Chapter 2

THE FEAST OF ST. DIANE, MONDAY, JUNE 9, 1687

It was five wet, cool days before Père Jouvancy’s health and the weather were finally judged fit for a ride to Versailles. They were five distractedly hectic days for Charles: trudging back and forth from the infirmary with the ballet livret, rewriting all that Jouvancy didn’t like of what he’d written during the rhetoric master’s illness, assisting in the morning grammar class, and teaching the rhetoric class. He also met with the college dancing master, Pierre Beauchamps, to decide which dances should be taught next and oversaw the older students’ weekly almsgiving. As he passed and repassed the bust of the king on the courtyard wall, Charles had the absurd conviction that Louis’s bland stone face grew increasingly smug and satisfied at his unwilling preparations for visiting court. Finally, all seemed done that could be done, and Père Jouvancy, Père Le Picart, Père Montville, and Charles were all ready to leave that Monday.

But on Monday morning, Père Le Picart and Père Montville found themselves embroiled in a dispute over the college water pipe and could not leave Paris.

“No help for it, Père Montville and I will have to hire a carriage early tomorrow morning. That will get us there in time for the presentation. But I want you and Père Jouvancy to go this morning, as planned,” Le Picart told Charles. “A slow ride in the good air will be better for him than a lurching gallop in a carriage. And he can rest well overnight—I understand from Père La Chaise that we will be expected to make an appearance at several court events tomorrow.”

So with Le Picart’s blessing, Charles and Jouvancy rode away from Louis le Grand into a day that was early summer perfection. The climbing sun promised warmth and the air was sweet. As sweet as it got in Paris, anyway. The sky’s soft blue looked newly washed, and courtyard trees were bright clouds of green above the stone walls. The people in the streets seemed as glad of it all as Charles was.

Père Jouvancy, expansive in the little rebirth of convalescence, was smiling on everyone and everything and letting the dappled mare Agneau, “Lamb,” choose her pace. Charles held his own horse, the restive black gelding called Flamme, to the same sedate walk. The gelding, named for his fiery spirits, tossed his head and danced, trying to change Charles’s mind about their speed until the crowded street forced him to give in and pick his way.

As he rode, Charles finally admitted to himself that he was more curious about this visit than he’d anticipated. His parents had met at court, after all. Not at the palace of Versailles, of course, which had not existed in their young days, but at the old Louvre palace across the Seine. And if he didn’t enjoy it, well, at least the visit would be short. The Jesuits would be presenting the gift, then returning to Paris on Wednesday, or Thursday at the latest, if Jouvancy needed an extra day to rest after all his exertion. Meanwhile, Charles told himself, it was a perfect day, he was on horseback, and there was no Greek to teach.

Though the sun was not far above the Left Bank’s blue-gray roof slates and thrusting spires, Paris was already hard at its selling and buying. As Charles and Jouvancy reached the rue de la Harpe, a water seller’s eerie, quavering cry of “A-a-a-a-l’eau!” rose from a narrow lane like the wail of a damned soul. A girl ran suddenly in front of Flamme and Agneau, holding out a bunch of late jonquils, yellow as the ribbons in her black hair, to a young professor in a clerical gown. Smiling and making suggestions Charles tried not to hear, the cleric told her he had no coins and tried to take a kiss instead of the flowers. She snatched back the jonquils and held them up to Charles, who also had to confess to a lack of money.

The girl smiled at him. “You’re better to look on than that other one. A kiss from you, then?” She hung for a moment on his stirrup, her red lips forming a kiss.

Jouvancy chose that moment to turn toward Charles. “Begone, girl,” he shouted, flicking a hand at her as if she were an errant chicken. “Go, out of his way!”

The girl let go of the stirrup and shrieked with laughter, pointing at Charles’s flaming face. Charles, grateful that the street din made it impossible for Jouvancy to say much to him, mustered what dignity he could and rode on. Street sellers shouted themselves hoarse, vying with one another like competing opera singers. “Asparagus! Leeks! New brooms!” rose above a rumbling chorus proclaiming old pots, lottery tickets, rosaries, and spring salad greens. A clutch of miaowing cats added their voices as they followed a woman balancing a two-handled pot on her head, gesturing with a ladle and singing the freshness of her milk.

“Bonjour, Maître du Luc!” a familiar deep voice called over the cacophony.

Charles reined in his horse and turned in the saddle to see Lieutenant-Général Nicolas de La Reynie, head of the Paris police and one of the king’s most influential officeholders, doffing his wide-brimmed, gray-plumed hat and smiling slightly. Behind him, a burly sergeant in the plain brown coat and breeches of La Reynie’s men kept his eyes stolidly on the swirling crowd.

