Chapter Text
France, 1624
***
Constance Bonacieux was of moderately good family, and her husband was dead.
“Is that all?” said Anne.
The Cardinal, who had invited the Queen to his salon and presented those two facts as the entire résumé of her newly-appointed lady in waiting, clucked his tongue impatiently.
“What can your Majesty mean, ‘is that all’? She will be presented within the week. What more can you wish to know of the girl?”
Anne held her temper in check. He would not goad her.
“I would know her age, and any experience she has in this capacity. Her politics too, although given that Your Eminence has chosen her personally, I can guess what they might be. You say she is of good family, but which one? What do they make of her appointment?”
“If her parents had not gone to their reward when the lady was in her infancy, no doubt they would be delighted to know their child is so favoured,” said the Cardinal. “As to experience, I am sure she managed her husband’s household adequately. She is gently reared and chaste, which qualities I think should matter more to a virtuous Queen of France than mere experience.”
“A pretty sentiment from the man who will not be dressed by her,” Anne said dryly. “What of her age?”
“I believe she has between fifteen and twenty years. A more precise figure, if feminine impatience cannot weather the wait of one week, may be got from the Captain of my guard. His man Jussac is the girl’s uncle, and may possess more detailed knowledge of her.”
Anne thinned her lips.
“Never mind, Cardinal. I think I know all of her that I care to at this time.”
She took her leave of him so rapidly, Madame de Sénécy was forced to stumble out of her lady’s path to avoid a direct collision. By the time she’d gathered skirts and wits enough to hurry after the Queen, Anne was halfway down the corridor.
Anne took no notice of her Lady-of-honour, for she was too busy fuming. A spy in her camp. Well, the Bonacieux girl would hardly be the first; the very woman whose post she was meant to fill was another such. Madame de Sénécy’s succession to her present position had also been the Cardinal’s doing, and Anne was not surprised that he would rush to fill the vacant post with another informant.
“At this rate,” she muttered, “I will soon be unable to pick my teeth after breakfast without the Cardinal hearing of it by dinner.”
“Ma’am?” panted Madame de Sénécy.
“Nothing to concern you,” said Anne. “Strictly Queen’s business.”
Spies were, after all, the business of the Queen of France. Especially when they were set to spy on her.
***
Spain, 1612
***
As children they had not called it spying. It was watch-keeping, a game invented by the infanta Ana María to amuse herself and her siblings.
The children crept about the palace, tracking the comings and goings of their nurses, the courtiers, household staff—even the dwarf Bonami, though he tumbled to their schemes very early because he was closer to their eye level than most adults. They considered a fair target anybody whose mind was too fully occupied to tumble to the fact that the whispering, giggling Spanish royal children were clumsily dogging their heels, and they set against such people with vigour.
When the Duke of Mayenne arrived as ambassador from France, he was judged an acceptable target and they kept watch over him too. They did not realise at the time that he was also keeping watch on them.
When the ambassador arrived, the children listened to the plans that were taking shape—plans for the future of Ana and her brother Philip, for the prospects of France and Spain, and an alliance with a French princess and dauphin they had never met.
The marriages themselves were not shocking news. It was the sort of thing you come to expect when you’re in a certain position. But even royal children are not proof against curiosity or trepidation, and the children of the Spanish king were no different.
“What do you suppose she’s like?” Philip wondered. “The princess Elisabeth.” He was sprawled on a bench in the courtyard, picking fretfully at the laces on his tabard. Ana was far less indolent, inspecting the workings of her crossbow as she made her reply.
“I expect she’s much like us. She has a king and queen for her papa and mama. Her brother will be king someday. She’s a princess, Philip. Just like me.”
Then she loaded the bolt and took aim at a low-hanging apple on a tree across the lawn. She pressed the trigger, the bolt shot clear and the apple, pierced, thudded to the ground. Ana gave a whoop of triumph.
“I don’t think I would like to marry her if she’s very much like you,” Philip said doubtfully.
“Pfft,” scoffed his sister, and raced off to inspect her conquest.
They would learn years later that the French Ambassador had been witness to that scene. He had been playing his own game of watch-keeping: the grown up version. He reported of them to France, and among the tales he carried was news of the infanta’s talent with the crossbow.
It was not a skill considered vital in a Queen of France. But it was something to know, and in the grown-up game of watch-keeping, anything you could know was always worth passing on.
***
Watch-keeping was not much needed to divine the path of the marriage negotiations once they were made public. King Philip kept his son and daughter closely apprised of the plans, and when the contracts were signed both children were given to understand it was a good thing, much to be desired.
“Isn’t it funny how we can want something, yet not want it at the same time?” Philip marvelled when their father had dismissed them from conference. “I mean to say, I am Spanish and of course I want what’s best for Spain. But on my honour, Ana, I don’t think I ever want to marry in my life!”
“That’s because you are just little,” said Ana. She was in no hurry to return to their siblings. Instead she leaned her back against the wall of the corridor, tipping her head up to study the ceiling and obliging Philip to wait with her. “If you were older, you would be only happy.”
“Then, are you truly happy to marry King Louis?”
“I suppose it will be all right,” said Ana, though she looked a bit more doubtful on this point. “I mean to say, I must marry somebody, and nobody has said anything very awful about him yet.”
“Perhaps they have,” suggested Philip, “only they took care not to say it in front of you.”
The suggestion seemed so plausible, and the prospect so alarming, that they were motivated to plan their first game of watch-keeping in weeks. Philip and Anna dogged the heels of anybody they thought might be expected to speak of King Louis and by the end of the week had collected a few meagre scraps of gossip they thought might be relevant to Ana’s interests.
“Papa says he’s weak-willed and biddable,” she reported. “I don’t think that sounds very nice.”
“No, that’s actually good for you,” Philip promised. “It means you’ll win all your quarrels.”
“Perhaps,” said Ana, though she still looked uncertain. “What have you heard?”
“Mayenne told the Condésa de Altamira that Louis enjoys hunting and sport.”
“Well that’s all right, so do I.”
“Yes, you can do that together, probably,” Philip agreed. “Look, Ana, I don’t think it will be so bad for you. You’ll have all your ladies with you so it will almost be like you’re still in Spain.”
“I will not have you, though,” Ana pointed out. The first real shadow of concern crossed her face. “Or Papa.”
“But you will have more family than you ever had before,” Philip encouraged her. “Come on, don’t look so glum. I am sorry I ever said anything. I think it will be all right.”
