Abundance. Part 4

There is the broad bed and the high embroidered canopy that roofs it. Inside this room, it is the King himself who hands the Dauphin his nights.h.i.+rt; the d.u.c.h.esse de Chartres, the most newly married of all the n.o.ble ladies, places my folded nightdress in my hands. The Dauphin and I, with our attendants, step behind two screens and are helped into our nightclothes. Perhaps my life is but a series of moments of disrobing and robing again for the task at hand. Perhaps all lives could be measured in such terms. For me, it is a long process, for I have many layers to be removed. I am grateful for the helping hands that move like small animals around my body, unhooking, untying, tugging, and sliding my garments away from me. I could not emerge from this brocade chrysalis by myself.

When I stand naked, I feel as though I should ask them to s.h.i.+ne and burnish my flesh so that I will gleam for him.

The nightgown tickles my skin like b.u.t.terflies.

As has been orchestrated by our attendants, the Dauphin and I step shyly forward at the same instant from behind the screens.

How fragile, almost naked we seem, draped like ghosts in loose gauze. In the midst of all the court finery of the others, we alone seem simple and natural.

The bedcovers are pulled back, and the Archbishop of Rheims blesses the bed with holy water. I see water droplets spot and wet the bed linen here and there. Outside it is raining hard, and I think of the fireworks that lie dormant and are sadly wasted. The archbishop rapidly intones the Latin as the rain drones mournfully.

Now the King offers his hand to the Dauphin to lead him forward, to mount the bed.

And I wait my turn, standing in my simple nightgown, the lace knitted by nuns. In face and form, Sister Therese said, you are a perfect princess. I am helped into bed by the d.u.c.h.esse de Chartres. Her hand is icy cold, and what has been the experience of her wedding night to leave such a chill? My mother spoke of rapture in one's joyful pain. But this hand is one of fear.

Have courage, my mother has instructed me, gently touching her own heart and then mine, as though to give some of what has been in her to me.

I refuse the portion of fear that nature would hand me.

No matter what happened in the nuptial bed of the d.u.c.h.esse de Chartres, I will fill my heart with hope, but the d.u.c.h.esse is about my size-also slight and graceful-and for her, I feel pity.

"I thank you for your kind service," I say to her and smile with grave modesty.

Her eyes flicker recognition, but she does not smile.

All is done with utmost seriousness with all the attention of the State, for it is in our bed that France and Austria unite. No, even a peasant girl would greet her marriage bed with seriousness.

The court, the King, the most royal core of the vast court, turns in all its finery and makes its exit.

Vanished!

We are left alone, for the first time.

Our heads find the pillows.

Most soft and divinely comfortable, my pillow cradles my neck and head.

On his side of the bed, the Dauphin's head sinks like lead into the softness. Automatically, I half sit up again, to fluff the downy feathers a bit more, as I did as a girl. When I glance toward him, my eyes find his, gazing curiously, with strange calm, at me. His body in the horizontal posture, the Dauphin's jet eyebrows seem strongly handsome. Across the room, twelve candles long enough to burn all night are glowing. Settled again on my pillow, I turn my face toward him and wait. He stares now at the ceiling.

My mother said that he might first reach out his hand and take my hand in his. Perhaps my father did it so, on her wedding night. I wait.

His eyelids slide down. I listen to the rain drum and moan. As I wait, the rain falls steadily and beats against the gla.s.s of the windowpanes. I listen and wait. And wait.

Suddenly, the wind snorts. No, it is not the wind.

The Dauphin snores. The raucous rattle of air in his nostrils wakes him, for a moment. "Pray, excuse me," he says.

And he is asleep. Have I failed to please him?

I seem to hear the snuffing of a dog at the door.

I too drift toward sleep.

Whatever happens or doesn't happen, the Empress told me, you are not to worry.

WHEN I AWAKE to morning suns.h.i.+ne, 17 May 1770, a new day, I see my husband is already dressed. I notice the stubby row of dead candles with their tiny black wicks bent this way or that.

