The Sisters of Versailles Read Online Free Page A

was a year later that everything changed. I was at work on a new set of covers for the twenty-four uncomfortable chairs that lined the massive old dining table. Beside me was my maid, Jacobs, the only one of the village girls I could abide. She had a calming presence and a clever turn with the needle, which I did not; we never learned much needlework in the nursery.
    I grimaced as I saw the carriage pull up—my husband. But then I saw the horses were banded in black, as was the carriage, and a sudden hope leapt in my heart. My mother-in-law? But God knows when we think evil thoughts and does not hesitate to punish, for it was not my hated mother-in-law that had passed away and freed me from my prison. It was my poor Mama.
    I traveled back to Paris in the carriage, my husband complaining all the way that to be pulled from his duties thus to attend to his wife was a great inconvenience and misfortune, and one he had not anticipated, for Conti was giving a dinner that night that he was loath to miss, yet he had to be here, with me.
    I cried silently beside him in the carriage, my face buried in my hands to shut out his voice and the guilt that threatened to choke me. My head ached and I wondered if I too should die like my mother. They said she complained of an immense headache then died within hours. Would I die like that too, God punishing me for my wicked thoughts?
    In Paris, my husband deposited me at my childhood home and disappeared, muttering something about a horse he had to buy.
    My four younger sisters gathered to greet me. I hugged them and held them close; we were five black starlings huddled together in our misery. I found Pauline, two years my junior, surly and angry, with nary an apology for the mountains of unanswered letters. Diane was jolly, even in sorrow. And perhaps alittle chubbier than I remembered. The two youngest, Hortense and Marie-Anne, at fourteen and twelve, had changed the most and had grown into poised young ladies, albeit ones with the red eyes of mourning.
    “I’m almost fifteen,” Hortense reminded me primly, and then told me she had prayed seven hours yesterday for our mother’s soul. Hortense is very devout and puts us all to shame.
    “I only prayed for an hour,” piped in Marie-Anne, “but it is as Zélie says: quality is more important than quantity.”
    “Never in the eyes of the Lord,” concluded Hortense, and there was no arguing with that.
    Tante Mazarin, a stern-faced relative and the Dowager Duchesse de Mazarin, fussed around us and fitted us with veils, the thin lace like black spider’s webbing. We were summoned to see our father in our mother’s gold bed chamber, where already gray-frocked men with no wigs were measuring and inspecting her possessions. This beautiful room was where we would visit when Mama was at home; we would play on her bed and she would comb our hair and point out any new freckles, then powder us and sometimes allow us to practice with her rouge. Once she let us each have a beauty patch from her box; I chose one shaped like a little bird. I touched my cheek and stared at her portrait on the wall—how could she be gone ?
    My father was sitting on the bed, his face heavy with grief and his words slurred with sorrow and drink. He was magnificently dressed, as always, in black satin stitched with black pearls; only the buckles on his shoes were gold, not black. I thought he was about to gather us to him on the bed, but instead he ordered us to line up, in order of our ages—myself, then Pauline, then Diane and Hortense, and little Marie-Anne at the end.
    “Her hair . . .” He started to speak. “Her hair . . .” Two men carrying an enormous gilded clock stumbled and dropped it with a clatter. My father roared his disapproval and flailed around for his sword to strike them with. We stood silent and fearful; our father was very inconstant and we never knew where his temper ordrink might lead him. Our governess, Zélie, watched over us, rigid