Chapter 7: The Cracks in the Queen
The days that followed were a blur of milky hours and broken nights, a continuous cycle that erased the boundaries between dawn and dusk. Sabine moved through the rooms of their private apartment in a state of suspended animation, her body a vessel of unfamiliar functions. Her world had narrowed to the square of light from the window, the weight of her daughter in her arms, the burning ache in her lower back that never fully subsided.
She was careful, so careful, to present a composed face to Louis. When he returned from the stifling air of the council chambers, she would be in her chair by the fire, Marie-Thérèse dozing against her shoulder, a book open on her lap. She would smile, ask about his day, listen to his frustrations with the Parlement or his plans for the canal at Sceaux. She performed the stillness he needed, the island of calm.
But the stillness was a lie.
At night, after he had fallen asleep—a deep, exhausted sleep that came quickly to him now—the cracks would show. The silence would swell until it was a physical pressure against her eardrums. Then the memories would come, not as clear pictures, but as sensations: the scent of turned earth in a rainstorm, the feeling of a small, trusting hand in hers, the devastating emptiness of a cradle stripped bare. Grief, she was learning, was not a linear path. It was a dormant seed that childbirth had watered anew. The love she felt for Marie-Thérèse was so vast it terrified her, a shimmering, fragile palace built on the same ground where a different one had collapsed.
One afternoon, the sun was a pale, cold coin behind the clouds, casting the room in a dull silver light. Marie-Thérèse was feeding, her tiny fingers splayed against Sabine’s skin. The child’s contentment was absolute, a soft, rhythmic pull that was usually a quiet comfort. But today, it felt like a tether to a cliff edge. The tiredness was a leaden weight in her bones. Her eyes were grainy, her head throbbed with a dull persistence. She looked down at the dark hair on her daughter’s head, so like her own, and a wave of pure, unadulterated fear crashed over her. What if she failed? What if this happiness, too, was borrowed? What if the very force of her love was a curse?
A sob escaped her, raw and sudden. Then another. She tried to stifle them, biting her lip until she tasted copper, but they came in silent, wrenching heaves that shook her entire frame. Tears fell hot and fast onto the baby’s wrapped feet. She cried for the child she’d lost, for the husband whose face was becoming blurry in her memory, for the terrifying responsibility of this new life, for the sheer, physical exhaustion of being split open and remade.
She didn’t hear the door open.
Louis had left the council early, a headache brewing behind his eyes from debating tariffs on Portuguese wine. He’d wanted the quiet of their rooms, the sight of her by the fire, the simple domesticity that was his only real solace. He pushed the door closed softly behind him, already pulling at his cravat.
The scene stopped him cold.
Sabine was curled in the wide chair, her body bowed over their daughter. Her shoulders trembled. The only sounds were the faint crackle of the fire and the wet, ragged hitch of her breath. A discarded linen lay crumpled on the floor by her feet. Sunlight glinted on the track of a tear on her cheek.
For a moment, he was paralyzed. He’d seen her in pain, in anger, in the brutal, magnificent struggle of birth. He’d never seen this quiet, absolute shattering. His boots were soundless on the thick carpet as he crossed the room. He stepped on the linen, the crunch of starched fabric the only announcement of his presence.
She didn’t look up. She was lost in it.
He knelt before her, his fine leather boots sinking into the pile. Gently, so gently, he put his hands on her shoulders. She flinched, her eyes flying open, wide with shock and shame. Her face was a mess of tears and stray strands of hair.
“Oh, Cricket,” he breathed, the old nickname falling from his lips unbidden, a relic from a simpler time in her garden. “How long have you been breaking alone, my love?”
The question, so soft, so devoid of any accusation, undid her completely. A wounded sound tore from her throat. She leaned into his hands, her forehead coming to rest against his. The baby, dislodged, whimpered softly, but Sabine barely registered it. Louis shifted, not letting go, and scooped them both into his arms. He rose, cradling her and the child against his chest, and sat in the chair, settling her in his lap.
He didn’t tell her not to cry. He didn’t offer empty platitudes. He just held her, one hand spread across her back, the other supporting the baby between them. Her tears soaked into the silk of his waistcoat. Milk stained the fine embroidery. He didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m so tired,” she finally choked out, the words muffled against his shoulder. “And I’m so scared. All the time. It’s like a noise in my head.”