The draperies have been parted, and the suns.h.i.+ne streams in. Illuminated by a shaft of sunlight, the Dauphin sits at his desk and opens a book I know to be his diary, his hunting journal. He writes in it very briefly, the quill scratching into the paper.

Though I am still in the bed and I would never read his private accounts, I know what he has written; the word that he chooses to represent futility in a day of hunting is chosen now to represent the wedding ceremonies of yesterday and last night and our marriage bed.

He writes the word Rien, which means Nothing.

Later, to my mother, the Empress, I must tell the truth. I will allow myself to tell the truth, that he did not even do so much as to touch my hand.

THE NEXT NIGHT.

Again, both our heads, at the very same moment, touch our pillows. But this time, his face is turned toward me, as mine is toward him, and we look more longingly at each other.

I am loving the caress of the cool linen against my cheek and hope his pillow gives his cheek the same smooth pleasure.

I feel my lips part, but no sound disturbs the air. Ever so slightly, the corners of my mouth suggest a slight smile.

"Your lips are the same shade as the flower so aptly named the rose," he says to me.

"Thank you," I say modestly. And nothing else, for every instinct tells me Wait.

I feel myself to be beautiful in his eyes. Pearly pink.

His hand is moving toward me. Slowly, palm first, the hand approaches the soft gathers that cover my chest. He has guessed the right place, and the palm presses against my slight mound of flesh and my small nipple.

He withdraws his hand.

"They will grow," I say shyly.

He only looks at me. His eyes, though sympathetic, are sleepy.

"I am a woman," I say. "Inside my body, I've changed already."

I would like to embrace him, but I dare not move. Steadily, I must present a docile manifestation of my charms. Waiting, barely breathing through parted lips, I slowly lick my lips, and then, with his flat palm, he touches my chest again, as though wondering if, before, his palm landed, perhaps, on the wrong quarter of my frame.

"They will grow"-I say with a slight smile-"as surely as the resurrection."

He throws back his head and howls with laughter.

"The resurrection?"

"The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting," I explain, for he has not understood my reference.

He controls his laughter for a moment, and then it squirts out of him again. He tries hard to tuck down the corners of his mouth into the proper seriousness for the congress of France with Austria.

"You are devout?" he says.

"I have no wish to be a nun," I reply.

Now he rolls away from his side onto his back. He stares at the ceiling. All mirth has left his body.

"I see you are a wit."

"Oh, no," I say sincerely. "That is something I have never wished to be, for wit is cruel, and my first wish is always to be kind."

"I believe you, Marie Antoinette."

Again, he turns onto his side, the better to look at me. He c.o.c.ks his elbow and props his head up with one arm. I think he has a n.o.ble nose, very large, and powerfully arched.

"I like best to be called 'Toinette.'"

He places his hand on my waist, but he does not draw me to him. His fingertips amuse themselves by making small swirls in the fabric of my loose and mobile gown. He speaks slowly. "If you have not wit, most certainly, you have will. You tell me what you like."

"I like best to please you," I whisper, for I do not want to frighten him again.

"With saucy talk of resurrection?" he asks.

I remain silent, waiting.

"-when I have none to offer," he concludes.

I am puzzled and wonder at his meaning. Before I ask for explanation, I remember my mother's caution: I must curb my curiosity. A tear forms at the corner of my eye, and I feel ashamed. I am failing her. It is ever my duty to be light, cheerful, and encouraging. He sees the tear and touches it.

No, he takes it, on his finger.

The Dauphin of France puts his finger in his mouth to taste my tear.

"You need not cry," he says, and his voice is chilly and restrained. He sighs. "I would not have you cry, Little One."

It is my mother's pet phrase for me, her youngest daughter. But he must not think maternally of me. "I am...," I begin, but as I unspool those words I remember the wanton, languis.h.i.+ng look so openly displayed by Madame du Barry. Before my lips have completed the phrase "...the Dauphine," the sultry expression of the du Barry inhabits my own face, for I have been well taught the arts of the theater.

My husband plops down and rolls again onto his back. Staring at the ceiling, he says wearily, "You need not try to look like her."

