Mistress of the Sun

by Sandra Gulland

  “Because of that fight on the stairs?” Nicole asked.

  Athénaïs nodded. “There were eight of them. They met out on some field in Chaillot. The Marquis de Noirmoutiers was one.” At the mention of her fiancé’s name, Athénaïs’s voice quavered.

  “Was anyone hurt?” Petite asked fearfully.

  “They all were—but the Marquis d’Antin was killed.” One of Athénaïs’s eyes began to twitch.

  “The kid with the big ears?” Nicole put her hands over her mouth.

  “He was stabbed—I was there. I saw it. I saw him die.”

  Oh no. “What about the Marquis de Noirmoutiers?” Petite asked, reaching for her rosary.

  “He’s—” Athénaïs took a shaky breath. “He’s wounded in one leg…badly.” She looked at Petite and then Nicole. “He needs help,” she whispered. “He needs a doctor who won’t talk. I thought you might know of someone. He needs to get out of the country, and quickly.”

  “Of course,” Nicole said—but tentatively. She glanced uneasily at Petite.

  “I’ll stand outside,” Petite offered, understanding Nicole’s discomfort. Athénaïs’s fiancé would have to flee the country, hide from the law—from Louis. She slipped out the door, wrapped in her comforter.

  She felt like an exile, shivering in the dark corridor. Soon, the door creaked open and Athénaïs appeared.

  “You’ll not say a word?” She pressed a ring into Petite’s hand.

  “I don’t need that, Athénaïs,” Petite said, handing the gem back. “You can trust me.”

  “Forgive me. I’m not myself.” Athénaïs bit down on her knuckle, a high little cry escaping. “Everything’s ruined.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Petite said, wishing she could comfort the Marquise, so elegant and regal—and yet so broken.

  THE DUEL WAS all anyone could talk of at Henriette’s salon the next evening.

  “Frette was drunk when he came down the stairs,” Yeyette said.

  “I heard him yell at the Prince de Chalais to get out of his way,” Claude-Marie said.

  “Frette’s rude,” Henriette said weakly, reclined on her daybed with her little dog Mimi curled up beside her.

  “So of course the Prince slapped him,” Yeyette concluded.

  Then blows had ensued. Athénaïs’s fiancé and others had joined Prince de Chalais, and others had joined Frette, and soon there were a dozen. The melee was stopped, but later, outside, a duel had been called.

  “It’s tragic.” Petite was careful not to say too much.

  Court was awash with gossip that week. All that Petite could discern with any certainty was that eight young men had gathered at dawn in an isolated field behind a monastery in the faubourg Saint-Germain, and that the Marquis d’Antin had been killed by the Chevalier d’Omale’s sword. They had all been wounded, Athénaïs’s fiancé the most seriously. After hiding Antin’s body in some bushes, they had fled the country—some to England and some to Spain, it was whispered.

  “They’ll be tried anyway—in absentia,” Yeyette said.

  “Condemned to death: the law is clear.”

  “They’ll never return,” Henriette said sadly, stroking Mimi’s long ears.

  “That’s punishment enough.”

  “Their poor families!” Claude-Marie exclaimed.

  “The law is too harsh. They’re boys.”

  “Yet duels must be stopped,” the Duchesse de Navailles said.

  “But to ruin so many lives?”

  “His Majesty will pardon them, surely,” Nicole said, joining the group.

  “Surely,” Petite echoed, but without conviction.

  Everyone hushed when Louis entered. He looked about the room solemnly.

  “Resume your diversions,” he said, stone-faced and drawn.

  What was he feeling? Petite wondered. He’d grown up with these eight young men, hunted and gambled with them. One or two of them had been members of Les Endormis, party to boyish pranks and mischief. Petite signaled to Louis with her fan, but he didn’t notice.

  “I must see His Majesty,” she whispered to Gautier under her breath. Louis’s trusted attendant had finally managed to secure a room in the Louvre at a discreet distance from the queens.

  “Four of the clock, tomorrow afternoon.”

  EVEN WITH A fire blazing it was too cold to undress. Louis and Petite shivered under the fur covers fully clothed. “This weather,” Louis said. He seemed drained of energy.

  The winter had been brutal. There had been stories of starvation in the south, of peasants living on cabbage stalks and roots. It was whispered that seventeen thousand families had perished in Burgundy, some eating human flesh in order to survive.