He kissed her temple, his lips lingering on her damp skin. “I know.”
“You don’t,” she whispered, but there was no bite to it, only despair.
“I do,” he insisted, his voice low and rough. “Every morning when I wake and you’re both here, breathing, whole… I feel like I’ve stolen something. That a reckoning is coming to take it back. That my joy is too large, and the gods will notice and snatch it away.” He let out a long, slow breath. “I rule a country by pretending I am not afraid. I stand before thousands and speak as if doubt is a foreign country. But here, with you… I am only a man waiting for the axe to fall.”
She drew back slightly, looking at him. His eyes were dark, earnest, stripped of all kingly veneer. He was telling the truth.
“I dream of the other one,” she admitted, the confession a knife twisted in her gut. “The midwife taking her away. I dream she never comes back. I wake up and my arms are empty. Then I feel her beside me and I… I almost hate her for a second, for not being the first. And then I hate myself.” The ugliness of it hung in the air.
Louis’s hand moved slowly up and down her spine. “The heart doesn’t keep a tidy ledger, Sabine. It just feels. All of it. At once.”
She nodded, fresh tears leaking silently. Marie-Thérèse, warm and milky between them, sighed in her sleep.
“You hide it so well,” he murmured.
“You have the weight of France on you. I didn’t want to add my handful of straw.”
He laughed then, a soft, choked sound. “Your handful of straw is the only thing that makes the weight bearable.” He shifted, wiping a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “From now on, no more hiding. If you’re breaking, break where I can see you. Where I can hold the pieces together.”
“They’re sharp. They’ll cut you.”
“Let them.”
He held her until her breathing evened out, until the storm of tears passed and left her hollowed and quiet. The room grew darker, the silver light deepening to twilight blue.
“I need to put her down,” Sabine whispered, her voice hoarse.
Together, they stood. He took the baby, his large hands impossibly gentle, and laid her in the carved cradle by the bed. Sabine watched, her arms feeling cold and useless. When he turned back to her, he didn’t lead her to the bed. Instead, he guided her to the window.
Outside, the world was painted in shades of grey and indigo. The geometric lines of the palace gardens were softened by the dusk. And there, in the middle of the ordered perfection, was her rebellion: the half-finished outdoor ballroom. It was a wild, dark shape against the neat parterres, the skeletal arches of climbing roses like black lace, the paths mere suggestions in the fading light. It was chaos, frozen in time.
“Look,” he said, his chin resting on her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her waist from behind. “Your chaos. Waiting for you.”
“It’s a mess,” she said, her voice flat.
“It’s potential.” He squeezed her. “You told me once that a garden isn’t afraid to look dead in winter. That it’s just gathering strength underground.” He turned her gently to face him. “So are you. You’re in your winter. Gather strength. I’ll keep the world from your door.”
She looked up at him, at the lines of fatigue around his eyes, at the unwavering certainty in his gaze. He meant it. He would try.
“I don’t know how to be a queen,” she admitted, the fear laid bare.
“And I,” he said, a faint smile touching his lips, “am exhausted from being a king all day. So for tonight, let’s just be Louis and Sabine. The two people in this palace who are desperately afraid of breaking the thing they love most.”
He called for a maid, instructing her to sit with the sleeping princess. He ordered a simple meal, broth and bread, and when it came, he fed her himself, spoonful by spoonful, when her hands shook too much to hold it. He helped her wash, his touch clinical and tender, and dressed her in a soft, clean nightdress. He did not make it an act of passion, but one of repair.
Later, in the vast bed, with the baby sleeping soundly in her cradle an arm’s reach away, he pulled her against him, her back to his chest. His body was a solid wall of warmth at her back.
“Sleep, Cricket,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m here. I’m watching.”
And for the first time since Marie-Thérèse was born, Sabine closed her eyes and did not fight the darkness. She let it pull her under, knowing that for this night, at least, she would not drown in it alone. His breath was steady on her neck, a silent counter-rhythm to her own, an anchor in the deep, dark sea.
His breath was steady on her neck, a silent counter-rhythm to her own, an anchor in the deep, dark sea. That night was a turning point, not because the fear vanished, but because it was no longer a secret she carried alone. The days that followed took on a new, deliberate rhythm. He began returning from his meetings earlier, shaving hours from his official day with a quiet, ruthless efficiency that sent ministers scattering. His presence became a fact of the room, like the persistent scent of sandalwood from the logs he now insisted on splitting himself each morning by the fireplace, a strangely physical task that seemed to calm him.