“Truly?” said Ana.
“Truly,” said Philip. “I promise.”
Such stock did Ana put in Philip’s promise that, when the ambassador requested a message he might take to the King from his bride-to-be, Ana bade him tell Louis how impatient she was to meet and be with him. This frank warmth charmed the Duke but horrified her governess, whose sense of piety and propriety were unequal to the task of mediating adolescent courtship.
“Ana!” she cried. “I beg you would show a more maidenly reserve.”
Ana was unaffected by this recommendation.
“I think instead, I had better tell him the truth from the first. You have taught me to be truthful anyway, have you not? I have spoken, and I will not recant.”
To this pert retort, Condésa de Altamira could make no reply. The ambassador’s report of Ana María following that meeting was favourable indeed.
***
France, 1624
***
God chose the King.
Constance had known this ever since she was five years old and God chose the new one; the one they had, even now. She had been in the convent garden picking flowers. Her skirt was dirtied by the sport, and the juice from the stems had just begun to stain her fingers when one of the nuns bade her come inside to pray for the new king.
Constance, because five-year-olds much prefer being dirty and sticky to praying for anyone, said “I don’t want to” and at once suffered a lengthy, demoralising lecture about the duty she bore the King. Because, apparently, God had picked him, just like a flower from the garden, and so you had to be respectful of that.
From that point on Constance had some vague notion of God tending all of them from on high, a vast white apron unfurled as he bent to scoop up a King here and there, shaking the dust from their feet and tumbling them all together in his lap to be sorted and arranged for viewing.
Whether or not God chose the Queen as well had never come up. Constance fervently wished it had. Then she might better understand how to feel about being chosen to serve the Queen (Constance herself had only been chosen by Cardinal Richelieu, rather than God Himself, but that was probably appropriate because Constance was not nearly so important as the King).
If she couldn’t feel anything about her new position, though, she would have settled for feeling anything other than sore. The carriage her uncle had hired was badly sprung and since Constance had been widowed very young, with no children to her name, she lacked the personal padding of a more mature woman. Every time they hit a rut—and the streets of Paris bore as many ruts as some country roads, in certain quarters—she gasped and screwed her eyes shut.
Knowing whether or not her new mistress had been chosen by God, or merely the King who had been chosen by God all those years ago, might have given her something to focus on other than the bruises that were forming on the underside of her thighs and the ominous silence of her uncle.
Jussac had taken no notice of her for the journey until, about the fifth or sixth time she sucked in her breath, he turned on her and growled “Will you contain yourself? I don’t remember you making half this much noise when you were a child. You had two years with Bonacieux; did the man not teach you to hold your tongue?”
Constance pinched her lips and stared fixedly at her hands. She would not tell him he had no cause to remember her childhood, as he had been absent for most of it. She would neither tell him that the only thing Bonacieux had taught her was to stay out of his way when he’d had bad luck at cards.
Responding to any angry overture from her uncle was not an option, since any response would be taken for impertinence. It had been that way since the day she’d met the man who inherited guardianship of her and the modest fortune left by her parents.
She had not even known until years after their death that she had an uncle. She had been sent to the nuns before she could remember, to be trained in whatever arts they considered suitable for a gentlewoman. The convent had been all she knew of life until one day, when she was about six years old, her mother’s brother had appeared in the doorway, a hulking, angry stranger.
He had barked questions at her until she cried. He then decried her tears as insolence, and boxed her ears.
Constance had stopped crying immediately, because she did not want to be struck again. The nuns answered Jussac’s questions about her conduct, character and schooling while she stood silently by, deciding with the cool, black-and-white reasoning of a child that she hated this man. While he questioned her caretakers she seethed with plans of everything she would do to him, if ever she grew large enough.
Now, jolted viciously in the back of a carriage, Constance was not yet large enough to do any of the things she had wished to, and she was finally old enough to know she never would be large enough to mete revenge out with her fists. But there were other ways to strike at a man that did not involve brute force, and so limited was Jussac’s intellect that Constance was confident any means she could employ to strike at him would remain undetected until it was too late for him to do anything about it.
Such had it been for Bonacieux.
The carriage hit another rut. Constance knocked her head against the door. The blow stung like a box to the ears. Her eyes watered, but she made no sound.
Constance Bonacieux knew very well how to hold her tongue.
***
Spain, 1615
***
Ana’s first wedding was to the Duke of Lerma. Of course it wasn’t a real wedding, like the kind of wedding she was supposed to have with Louis. She was fourteen, and quite able to understand that the duke was only meant to be standing in for her true husband. An unmarried princess travelling across the border would have been unthinkable, so she had to be married first. But it still seemed very off to be obliged to make vows to Lerma when God and ambassadors had chosen Louis especially for her husband. Consequently she considered the business with Lerma, no matter how legal and proper, to be one of the most irregular parts of the entire proceeding.
At least the Burgos cathedral was resplendent, and her father and brothers were there, which was exactly how she would have wished it if she could have ordered the entire affair herself.
When the proxy marriage and celebration had concluded, the infanta was ushered gently away to get some rest in preparation for her journey to meet her new spouse. But Ana, keenly conscious of what the journey home must mean for her now that “home” was not a thing she would share with her family, waited until her household was abed. Then she slipped out from under the counterpane, lit a taper from her bedside lamp and swiftly, silently traced a route to the chamber of her brother.
Philip answered her knock with such speed that she knew he must have been waiting for her. He tugged her into the room and they stood together just inside his doorway, pale and nervous, and tried to face whatever lay ahead.
“We have survived this day,” said Ana. “There remains now only all the other days.”
“It—it wasn’t so very bad, was it?” Philip asked. Ana was quick to reassure him that it was not.
“Not at all! Why, you got through the whole thing very well. I mean, it was odd to be marrying somebody who isn’t my husband, but I understood why it had to be that way. Truthfully I had mostly wondered if you might not be sick, like you were last month at the court play.”
“Oh, that,” said Philip, and coloured a fearsome scarlet even in the dim glow of Ana’s taper. “Yes, I had wondered too. But I think that time was only a little to do with nerves. Remember Bonami had just died, and I was very sad about that.”
His words gave Ana pause.
“Were . . . were you not sad today, then?”
“Yes,” Philip admitted. “Because you are leaving, and now I must be married, which I don’t think I will enjoy very much. But I could bear the marrying part for myself, if only you were still in Spain.”
