His Majesty and Pope Innocent and Mme de Maintenon walked together across the Marble Courtyard to the chateau entrance, the Royal Family and the bishops and cardinals falling in behind, the courtiers bowing as they passed. Another cheer from the crowd rose around them and echoed from the walls, making the busts of heroes and saints shout and cry as they never had in life.
7
Marie-Josèphe accompanied Mademoiselle and Madame back to Madame’s apartments. Put out of sorts by Mme de Maintenon’s triumph, Madame grumbled all the way.
“Innocent will take all His Majesty’s time,” she said, “Planning wars, estranging me further from my relatives… I fear His Majesty will never invite us on another hunt, or even a walk.”
“We could walk by ourselves, Mama,” Lotte said.
“It isn’t the same.”
“Oh, Madame,” Marie-Josèphe said, “how can His Majesty do anything ordinary today?”
“His entertainments this evening will be ordinary enough, I have no doubt. No pope will stop the gambling or the drinking, and he certainly cannot stop the boredom!” Madame sighed, then brightened as she led the way into her dim, cold apartments. “I must finish my letter to Electress Sophie.”
“You’ll have to admit to Aunt Sophie that the Marquise de Maintenon came away unstoned.”
Madame made a sound of disgust. “The old whore! By your leave, Mlle de La Croix.”
“I beg your pardon, Madame?”
“And I beg yours! I cannot help my improper language, for I ran wild when I was young.”
“I heard no improper language,” Marie-Josèphe said.
Madame laughed, and Lotte joined in.
“So the old hag hasn’t taken you in, with her piety and her mouse turds! I knew you were a sensible young woman.”
“You give me too much credit, Madame.” Marie-Josèphe’s cheeks warmed intensely with her embarrassment. “If you spoke improperly I couldn’t tell—I don’t know what that word means.”
“Which word?” Lotte asked dryly. “Turd, hag, or whore?”
“The last,” Marie-Josèphe whispered.
“It is charming that you do not know it,” Madame said. “I must get to my letters.”
Marie-Josèphe and Lotte curtsied as Madame disappeared into her private chamber.
Lotte took Marie-Josèphe’s arm. Together they left Madame’s rooms. Odelette followed. Dusk was falling; as they passed, servants lowered the crystal chandeliers and lit masses of new candles.
In Lotte’s apartments, the ladies-in-waiting claimed Odelette to dress their hair. Lotte drew Marie-Josèphe to a corner by the window so they could whisper together.
“You have led such a sheltered existence!” Lotte said.
“You know that I have.”
“A whore is a woman who sells herself for money.”
“In Martinique we would call her a slave. Or a bondservant, if she sold herself.”
“Not a slave, not a bondservant! A woman who sells her body.”
Marie-Josèphe shook her head, confused.
“Who sells her body to men. To any man.” Exasperated, Lotte said, “For sex!”
“Sex?” Marie-Josèphe tried to make sense of it. “Do you mean, fornication? Sex without marriage?”
“Marriage! Silly goose.”
“I—” Marie-Josèphe fell silent. It would be improper for her to defend herself against her royal mistress’ ridicule, though she felt hurt that Lotte would take such pleasure in making fun of her.
You raised yourself too high, Marie-Josèphe told herself. If Lotte slaps you down, then you deserve it.
“I don’t mean it!” Lotte said. “Marie-Josèphe, I’m sorry. You must let me teach you everything about the world—how could the nuns keep you in such ignorance?”
“They hoped only to preserve my innocence,” Marie-Josèphe said. “The holy sisters are innocent themselves. They know nothing of—” Her voice fell to a whisper.
“Whoring,” Lotte said out loud. “I’ll tell you of Ninon de L’Enclos—I met her, if His Majesty found out!—Or mama—but of course she isn’t a whore, she’s a courtesan.”
“What is that?”
Lotte explained. To Marie-Josèphe, the difference could dance on the head of a pin with a thousand angels.
In the convent, the nuns had repeated dire and ambiguous warnings that Marie-Josèphe never understood. Only once had she asked what “fornication” meant, exactly; a week alone in her room with nothing to eat but bread and water could not cure her unwomanly curiosity, but the punishment made her devious about how she found out answers. The punishment left her with the holy knowledge that intimate relations between a man and a woman were evil, obligatory in marriage, and unpleasant.
When she was Lotte’s age, Marie-Josèphe had wept for her dead mama and papa, who had loved each other while they lived, who loved her and Yves, who had been required to submit to distress and pain to create their children and their family. She wept because she and her future husband would have to do the same thing, if she wished to recreate the enchantment of her childhood. She hoped she was strong enough, and she wondered why God had made the world this way. She wondered if God had made a joke. But when she asked the priest at confession, he laughed. Then he told her people should not love each other, for such love was profane. People should love God, whose love was sacred. Then the priest assigned her such a heavy penance that she suspected she had nearly earned a beating.
Once Mother Superior lectured her students about fornication. She left them in such a state of confusion and excitement that at bedtime they whispered instead of sleeping. When the holy sisters checked their charges at midnight, they heard the whispers. That night, and for a month afterwards, the sisters laid themselves down next to the students, rigid and wakeful, to prevent forbidden words and to enforce the proper sleeping position among their charges: on their backs, their hands on top of the covers.
“Now you know of Mlle de L’Enclos,” Lotte said, “who is a wit, who was the toast of Paris, a courtesan.”
“She committed mortal sin,” Marie-Josèphe said, appalled.
“Then everyone at court will go to hell!”
“Not everyone! Not Madame—”
“No, not poor mama,” Lotte said.
“And not His Majesty!”
“Not now, it’s true, but when he was young, why, Marie-Josèphe, he was the worst!”
“Oh, hush, how can you speak of His Majesty that way?”
“Where do you think the mouse turds came from!”
Marie-Josèphe tried to reconcile her belief that children resulted only from marriage, with the indisputable fact that the duke du Maine—and his brother and sisters and his half sister—existed.
“His Majesty can do as he wishes,” Marie-Josèphe said.
And perhaps, Marie-Josèphe thought, God makes the business of creating children less horrible, for his representative on Earth. That would explain why His Majesty had created so many.
“Not according to the Church—not according to Mme de Maintenon! The courtiers say she has him locked up in a chastity belt.”
Embarrassed, Marie-Josèphe held her silence. She, the elder, should be the more knowledgeable. Lotte had ventured into territory about which Marie-Josèphe was ignorant.
“And I’m not going to hell—not for that reason, in any event,” Marie-Josèphe said, trying to regain a foothold. “Nor are you—”
“Are you sure?” Lotte said slyly.
Marie-Josèphe forged ahead, unwilling to understand Lotte’s innuendo. “—or my brother—”
“Your beautiful brother!” Lotte exclaimed. “Yves is wasted on the priesthood, what a shame! Every woman at court is entranced by his eyes.”