Mistress of the Sun (9 page)

“About four years ago,” Françoise said, “in the summer—or perhaps it was the fall? Yes, it was early in the fall…the day of the King’s majority, I recall.”

“The fifth of September,” Abbé Patin said, sitting informally with his hands on his knees. “In 1651.”

“The day her father passed away,” Françoise recalled with a frown.

“No doubt you can ameliorate this unintentional delinquency, Abbé Patin?” the Marquis asked. No need for hysterics. “In hugger-mugger, need one declare?”

“Do you wish to make Confession?” Abbé Patin asked the girl.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Abbé Patin put up his hand. “That’s a beginning,” he said, before the Marquis could object.

T
HE
S
ATURDAY OF
the Easter Vigil, Petite entered the confessional. She brushed off the bench before sitting down. She heard movement behind the grille and the scent of a stable filled the small chamber.

“May the Lord be with you,” Abbé Patin said.

“And with you,” Petite said. And then she remembered to add, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” What came next? A sin. “I read when I’m supposed to be doing needlework.”

“What do you read?”

“Right now I’m reading Xenophon’s book on Socrates.”

“
The Conversations.
Are you reading it in translation?”

“Yes, but into Latin. It was my father’s book. It’s in the library here.” She had been shocked to discover the familiar texts in a pile by the door—
Consolation of Philosophy
,
Poetae Latini Rei Venaticae Scriptores
,
Histoire naturelle des quadrupèdes
—her father’s comments neatly printed at the back, cross-referenced to the page. There was even the leather-bound copy of Saint Teresa’s
Life.
She’d been relieved to see that
The Horseman
was not in the collection—covered in pasteboard, it would not have been considered worthy of the Duke’s library.

“Have you read Xenophon’s
The Art of Horsemanship
?” the Abbé asked.

“Yes. It was one of my father’s favorite books.”

“It’s my favorite as well,” he said kindly. “You’re going to have to come up with more sinful sins, Mademoiselle. You may kneel, if you wish.”

Petite knelt on the padded prayer bench.

“Let’s begin again: make the sign of the Cross. This is the Rite of Reconciliation. Remember that God loves you and wants you to be clean for Him. Imagine that I am Christ.”

Petite closed her eyes and imagined Christ, but it was her father’s face she saw—his gentle smile—and her eyes began to water.

“Then you make your Confession. ‘Bless me, Father’ and so forth.”

“Bless me, Father, for—” Petite’s voice broke. “For I have sinned,” she whispered, blinking back tears.

The Abbé was silent for a long moment. “Do not fear, child,” he said softly. “We will take this step by step.”

Petite nodded but did not speak, wiping her cheeks on her sleeve. “Yes, Father,” she said finally, sniffing.

“And then…then people usually say how long it has been since their last Confession, but today, you will simply say that this is your first.”

“Yes, Father. This is my first Confession.”

“That’s right. And then you list your sins. Some people like to say, ‘I accuse myself of such-and-such,’ but that’s a little dramatic, I think. If you just say the sin and then state how many times you did it, that would be perfectly acceptable. Remember that whatever you say will be kept private, so you don’t have to worry about that. You may begin.”

Petite clenched her hands together in prayer. Her heart was pounding. “I killed my father,” she blurted out with a sob. The words burned! “One time.”

The Abbé shifted in his seat. “Perhaps you should explain.”

“Just that,” Petite said, her breath coming in jags.
O Lord!
She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Don’t be afraid. Now…just explain what happened.”

“The Romas sold my father a wild horse, a White.”

“Unbacked, you mean?”

“Yes, but mean. Some said he was cursed.”

“We have rituals for such things.”

“I know, Father. The village priest tried, but nothing changed. My father was going to kill him, but…” Petite paused, her mouth dry and her palms damp. The Abbé was wrong: there was cause to fear. She would not, could not, say the words bone magic. She knew the Devil’s power, knew what the Devil could do. “But after the horse was gentled, my father agreed not to—and then he died,” she said, choking at the memory of her father stretched out on the stable floor, the stall gate gaping open.

“I’m afraid I still don’t understand. The horse died?”

“No,” Petite whispered. “My father.”

“But the horse was wild, and then he was broken.”

“Yes, I backed him.”

“How many years ago was this?”

“I was six, Father, and I’ll be eleven this summer, so…five years ago.”

“You were six years old, and you backed an unbroken horse?”

“Yes, Father, a stallion of about four years.”

“Do you understand the difference between a falsehood and a truth?”

“I do, Father.” Petite knew she was telling the truth, but she also knew that there was more to it, that she alone had not gentled Diablo, that the Devil had had a hand in it.

