Mistress of the Sun

by Sandra Gulland

  “That horse has to go, Laurent,” Françoise said as her husband closed the door against the chill. “Sell him at the market.”

  “Getting the horse there is the problem,” Laurent said, reaching for his coat.

  “Then it’s time to consider the obvious.” Françoise deftly peeled an apple, its skin hanging down in one long curl. “I don’t know why you object to feeding horseflesh to the help. It’s good nourishment, and—”

  “I will not do so, and that is the end of it.”

  Petite appeared at the door with a basket of eggs. “Are you talking about Hongre?”

  “You are not to interrupt your elders, Mademoiselle,” Françoise said, dividing the apple in half and cutting out the core. “And no, we’re not talking about Hongre—although you should get rid of him as well while you’re at it, Laurent. That old horse does nothing but eat.”

  “Not just yet, Françoise,” Laurent said with a sigh.

  “You were talking about Diablo.” Petite set the egg basket down roughly.

  “Careful, now.” Françoise frowned to see two eggs cracked.

  “Little one, your mother is right. She is only being practical.”

  “But not Diablo, Father!”

  Laurent pulled his hat down over his ears. “We leave for Amboise tomorrow. When I return, it will have to be done.”

  CAW! A CARRION CROW called out in warning.

  Petite, bundled in homespun wool, looked up. Three blue-black crows perched on the branches of an elm below a mass of stick-and-mud nests.

  Caw! Caw!

  Petite turned to watch as her father checked the harness of the four-wheeled open carriage. “When will you be back?” she asked, reaching to stroke the neck of her father’s old horse. Hongre was sleeping in the bright morning sun, his reins looped through the spokes of a wheel. The covered donkey cart was ready to go, loaded with trunks and bedding.

  “That depends.” Laurent pulled the leather strap two holes tighter and tugged on it to make sure it was secure.

  Petite looked into her father’s pale eyes. “I don’t want you to kill Diablo, Father.”

  “A horse must be of use.”

  “He can be tamed. I’ve been praying for him.”

  “He is dangerous. I do not want you fooling with him—understand? I forbid it.” He bent down. “You are not to go near him. Now, get back inside. You’ll catch your death out here.”

  Petite ran to the manor steps and crouched there, hugging her knees. The cobbles of the courtyard were strewn with bright autumn leaves. Through the bare tree branches, she could glimpse the river, edged with moss and ferns.

  The big front door opened, letting out a waft of warm vanillascented air. “There you are,” Françoise said with a scolding tone. She was wearing whalebone hip-hoops under her cloak and gown, so she had to turn sideways to get through the door. The tutor was behind her, followed by Jean, uncomfortably done up in his church clothes, a worn yellow velvet doublet and knee breeches that were somewhat too small for him now.

  “I’m not cold, Mother,” Petite said, her teeth chattering. She scooted over, to make room for them to pass.

  “Jean, come here,” Laurent called out, placing the whip in its socket.

  Jean pushed past, and the tutor helped Françoise down the steps, her boned skirts lifting and settling with each step. She turned at the bottom.

  “You be good, Louise,” she said, pointing her spotted rabbit muff at her daughter. “No mischief. No climbing trees. No horsing around.”

  Caw! Caw! The carrion crows took flight.

  Chapter Three

  IT WAS QUIET after everyone had left. Blanche set a whitepot for Petite on the yellow painted table in the kitchen. Petite prayed as she spooned the silky custard: O Lord, I am in need of guidance. She closed her eyes and waited for a sign.

  “Have you finished with your father’s books?” Blanche asked, taking away the wooden bowl.

  That book on horses. Of course. “I’ll finish now,” Petite said, jumping up.

  Her father’s study was dark. Petite groped her way to the window and fumbled to open the shutters. Sunlight illuminated the statue of the Virgin weighting down the papers piled at one end of her father’s desk.

  The Horseman was where she’d last seen it, tucked between The Family-Physician and The Art of Horsemanship on the shelf closest to the window. Petite made the sign of the cross and reached for it.

