Gates of Gold

The Letter

By late November, snow blankets the grounds of Versailles in wet, heavy clumps. It’s the first snow Cécile has seen since arriving three months earlier. She bundles into her wool cape and leads the dogs outside before the sun can rise too high and melt it all away.

They tiptoe through the snow at first, lifting their paws gingerly and flattening their ears. They’re as reluctant to muss their elaborately curled fur as court ladies are to smudge their rouge in a snowball fight, a fashion Madame has always refused to indulge. She jokes that the women end up looking like startled white rabbits. Stabdille is the first to lower his nose and taste the snow, then rears onto his hind legs, tugging hard at his lead. “Go ahead,” Cécile tells them, urging the pack on. “A little snow won’t hurt you.”

The air smells sweet and damp. Once Stabdille gives in, the others follow, bounding across the slick paths. They chase each other around bare groves of trees and past frost-rimmed fountains and statues wearing snow like powdered wigs. Twice, Cécile slips and tumbles into the drifts herself. The dogs pile onto her skirts to cover her face with cold, wet kisses. She can’t help laughing out loud, cheeks stinging, before trudging the whole damp, joyful pack back inside as evening falls.

That night, with Madame and Françoise away, two soft scratches sound at the door. Cécile pushes the dogs aside and opens it to find Philippe holding a letter. She tells him Madame isn’t in, but will return soon. He tells her the letter is for her, and flinches. “I’m afraid the news isn’t good.” She asks how he knows, snatching it from his hand.

Madame complains often enough about her own mail being opened and read before it reaches her. But Cécile can’t imagine why anyone would bother with a letter as humble as hers. She thinks that unless the whole court has decided to suspect her of being a spy, or of plotting to poison someone, which strikes her as ridiculous. She asks whether he was asked to read it. Philippe shakes his head. He says he wasn’t, but he was told something he won’t repeat. He stops, looks at her, and tilts his head. “I’m sorry, Cécile.”

She closes the door and tears open the seal, already broken and poorly refastened. The letter isn’t from Papa, as she’d hoped, but from the priest at her village church. Papa has died of smallpox, it says. He received his last rites before his soul went to God. He was buried a week ago in the cemetery at Saint Augustine’s. May God be with her.

Cécile reads the words over and over, willing them to rearrange themselves into something bearable. But they only drive deeper, like a sword. She has heard of a smallpox outbreak sweeping through Paris. She never imagined it would reach the countryside so fast. Papa’s cough, she realizes now, must have left him too weak to fight it off.

Grief and regret consume her. She imagines his final hours and aches to know whether anyone sat with him, whether he suffered, whether he was alone. She thinks that if only she had been there with broth and chamomile tea, she might have nursed him back to health, finally asked him everything she never got to ask, and thanked him properly for teaching her to read and write. The loss tears open the old wound of Maman’s death. Memories of keeping vigil at her bedside rush back like embers stirred to flame, until Cécile feels herself pitched over the edge of a cliff, tumbling into darkness.

Philippe scratches at the door again, calling her name softly. She begs him to go away. He promises to come back tomorrow, and his footsteps fade down the hall.

She barely composes herself before Madame and Françoise’s heels come clicking back down the corridor. They’re still deep in one of Madame’s favorite laments, something about refusing to be watched like a prisoner over every meal when whether she lives or dies is God’s will regardless. Cécile gulps a breath, tucks the letter beneath a cushion, and busies herself brushing Stabdille’s coat. The other dogs scamper around her, licking her face and hands as though they can tell something is wrong.

At dinner she can’t touch a bite, not even the pheasant, salmon, and caramel peaches sent down from the king’s own kitchens. Her appetite is gone, as surely as Papa. Françoise notices her reddened eyes and, gently, tells her she is free to go. Cécile can’t lift her gaze or make herself move.

Madame asks if something is the matter. Reluctantly, Cécile reaches beneath the cushion and holds up the crumpled letter. Madame reads it, her ice-blue eyes filling with tears, and passes it to Françoise before opening her arms. Cécile finally lets herself cry.