Marie-Josèphe told the lie without a second thought because Mlle d’Armagnac made her angry, because her own family’s slaves had never been whipped, and because Odelette would never be whipped if Marie-Josèphe had anything to say about it. Nor would she be bled.
“Please, no, Mademoiselle, this is —” Marie-Josèphe could not bring herself to tell the King’s niece that Odelette always bled too heavily for her health. “It’s an old complaint.”
“Ah,” said Lotte, “it’s like that, is it?”
“She’ll be better this evening or tomorrow. I’ll tend to her as soon as you’re dressed.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Lotte said, “you’ll attend me, and go to the picnic.”
“But —”
“Shh!” Lotte called for a servant to take broth and warm flannel to Odelette.
“And to remind my brother of the luncheon, if you please, Mademoiselle. His work engrosses him so.”
“If we cannot whip the slave for dereliction, perhaps we can whip the brother,” Mlle d’Armagnac said, and all the ladies giggled at her daring wit.
“Of course, fetch Father de la Croix.” To Marie-Josèphe she said, “You both must see the Menagerie.”
“Mademoiselle, I haven’t anything to wear.”
Lotte laughed, threw open her cupboard, pulled out dresses, and chose a beautiful brocade. Marie-Josèphe might have been in a whirlwind for all the power she had: Lotte’s other ladies stripped her to her shift and stays and dressed her in the new gown, leaving her only a moment to blush furiously, fearing they might notice the rolled-up towel. She wished she had risked taking it off, for as yet it had been of no use.
“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.
oOo
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.”