Chapter 1 - Prologue
On a stormy night of the year of our Lord 1755, Robert Crolet, Earl of Grand-Tamme, was pacing the vast dining room of his sumptuous family castle, built on the Grand-Tamme's estate between Paris and Versailles. He hadn't even taken the time to change from his uniform of general of the Royal Guards.
Upstairs in her bedroom, Caroline, Countess of Grand-Tamme – his lawful wife before God and men – was enduring the throes of childbirth.
This time, it will be a boy, Robert was endlessly telling himself while wearing a hole in the carpet by dint of pacing.
A boy, it can't be otherwise. A son. An heir. His heir. After all those daughters, all those stillborn sons, all those dead infants or toddlers of either gender, all those so tiny coffins buried deep down the earth…
A very loud shriek of pain rang out from upstairs. This birth was taking ages, and the countess was having the hardest time ever giving birth to his heir.
More minutes and still no news from the midwife. She had even sent for a doctor, and now they were both tending to the mother-to-be, while Robert was left sipping his wine by the blazing fireplace.
The sky's thunder was rivalling in intensity with the countess's shrieks, and then the latter stopped.
A few minutes passed, then a quarter an hour, and nothing. Each time the door opened Robert turned, bolted from his armchair, but each and every time it was only a servant bringing new candles before the lights went off, a maid taking away the empty bottle on a tray, a footman closing the shutters…
Finally, finally the housekeeper came in and told him: "It's alright, Milord. Milady is rest–"
She didn't have time to finish. The Earl had bolted out of the room and was already taking the stairs two by two. In the corridor, he passed the nanny and his two remaining children – only daughters: The eldest, six-years-old Marie-Josèphe, with hair and eyes as dark as the night, and the younger, four years-old Edmée, blond-haired and brown-eyed, both as fair-skinned as porcelain dolls.
The two children seemed scared by the whole situation, and the screams they had been hearing for the last half an hour coming from their mother probably did nothing to ease their worry. They now were waiting to meet their new sibling, but didn't seem to realise it yet, all they could remember from this night and for many years to come was the shrieks and their nanny's worry and the rush and the doctor coming. Last time the doctor had been sent for, their one-year-old baby sister had died a few hours later. All this had happened the year before, and if little Edmée was too young to really remember it, Marie-Josèphe kept that engraved in her memory.
But Robert paid no attention to his daughters' fright. He burst inside his wife's bedroom and went straight to the midwife, who was holding a bundle of crying and wriggling white cloth:
"My son! Show me my son! Tell me I have a son!"
The midwife shook her head and, with a tender smile, presented him the bundle of cloth: in the middle of it he could see a tiny head with a fluff of dark hair and a black curl falling on the rosy forehead.
"A beautiful little girl, Milord, even more lovely than your eldest. And she has quite a healthy set of lungs! Listen to that!"
Indeed, the baby was filling the room with strong wails, kicking, flailing and wriggling all the while.
"She's perfectly healthy, Milord, and so strong! Congratulations, this one is a robust one!"
But Robert turned heels immediately, grumbling: "We don't need daughters in a family like this one. We've been protecting the kings and commanding the Royal Guards for generations, we had no need for another girl!"
He then went to his wife, who looked very pale and exhausted, and took her hand.
"It's no one's fault," he told her. "God is certainly testing us, my dear. We'll try again later. Now rest." He wasn't sure she heard him, or even realised he was there. She looked so drained!
"How is she?" Robert finally asked Doctor Lassone.
"Milord, I won't lie: it's been very close. The baby was engaged in a wrong position and it's been very long. She had to struggle and suffer a very long time before we could move the baby inside and deliver her. It exhausted her seriously. We feared for her life."
Robert stroked his sleeping wife's cheek.
"Milord," Doctor Lassonne went on, "I heard what you just told your wife…"
Robert looked at him "And…?" he asked.
"Not only did she seriously exhaust herself, but also the baby was so badly positioned during the delivery that the countess's pelvis had to be broken, otherwise both mother and child would have eventually died, your wife out of exhaustion and the baby from not being able to be delivered. But the sequelae are such that… well… another baby is out of the question for her now. It would kill her even before the child could be delivered."
The Earl blanched. No more children! It meant no son. Ever.
"Are you sure…?"
"Adamantly so, Milord. Don't even think of it: you would kill her as surely as if shooting a bullet in her head."
Robert slumped a bit.
"I'm sorry Milord," said the doctor, "but I had to be blunt about it, to be sure you understand the situation."
Robert nodded.
"I'm sorry," Lassonne offered again.
From the other side of the room, a strong wail resounded.
The child! Robert thought.
He went to his newborn baby, an unreadable look on his face, and took it in his arms. He stared at his child intently, then with a wild and crazed look on his face, he turned to the doctor and the midwife, holding the baby at arm's length.
"No matter what nature made you," he told the child, "I don't care. You have the strong cries of a Grand-Tamme and the stamina of a real soldier. No matter what nature made you I say that you are my son, and will be my heir and successor; and your name is Cyril!"