‘Let go of the lady,’ said the grandmother sharply.

He refused. The woman was about to snatch him away, when the Queen prevented her.

‘You do not want me to go away?’ asked Antoinette.

‘You stay here,’ said the boy. ‘You stay always.’

‘He’s a forward little villain, that one is,’ said the grandmother. ‘That’s the Queen you’re speaking to.’

‘Queen,’ said the little boy, and in all her life Antoinette had never sensed so much adoration as she did now in that small voice.

She made one of her impulsive decisions.

‘Let me take him,’ she said. ‘Would you come with me? Would you be my little boy?’

The joy in his face was the most moving thing she had ever seen. The little hand was in hers now, clinging, clinging as though he was never going to let her go.

The Queen turned to the woman. ‘If you will let me take this boy, and adopt him,’ she said, ‘I will provide for the upbringing of the four who are left to you.’

The woman’s answer was to fall on her knees and kiss the hem of the Queen’s gown.

Antoinette was never so happy as when she was giving happiness.

‘Then rise,’ she said, ‘rise, my good woman. And have no fear for your family. All will be well, I promise you. And I shall take James Armand away with me now.’

She lifted the child in her arms. She kissed his grubby face; her reward was a pair of arms about her neck – a tight and suffocating hug.

She thought: he shall be bathed; he shall be suitably dressed. James Armand, you are my little boy from now on.


* * *

For a long time she was happy.

Each morning James Armand was brought to her; he would climb on to her bed; he would be happy merely to be with her. He asked nothing else. He was not like other children. He was glad of sweetmeats; he liked handsome toys; but nothing but the company of the Queen could give him real pleasure.

If she had danced late and was too tired to be disturbed he would sit outside her door waiting disconsolately. None of her ladies could lure him away with any promise of a treat.

There was only one thing which could satisfy James Armand, and that was the presence of his most beautiful Queen who had by the miracle of a summer’s morning become his own mother.

Sometimes he dreamed that he was at the cottage door watching the carriage pass by. There was a heavy gloom in those dreams because in them the royal calash had not pulled up and he was still living with his grandmother in her dark one-roomed cottage … the miracle had not happened, his enchantress had not appeared.

He would wake whimpering; then his little fingers would touch the fine linen of his bedclothes and he would see the gilded furniture in his room, and he would know that all was well.

Once she had seen the traces of tears on his cheeks and demanded to know the reason.

‘Dreamed you did not come,’ said James Armand.

Then he was caught in that perfumed embrace, and his happiness was so great that he was glad of the bad dream which had made it possible.


* * *

So heedlessly she lived through those gilded days.

The hours flew past, there was never time to be bored; and she dreaded boredom more than anything on earth. She confided this to Artois. It was a fear they had in common. So she must plan more dresses with Rose Bertin; she must give a ball, have firework displays; she would spend an hour or so playing with her dear James Armand who so adored her; she would ride out to Paris, masked for the Opéra ball, as she used to in the old days.

But there was something missing in her life. Her dear friends, Madame de Polignac and the Princesse de Lamballe, could not make up for that. Indeed, those young men who hovered about her, paying their compliments which could be delicate or bold, came nearer to providing it. Madame de Polignac had taken a lover – the Comte de Vaudreuil, a Creole, not very handsome, his face having been pitted by the smallpox, but so witty, so amusing that he was quite charming. Gabrielle Yolande confided in the Queen, and Antoinette felt those twinges of envy for women who could enjoy such a relationship.

Another of her friends, Madame de Guémenée, took the Duc de Coigny for her lover. It was not that Antoinette shared her confidence, nor indeed that she liked her, but she was often at her card parties, for gambling, Antoinette had discovered, was one of the surest ways of driving boredom away. It was purely for the sake of Madame de Guémenée’s card parties that the Queen frequented her apartments.

Madame de Guémenée belonged to the Rohan family and the Queen did not feel very friendly disposed towards one member of that family. This was Louis, Prince de Rohan, that Cardinal whom she had never forgotten because he was the first man who had looked at her with that kind of admiration which she now met on every side. He was the young man who had received her in place of his uncle the Bishop in the Strasbourg Cathedral, when she was on her way to France from Vienna.