  “I’m sorry, my love—I just can’t,” he said, chagrined by his want of passion.

  “I understand,” Petite said, trying not to sound disappointed. Soon would begin the season of want, the forty days of Lent in which they would be abstaining. “Just hold me.” She sensed he needed refuge, comfort. He’d been working hard: on financial reform, on providing food for the starving. Halls of the Louvre had been turned into storehouses for grain for the poor. In the courtyard of the Tuileries, bread was baked in huge ovens, and thousands of loaves given away every day.

  And on top of all this, the tragedy of the duel. The eight young men—all from fine families—would be tried and condemned. They had found the means to flee (such was their privilege), but upon sentence of death they would never be able to set foot in the country again.

  “It must be hard, Louis. They were your compatriots.”

  “The law must be upheld,” he said. He clenched one fist, opening and closing his fingers.

  “I know,” Petite said. He was remote in a way she’d not seen before—this was King Louis, the man behind a mask. She put her hand on his arm, but he shook free.

  ON MARDI GRAS, Petite was wakened by Clorine, dressed in one of Petite’s gowns and fake pearls.

  “You look beautiful,” Petite said—although in truth the ensemble looked grotesque on Clorine’s stocky form. “I should be serving you,” she added, dipping into the earthen cup of bread dunked in wine. On this, the last carnival day before Lent, everything was supposed to be topsy-turvy. On this day, everyone went mad.

  “I’ll finish hemming your costume this afternoon,” Clorine said.

  Petite planned to go to the masquerade ball as Pierrot in a white tunic and pantaloons with red edging. A red velvet mask would complete the disguise.

  “His Majesty sent the mask over yesterday—rimmed with little diamonds. Real diamonds, I think,” Clorine added, rolling her eyes.

  “That, I doubt,” Petite said with a smile. It had taken time for Clorine to be at ease with her liaison with the King—time, the persuasive intercession of Gautier, as well as a long consultation with the King’s confessor—but having at last resigned herself to the relationship, she’d taken on the roles of guardian, parent as well as spiritual adviser: plying Louis for favors, lecturing Petite on caution and insisting on rigorous prayers. After each visit, it was Clorine who insisted that Petite wash her privates with vinegar and then pray on her knees before the wood figure of the Virgin. (Petite might be a fallen woman in this world, but Clorine was resolved to do everything she could to ensure that she would not be damned in the next.)

  “Listen.” Clorine went to the window. A man outside was calling out the route of the fattened ox: the procession would reach the gates of the Louvre between two and three of the clock.

  FROM THE PALACE balconies, members of the Court gathered to watch the parade of butchers—their wives and daughters laughably adorned in noble dress—followed by Druids leading the ox garlanded with flowers and mounted by a child dressed as Cupid. In former times, the bull would have been slaughtered right there, its blood flowing onto the courtyard cobbles. Now, in their more civilized times, the animal would be led to the slaughterhouse to be butchered and eaten by courtiers at the Mardi Gras ball later that night.

  Bo
nbons were thrown onto the cobbles. The courtiers laughed as men, women and children in rags frantically scrambled to get them. Someone opened a bag of flour onto the crowd below and a great shout went up, followed by mirth.

  Louis, standing with his mother and wife, glanced Petite’s way. Petite put a gloved finger to her chin, meaning. Later, my love. That night, in disguise, they would be free to meet. It would be their last encounter before the long sacrifices of Lent.

  That evening, Petite (dressed as Pierrot) and Nicole (as a milk-maid) helped Henriette into her costume as Claude-Marie and Yeyette sat by entertaining them with stories of pagan revelries of times past—the illicit trysts, the secret groping and meddling. The evening inevitably gave way to madness, they warned, an orgy of eating meat and sating fleshly desires, for on the morrow everyone began a regime of fasting, chastity and prayer.

  The two pious queens would not be attending (of course), and had cautioned Henriette, who was close to eight months along. Philippe had even forbidden his wife from going, but Henriette could not bear the thought of missing the best ball of the year. She’d been feeling much better, she claimed, “thanks to laudanum,” so her plan was to sneak in disguised in the voluminous black hooded cloak of a Domino, a common costume worn by both men and women. “My husband will never know,” she said, instructing her attendants not to hover lest her entourage betray her.

