Free BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis by Parris Afton Bonds Page A

she flung the stemmed glass from her. It shattered in one corner of the marbled floor. The realization that she had been drugged came too late, and her body sagged, then collapsed onto the Aubusson carpet.
     

 
     
     
    § CHAPTER SIX §
     
    La Salpêtrière was a vast, gray-brick enclosure on the Seine that had first been a saltpeter-powder magazine. Louis XIV had converted it into a home for beggars, the aged, and mentally afflicted men and women. Soon a prison for incorrigible and undisciplined women and girls was added.
    Now it was a prison for women criminals only, as well as for the debauched and the insane. Seven thousand women were crowded inside it, two thousa nd of whom were prostitutes. Natalie found herself confined to the better section known simply as the Prison, reserved for those women interned by royal order.
    Those first few days, she sat listlessly in her ten-foot-square, cell-like room, part of the outer western wall of the dungeon. When she stirred herself, it was to curse Claude Fabreville quietly with a venom of which she had not suspected she was capable.
    At least, she consoled herself, Philippe was still alive and not far away in the Bastille. She told herself that she could be worse off. The governor of La Salpêtrière was a portly old gentleman, who, for a slight commission, permitted the prisoners certain comforts of home.
    With the jewels she had bee n wearing when she was incarcerated, she was able to have her own books, furniture, and linen in a private cell. However, the windows were mere apertures, and within days she became obsessed with the need for light, particularly sunlight. Come sunset, a smidgen of wintry, bleak light slid rapidly down the wall and soon vanished.
    No provision had been provided for heating, and she suffered greatly from the cold. So she did not trade her velvet and ermine cloak for superfluous items. She often wondered how many times she had worn the luxurious cloak and taken its warm ermine trimming for granted.
    Warmth and sunlight, those things she would never again take for granted. When she and the other seventy-eight women interned by royal order went for their afternoon exercise in the bare courtyard once a day, she would toss back the cloak’s hood and turn her face up toward the gray, winter sunlight.
    Closing her eyes, she would pretend that she was at Maison Bellecour, walking through the maze of the boxed gardens or among its classic statues . . . feeling the cool breeze off the Loire that played with the loose tendrils of her hair . . . trailing her fingers in one of the mirror ponds . . . wandering through the orangerie , smelling the sweet, sultry scent of cape jasmine, her favorite flower.
    “The sun is bad for your skin, ma petite ."
    Natalie’s eyes snapped open. She recognized the woman from her first year at court. Madame Madeleine Remoneaux had been sent to La Salp étrière by royal letter after the duc had tired of her. The middle-aged woman had a natural redhead’s sallow complexion. She now resorted to henna to cover the gray strands that had invaded her hair.
    “On the contrary, I shall shrivel and die without the sunlight,” Natalie replied, politely but sadl y. She really didn’t want to establish any relationships. It would be an acknowledgment of a permanency there at La Salpétrière.
    By the second month, loneliness drove her to talk to the others, most of whom were courtesans like Madeleine Remoneaux, though a few unfortunate daughters, sisters, and wives also occupied the private cells. Natalie sought out Madeleine more often than the others, for the woman seemed th e least bitter about her circumstances.
    “I try to look at the worst that could happen,” Natalie said one evening. The two were having dinner together in Madeleine’s cell, which was elegantly swathed with heavy red drapes to keep out the insidious cold drafts. “I judge I’ll be imprisoned here two years at the most. By that time, Louis will turn