“A very good day to you, also, mon lieutenant-général,” Charles called back, bowing slightly in the saddle. “I am glad to see you.” He’d occasionally helped La Reynie in the past, and though at first his help had been unwilling, he’d come to respect the man, and even like him.

La Reynie pushed his way past a leek seller to Charles’s side and said, with a half smile and a raised eyebrow, “Do you know, I think that’s the first time you’ve ever said that.”

Lifting his hat again, he bowed to Père Jouvancy. Charles introduced them, and Jouvancy smiled absently at La Reynie, then went back to watching a loud quarrel over the right of way between a vinegar seller and an impatient Benedictine on a mule.

“Is it well with you, Monsieur La Reynie?” Charles asked.

“Well enough,” the police chief returned, but his eyes were following something across the street.

Knowing that look, Charles turned his head to see who was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of it. A pair of men, short capes rakishly draped on their shoulders and swords at their sides, turned into a shop doorway beneath a sign with a golden quill.

Charles looked down at the lieutenant-général. “Are you thinking of visiting that bookshop?”

“I am. And inquiring about what they’re selling upstairs.”

“Ah,” Charles said, knowing—as anyone in Paris would know—that La Reynie meant books from Holland. “Dutch pornography or Dutch politics?”

“There’s a difference?” La Reynie said ironically, his black gaze still on the shop.

Holland was a perpetual source of pornography and of books and pamphlets attacking everything French, especially the king and his policies. Louis had made finding the illicit imports, and their sellers and buyers, part of La Reynie’s job.

“A new spate of tracts has turned up,” the lieutenant-général said, turning his attention back to Charles. “Vile things that look like pornography at first glance, but are in fact libels on the king and Madame de Maintenon.”

Charles tried not to imagine what such tracts might look like. “Well, I wish you good hunting.”

La Reynie grunted. “Where are you and Père Jouvancy riding to?”

“Interestingly enough, to Versailles,” Charles said. “To present a gift to Madame de Maintenon.”

“Well, don’t mention the tracts. As far as I know, she hasn’t heard about them, and God send she never does.” La Reynie eyed Charles. “You don’t look eager to arrive at court.”

“I’m not.” Charles glanced at Jouvancy to make sure he wasn’t listening. But the rhetoric master was absorbed in watching a hatter shaping the brim of a shiny black beaver hat just inside the open window of his shop.

“Maître du Luc.” La Reynie put a lace-cuffed hand on Charles’s bridle. “Do me the favor of keeping your eyes open while you are there.”

“Open for what? Don’t you have mouches at Versailles?” La Reynie, like everyone with power, had “flies”—spies—in high places, listening and reporting.

“Swarms of them. And everyone, no doubt, can identify them on sight. Do you know who the Prince of Conti is?”

“I know he’s a Prince of the Blood. Close kin to the king.”

“Yes.” La Reynie studied the cobbles, as though debating what to say. “Questions are being raised—again—about Conti and his intentions toward the king. I would like you to store up anything you hear. Gossip, who Conti talks to, everything. It would be a great favor to me if you would do this.”

“Why do I think you’re not going to tell me why you’re asking this?”

“Because you’ll listen more acutely if you’re not trying to hear what you think I want you to hear. Send me word when you return to Paris, and I will come to the college to hear what you have to tell me.”

Charles hesitated, his interest piqued and his conscience protesting. On the Friday just past, his confessor had reminded him—yet again—that he must learn to live quietly within the bounds of his lowly place in the Society. On the other hand, his logical self said, isn’t Père Le Picart sending you to Versailles for the good of the king?

“Very well. If I hear anything, I will certainly tell you—though you know that I will have to tell Père Le Picart first. And I will not be free to come and go on my own at court.”

La Reynie laughed. “I don’t recall that that has ever stopped you, maître.”

The shot went home, and Charles winced. “Anyway, I cannot imagine that a lowly Jesuit scholastic like myself will hear or see much of use to you.”

“Oh, come, surely you know that it is in the presence of those who don’t count that people are careless.”

“You flatter me,” Charles said, straight-faced, and they both laughed.

La Reynie’s eyes went to the bookshop again, and Charles, watching him, thought about how much his opinion of the man had changed. Something he would have sworn would never happen when they were first thrown together. The early sun was strong on the lieutenant-général’s face, and Charles saw how deep its lines were growing. Well, the man was sixty-one, more than twice Charles’s own twenty-nine. Sixty-one was a full age for working day and night, as La Reynie did. He turned back to Charles, reaching to steady a radish seller who stumbled beside him. The woman glanced up at him, mumbled her thanks, and walked on a few paces. Then she stared, round-eyed, over her shoulder as she realized who had helped her. La Reynie’s courtesy to the lowly street vendor made Charles respect him all the more.

“When you return,” La Reynie repeated, “send for me.”

“I will. Monsieur La Reynie—please—how is it with Reine?” Reine was a beggarwoman whose mysterious past was intertwined somehow with La Reynie’s own, though he refused to say much about how and why.

La Reynie’s chin came up and his eyes turned wary.

Having good reason to know that this man’s secrets were inviolable, Charles said quickly, “It’s only that I think of her sometimes and hope she’s well.”

The wariness softened and the older man smiled fleetingly. “She’s well. Growing older. Like me. But well. She’s asked about you, too.”

Charles smiled, inordinately pleased by that. “She’s in my prayers.”

“As, I hope, am I. I wish you a good ride. And that you will go about your court business looking as lowly as possible and letting your ears flap.” He looked toward Jouvancy. “I wish you both a good journey.”

Charles called Jouvancy’s attention, the priest signed a blessing toward La Reynie, and the two Jesuits rode on. Telling himself that whatever trouble came of what he’d just been asked to do, it would be La Reynie’s trouble and not his, Charles nudged Flamme into the lead. They passed the Convent of St. Michel and the line of the old walls, and the road angled southwest, past the Prince of Condé’s townhouse and toward the village of Vaugirard. Beyond Vaugirard they would join the royal Versailles road, which left Paris on the Right Bank and crossed the Seine at the village of Sevres. The ride from Paris to Versailles was a short one for a man in a hurry, but Charles had strict orders to take the journey slowly for Jouvancy’s sake, stopping often, and they did not expect to arrive until the afternoon.

“How far is it to Versailles, exactly?” Jouvancy asked, craning his neck to look up at the dome of the Luxembourg palace as they passed it. “I’ve been there, but not for many years, and then not from Paris.”

“It’s five miles,” Charles said, filling his lungs with the scent of flowering trees from the Luxembourg Gardens. Then he looked sharply at Jouvancy. “Are you tiring, mon père?”

“No, no, we’ve just set out, I am very well. Five French miles, I suppose you mean.”

“I could give you the distance in some other country’s reckoning, if that would please you better.”

“Pride is a great fault in a lowly scholastic, maître,” Jouvancy said with mock gravity. “But go on, show off your knowledge.”

Twisting in his saddle, Charles answered with a grin and a small mock bow. “Know, then, mon père, that we have fifteen English miles to ride, or, if you prefer, twenty Russian miles. In Spanish miles, the figure is less tiring—something under four and a half miles. And the German distance is easier yet, only a soupçon more than three miles.” He frowned and then shook his head. “I used to know Italian miles, but I’ve forgotten them.”

“I, also. Well, then, I shall ride in German miles and arrive fresh as the world’s first morning. Or at least,” the rhetoric master said wryly, “still able to stand up after I dismount.”

As the road bent south, the houses and convents thinned and gave way to fields and vineyards. They rode companionably, without speaking, listening to the country sounds of birdsong, cows and sheep, and field laborers calling to each other. Then there were more vineyards than fields, and the houses of the wine-growing village of Vaugirard began to line the road. They rode past the old church, with its carvings of vines and grapes, and stopped in the little arcaded marketplace to let Jouvancy rest for a time.

They tethered their horses to an iron ring in the stone arcade and Charles loosed the saddlebag with Madame de Maintenon’s gift in it and tucked it under his arm. As they walked slowly across the cobbled square to drink from the fountain in its center, Charles saw several curious faces watching them from upper windows, but it wasn’t a market day so the square itself was mostly empty. Jouvancy sat down on a tree-shaded bench, and Charles sat beside him. The church bells rang nine o’clock and the office of Terce, and Jouvancy took out his breviary. As a priest, he was required to say the offices, though in the solitary Jesuit manner, unlike the Benedictines. As merely a scholastic, Charles was not yet bound to say them, but he knew many of the prayers by heart and joined Jouvancy silently.

At the prayers’ end, they sat quietly. Then Jouvancy put his breviary away in his pocket. Charles opened the saddlebag, brought out two winter-withered but still sweet apples, and offered Jouvancy one. They munched in companionable quiet and watched the little there was to see: maidservants with pitchers and buckets coming and going from the fountain, and a few old men walking under the arcade, their sticks tapping the stone. Pigeons drank from the puddled gravel near the fountain, the males strutting and chasing the softly cooing females.

“Spring,” Jouvancy snorted, watching them. He looked sideways at Charles. “You will do well to remember that it is always ‘spring’ at Versailles, Maître du Luc.”

Charles turned to stare at him and then began to laugh. “That sort of spring, you mean?” He nodded toward the pigeons.

“It is no laughing matter.”

“But I’ve heard the court is greatly changed, mon père, since the king has become more sober and devout.”

“The king may have become more sober and devout—and not before time, he’s in sight of fifty—but the court is forever full of ill-disciplined young people, and even Madame de Maintenon cannot change young blood into old.”

Charles considered the rhetoric master with some surprise, wondering at this irritable, moralistic fault finding. He’d never heard Jouvancy in this mood before.

“And so you are warning me, mon père?” he said carefully.

“Yes, and you can stop laughing up your sleeve about it. I saw that little flower seller flirting with you on the way out of the city! The court is also full of young, bored, pretty women.”

Torn between laughter and offense, Charles kept quiet and watched the pigeons. After a moment, he said, “Do you really think me so vulnerable, mon père? So uncertain in my vows?”

“I don’t doubt the sincerity of your vows, but you are young and male and well featured. As for what uncertainty there may be, time will tell.”

“Well,” Charles said, trying for lightness, “then it’s to the good that I passed my twenty-ninth birthday on Saint Bobo’s Day, and am rapidly becoming not all that young.”

“Saint Bobo?” Jouvancy frowned and shook his head. “I have never heard of any Saint Bobo.”

“He lived a long time ago, in Languedoc. He’s much loved in the south and we call him Bobo, though his Christian name was Beuvron. He fought Saracen pirates to stop them raiding our coast. My father gave me Beuvron as my third name, since I was born on his day.” Charles grinned sheepishly. “But my family likewise calls me Bobo.”

Charles expected laughter, but Jouvancy only grunted and smiled faintly. Anxiously, Charles studied the priest’s fine-drawn profile, thinking that if the rhetoric master was already tired enough to be so fractious, perhaps they should turn back to Paris now. The priest’s light blue eyes were still shadowed and he was thin, but he had always been small. His slenderness added to his grace, which seemed bred in the bone and not something learned.

Thinking that Jouvancy might have personal reasons for cautioning him, Charles said, “Were—forgive me, mon père—but were you already a Jesuit when you last visited Versailles?”

“No.”

“Then I can imagine that you must have attracted much attention. But I am already a Jesuit under first vows. There must be some respect for clerics at court.”

Jouvancy snorted. “Have you forgotten Madame de Maintenon’s nickname for Père La Chaise, who holds what many would judge the most eminent clerical position in France?”

The little priest stood up, slapping the crown of his wide-brimmed black hat farther down over his fine fair hair, and stalked back toward the horses. Hoping that his superior’s current mood was not going to color their whole trip, Charles hastily closed the saddlebag and followed him. He held the older man’s reins and stirrup and helped him mount, strapped the bag on the front of his own saddle, and swung himself up.

They rode in silence until they reached the southwest side of the village. There, Charles asked a boy with a flock of hissing geese if the road they were on joined the road to Versailles. Told that it did, somewhere beyond the village of Issy, they rode on, still without speaking. The warming air was thick with the smell of earth and Flamme danced and curvetted, shaking his head against the reins. Charles held him back reluctantly. The horse was not the only one who would have loved a gallop through the sloping vineyards green with new leaves, but Jouvancy could not be left to follow in Charles’s dust. They both had to content themselves with drinking in the spring air as though it were the local white wine. But under Charles’s pleasure in the day, he was still uneasy about Jouvancy’s mood and concern for his virtue.

Charles had indeed had a sharp struggle with his vow of chastity, but that was known only to his confessor. He’d done his penance and remade his vows, choosing chastity finally and with his whole heart. Before entering the Society of Jesus, however, he’d had plenty of experience with women. During his two years as a soldier, he’d bedded several willing and pretty women, whom he remembered with affection. He hoped their memories of him were equally happy. But all that was past.

Charles and Jouvancy heard the royal road to Versailles before they saw it. Galloping hooves, rattling harness, bouncing carriages, and belligerent cries disputing the right of way made them feel they were back in Paris. When the small road they were on unwound its last curve, they reined in, gaping at the stream of fast-moving traffic in both directions. Luxurious private carriages, red and gold and black, and drawn by anything from two to eight horses, sped along the wide and level road surface. Charles caught glimpses of brocaded interiors and richly dressed men and women inside—and once, of a beady-eyed lapdog at a carriage window, its black-and-white ears streaming in the wind. A slow-moving hired coach trundled past, weighed down by fifteen or twenty laughing, singing tourists returning from Versailles to Paris. The road was also thick with agile pedestrians, women as well as men, dodging not only coaches but also riders on horseback. Young men in wind-tangled wigs under plumed hats, dark velvet-trimmed coats, and gleaming riding boots—boots that made Charles catch his breath with forbidden covetousness—rode their lathered horses as recklessly as the king’s hard-bitten mail couriers, going as though their lives depended on arriving before anyone else at Versailles or Paris. Charles and Jouvancy joined the cavalcade, going slowly and steadily like the tortoise in Aesop’s fable, and were quickly covered in everyone else’s dust.

