Paris: The Novel

sensitive.”
    Leaving the palace, Charles wrapped his cloak about him tightly. A cold rain was falling with the gusting wind. Foul winter weather. Hecrossed the square in front of the cardinal’s palace. Ahead of him, the long mass of the Louvre’s north side loomed dark and solemn. Through the rain, he could see the dim lamps by a side door.
    He announced his business. The sentries knew him. A young officer conducted him along the dimly lit stone halls and galleries toward the queen’s apartments.
    As he walked along in silence, he had time to reflect.
    Anne, the daughter of the Hapsburg king of Spain, had married King Louis XIII of France when they were both fourteen. It was the usual dynastic marriage, on this occasion to lessen tensions between her Hapsburg family and the kingdom of France.
    What had it been like for her? Charles wondered. It couldn’t have been easy.
    For by the time they met, Louis XIII of France was exhibiting a very rare medical condition: a double set of teeth. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps for other reasons, he had a terrible stutter. If the girl found this off-putting, what agonies, Charles wondered, had the fourteen-year-old boy suffered?
    When they were both eighteen, they conceived a child, but it was stillborn. The same thing happened again, three years later, then another four years after, then another five after that, in 1631. And then, nothing. It was said that when they did sleep in the same bed, his wife kept a bolster between them.
    Charles felt sorry for the king. People complained that he was constantly off hunting. Poor devil, he thought, it’s probably to get away from them all. He seemed to have no mistresses. Was that piety, lack of inclination, or the fear that women found him repulsive? Who knew?
    “He’s bedded one or two young men,” the king’s hunting companions told him. Perhaps that was what Louis preferred. Or perhaps he’d turned to men because he’d given up on women.
    Whatever was going on in the king’s mind, or in the heart of his wife, France had no heir.
    That wasn’t quite true. There was the king’s younger brother Gaston. But what a disaster he would be. Constantly plotting against Louis and Richelieu, unreliable, untruthful, disloyal and still without any male heirs of his own in any case, Gaston was the last person that any responsible courtier wanted to see on the throne of France.
    No wonder, as he felt his own health failing, that Richelieu had beensecretly doing all he could to provide France with an heir. Some time ago, he had persuaded the royal couple to resume their marital relations, and they’d done so. Such things could be known, and Richelieu knew. But nothing had come of it yet.
    One could only pray.
    They were at the queen’s apartments. He was told to wait. Then the door was held open.
    She received him in an anteroom. Her bedroom was just beyond. She was wearing a nightgown. It seemed she was already retiring to bed. But she smiled at him pleasantly as he bowed.
    “Good evening, Monsieur de Cygne. I’m sorry if you got wet coming to see me. You have a private letter from the cardinal?”
    Despite her strict Spanish upbringing, there was a gentle playfulness in her manner that was entirely pleasant. She was certainly a good-looking woman, Charles thought. Her hair had a natural hint of red, her eyes were large and brown. She was full-breasted, her skin perfect, her hands especially beautiful. For just a second his face may have given away that he was thinking how delightful it must be to share her bed, but he quickly lowered his gaze. If she noticed, she probably didn’t mind.
    “I was to deliver it personally, Majesty, into your hands alone.”
    “Then I thank you, monsieur.” She smiled again. “Good night.”
    “Your Majesty.” He bowed again and began to withdraw.
    It was as he did so that the door of the queen’s bedroom beyond slowly swung open, allowing him a glimpse into a large, high room, softly lit with candles.
    And then he saw the man. It was only a fleeting glance, since he instantly looked down, pretending to have seen nothing as he backed out of the anteroom. A moment’s vision of a man in the candlelight.
    It could have been King Louis. He thought the king had gone away hunting, but it could have been King Louis, certainly. Only, in that brief glimpse, he could have sworn it was another face he knew.
    Mazarin. The Italian. It had looked like Mazarin.
    He’d been away in Italy recently,