“I probably shouldn’t like to hear you say that,” Ana said doubtfully. “Now that I am Queen of France.”
“Probably not,” Philip agreed cheerfully. “But I will say this wedding of yours was not as bad for me as the court play. It’s a different kind of sad. You are not dying, after all.”
“No-o,” Ana agreed. But she sounded as if she were not sure. “I am leaving, though.”
“Yes, but not to be with God; only to be with French people.”
Ana, progressively less conscious of her duty as Queen of France, could not quite see this as philosophically as her brother. “At least if I were with God and Mama, in Heaven, I might look in on you. I could see you every day and you could say special novenas for me. I would be closer to you dead than I will be in France. When I am in France we will not be able to speak to each other at all.”
“Well then, write to me,” Philip ordered. “Write me of everything that happens here. Tell me if you are happy or lonely or sad. Then you won’t seem so far away.”
“I won’t ever tell you if I am lonely,” Ana protested. “You will worry.”
“If you will never tell me you are lonely I must assume you are always lonely, and only pretending happiness for my sake, and I will worry all the more.”
“Very well,” said Ana. “I will tell you all.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what.”
The deal struck, they embraced each other as fiercely and mournfully as you would expect of any two children who had spent all their lives together, and must thereafter spend all their lives apart.
***
The less said about the journey from Burgos to the Bidassoa, the better. The roads were bad, the weather not much better, and Ana found holding her temper over the course of those four days took every shred of self-restraint that she possessed. The morning that she was handed onto the barge to complete her journey to France, she told herself, quite sternly, that it was all worth it. That it must be worth it.
Then she looked ahead to the resplendent pavilion crowned with the Spanish flag, which waited on the island in the middle of the Bidassoa, and willed herself to believe it.
The Spanish bridal party reached the island at the same time as the French one, and it soon felt crowded on those two brief acres of land. Ana was helped into a rather magnificent chair as her ladies arrayed themselves around her, kneeling on cushions in a posture that seemed a little ridiculous for its pageantry. All the while Ana stole glances at the newly-arrived French princess across the island, seated in her own French pavilion of white silk.
When at last they were able to leave their seats and greet one another, Ana studied her new sister intently, trying to see in her anything that Philip might love. Princess Elisabeth had pale, intent little features, and her robes were beautiful. She did not have the farthingale that weighed heavily on Ana’s gown. She looked so light and pretty that Ana found herself wishing for garments a little less cumbersome than her own.
The adults thronged around them, their attitudes a curious mix of deferential and solicitous. Her hand was kissed and she was saluted with all due ceremony, but Ana resolved to shut them out entirely. For this moment she wanted it only to be they two: herself and the one other girl who understood her position better than anyone else in the world.
Princess Elisabeth bore the transfer bravely, but when her French company left her, Ana saw her sister-in-law’s resolve give way. The girl broke down weeping, and none of the comforts offered by the new Spanish women around her were to any effect.
Ana, on impulse, broke rank from her people and hustled her ungainly farthingale back across the brief stretch of land to her original boat, where she put a hand out to Elisabeth.
“I love him very much,” she said, in rather badly-mangled French. “I think you will like him also.”
Elisabeth did not stop crying, but her sobs did seem to abate. Ana petted her encouragingly, and said “I like your dress.”
Then, seeing that the greater part of her escort were looking very awkward about this deviation from their planned programme, Ana took a step back.
“Bonne chance!” she whispered, because it seemed an encouraging thing to say, and she rather wished somebody would say it to her. She allowed herself to be beckoned back across the island to the French pavilion, where her new boat waited to take her to her new home.
“With nerves like that,” thought Ana, as the boat set out for shore, “I think she had better not perform in court plays either.”
She resolved to write Philip of that information directly she reached land.
***
The best part of her wedding journey was Bordeaux itself. Always, Ana would remember it as such. The beds were good, the food was excellent, and it was where she met Louis for the first time.
Meeting Louis was when she knew it would all work out.
At first meeting his hand was put in hers, and before she could lose her nerve completely Ana looked directly into his face to see what it was she’d gotten herself into.
Louis was of a height with her, fair-haired and boyish, and looked as flustered a human being as Ana had ever seen. He blinked, opened his mouth, then closed it again as it seemed to strike him that he was not sure what to say. She warmed to him at once, the way you would to a nervous kitten. Besides, even through his uncertainty he clasped her hand as though he intended to hold it for the rest of his life.
After a moment’s careful thought, he settled on just the right words.
“It—look, it will be all right, I think,” he said earnestly. “You and me, I mean. I am pretty sure of that.”
If she had ever been challenged to name the moment she fell in love, Ana would have named the moment that the stammering King of France held her hand, and promised her, with all sincerity, that they would be just fine.
***
France, 1615
***
“Your uncle is late. What do you make of that?”
“My uncle is always late,” said Constance. “It is of no profit to him to be punctual.”
The nun who had meant to make a casual observation to pass time was aghast to have provoked such insubordination.
“That’s no way to speak of your uncle! He would hardly have got a post in the palace guard if he could not be punctual, now, could he?”
“But see,” said Constance, “there it profits him to be punctual. I am nothing next to the security of a pension.”
“This cynicism is very unbecoming in a maid of so few years,” the older woman muttered.
“I have eleven years,” said Constance, greatly offended that her years be called few when she clearly had so many.
“Ah! A multitude,” was the sarcastic reply.
Constance firmed her lips and sat a little straighter, pointedly ignoring the jibe. A moment’s silence passed, and then “Constance, did you not know I was making fun of you just now?”
“I knew it,” Constance admitted.
“But you said nothing. Do you so esteem me, that you would bear my insult without retort?”
Constance shook her head. “I do not think I esteem you very much, Sister Colombe.”
“Hrmm. And why not?”
“You take more food than you are allowed, and you give less than you are obliged. Also, I have twice seen you put money in your pocket that was from the collection box. That is not estimable.”
To be accidentally revealed as a petty thief in the vestibule of the convent was, understandably, unsettling to Sister Colombe. But she rallied with remarkable speed.
“To whom have you spoken of this?”
“Nobody.”
“And why not?”
Constance turned the full force of her stare on the nun. “They have not asked me.”
Sister Colombe stood a moment, turning this marvel of selective discretion over in her mind. At last she decided that the pursuit of its origin was a worthier pastime than threats to ensure the girl’s silence. Besides, she had rather an uneasy feeling that truly threatening Constance would provoke the opposite of the desired result.
“Tell me, who taught you to hold your tongue?”