“The axe is more honest than a memorandum,” he’d grunt, wiping sweat from his brow before coming to kiss her forehead, his skin smelling of cold air and honest labor.
One such afternoon, a week later, he came in shaking rain from his cloak. Sabine was pacing, a drowsy Marie-Thérèse fussing lightly against her shoulder. The grey sky pressed against the windows, a mirror to the restless energy coursing through her. She felt caged by the velvet drapes and polished floors, her body itching for distance, for air that didn’t smell of her own confinement.
“I can’t stay in this room another hour,” she said, her voice tight. “I feel like the walls are breathing in with me.”
Louis hung his cloak, his eyes thoughtful. He watched her jostle the baby, a slow smile touching his lips. “Then we go out.”
“In this? She’s too new, the air is damp—”
“We wrap her to you. Like the peasant women do in the markets. Close to your heart, hidden from the wind.” He was already moving toward the chest where her simpler clothes were kept, digging past silks until he found a long, sturdy length of linen she used as a scarf. “It’s just to the orangery. The paths are covered. No one will be there.”
The simplicity of the plan disarmed her. It wasn’t a royal procession. It was an escape. Her hands trembled slightly as she helped him fashion the sling, looping and tying the fabric until it formed a secure cocoon against her chest. She settled Marie-Thérèse into it, the baby’s warmth immediately seeping through her layers. She pulled the outer fold of linen up and over the baby’s head, creating a deep hood that shielded the tiny face completely from view. The weight was perfect, a grounded, living pressure.
“See?” Louis murmured, his fingers brushing the wrappings. “A fortress.”
They slipped through a servants’ door, Louis guiding her with a hand at the small of her back. The corridors here were plain, smelling of damp stone and haste. The reality of the palace beyond their sanctuary was a shock of noise and echoing footsteps. Sabine flinched at a sudden clatter of pewter from a nearby kitchen, pulling the wrap closer.
“Just to the end of this hall,” Louis whispered, his mouth close to her ear. His posture had changed; he was taller, his gaze sweeping ahead, a king clearing a path in a space where no one expected to see him.
A young maid, carrying a towering pile of bed linens, rounded a corner and almost collided with them. Her eyes went wide, darting from the king’s face to the strange, bundled shape against Sabine’s chest. She froze, curtsying so low the linens teetered.
Louis didn’t break stride. “Watch your step,” he said, his voice devoid of its usual public grandeur, just flat and factual. The maid scurried past, her confusion palpable.
They reached a heavy, unadorned door. Louis pushed it open, and the wet, green scent of growing things washed over them. The orangery was vast, a cathedral of glass and desperate, expensive life. Lemon and orange trees in giant tubs stood in military rows, their leaves a defiant, waxy green against the gloom outside. The air was thick and humid, a shock after the dry palace. It was utterly, blessedly empty.
Sabine’s shoulders slumped in relief. She walked slowly down the central aisle, her hand coming up to cradle the curve of the baby’s hidden form through the linen. The only sounds were the soft tap of rain on the glass roof, the rustle of their own footsteps on the gravel path, and the quiet, snuffling breath of her daughter. Louis fell into step beside her, his hands clasped behind his back.
“They’re miserable, you know,” Sabine said after a long silence, nodding toward the potted trees.
“The gardeners report they are thriving,” Louis said, frowning at a particularly leafy specimen.
“They’re surviving. Not thriving. Their roots are bound in a prison. They dream of different soil.” She stopped, looking down at the hidden baby. “She’s sleeping. The walking soothed her.”
“It soothed you,” he observed. He reached out, not for the baby, but to tuck a stray strand of hair behind Sabine’s ear. His touch was warm. “You stood straighter the moment we entered.”
They walked further, the silence comfortable now. The tension bled from Sabine’s jaw. Here, under the glass with the smell of wet earth and citrus, with her child a secret weight against her ribs, she could almost imagine herself separate from the gilded machine of Versailles. She was just a woman in a garden. He was just a man beside her.
“I want to show you something,” he said, veering toward a side door she’d never used. It led out to a covered walkway that snaked behind the main hall, sheltered from the drizzle. At its end was a raw, mud-churned gap in the hedges—the beginning of her outdoor ballroom site. Work had clearly halted for the winter. The half-built arches were naked stone, the paths incomplete ribbons of gravel swallowed by weeds.
