Still looking down, Charles watched the shapely black-stockinged legs and red-heeled shoes pass along the glowing Savonnerie carpet. Then La Chaise shoved at Charles again, and he lifted his head and followed his companions into the royal train behind the king’s almoner. The procession, lengthened every moment by courtiers falling in behind, made its way back through the long chain of rooms to the chapel, where most of the courtiers went down into the sumptuously gilded nave, but the king and his immediate train, including the Jesuits, took their places in the balcony. Louis knelt on his thickly cushioned prie-dieu, set in front of a cushioned armchair, and his attendants stood in a semicircle behind him. Most had kneeling cushions set ready for them on the floor, and out of the corner of his eye, Charles saw that even these were pawns in the game of grandeur. He watched as one shining square-toed shoe inched its owner’s cushion forward, closer to the king, and then a different shoe inched another cushion beyond it. Someone else cleared his throat, and both cushions were inched back to where they started.
The Mass began, celebrated by a Franciscan priest. The heart-lifting musical setting was gloriously sung by a choir of men and boys accompanied by violins and oboes, but instead of losing himself in the liturgy as he usually did, Charles could not stop drinking in the colors, the music, the rich fabric, and the jewels of the crowd. Not to mention how the sunlight played over all of it, since the chapel’s windows, fittingly for a king who likened himself to the sun, were mostly clear glass, in the new fashion. And there in the midst of it, the Sun King-the man who rode his charger over the dead and dying on the ceiling of the Galerie des Glaces-was praying.
Which was more than Charles managed to do, and by the time the Mass was ended, he was in a thoroughly bad humor with himself. Feeling as though he’d been caught in a trap of richness, he kept his eyes rigidly on his low-heeled, square-toed black shoes as Louis left the chapel, and kept them there as he waited with his fellow Jesuits for the royal attendants to sweep through the door after the king. Oh, for God’s sake-and I do mean that literally-can’t you just enjoy the beauty? the acid part of Charles’s mind said. I am enjoying it, Charles said even more acidly back, that’s the trouble. Oh, yes? the inner voice said. What a very un-Jesuit position to take. A very Jansenist position, in fact, the voice taunted, Jansenist Catholics being so austere that they rejected beauty entirely, insisting that it distracted the soul from God. The voice went on needling him. Jansenists say they love only what is ugly. Are you going to join them, then? Of course not, Charles returned indignantly.
“And shut up!” He realized he’d said it out loud only when Jouvancy turned an outraged face on him.
Fortunately, La Chaise called their attention. “Come, we will get the reliquary, and then go to Madame de Maintenon’s antechamber.”
The five men hurried to La Chaise’s chamber, where Charles fetched the reliquary while Le Picart and Montville washed the road’s gritty dust from their faces and Jouvancy gave the reliquary’s satin-smooth, carved box a last polishing. He started to hand it back to Charles to carry, stopped, told him to pull his white shirt cuffs another fraction of an inch below his cassock sleeves, barked at him to straighten his bonnet, put the box tenderly down on La Chaise’s bed, hurried to the bowl of water still standing on a table, washed his spotless hands again, dried them, picked up the box, and finally handed it to Charles. With an amused glance at one another over Jouvancy’s head, La Chaise and Le Picart and Montville got him out the door, followed by Charles with the box.
Madame de Maintenon lived on the south side of what had been Louis XIII’s little royal hunting lodge. The placement of her rooms, nearer than anyone else’s to the king’s, made Charles wonder why there was any gossiping question at all about her status. When the Jesuits reached the guardroom that was the only access to her reception chamber, a large, impassive soldier barred their way. Charles found the Swiss Guard’s ceremonial indoor uniform, in the fashion of his grandfather’s time, slightly comical. Patterned in red, black, and white, it sported a starched white ruff, a padded doublet, and loose breeches gathered and fringed at the knee. But there was nothing comical about the pike in the soldier’s white-gloved fist. It was a menacing weapon, taller than a tall man, with a steel ax head and a long, glittering spear point.
When the guard was satisfied that the Jesuits had reason to be there, he allowed them into Mme de Maintenon’s antechamber. Bright with sun from its big south-facing window, the room was full of men and women, talking and shifting from one little group to another. Charles was startled to hear the word poison slipping in and out of their talk like a sibilant snake. He saw that Le Picart heard it, too, and watched him whisper a question to La Chaise.
Not everyone was gossiping, though. A few courtiers watched the door to the inner chamber like dogs watching a man with a leg of lamb, and more than a few looked merely bored, fanning themselves, fingering their jewelry, examining their lace or fingernails. Tapestries and gilt-framed religious paintings hung on the walls, and Charles could see himself in the shine of the parquet. It was as slick as a mirror, too, and when Charles sidestepped to avoid a glowering man striding out of the audience chamber, he skated into Jouvancy and nearly dropped the reliquary. Jouvancy yelped and grabbed it from him, holding the box to his chest as though it were a lady’s frightened lapdog. Montville patted Jouvancy’s arm, and Le Picart looked sternly at Charles.
“A man who dances as well as you do cannot keep his balance on two feet?”
“Not here, it seems, mon père,” Charles murmured.
La Chaise drew them all to the side of the room, out of the path between the antechamber doors, and gave them a brief education in court ceremony.
“To my surprise, the king expressed a desire to be here,” he began. “But early this morning he told me that he cannot leave his council meeting after all, since he returned from inspecting the fortifications at Luxembourg only on Saturday and there is much business to be done.” La Chaise gave them a moment to murmur their disappointment and then took them through the steps of the ceremony, finishing with, “You, Père Jouvancy, will be flanked by Père Le Picart and Père Montville. I will stand to one side, and Maître du Luc will stand behind you with the box. When you finish your presentation speech, he will hand it to you. You will open its lid and hold it toward Madame de Maintenon, so that she can see the reliquary. When she has admired it and thanked you, someone, probably the Duc du Maine, will step forward and take the box from you. Then all of us will step back, make our reverence to her, turn, and leave the chamber. Not backward, remember, for the same reason that we do not remove our bonnets to her: she is not royalty.”
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.