The Abbé shifted on his bench. “And this had something to do with the death of your father?”

Petite did not answer. She didn’t want to lie; nor could she bear to tell the truth.

“You said you felt you had…that you were responsible somehow,” the Abbé said.

“Yes,” Petite said finally. “When my father first saw me riding this horse, he fell over as if dead.”

“Did he die then?”

“No, but he was sick for a time after. And then the ploughman found him, dead on the stable floor.” Her voice was unsteady.

“Very well,” Abbé Patin said finally, after a long silence. “Say five Our Fathers before you leave. In the morning, you may take Communion.”

“Is that all, Father?” Outside the tiny confessional, Petite could hear a woman humming tunelessly.

“No…there
is
more,” the Abbé said with a smile in his voice. “You’re to help me out in the stable, exercising some of the horses.”

“But—I don’t ride horses anymore.”

“Yes, I sensed that. Nonetheless, you’re to be there tomorrow afternoon, at four of the clock.”

“Father, I can’t,” Petite said, a feeling of panic rising in her.

“Don’t fear, child.”

T
HAT NIGHT
, P
ETITE COULD
not sleep. When the village church rang for compline, she tiptoed to the window and eased open the wood shutter. Looking out, she saw the gardens bathed in moonlight, the silver ribbon of the river below, the fields beyond the stone stables. The moon hung full in the sky, illuminating horses standing in groups, nose to head, head to nose. In the distance was a glow—marsh gas, or possibly night spirits. She was startled by a screech owl’s cry. Chilled and shivering, she slipped back under her quilts, feeling with her toes for the warming pan.

T
HE CHÂTEAU STABLES
were a sprawling stone and wood structure on the far side of the kitchen gardens. Petite stood at the big double doors. The air was fragrant, sweet with the scent of straw and horse dung. Slowly, she went from stall to stall, looking at the noble horses, their muscles hard and gleaming, their coats smooth and shiny. Their standings were dry, their racks and mangers recently freshened with hay.

“Are you the girl they call Petite?”

Petite turned to face the head groom, who was picking his teeth with a penknife.

“Abbé Patin said I’m to saddle up one of the gallopers for you,” he said, “but I think there must have been a mistake. You don’t look big enough to ride a donkey.”

Galloper or donkey, Petite didn’t wish to ride at all. She hadn’t been on a horse since her father’s death.

“Good, you’re here.” Abbé Patin came striding down the aisle, a milk-colored cloak over one shoulder. He was dressed for riding in a brown doublet and hose. His military-style jackboots reached above his knees. “The horses are ready, Hugo?”

The groom brought out the Abbé’s big charger, Eclypse, a handsome black hunter over fifteen hands tall. Following behind, a stable hand led a young stallion, an unsaddled bay.

The horse looked about uneasily. Petite ran her hand over his shoulder, which was deep and oblique: he would be fast. She breathed into his nose, took in his sweet breath. He turned his head to her, an invitation. He was about five years, she thought, feeling his teeth. Her father always said that a colt must be a full five before his wildness could be claimed. (Diablo had been only four.) “What’s his name?”

“Hannibal,” Abbé Patin said. “But he’s not the horse for you. Go saddle one of the older, more settled ones,” he told the groom.

“Easy, boy,” Petite said in a soothing voice, observing the horse’s eyes and ears for signs of fear. His uneasiness helped her forget her own. “Has he ever been shod?”

“Just last week,” the groom said.

“He’s been backed as well,” Abbé Patin said, “but he bucks at a saddle, even with a straw pad.”

“I could ride him without,” Petite said, stroking his neck, calming the youngster. “Ho, boy,” she whispered. “Don’t be afraid.”

Abbé Patin studied Petite. “Very well. We’ll start off in the paddock—where I can keep an eye on things.”

P
ETITE SELECTED A GENTLE
bit and insisted on putting it on the colt herself. She took it slowly, letting him sniff the bit before slipping it into his mouth. She led him through droves of chicks and ducklings out to the paddock, the colt lifting his feet so as not to step on one. “Good boy,” she said.

Abbé Patin held the reins as Petite mounted, the groom standing by.

She let out a long breath. “Ho, boy,” she whispered. She arranged herself so that she was sitting on her petticoat, her skirt falling freely to her ankles.

“Hugo, lead her around. I want to observe how he goes,” Abbé Patin said with concern in his voice.

“I’m fine, Father,” Petite said, taking up the reins and nudging the colt forward into a walk.

