Minette Read online

  Contents

  Title

  THE KING DANCES

  1 Paris, March 1654

  2 Paris, July 1654

  3 Paris, September 1654

  4 Paris, November 1654

  THE HOLY INNOCENT

  5 Paris, December 1655

  6 Paris, February 1656

  7 Paris, July 1657

  8 Paris, December 1657

  9 Paris, June 1658

  10 Paris, September 1658

  11 Fontainebleau, April 1659

  12 Paris, June 1659

  13 Paris, July 1659

  14 Colombes, December 1659

  THE SLEEPING PALACE

  15 Colombes, May, 1660

  16 Fontainebleau, July 1660

  17 Saint Cloud, August 1660

  18 Paris, September 1660

  19 Dover, November 1660

  20 London, December 1660

  21 London, January 1661

  22 Paris, March, 1661

  Acknowledgements

  Author

  From Whitechapel...

  Minette - Melanie Clegg

  By the same author

  The Secret Diary of a Princess

  Blood Sisters

  Before the Storm

  From Whitechapel

  Copyright © 2013 Melanie Clegg. All rights reserved.

  For Suzy, Kaite, Becky, Del, Miranda, Zazz, Mof, Rachael, Tish, Mike, Hester, Alison, Tom, Matthias, Simon, Jane, Andrew, David and all the other GIN fiends of my acquaintance.

  Part One

  The King Dances

  1654

  Chapter One

  Paris, March 1654

  The young king steps out onto the stage, resplendent in cloth of gold embroidered with diamond studded lilies and holding a smiling golden sun mask edged with rubies in front of his handsome face. He doesn’t bother trying to conceal himself behind the mask, but instead holds it flirtatiously to the side, smiling winsomely around it in the manner of a court trollop holding a fan.

  Everyone in the audience obligingly gasps with awe and wonderment and applauds enthusiastically when he begins to dance, his dark head held high as his red stockinged feet in their gilded high heeled shoes tap and slide their way through the complicated routine devised by his long suffering dancing master.

  Apparently overcome by the spectacle one of the ladies of the court, a plump blonde in a tight pink silk gown, goes too far and gives a small but piercing scream before fainting dead away. There’s always one. I suspect that this pretty lady is pretending though as she has managed to land directly back onto a convenient and rather comfortable chair rather than on the cold stone floor and I can see her long dark eyelashes fluttering as she covertly looks around to see what reaction her dramatic collapse has had. The dowager queen, my dear Tante Anne, who doesn’t suffer fools gladly and is jealous of her eldest son’s dignity, regards her coldly for a moment from her small pale green eyes then turns ominously away to whisper to Cardinal Mazarin who sits upright at her side with his usual urbane smile fixed on his thin face.

  ‘Uh oh, that’s the little Comtesse’s court career at an end,’ Harry whispers delightedly in my ear. His breath smells of sweet wine and chocolate. ‘She’ll be back in whatever miserable little provincial backwater she originally came from by sunrise.’

  I smile up at my brother, pleased to see that he seems to be having fun even if France doesn’t exactly agree with him. He’s confused by the way that the French like to kiss and pat and groom, while at the same time somehow contriving to keep other people at as much of a distance as possible. He also distrusts the way that they never seem to laugh. If they find something amusing, they give a bleak little smile and say ‘That’s so funny’ instead. He hates this. ‘My God, why don’t they just laugh?’ he whispers to me. ‘Or do they think it’ll crack their painted faces?’ Needless to say, he isn’t overly keen on their love of cosmetics, of powder, paint and kohl either.

  ‘It’s good to have you here,’ I say now, taking his large hand in mine and curling my fingers around his. He’s solid as English oak, my brother Harry.

  He hesitates, begins to speak then pauses again before nodding. ‘I am glad to be with you,’ he says at last.