“I don’t think we’ve had that lesson yet.”
“Not formally, no, yet you are no mean study . . . who is your teacher, I wonder?”
This was puzzling. “You are my teacher, Sister Colombe.”
“Then listen to your teacher, Constance, and may it profit you: discretion is a marketable skill. Your uncle may not see profit in you now, but the time will come when your discretion is esteemed, and it will mean money. For you, or him. But most likely for him,” she concluded, for Sister Colombe had many years more than Constance, and she had come by her cynicism the old-fashioned way.
Constance gave no sign of having understood or even heard this lecture. She was looking out the door into the courtyard.
“He’s here,” she said, and a moment later stood to greet her relative. The topic of focus having been so clearly changed, Sister Colombe did not revisit her advice. Whether or not the girl had understood, only time would tell.
***
1615 - 1617
***
After her marriage, watch-keeping became a vital component Ana’s survival. The infanta Ana María had listened at doors and peeked over balconies to learn things nobody would have told a child. Queen Anne bent her every instinct honed over the years of playing at nursery games to understanding the currents of power, privilege and deceit that had been thrumming through the French court for decades.
In France, the game she once played with her brothers and sisters was quickly put in its proper perspective. In France it seemed everybody was immersed up to the teeth in schemes and intrigues of someone else’s making, and the Queen of France was far from proof against such intrigues.
Her husband was as much a target of the plotting as she; possibly even more so. And what a quaint and curious husband he was, too.
Queen Anne was used to kings. She had grown up with kings, and boys who would be king, and was much confused by the way her new husband did not seem to act like either one. He was shy and sensitive and unsure. Almost at once, Anne resolved that whatever watch-keeping was required on her part to keep the King safe, she would play a personal part in it. Louis seemed not even to realise half the intrigues that surrounded him. She suspected that were it not for the careful tutelage provided him by his friend M. Charles-Albert de Luynes, he would not even have known of the few schemes that he did.
This was all confirmed for her by Marie de Rohan, first surintendente of Anne’s household.
Marie was young, merry and entirely the mistress of herself, since a good-natured and overindulgent father allowed her nearly free reign over her own affairs. Marie was much brighter and less staid than most of the Spanish ladies Anne kept with her, and made a lively addition to the household.
Too lively, if you asked some people.
“Why shouldn’t I listen to her?” Anne demanded, when called to task by the Spanish ambassador for falling in too readily with Marie de Rohan and her schemes. “She is my friend.”
“Not everybody who is friendly is a friend to you, Your Majesty,” Monteléone said censoriously.
“Should I take that as a warning of your intentions?” Anne retorted. The Spanish ambassador was so taken aback by the question that he could make no reply, and the young Queen sailed almost majestically from the room, which effect she promptly spoilt by breaking into a run when she spotted her friend waiting some distance down the passageway.
“Did he give you much difficulty?” Marie wondered, linking arms with the Queen as they met in the corridor.
“Not so much,” Anne said lightly. She gave a quick skipping step, shaking the interview from her shoulders. “Anyway, why should I listen to Monteléone? He orders me about dreadfully, and he does not like that Louis and I are such good friends. He says we are too comfortable, like brother and sister; as if that were anything to trouble himself about! My very best friends in all the world were my brothers and sisters before I came here. It’s good to have a husband who is your best friend too, don’t you think?”
“I suppose it must be,” Marie agreed. “I could do with a little of that myself.”
But King Philip was disinclined to agree that this was a good thing, and in response to letters drafted by Monteléone, admonished his daughter to conduct herself with greater circumspection in the future.
“Do you think you had better do as he says?” Marie wondered. “I mean, he is the King of Spain, after all, and your father besides. Not that being a father always counts for much, since mine hardly counts for anything, but I think your father is not very like my own.”
The two were secreted in a small alcove in Anne’s bedchamber, hiding from Dona Theresa and Dona Estefanía. Anne, scrutinising the letter for a third time, said she wasn’t sure.
“I think I might have to listen eventually. Only all this business here in Paris, with Prince Henri setting everyone in the family against him despite the treaty he signed to keep peace, seems to have helped them forget about me a little. I am not nearly as important as an insurrectionist prince. With all this treason business going on, maybe the very best thing we could do just now is to keep watch.”
“Keep watch over what?” Marie wondered. Anne’s eyes lit with merriment as the prospect of putting the childhood game into play once more presented itself.
“When I was a girl,” she whispered, “we used to play a game.”
They bent their heads together and the Queen of France described the childhood sport of keeping watch in terms that would allow it to be used to spy on the people most closely concerned in the power struggle between Anne’s husband, her mother-in-law, and the brother-in-law making a bid for the French throne.
***
“You neglected to mention,” panted Marie, “that this game had such an edge to it.”
“In my defence,” retorted the Queen of France, putting her shoulder to the same door as her friend, and bearing all her weight down upon it until the latch clicked, “I have previously played it with children, nursemaids and witless ambassadors. Never during rebellion. Perhaps some adjustment should have been allowed for keeping watch on the affairs of men who—oh!” and she leaped back from the door just as an axe head thudded into the wood.
“This is madness,” Marie hissed, abandoning her post at the door when Anne directed her. They retreated into the palace at a brisk pace. “We are meant to be travelling to safety at the Louvre, not chasing after some ridiculous scrap of intelligence that Condé may or may not have concealed plans for a war machine in his mother’s home.”
“We are travelling to safety at the Louvre; we are only taking a longer and rather more hazardous way around. We will reach safety by and by.”
“I would be more settled in my mind if we reached it sooner than later.”
“We won’t linger. But what we overheard du Plessis saying seemed very definite, so I want to search the storeroom he spoke of. I still think the plans must be here somewhere, and the storeroom sounds a secure place.”
“But why should du Plessis have known about this machine? He can’t be in sympathy with Condé, can he? Not while he serves the King’s mother.”
“Her-Other-Majesty has a hand in everything,” Anne said firmly. “I wouldn’t put it past her. You know what she’s like with Louis, and how she insists on running him. She runs him because she doesn’t like that she is not Queen anymore. Which is foolishness, because being a Queen is very trying.”
“This is not the best time to discuss family matters. We shouldn’t even be here.”
“Yes, and that last fact alone may save us,” said Anne. Together they continued their journey into the depths of the Luxembourg palace, which already rang with the shouts of looters and defenders of the Huguenot cause.
