“This is my best court gown from last summer,” Lotte said. “I was a little thinner, and you’re not so scrawny as some fashionable ladies — lace it up, it will look fine! Now, you mustn’t bother that it’s a year old, with this season’s petticoat no one will notice.”
Marie-Josèphe doubted that. She was grateful for Lotte’s generosity, but she wondered, shamed by her envy, if she would ever have a new dress of her own.
Mademoiselle’s carriage rumbled down the road toward His Majesty’s Menagerie. Marie-Josèphe sat beside Lotte, squeezed in among the other ladies in their full court dresses. Weariness overtook her. She tried to recall when she had last eaten, when she had last slept.
The gilded gates of the Menagerie swung open. The sound and smell of exotic animals filled the courtyard. Chartres, on horseback, accompanied by Duke Charles, met Lotte and escorted her through the gates toward the central octagonal dome. Marie-Josèphe followed with the other ladies, noticing their significant glances, hearing their whispers about the attraction between Mademoiselle and the Foreign Prince.
They climbed to the balconies overlooking the animal pens. Cages of birds from the New World decorated the passageway: Bright screeching parrots and macaws, and hummingbirds who shrieked even more loudly.
At the central dome, servants held aside sheer white curtains. His Majesty’s guests stepped into a jungle.
Drifts of orchids covered the walls and ceiling, hot with color and lush as flesh. Scarlet tanagers and cardinals screamed and fluttered on the branches, not caged, but entrapped with silken threads around their legs. A few had broken free and flew madly back and forth. Gamekeepers rushed back and forth as madly as the birds, trying to capture them before they soiled the food, trapping them in bags, tying them more tightly to the branches of the orchids.
The central dome was filled with tables laden with baked peacocks, their iridescent tails spread wide, with bowls of oranges and figs, roast hare, ham, and every sort of sweet and pastry. Marie-Josèphe could hardly bring herself to pass; the scents made her mouth water. Dizzy, she followed Mademoiselle past the curtain onto one of the balconies overlooking the animal enclosures.
A more pungent odor overwhelmed the smell of the food. In the tiny stone enclosure beneath them, a tiger paced two steps, flung itself around, paced two steps back. It stopped, looked upward, snarled, and launched itself toward Marie-Josèphe. Its claws scraped the wall beneath the balcony railing. Lotte and the other ladies shrieked. Marie-Josèphe caught her breath in terror, frozen by the tiger’s glare.
On the ground again, the tiger growled and paced and jerked its tail and sprayed a cloud of acrid musk, the hot juniper reek of cat spray. The other ladies giggled, pretending to be frightened, pretending to be shocked. They had all been here a hundred times before.
“Did it frighten you?” Lotte asked. “It frightened me the first time I saw it.”
“It doesn’t frighten me,” Chartres said. He pitched a purloined orange at the furious tiger. The tiger swatted at its flank as if at a mosquito, catching the orange with its claw, ripping it in half, crushing it against the ground.
“I thought nothing could frighten you!” Lotte said to Marie-Josèphe. “I thought you’d pull off one of its whiskers to study.”
“I’d never pull the whisker off such a creature.”
“Are its claws so much sharper than the sea monster’s?”
“Sharper — and it has bigger teeth. It wouldn’t sing to me when I spoke to it!”
The ladies laughed. As if she had commanded it, music sparkled upward from the grotto beneath the octagonal tower.
“The musicians are in the grotto.” Lotte whispered, “It’s full of water pipes — if you know where the faucets are, you can soak anyone who walks through! My uncle the King used to douse anyone who dared enter. Such fun!”
The tiger diverted her from the fun. It hurled itself at the dividing wall between its compound and the next. The camels lurched away, grunting and spitting with fear. The stench of their shit mixed with the tiger’s scent-mark. Their fear aroused the lions in the next compound. The lions roared and the tiger challenged them; the camels huddled in the center of their enclosure. On the other side of the dome the elephant trumpeted in fury. An ancient aurochs, its red hide turned roan with age, tossed its wide horns and bellowed continuously. Leashed birds — bluebirds and bluejays — on the balcony shrieked and beat their wings. Torn feathers fluttered to the ground.
In the distance, the sea monster cried out in answer.
On the circle of balconies overlooking the enclosures, courtiers shouted and applauded. Chartres was not the only one to torment the creatures with oranges, or stones.
Everyone, even the animals, suddenly fell silent.
His Majesty had arrived.
All the court gathered in the central dome: the men, bareheaded, nearest His Majesty; the women at the back of the group, conscious of the honor, for women did not usually attend His Majesty’s public dinner. Marie-Josèphe looked for her brother, but Yves was nowhere to be seen. The bound birds cried and beat their wings. A cardinal broke free, hit the curtain like a powder-puff, fell stunned, recovered in mid-air, flew into the curtain again, and tumbled to the floor, its neck broken. A servant scooped it up and out of His Majesty’s sight.
His Majesty sat alone at a small, elegant table beneath an arch of scarlet and gold orchids; Monsieur stood nearby with his napkin. The most favored courtiers served his food: Count Lucien poured his wine. His Majesty ate as he performed every task: calmly, majestically, deliberately. He gazed straight forward, chewing steadily through course after course of his first meal of the day: a platter of thick soup, fish, partridge, ham and beef, a plate of salad.
After the partridge, His Majesty turned to Monsieur.
“Will you be seated, brother?”
Monsieur bowed low; a servant hurried to bring a chair of ebony and mother-of-pearl. Monsieur sat beside his brother, facing him, holding his napkin ready.
When His Majesty had finished his ham, he glanced toward M. du Maine, standing in the front row with Monseigneur the Grand Dauphin and the legitimate grandsons.
“M. du Maine, the weather is fine for Carrousel, is it not?”
M. du Maine replied with a bow even deeper than Monsieur’s. The legitimate son watched the bastard favorite with a foolish expression of transparent envy.
His Majesty ate alone. Out of respect for the King, Marie-Josèphe resisted the temptation to pilfer a bit of meat from the tables behind her. No one paid her any mind; if she dared, she could take the edge off her hunger. She might also find herself curtsying and trying to fashion a proper greeting through a mouthful of food. She imagined Count Lucien’s disapproval. She would die of embarrassment.