed and helps him to lie down. Richelieu takes off Louis’s cloak, loosens his jacket, revealing its underside stained with blood. To Lebel’s eyes the wound doesn’t look deep, but he is not close enough to see properly, standing as he is behind d’Ayen. A line has been drawn in this room, a line he cannot dispute. They are royal friends, he is a royal servant, barred from his master until the king calls him.
Richelieu and d’Ayen exchange tense whispers. Lebel hears the word poison. The king must have heard it, too, for suddenly his face breaks out in sweat. The dauphin leaves his father’s side and darts out of the room.
If Lebel could strike these two on their thick heads, he would. Is it of no consequence to them that they are alarming Louis at a moment so fraught already? Panic, Lebel knows, is like a tidal wave, crushing all resistance. Louis is already picturing this poison coursing through his veins. Imagines the pain, the convulsions, his body opened, viscera all dissolved, flowing through the doctor’s hands as he tries to hold them. How long does he have? One hour? Two? Three, perhaps?
“Lebel, get my confessor,” he hears.
But, of course, the royal confessor is at Fontainebleau as well.
“Get any priest then,” Lebel barks in the direction of the pages. “Quick.”
By then the sniveling page has fetched a surgeon from the guards’ quarters. Another one from God knows where follows, so the word must have spread. The two surgeons inspect the wound together, terrified of their responsibility. The result is predictable. “Press makeshift bandages to stop the bleeding,” says one. “No, keep the wound open. It has to breathe,” says the other.
My king needs reassurance, Lebel thinks, and all these fools can do is bicker.
Outside the bedroom, more commotion. Footsteps, shouts, doors banging. Servants trip over themselves, bungle even the simplest of tasks. Assassin . . . Lebel hears . . . a madman . . . The king mortally wounded . . . The queen is on her way.