  Poor Harry. Before he came back to us, there was just Mam, Charles, James and me, doing our desperate best to cling on to all that remained of our patched up and tattered dignity in our once magnificent but now sadly shabby apartments in the Palais Royal, where we reside on the charity of our French cousins. Mam is very fond of putting a brave face on things and so she claims to find the dusty velvet and brocade curtains, flaking gilt decorations and squeaky wooden floorboards charming. She scurries from room to room, exclaiming over the dirty windows (‘How très charmant, my dear, to see the world through such a heavenly mist!’), the gloomy portraits of pop eyed ancestors that no one else wants to remember (‘Aren’t we lucky, Minette, to have them looking after us while we sleep!’) and the smell of long ago digested dinners and elderly beeswax that hangs about the claustrophobic little anterooms (‘Ah, who could ever go hungry with such delicious smells in the air?’)

  We’ve often gone hungry though. Mam doesn’t like to talk about it, but there it is. I can remember at least one dismal long winter long ago when we were living in even less salubrious apartments in the Louvre and our allowance wasn’t paid for months on end and dinner every night consisted of cabbage soup (‘Ah, so delicious and nutritious!’) and a few crusts of hard bread. Later on, my mother told me that the feeling of hunger made her feel closer to God and I had to quickly turn away from her to hide my look of annoyance. What about me? I wanted to shout. I couldn’t have felt any further away from God during those weeks. I thought my empty rumbling stomach meant that he had finally abandoned us to our fate.

  Things were better though by the time that Harry arrived in Paris, pale and exhausted after his long journey from the Hague. Our mother greeted him fondly, pulling him to her thin bosom and kissing him over and over again while exclaiming over his fine hazel eyes, his softly curling chestnut brown hair. ‘You were the last of us to see him alive,’ she said mournfully, rolling her red rimmed eyes towards the portrait of our father as a beardless, smirking young man that hangs over the chipped marble fireplace in her private sitting room. Our Sainted Father, I should say, for that is how Mam refers to him.

  Harry gulped, pushed her away and went even paler. ‘I try not to think about it,’ he said awkwardly, wriggling his way out of her embrace.

  I understand. Of course I do. It’s overwhelming for him. Even I, who have no recollection of ever having met Our Sainted Father although I am told that I did just once as a babe in arms, pause and quake a little inside at the thought of what they did to him, those gloomy black clad men across the Channel.

  Mam is relentless though. ‘What did he say to you?’ she demanded, gently taking his face in her hands. He was a little boy, a child of just four years old, when she last saw him but he’s nearly thirteen now and taller than her by a head. Our poor little mother has to lift her arms to take hold of him and I can see that her heart hurts with all the time they have lost, she and this tall almost-man that she barely knows.

  Harry shook his head miserably. ‘He said that I must not allow them to make me a king while Charles and James are still alive,’ he whispered, blinking away his tears. ‘He said: They will cut off your brothers’ heads, when they catch them and cut off your head too at the last and so, I charge you, do not be made a king by them.’

  Charles, who was standing by the window and quietly watching them together, turned away at this and I saw him surreptitiously touch his neck as if making sure that head and body were still attached. He didn’t want Harry to come to us in Paris - not because he dislikes him but because he fears the infl
uence that Mam might have over him, this vulnerable, damaged boy so desperate for attention and approval. Harry has grown up in the care of Parliament and is a staunch Protestant, which of course doesn’t please our mother at all even if it pleases everyone else.

  The morning after Harry first arrived, Mam waited patiently, red leather prayer book in hand, for him to accompany us to Mass only for him to shrug his broad shoulders and refuse to leave his comfortable seat by the fire. We went without him and when I glanced nervously up at her thin face, I saw that it was pinched with anxiety and disappointment. ‘What shall we do?’ she whispered to me as we went down the worn stone steps to our shabby little chapel, Mam’s little spaniels trotting at our heels, their moist noses sniffing around my blue cotton skirts. ‘They have sent a heretic back to me. My own son.’

  Both of our grandfathers were kings and Harry is named for Mam’s father, Henri IV of France who was by all accounts a very charming fellow before he was struck down in his prime by an insane monk. Isn’t that always the way? The beloved are murdered in the street while all the horrible people seem to linger on forever before neatly dying in their beds, surrounded by family and the stink of sanctity.

