Mistress of the Sun (8 page)

“Your turn now,” Princess Marguerite said, pushing the bone top over to the middle sister.

The Marquis turned to the elderly woman knitting by the fire. “Madame de Raré, it is the aspiration of the esteemed Duke and Duchess that Mademoiselle de la Vallière adhere to Princess Marguerite in the function of waiting maid.”

“The Princess already has a waiting maid,” the woman said, her chin buried in an old-fashioned figure-of-eight ruff.

“The esteemed Duke and Duchess deem that the Princess is of an epoch to necessitate further than one, Madame.”

The buxom maid stepped forward. “Then perhaps I should be introduced, Monsieur le Marquis?” She was a tall girl with thick black braids, each tied with a wide scarlet ribbon. “I am that
other
waiting maid, Mademoiselle Nicole de Montalais.” She made a pert curtsy.

Marguerite, the eldest princess, jumped up and grabbed hold of Nicole’s braids. “Go, horsey,” she commanded, as if holding reins.

Nicole yanked away and drove the Princess off using one of her braids as a whip.

“Oh, stop. Please stop,” the woman by the fire said faintly.

“Stop, stop, stop,” the princesses sang out in chorus as the Marquis bowed out, abandoning Petite to the chaos.

P
ETITE GAVE WAY
to tears in her garret room that night. Her introduction to the princesses had been raucous, and she was filled with confusion. She had expected a castle not to stink and nobility to act…well, noble. She had a new father, a new home,
responsibilities
: it was all too much. She longed for the convent, Sister Angélique, the silence. What did a waiting maid even do?

“Well, first, you must be well turned-out,” Clorine said, looking around their tiny room, her hands on her hips. She pushed Petite’s trunk into one corner. “I’ll do you up in ringlets every day.”

“I
hate
ringlets,” Petite said. Plus, she was ravenous. Clearly, from the extraordinary size of both the Duke and Duchess, there was food in the château—but where? She threw herself down on her bed—a crackling sound startled her. The mattress was straw? She could hear her mother and the Marquis talking downstairs,
something about the fireplace smoking. She didn’t like that the floor was so thin. She didn’t want to hear them talking…or worse. “I’m starving.”

“I found out that the last sitting for the higher staff was about an hour ago,” Clorine said, digging around in her basket and handing Petite a length of jerky. “In the morning it’s at prime—they’ll ring a bell when the table is laid. That will give you plenty of time because the Princess doesn’t rise until terce, just before Mass.”

“But then what am I supposed to do? Do I put her fire on?”

“No, the butler does that.”

“Do I take out her chamber pot?”

“No, there will be a chambermaid for that.”

“Do I wake her?”

“I believe her nurse will be the one to do that.”

“Does her nurse help her dress as well?”

“That’s the job of the mistress of the wardrobe, but you or the other waiting maid may be asked to tie a ribbon, or comb out the Princess’s hair, for example.”

“I can do that,” Petite said, reassured. “Do princesses ever eat?”

“Of course. You’re to stand behind her commodité de la conversation when she’s at table.”

“A commodité de la…what?”

“Conversation. That’s what they call a chair here.” Clorine rolled her eyes in exasperation. “You may eat what’s left on the Princess’s plate after she’s finished.”

“And then what?”

Clorine shrugged. “And then you just stand around waiting. You are, after all, a
waiting
maid.”

Chewing on the jerky, Petite gave this some thought. She could do a lot of things passably well, but waiting was not one of them.

“Y
OU ARE TO CALL ME
Little Queen,” Princess Marguerite informed Petite the next morning. The Princess lifted her skirts and sat down on a necessary, a padded open seat over a tin chamber pot. “Everyone does.” Broken strands of gold thread glinted on her underskirt.

“Yes, Little Queen,” Petite said, clasping her white-gloved hands behind her back. She shifted her hands to the front, and then let them hang down by her sides. There was a correct posture, no doubt.

“Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“Why, Little Queen?” The Princess was wearing ear-rings made of bone buttons. Petite had known only a few girls of her own age, and certainly none of them ornamented. A foul smell filled the room.

“Because I’m going to marry the King.”

Petite took in this astonishing news. “I didn’t know that.” Was it permissible to admit such a thing? “Little Queen,” she added.

“I’ll be ten on July twenty-eighth, so when the King and I marry in four years, I’ll be fourteen and he will be twenty. How old are you?”

“I’m ten. Little Queen.” Petite calculated that she was one year and eleven days older than the Princess.

“I was born with the sun in Leo.” Marguerite put out her hand.

Unsure, Petite placed her hand in the Princess’s.

