To Dance with Kings: A Novel - Softcover

Laker, Rosalind

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307352552 ISBN 13: 9780307352552

Verlag: Crown, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

An epic generational tale of loves lost, promises kept, dreams broken, and monarchies shattered, To Dance with Kings is a story of passion and privilege, humble beginnings and limitless ambition.

On a May morning in 1664, in the small village of Versailles, as hundreds of young aristocrats are coming to pay court to King Louis XIV, a peasant fan-maker gives birth to her first and only child, Marguerite. Determined to give her daughter a better life than the one she herself has lived, the young mother vows to break the newborn’s bonds of poverty and ensure that she fulfills her destiny—to dance with kings. Purely by chance, a drunken nobleman witnesses the birth and makes a reckless promise to return for Marguerite in seventeen years. With those fateful words, events are set into motion that will span three monarchies, affecting the lives of four generations of women.

Marguerite becomes part of the royal court of the Sun King, but her fairy-tale existence is torn out from under her by a change of political winds. Jasmin, Marguerite’s daughter, is born to the life of privilege her grandmother dreamed of, but tempts fate by daring to catch the eye of the king. Violette, Marguerite’s granddaughter, is drawn to the nefarious side of life among the nobles at Versailles. And Rose, Violette’s daughter, becomes a lady-in-waiting and confidante to Marie Antoinette. Through Rose, a love lost generations before will come full circle, even as the ground beneath Versailles begins to rumble with the chaos of the coming revolution.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rosalind Laker is the author of many novels, including The Venetian Mask and The Golden Tulip. She lives in England.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

With the crimson, emerald, and purple plumes of their hats streaming out behind them, four young men rode at speed into the village of Versailles one May morning in 1664, scattering squawking geese in their path.

"We should have been here hours ago," Augustin Roussier yelled to his companions, making his horse rear as they halted to view the busy scene. "All the best lodgings will have been taken by the look of it!"

The rutted streets were crammed with elegant traffic more at home in Paris, from which most of them had come, than in these countrified surroundings. The sun glinted on gilded coachwork and harness, the warm air hazy with dust thrown up by wheels and hooves. Six hundred of the nobility had been invited to the first grandfete ever to be held at the nearby hunting lodge, which was a small place with only accommodation enough for a few of the king's special guests to stay.

"Is it any use trying the inns to see if there's a room left?" asked one of his companions as they moved their tired horses forward at a more restful pace. "There are three hostelries, I believe."

"I'd say we've lost that chance, Leon. See! Even those miserable hovels have been taken." Augustin flicked his gloved hand toward some old stone houses they were passing. Well-dressed arrivals were stepping fastidiously inside, never having set foot in such humble places before, their servants carrying in their boxes and baggage after them. "Those we left behind us on the road will be lucky to get a stable at this rate."

He was the natural leader of their high-spirited group. They had become friends during their initial year's service with the First Company of the King's Musketeers, a duty expected of every young courtier who wished for promotion at Court. Not yet twenty, born of Huguenot stock and of a father with powerful financial interests, Augustin was tall with a straight bearing and a good physique, his looks dashing and debonair.

Like most youths of his age, he scorned the fashionable full-bottomed periwig and wore his own hair, which was thick, curly, and long enough to rest on his broad shoulders in the modish style. Its luxuriant growth, black shot with blueish lights, framed features hardening into the square jaw and prominent nose of his forebears. Beneath thick brows the narrow eyes were a curiously brilliant green and there was a lusty eagerness in the lines of the wide mouth. As always when he was with these particular friends, Leon Postel, Francois Esconde, and Jacques de Fresnay, any excuse for a prank or horseplay was seized on with relish. They had enlivened the ride from Paris with a number of diversions, such as racing each other dangerously, swerving in front of coach horses, and flirting with pretty women riding together in the lumbering equipages.

"At least let us stop for a swig of wine first." Francois eased a gloved finger around the inside of his lace-trimmed neck band, his freckled face gleaming with beads of sweat.