Slowly, she took him through the paces. One ear forward, the other back, he began to relax, responding obediently: no prancing and hopping sideways, no twirling and throwing up his head, no rolling his eyes, pawing or snorting, not even so much as one little
buck. Soon she had him cantering, then pulling up short, his head bowed, ears cocked back, awaiting her command.

“I think we’re ready to head out, Abbé Patin,” she announced. Truth was, riding felt good, like finding her voice again.

They set out into the hills, Abbé Patin on Eclypse, Petite on Hannibal, and the groom and two outriders following behind. The feel of the warm horse under her brought tears to Petite’s eyes, conjured memories of riding Diablo.

Turning in his saddle, the Abbé asked, “Would you be all right with an easy hand-canter?”

“Could we gallop?”

“Call out if you get in trouble.” He spurred his big charger.

Their horses surged up the trail. Petite’s colt flew into the lead. “Whoop!” she cried out, jumping two hedges and a three-barred gate. Abbé Patin, following, kept his saddle, but the groom, in the last attempt, tumbled, falling behind with the straggling outriders.

An hour later, as the cows were being brought in to milk, Petite and a mud-splattered Abbé Patin emerged out of a belt of woodland. Petite, in the lead, slowed her horse to an amble. He was nicely lathered and breathing heavily. She stroked his damp shoulder.

“Splendid,” Abbé Patin said with a sheepish grin, pulling up alongside. “There is nothing quite so thrilling as riding in fear for one’s life.”

T
HE FOLLOWING SUMMER
Princess Marguerite turned eleven and Petite twelve. “In three years I shall be queen,” Princess Marguerite informed all and sundry, impatient for her glorious future.

Weekly there was news of the King. It was reported that he was comely, that he refused to wear a wig, that he loved hunting, music and theater and danced the lead parts in ballets. Before and after a ball he went riding or did exercises with a lance. He did not eat waterfowl, but had a great appetite for everything else, even salads of green herbs. He and his friends were known as les Endormis—the sleepyheads—because they stayed out all night and slept all day.

“When I am queen, I shall not permit that,” Marguerite said.

Two years later, the King almost died of a fever. He was only nineteen! For weeks unending, in every church, in every village and hamlet, citizens fell to their knees and prayed. Daily, the town
crier called out alarming news: the King has been given Last Rites at midnight; a detachment of soldiers has been sent from Paris to carry his body back; the King has been given antimony in wine. And then, miraculously: the King’s fever has broken! Church bells pealed throughout the night, and towns set aglow with candles and torches.

“He has been saved for
me
,” Princess Marguerite said fervently on the eve of her thirteenth birthday. “And soon we shall marry.” She had flowered only the month before, but was already bigbreasted. Petite, a year older, looked yet a girl, thin, gangly and somewhat mystified over this obsessive interest in what was called
love
, an interest well fueled by the romances Nicole found hidden in the Duke’s library.

Late that winter, Petite did flower, at last, and was even courted by the bucktoothed son of a second steward. One of his letters was intercepted by her mother, and the budding courtship put to a halt, somewhat to Petite’s relief.

The spring was lush and warm; buttercups and forget-me-nots came early. Petite continued to ride daily, schooling the young horses, exercising them, training them for the hunts. Her mother objected, but Abbé Patin insisted; who else could gentle a horse so well? Petite still had her schoolwork and waited in attendance on the Princess as well. She managed it all by riding out into the dewy meadows at sunrise, revelling in the sounds of larks singing, jackdaws chattering, dragonflies and bees humming in the early light.

As the days lengthened, the princesses and their attendants became impatient to abandon their daily lessons, but it wasn’t until the first week in July that they got their wish. Petite was quizzing Nicole on basic Latin grammar in the Duke’s library when the panting footman arrived.

“It’s something about going to see the Duchess,” Nicole said under her breath.

“The princesses see their mother every day from eleven to eleven-twenty,” Madame de Raré, the governess, could be heard to object. “Taking them now will throw off the entire day’s schedule.”

“Her Highness insists,” the footman answered.

“Race you.” Princess Marguerite jumped up from the study table and took off at a run, chased by her two younger sisters.

“As well as their attendants,” the footman added, wiping the sweat from his brow with a grimy lace cuff.

The governess sighed and took up her silver-tipped cane. “Come along, girls. It’s one hundred fifty-seven steps to Her Highness’s bedchamber, and my old bones ache with every one of them.”

