Mistress of the Sun

by Sandra Gulland

  Louis scanned the room and found Petite. There was a hint of warm recognition, and then a hint of a frown. (Why? Petite wondered, alarmed).

  Fortunately, the Queen did not stay long, retiring just before the midnight excursion. The courtiers followed Louis, his brother and Henriette down to the courtyard. The moon was a full circle of light, the stars bright, the air smelling of dung and smoke from all the torches. The men mounted their horses as the women were helped into coaches. Petite joined Nicole in the last, a covered cabriolet for two.

  Under cover of night, Petite fell silent as Nicole pattered on. She was exhausted from the day’s effort to dissemble, overwhelmed yet enlivened by the enormous change in her life. She was no longer chaste. Ruined, her mother would say—yet she did not feel ruined in the least.

  A night bird warbled, a breeze picked up. The leaves of a beech tree quivered in the moonlight. How beautiful everything seemed. She had given up her chastity for him. Did he scorn her for it? Did he love her less? No, she could not believe that. His love for her was true.

  Nicole touched Petite’s arm. A rider was approaching. “I think it’s Ludmilla,” she said, her eyes wide.

  Louis? There was a cloud over the moon, and Petite could not be sure. The rider said something to their driver, turning his horse to keep pace with the carriage.

  It was Louis. Mercy. Petite stuck her head out the window. “Your Majesty?”

  Not Louis. Not Beloved. Not my heart’s desire. She had to be careful.

  “Your driver’s going to stop at the fork ahead,” Louis told her, his face shadowed by the brim of his hat. “Go into the woods on the left.” He spurred his horse and galloped ahead.

  “Well,” Nicole said with quiet astonishment, fluttering her lace-edged fan.

  “I’ll explain later,” Petite said as their coach slowed. Her emotions were in disorder. Now she would have to confide in Nicole, but what would she say? She felt caught in a maze. “I won’t be long.”

  “You can’t go into the woods at night alone,” Nicole said, grabbing Petite’s arm.

  Petite wrenched free and jumped to the ground. It was dark under cover of the enormous trees. It took a moment for her to make out a narrow footpath through the brush. She felt her way slowly. She could smell wolf. Soon the path opened onto a wider riding track.

  She stood, waiting, recovering her breath. She started at the loud, whistling call of a nightingale. She felt the pounding of Louis’s horse on the earth, and he emerged around a bend, riding a small bay trotter.

  He vaulted off the horse, looped the reins over a branch and approached, faint shafts of moonlight glinting off his sword. He stopped at a distance and tipped his hat—as if they were at Court. An owl hooted.

  Petite’s eyes filled with tears. She held out her bare hands.

  Louis stepped forward and placed his hands in hers, the leather of his gloves soft.

  Handfasted.

  “I talked to my confessor, Louise,” he said. “I must give you up.” There were tears in his voice.

  “What do you mean?” Fear filled her. His confessor was right. They would both go to Hell. But Hell, surely, would be here on Earth, should he forsake her.

  “This life will ruin you,” he said, his tone almost pleading. “I’ve already ruined you.”

  Petite started to raise her hand—to slap him, she realized with horror—and then quickly stepped back, frightened by what she might have done. She took a shaky breath. “Never say that you’ve ruined me, Louis.”

  He gathered her into his arms. “My love,” he said—awkwardly, as if the word was still new to him, an ancient tongue.

  Petite’s knees buckled as he kissed her, an unholy sweetness filling her veins.

  NICOLE SCRAMBLED FOR a kerchief as Petite climbed back into the coach. She wiped Petite’s cheeks and put her arm around her friend’s heaving shoulders.

  “I can’t bear it,” Petite said, weeping. She felt joyous, euphoric—as well as bewildered. She and Louis had vowed to meet, again and again. It was wrong, but they were helplessly in love. “If you tell, Nicole, I’ll kill you,” she said with a quiet ferocity that shocked them both.