“No, fishhead—a
cloth.
”

Petite looked around, then handed the Princess a cloth from a stack on a side table. The Princess cleaned herself and stood, handing Petite the soiled linen. Petite took it by one corner.

“The astrologer said I’ll make a good queen because I’m proud, dignified, commanding and powerful,” Marguerite said. “The King is a Virgo, but his moon is in Leo. What sign are you?”

“I’m Leo as well,” Petite said, tucking the soiled cloth into the waistband of her apron. “Little Queen. But with a Cancer ascendant.” The astrologer present at Petite’s birth had written out a full report. According to his calculations she was sensitive to others—attuned, even, to mystic vibrations—and although rational by nature, he’d written that her “affective sensibility tended to overheat,” concluding with the warning that her mild manner veiled a voraginous passion. Petite had yet to discover what
voraginous
meant, but because of a line in the
Aeneid
(“Neptune came upon them, with all his vorages and his waves full of scum”), she thought it might have something to do with a whirlpool.

“Cancer ascendant? Tant pis! We shall never get along,” Princess Marguerite said cheerily.

Nicole, the other waiting maid, jumped into the room.

“Where have you been?” Princess Marguerite demanded.

“Out spying.” Nicole gave a sly look. “That harlot from Tours is here.”

“Mademoiselle de la Marbelière?”

“
And
she’s got her son with her.
Your
half-brother.”

“The bastard.” Marguerite sounded horrified.

Petite flushed, understanding. Once, in Tours, on the way to the surgeon, Sister Angélique had shielded her from seeing a woman in a passing carriage—this same Mademoiselle de la Marbelière.

The Princess sank down to the floor, her skirts wafting out around her. “She’s not here to see my father, is she?”

“I’ll find out,” Nicole said, leaping back out the door.

A maid of the wardrobe entered with a wicker basket containing a sable snug and a blue velvet cape trimmed with swan’s down. As the maid secured the enormous cape to the Princess by means of an ivory button at the neck, Petite tucked the soiled cloth under the pale green carpet of uncut pile.

The Princess took a handful of sweetmeats from a bowl and stuffed them into the snug. “You have to carry my train,” she told Petite, pulling toward the door.

Petite scooped up the train as best she could. Holding it high, she hurried after the Princess, down the stone stairs and along the chilly arcades, sidestepping the piles of feces left by dogs.

The chapel abutted the unfinished wing. It looked as if part of it had been destroyed and then patched back together. The Princess
entered a small door and climbed a narrow circular stair, emerging onto a balcony that overlooked the chancel and nave. The little chapel had stained-glass windows and a vaulted ceiling, and the altar was covered with a dark velvet cloth trimmed with silver lace. Pews in the front by the railing were already full, a crowd standing behind—shopkeepers and townsfolk, Petite guessed by their attire. Incense failed to cover the scent of sheepskin and damp wool.

“We’re early,” Marguerite said with disgust, dipping her fingers into a baptismal font set into the wall. She crossed herself, bent a knee to the altar and climbed up into the single chair.

Petite wasn’t sure what to do. The Princess would likely be offended if she were to dip her fingers into
her
holy water—but wouldn’t God be offended if she didn’t?

“My cape,” the Princess said, swinging her feet. Petite arranged the fabric so that it wasn’t wadded in a lump behind the Princess’s back.

The balcony beside theirs was crowded. Petite recognized the two younger princesses, sitting at the balustrade. The youngest stuck her tongue out, then collapsed into a giggle.

“My mother the Duchess says that you’re not to smile in the chapel,” Marguerite said. “Nor are you to frown. You must maintain a beatific expression.”

Petite tried to look beatific, but it was difficult with her teeth chattering. She wished she had brought a wrap.

“I get my own balcony because I’m Little Queen,” Marguerite said, making a face back at her sisters—the bratchets, she called them.

“That’s good, Little Queen,” Petite said, as a tall comely priest in a patched surplice strode up the aisle. Under his thick wool cassock, he was wearing riding boots with spurs, which kept catching on the hem.

Those in the pews below stood, but Princess Marguerite remained seated. “That’s Abbé Patin, our tutor,” she said.

The Abbé crossed himself, his voice booming out, “The Lord be with you.”

“And also with you,” Petite intoned. The familiar ritual of the Mass was a comfort.

The Abbé began to read from the Bible in Latin, his voice commanding.

“We call him the Thunderer,” the Princess said. “He had a wench in Paris,” she went on as the congregation began to sing “Gloria,” “but she died of the Plague. Her servants had to cut off her head so that they could fit her into the coffin. When I am queen, there will be no Plague.”

Abbé Patin glanced up after the choir finished singing.