  Although thick, the book was not heavy. Petite pulled a cane chair to the window for light and eased herself up onto the seat. She opened the book on her lap, turning the pages until she came to the one titled “Of the Bone Magic.” Most of it she could read—enough, in any case, to understand how the enchantment was done. Kill a toad or frog…Set it on a whitethorn bush…At the full moon…

  Beware.

  She felt daunted—as well as uneasy. Was enchantment not the Devil’s work? She recalled the cautions she’d been given, the snippets of conversations overheard, and she thought to put the book away. The fires of Hell burned darkly. Have nothing to do with it, the Moor had said.

  But what of Diablo? How was she to save him? She’d lured him with grain, with bits of bread and apple. She’d prayed to Jesus, Mother Mary and every saint she could think of—and still Diablo lunged, struck out. Bone magic was the only thing that could turn him, the Moor had said. How could gentling a horse be a sin?

  The next morning, after her needlework (embroidering a sampler of the three virtues: chastity, humility, piety), after her barn and kitchen chores, after standing in her ritual way in front of Diablo’s stall, Petite headed down the narrow footpath to the river. The fog had cleared, but the day was overcast and unseasonably mild, threatening rain. The water’s surface was silvery gray. A fisherman dozed in his plank boat on the far side of the bridge, his long line tangled in cattails.

  Petite headed upstream to a spot around the bend where trees overhung the river, the place where her brother often set his nets. At the gnarled oak, she tucked her skirt up under her apron sash and made her way through the damp bushes. Close to the water’s edge, she slipped off her sabots and stockings. The cold guck oozed up between her toes.

  It was slippery. She’d been warned to stay away from the river, told stories of the Lady in White, the ghost of the brokenhearted woman from Vaujours who had drowned herself in sorrow. The Lady’s woeful spirit lured girls into ponds and rivers, into a watery grave. A girl had died that very winter on the feast day of Saint Catherine, patron saint of spinsters. Petite’s neighbor Charlotte had even seen the Lady in White near a cow pond, heard her sing out—a sound like an owl, she said. Charlotte had run, feeling ghostly fingers at her heels—“like tiger-beetle bites,” she said.

  Petite tucked her stockings into her sabots. According to the book, the first thing she had to do was kill a frog or toad. She was not squeamish about killing—she’d trapped chipmunks and mice for the animals in her care, had hunted deer, rabbit, otter and even cat with her father and brother—but this was different, this wasn’t to eat.

  She crouched in the weeds, praying. As if in answer, she spotted two toads, one close by on a clump of moss, another sunning itself on a rock. If she reached for the one close by—

  It leapt into the water.

  Patience, she reminded herself. She waited motionless and then slowly reached for the sleepy toad on the rock.

  She had it! It struggled, but she held tight. She stifled a scream, repulsed by its slippery skin, its sluggish squirming movements, surprisingly strong. With a foot pinning one of the toad’s legs firmly, she grabbed for a rock and brought it down. The toad squirmed violently to get free. She closed her eyes and struck, making solid contact. The toad twitched, then stilled. Shaking, she opened her eyes. Its skull had opened, oozed. One leg kicked out, and she jumped back. She retched into the reeds, tears streaming.

  It took a few moments for the toad to stop moving. Petite waited to be sure. She picked it up by one leg, but dropped it when it kic
ked. She poked it with a stick. It was dead, surely. Again, she reached for it, using the hem of her smock this time so that she wouldn’t have to feel its skin.

  She headed back to the house. The toad’s body had to be left on a bush overnight—a whitethorn bush, the book said. There was one by the henhouse.

  The scullery girl was at the henhouse door when Petite entered through the back gate. Petite wrapped her apron around the toad’s body to hide it.

  “Blanche has been looking for you everywhere,” the girl said, hens pecking at her feet.

  “My brother asked me to take in his nets,” Petite lied, tucking the toad deep into the branches of the whitethorn bush as soon as the maid wasn’t looking.

  In the morning, at dawn, she would bury the toad under an anthill. Then it would be a matter of waiting until the noontide moon was round and full.

  THE DAYS—THE NIGHTS—passed slowly. Often, in the dark, Petite slipped out of her bed to gaze at the moon from her attic window, as if watching would hurry it along. New moon, crescent moon, quarter moon, gibbous moon: the time drew near.