“Whatever can you mean by that?” said Marie. They sped up as the shouts drew nearer, and Anne made her answer between gulps of air.
“I mean they will not be looking for us in particular, so as long as they do not see us up close they may not know who we are. We’ll just be two of Her-Other-Majesty’s ladies who got away late, and I don’t think they will bother with us as such. No, not that way,” as Marie made to turn to the left, “we want this direction.”
They fled down the passageway together, finding at the end of it a set of magnificent double doors. Marie reached for them.
“Not those,” Anne scolded. “Did you not study the plans at all?” and she wrenched at the handle of a much smaller door off to the side.
The room they entered was in such disarray as to suggest it had been raided in a great hurry prior to an even hastier departure. Anne, heedless of the clutter, went directly to the back wall and prodded fiercely at one of a pair of iron sconces. Nothing happened.
“Must be the other. Can you reach it?” she called. Then, as Marie struggled to pull down on the sconce, Anne turned her attention to the rest of the room.
“They’ve taken almost everything of importance I think. Perhaps it is gone after all.”
“Can you help me with this?” Marie huffed. “If it’s the right sconce, it must be stuck.”
“Hmm?” Anne paused in front of a half-open case. A sheet of paper had fallen to one side, and the Queen bent to pull it loose. The sketch she found was baffling—some kind of ship, but with a sail like none other she had seen. “What a curious—”
“Your Majesty!”
Abruptly recalled to their mission, Anne let the paper fall to the ground and flew to Marie’s side. Together they levered the sconce away from the wall, and a door even smaller than that they had used to enter swung open.
“After you, Ma’am,” said Marie. Then she and Anne exchanged looks and, suddenly suffused with giggles, raced away down the passage as the looters of Marie de Medici’s palace raided and burned the Luxembourg behind them.
***
The Queen did not, in the end, have much effect on the outcome of that particular war. The plans for the war machine she had overheard Armand Jean du Plessis discussing with a councilman remained undiscovered by the Queen and her lady. Condé was arrested, and Louis showed an uncommon measure of spine the following year by deposing his own mother into the bargain, and making a rather violent end of her pet favourite, Concini.
Monteléone sent Spain highly favourable reports of Anne’s most commendable composure throughout the entire ordeal, but Anne, upon reflection, thought maybe a holiday from watch-keeping would be the appropriate choice to make.
She did not confide this to her husband, since he hadn’t known about the watch-keeping to begin with, but when they met for country sport one morning she did confide in him how relieved in her mind she was that all had events had concluded so much in his favour.
“Oh!” said Louis. “Oh, well, yes. Thank you. Well, I mean, it was time for Mother to push along, you know? She would insist on poking about in our affairs, and it was getting tiresome. I hope it didn’t worry you overmuch when it was all in the works, though.”
“Oh no,” Anne assured him. “I was quite sure you would work it out.”
“Yes?” Louis sounded pleased. “Well. It can be a tricky business, though. Gets a bit messy sometimes, politics.”
“I am sure,” murmured Anne.
“I’ve awarded all of Condé’s land and monies to M. de Luynes,” Louis added. “Good friend, de Luynes. Deserves a bit of a coming-up in the world. Planning to make him a duke, actually.”
“He will be pleased to know it,” said Anne. “You are very generous, my lord.”
“Yes, well. Oh. Yes,” Louis shuffled his feet, and blushed slightly. “He, um, asked me about your friend. Marie, isn’t it? He rather thought maybe she . . .you know. And all that. Now that he’s going to be a person of some consequence, he’ll want a wife. So perhaps she . . . well.”
“Yes,” said Anne, reflecting with genuine pleasure on the possibility of her friend and her husband’s friend making an alliance. “Yes, perhaps she might.”
“Well,” said Louis. He shot a shy, sideways smile in her direction. “Well this is all turning out for the best, then, isn’t it?”
“Do you know,” said Anne, as she took a discreet side-step closer to her husband so she could link her fingers through his, “I think it is.”
***
1622
***
Constance learned of her wedding three days before it happened. That was three days more than Jussac had meant her to have; she overheard him telling the nuns that he would be taking her away in that time, which gave her three days to decide what she wanted to do about it.
Running away was considered and rejected. Running away would be uncomfortable, dangerous, and ultimately ruinous. It was an impractical choice.
Refusal was possible. Direct refusal would not gain her much ground, but professing the faith and taking up the veil would put her out of Jussac’s reach for good. The very notion of putting his nose so out of joint gave Constance such a warm, satisfied feeling in the pit of her stomach that for a few hours she did seriously contemplate life as a nun. It was certainly something she’d considered before—difficult to be raised in a convent and not think of it at least a few times—but this was the first time she’d had a real reason to want it.
That, of course, was the deciding point. If she did not want to be a nun for any higher reason than to spite her uncle, Constance thought she had probably better not try it. Which left only acquiescence to the plan, in the hope that whoever he’d found for her would not be quite as disagreeable as Jussac himself.
So Constance consented to being introduced to M Bonacieux, who at thirty-five was a little less than twice her age, and ordinary in every respect. His clothing, face and manner were entirely unremarkable, and Constance, while far from stirred to poetic raptures over his frame, thought that perhaps there were worse things than the fate of an unexceptional life.
Sister Colombe was less phlegmatic on the subject. As she brought Constance to the chapel she went so far as to say “the man’s chin is soft. It cannot be for the good.”
“If his chin is soft,” said Constance, “I will know where to strike him first if he proves disagreeable.”
“Hrm,” said Sister Colombe. “I think perhaps we have something to answer for in our rearing of you, if you have not even married the man and already you contemplate striking him.”
“The salve of your conscience over the question of your care of me must be left to God alone.”
Sister Colombe made a noise that was half snort, half cough. “I hope his will is stronger than his chin, this bridegroom of yours. He will need it to keep pace with you.”
Constance thought of this remark all through the ceremony. The borderline insult of an elderly nun was probably not the typical reflection of a bride, but then most brides were probably not obliged to stare at such a soft chin all through the wedding mass. Every time she saw the chin of the man she was marrying, she imagined what a will that matched the chin would look like.
Somehow, she could not reach the same conclusion as Sister Colombe. A man with a soft chin could have a weak will, certainly, but he could have had any number of additional character deficiencies that would combine to allow him to keep pace with her. And not always pleasantly, either.
Constance was not worried, exactly. But she was sober and reflective through the ceremony, and when her husband offered her his elbow to escort her from the church, Constance felt the closest thing to uncertainty that she had ever felt in her life.