He led her to the edge of the cover, where the open sky began. “Look,” he said.
From here, the vista of her unfinished work was clear. The chaotic, frozen design was a stark, black scar against the sleeping formal gardens. In the rain, it looked less like a ruin and more like a promise, the skeletons of her climbing roses clutching the arches like determined hands.
“When the sun returns,” he said quietly, “this will be your first project. Not the gardeners. You. You’ll come here with her, if you like. We’ll have a tent pitched. You can direct the men, get your hands dirty.” He glanced at her. “No one will comment. I’ll make sure of it.”
The offer was so vast, so understanding of the core of her that had been lying dormant, that it stole her breath. It wasn’t permission. It was a mandate for her own restoration. She looked from the wild, sleeping chaos of her garden to the hidden, sleeping chaos of her child. A connection sparked, fierce and bright.
“She’s like this,” Sabine said, her voice thick. She didn’t gesture to the garden, but to the wrap. “All potential. All unseen design. We just… provide the structure. The support. And then we wait to see what grows.”
Louis’s hand found hers, their fingers lacing together tightly. They stood watching the rain patter on the brown earth, on the stone, on the sleeping, tangled roots. The baby shifted, a tiny stir against Sabine’s heart, a secret known only to her body. Out here, at the edge of the tame world, with the wild one waiting, the fear didn’t feel like drowning. It felt like a necessary nutrient, dark and rich, for something that had yet to bloom.
“Let’s go back in,” she whispered finally, the cold beginning to seep through her shoes. “She’s getting heavy.”
He nodded, but his eyes lingered on the mud-churned ground, on the defiant arches. “We’ll build it,” he said, as if making a vow to the land itself. Then he turned, guiding her back toward the sterile warmth of the orangery, his shoulder brushing hers, a steady point of contact all the way to the door.
Back in their chamber, with the baby unwrapped and nursing contentedly by the fire, Sabine felt different. The walls felt less like a cage. They felt like the linen wrap: a temporary shelter, a thing she could one day step out of. She looked across the room at Louis, who was already scratching notes about drainage for the site on a scrap of paper, his brow furrowed in thought. He felt her gaze and looked up.
“Thank you,” she said. It was a small word for the enormity of what he’d given her.
He just shook his head once, a quick, dismissive motion. “It’s just a walk, Cricket.”
But it wasn’t. It was a reconnaissance of a future she had feared was lost. The garden was still there. And so was she. The silent, hidden weight against her chest that afternoon had been more than her daughter. It had been her own burgeoning self, tentatively unfurling, still tucked away safe from prying eyes, but unmistakably present, a warm and breathing proof of life continuing. She leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes, no longer seeing the dark behind her lids, but the intricate, hopeful pattern of roots and stone and rain.
She opened her eyes to the soft, snuffling sounds of Marie-Thérèse finishing, the baby’s mouth going slack against her skin. Sabine adjusted her shift, her movements slow with a deep, bodily fatigue. The fire popped, sending a shower of orange sparks up the chimney.
The door to the bedchamber opened and closed with a quiet click. Louis crossed the room, his footsteps muffled by the rug. He didn’t speak. He simply sat directly beside her on the wide chair, his thigh warm against hers. He waited, watching her face.
“She’s done,” Sabine whispered, her voice raspy.
With infinite care, she passed the sleepy, warm bundle into his waiting hands. He cradled Marie-Thérèse, his large palms effortlessly supporting her head and bottom, and drew her close. He settled her against his chest, just above his heart, where the fine silk of his waistcoat was already rumpled. He leaned back, a sigh escaping him that seemed to come from his very bones.
For a moment, there was only the fire and their breathing. Then Marie-Thérèse made a tiny, hiccupping sound—a soft, startled hup that made Sabine’s breath catch. The baby’s face, nestled in the hollow of her father’s neck, relaxed completely. A fleeting, gummy smile touched her lips, a mere ghost of a curve that appeared and vanished in an instant.
“She knows your heart,” Sabine said, the words feeling torn from a deep, sacred place inside her.