  Finally, one night at sunset, Petite saw the full moon rise over the far hills. Later she said her prayers and lay in bed waiting for the scullery girl to fall asleep, for the house to still.

  After what seemed an eternity of silence, she opened her bed curtains. She tiptoed to the window and opened the shutters. The moon was penny full, illuminating the landscape in a ghostly light. She reached for her sabots and felt cloak, and stole down the stairs.

  The silhouetted trees stood like sentinels around the barnyard. Petite breathed in the night air, stilling her heart against the night phantoms. Three fence posts past the gate and two giant strides to the right brought her to the anthill. She dug down with her fingers until she found the toad, bones now. She was relieved: the ants had done their work. Shaking off a few clinging insects, she lifted the little skeleton and brushed off the dirt. She felt breath on her neck, heard a branch snap behind her. Trembling, she stopped herself from looking over her shoulder, remembering what the book had said about not taking her eyes off the skeleton, not even once.

  It wasn’t easy getting down to the river in this way, her eyes fixed on the little bones. She stumbled two times, once falling to her knees. The plaintive hoot of an owl chilled her—the call of the Lady in White!—but even so she did not avert her eyes.

  At the river’s edge, holding onto alder branches with one hand, she slipped the skeleton into the water. It floated downstream and disappeared. She crouched, praying, watching for it to float back toward her, against the current, but she could see nothing. The surface of the black water shimmered in the moonlight.

  O God, Creator, all life is in Your hands, she prayed in despair. She knew Diablo’s fate: his throat would be cut, or a pistol held to his head. She had seen it done before, watched her father’s slow, determined moves, his clenched jaw, his reverent moment of silence after, his hand on the animal as he waited for it to still, for the bright pulsing blood to slow.

  Did animals have souls? Would Diablo go to Heaven? The purpose of living was to prepare to die, her father had taught her, to escape Hell fire and to have a joyful death. Petite didn’t want Diablo to die. She was wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of one hand when she saw a white speck at the water’s edge, something stuck between rocks. “I thank You,” she whispered, for it was a bit of bone—the crotch bone, just as the book had said.

  “I HEARD AT THE MARKET that the Queen Mother is sick as a dog in Amboise,” the scullery girl said as she stoked the oven fire.

  “So maybe Father will have to stay longer,” Petite said, eyeing the oven door. She had tucked the bone in behind the cast-iron stew pot to bake, but now she had to get it out without the two maids noticing.

  “You talk as if you don’t want your family to come back,” Blanche said, pinching Petite’s cheek. “Don’t think I don’t see you sneaking around.”

  “It’s that White,” the scullery girl said, taking a sip of Petite’s warm beer before putting it down on the table in front of her.

  “That horse makes me quake for fear,” Blanche said. “He’s possessed.”

  “The ploughman says Master’s going to cut the beast’s throat when he gets back.” The scullery girl wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “He said the girl’s been putting holy trinkets all around its stall.”

  “What are you up to?” Blanche grabbed Petite by the arm.

  “Nothing,” Petite said. I will wait them out, she thought.

  Not long after, as Blanche and the scullery girl chatted at the door with a man selling tooth powders, ribbons and other household notions, Petite got her chance to retrieve the bone from the hot oven. How was she to know whether it had baked through? She sniffed it. It had no odor, but she decided to bake it again the next day, just to be sure.

  The next morning proved to be more difficult. After the bread dough was put in the oven to bake, the maid and scullery girl busied themselves preparing chickens to be smoked for the winter. The big canning pot was steaming in the stone fireplace for scalding the birds. One basin was filling with feathers, another with innards, and a big vat by the door held the feet. The musky smell of feather dander filled the room.

  Petite stayed out of the fray, picking over a barrel of crab apples in one corner and tossing the rotten ones into the pig pail, watching for her chance. She’d hidden the bone behind the jar of dried rosemary on the shelf beside the cookstove. She had to get it into the oven somehow. Finally Blanche ducked out the back door to answer nature’s call, leaving only the scullery girl in the kitchen.

