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Chapter 33

Paris

July 1637


Soubise looked at the bride chosen by Anne. “You realize, young lady, that you are committing yourself to marriage to a grouchy old man?”

Käthe gripped her hands together firmly but raised her chin a little. “It should be a refreshing change from marriage to a petulant child.”

The groom chuckled. “You’ll do.”

The wedding ensued promptly at the nearest functioning Huguenot temple. Which was five leagues from Paris. Before King Gaston even knew that Katharina Juliana was in the country and most certainly before he had any opportunity to forbid the ceremony.

Soubise warned his new wife that there would probably be unfavorable repercussions.

“I expect to receive quite a lot of correspondence from my own family.”

He decided to minimize the immediate impact of potential repercussions as much as possible by honeymooning at an undisclosed location in the countryside.

Very undisclosed. “Where are we?” Käthe asked when they descended from the carriage.

“La Garnache. It’s one of Anne’s estates that has come down from aunt to niece, from aunt to niece again; she owns it independent of the duke or myself.”

She craned her neck upwards. “It appears to be well-fortified.”

“It is.”

She thought a minute. “Didn’t the king order all your family’s fortifications destroyed? Back . . . well, before La Rochelle. Then again after La Rochelle?”

“Back when we were in active revolt against the crown?”

She nodded.

“He did. The royal army took it in 1621 and, the next year, Louis ordered this, as well as Beauvoir sur Mer, up the coast—that’s also Anne’s—destroyed. It’s far easier to issue a royal order, though, than to get it carried out. That requires men and equipment. Procuring men and equipment requires money in the royal budget. In 1631, upon the advice of Richelieu, he ordered it razed again. The authorities made some efforts, but the government’s attention has moved to other crises, and many officials are slow to consider women to be as dangerous as men. In the past year, with everything that has been happening, Anne considered it a prudent investment to make some repairs.”

In Paris, Mademoiselle Anne didn’t wait for the honeymoon to be over, neither to extend hints of possible quid pro quo favors that the Soubise faction might offer to the court nor . . . 

La petite Marguerite might be fully persuaded that she was the legitimate daughter and heiress of Rohan. Her aunt (and, for that matter, her uncle) was by no means so certain that Henri’s wife had not taken any lovers until after the birth of her surviving daughter. Who was in Burgundy rather than here in France where she might have gathered her own partisans and sought to influence the mood at the royal court. How convenient of Henri to have summoned the girl away.

How extraordinarily annoying that the duchess was still running around France, intriguing on her husband’s behalf.

With her current lover.

Need they wait?

Before the abbreviated honeymoon was indeed over, Anne sent out delicate feelers to King Gaston. Mere wisps. Bare cobwebs of suggestions. Would he perchance be interested in declaring the purported Rohan heiress illegitimate and ineligible to inherit in return for Soubise’s throwing as much of the Rohan support as he could garner from among the Huguenot community to the king? Who could predict what might ensue from such sighing breaths of tentative rumor?

It was still all indefinite, of course, but even in the worst case, the half-whispered query would serve as an excellent distraction. A flaky monarch who was focused on the legitimacy of la petite Marguerite would probably not be concentrating upon whether it would be feasible for him to invalidate Soubise’s marriage.

Mademoiselle Anne, who had often found confidential informants useful, also used a couple of them to put into the French newspapers everything that any gossip had ever said about who was where when in the weeks that would have surrounded the conception of Henri de Rohan’s purported heiress Marguerite. Most of the extrapolations that opinion columnists derived from the statistics fell into the category of salacious.

As it happened, King Gaston chose to accept the fait accompli and recognize Soubise’s marriage. The refusal of his brother Louis, under Richelieu’s influence, to recognize his own marriage to the queen for so many years had been . . . far more than annoying to him.


Besançon

July 1637


When the newspapers reached Besançon, the little Rohanette daisy, for the first time, came to doubt her previously unshakable conviction of her own legitimacy.

“You must marry, soon.” When Henri de Rohan used that voice, it meant that he would not budge. “Not merely soon. Now. No more nonsense. No more delays.”

“Nobody will have me, now,” Marguerite retorted. “Not that I had lines and lines of acceptable suitors even before Tante did this. Not genuine ones. Even Eva’s brother preferred his morganatic Johanna to me. And now, Tante and Uncle Soubise are in France, snuggling up to King Gaston, and controlling what little money the family has left. You’re dead broke, we’re dead broke, except for what the grand duke pays you. I’m dead in the water. No dowry.”

“Not,” Rohan said, “entirely. I’ve been prudent enough to put some things aside, investing modestly through the grand duke’s bankers in the Low Countries and to some extent through the up-timers’ exchange. And I remember who it was who first suggested that I teach you to be Rohan for yourself. Even if he does not, as things eventuate, become Rohan for you, he is someone who will, I am confident, always provide you with staunch support.”