Louis’s throat worked. He looked down at the dark hair on his daughter’s head, at the impossible smallness of her ear against the pounding rhythm of his life’s blood. “It’s the only part of me that’s entirely my own,” he murmured. “The rest belongs to them. To France.” He glanced at Sabine, his eyes gleaming in the low light. “But this beat? This is for you two.”
He sat like that for a long time, until the baby’s breathing deepened into the steady pattern of true sleep. Sabine watched them, the fierce knot of fear in her stomach loosening just a fraction. Here was a man who commanded armies, who broke rebellions with a signature, whose every word was dissected for meaning, sitting utterly transfixed by the weight of seven pounds of sleeping child.
“I should ring for her nurse,” Sabine said, not moving.
“In a minute.”
He didn’t relinquish his hold. He began to hum, something low and tuneless, more vibration than melody. It was a sound Sabine had never heard from him. It wasn’t court music. It was the sound of a man trying to remember a lullaby from a childhood he never really had. The simple, off-key noise was more intimate than any love speech he’d ever uttered.
Finally, he stood, moving with a predator’s grace so as not to jostle her. He laid Marie-Thérèse in her cradle, his hand resting on her back for a moment longer than necessary. He turned back to Sabine, studying her in the firelight. The shadows highlighted the hollows under her eyes, the new sharpness of her cheekbones.
“You look pale.”
“I am pale,” she said, attempting a smile. “It’s February. Everyone is pale.”
“You know what I mean.” He extended a hand. “Come to bed. Not to sleep. Just to lie down. The world can wait outside the door for one more hour.”
She let him pull her up. Her body felt strangely light, empty. He led her to the bed, not the vast formal one, but the smaller daybed he’d had moved nearer the fire. He lay down first, his back against the piled cushions, and opened his arms. She curled into him, fitting herself against his side, her head on his shoulder. He pulled a heavy fur over them both.
“Tell me about the garden,” he said into her hair. “The one you’ll make out there.”
She was silent for so long he thought she’d fallen asleep. “It won’t have straight lines,” she began, her voice muffled against him. “The paths will curve. You’ll think you know where they lead, and then they’ll surprise you. There will be hidden benches where you can’t be seen from the palace.”
“Sedition,” he whispered, a smile in his voice.
“Privacy,” she corrected. “There will be banks of rosemary, because it’s hardy and it smells like memory. And lavender, for the bees. Not for scenting linens. For the bees.”
“For the bees,” he repeated, his hand making slow circles on her back. “And what else?”
“Wild strawberries. In the shade. They’ll be small and intensely sweet. You’ll have to get on your knees to find them.” She felt his chest vibrate with a silent laugh. “And one oak tree. Right in the middle of where the dancing floor would be. A young one. We’ll plant it together.”
“An oak in a ballroom. The architects will have seizures.”
“Let them.”
They lay like that, her whispering plans for a defiant, living thing into the quiet room, him anchoring her to the earth. The future she sketched was not of palaces or power, but of roots and twisting paths and stubborn, fragrant life. It was a map back to herself.
Down the hall, a clock chimed the hour. The sound was dull, distant. Louis’s hand stilled on her back.
“They’ll be expecting me. The Spanish ambassador is a tedious man with a terrible wig. He will talk of borders for two hours.”
She didn’t open her eyes. “Tell him your queen is planting an oak tree. See what he makes of that.”
He kissed her forehead, a firm press of his lips. He carefully extracted himself, leaving warmth behind him in the nest of furs. She listened to him move about the room, the soft shush of fabric as he changed his milk-stained waistcoat for one of pristine embroidery, the click of a buckle. It was the sound of a man armoring himself.
He returned to the bedside, now the Sun King in miniature, all gold thread and severe lines. He placed a hand on her hair. “The axe and the memorandum await,” he said, his tone lighter now, a mask clicked into place.
“Try not to enjoy the axe part too much.”
“No promises.” He glanced at the cradle, then back at her. His gaze was a physical touch. “Stay here. Rest. If that woman with the dried pea eyes comes back, have her ejected from a window.”
He left then, the door closing with a definitive, quiet thud. The room felt larger, emptier. But the space he left behind was not a cold one. It was filled with the echo of a hummed lullaby, the ghost of a smile against a heartbeat, and the precise, living weight of a daughter asleep nearby. Sabine closed her eyes again. This time, she did not see roots or rain.
She saw a single, young oak tree, its leaves casting dappled shade on a floor where no one would ever dance.