“Honestly, René, how can you believe André?”
“Madame du Plessis-Bellière has given an account too,” he says.
This brings me up short. André has condemned me with lies, but Suzanne du Plessis-Bellière might have condemned me with the truth. No wonder René thinks the worst of me. I shudder. If I have poisoned his sweet heart into something hard and bitter, perhaps I deserve the punishment that awaits me. And yet my motives were always pure. I cling to that solid fact amid the flotsam of my once-glorious plans.
“Just hear my side of the story,” I beg.
He gives a sharp, cynical laugh. “I have no choice, do I? My penance for falling into your web is to record your confession.” He takes his seat again and dips the quill in the ink. “If it were up to me, the king would have condemned you and been done with it.”
His words wound me, as he intends. If they are true, the king’s pardon would hardly matter, but I am not willing to believe them so easily. I plant my hands firmly on the table and lean over it, bringing us face-to-face.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you mean that,” I demand.
He glances at me, then quickly away. It is enough. I have seen the wounded love still within him, and I know what I must do. My confession must acquit me with the king, but more than that, it must reach deep into René’s injured heart and rekindle the affection there. And yet some of what I must tell the king will surely hurt René more deeply.
So, this is my choice, then: to strive to save myself and in so doing lose René, or strive for his forgiveness and forsake my life? I close my eyes for a moment to quiet my pounding heart and gather in the chaos of my thoughts. I have faced the impossible before and overcome it.
The king only wants to know where the diamond is and how I managed to steal it from under his nose. But if I am going to win back René’s love, I must tell more. I must relive all the tragedy and heartbreak that brought me here. It would be so much easier to just tell the king what he wants to know, but the king’s pardon without René’s forgiveness? Life without love is not enough.
Strengthened by this conviction, I start at the beginning.
THREE
The day of Cardinal Mazarin’s funeral, my life changed forever. Many people’s lives changed when he died, not least of all Mazarin’s. Of course, King Louis would say that when Mazarin died, the sun rose in the court of France. With his death, Louis claimed his inheritance, which included more than just the crown. It included the cardinal’s famous diamonds, eighteen seemingly miraculous stones that glittered with an internal fire, unlike any other diamonds in the world. Possessing those stones kindled a new fire in young Louis’s heart.
* * *
“You are meant to be confessing your crimes, mademoiselle,” René interrupts impatiently, “not recounting the history of France. Mazarin died more than a decade ago.”
“But that is the day it all began,” I insist. “If I don’t start there—”
“I am only here to record your confession. Tell me how you stole the diamond, and nothing more.”
I don’t want to argue, so I simply continue where I left off. “Papa had been an ordinary gem-cutter before that day, with our apartments over his workshop and Maman taking commissions and selling fine trinkets from a counter in the front. That morning, with Mazarin barely in his tomb, soldiers came to Papa’s workshop and took him to the king. I was only six, but I remember that day vividly.”
“No doubt,” René mutters. He is turning the quill idly in his hand and not writing anything down. “Even then you were calculating how you might rise in the world.”
* * *
On the contrary—I was terrified. Imagine how you would feel to see the king’s men come for your beloved father. I cried, and Maman paced the floor until he returned an hour later, his eyes ablaze with excitement. He strode directly to the table, and there, on its bare surface, he tipped out a velvet bag. Three raw amethysts clattered to the tabletop.
Maman looked at him, her gaze full of question and hope.
“His Excellency the Cardinal has left his jewels to the crown,” Papa said.
“His diamonds?!” Maman exclaimed, her eyebrows raising. I had heard the Mazarin diamonds excitedly discussed on more than one occasion. When master gem-cutters dined together, the mystery of their rare brilliance was often the topic of debate.
“I’ve seen them, Marie!” Papa said, his eyes themselves glinting like diamonds. “They let me examine them. It is as I have always speculated. They are diamonds, like any other. But the cut! Mon Dieu, Marie! It is the cut that gives them that sparkle—that brilliance.”
My mother looked down at the three large, uncut stones on the table. “And these?” she asked.
Papa picked up one of the stones, rolling it between his fingers, examining how the light caught and shifted on it. “He wants to outshine Mazarin. He wants to outshine all the world, and I daresay he will, Marie. He is challenging every master gem-cutter in Paris to cut him stones that will outshine the Mazarins. From the result, he will select his crown jeweler.”
Maman drew in a sharp gasp of air. “Can you do it, Jean? Can anyone?”
Papa’s smile widened. “I have seen them, Marie. I have touched them. Mark my words, I will make young Louis shine like the sun!”
And of course, he did just that, at least with those first stones. When he was appointed as crown jeweler, our lives changed forever. We moved to the royal jeweler’s workshop and apartments in the Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne on the Left Bank. It was very grand, but it was the king’s property—all of it. We were—are—entirely dependent on the favor of the king. You accuse me, René, of striving for glory, but striving to see Papa succeed was not ambition. Our home, our lives—everything depended on it.
I was on the cusp of womanhood seven years later, in 1668, when Jean-Baptiste Tavernier returned from India, brightening a gray Paris winter with silks and gems and tales of adventure. Across the Seine in the Marais district, the salons of the nobility buzzed with his stories of forbidden delights and wealth beyond imagining. But for me, the real excitement began when the king invited Tavernier to appear—along with his rumored hoard—at the Louvre Palace. Tavernier’s audience before the king foretold great glory for us. He was rumored to have brought back hundreds of precious stones, and so we were invited to the spectacle.
Maman had fine new gowns made for both of us for the occasion. She needed a new gown to adjust to her changed figure since giving birth to my brother Georges just a year before, the first of her many pregnancies since my birth to bring forth a healthy child. She chose patterned, dove-gray wool for her gown that disguised her gradually thickening waistline and elegantly contrasted with her dark eyes and hair. As for me, Papa’s position had earned our family wealth and prestige over the past seven years, and Maman was determined to capitalize on his position to make a good marriage for me when the time came.