"Agreed!" Jacques, hawk-faced and fair-haired, made exaggerated gasping sounds. "I'm parched from the dust of the ride. There's a wineshop ahead."

"We can't afford to stop yet." Augustin twisted in his saddle to signal his own servant forward from the retinue of valets who had now caught up in the rear, bringing with them the extra horses with saddle hampers and chests of clothes. "Get a few bottles of the best wine this place can provide," he instructed, "and follow me."

The wine, coarse and rough though it was, proved welcome when the search for accommodation brought no result. While the servants did the knocking on doors, Augustin and his companions tossed it back from their silver traveling cups. Its potency took full effect as the rising heat of noon combined with their deep thirst, Leon's swarthy complexion almost reaching the same hue as the wine itself. All four of them became more boisterous and everything seemed excruciatingly funny to them. There was plenty to amuse as women accidentally set satin-shod feet into cow dung, sometimes causing a loss of balance amid squeals of temper and dismay, and fellow gallants, who were no more used to inconveniences than they were themselves, sprang off their horses to kick and cuff their unfortunate servants for failing to get a room for them in the last of the tolerable property.

The local priest had opened his house for some of the women out of sympathy for their plight, but he ran like a schoolboy, his black robes flapping, to lock the doors of the twelfth-century church before anyone thought to bed down there. He knew as well as anybody that there would inevitably be drunkenness and every other kind of indulgence before the royal fete was at an end. Augustin, laughing, wheeled his black horse about with a sheen of flanks to the church steps and leaned from the saddle to offer him a cup of wine. It was refused with uplifted white palms before the priest went scurrying back to his house.

Gradually the search spread from the center of the village to the outskirts. Versailles, situated as it was on the main road between Normandy and Paris, was better able to house travelers than the neighboring hamlets, but already some people had set off for Clagny and Saint-Cyr and Trianon in the hope of snatching up the best accommodation there, not knowing that they could not expect even a moderation of comfort in those poverty-stricken hamlets.

Augustin's servant, dodging in front of one of these departing coaches as he returned from a row of mean-looking stone cottages, gave his information breathlessly. "All rooms have been claimed, except in the end one where the housewife is in labor and nobody is being accommodated."

Augustin raised an eyebrow incredulously. "Do you mean that space has been found at last and admittance refused?"

"The woman is almost at birthing point--"

"Out of my way!" Augustin swung himself down from the saddle and turned to the other three with a sweep of his arm. "Come along, my friends! If this were a royal birth, it would be our noble right to witness the delivery! A peasant woman has no cause to keep us out!"

He made for the cottage. Whooping and shouting as if going into battle, the trio dismounted and rushed after him. The door was on the latch and he flung it wide as he entered, those in his wake following close behind, the heels of their riding boots ringing on the flagstones. They found themselves in the single whitewashed room that served all purposes. Sparsely furnished with a rough-hewn table, a dresser, and benches, it was stiflingly hot, the windows tightly shut. A midwife swung around from a bed in the far corner, her sleeves rolled up above her elbow, her apron soiled and her sweaty red face a mask of outrage at this intrusion. Deftly she flicked a corner of the sheet over the bare updrawn legs of the groaning woman she was tending before taking up a belligerent stance with feet apart and arms akimbo.

"Messieurs! You must leave this instant! Madame Dremont is unable to wait on anyone and there is no place for you here."

A scream of torment compelled her to turn back to her charge. The woman in labor, regaining her breath, raised her head weakly from the pillow. "Who has come?"

The midwife reached out to pull the ragged bed-curtain across and block the view, but her action came too late. Jeanne Dremont's pain-filled eyes became drenched with horror as she saw the four youths advancing toward her. She began to shriek hysterically, releasing the labor rope strung across the bed to clutch frantically at the midwife's hand.

"Make them go away! Have I not endured enough this day?"

Augustin thrust the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Crown
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0307352552
• ISBN 13: 9780307352552
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 624
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland