Versailles Read Free Page B

you must cut her dead. She can't be allowed to get away with such impudence.
A NTOINETTE : But she's the King's mistress. His favorite.
A D é LAï DE : Trust me— I understand the protocol.
S OPHIE
, giggling:
Trust me. Trust me.
A DÉLAÉDE : For the love of God, Sophie. That's enough!
S OPHIE : Uh-oh! Here comes Father.
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    She races from the window and takes a seat on the couch beside Antoinette, only moments before Louis, who is rakishly dressed for the hunt in a scarlet coat and leather breeches, and carrying a gilt coffeepot, enters, stage right. Immediately all three daughters begin displaying signs of agitation, fruit-lesslyfussing with their hair and tuning at their clothing.
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V ICTOIRE : I'm starving! Have we nothing good to eat? Breakfast was a million years ago. Surely there's something left on the tray? A rind? A pit? A crust of bread?
L OUIS : You eat too much. The lot of you eat too much, and it shows. Why can't you all be more like Antoinette?
He turns to face her, staring pointedly at her chest.
Some coffee, my dear?
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    Meanwhile Bread, an androgynous figure in white, part baker, part winged Victory, incomplete in many respects (right cheek and ear, right hand, right foot) yet also oddly triumphant, is gradually taking shape in the gilt-framed mirror on the wall.
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B READ : Rain falls on wheat, heavy the head, bending the stalk. Harvest and crush it, thresh it and winnow it, discard the husks. Round wheat, golden wheat, round golden beads. How many beautiful women have been heroines?
A NTOINETTE : Thome coffee, Royal? Mypleasure.
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    He was sick and getting sicker. His teeth were gone and so was his brain. He was dying and everyone knew it but no one would admit it—that was the way of the place.
    The way of the place was to ignore the wages of the flesh, but still call as much attention to it as possible. Dress it up, rouge its cheeks. The flesh was interesting, especially if it was royal. So interesting the average courtier couldn't resist speculating on the size of the King's—well, everything. Too interesting, in other words.
    They tucked Beloved into a camp bed in his room overlooking the Marble Court, where not so very long before he'd been accustomed to watching the world come to meet him on horseback and in carriages, sun sent flying from its stirrups and gilt wheels like arrows. But now he could no longer stand the sun. It made his eyes water. Even moonlight was too much for him. He had his windows draped in yards of dark cloth, and every visit was like a game of blindman's buff.
    Six doctors, five surgeons, and three apothecaries were in attendance. Six times an hour they lined up and took turns taking Beloved's pulse, studying his tongue, poking his stomach. So solemn, in their understated attire, their modest gray periwigs, gravely vying for the best place in line—it would have been amusing if it weren't for the smell. In the dark of the King's Bedchamber I could feel my poor husband tremble beside me; once Beloved was gone there'd be nothing to stand between us and our unthinkable destiny.
    "I feel as though the universe were tumbling down on top of me," he said. Trembling and breathing shallowly, the way he would when I'd remove my chemise and show him my breasts, undeniably the part of me he liked best, though chiefly to gape at. And then all at once a servant lit a torch and everyone in the room gasped. My elbow jumped, knocking some fragile thing off a table and onto the floor. "Antoinette?" said Beloved, though it came out more like
nnnn,
his speech slurred, his tongue, as it turned out, covered in pustules and decomposing like the rest of him.
    In the torchlight I could see his face. Like those parts of a deer that hunters discard in the woods, peeking from under dock leaves, slick and pitch-black and buzzing with flies.
    "Antoinette, is that you?" he said. Cupping his privates, or what was left of them, with what was left of his