Mistress of the Sun

by Sandra Gulland

  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.”

  IT 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.

  “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.

  THE SATURDAY 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 drama
tic, 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.”

  THAT NIGHT, PETITE 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.

  THE CHTEAU 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.”

  PETITE 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-ba
rred 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.”

  Chapter Nine

  THE 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.