  Petite picked up the runt they had kept from the hound dog’s litter and pressed him to her face, growling with him playfully. “Oh! He nipped me,” she exclaimed, dropping the puppy in the basin of feathers.

  “What are you doing?” The scullery girl waved the flying feathers away with bloody hands. “What a mess.”

  As the girl lunged to catch the pup, Petite retrieved the bone from behind the jar. “Oh, how I love to see bread baking,” she said, opening the great oven door and pushing the bone in behind the pans. “Nec cesso, nec erro,” she whispered in Latin for good measure: I do not slacken, I do not lose my way.

  AS BLANCHE AND THE SCULLERY GIRL were hanging chickens in the smoker, Petite snuck back into the kitchen to retrieve the bone. She was alarmed to see three bread loaves lined up on the sill to cool. She opened the door to the oven. It was warm still…and empty.

  Where was the bone? Petite pulled out a rack and felt along the greasy edges of the pan floor.

  “Get out of there.” Blanche’s voice boomed behind her.

  Petite stood, her hands covered in soot.

  “What in God’s name were you doing?” Blanche frowned down at Petite with her one good eye.

  “Blanche,” the scullery girl yelled from the poultry yard.

  Petite stared down at the floorboards. There it was: the bit of bone, caught between the cracks. She slipped her foot over it.

  “Blanche! The goat’s going after the hound!”

  “Mon Dieu, if it’s not one thing, it’s another,” the kitchen maid said, slamming the back door behind her.

  Hiding in the dark pantry, Petite crushed the baked bone into powder using the marble mortar and stone her mother used to grind herbs. She mixed in a bit of oil and spooned the mix into a pin case, which she’d emptied three nights earlier. Then she tiptoed up to her attic room and put the case into the toe of one of her sabots. Tomorrow, she thought, pushing the wooden shoes under her bed.

  PETITE WOKE AT COCK’S CROW and slipped down the narrow stairs, taking care not to wake Blanche, asleep on a pallet in the kitchen. She stood shivering on the back step for some time, listening for spirits. Her breath caught at the sound of flapping wings, and she saw a great bird rise from the woods. Her heart was pounding. She put the pin case between her teeth and, forming a cross with her fingers, made her way across the farmyard to the barn. She cre
aked open the door and stepped inside.

  The barn was dark as pitch. She couldn’t see Diablo, but she could hear his tail swishing against the boards. The acrid smell of urine stung her eyes. Moon glow filled the tiny window, and the stallion’s head appeared, shining in the light.

  Petite felt her way along the woodpile to the corner stall. She paused at the gate latch, her eyes adjusting to the dark. Perhaps she should climb over the rails. That way she would be out of reach of his hind quarters—but closer to his teeth.

  No, there was no easy way, no way that was safe. She said a prayer as she opened the latch and slipped into the stall, ankle deep in manure. The horse pinned back his ears, watching her with a wary eye.

  Petite pried the pin case open. “Ho, boy,” she said faintly, rubbing the oil on her fingers. “Don’t be afraid.” She held out her trembling hand. “I can save you,” she whispered, taking one cautious step forward. And then another.

  Finally, she was at his shoulder. He was taller than she had imagined. “Ho, boy.” She knew this horse. “Ho, my beautiful brave boy.”

  Slowly, so as not to startle him, she touched an oily finger to his nostril. “Ho, my pretty one,” she said. She reached her finger into his mouth and felt his tongue. “Beloved,” she whispered, rubbing her oily hand over his chin, his chest.

  He bent his head around to her. She pressed her face into his neck, inhaled his scent, joy coursing through her. The magic had worked. Diablo was hers now. She had tamed him—now he would bend to her will.

  O God, I thank Thee. Although she knew it was not God she should thank, but the Devil.

  PETITE WAS ON DIABLO’S BACK when the old ploughman appeared.

  “Wha—!” he cried out, dropping his bucket of water. “Que diable,” he said, crossing himself.

  Petite sat up and stretched. The horse nickered softly, bending his nose around to sniff her foot. She stroked his ears, then grabbed his mane and slid down his side, feeling for her sabots in the muck.