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In the first chamber, dozens of less favored courtiers crowded together. Inured to their magnificent surroundings, bored by the paintings and frescoes, the carved marble and the gilded representations of Apollo and the sun, they stood, yawning sleepily, gossiping, trading insults veiled as compliments. When His Majesty appeared, they fell silent and saluted their sovereign.
When they rose, Mlle de la Croix gazed at His Majesty, in awe, like the colonial girl she remained. Her cheeks flushed with excitement. Lucien sympathized with her amazement. He loved Louis, as he had loved Queen Marie Thérèse. He missed the queen; he still grieved for her, though she was ten years gone. Having spent most of his life at court, he knew better than to display everything he felt. He hoped Mlle de la Croix would learn, soon, not to reveal herself quite so plainly.
As he always did, Lucien left the procession when His Majesty approached the chapel.
As His Majesty disappeared into the chapel to perform his religious devotions, Lucien wondered, Does immortality extend life into endless sickness and aging? Or... might it convey perfect health, and everlasting youth?
Marie-Josèphe curtsied low with the other courtiers as His Majesty strode from his room. His brother and his son and his grandsons and the Foreign Princes Condé and Conti and Lorraine and the legitimized duke du Maine and the Chevalier de Lorraine and Count Lucien followed. In their brilliant company, Yves was as drab as a crow. She wished, sometimes, that he was a young courtier rather than a Jesuit, that he practiced war instead of learning, that he dressed in diamonds and silk.
But, then, she thought, I would be even less a part of his life, and I would be nothing to his work, because he would have none. He would marry, his wife would manage his household, he would have no room for a spinster sister.
She sighed, then thought, I might not be a spinster, if he were not a priest. He would promote my marriage; our family might have the resources to allow it.
She shrugged off her fantasies. As the King passed, people stepped forward to press letters into his hands, to beg him for favors, for pensions, for a position in his household. Even ordinary folk could petition him, as he paraded with his family on his way to Mass.
Mme de Maintenon and the other women of the royal family joined His Majesty. Marie-Josèphe surveyed Mademoiselle as she passed, criticizing herself. She had not dressed Lotte’s hair as beautifully as Odelette would have done.
A roar of greeting and affection rose from the crowd of visitors as soon as the King appeared. Lesser nobles, tradesmen and their wives, all those who presented themselves at the gate decently dressed, had the right to enter the chateau grounds and see their sovereign. The crowd parted for him, but pressed close as soon as he had passed. Marie-Josèphe pushed through the crush of bodies, trying to keep her place, trying not to feel afraid.
“Your Majesty, a boon to ask —”
“Please, Your Majesty, heal my son —”
The procession paused as the King accepted the petitions of his subjects and passed the letters to Count Lucien. He laid his hand on the swollen throat of a child, when the mother begged for a cure for the King’s Disease.
The crowded, echoing chapel was a relief after the crush of the courtyard. Marie-Josèphe took her place in the pew behind Madame’s. Hugging her shawl close, Madame kissed Marie-Josèphe’s cheek.
“Perhaps the new chapel will be warmer,” Madame said, but her tone was not very hopeful.
Marie-Josèphe had to smother a giggle. References to Hell freezing over often accompanied speculations about the new chapel’s eventual completion. She wondered if hell, frozen, would be warmer than the old chapel. She wished she could tell Madame the joke. In her own way, Madame was very pious, but she loved God rather than the rituals and ceremonies of the church. She had been a heretic, a Protestant, in her youth; court gossips claimed her conversion was a fraud, entered into only to allow her to marry Monsieur.
Marie-Josèphe thought she might tell Count Lucien the joke, but Count Lucien was nowhere to be seen.
Yves joined Marie-Josèphe. She squeezed his arm fondly.
“Aren’t you glad you attended His Majesty this morning? Was it wonderful, in his room? I wish I —”
“Shh,” he said gently.
The choir’s voices, as one, rose to the frescoed ceiling. Marie-Josèphe shivered at the pure beauty of the singing.
Splendid new cloths draped the altar, and a thousand new wax candles burned in silver candelabra. Marie-Josèphe admired the altar, then turned with the rest of His Majesty’s court to face the back of the chapel.
“What are you doing?” Yves whispered, horrified. He faced the altar, with a foolish expression of confusion.
Marie-Josèphe tugged at his sleeve. “I should have explained,” she whispered. At Mass, His Majesty’s court always faced him, while he faced the altar and the priest.
Yves resisted her, but yielded to the combined stares of Madame and the princes of the blood royal. He turned around.
Above, His Majesty arrived in his balcony at the rear of the chapel.
The King gazed down at his court, who worshipped him to worship God. With a gesture of elegant magnanimity, he directed them toward the altar. Obediently, respectfully, they all turned again, as His Holiness Pope Innocent XII came to the altar to conduct Mass.
11
The coolness of the chateau gave way to the warmth of the terrace above the gardens. The sun had already sped halfway to noon. It’s warm today! Marie-Josèphe thought gratefully.
Potted flowers traced the verges of the pathways; the blossoms of a thousand orange trees perfumed the air. Bees bumbled softly through the flower-embroidery.
The fountain mechanisms creaked and groaned, shivering the quiet into pieces. The fountains all burst into sprays and streams: Latona and Poseidon, Neptune, the dragons. Usually the fountains played only for His Majesty, but they would play continuously until after Carrousel.
People filled the gardens, flowing down the Green Carpet and pooling around the Fountain of Apollo and the sea monster’s tent. They carried Marie-Josèphe like a stream, as if she were lighter than air.
The poor sea monster will be so hungry, Marie-Josèphe thought, I did hope to feed her as soon as the servant brought the fish. But perhaps it’s just as well. I induced her to eat from my hand... Marie-Josèphe rubbed her sore wrist and thought, apprehensively, If she’s very hungry, perhaps I can induce her to obey me.
Marie-Josèphe slipped past and between groups of visitors — mothers and fathers and children, elderly grandparents, two and three and even four generations marvelling at the magnificence of their King’s home and the perfection of his gardens. Strolling through the soft, warm afternoon in their best clothes, husbands wearing rented swords, wives defying the sumptuary laws with daring silver lace at sleeve or petticoat, the children in leading-strings and ribbons, the townspeople of Versailles and Paris and every town in France hoped for a glimpse of Louis le Grand.