“Uh-oh, I’m in trouble: three Hail Marys,” Marguerite said, as he began the silent prayer.

A bell sounded and people pressed into the small chapel.

“Peasants.” Princess Marguerite pinched her nose. “They come to see the Host. Oh,
there’s
Nicole.”

Petite recognized the other waiting maid’s blue hooded cloak below.

Soon Nicole emerged through the balcony door. “She talked to your father,” she reported breathlessly. “Something about money, I think. Oh, speak of the Devil, there she is.”

The three of them leaned over the balustrade.

“The one with the straw hat?” Marguerite looked incredulous. “In winter?”

Mademoiselle de la Marbelière was a plump little woman, wearing a traveling suit in an ancient style. She was holding a little boy’s hand. Petite thought she looked like any woman, any mother. How was one to tell a harlot? What were the clues?

“She should be put in stocks in the square,” Marguerite said indignantly. “That’s what they do to sinners.”

The crowd murmured appreciatively as Abbé Patin lifted the Host.

“The Duchess pays him extra to hold it up for three minutes,” the Princess said. “Watch, his arms will start to shake.”

I
T WAS A MISFORTUNE
that Easter Week was so continuously hectic, the Marquis reflected. The days were still fleeting, the sun both dawning and setting at six of the clock, more or less, leaving deficient light at the end of the day to attend to his private accounts, much in decline due to the commotion of acquiring a wife.

A wife, and a daughter now too. He had hoped for more in the way of attendance. Was it too much to require a girl to sing from time to time? Musical accompaniment would be soothing to work to; it might help obscure his wife’s perpetual babble.

He took off his spectacles and turned toward Françoise, who was standing by the smoking fire. Had he heard rightly just now?

“This coming Easter would be an ideal time,” she told her daughter.

The girl looked up from the book she was reading by the light of a lantern. (Terrible for the eyes. She would be blind before her time.)

“But I’ve not been confirmed, Mother,” she said.

The Marquis closed his journal of accounts. Not
confirmed?

“Of course not. You weren’t talking then,” his wife said, positioning a recent letter from her son next to the candles on the fireplace mantel.

The Marquis cleared his throat. Not
talking?
“Madame, do I comprehend you exactly? Your daughter is not confirmed?” Was she even baptized? He was afraid to ask. In a matter of weeks he had learned 1) that his wife did not find his jokes amusing, 2) that she permitted conjugal liberties only on Thursday nights at eleven of the clock, long past his hour of retiring, 3) that her daughter had no dowry and was malformed, the left leg shorter than the right, and now, 4) that the girl was unconfessed. It was egregiously upsetting.

“No need to get into a hurly-burly over this, Monsieur le Marquis. I have already sent for Abbé Patin in order to make arrangements.” The bell sounded. “In fact, that must be him now,” Françoise said, settling into a chair and arranging her skirts. “Petite, put that book away. Stand behind me,” she said as their chambermaid opened the door.

Abbé Patin strode into the room holding a torchlight. He wedged it into a tin chandler, then made a dignified bow.

The smell of horse manure filled the room. The Marquis frowned down at the Abbé’s boots, but refrained from complaining. This unexpected situation was, in fact, delicate. Were it to be discovered that he had placed a heathen as waiting maid to Princess Marguerite, he could be dismissed.

“Madame sent for me,” the Abbé said, accepting a stool that the Marquis nudged forward.

“Indeed.” The Marquis tightened his cravat. “Madame, perchance you would care to delineate your…
quandary?
”

“It regards my daughter, Abbé Patin.”

The Abbé glanced over at the girl. “I have been wishing to talk to you about her schooling. Her mind is unusually active.”

“It’s a problem I have long been aware of,” Françoise said. “I’ve even forbidden her from reading—”

“However, Abbé Patin,” the Marquis cut in, “my wife has an even greater postulatum in need of discourse.” He nodded at his wife: continue.

“Yes, Abbé Patin. You see, my daughter didn’t speak for a period of time,” Françoise began.

“The significant point is that the girl was
unable
to make Confession,” the Marquis said, “and thus to receive her First Communion, the consequence therefore being that she has yet to be confirmed.”

Abbé Patin sat forward. “You stopped speaking, Mademoiselle Petite?”

“Yes, Abbé Patin.” The girl bowed her head.

“My wife is in no way accountable,” the Marquis said with emphasis. The girl herself was no doubt to blame! She was mooneyed, somewhat strange. She liked animals—even cats. Two times now, on a Friday night, he’d heard an eerie sound coming from the château gardens, and just the day before, a snake had come into their cottage and then mysteriously disappeared.

“When did this begin?” Abbé Patin asked.