Charles looked for a knife to cut the loaf, that being the polite modern custom, but La Chaise only said, “No, no, break it. If Louis can use his fingers to eat, so can we.”
Gratefully, Charles broke a piece off the brown loaf and La Chaise refilled the cone-shaped glasses they’d used earlier, but only to the scant side of half full.
“To your health, maître,” he said, handing a glass to Charles and raising his own.
Charles returned the compliment and they drank.
“Sit. No, have the chair.” La Chaise gestured Charles to the thinly cushioned chair fringed with red silk where Jouvancy had sat, and settled himself in the other. “Aaah.” He drank again and closed his eyes briefly. Seeming to open them again with an effort, he said, “Have you had much sickness in the college?”
“Yes, these last weeks. Our infirmarian thinks it’s some unbalance of humors caused by the weather going from cold to warmer after such a bad winter. He says the change makes the stomach and bowels grip, and then the blood boils trying to get through them, which raises a fever. Though hardly anyone dies of it, he says.”
La Chaise grunted. “Unless they fall downstairs trying to reach the privy. Does this illness come on suddenly?”
“Oh, yes. Père Jouvancy was well one afternoon at the beginning of the rhetoric class, and deathly ill and spewing before it ended. I could hardly get him to the infirmary.”
“Have you, too, been ill?”
“No, thank Saint Roch and Saint Stephen,” Charles answered fervently, naming two saints known for protecting against contagion. “If I may ask, mon père, are you thinking that the Comte de Fleury was ill in the same way?”
“Possibly. You may have heard the woman in the corridor say he seemed well enough at dinner today.” La Chaise rose and stirred the soup, whose scent was so enticing now that Charles felt like biting at the air to see if it tasted like it smelled. To distract himself, he said, “I saw three young people playing in the court below the window soon after we arrived and recognized two of them as the king’s children, who did us the honor of coming to our college performance in February, the Duc du Maine and Mademoiselle de Rouen.”
“Two of our legitimées de France. You know, of course, that he had his children by Madame de Montespan declared legally legitimate.”
“The other was a small girl. But very quick at the game they were playing.”
“Very little? Bright brown hair?” When Charles nodded, La Chaise said, “That was Anne-Marie de Bourbon, Princess of the Blood, a daughter of the new Prince of Condé.”
“Ah.” Charles nodded. The Condés were Bourbons, as royal blooded as the king and in line for the throne. The present Prince of Condé had come into his title only in December, when his father died.
“In case you have to speak to the princess,” La Chaise said, “she’s styled Her Serene Highness and her title is Mademoiselle d’Enghien. She looks six, but she’s eleven or twelve, I think. The new Condé’s daughters are all tiny, like their grandmother Claire Clemence. People call them ‘Dolls of the Blood.’” Watching the fire brighten as the light faded, La Chaise said reflectively, “Have you ever thought how oddly things are passed on in families? Take those two children of the king you saw. Maine is dark like his father. But Lulu, as Mademoiselle de Rouen is called, is nearly blond, like her mother, Madame de Montespan. And her character could not be more different from her brother’s if she came from the other side of the world. Maine’s a quiet boy, doesn’t seem to like public life much. He’d rather be in the woods with his huntsman and the dogs, so I hear. Though his limp doesn’t help his riding. I will tell you-in confidence-that he’s the king’s favorite child. Though they say he’s not living up to his promise. He was a brilliant little boy, but now he has-well-faded, somehow. In my opinion, Madame de Maintenon has kept him too close, too tied to her, probably because of his limp. She tried very hard to cure him, you know. But limp or not, it’s high time the king sent Maine to the army. The boy is seventeen. Far too old to be mooning around here at court playing children’s games.”
“And what of Lulu, as you called her? How old is she?”
La Chaise sighed. “Yes. Lulu. She’s-let me see-almost sixteen. Her Highness’s real name is Louise Marguerite. Louise after her father, of course, and Marguerite after his mother’s mother, Marguerite of Austria.”
“So she’s nearly marriageable.”
“In fact, nearly married. And furious about it. She’s tried to change the king’s mind. But he pays no attention and she’s causing a world of trouble. I live for the day she’s finally dispatched to her husband, I assure you.”
“Who is he?”
“A Polish prince, the younger son of King Jan Sobieski. We need to strengthen ties with Poland, since Sobieski has too often aligned himself with France’s enemies. Particularly the Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire. Of course, Sobieski had no choice but to fight on the Hapsburg side against the Turks at Vienna and Buda, the Turks being such a danger to Poland. But Louis hopes to make Sobieski our ally with this marriage.”
“However the girl herself feels about it?”
La Chaise looked at Charles as though he’d begun speaking Chinese. “She’s known all her life that she would be married for royal reasons. Why she’s making so much trouble about it, I can’t imagine.” He shook his head and sipped from his glass. “Poland is an odd place. Did you know that Polish nobles elect their king? They usually choose the old king’s son, but not always. It seems to me an affront to God to show so little trust in the royal lineage.”
Charles was silent, wondering how different things might be in France if the French king were elected.
“With his daughter married to Sobieski’s son, Louis will have more influence on the next vote, whenever that should come. So Lulu’s marriage-” La Chaise stopped short and turned in his chair as the connecting door between the chambers opened.
Jouvancy stood in the doorway, blinking in the firelight and yawning. “Bonsoir, mon père, maître,” he said indistinctly, turning politely aside to cover another wide yawn. “I see I have slept into the evening. I thank you for letting me rest so long. I am a new man.” He sniffed the air. “Supper?” he said hopefully.
“Le bouillon, mon père.” La Chaise got up and set his wineglass on the table. “And to start, let me pour wine for you.”
The firelight made a twisting red rope of the wine as he added what was left in the small pot of wine to the silver pitcher. He filled a glass for Jouvancy, who took it with a satisfied sigh and sank into the chair Charles offered him.
“You feel better, then?” Charles said, watching Jouvancy narrowly.
“Much better, I was only tired.” Jouvancy settled stiffly on the seat’s thin cushion and smiled up at Charles. “Don’t fuss over me-go and help our host.”
La Chaise straightened from stirring the pot. “No need, we have a few minutes yet to wait. What you can do, though, is show me the gift we’re giving to Madame de Maintenon tomorrow. I would like to see it.”
“With pleasure, mon père.”
Charles brought the well-wrapped reliquary from the connecting chamber and held it out to Jouvancy.
“No, please-you unwrap it, maître.”
When the heavy canvas and the soft silk wrappings beneath were peeled away, the cross stood glowing among the supper preparations, the bread and the wine, so that for a moment, Charles saw the table as an altar.