By late afternoon, the road had climbed gently and the Versailles-bound traffic had thickened even more. A voice behind Charles and Jouvancy bellowed, “Way! Way!” and a four-horse coach passed so closely that Charles nearly brushed knees with the postillion mounted on the right-hand lead horse. Flamme, exasperated at having been held back all day, shied madly sideways, tossing his head, and Jouvancy’s mare bared her teeth and snapped, nearly catching his ear. Just as Charles got Flamme settled, another coach going like devils out of hell hurtled toward them, the postillion blowing long and loud on a brass horn. Flamme reared, pawing the air. It took all of Charles’s horsemanship to get him to the side of the road. The mare, Agneau, having shaken her reins loose from Jouvancy’s grip, was now ignoring everything except the grass she was pulling up. Jouvancy sat motionless in the saddle, squinting straight west into the late afternoon sun.

“There it is,” he said.

At the end of the tree-lined avenue, the sun struck gleams of gold from towering, gilded iron gates on the far side of a trapezoidal plaza. Two other tree-lined avenues, one on each side of their own, converged on the plaza, where what looked like half the population of a small town walked, lounged, and loitered, careful to stay out of the way of the busy gate traffic. There were men exercising horses on lead reins, other men walking braces of leashed dogs, and off to one side, Charles thought he saw two men dueling. But it was a good quarter mile from where they sat to the open space, he realized, and he might be wrong.

“Shall we go on?” Jouvancy said. “I confess I am ready to be done with riding.” His tone was light, but Charles saw with concern that there were gray shadows under his eyes and he was slumping tiredly, which he hadn’t been earlier.

“By all means, mon père. I, too, am ready to arrive.”

As the palace grew nearer, Charles felt as though a mounting wave of architecture were about to break over him. Palace, Charles thought, was really the only word for the place. Calling this sprawling pile of buildings a chateau was like calling Louis XIV merely a bureaucrat. As they crossed the plaza, Charles’s eye was caught by what looked like a shop front in the wall to the left of the gates. One horizontal wooden shutter was propped up as a sloping rooflet, the other let down to make a counter, behind which a concierge was renting out swords and plumed hats, required wear for all laymen entering the palace, to men too low in rank to have their own. Vendors from the new town that had grown up around the palace were selling pastries and lottery tickets and eau de vie. Obvious palace officials attended by retinues of lesser officials walked slowly, deep in talk. Several ladies—by their dress and bold looks, of doubtful virtue—watched the men with practiced eyes, and one of them let her eyes linger on Charles as he passed.

At the gilded gate, the guards on duty asked their business. While Jouvancy explained, Charles stared balefully at the golden sun as big as a carriage wheel on the gate’s top, feeling already scrutinized by the Sun King’s personal surveillance. The guards let them pass into the wide green expanse that still lay between them and most of the palace buildings. Beyond was a second gilded gate that Charles hadn’t even seen till now. He shook his head, thinking that the scale of the place was so huge that some things were simply too big to be seen.

At the second set of gates, another guard questioned them and directed them to their right, across the smaller—but still enormous—court toward the palace’s south wing. Here there were no carriages, just strolling courtiers and clutches of pointing, gawking sightseers. When they finally reached the door, Charles dismounted and helped Jouvancy down from the saddle. Two grooms appeared seemingly from nowhere, one taking the horses’ bridles and the other removing the saddlebags. A young royal footman in a blue serge coat with red velvet cuffs and pockets hurried through the door, spoke sharply to the man with the saddlebags, bowed to the two Jesuits, and scanned the court beyond them.

“I’ve been watching for you, mes pères,” he said, in a voice that rasped like an old file and consorted oddly with his comely face and warm brown eyes. “But I was told there’d be four of you.”

“Père Le Picart and Père Montville were detained in Paris,” Jouvancy replied. “They will be here tomorrow morning.”

“Then if you please, I will conduct you to Père La Chaise. He’s waiting in his chamber.”

Jouvancy gently removed himself from Charles’s supporting arm and drew himself up, wavering a little as he found his feet again after the ride. “We thank you,” he said, with a relieved sigh, and they followed the footman into the palace, trailed in turn by the lower servant with the saddlebags.

The footman led his little procession along a corridor, up a flight of marble stairs to the next floor, and to the left along another corridor. This one was so crowded with people coming and going that its black-and-white-patterned marble floor was hardly visible beneath the rustling, swinging skirts and cloaks. Stopping at a door at the courtyard end of the building, the footman scratched at the door with his little finger. A tall, solidly built Jesuit in his late middle years opened it. Charles, who had met him before, recognized him as Père La Chaise and inclined his head. Jouvancy did the same.

La Chaise returned the gesture. “Welcome, Père Jouvancy. Entrez, I beg you. But where are the others?”

Jouvancy again explained. La Chaise nodded slightly at Charles, stood aside for them to pass into a small anteroom, and turned to the footman.

“Thank you, Bouchel, see that your man leaves the bags there.” He pointed to a table standing beside a copper water reservoir.

The footman pointed imperiously in his turn and stood over the other servant as he deposited the bags.

Waving his guests through the anteroom into the larger chamber, La Chaise said to Jouvancy, “Please, sit. I know that you have been ill, mon père.” He pulled an upholstered, fringed chair forward and turned to a small polished table that held a silver pitcher and five delicate cone-shaped, short-stemmed glasses. Jouvancy loosed his cloak, handed it to Charles, and sat, groaning audibly as his hindquarters met the chair seat.

“It is a long while since I’ve ridden,” he said ruefully.

La Chaise laughed and handed him a glass of rich red wine. “This should help ease the pain—and build up your blood, too. Always necessary after illness, I find.” Returning to the table, he said to Charles, “Put the cloaks on my bed and bring the stool from beside the hearth.”

Charles folded the cloaks and laid them on the thickly blanketed and well-pillowed bed, whose red curtains were looped back and tied to its carved posts. When he had moved the small, cushioned stool nearer to Jouvancy, La Chaise held out a glass to him.

“It is a pleasure to meet you again, mon père,” Charles said, bowing once more before he took the wine.

La Chaise again nodded slightly in return and gestured Charles to the low stool. Charles sat obediently. La Chaise poured his own glass of wine and seated himself in the other chair. Seen close up, the king’s confessor looked to be sixty or so. His fleshy face was lined, his dark eyes resigned and knowing. He had the air of someone long past being surprised by anything—only to be expected, Charles thought, from a man who had spent more than a decade as the confessor of Europe’s most absolute monarch. But Charles could see in him none of the bitter cynicism such a king’s confessor might have had. La Chaise’s eyes were knowing, but they were also warm.

Charles drank gratefully, realizing as the wine went down how hungry he was and wondering when something might be done about it. Jouvancy was giving La Chaise an account of his illness, and Charles let his eyes wander over the room, the first palace room he’d seen. Its small size was a relief from the massive scale of the exterior. The chamber’s ceiling was undecorated; its walls were plain wood paneling below and plaster above; and the two armchairs, the stool, the table, a tall cupboard beside the fireplace, a prie-dieu, and the bed were all its furnishings. The large window opposite the door had small wood-framed panes of clear, faintly bluish glass. Its interior shutters stood open and the late afternoon sun, coming and going now among gathering clouds, fell obliquely, lighting a patch of bare, dusty parquet floor.

Charles realized that he’d expected something more, something grander, even though La Chaise used this room only when events compelled his overnight presence at Versailles. Otherwise, the king’s confessor lived in Paris, in the Jesuit Professed House beside the Church of St. Louis. La Chaise was not outwardly a courtier; he wore the same plain black cassock, with a rosary hanging from its belt, that every other Jesuit wore, and rode horseback or hired a carriage when the king sent for him.

As though he’d been reading Charles’s mind, La Chaise said, smiling, “I see you wondering at my accommodations, maître. I fought hard to get the brocade taken off the walls and to keep the gaggle of palace artists from painting overfed angels on my ceiling. Which gained me a reputation with a few people for ascetic sanctity, and with a great many more for pretended sanctity and secret luxury, and for myself, one space at least in this palace where I can breathe.” He nodded toward a door beyond Jouvancy. “Your chamber is just there, through that door. It, too, is plain.”

Jouvancy gave him a tired smile. “We thank you.” Then he sighed and said, “Mon père, I think I must go and rest soon, but before I do, may we know what the arrangements are for giving our gift tomorrow?”

“Of course, yes. You are certain that Père Le Picart and Père Montville will be here in good time?”

“That is their intention. They will take a coach after the first Mass.”

“Good. Then that leaves only…” La Chaise pursed his lips and tapped a foot, staring at Charles without seeming to see him. Then he nodded, as though agreeing with himself, and stood up. “There is one last detail still to settle. Pray excuse me and I will see to it—it will be faster than sending someone. I will return as quickly as may be.”