“Who?” Marguerite demanded. “Who?” She absolutely could not recall who made that suggestion, but it certainly had not been a Huguenot nobleman. And surely, surely, it was not Gerry Stone!

“Patience, child. I really must ask him, first.” Rohan fingered his goatee. “In the meantime . . . ” He smiled. “Would you like to become involved, in a small way at least, in gathering intelligence?”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes. How?” She wriggled in her chair.

“Let us compose a letter to M. de Chabot, to see what he has to say in the light of your aunt’s latest gambit. If he still presents himself as a serious suitor in his reply, it is possible that this is some feint, however hurtful to your feelings, and she has let him know that. If he shows signs of backing off, however . . . she may be serious.”

“It wouldn’t be news if he backs off,” Marguerite said. “Every suitor I’ve ever had has backed off.” She paused. “Except Horrid Hamilton, of course. I hope that’s not an omen.”

Her father reminded her that omens were a pagan superstition associated with the practice of astrology and thus to be eschewed by all good Christians, most especially those who adhered to Reformed faith.

When Chabot’s answer arrived, she thought it was delightful. He admitted that Mademoiselle de Rohan had subtly advised him that Marguerite might not be as advantageous a match as had originally been presented to him, but he also stated that he had, in the course of their correspondence, found her to be of such a lively mind and bright spirit that he would like to continue their association in spite of that.

“Isn’t that sweet of him?” Marguerite asked.

Rohan found it deeply disturbing.

* * *

Rohan leaned his arms on the balcony, watching a group of young people in the courtyard.

“Aren’t they a bit old to be playing with beanbags?” Carey asked.

“There’s no tennis court—the grand duke really ought to build one. They prefer the ‘frisbees’ that Gerry brought, but they sail too far, and the leather is too firm for them to be safe to use in a small courtyard surrounded by windows. Still, there is nothing wrong with keeping a bit of childhood in one’s later life, I suppose, as Dr. Seuss reminds us. Beanbags are at least, for the most part, harmless.”

Marguerite, too short to have much hope of intercepting a beanbag thrown overhand from one person to another in mid-flight, ducked under someone’s arm and snatched a bag just as it was about to arrive in his hand, tossing it into another boy’s face.

“I often thought,” Rohan said musingly, “until these last few years, I often thought, no matter what other marriage projects arose, that eventually, unless the crown interfered and prohibited it, I would marry her to one of her distant Rohan cousins from a cadet line of the family and continue Rohan in that manner. The Guémené line would have been best. It is a pity that Pierre had no sons, for they would have been of approximately the right age. Hercule’s son Louis, from his first marriage, married when Marguerite was barely two years old, but his surviving sons are about fifteen years younger than my daughter. Hercule’s sons from his second marriage are also much too young.”

He sighed. “Until this year, I had seen little of her since she was a small child. We were rarely in the same household. The military life is not conducive to what Madame Dunn refers to as ‘involved fatherhood.’ Yet, now that I have come to know her, I have grown to like her. Perhaps the members of their ‘Red Headed League’ are correct. Perhaps she can become Rohan for herself.” He sighed even more deeply.

Carey pursed her lips. “These newspaper reports . . . your sister . . . ”

Rohan continued watching the beanbag game.

“However that may be,” he finally commented, “it is possible that it is not the worst of fates if I do indeed have a small elephantbird, which no one can ever know, whatever Anne may hint. I will continue to teach Marguerite to be Rohan for herself.”

“Tancrède?”

“He is most certainly not my son. There is no way that I will allow him to supersede her rights.”

After a few minutes, he continued. “With the troubles in France, which will certainly bring renewed unrest to Lorraine, I anticipate that my service to Grand Duke Bernhard will involve me in battles again, possibly as soon as this autumn and very probably by next spring, even if none of them will be precisely the same battle in which I was killed in your universe.” He grimaced. “Every battle or skirmish carries its own risks. I may well die ‘on schedule’ and Marguerite still needs a husband: a Protestant husband.”


Paris

July 1637


The meeting was unsatisfactory, because there weren’t many solid facts to be obtained. None of them had much to contribute.

Sandrart finally said, “The duchess is furious with Mademoiselle Anne. Enraged. I can’t find out much more than that. Since her current pregnancy has advanced to the point that she cannot conveniently travel any longer and has moved in with her father, there’s not a lot to observe. I only know that she is infuriated by way of reports from Sully’s servants.”

“Is Candale with her?”

That was a factual question. Sandrart could answer it, but not with a simple affirmative or negative. “He hasn’t returned to his regiment. He is not moving around the countryside any longer, as far as I have been able to determine.”

Gage and Gardiner took that as a sufficient answer.

Finally Gage contributed, “There have been some interesting theological discussions pertaining to . . . ”

Gardiner shook his head. “Relevant facts, please. Not random facts.”

“Do you have any?”

“Everyone’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hoping it will be someone else’s shoe.”

* * *

Then Sully died.


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