P
ETITE FOLLOWED THE
governess and Nicole down to the courtyard and across to the stone stairs. It had been almost a year since she had been in the King François wing of the château. She recalled arriving her first day, remembered being overwhelmed by luxury, intimidated by royalty. Now she saw the shoddy economies, the
extravagant waste—bottles stopped up with tow instead of cork, priceless tulip bulbs left to rot in standing water.

Indeed, she’d even come to suspect that the members of the royal family were not a race apart, that they were human like everyone else. Nobility was said to be innate, an intrinsic quality carried in the blood—but was it possible for it to become corrupted? Princess Marguerite and her sisters had the blood of Henry the Great in their veins, but also the blood of a Médicis.

Was it possible that nobility of heart had little to do with high birth? Petite wondered. Her father had not had a title, had not qualified for tax exemptions and civic privileges, had not been entitled to own a coach draped with an impériale, much less the right to wear high red-heeled shoes, but he did have “nobility of heart,” she thought, approaching the entrance to the Duchess’s suite.

“Are the princesses already in with their mother?” the governess asked the guard, leaning on her cane. “Ah, there they are,” she said as Princess Marguerite emerged from the guard room, sweaty and disheveled, followed by her two sisters. Princess Elisabeth’s laces had come loose and the lace edge of Princess Madeleine’s petticoat train was torn, dragging on the stone floor.

The governess wiped Princess Madeleine’s face with her apron, and gave the sign to the footman to open the doors to the Duchess’s bedchamber.

The enormous room was empty but for a bed at one end—much as Petite remembered it—although now the walls were
covered with bright tapestries depicting scenes from the Bible: Jesus eating a roast guinea pig at the last supper, Jesus eating in the house of Lazarus, Jesus eating with sinners, Jesus eating fish with the disciples, Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes.

The Duchess was sitting up in bed eating a fowl, watched by her three terriers. The princesses dutifully lined up at the foot of the massive bed according to age: Marguerite, almost fourteen, Elisabeth, twelve, and Madeleine, ten.

“Time already?” the Duchess asked, throwing a bone into a porcelain bowl on the floor and holding out her fingers to be washed. “They’re early.”

“You sent for them, Your Highness,” the governess said. “As well as the attendants.”

“You remember, Your Highness?” a maid of honor said, spooning laudanum into a glass of spirits and handing it to the Duchess. “It’s because the King is coming. We discussed this earlier.”

The Duchess downed the spirits and lay back.

“The King?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” the maid said. “His Majesty intends to stop at Blois on his way south—something to do with making peace with Spain. It is said that His Majesty is ready to take a bride—”

Marguerite clapped her hands.

“The King of Spain’s daughter,” the maid of honor said.

Marguerite’s face turned red. “But
I’m
the one who is to marry the King. Everyone says so, even the astrologer.”

The Duchess wiped her mouth on the bed linen. “The astrologer is here?” she asked.

“Your Highness, permit me to explain,” the maid of honor said.

“I wish somebody would,” the Duchess said dreamily.

“Princess Marguerite, your mother believes that the King must be made to see that there is no reason for him to marry a Spanish princess when there is a perfect French princess for him right here.”

“Yes.” Marguerite sounded tearful.

“Therefore, it has been suggested that you put on a performance—you and your sisters and even your attendants. Something that will display your charms and convince His Majesty that you are the perfect bride for him.”

Petite glanced at Nicole in alarm. They were to perform for the King?

“It’s to be a magnificent show in which Princess Marguerite will star. It has already been discussed with Monsieur de Gautier, who will be your dance master. You have three weeks to prepare.”

“Why is the astrologer here?” Petite heard the Duchess ask as they bowed out of the room.

M
ONSIEUR DE
G
AUTIER
, dance master, was over sixty, but fancied that nobody noticed. He watched his diet, not even glancing at the tarts the cooks made. He did fencing exercises every morning and sported a short doublet with his linen undershirt showing,
the latest in the fashion. He could not bring himself to give up wearing fusty wigs, however, even sleeping in one. It protected him from vermin and drafts, but most of all it prevented him from viewing his bald cranium in the looking glass each morning. Demoralization was not youthful.

He was thrilled about the coming Royal Visitation. As dance master for the Duc d’Orléans, his talents were going to ruin. He aspired to join the Court of the King, who was only twenty and a splendid specimen of male virility. This would be Gautier’s chance to demonstrate his skill at set design and theatrical effects—not to mention dance sequences.

Well, perhaps not the dance part, he thought, facing the three hunchbacked princesses lined up before him, as well as the two attendants: Mademoiselle Nicole, a buxom gill-flirt, and the graceful but slightly lame one called Petite. He began with the basics, explaining that the walk employed the movements of the hip, the knee and, last but not least, the instep, and that from these three movements, all steps were formed.