  A WEEK LATER, after Mass, Petite was followed out of the chapel by the Marquise de Plessis-Bellièvre. Lost in thought, Petite didn’t notice. Louis had arranged for her to talk to his new confessor a few days earlier. Polygamy was common in the days of the apostles, the priest had explained to her. Holy men such as Moses and David had more than one wife and, historically, the King of France often had a mistress. The King was of God; even Petite was absolved. Petite didn’t really believe it, so she was walking along silently praying for clarity, absolution and forgiveness (as well as, in truth, the chance soon to meet with her lover), unaware that her attention was wanted.

  Finally, the short, plump widow made an obsequious bow before her, sliding her right foot forward and bending at the waist so low that the two ostrich feathers on her cap touched the stone floor. “Do you have a moment, Mademoiselle de la Vallière?” she asked, rising. In spite of the heat she was wearing a heavy green gown trimmed with spotted brown fur.

  “Madame is expecting me,” Petite said, resisting an urge to stand back. The woman’s breath smelled rotten.

  “This won’t take much time,” the Marquise de Plessis-Bellièvre promised, ushering Petite outside with surprising strength. “Come, here’s a shady bench. You know, my dear, you are regarded as one of the beauties of the Court. It wouldn’t do to brown your lovely skin.”

  “Madame la Marquise de Plessis-Bellièvre,” Petite said, pulling away, “truly, I must be going.”

  The Marquise leaned her sunshade against the bench. “How charming to be punctual,” she said, sitting and patting the place beside her. “I assure you this won’t take long. I have a message from the minister of finance.”

  Reluctantly, Petite sat. The Marquise de Plessis-Bellièvre organized Nicolas Fouquet’s social engagements, she knew, and she suspected that this might have to do with the minister’s upcoming fete at his new château at Vaux-le-Vicomte. It was all anyone talked about of late.

  “He’d like to make you a gift,” the Marquise said, pulling a fan from her bodice. “A token of friendship.” She snapped the fan open and fluttered it vigorously.

  Petite stiffened. A gift? Why? “That wouldn’t be right, Madame,” she said, flustered. Was this how bribes were made?

  “Come, my dear, this is no trifle—twenty thousand pistoles. Half that would make a respectable dowry, set you up nicely, and all you’d have to do is let him know what’s going on from time to time.” She smiled, covering a broken tooth with her fan. “What could be the harm in that?”

  Petite was at a loss for words. Did Fouquet want her to spy for him? Surely not.

  “Just imagine what one could do with such a sum,” the Marquise went on.

  “Madame la Marquise de Plessis-Bellièvre, I believe there has been a mistake,” Petite said, standing abruptly.

  “My dear girl—”

  “I am not in a position to know what’s going on—as you put it—and even if I were, I could certainly not be bought,” Petite said, inflamed now with anger.

  At that, she curtsied and headed back to the château, overcome with an inner trembling. Court seemed an unknown world to her. She felt unmoored, afloat.

  As she climbed the stairs to Henriette’s suite, she tried to compose herself. Courtiers gathered on the landing were watching; there could be talk. She stopped at a window enclosure, her heart palpitating. Fouquet had tried to bribe her to spy…on Louis? She gasped, realizing that that must be the case. She took a careful breath, leaning against the stone sill. Fouquet must know; he must have found out.

  How can that be? she thought, an icy panic filling her. They had been so careful. Petite had had to tell Nicole, true, but only after Nicole had vowed not to breathe word of it to a soul. And other than Nicole, who but Louis’s confessor and Gautier knew anything at all? She had to tell Louis—warn him.


  PETITE LOOKED TO make sure nobody was around before pushing open the heavy door to Gautier’s room. The small chamber was empty. Louis wasn’t there yet. She put down her basket of linens and leaned against the door, closing her eyes and collecting her breath. She’d passed Athénaïs in the stairwell.

  This time, Petite was well disguised as a laundress and thankfully—Dieu merci—she’d not been recognized. Gautier thought it safer for her and Louis to change their costumes each time they met. (Each time, he had said, the words implying an indefinite future.)

  The drapery had been drawn against the afternoon sun and two night candles lit. The bed curtains were open, the covering sheet pulled back. Petite took off her hemp apron. A rectangular cloth, folded in half and wired at the edges, was pinned to her cap. It scratched. She lifted it off and unpinned her braids, coiled into a bun. Louis liked her hair hanging loose.