It is a shocking moment, for he has divined my thoughts.

"The fault does not lie with you," he says, but he speaks to the ceiling.

I think I see a tear forming at the corner of his eye.

I touch his shoulder gently. "Would you like to hold my hand?"

Without a word, he reaches toward me, and our hands find each other as though by magic. Like two magnets, our hands fly together. But he does not turn to me. I roll also onto my back, and our firm-clasped hands lie between us with fingers entwined in a pleasant knot. I think of the sarcophagus coverings of kings and queens who lie in marble majesty side by side. His large hand perspires against my flesh.

"Another night," he says.

"I am sorry for my awkwardness," I say.

There is silence, but then he replies, "And I for mine."

THE CUP OF CHOCOLATE.

When I awake, I am informed that the Dauphin has risen earlier to join the hunt, and the royal aunts, Adelaide, Victoire, and Sophie are hoping that I visit them in Madame Adelaide's apartment, before Ma.s.s.

Because the aunts are maidens, they cannot imagine anything about this pair of nights in the marriage bed, any more than I could have imagined a night sleeping in the same bed as a man when, while still at a distance from the Heart of France, my carriage paused on the crest of the hill, and I looked through the three courtyards of Versailles, each smaller and more focused than the one before it, to the windows of the King's bedchamber. At the heart of the heart of Versailles, I could only imagine some sort of bed. And that is all they can imagine. When they will see me, by all outward appearances, I will be the same, beautifully dressed-cheerful and hopeful.

But they will know, as everyone here knows, the conditions of the bridal linens the morning after the wedding. And again, this morning! There is no blood on the sheets. I am not yet truly made a wife. Most important, there is no hope of an heir. Now I long for that corporeal color-red! Perhaps when the Generale arrives, I will leave some of that blood on the sheets in order to trick them all.

But I have great and real hope that the Dauphin and I will very soon make true amends for this slow start. My spirits are not the least dismal in nature. I have slept so long and well, I am impatient to have my satin slippers put on my feet and to sail through these long corridors, across the rooms of state, as though pulled forward by silver strings. The Versailles "glide" they call it, and all my dancing at Schonbrunn, Laxenburg, and even the Hofburg a.s.sures that my graceful gliding will be the admiration of the court. It already is, according to precious, tubby Clothilde.

"MY DEAR AUNTS," I say and embrace them each in turn, from eldest to youngest. And then, oh horrible, I have failed to notice the King first, and to curtsy first before him. But he is not displeased-not much-I amuse him, and my apology is very pretty, for I make it more extravagant than it needs to be. I tell him the little comet of myself was so dazzled by the sun that I became confused and orbited by mistake the fair planets of my most beloved aunts instead of his august person.

He tells me that I have scarcely been introduced to the splendor of the chateau and not at all to the gardens and that I have much left yet to see of the glory of Versailles, and that he himself-like his own ill.u.s.trious predecessor, the real Sun King, Louis XIV-will serve as my guide from time to time. "The Dauphin hopes to kill a fat goose for you," he adds. "Do you like goose?"

"I am myself a goose," I say, "and naturally admire my feathered cousins."

"But not a fatted goose," he says, his black eyes glowing. I know that he would like to pinch me, in play, to see if he could find an ounce of fat, but he is far too courteous and courtly to stoop to such.

Nonetheless, the aunts are alarmed, and they flutter around, truly like fowl in a barnyard, their having caught a whiff of fox.

"I do not know why you want the company of anyone outside the walls of this chamber," says Madame Adelaide, rather coquettishly to the King, "when you have such fine company here, and of the very best morals."

"I see I have not admired you often enough of late," the King replied. He is at ease with such banter, quite different from Louis Auguste. "There seems to be a new light, though, in the room"-he inclines his head toward me-"and everyone else basks in her glow."

"She is a darling," Madame Victoire chimes in.

"We love her already as though she were family," says Madame Sophie, somewhat infelicitously, with her head tilted to one side. I know she is not appraising me. It is just that her awkwardness of posture has become habitual.