He raised his cane as if it were a baton. “We begin.”

He gloomed as the princesses lurched across the floor. “Stop! Princess Marguerite, everyone, please, watch now as…” He gestured to the thin girl to come forward. “Demonstrate a walk, Mademoiselle.”

Petite’s skirts made a swishing sound as her leather-soled slippers slid across the wooden floor.

Monsieur de Gautier cleared his throat. Even with a slight limp, the girl walked with remarkable grace. Her stepping foot touched the ground first, her legs turned slightly outward. She moved neither too fast (which showed folly), nor too slow (indolence).

“Observe: her head is upright, her waist steady, her arms well managed,” he said, taking up a pochette to keep time. “As her right foot advances, the left arm moves forward, but only slightly.” There was hope.

A
FTER A BREAKFAST
of beer and mutton, Petite was in the habit of meeting Nicole in a north stairwell, not far from the Princess’s chamber. The rarely used landing had a stone bench to sit on and a horn-paned window that could be closed against inclement weather. They had taken to meeting thus most mornings before reporting for duty, sharing confidences regarding their mistress as well as such vital matters as how to increase the size of one’s bust, what to do when the monthly courses came unexpectedly, and facts in general regarding the mysteries of the privy part: that redheads were the product of uncontrollable lust during the flowers, for example; that an owl hooting meant that someone was with child. But mostly, of late, they talked of Princess Marguerite’s great challenge.

“Marguerite can’t even make a curtsy without looking like a mule in a petticoat,” Nicole said. “She’s never going to capture the King this way.”

“Poor Marguerite,” Petite said sympathetically. She herself would never want to be queen, but it was different for a princess.

“She must conquer the King, and her only weapon is her bosom. Men like that, especially kings.”

Sadly, this was a fact. Petite herself remained stubbornly flatchested in spite of herbs and growing-chants.

“But the Duke insists that Princess Marguerite wear a tucker,” Nicole persisted. “If I were Marguerite, I would kill myself. Then maybe the King would fall in love with her.”

“But then she’d be dead,” Petite said.

A
FLURRY OF
preparation preceded the King’s arrival. The château swarmed with butlers, pageboys and maids hired specially for the grand occasion.

“I’ve observed the kitchen, the dairy, the food cupboard, the laundry,” the Marquis complained to Françoise, shuffling to and fro with his hands behind his back, “and in every region there is a crisis. In the antechamber, a damaged candle was fixed into a powder-horn. In the cabinet neuf, some idiot has used the extremity of the Duke’s ivory staff to awaken the embers, and in the salle de conseil, a magpie was unleashed. There are leavings everywhere!”

It was decided that the King, the Queen Mother and the rest of the royal family (including la Grande Mademoiselle) and their hundred and twenty-six attendants would stay at Chambord, the
royal hunt château not far from Blois on the other side of the river. But then, of course, additional staff (including four rat-catchers) had to be found to ready
that
château. The four hundred unfurnished rooms were not a problem; the royal entourage would be arriving with its own beds, bed curtains, pillows and linens. But then it was decided, rather late, that the Duke and Duchess and their three daughters would formally greet the King upon his arrival
there
—and so the best coaches were repaired and harnessed, and an escort of fifty guards called up. The royal party departed, the Duke and Duchess in the lead, followed by Marguerite and her two sisters with Nicole in an ancient, but gilded, closed carriage. The servants, overseen by the Marquis and Madame Françoise, followed behind.

Petite, at Abbé Patin’s request, rode horseback on one of the younger stallions. Every horse in the stable had had to be saddled. For some, it would be their first journey across the bridge, their first journey away from the security of the stable, and Abbé Patin, as equerry, needed Petite’s help.

Petite’s horse, Arion, was a young bay hunter. He was uneasy crossing the mighty Loire, but relaxed into a trot once on the other side. It was only his third ride out in the world and he was keeping his head.

As they entered a flat and sandy region, the horizon opened. They rode by vineyards, scattered peasant cottages and orchards, the trees netted to protect the fruit from birds. Women in white caps and clunky sabots waved to them from the fields.

After over an hour, they passed through a gap in a stone wall—the modest gateway to the château—then down a long, straight avenue, the woods on either side a tangle of brush. At last, the enormous round towers of Chambord appeared as if out of nowhere, its numerous turrets, spires and chimneys giving it the appearance of a small city.

It was a monstrous structure, Petite couldn’t help but think as she rode across the wide, fetid moat into the courtyard, her horse shying at the shadow of a gargoyle falling across the stones.