Free Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) by Sena Jeter Naslund Page A

thank you for your kind service,” I say to her and smile with grave modesty.
    Her eyes flicker recognition, but she does not smile.
    All is done with utmost seriousness with all the attention of the State, for it is in our bed that France and Austria unite. No, even a peasant girl would greet her marriage bed with seriousness.
    The court, the King, the most royal core of the vast court, turns in all its finery and makes its exit.
    Vanished!
    We are left alone, for the first time.
    Our heads find the pillows.
    Most soft and divinely comfortable, my pillow cradles my neck and head.
    On his side of the bed, the Dauphin’s head sinks like lead into the softness. Automatically, I half sit up again, to fluff the downy feathers a bit more, as I did as a girl. When I glance toward him, my eyes find his, gazing curiously, with strange calm, at me. His body in the horizontal posture, the Dauphin’s jet eyebrows seem strongly handsome. Across the room, twelve candles long enough to burn all night are glowing. Settled again on my pillow, I turn my face toward him and wait. He stares now at the ceiling.
    My mother said that he might first reach out his hand and take my hand in his. Perhaps my father did it so, on her wedding night. I wait.
    His eyelids slide down. I listen to the rain drum and moan. As I wait, the rain falls steadily and beats against the glass of the windowpanes. I listen and wait. And wait.
    Suddenly, the wind snorts. No, it is not the wind.
    The Dauphin snores. The raucous rattle of air in his nostrils wakes him, for a moment. “Pray, excuse me,” he says.
    And he is asleep. Have I failed to please him?
    I seem to hear the snuffing of a dog at the door.
    I too drift toward sleep.
    Whatever happens or doesn’t happen , the Empress told me, you are not to worry.
     
     
     
    W HEN I AWAKE to morning sunshine, 17 May 1770, a new day, I see my husband is already dressed. I notice the stubby row of dead candles with their tiny black wicks bent this way or that.
    The draperies have been parted, and the sunshine streams in. Illuminated by a shaft of sunlight, the Dauphin sits at his desk and opens a book I know to be his diary, his hunting journal. He writes in it very briefly, the quill scratching into the paper.
    Though I am still in the bed and I would never read his private accounts, I know what he has written; the word that he chooses to represent futility in a day of hunting is chosen now to represent the wedding ceremonies of yesterday and last night and our marriage bed.
    He writes the word Rien , which means Nothing.
    Later, to my mother, the Empress, I must tell the truth. I will allow myself to tell the truth, that he did not even do so much as to touch my hand.

T HE N EXT N IGHT
     
    Again, both our heads, at the very same moment, touch our pillows. But this time, his face is turned toward me, as mine is toward him, and we look more longingly at each other.
    I am loving the caress of the cool linen against my cheek and hope his pillow gives his cheek the same smooth pleasure.
    I feel my lips part, but no sound disturbs the air. Ever so slightly, the corners of my mouth suggest a slight smile.
    “Your lips are the same shade as the flower so aptly named the rose,” he says to me.
    “Thank you,” I say modestly. And nothing else, for every instinct tells me Wait.
    I feel myself to be beautiful in his eyes. Pearly pink.
    His hand is moving toward me. Slowly, palm first, the hand approaches the soft gathers that cover my chest. He has guessed the right place, and the palm presses against my slight mound of flesh and my small nipple.
    He withdraws his hand.
    “They will grow,” I say shyly.
    He only looks at me. His eyes, though sympathetic, are sleepy.
    “I am a woman,” I say. “Inside my body, I’ve changed already.”
    I would like to embrace him, but I dare not move. Steadily, I must present a docile manifestation of my charms. Waiting, barely breathing through parted lips, I slowly lick my lips,