The Office of the Chamber Pot...

Louis was already adept with both longbow and crossbow. His younger brother Philip was still clumsy, but clearly delighted to hit target after target under his elder brother's guidance. In this age, the people who set up targets did not reward winners with dolls. This game could be called gambling in another guise. One small écu could be exchanged for ten long arrows and broadheads; hitting the bull's-eye ten times earned a gold louis. But these targets were even smaller than those used in knights' training. Even a well-trained longbowman might not hit them. Moreover, the last three parchment targets were not fixed to a wall but suspended from thin cords. Even the faintest breeze would set them swaying, making it difficult merely to strike the target face.

At first, the king and his younger brother played there with great enthusiasm. Before long, Princess Henrietta arrived as well. Rather than saying Mary had sent her, it was more accurate to say that she had finally used this as an excuse to escape an interminable Latin monologue. She too produced a small écu to exchange for arrows, but compared with properly trained Louis and the wildly spirited Mali Mancini, Her Highness's results were truly dismal. More precisely, the target owner complained without end, because he had no idea where the princess had shot all those arrows. His losses were becoming rather severe.

Princess Henrietta's expression turned genuinely bleak. At that moment, her maid Louise approached and said something to her. The princess took out another small écu, exchanged it for ten arrows, and handed them to Louise.

Louise truly was not the sort of girl who made a striking impression. Her features leaned toward masculine firmness, and the lines of her face were too severe for contemporary tastes. Even her hands and feet were not small or delicate enough. Yet it was precisely such fingers and palms that could hold a longbow or crossbow steady, ensuring that an arrow did not lose its force or accuracy in flight.

Without pausing, she shot ten times in succession. Every arrow struck the bull's-eye, including the three targets hanging from thin cords. Now it was the target owner's turn to be dejected. His earlier complaints had merely been an attempt to wring a little more reward from these noble guests, but now he would actually lose money. He cast a pleading look at the king. Louis knew what he was plotting, and fairly ruled that the target owner must give Princess Henrietta one gold louis according to their verbal agreement. He had no choice but to obey.

But after Bontemps, the king's first valet, said something to him, he became cheerful again.

"What did you say to him?" Princess Henrietta could not help asking. She knew it was somewhat improper, but she truly wanted to know whether His Majesty was willing to grant her some additional protection.

"I told him that he could hang up a banner, so that everyone would know the king, the king's brother, and the princess had all played his game here," Louis said gently. "Many people will be willing to try it."

"You are truly too kind," Henrietta said.

"It was only a small effort," Louis said. "To people like them, the little troubles we would never even notice may be a catastrophe in their lives."

Henrietta's face paled slightly. Louis immediately felt somewhat remorseful. Noble ladies like Princess Henrietta simply would never receive such an education. She might pity starving people without food or clothing, but that sentiment came from on high. She could never understand what it meant to put herself in another's place, or to exchange positions. She had been a princess from the moment of her birth and might become a queen in the future, or at the very least the wife of a prince or duke. Even though she had once nearly died because of straitened finances, she would remember only the humiliation she had suffered, rather than lowering herself afterward to keep her gaze level with those humble people.

"This is my fault," Louis said at once. "Dear Henrietta, I swear I did not mean to reproach anyone—neither you nor your maid. I simply did not wish to see anyone disappointed. Though he truly is a greedy fellow, what we ought to do is forgive."

"Yes," Princess Henrietta said somewhat reluctantly. "That is what the saints ask of us."

The king could see that she did not mean it, but he did not press her too harshly. There was no need. For Henrietta, the king felt only pity and respect; love was absolutely out of the question. Perhaps, to people of the seventeenth century, they were at exactly the right age to discuss marriage, but to Louis, it was practically a crime. When Romeo and Juliet fell in love, Juliet had at least been fourteen. On this matter, he wholly supported Anne, the Queen Mother, and Mazarin. The more demanding they were, the better. He could easily wait until he was twenty-two to marry.

Seeing this, Philip immediately stepped between Henrietta and his elder brother. By etiquette, Henrietta should walk behind him, thus placing distance between her and the king. But Mali Mancini then had to walk behind the princess's maid, which displeased her somewhat. Yet there was no changing that until she received a title or married a nobleman. The king had Bontemps instruct her to do something, and she immediately went off in high spirits.

While the king and Queen Mother were here, naturally no one would casually fling excrement into the streets. Yet the pavement still carried a faint, indescribable odor. As they passed through a small square, it grew stronger, the stench mixed with the reek of fish. It seemed that even though the bishop had forbidden fishmongers from selling fish today, he could not dispel the smell accumulated over the years. The mayor of Paris, who was also their guide today, was immediately put in an awkward position. Fortunately, at that moment, the Mass play offered to Anne, the Queen Mother, finally ended. The Queen Mother's maids gathered around her. If Louis had seen this a few months ago, he probably would not have understood what they were doing, but on the road from Versailles to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, he had seen such scenes many times.

Simply put, it was a crude open-air toilet. The maids spread their cloaks around the Queen Mother, while a maid specially assigned to the chamber pot brought one over for the Queen Mother to attend to her private needs. Originally, the chamber-pot attendant had been a privilege reserved for the king, but after a daughter of the Medici of Italy became queen, she wrested that right from her husband. Anne, the Queen Mother, could be said to have benefited from it.

King Louis naturally had his own chamber-pot attendant as well, but he rarely used him. No—if possible, he wished the position could be abolished. Whether while hunting, being watched by guards as he looked up at the sky and gave back to nature, or at a noisy ball or lavish banquet, with two people stationed beneath the cover of the tablecloth, one holding a chamber pot and the other a silk cloth, ready to serve him at any moment... no, he wanted none of it.

But the mayor of Paris did not see it that way. He eagerly introduced his nephew to the king—the young man was holding a chamber pot—and declared that he possessed the warmest, softest hands, and would absolutely not allow harm to come to the king's delicate skin.

Just as Louis was weighing his words, trying to ensure that he neither hurt this minister, who was clearly overzealous in his pursuit of power, nor suffered a crushing setback himself, a woman came rushing toward them like a madwoman. Only when alert guards and sentries stopped her did the king realize that she was the Duchess of Montpensier. At first, the king could not understand what she was shouting, but Mali Mancini swiftly returned to his side and nodded urgently at him.

"Prince of Condé has been assassinated!" she said.