He strode from the room, leaving Charles and Jouvancy looking at each other. Jouvancy was pale and the shadows beneath his eyes had darkened.

“Perhaps you could sleep a little in your chair while he’s gone,” Charles said.

“Yes. Yes, perhaps I could. Forgive me, I am absurdly tired.”

Jouvancy’s eyes closed and the wineglass tilted in his hand. Charles saved it from falling and set it on the table. Then he went into the adjoining chamber, took a blanket from the larger bed standing there, and put it over Jouvancy’s knees. The rhetoric master did not so much as stir when Charles tucked it in around him. Picking up his own wineglass, Charles went to the window and saw that it looked down into an interior courtyard, where a boy, two girls, and a small black dog were playing some game with a ball. Charles watched with pleasure as they darted after the ball and threw it, laughing and calling to one another, indifferent to the small sprinkling of rain that had started. The dark-haired boy was slower than the two girls, visibly limping as he chased the ball over low bushes bordering the court’s checkerboard of flower beds. He and the older girl, whose tall headdress of red ribbons and lace had fallen off, leaving her curling fair hair to fly in every direction, were in their teens. The other girl was much younger and very small, and Charles was thinking that it was kind of the older two to play with her, when he belatedly recognized the limping boy as the young Duc du Maine, the king’s eldest bastard son, who had come to the Louis le Grand pre-Lenten performance back in February. And the older girl was his sister, Mademoiselle de Rouen, who had come with him. The little girl Charles did not know.

Charles was turning away from the window when a shout from the courtyard drew him back. A man in coat and breeches of rich brown was crossing the courtyard toward the three, one hand on his belly, shaking a fist at the older girl. She stood with hands on her hips, bust thrust out, shouting back at him like a market woman. The cocked front brim of the man’s black hat showed only part of his face, but something about his walk seemed familiar to Charles. The Duc du Maine hobbled toward the man, but the little girl was backing away. To Charles’s astonishment, Mademoiselle de Rouen bent down, scooped up a handful of courtyard gravel, and flung it at the man’s face. His howl of anger was loud enough to make Jouvancy sit up, and Charles went to see how he did, leaving the scene below to play itself out.

“It was only a noise outside, mon père,” Charles said soothingly. “You can sleep a while longer.”

Jouvancy blinked and mumbled something, and his eyes closed again. Charles went to see if there was more wine in the pitcher. Thanking St. Martin, patron of winemakers and beggars, he poured a little more into his glass and wondered how much longer it would be before he got anything to eat. He was eyeing the cupboard’s closed doors when the gallery door opened and Père La Chaise hurried through the anteroom.

“All is well,” he said. “I—oh. Sleeping, is he?”

But Jouvancy had heard him and struggled upright. “Only a little nap, mon père, and very welcome.”

La Chaise settled himself again in his armchair and Charles resumed the stool.

“So. Here is how tomorrow will go,” La Chaise said. “I want you both to accompany me to the king’s morning Mass at ten o’clock. If the other two are here by then, well and good. If not, no matter. You will not be presented to the king before the Mass, but he will see you.”

Jouvancy’s eyes widened. “Do you mean that he will be at the presentation of the cross?”

“No. I have advised him not to be there. You are presenting it to the lady, not to the king, and his presence would only call attention to their—connection.” Jouvancy and Charles both opened their mouths, but La Chaise’s face made it clear that there would be no discussion of that interesting question. “Now,” he went on, “know that Louis misses nothing that happens around him. He sees and he remembers. His public presence is even-tempered and courteous almost to a fault.” La Chaise shrugged and lifted open palms. “The man raises his hat to kitchen maids. Any failure of courtesy infuriates him, and so does any breach of ceremony. No, no, mon père,” he added quickly as Jouvancy opened his mouth to protest. “I am not in the least implying that you might be discourteous, I am only trying to give you some understanding of the king. Because unless you somewhat understand him, you will not understand our Madame de Maintenon, and it is she whose heart you must touch tomorrow.”

“It’s said she doesn’t have one,” Charles murmured, mostly to see if he could provoke a little useful indiscretion and a little more information.

Jouvancy frowned, and La Chaise eyed Charles in surprise. Less, Charles thought, because of what he’d said than because a mere scholastic had ventured to say it.