  Mam talks about her father all the time, dwelling on his kindness and wisdom and how my brother Charles is just like him with his smiling dark eyes, open handed ways and easy going manner that draws people in towards him like moths to a flame. As always, Charles is on hand to fill in the gaps that Mam conveniently forgets to mention and whispers that King Henri ruled Protestant Navarre before he took the throne of France and agreed to convert to Catholicism so that he could inherit. ‘Paris is well worth a Mass,’ he cheerfully declared upon signing his religion away and I can’t help thinking, Harry, is not our mother worth a Mass too? Can you not, just once, bend your knee?

  ‘Your Highness,’ someone hisses close to me. ‘That was your cue.’

  I give a little shake then fix a bright smile onto my face and step out into the light. There’s an obliging little gasp and then scattered round of applause from the huge audience as I dance delicately around the rose petals that have been scattered onto the huge stage, crushing some of them beneath my thin golden sandals so that their sweet scent rises through the air.

  I am dressed as Erato, the muse of love and poetry in a shimmering pleated tunic of gold threaded gauze with a wide gold belt around my waist and a delicate wreath of pink roses and myrtle crowning my auburn hair which hangs in tight little ringlets about my shoulders. Mam couldn’t afford to pay for my costume so Tante Anne discreetly paid for it instead, just one of the many acts of kindness which we have become accustomed to if not utterly dependent upon. ‘Ah, how pretty your Minette looks,’ I hear her say to my brother Charles who is sitting in the place of honour beside her. ‘I thought that pink roses would clash with her red hair but it looks quite charming.’

  ‘She has Stuart hair,’ my brother replies in his much improved French. When he was last here people used to pretend that they couldn’t understand anything that he said. It amused them to do so, to shrug and roll their eyes apologetically and deliberately misunderstand when he asked for a glass of water or the way to the King’s chambers. All that has changed now though. ‘They’ll love her in Scotland, if they ever let us back into the country again.’

  They are all watching me, waiting for my first line which stubbornly flickers furtive and half forgotten at the back of my mind. Even Louis has paused for a moment in his dance and is watching me warily from his pedestal high above us all. He thought me too young to take part in the ballet, had insisted that I would forget my lines or disgrace myself in some way and I am determined to prove him wrong.

  I open my mouth, clutch my little gold wire lyre to my breast with shaking hands and then, like magic, the words that I have spent so many hours working to memorise spring into life and flow out into the silence. ‘Ma race est du plus sang des dieux et sur nos montangnes on me voit tenir un rang.’ I pause and look around them all, opening my arms to beg for their love. ‘Tout autre que mes compagnes: mon jeune et royal aspect inspire avec le respect la pitoyable tendresse…’

  My moment is over so quickly that I blink with confusion as I step back into place and the bold eyed and beautiful Mademoiselle de Villeroy, dressed as Clio, the muse of history in rich crimson silk stamped with golden lilies strides forward to say her piece.

  The candles around the elaborately decorated stage sputter alarmingly as one by one the muses step out and say their lines while young Monsieur Lully who looks like an angel with his intense blue eyes and fair curling hair waits anxiously at the side, intently watching the faces of the audience for their reaction as his beautiful music floats around them. I smile at him but he barely notices me - his gaze is fixed on Tante Anne, who is smiling, delightedly nodding and occasionally clapping along with each speech. She only has eyes for her son Louis, who stands aloof and magnificent on his pedestal at the back of the stage. The rest of us might just as well not be there at all. It’s always been that way though.

  There are nine muses and by the time Mademoiselle de Gourdon has simpered on as Polyhymnia, the muse of hymns and also, oddly, pantomime, my feet are weary in their silly sandals and I am longing to sidle away and sit down. I wilt a little and see my aunt pinch her lips and shake her head at me. I immediately straighten up.

  The rose petal covered stage is bathed with soft amber light cast by the hundreds of candles that have been lit in the theatre and the lanterns that hang overhead. The air is heady with the scent of beeswax, smoke and the rich amber perfume that the ladies and gentlemen of the court are favouring this season. I am not allowed perfume yet but sometimes I sneak a little from one of the precious glass bottles that litter my mother’s toilette. She likes gentle flower scents - lavender, lilies, roses and violets. I dab them on my pillow and dream of meadows and country gardens humming with bees.

