“Everyone does.”
“My father doesn’t.” Lulu’s tone was suddenly venomous and the words spilled out. “He’s never miserable, he only makes other people so. Especially women.” She stopped in front of Charles and faced him. “Do you know what he said when his first daughter was born? His only legitimate one. It was-oh, thirty years ago, and she soon died, but of course, he didn’t know she would and he had all the bells rung in Paris and bonfires lit. And when they asked him why he did that for a girl, he said that a daughter was something to celebrate because she would make a valuable marriage connection with some other prince. That’s all a daughter means to him.” She spat impressively into the gravel.
“It may be true that some fathers care less for daughters, but God doesn’t make that distinction.”
“Oh, no? Priests talk enough about Eve’s daughters and all the evil we’ve brought into the world.”
“The story doesn’t say Eve shoved the apple down Adam’s throat. I imagine he gobbled it down and asked for another.”
“And then blamed Eve when his belly hurt!” Lulu laughed, in spite of herself.
“Of course he did!” Charles said, laughing, too.
Anne-Marie, digging a thinly shod toe in the wet gravel, was watching them so somberly that Charles wondered if the little princess ever let go of her dignity long enough to behave like a child.
“Margot’s husband was just like that,” Lulu said disgustedly, taking Charles’s arm and beginning to walk again. “The Duchess of Tuscany, I mean. You probably don’t know her. Anyway, her husband blamed her for his bellyache when he didn’t like the marriage he and my father forced her into!”
Charles let her hold on to him, not wanting to disturb the growing confidence between them. “The Duchess of Tuscany was with you in the little alcove last evening, wasn’t she?”
“How did you know that?”
“She came out after you and Monsieur Montmorency left.”
“Oh.”
Charles decided to seize the moment and hoped she wouldn’t take offense. “Your Highness, I beg you not to encourage Monsieur Montmorency. He is very much in love with you. But you must not-” He searched for words, but there was no other way to say it. “You must not use him.”
Lulu made a dismissive noise. “At least he doesn’t want me to go to Poland! Is it my fault he throws himself at my feet whenever he can get away from your school and come here? Which is hardly ever. Anyway, you needn’t worry, I’ll probably never see him again.” A fleeting smile brightened her face. “Last night Margot kissed him, and you should have seen him blush! I wish Margot were here all the time. She’s the only one who really knows how I feel. Her marriage was so terrible-her husband tried to poison her, did you know that?”
Charles shook his head.
“Of course, he said she tried to poison him first.”
“Did she?”
“Of course she didn’t. It’s always the Italians who poison people.”
Not always, Charles thought, remembering suddenly that in the Paris poison scandal that had rocked France a few years back, it was Lulu’s mother, Madame de Montespan, who had been accused of trying to poison the king. Though nothing had come of the accusation. But since he was thinking about poison…
“Is the Grand Duchess of Tuscany acquainted with your mother?”
“Of course. Though they don’t like each other much. They don’t have much in common.”
Except poison, Charles thought, if rumor was to be believed. Which it usually wasn’t.
Lulu leaned closer, her eyes suddenly sparkling with glee. “Do you know what Margot did in the convent where my father makes her live in Montmartre? No? Well, the mother superior was trying to keep her from going out so much-Margot comes here often to gamble. And Margot got her pistol-”
“Pistol?”
“Perhaps ladies have them in Tuscany, I don’t know. Anyway, she got her pistol and grabbed a hatchet from somewhere and chased the mother superior through the convent until the poor woman relented! Now Margot leaves when she pleases!”
“I can imagine she does,” Charles murmured, hoping that hatchets and pistols would not be much in evidence at the Polish court, since Lulu seemed so charmed by Margot’s example.
Lulu dropped his arm and sighed. “But I’ll never come back from Poland.”
“Your Highness, why does this marriage seem so terrible to you?”
“Because the Polish prince is nothing but a child! And he-he can’t-” Fresh tears ran down her face, and she wiped angrily at them with her hand.
“A child? What do you mean?”
“He’s ten years old. Oh, there’s an older brother, but the Polish king has other plans for him. What good is a little boy to me?”
“Not much,” Charles said injudiciously, appalled at this piece of news. For the ten-year-old husband, as much as for the sixteen-year-old bride. “Or not much good yet,” he made himself add. “Children do grow up.”
“I’ll be old before then! When he’s my age, I’ll be almost twenty-two!”
“Hardly old.” Charles made a face at her and said confidingly, “Though I myself am so old, perhaps my opinion hardly matters.”
“You? You don’t look old. What age are you?”
“Twenty-nine, Your Highness. One foot in the grave, I fear.”
She laughed a little. “I never knew Jesuits were so amusing. First you are a tree and now you are pretending to have one ancient foot in the grave.” She sighed, gazing at him. “I wish you were Jan Sobieski’s second son!”
“Not a drop of Polish blood in my veins, I fear,” Charles said lightly, and widened the space between them. The dog turned from nosing through the wet grass and jumped up on him with muddy paws.
“No, Louis!” Anne-Marie tried to pull the dog away as Charles leaned down to fondle its long black ears.
“No matter, the mud’s the same color as the cassock.”
Lulu suddenly scooped up the dog, cradling him as though he were a baby, and buried her face in his fur. For a moment, she was so still she seemed not to breathe. Then she put him down, picked up her gray skirts, and ran down the arbor path like a small fierce storm.
Anne-Marie glared at Charles. “You shouldn’t make her run. She’s been feeling ill.”
“She doesn’t seem ill. Although she does look pale.”
“Yes.”
Charles and Anne-Marie found Lulu beside a fishpond with a small dolphin spouting water in its center. Standing at its rim, she was taking crumbs from a pocket under her skirts and throwing them to the fish. With a sense of girding his loins, Charles decided that it was time to do what he’d agreed. Though he was even less sure now whether doing it was a good or a bad thing.
“Your Highness, there is something I would like to say to you.”
“What?” she said, without turning.
Charles went to the pond’s edge. “I would like to see you find a measure of peace in this marriage the king is demanding of you. So that some good can perhaps come from it, though you dread it now. You were never meant to be a darkling, angry soul!”
Behind him, he heard Anne-Marie catch her breath. He looked over his shoulder and she nodded eagerly at him. But Lulu’s stare was cold.
“So that’s why you’re willing to walk with me? Not for the pleasure of my company, but to ‘help’ me stop being inconvenient?”
“Your company is more pleasure than I expected. I would like to help you for you yourself. No one else.”
She shrugged, but a wary hope showed in her eyes. “Everyone else only wants me out of the way. Because I smoke and flirt and swear and-” She bit her lip and grabbed a handful of her skirts and shook the soaked hem’s straw-yellow lace trimming at him. “I ruin my gowns, I run away from my tedious women… such very grave sins.”
Charles said nothing, and the three of them walked on. The path opened suddenly into a long vista down the newly dug lake. Unlike the bank where the gardener’s body had lain, this bank was already covered in thin grass and the piles of dirt had been removed.