Lulu let go of the little cross and reached up a hand to him. As he brought it to his lips, she said, “I will miss you, too, Louis.” She drew her hand away. “As you see, maître, you did help me.” Changing expressions flitted across her face like cloud shadows. “What could be more resigned than sewing bridal linen?”
Margot picked up the sheer ivory linen in her lap and shook it out, revealing a lace-trimmed chemise so finely woven that it rippled like silk. She dangled it enticingly, making it jump as though it were alive, her eyes sparkling maliciously as she watched Charles.
A wave of anger swept through him at the woman’s taunting, but he said lightly, “I have sisters, Your Highness. I have seen a chemise before.” He forced a smile and started to invite Lulu to the chapel for one last conversation. But Madame de Montespan forestalled him.
“It is nearly dinnertime, maître, and I am sure you don’t wish to be late at the table you are gracing.” She held out a smooth white hand.
Lulu looked daggers at her mother, but Charles accepted the dismissal. When he only bowed over her hand-without kissing it-she shrugged slightly and then gave him what seemed like a real, though brief, smile.
“Thank you for receiving me, Madame,” he said. “I am glad to have met you.” He bowed slightly to Margot. “Your Royal Highness.” To Lulu, whose mouth was trembling with disappointment, he said, “I am glad you are turning your attention to being a bride. I-” He stopped as she bent her head and a shower of tears broke through her control and fell on her sewing. He looked helplessly at the pale slender neck and the white ribbons trailing on either side of it from her headdress. “God can bring good out of what seems like the blackest misery,” he said softly, as though no one else were in the room.
She dried the tears with a handful of lace from her lap and looked up. Her face was so set and bleak that Charles caught his breath in pain, as though her sore heart beat suddenly in his own chest.
“Lulu-” He stopped, realizing he’d used the nickname he had no right to use, but no one chided him. “Obedience can begin bitterly. As yours begins. But, with time, it can grow sweet. I know this for myself, and it is hard learning. But it can happen.”
Margot snorted loudly, but Charles ignored her. In Lulu’s case, obedience growing sweet seemed more than unlikely, but unlikely was not the same as impossible.
She nodded slightly, and her hand went to the cross again. But her miserable expression didn’t change.
“God go with you.” Charles turned toward the door, but she called him back.
“Maître.” It might have been the king looking at him. Her illusionless Bourbon eyes were as dry as though she’d never in her life wept. “I am my father’s daughter. I can do what I must as ruthlessly as he does.”
Charles found no answer to that. But as he crossed the antechamber dedicated to love, he looked back at the salon. Margot looked at Mme de Montespan, and the two resumed their sewing. Lulu took up her scissors and cut her needle free of the white cloud of lace. Charles suddenly saw the women as the ancient world’s three Fates, those daughters of the gods who spun the thread of a man’s life, fixed its length, and cut it off. He went out into the passage, trying to remember the ancients’ other name for the Fates. It came to him as he climbed the stairs in the south wing. They’d been called Daughters of the Just Heavens.
Chapter 13
When Charles reached Père La Chaise’s chambers, no one was there. Hoping he wouldn’t have to search the entire gardens, he went to look for Jouvancy and La Chaise but, to his relief, found them walking slowly toward him across the gravel, deep in talk, as he emerged from the palace.
Charles reported the results of his morning’s visit.
“I’m not surprised that Maine was there,” La Chaise said. “He’s taking his sister’s leaving very much to heart and will no doubt be her shadow until she goes. Which is to the good, since we don’t want her left alone. Ah,” he said, as bells began to ring, “that means dinner. Come. We’ll go to the Grand Commons.”
They went into the palace and started along the ground-floor gallery, but La Chaise suddenly pulled them to a stop. A fast-stepping procession led by a gentleman with a baton of office was bearing down on them. All along the gallery, courtiers were drawing aside, sweeping off hats, bowing and curtsying nearly to the ground. A ripple of murmuring accompanied the courtiers’ reverences as the procession passed.
“Uncover and bow,” La Chaise hissed, whipping off his own bonnet.
Charles and Jouvancy did the same, and when the procession had nearly reached them, Charles heard what the courtiers were murmuring as they bowed.
“The king’s dinner,” La Chaise and Jouvancy said in their turn, as the line of gentlemen carrying covered silver dishes passed, leaving a savory smell behind. La Chaise elbowed Charles. “Say it!”
Speechless, Charles turned to La Chaise.
“Didn’t you hear me?” La Chaise hissed, as the three of them replaced their bonnets.
“Yes, mon père. But-why were we bowing to the king’s dinner?”
“Because it is the king’s dinner,” Jouvancy said, scandalized. “It is soon to be part of the king.”
Biting his tongue to keep from asking if they must bow to Louis’s chamber pot as well, Charles followed the others to the Grand Commons across the street.
The Grand Commons was enormous and new. La Chaise told them that it contained a plethora of kitchens and a nicely graded series of refectories, where courtiers, guards, and flocks of servants ate. The kitchens also prepared much of the food for private chambers and rushed it across the road and through the galleries to its destination. Which made Charles think of the abortive dinner at La Rochefoucauld’s table. The food had been delicious, but nothing he’d eaten had been more than faintly warm.
After a surprisingly good dinner of roasted cod in a butter sauce with cloves and capers, and a side dish of spinach with raisins, they went back to La Chaise’s chamber. Charles gathered his and Jouvancy’s belongings, and the three Jesuits made their farewells.
“And I beg you to remember,” La Chaise said, “it is imperative to keep a close eye on Henri de Montmorency. Especially you, maître. He must not leave Louis le Grand until Lulu is gone. Not for any reason.”
“But”-Jouvancy looked in confusion from one to the other-“if his mother demands it-”
“Forgive me, mon père,” La Chaise said. “I forgot that you have not been part of all this. Your Henri de Montmorency fancies himself in love with Mademoiselle de Rouen and talks foolishly of stopping her going to Poland.”
Jouvancy’s eyes rounded in horror. “That beggars belief. How could even Montmorency be so stupid! Of course we must keep him inside the college. For his own sake!”
“And for ours,” La Chaise said dryly.
Charles picked up the saddlebags and the three of them went out into the gallery.
“Are you sure you can manage both horses, maître?” Jouvancy said anxiously.
“Assuredly, mon père. But first, I will get you a carriage.”
La Chaise shook his head. “You go ahead, maître. I will see Père Jouvancy into a carriage and on his way.”
Charles bowed to the two of them, shouldered the saddlebags, and went decorously to the stairs. When he was out of sight, he bolted down the stairs two at a time, feeling like a boy let out of school and caring nothing for the looks he got from people climbing past him. Outside, the air was warm and fresh, and the afternoon promised settled riding weather to accompany two of his favorite earthly pleasures: riding and solitude. A whole afternoon of privacy rarely came his way.