  Where is he? she thought, sitting down on the bed. A small sponge had been placed on the bedside table, next to a bottle of brandy. Gautier had thought of everything. O Mary…Sin upon sin.

  Louis entered without knocking. “Ha,” he said with a grin, throwing off his cloak and diving onto the bed, taking Petite into his arms. “I can’t stop thinking of you,” he said, his hands roving, fumbling with the back laces of her bodice.

  Petite sat up to make it easier for him. She shrugged out of the bodice so that he could loosen her skirt. At last she was down to her chemise (skirt and petticoat ties edged with laces made by her aunt Angélique, she realized with chagrin).

  Louis took her hands and pressed her fingertips to his lips. “Your hands are cold.” He looked at her face. “What’s wrong, Louise?”

  He said her name softly, almost in a whisper—as if they were children, playing a secret game. She wanted it always to be thus, the two of them, hidden away. She pressed her cheek against his. She loved the cool feel of his skin, the rasp of his chin, his breath in her ear. Their love was spiritual in its intensity—how could it be a sin?

  “I’m frightened,” she said, looking into his eyes.

  He regarded her with surprise. “Why?” he asked, stroking her hair. “Has something happened?”

  “It’s Monsieur Fouquet,” she said, unfastening the cloth ties of his leather doublet. She longed to feel his skin on hers.

  “Nicolas?” His eyes squinted jealously. Fouquet had a reputation as a seducer, in spite of his age. “He didn’t—?”

  “No, it’s not that. He offered me money, through the Marquise de Plessis-Bellièvre…to spy—on you, I fear.”

  “How much?” His voice was cold—the voice of a king, not a lover.

  “How much has nothing to do with it.” She snorted with proud contempt. “I cannot be bought.”

  Louis tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. “Unlike the rest of us,” he said, smiling with sad irony.

  Petite covered his hands with her own and kissed him lightly. “He must know,” she said, feeling his lips on her neck. The thought that they were watched chilled her. She ran her fingers through his long hair, felt an edge of teeth in his kisses. “How?” she asked, her breath quickening.

  “Fouquet has spies everywhere,” Louis said bitterly. “I told you this was a dangerous place. We all wear masks. Nothing is as it seems.”

  “Some say he’s assembling arms, Louis, that he intends to rule.” She lay down and he followed her. She laced her hands under his shirt, feeling the long smooth muscles of his back.

  “I know,” he scoffed. “He’s not the only one with spies. I’ve been watching him. I’m not the dupe he imagines. He thinks I’m young and frivolous, that I’m more interested in hunting than ruling. He assumes I’m not paying attention, that I don’t know what he’s up to.” He regarded Petite for a long moment. “He underestimates me.”

  Chapter Twenty

  NICOLAS FOUQUET WELCOMED his royal guests to his new château with an effusive show of grandeur. “This modest fete is in your honor, Your Majesty.” Attired in lace and brocade, he handed the King and the Queen Mother down from their royal coach himself, presenting the Queen Mother with a tiara of diamonds. He expressed regret that the Queen, great in her maternity, had been unable to make the three-hour journey from Fontaine Beleau.

  Madame Fouquet, fully with child herself, made a curtsy and was helped to rise by the Marquise de Plessis-Bellièvre.

  Petite glanced away when the Marquise—Fouquet’s spy, she now knew—looked at her coldly.

  “Ah, my dear Fouquet,” the Queen Mother said as one of her attendants placed the glittering bauble on her head, “you honor to excess.”

  “Nothing is too great for Your Majesty,” Fouquet said, but glancing over at Louis, who was surveying the grounds. The limestone château was encircled by courtyards and a moat. Vast gardens, defined by clipped hornbeam hedges, extended down to a canal.

  “Ah, the beautiful Madame,” Fouquet exclaimed as a swarm of footmen unhitched Henriette’s litter from the backs of two palfreys. “What a trial for you to have come all this way,” he said, bending to kiss her hand.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, Monsieur,” Henriette said dreamily. She was officially young with child now, and delicate. Her doctor and Philippe had objected, but she had insisted on making the trip. She had had to travel by litter, well dosed with laudanum.

