“Is not exile from the king’s presence considered the worst punishment a nobleman can have?” La Chaise’s face warned Charles not to answer that question. “In any case, Maître du Luc, none of this is your business. Your business relative to Conti is to avoid him at all costs. And now, if you wish any rest, leave me, go to your bed. Evening will come soon enough.”
Deciding that obedience was the better part of valor at this point, Charles started toward the adjoining chamber. And turned back. “Mon père, I saw the new Prince of Condé just now in the corridor. He was-” Charles paused, but no euphemism came to his aid. “Barking.”
La Chaise grunted unhappily. “This Condé is peculiar even for that peculiar family.”
Sensing that La Chaise wanted to say more, in spite of the order to leave him alone, Charles drifted toward the adjoining chamber as slowly as he could. He was nearly in the doorway when La Chaise burst out, “That is another thing I worry about. The Bourbon lineage. Not one of the Princes of the Blood has the king’s ability to command respect, let alone his self-sacrificing devotion to duty.”
Charles turned and stared. “Self-sacrificing?! When has he ever-”
“Self-sacrificing, maître,” La Chaise said coldly, across Charles’s indignation. “I do not use words lightly. Something you should remember. The king works every day, most hours of the day. With his council, with his advisors, with his officers. He leaves no detail unchecked or unregarded. Not one!”
All of which seemed to Charles only what a king ought to do. “But he also sacrifices everyone and everything else to his own ends. To his blood-soaked gloire.”
La Chaise surged out of his chair, and Charles realized too late that he’d thrust his verbal knife not only into the king but into the king’s confessor, director of the royal conscience. And thereby director-at least in theory-of the royal actions. But it was too late to take back the words, even if he’d been willing to do so.
“Never,” La Chaise said between his teeth, “never say those things again. Not here, not anywhere. If you do and the wrong people hear you, I will not lift a finger to save you from the consequences. I will also see that your own confessor hears of your opinions. King Louis is God’s anointed sovereign, the king God Himself has given to govern France. King Louis is the mystical body of France. You and I and every soul in the realm are members of that body, and he is the head. Rebel against the king, and you rebel against God Himself.”
“I know that,” Charles said unhappily. His conscience was all too familiar with this particular moral struggle. “Of course I know he is divinely anointed, and that gives him his royal body-”
“Not only that. His birth also gives it.”
“But he also has a natural body, he is also a man like you and me. After all, he sins-if he did not, he wouldn’t need a confessor!”
“Of course he sins. But that natural sinning body is subsumed within the anointed mystical body of the king. The royal body can do no wrong. None.” Seething with anger, La Chaise waited for Charles’s agreement. When it didn’t come, he strode to the window and rubbed his hands over his red face. “What is the matter with you?” He sounded almost afraid. “How did you ever become a Jesuit?”
“Mon père, I know that by blood and the holy chrism with which he was anointed in the cathedral at Rheims, the king is divinely sanctioned to rule.” Charles flung out his arms, pleading for understanding, even though La Chaise’s back was turned. “I am loyal to him-I must be loyal to him in order to obey God. But-but how can I not hate the suffering the king causes his people? His greed for gloire, for triumphs, for turning Europe into a blood-soaked battlefield, is ruining France. And didn’t the prophets criticize the kings in the Bible?”
La Chaise shook his head, still looking out the window. “You are not a prophet. You are also not a stupid man, so why do you talk like an idiot? Without making himself feared across Europe, the king of France cannot rule. Our enemies would overrun us-the Holy Roman Emperor, the Protestants, the Turks, the League of Augsburg countries. Do you not know how hated France is for its power? Do you not realize what will happen if Louis dies, as he could easily have done last winter? Who would hold France together? Who would protect it? Not the king’s heir, God help us. The poor Dauphin is not only terrified of his father, he cannot say boo to a goose. But he’s young and strong-he’ll live for years. In that time, if he were king, France could lose everything. Anything King Louis can do now to make France sovereign in Europe and feared across the world, he must do. And I must help him do it.” The king’s confessor rested his forehead against the window glass. “And I must somehow help him save his soul at the same time,” he added, almost too softly for Charles to hear.
Charles was not one iota moved to agree with the king’s actions, as either mystical body of France or natural man. But he understood for the first time the danger looming beyond Louis’s death, whenever it came. And he understood much more of La Chaise’s impossible position and his struggle, saw that it was far more perilous than his own.
“I will pray for you both, mon père,” he said gravely.
“Do. God knows we need it.”
Chapter 8
Charles thought he might faint from heat. He and Père La Chaise were standing together behind the king’s chair, looking over the outsized white plume on the royal hat, waiting for the ball to begin. Around the other three sides of the large salon, members of the royal family and the highest-ranking courtiers were settling in what was called the Ring, whose back rows were raised on wooden forms so that everyone could see and be seen. Lower-ranking courtiers stood wherever they could find room, crowded sleeve to sleeve and bare shoulder to bare shoulder, sweating in their layers of silk and wool and brocade and satin. The women’s painted fans beat the air like the bright, fragile wings of butterflies, doing about as much good toward cooling anyone. Charles smiled as he caught sight of little Anne-Marie de Bourbon, in a yellow gown with her dog in her lap, sitting in one of the Ring’s raised rows of chairs and swinging her feet, which didn’t reach the ground.
The Polish ambassadors sat on the king’s left. On his right was his son the Dauphin, also named Louis. The Dauphin was said to be the image of his mother, the dead Queen Maria Teresa. Like her, he was blond, plump, and pink-faced. And unfortunately, none too intelligent.
“Where is the Dauphin’s wife?” Charles whispered, speaking Latin to keep his questions even more private. All educated men learned Latin, but only the scholarly kept it up. Courtiers used it little.
“Pregnant again, or so I understand. Even when she’s not, the Dauphine rarely goes anywhere.”
Beyond the Dauphin was a smallish man in a beautifully curled dark brown wig, moving restlessly, gesturing with slender, heavily ringed hands at the crowd. As he turned his head, Charles saw that his cheeks were brightly rouged. Beside him, a large woman in gray satin and red jewels sat immovable as a mountain.
Seeing where Charles was looking, La Chaise mouthed, “Monsieur and Madame.”
Styled simply Monsieur, Philippe d’Orleans was the king’s younger brother. The gray satin mountain was Philippe’s second wife, the formidable German princess called Liselotte.
“Where is Madame de Maintenon?” Charles said softly in La Chaise’s ear. “I thought she would be here.”
La Chaise shook his head. “She makes few and brief appearances at occasions like this. Since her position is not acknowledged, you understand.”
“And Madame de Montespan, Mademoiselle de Rouen’s mother? Or is she no longer at court?”