A welcome distraction presented itself in the street. As the newly wedded couple emerged from the chapel, their way was blocked by a crowd packed shoulder-to-shoulder along the roadside. There was a general clamour unlike the usual noise of city streets, which meant something particular must be happening. Constance, who should possibly have been intimidated by a crowd after being reared in the relatively spacious confines of a convent, wondered only how best to become part of the crowd so she could see what held their focus.
“What is this?” Bonacieux wondered, but he did not approach the people to ask. So Constance stepped closer to the crowd, touched a woman on the shoulder, and repeated her husband’s question.
“Why are you standing here?” she wondered.
“The English Duke has come,” was the answer. “Duke of Buckingham, he is! Fine figure of a man, don’t you think? Here to court Princess Henriette for their Prince Charles, they say, though it will mean breaking an agreement with Spain to do it. Very grand fellow. Face like—well! You know.”
Constance did not know, but she was curious to see. Bonacieux seemed content to stand there, so they stood together, waiting, until the English duke passed by.
He was quite fine to look at. His chin did not have the same problem as her new husband’s. He was, in fact, as unlike Bonacieux as any man could be. The comparison of clothing would be unfair, of course, where both men were of such disparate means, but even without Bonacieux’s drab wedding suit to compare to the peacock silks of the Duke, the comparison was not to Bonacieux’s credit.
Where Bonacieux was nondescript, Buckingham was a masterpiece of human form. He was the cut marble statue to Bonacieux’s clay model. He was dazzling.
Constance recognised this in him. She had eyes and wits to observe, after all. But whatever flutter of attraction seemed to bubble up in the breast of all women around her did not touch Constance. She noted the cloth of his suit, the shape of his chin, and understood that these were his assets. But she did not press a hand to flushed cheeks, nor catch her breath at the sight of him.
Instead, she wondered how long he would block their way home, and if he understood how many people he was inconveniencing by passing this way just now.
“That was a fine looking fellow,” Bonacieux reflected, as Buckingham’s retinue finally moved on, and the crowds dispersed.
“I suppose,” said Constance. “But I think today I prefer a man who can walk through the streets without causing a crowd. There is something to be said for passing unnoticed.”
And though Bonacieux did not really understand what she meant by this, he nodded all the same.
***
The duke wore white. And gold. And diamonds. And pearls.
The duke was altogether dazzling to behold as he bowed over the hand of King Louis and presented his compliments.
“Your Majesty,” he said, over the sound of hundreds of tiny seed pearls dropping from his garments and rolling across the floor. “King James sends his warmest regards.”
“Oh . . . yes?” said Louis, transfixed by the intricate gold embroidery that traced the shoulder seams of Buckingham’s doublet. “Well, yes. Thank you. And—oh! The same to him, of course.”
The amazed young king watched the courtiers surreptitiously crouch down and scoop up the rolling pearls. Years of conflict had bled the treasury badly, and the kind of wealth that Buckingham was shedding in the audience chamber was of a sort difficult to come by in France.
A gentle cough from one of his ministers recalled Louis to himself. “Oh, and welcome,” Louis added hastily, “and we hope . . . well. Henriette is very curious to meet you, of course.”
“Of course,” purred the Duke. “The joyous occasion is much to be desired. And naturally,” he offered a contrite smile, “His Majesty hopes that the Queen of France is less the sister of the infanta of Spain than she is the sister of the princess of France.”
Louis looked discomfited at this. He did not much like being reminded that his own sister’s marriage would be got at the expense of marriage arrangements made for his wife’s sister. Yes, it was Spain, and Louis was no great admirer of the Spanish, but still. Family, and all that.
“Oh well I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “I mean, Anne is Henriette’s sister too, of course. Through me. I’m sure she’d be glad if any of her sisters were fortunate. In marriage. And in families too, given that now we’re . . . she’s . . . well. In the family way. Very proper for her to want good things for Henriette, I’m sure.”
“Quite so,” agreed Buckingham, “her Majesty’s generous spirit is a credit to France and Spain alike. Your Majesty is very fortunate in her.”
“Yes,” said Louis. “Yes, I am. In her, and also in our little—well.” He smiled. “This will be a nice visit, I hope, and we’ve arranged some amusements for you of course. You know the sort of thing. There will be a fête tomorrow. Promises to be something quite wonderful.”
“I look forward to it, Your Majesty,” said Buckingham. And he smiled in a way that Louis, had Louis been paying properly close attention, could not have liked.
***
The fête given in honour of Buckingham was the kind that is put on more with a view to making people talk about it for years than ensuring that everyone is actually having a good time. By the time you had taken stock of the decorations, the music, peoples’ costumes and the sort of food being served, you had worn yourself out and were looking for any excuse to go home.
At least, this was the case with Queen Anne. She grudgingly allowed that perhaps not everybody might feel so exhausted, especially if they were not currently enceinte, but that didn’t stop her stealing a quiet moment during one of the ballets to sneak away and settle on a chair with only two of her ladies for company.
“It’s only the usual way,” Dona Theresa promised, as the Queen reclined in her chair and professed herself miserably uncomfortable. “Everything is more taxing than usual. It will pass.”
“I will hold you to that,” muttered the Queen. “And hear this: if your promise should prove untrue, you may find yourself recalled to Spain.”
“Tsk,” said Dona Theresa. “Temper! We will help your Majesty early to bed this evening.”
“How?” said Anne. “I cannot leave early without causing offence to both my husband the host, and the Duke his guest.”
“I am sure Buckingham has other matters on his mind than your Majesty,” Estefanía said firmly. “And I think King Louis will be only too glad to see that you are taking good care of your health at this point in time.”
But Anne still expressed doubt, so at last a bargain was struck. The King would be invited to attend them and the matter put to him directly. If he instructed Anne to return to the Louvre and rest there, she would do it.
Dona Theresa at once took herself away, and had not been gone more than a few minutes before Marie de Rohan found them. Marie’s shoulders heaved, and her eyes were alight with the fever of intrigue. She flung herself down beside Anne and clutched the queen’s sleeve.
“Your Majesty,” she whispered. “I must speak with you. Urgently. Of Buckingham.”
“Ugh, what of him?” said the Queen, pettishly. “If one more person tells me how his cloth-of-gold doublet makes him look like the sun god, I shall set the room on fire and see how their sun god fares then.”
“No, Ma’am. It . . .” and here Marie faltered, registering belatedly the presence of Estefanía in the corner. Anne followed her gaze, and at once divined what manner of news Marie must bring.
“You may speak freely before Estefanía,” she said firmly. “She has known me from childhood. This will not undo her.”
“If your Majesty is certain,” said Marie, not looking certain in the least. “I must tell you of a conversation, Ma’am, which I know I was not meant to overhear—”
“Ah!” cried Dona Estefanía. “Not more of your watch-keeping game, my lady? I thought those childish intrigues were well past.”
“Ma’am,” said Marie, “I am afraid you are right. It is not a children’s game that we play now.”
“Sometimes,” said Anne, “I wonder if it ever was. Maybe we were always playing a grown-up’s game, only we did not know it yet.”
“The children of the King of Spain can be pardoned if they are something more than ordinary children,” Estefanía decided. “Your parents did always speak so well of your wit, my lady, and your brother’s also. I am sure you were quite advanced for your age.”
“And I am sure you are not objective in the least,” retorted the Queen. “But hush. Marie, what conversation?”
“It was only a part. I could not hear all. He was behind a curtain with one whose face I could not see, and whose voice I did not hear. But Buckingham I heard aright. I could not mistake him. Your Majesty,” Marie tugged fretfully at her lady’s sleeve, “he spoke of a war machine.”
Anne stiffened.
“A war machine? Not—surely not the same as we were trying to investigate at the Luxembourg.”
“I couldn’t say for sure it was the same. But what if it is? What if his mission is all—all pretext? What if he’s really here to find the plans for the machine?”
“But how can he? We don’t even know where they are. And this courtship cannot all be pretext, or else the insult to Henriette will be even worse than the insult to my sister when she is refused as a bride for the English prince.”
Marie admitted this was so, but she was still highly agitated. At last Anne put out a hand, patted her friend’s arm, and urged her to settle herself.
“If it will make you easier in your mind, perhaps there is a way. We will think of something.”
“Thinking is not so bad,” said Estefanía, “but I trust your Majesty will not be so foolish as to put thought to deed, in your condition. Your greatest responsibility is now the future of France.”
“And what is this business,” cried Marie, “if not the future of France?”
“We don’t know what it is yet,” sighed Anne. “Please, Marie. You’re giving me head-ache. Can you accept my promise that we will discuss this further, and let me rest a little while until his Majesty arrives?”
Marie tendered her promise to let the matter rest for the time being. Then she waited quietly by as Dona Theresa returned with the King and his retinue. Louis at once bent over the chair, hovering near Anne, though he was not quite able to bring himself to touch her.
“My dear, are you unwell? Should we summon . . . someone?”
“No, no, nothing like,” Anne reassured him. “Only I am very fatigued. My ladies tell me it’s to be expected, but expecting it somehow doesn’t make the weathering of it much easier.”
“No, no of course not,” Louis agreed. “Well, of course if you . . . I mean, you should go. I think. If you like. You should go, and rest, and of course nobody will question that.”
“Thank you my lord,” Anne said, and smiled in such a sweet, weary way that Louis coloured deep scarlet, and opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. After a moment’s open-mouthed silence, he collected himself enough to make a gesture that seemed to mean ‘good evening’ and Anne took her leave of him, her ladies following close behind.
***
The scheme to which Anne consented was none of her design. It was entirely the urgent belief of Marie de Rohan that Buckingham was scheming against the crown and entirely the energies of that lady which propelled Anne to go along with the plan.
They would purport to visit the apartments of the Princess of Conti, who was unwell that day. Their path would take them near the section of the palace where Buckingham was quartered, and it would give them the chance to spy out any untoward doings on his part.
At least, that was Marie’s view of the thing. Anne, rather more pragmatic in her weariness, had asked snappishly what luck Marie thought they would possess, that Buckingham would against all odds be engaged in something obviously sinister just at the moment they passed his rooms. Marie said, loftily, that her Majesty needed to have a little faith.
“Faith!” cried Anne. “If I have faith in anything, it is that the match will be made with Henriette, at the expense of the last child my mother brought into this world.”
A more perceptive, less excitable woman than Marie de Rohan would have rightly discerned the fear lying at the back of this reference, but she only said “nothing is to keep him from making the match and spying for England, is it?”
So Anne did not speak of her mother again, nor of the child who had sent her from the birthing-bed to the grave. She went along with the scheme, taking three of her ladies with her to visit the princess in her sickbed, where they passed several agreeable hours.
At last, on the pretext of finding the room too warm and close, Anne stepped out into the corridor with Marie.
“If we are to do this,” she said, “let us do it now. The sooner we discover no scheme, the sooner I can go back to my bed.”
“His rooms are back the way we came.” Marie took her friend by the arm and drew her along the corridor. “We need not look in all of them. Only let us see what we can learn. He means no good, I am convinced of it.”
Anne followed without complaint, at first because she knew it would be futile to argue, and then because they had reached the section allotted to Buckingham and his cohort, where speech would have meant speedy discovery.
There were several doors that showed a light at the bottom, but most were the feeble, flickering light of a single lamp before bed. Only one light showed up bright and strong, as if several lamps and a good fire still burned beyond. Instinctively Anne drew closer to that door, and Marie followed her lead.
Together they crouched on either side, put their ear by the panels, and listened. From behind the door came scraps of conversation, one of the speakers possibly Buckingham, the other much older and thinner of voice.
“. . . burned in the palace. Rotten luck for us.”
“You assume we could have got it out had it not.”
“I think du Plessis could have been bought for the job. But no matter. The only copy left is in a vault in Venice. Bloody thing was designed by Leonardo da Vinci and it’s said to be impregnable. I like our luck there much less.”
“There have got to be people for the job.”
“No doubt there are. But the finding of them will take time, and the hiring of them, money.”
“Money is one thing I have in abundance. Find me these people, and I will take care of the—hang on. What was that?”
Anne rocked back, horrified. Had they made some sound? Brushed against the door? Whatever it was, a man’s footsteps sounded across the floor, drawing rapidly nearer. They had only moments to act.
Marie surged to her feet, caught Anne by the hand and flew back down the hall with only the rustle of their skirts to mark their path. They had just reached the corner when the door opened. They looked back in time to see the Duke of Buckingham looking away from them, down the opposite length of the passageway.
Then he turned and saw them.
Whether or not he was close enough to divine their identities, Marie did not wait to discover. She grabbed Anne’s arm and cried “my lady, run.”
