Chapter 2: février 1688, Versailles

“Pardon monsieur,” came a feminine voice from behind me as I stood looking down upon the fountain and in the distance an artificial lake, really the extension of a canal, completely covered in winter’s white blanket, “But are you Christian?”

Without bothering to look, I waved my hand as if shooing away a fly and replied in the aloof manner that I cultivated, “It seems to me that one’s religious propensity is a rather personal, and potentially fatal question, Mademoiselle.”

Only then did I turn my head over my shoulder, to find a young woman standing there of such beauty that she almost took my breath away, her perfectly oval face revealing her embarrassment by blushing a furious red that extended to her décolletage.

Her eyes were a rare dark blue, very intense and intelligent. I imagined that beneath the fashionable powdered wig that stood atop her head her own hair would be of a golden straw color. Ah yes! There was an undisciplined wisp of flaxen hair trying to escape behind her ear. Descended, no doubt, of the Norsemen who ruled long ago in Normandy.

Her lips were reddened, of course, and her eyebrows were colored as well to frame her face. She had a delicate chin and high cheekbones, again betraying her Viking ancestry. She was, at least to my eyes, staggeringly beautiful.

To my great fortune the fashions of the time dictated that her neck down to the top of her full bosom was exposed. And her deep blush extended to the entire area of her body that was open to my vision. Jesus wept.

Suddenly, again in the present time, I could only wonder: how could it be that a woman whose body was covered by a dress that exposed so little flesh — the top of her full bosom, her neck, her throat, her hands, her wrists — could seem so much more erotic than the virtually nude posturing of the slatterns who constitute what passes for modern eroticism?

Knowing there was no rational answer to my question, my mind retreated again to the past.

I smiled at her. First because her beauty was naturally pleasing and second because her appearance indicated that she was a person of importance, not the maid or serving wench I had first taken her for.

Her dress was made of red silk, with a matching jacket of sorts split in the middle, worn over her skirt. If there were any doubts of her wealth and status, the amount of gold brocade on the jacket and the lace adorning her sleeves would have dispelled the question.

“But please, je m’excuse for my rudeness,” I said with a bow, “I am not a Christian, although I am nominally a Catholic. I am a rationalist by nature, an astronomer and astrologer as well as a Court physician by employment. I advise l’Roi, the King, regarding the stars, which explains why I am tolerated here at Versailles and haven’t, thus far, been expelled from the country like a Huguenot heretic.” I added a slight smile to punctuate my answer and show that I regarded the issue of possibly being expelled from France with some humor.

She looked at me for a brief moment with her intense gaze as if she were seeking access into my innermost soul. Perhaps she thought I was a madman. Or maybe I WAS a secret Huguenot. No, I hoped, she is merely shy and avoids offending me, even though I was a simple servant of sorts, far beneath her social station.

I didn’t recognize her, something that suggested that she was newly arrived at the Court.

“I was told that your NAME was ‘Christian’, monsieur,” she paused and looked over her delicate and exquisite shoulder and tipped her head in the direction of the Duchess d’M... “and that you could instruct me in the ways of Versailles better than any other man at the court!”

Her sincerity spoke to a soft place in my heart and I couldn’t allow the jape to go forward.

The Duchess d’M ... was one of the ‘noble’ ladies who attended (and some might say ‘guarded’) the rather dubious virtue of the one of the King’s younger mistresses. In this case, neither the mistress nor the Duchess suffered from a surfeit of virtue, so it was something of a lost cause from its genesis.