“Many things are said about those who live here,” La Chaise retorted. “As you obviously know.” Charles bowed his head slightly to the riposte, which La Chaise softened by saying, with laughter in his voice, “Many things are said about me by many people, including Madame de Maintenon. As I am also sure you know. Even though I spend less time here at court than at our Professed House in Paris.” His face sobered. “Madame de Maintenon has not only a measure of wit but also an essentially kind heart, I assure you. But she gives her heart very rarely. So far as I know, she has given it only twice: to the king and to his eldest son by Madame de Montespan, our young Duc du Maine. She was governess, you know, to him and some of his brothers and sisters. She loves all those children, the more because she feels their mother has virtually ignored them. But Maine has a lame leg and is her favorite. She did everything that could be done for him, though little helped his lameness. He is her heart’s darling.”

Jouvancy was watching him curiously. “As I listen to you speak of her, mon père, I could almost believe that you do not dislike the woman.”

La Chaise’s eyebrows rose. “Dislike her? I don’t know that I do dislike her. She is without pretense my enemy. But I often have the feeling that if we had been thrown together under different circumstances, we might have been friends.”

Fascinated, Charles ventured, “Why do you think so?”

“There’s much about her I respect. Her piety. Her austerity of mind. She has no use at all for self-indulgence. Or for false or easy answers. Or for impiety—under the Caesars, she would probably have ended in the arena.”

Jouvancy laughed. “One might feel sorry for the lions.”

“One might, indeed.” La Chaise shrugged and held out his hands. “But things are as they are, and we are not friends. She is an idealist. I am a realist. She loathes my realistic lenience with my royal penitent. But a king, especially this king, can only be guided by a loose rein. I choose to think that better than no guidance at all.”

Jouvancy and Charles nodded somber agreement with that. They all sat without speaking—busy, it seemed to Charles, with thoughts loosed by what La Chaise had said. The light was fading, and Charles saw that it was raining in earnest now. Out in the gallery, the clattering noise of heels echoed on the marble floor, and Charles found himself wondering how late it would go on. Louis le Grand was a noisy enough place during the day, but quiet was the rule at night.

La Chaise sighed. “What I fear most just now is the king’s lust for war. Which is coming—and not altogether at his behest this time. Now that the Turks have been beaten back in the east, the Protestant countries of the League of Augsburg—the Holy Roman Emperor and the Germanic states, Sweden, and Spain—have breathing space to think of clipping France’s wings once and for all. Or at least, to try.”

“How soon do you believe they will try?” Jouvancy’s pinched face had grown anxious.

“The spies and rumors are saying it may not be this year. But by the next, for certain.”

“Well, you may be sure,” Jouvancy said triumphantly, “that in our own small way, we are doing what we can at Louis le Grand to help gird the loins of France.”

La Chaise looked at him in surprise. “Oh, yes?” he said, half smiling. “And with what are you girding her loins, mon père?”

“With our rousing August ballet. It’s called La France Victorieuse sous Louis le Grand. I chose it to proclaim the strength of our realm and our Most Christian King in the face of our enemies. Our students performed it several years ago, but Maître du Luc is revising it to make it more current, so that it fits with what is happening now.”

Charles bit his tongue.

“France Victorious under Louis the Great,” La Chaise said meditatively. “Yes, that’s good. Perhaps I can contrive to mention that tomorrow morning.” He peered at Jouvancy. “I must let you go and rest, but first, let me briefly explain what will happen tomorrow after the king’s Mass. From the chapel, we will go to Madame de Maintenon’s antechamber and wait there until we are called into her reception room. Some of the royal children will be there, and an assortment of courtiers. We will go over the ceremonial procedure in detail tomorrow, but the crux of it is that you, Père Jouvancy, should present the reliquary directly into Madame de Maintenon’s hands—unless it is too large or heavy?”

“No, no,” Jouvancy said, “it is only about the height of two spread hands.”

“Good. After she takes it from you, she will thank you and the Society of Jesus, and everyone will admire the gift. Then she will give the signal for the three of us to retire. And then it will be dinnertime. What I went to confirm just now is where we will eat. I am happy to tell you that we are invited to the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s table. A very good table indeed. He is a friend of Madame de Maintenon’s and pleased by your gift.” La Chaise smiled at Jouvancy and stood up. “For now, let us get you settled in your own chamber for a little more rest. Besides the door from this chamber, there is also a door into the gallery. You will find a latrine in the corner of the gallery to your left.”

Jouvancy began to struggle out of his chair, and Charles went quickly to help him.

“Oof! I feel as stiff as a new boot,” he said, holding to Charles’s arm as he slowly straightened. “Will you get our saddlebags, maître?”

La Chaise took his place at Jouvancy’s arm, and Charles went to the anteroom for the saddlebags. As he hefted them over his shoulder, what sounded like thunder crashed and echoed out in the gallery, and women began to scream.