Anne did not stop to consider the wisdom of obedience. She did not pause to reflect that it would not be impossible to invent some pretext for her presence in the area: perhaps even beg him to call off pursuit of Henriette, and urge King James to honour the contract with Spain for his son, for the sake of her sister. Any portion of that might have made a convincing cover, but Marie was so lost to herself, so witless with blind panic, that she communicated that panic to her mistress at the expense of cold reason and sent them both in headlong flight down the darkened corridor.
At some point during their escape, Marie lost her grip on Anne’s arm. Anne could never remember at what point it had happened; she only knew that it must have, because of what happened next.
As they reached the top of the staircase, Anne’s foot caught the hem of her gown. She lurched; wobbled; teetered on the brink of an inky abyss for what seemed like the entirety of her life, and someone else’s life besides.
She saw, in the depths of that blackness, a small, round face whose features she could not discern. It was impossibly far away. As she stared the face drifted farther still, shimmering and indiscriminate, as if hiding behind a veil of tears.
Then she pitched headlong down the staircase, a sharp pain lit the base of her skull, and for a few blessed hours she knew nothing at all.
***
When Anne woke, it was somewhere warm and dimly lit that smelled of home. Soft weeping drew her focus to the side of the bed. Dona Estefanía and Dona Theresa were clinging to each other, crying.
“I am not dead,” she said. The dull ache in her head gave an extra sharpness to her words. “Do stop carrying on so.”
“Ana,” whispered Estefania. “Oh Ana. I am sorry. I am so sorry.” She released Theresa to take her lady’s hand in her own, and kiss it.
“I am so sorry.”
There was a sharp ache in her abdomen, and a heavy emptiness that had not been there before.
Anne had time only to note that the second abyss was much blacker than the first. Then it was all around her, and she half hoped that she might never need to leave.
***
When they brought him the news, Louis wasn’t sure he’d heard it right. He made them repeat it to him three times.
He saw in their faces they thought he was an idiot. That he didn’t understand their words. Well, all right, they could think that. He didn’t care. But only, he wanted to hear it again, because somehow he felt if he heard it enough, it would stop making sense.
And if it didn’t make sense, it couldn’t be true.
But it didn’t work like that in the end. They just kept saying it, and then saying he must go to his bride, until at last he stopped trying to make it not true and went instead to help Anne through the terrible truth of it.
She was lying in bed when he found her, attended very rightly and thoroughly by French and Spanish ladies, who retired to a discreet distance at his arrival.
His wife was a study in white and gold. If angels laid in beds, tucked beneath counterpanes, he might have mistaken her for one of them. Her cheeks were waxen, as pale as the lacy night rail she wore. The rich, curling gold of her hair was echoed in the splendid threads that ran through the white silk of her counterpane. She looked too perfect, too clean, to be real.
Louis focused very hard on the threads of the counterpane as he fidgeted by her bedside. Anything to avoid looking at the agony writ in her face, or the green and purple knot on the side of her head, only partly covered by a careful combing-over of curls.
“They—they say you fell,” he said, still staring at a spot on the bed much lower than her face.
“Yes,” said Anne.
“You were running. You and Marie de Rohan were running. And you fell.”
“Yes,” said Anne. This time it was barely more than a whisper.
“You—you shouldn’t have been running, should you?”
“No,” she said, but this time it was so faint, he had to look at her face to make sure he hadn’t imagined it. The grief he saw there instantly shattered any thought he might have had of scolding or questioning.
“You—but you’re going to be all right, aren’t you? They said—I mean, the—the physician says you will be all right. In the end.”
“Yes. I think—oh!” she put her hand to her head.
“Anne?” he pressed close to the bed, frightened. “Anne, what is it?”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s just a pain, here.” And she touched her temple to show him.
“Is it a toothache?” Louis asked, deeply troubled at the thought. “I had a toothache once, you know, when I was a boy. They gave me a foul mix of vinegar and rose leaves to cure it. I shouldn’t recommend having a toothache if you can avoid it.”
Anne smiled at him, sweet and sad, from the depths of her pillows.
“No my love,” she sighed, “it is not toothache.”
“Well, good,” he said. “It—it would be the utter limit, wouldn’t it, having . . . having toothache on top of losing . . . that is, being . . .”
He broke off as a sharp sob escaped his wife, and she pressed her free hand to her face in a futile effort to stem the flood of tears.
“Anne—Anne, I am so . . . I shouldn’t—that is, it was thoughtless . . . my dear, my dear, please don’t cry.”
But she could not stop, and presently the King, finding his own cheeks were streaked with tears, gave up trying to comfort her and wept with her instead.
***
Marie de Rohan was in Queen Anne’s private cabinet when the King of France stormed in. He crossed the polished floor in six quick, angry strides and came to a halt in front of her.
He quivered, desperately, from the top of his plumed hat to the tips of his exquisitely polished feet. He quivered and shook so badly, it almost seemed he was seizing in front of her, rather than seized in the grip of an emotion so powerful that it was all he could do to hold himself upright before her.
“G-g-g-get out,” he ordered.
And thus was Marie de Rohan banished from court for inciting Her Majesty the Queen of France to boisterous pursuits in the Louvre, and causing her to miscarry her child.
***
With Marie gone from her household, Anne did not even have a confidante that she could tell she was resolved to give up watch-keeping forever. Watch-keeping had cost her a friend and her child. She was not about to see what it would take from her next.
Further to that, she was becoming ever more painfully aware of the subtle watch being kept on her. As Jean Armand du Plessis increased in power and consequence, as he became the Cardinal Richelieu of influence who gained such sway over King Louis, Anne saw too late that her private games with Marie had allowed her to overlook the more grown-up machinations of the wider court.
Anne could not forget the words she had overheard behind the chamber door. Could not find an innocent explanation for why an Englishman might think he could buy a service from Cardinal Richelieu, unless Cardinal Richelieu was in the business of selling services to Englishmen.
Which would make Cardinal Richelieu a spy, and anyone who worked for him a spy twice over.
When Cardinal Richelieu called her into his chamber and told her he had found her next dame d’atour, Anne did not mistake the gesture for goodwill. She knew exactly what role Constance Bonacieux was expected to play in her household, and it had little to do with keeping her gowns in order.
Watch-keeping was no longer a game for children, if in fact it had ever been. Watch-keeping was a grown-up pursuit, and it was only fun if you were the one keeping watch.
It was markedly less fun when the watch was being kept on you.