  “And in such heat, such dust! Come, Your Majesties, I will show you to your suites so that you might refresh.”

  Petite followed as footmen hoisted Henriette’s litter up the carpeted stairs. The château was exquisite in every detail: frescoes, rare mosaics, porphyry tables, gold-framed mirrors, ancient Greek sculptures everywhere. She noticed an emblem carved into the cupola high above—Fouquet’s device. It showed a squirrel climbing a tree, and underneath, the words Quo non ascendet?

  She puzzled over the translation. Where to not climb? To what not to climb? To what place—what height—would he not climb? That was it, she realized with a chill. To what heights would he not climb?

  Does Fouquet seek the crown? Petite wondered. Certainly, he was acting the part. It was said that he had spent over a hundred thousand livres on this fete alone—more than Louis spent in a year. Where had the money come from? Louis suspected that Fouquet was taking money out of the national treasury, that his wealth was embezzled—from him, from the people. Such display of luxury would no doubt confirm his suspicions. Where would it lead? Louis was intent on change, intent on rule without corruption—by force if need be.

  “Look up,” Nicole sang out softly beside her. “Ludmilla’s watching.”

  Louis was standing on the landing. He glanced beyond Petite and then directly at her, his eyes lingering. With the slightest of smiles, he looked away.

  Fouquet appeared at the balustrade beside him. He too caught Petite’s eye. He lifted his gloved hand to the brim of his green hat in salute.

  “What did that mean?” Nicole asked.

  “Hush, Nicole,” Petite said under her breath. What did it mean? She longed to be somewhere else, in a field among silent horses, with creatures she trusted, whose language she knew.

  After the royal family refreshed and the hot August day began to cool, Fouquet proposed a promenade in the gardens. Louis and Philippe helped their mother into a light open-topped calèche as Nicole and Yeyette helped Henriette, prettily coiffed and newly attired, into an embroidered litter shaded by a cloth-of-gold canopy and carried by four footmen.

  Reclining on the down pillows, the Princess held out her hands so that Petite could arrange the scarlet ribbons at her thin wrists. Her ringlets hung low onto her shoulders and were sprinkled with the same rosettes that adorned her gown.

  “Hurry,” Henriette said, flushed with excitement. “I don’t want to miss a thing.”

  Guests were arriving in droves—hundreds upon hundreds of them, an endless stream of men and women in silk and satin, glittering with diamonds, and adorned with rare plumes and a profusion of ribbons: on hats, canes, sleeves, swords, sh
oe buckles—even on walking sticks.

  Petite waved her fan at Athénaïs, who was standing with two of the Queen Mother’s attendants and Lauzun.

  At last the promenade was put in motion, with Louis and Fouquet in the lead. Fouquet waved his arms about, effervescent with excitement, the courtiers following like an infestation of tropical birds. They cried out with delight as hundreds of water jets shot into the air and all the fountains suddenly came to life.

  “The garden changes as we move through it,” Petite observed as she and Nicole followed after Madame’s litter. The pool wasn’t rectangular, after all, but square. What appeared to be a grotto, just beyond the pool, was in fact some distance away, separated by a canal. What appeared to be a row of water jets turned out to be a roaring cascade. Everything appeared symmetrical, but teasingly was not.

  A garden of illusion, Petite thought: how apt. Fouquet played the part of the devoted servant, while plotting to rule. Louis publicly applauded his minister of finance, while planning his demise. At Court, nothing is as it appears, Louis had said. We all wear masks.

  Torchbearers, thousands of them, appeared as the sun began to set, escorting the guests back to the château, where tables had been set with gold—solid gold—platters of pheasant, ortolan, quail, partridge, ragouts and bisques. Wine flowed in abundance as musicians played. The buzz of revelry grew as the tables were refreshed six times.

  The abundance was shocking, an affront. Could the royal family afford such a display? Louis was taking it all in. Indeed, everyone seemed to be watching. How many present were Fouquet’s spies? Petite wondered. Who could be trusted?

  Trumpets sounded. “To the outdoor theater,” pages announced.