  Eventually the muses are all done and we dance slowly in single file from the stage. I risk one last look over my shoulder as I go and glimpse my mother’s eyes sparkle with tears as she watches me pirouette away.

  In contrast to the carefully choreographed order that we are presenting to the audience, the back stage is awash with panic, light, the stench of grease paint and bustling noise as dozens of stage hands dash about with bundles of props and costumes in their arms, adroitly avoiding the cast as they preen themselves and each other in front of the tall mirrors that have been erected along the entire length of the room. In the corner two court ladies dressed in cloth of silver tunics squabble shrilly over a particularly fine head dress decorated with metal roses and tall white feathers while beside them my cousin Philippe and his noisy pack of friends avidly bet money on the outcome of the fight.

  No one notices me as I push my way through the crowd to a mirror and slip in next to my brother James, who is grimacing down at his elaborate costume in dismay. Like Philippe and his handsome young men, he is playing the part of a fisherman and is decked out in an absurd blue tunic designed to look as if it is made from scales and decorated with profusions of crimson satin ribbons and feathers and little gilded fish that tremble with every movement he makes. On his head he wears a vast headdress of coral branches and white and pale blue feathers which coupled with his long red hair give him the wild appearance of a Celtic tribal chief.

  ‘Imagine fishing while wearing this,’ he hisses, turning this way and that and irritably tweaking the flamboyant feathers that encircle his slender waist. ‘I like how Charles always manages to get out of all this ridiculous chicanery.’ This is, of course, his real complaint. My elder brothers love each other fiercely but there’s a strong seam of envy running beneath all the fraternal hugging, nudging and pinching, the little jokes that only they share, the amused looks and winks across the dinner table when Mam sets forth on one of her tales about Our Sainted Father. Charles envies James for not being king, for not being the focus of Mam’s worries, schemings and, ultimately, disappointments. James envies Charles ever
ything. He’d even willingly bear the brunt of being the one who always lets Mam down if only it meant he was the eldest and most important.

  ‘He’s the guest of honour,’ I say lightly, although I know that once James is in this grudging, awkward mood, it’s almost impossible to cajole him out of it. ‘It’s also an honour for us to be asked to take part in the ballet.’

  James snorts and shakes out his auburn hair. ‘So Mam says.’

  Philippe and his friends saunter past, rolling their sooty kohl rimmed eyes contemptuously over us as they go. One of them, a tall, good looking boy with long chestnut hair smirks back over his shoulder at me. ‘What a pity Anne-Marie couldn’t be here,’ Philippe is saying in that high pitched and slightly stilted way that means he intends to be overheard. ‘She would have made a marvellous Erato.’

  I don’t think it’s a pity at all. Our cousin Anne-Marie de Montpensier, who is the daughter of Mam’s brother Gaston, thinks a great deal of herself and although she offers our mother a certain grudging sycophancy for having been a queen when she herself has never even been a wife, she never fails to make it clear that I am not quite worthy of her attention.

  On the other hand, it amuses me that Philippe talks as though Anne-Marie is indisposed in some way when in fact everyone knows that she has been banished in disgrace to her country estates for almost two years now for her part in the Fronde uprising and might never be allowed to come back to court. Despite my dislike of my much older cousin, I couldn’t help but be thrilled when I heard that she had climbed high up onto the ancient turrets of the Bastille dressed as a soldier with scarlet plumes in her hat and with her own hands fired a cannon at Louis’ forces led by brave Marshal Turenne.

  There was a dreadful fuss at the time but now most of the court just shake their heads amusedly and smile at her ridiculous folly. ‘Isn’t that just like Anne-Marie?’ they say, rolling their eyes and pouting their cerise painted mouths in little pretend moues of disapproval. ‘When will she learn to think before she acts? Louis might even have married her one day if she hadn’t tried to blow his troops up.’ Even Turenne grins bashfully and looks not a little pleased when teased about the time a princess fired a cannon at him. ‘She fired very wide,’ he says to all the ladies as they sigh and flutter around him. ‘Perhaps I should give her lessons so that next time she can actually hit her target?’