The Courtier of Versailles

~One~-2

Jeanne gathered her wide, long skirts in her fists, rushing from the pew, and jostling the Duchess standing in the aisle, standing in her way. The prim, powdered woman squeaked in protest. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed Jeanne's father pushing passed her mother, the Comtesse, and her daughter, meaningless obstacles between him and his prey.

Jeanne hurried ever faster, attempting a decorous if frantic escape, but her father would not be so deprived. He came upon her with wheeling strides of his short legs and grabbed her roughly by the arm. He spoke not a word as he flew down the aisle, teeth bared in an angry snarl disguised as a smile, his daughter in tow. Jeanne curled her spine, slumping, eliminating the inch she rose above her father, an inch forever infuriating him. He yanked her along like a recalcitrant two-year-old, her humiliation mounting as they careened through hundreds of shocked courtiers.

Since May, and the court's official move to Versailles, the population had grown exponentially; close to ten thousand people now lived within the resplendent walls. The vast but crowded hallways forever crammed with courtiers, commoners, and peasants, some hoping for a chance to petition the King, others merely hoping for a glimpse of him. Past all these speculative, scrutinizing eyes, Gaston pulled Jeanne like a dog on a leach.

Through one gilded and jeweled salon after another, Gaston marched swiftly along, feet pounding on the marble and dark wood floors below his feet as if, with each step, he crushed them or his daughter. The long curls of his high wig flew out like a banner proclaiming his importance. Jeanne ran to keep up, her heavy skirts and the many layers of taffeta and silk beneath making it difficult to take long strides.

Gaston's grip on his daughter's arm tightened as they strode through the palace. The clutch of his hand squeezed her muscles, flattening them to a thin layer of flesh. The pressure of each finger like a dagger threatening to puncture.

Her father panted, unused to such physical strain. Her own lungs burned. Encased in the tightly tied bodice, she could take only short, shallow gulps of air; she longed for the unrestraint of her dueling clothes.

With but a few more steps they rushed through the Buffet Room and onto the staircase leading to the uppermost floor. At the top, the trapped August heat smacked them. Père yanked her down the long corridor to the entrance of their suite. Wrenching the door open to the dark, low-ceilinged hallway, Gaston launched his wretched daughter from him. Jeanne landed on the small foyer's floor on her knees.

Jeanne turned a fearful glance up to her father, loosened, disheveled hair falling across her face. She rubbed her arm where the pressing of his gouging fingers still panged.

“To your room,” Gaston growled the rumble of a wild animal.

“Oui, mon Père,” Jeanne whispered, scrambling to her feet.

Her legs tangled in the folds of her skirts. She tumbled once more to her knees, the pain of breaking blood vessels stabbed her. Afraid to look at her father, she tried again, this time making it to her feet. With three quick steps, she made it to her bedroom, entered the room, and closed the door. With backward steps, she reached the bed she shared with her sister and fell upon it, gaze glued to the door, expecting her father to crash through it at any moment.

Her hands would not—could not—be stilled; she watched them shake as if they belonged to someone else. Jeanne pulled her legs up, wrapped her arms around them, and curled her body into a ball as if to stave off the assault she knew would come. Slowly rocking on her curved buttocks, she waited and prayed.

* * *

He paced back and forth in the small room that served the Du Bois family as salon, study, and dining room, crossing the carpet of maroon and gold, arms flaiying the air about his head. Adelaide Lomenie Mas du Bois sat as still as possible on the small upholstered chair, silently suffering her husband's outburst. Adelaide kept her mouth shut, lips paling with the tight clasp. To open them would be to beg to suffer much worse than a verbal lashing.

“Is it not enough that she should return here in shame, but that she should flaunt her misbehavior in front of the entire court? It is an outrage!” Gaston's face flowed purple, almost black under the white, powdered wig; spittle flew from his mouth with each venomous word. “I should have begged Mère-révérend Robiquet to keep her at the convent, or begged the King for the money to keep her there.”

Jeanne heard every word, every growl, her father uttered; the almost paper-thin walls did nothing to contain the verbal onslaught. She grimaced, the chagrin and terror of returning to Versailles still fresh, still caused sleepless nights and the urge to run somewhere, anywhere. It was but a few days ago since she had been turned out of the convent where she had spent seven years—seven years of living in hell. The salivating tongues of the courtiers dripped with delight at the scandal of the dreadful behavior that had prompted her removal, humiliating her father even more.

“She is a disgrace to my family, to me, to the King. The whole world knows my daughter has the tongue of the devil speaking to the nuns as if she were their equal, or worse, their better. Now they know she has the soul of the devil as well. They see for themselves that her behavior is no better than the filthy peasants who beg at the gates.”

“She is but young, Gaston,” Adelaide murmured, a timid whisper, golden-eyed gaze holding fast upon the tight knot that was her hands in her lap.

Gaston whirled on his wife, piercing her with his steely, black-eyed gaze.

