Before Versailles Read Online Free PDF Page B

it was his majesty’s due. He was their king. The civil wars in which they’d all grown to manhood had soiled the concept of loyalty.
    Philippe’s eyes followed his friend until the young man was across the courtyard and walking through an arch, out of sight, and Philippe’s intent expression wasn’t missed either.
    “I thought Monsieur was supposed to be madly in love with his new wife,” said one of the young noblemen, a suggestive arch in his eyebrow.
    “Some things never change—”
    “Be quiet,” another interrupted. “You’re missing the show. His majesty is shaving the lace off Péguilin’s shirt stitch by stitch. You’d think he’d be too tired.”
    In a sudden burst of fresh stamina, his blade slashing and hissing and seeming to be everywhere at once, Louis had driven his captain backward into a defensive posture. Péguilin defended himself valiantly, but then he stumbled over an uneven stone in the courtyard and fell, and before he could gather his wits, Louis was standing over him, the rapier’s buttoned tip at his heart.
    “Sire, I give up!” he shouted, alarmed at the expression on the king’s face.
    Louis smiled, grimness wiped away as if by magic. He brought the rapier to his forehead in a quick gesture of respect and held out his hand to help his friend from the ground.
    “Clumsy idiot, Péguilin!” came a shout from among the watchers. “I had a louis on you.” A louis was a gold coin, named, of course, for the man whose image graced its sides.
    “More fool you!” Péguilin shouted back. He dusted himself off. “You’d have had me whether I fell or not,” he said to Louis, and their eyes met in that way men display when they’ve had a good, clean fight, and each honors the other for the valor shown. Louis grinned.
    Sacred Christ, I’m an ugly fellow, Péguilin thought. The king, by contrast, was tall and lean, his face a little like a hawk’s, same flickering eyes, same slight and hard edge to the mouth.
    Louis’s early morning exercise ended now. Except for himself and those friends who chose to wake early, and of course servants, the palace was still asleep. It would rise for Mass, closer to the noon hour, when courtiers would run from one royal set of apartments to the next: the king’s, Monsieur’s, the queen mother’s, the young queen’s. Each household was a nest of servants and ladies or gentlemen in waiting, and courtiers dropped in to be both courteous and practical. Where would that particular household gather in the afternoon? Who had the most interesting plans? Walking at the end of which entourage brought the most advantage?
    But now, in this early quiet, a courtier leapt over the balustrade to pick up the king’s jacket from the ground, while Philippe took the linen with which his brother would dry his perspiring face and neck. He held out his hand for Louis’s jacket. That, too, was his right—to hand it directly to the man who was the king of France and Navarre.
    Etiquette was ancient at this court—who might do what was the product of several hundred years and one’s birth—and since Cardinal Mazarin had died, it seemed to have sharpened. Courtiers noticed the king’s slight frown over those who had the privileges of not showing up to wait upon him. This was the beginning of a reign, so to speak, and there were councils and offices and honors waiting to be plundered—and since there hadn’t been a reign in a hundred years that hadn’t produced a favorite and the plunder that came with that—word had spread: His majesty liked tradition upheld. The ambitious packed around him.
    “Sire,” said one of Louis’s gentlemen, “I’ve been given word that her majesty is awake.”
    “Early bird,” chirped Philippe, not noticing the hooding of his brother’s eyes, as if a mask had dropped suddenly into place. “Madame never rises before noon.” He was proud of his wife, bragging about her, pleased at the impact she was making at