She had good reason not to forget this man, for she had discovered that he had written disparagingly of her mother in a letter from Vienna, whither he had gone soon after the occasion of his first meeting with Antoinette. She had heard no other than Madame du Barry reading it aloud. And for that, Antoinette had said, she would never forgive Louis, Prince de Rohan. All the same she could not resist his relative’s card parties. Moreover Madame de Guémenée was a friend of Gabrielle’s and that meant that the Queen must receive her and try to like her.

And so, looking round at her friends and seeing their happiness, she found new emotions being stirred within her. She found herself listening more eagerly to the fulsome compliments of the men about her; she found herself encouraging these compliments.

The Duc de Lauzun was particularly charming and he was known to be something of a hot-head. During those dangerous days he was often in the company of the Queen. With Madame de Polignac and her lover, the Queen and Lauzun would stroll in the gardens, and dance their minuets and gavottes on the grass before the Petit Trianon.

It was beginning to be asked: ‘Is the Duc de Lauzun the Queen’s lover?’

As for Lauzun he grew more and more certain of the Queen’s surrender, and he found it becoming increasingly difficult to remain in her company without attempting to make love to her.

He found her one day alone in her boudoir – that charmingly intimate chamber – where she often received her visitors and where she herself had commanded that ceremony be set aside.

‘Antoinette,’ said Lauzun, taking both her hands, ‘how long can we go on like this?’

She looked at him in astonishment, but they both knew the astonishment to be feigned.

‘I do not understand you,’ she said in a whisper.

He drew her to him and murmured: ‘Then you must … for it is more than I can humanly endure to go on like this … seeing you day after day … so close … so near to me … and never to kiss your lips … never to hold you … ’

‘I pray you stop,’ she cried in a panic.

But he would not stop. She had played the coquette so long, so often; she had played at taking a lover as she had played at being a mother to a motherless boy.

This was different. The play-acting had suddenly become a reality. There was no mistaking Lauzun’s meaning. He was suggesting that they should be lovers – even as Gabrielle and Vaudreuil were – even as Victoire Guémenée and her lover were.

She felt herself tremble. The blood rushed to her head and drained away again. She was almost fainting with horror.

This must never be.

What if she were to have a child – a child that all would know was not the King’s child.

She drew herself up to her full height. She suppressed her raging senses; she would not look into the fiercely demanding eyes of the Duc de Lauzun.

The game had gone too far.

‘Never, never, never,’ she said to herself. To him she said coldly, ‘Go away from here, Monsieur. You must never come here without my permission. You must never be with me alone…. ’

‘My dearest,’ began the Duke.

But the Queen turned away. She ran out of her boudoir and shut herself into her bedchamber.

She was trembling with fear and the knowledge that she had needed all her strength to tear herself away from temptation.


* * *

There were spies even in the ideal kingdom of the Petit Trianon.

Mercy was alarmed. He wrote in haste to Maria Theresa. It was no use remonstrating with Antoinette now. Remonstrances were useless. What had she said when the Empress had begged her to curb her extravagant love of jewels, having heard that she had just purchased a magnificent pair of diamond earrings? ‘So my earrings have travelled to Vienna?’

No! Letters were no use. But something drastic must be done to prevent the Queen’s rushing headlong into disaster.

The great trouble was the King’s disability, brooded the wise Maria Theresa.

She called her son to her.

‘Joseph,’ she said, ‘you must pay a visit to your sister. You must talk to her tactfully. Do not lecture, for if you do so you will make her angry and that will drive her mayhap to greater folly. Try to instil some sound sense in her. At the same time try to strengthen the alliance between our two countries.’

Joseph looked at his mother ironically.

‘You have left unsaid the most important part of my mission,’ he said.

She nodded.

‘I will speak to Louis,’ said Joseph, ‘and see if an end cannot be made to this sorry state of affairs.’