“Young? No! She is impudent and unruly, completely out of control. Bernadette is two years her junior and yet she is the perfect young woman, gracious and polite, affable and charming. She will be married and gone within the year.” Gaston threw one hand upward toward the door as if pushing his youngest daughter through it.

The mention of her sister sent Jeanne's eyes to rolling. Her own words for the blond, plump beauty differed greatly. She loved Bernadette dearly but her sister's obsequiousness, her blindingly obedient behavior infuriated Jeanne. A fury only fueled by the knowledge of the truth, Bernadette was the beauty, while Jeanne was…passable; or so she had heard far too often from her father.

Gaston stood before his wife, his reddened face inches from hers, hands straddling, one on each arm of the chair. The deep wrinkles of his skin cast grotesque shadows on his face in the dim candlelight of the small room. Adelaide trembled, squirming back against the cushion.

“Your worthless womb. One son was all you managed to spit out of it.”

Jeanne slid off the bed and crawled along the floor; her father's voice had become that of the madman that lived within him. He stood close to the edge now, close to the point where ranting anger no longer sufficed. Jeanne felt the coward, with her back to the door, bracing it to keep her father out while her mother defended her, sacrificing herself for her errant daughter as she had so many times before.

Adelaide looked up to her husband, her shroud of timidity falling from her shoulders; anger sparked instead.

“God chooses whom he shall bless with sons. Do you hold the same contempt for the Almighty?

Flesh smack against flesh, echoing against the walls of the small chamber. Adelaide's head bounced off the wing of the chair and a small stream of blood began to dribble from her nose.

Jeanne jumped to her feet, a hand trembling toward the doorknob, fingers quivering with every quick beat of her heart. A sob escaped her lips; bile of anguish and despair rose up her throat. Salty tears ran down her face and into her mouth; she tasted them on her tongue, the taste of fear and self-loathing.

“No, Gaston. Please, no.”

A mewling whisper—her mother's—found Jeanne. She venerated courage; she loathed tears, especially her own.

She flung open the door. Her father stood before her mother, arm drawn back, poised to strike her mother once more.

“Non, Père. Non! It is me you hate, strike me!” Jeanne hated the crack in her voice, in her determination it revealed.

Gaston spun with a snarl, arm still raised, white-knuckled fist high in the air.

Adelaide flew from her perch, launching herself between father and daughter.

Jeanne stumbled as her mother's body forced her backward. Reaching out, she grabbed her mother's shoulders, trying in vain to remove Adelaide as the target.

“Stop!”

The shouted command came from the door. As one, the combatants spun.

“Raol,” Jeanne whispered her brother's name, lowering her head onto her mother's back in relief.

“Père, come.” The dark-haired, amber-eyed young man, features so like Jeanne's, strode across the room in a few long strides. He reached up, gently pulling his father's arm down as he turned the man away from mother and sister. “You must come. The Conseil d'Etat is beginning. People are wondering where you are.”

His son's words worked their magic, Gaston forgot his wife and daughter as if they no longer existed. As he moved toward his son, the ravages of rage slowly slithered off his face, strained jaw muscles relaxed into prominent jowls; the snarl on his lips slid into a smile.

“Ah, Raol, I would be lost with you. You have brought your father the only pleasure he has ever known.” Gaston headed toward the door on the arm of his son.

With shocking abruptness, he turned on his heels, the monstrous mask of fury once more defiling his face. His gaze upon Adelaide and Jeanne darkened with undisguised loathing. Both women jumped back.

“She is your fault, your doing.” To Adelaide, he spoke of Jeanne as if she were not there, could not hear. “If you cannot control her, you will suffer the consequences.”

Gaston turned from wife to daughter, nostrils flaring as if assaulted by a foul stench.

“Come, Père, come,” Raol urged, placing his large hands firmly on his father's shoulders, turning and steering the older man back toward the door. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he offered his mother and sister a shy smile peeking out from under his fluffy, sable-colored mustache, a tender panacea offered to ease their anguish.

* * *

Jeanne knocked softly on the closed door.

In the desolate abyss that was the churning wake left behind by his father and brother, she and her mother had embraced, released with their shared survival, two soldiers rising from a desecrated battlefield.

Jeanne had tried to apologize but her mother's ravaged and bruised face had stolen all words from her tongue. Adelaide had kissed her lips, left the room, and closed her bedchamber door.

Contrite daughter had waited anxiously for her mother but could wait no longer; the words of regret clogged her throat like a half-chewed piece of food and she longed to spew, ridding herself of the choking guilt.

“Maman?” she softly called, knocking once more, this time cracking open the door without waiting for words of encouragement.

Adelaide lay on her back on her bed, motionless save for the slight rise and fall of her chest, eyes tightly shut. Jeanne tiptoed to the bedside, peering down at her mother. Fresh tears sprang to blur the vision of the large bruise spreading like a puce stain on the side of her mother's face. Jeanne took the few small steps to the small room's corner where the pedestal holding a water pitcher and basin stood. Gathering a cloth from the shelf beneath, she poured cool water into the basin, soaking the cloth.