  Petite pulled on her mask and hung back from the others before entering the thronged ballroom, slipping in behind a party of hussars. The assembly was already a riot of loose manners, men and women gorging at a table littered with bones as footmen in velvet gowns carted in heaped platters and maids dressed as hussars ran about filling mugs of wine. Off to one side, a butcher was carving a black-roasted sheep and a heifer. The night was young, but the musicians were already playing the vigorous risqué dance called “Shaking of the Sheets,” the dancers twirling like tops.

  Petite made her way to one side, the better to watch—the better to look out for Louis. She saw a Domino—Henriette? she wondered. It was hard to be sure, for there were many. She was mistaken, she realized, when the figure disappeared into the shadows with a man dressed as a sultan. Taking their pleasure? It was not a night to be venturing into dark corners unannounced.

  She felt someone grip her elbow.

  Alarmed, Petite turned to see a tall man dressed as a master falconer. A feathered half-mask covered his eyes. “You were supposed to be a Trojan.” She smiled, faint with relief.

  Louis led her into a narrow passageway and pulled her into a dark chamber. She heard the sound of the bolt. “Wait,” she laughed as he pulled at her clothes, found skin. She suspected he’d been drinking.

  “Help me with this.” He tugged at the sash that held up her costume bloomers.

  “Are you sure, Louis?” If only there were a candle, a hint of light. She ran her finger down his face to his mouth, and reached for a kiss.

  He thrust his tongue into her. He tasted of spirits. “Quick.”

  With difficulty, Petite pulled the cord free and, holding onto Louis for balance, managed to step out of the wide costume pantalons. It was cold, and the room smelled of urine. She had been longing to see him, but had not imagined it like this.

  She stood in the dark, the skin on her bare arms rising up in goose bumps. She couldn’t see Louis, but he was close: she could hear him breathing, hear fabric rustling. Such dark frightened her; she imagined the Devil lurking, imagined him pinching her ankles, her neck. She startled when Louis tugged on her arm.

  “I put my cloak down,” he whispered.

  Holding onto his hand, she knelt, feeling for the cloth. “I found it,” she said, lying down. Her buttocks were on the cape, but her head was on the stone floor. This is miserable, she thought.

  Someone was trying the door, but the bolt held. “Don’t worry,” Louis said, lying down over her.

  She wound her legs around his back. The stones cut into her spine in spite of the cape. If I moan and thrash, she thought, it will be over sooner…but then her moans were real.

  “Mon Dieu,” Louis said with a gasp as Petite convulsed. He collapsed and rolled off her. “You’re a devil.”

  A devil. Petite lay on the floor, staring into the dark. Waves of pleasure surged through her still. A tear tickled down her cheek into her ear. She reached for Louis’s hand, for reassurance. Mislove, it was called. Sinful love.

  PETITE SLIPPED BACK into the ballroom alone. Still weak, she leaned against a stone pillar, watching the revelry. She recognized Nicole dancing with a big man dressed as Henry the Great.

  She felt dizzy, as if she’d just emerged from a dark cave—a cave of licentious desire.

  They had performed unnatural acts. He’d held her down as he spent, called her his whore. She had imagined that it was not Louis but the Devil himself…and yet even this had inflamed her.

  La petite mort, it was called. Indeed. She had died several times over, shortening her life by a minute each time.

  In the morning I will repent, pray and fast, Petite thought. In the morning I will go to Confession, she decided as Nicole approached. Confess to insatiable desire.

  “Where have you been?” Nicole demanded gaily, slurring slightly. “It’s a little early in the evening to be disappearing.”

  “I’ve been here,” Petite lied, refraining from saying that it was a little early in the evening for Nicole to be so tipsy. “Have you seen Henriette?”

  Nicole made mysterious wide eyes. “Well…Philippe is over there.” She pointed to a couple dancing. “Pretty, isn’t he?”

  Philippe often dressed as a woman, but this ensemble was exquisite, the bodice of black silk set low at the shoulders and adorned with parchment lace. “Is that Armand de Guiche he’s with?” Petite asked.

  “Not exactly.” Nicole pointed her fan at the Domino and sultan Petite had seen earlier. “That’s Henriette…and that’s Armand de Guiche she’s with,” she whispered behind her fan. “He’s the sultan.”

  Petite was shocked—although she realized she shouldn’t have been. Armand de Guiche was a regular attendee of Henriette’s evening entertainments, his kohl-lined eyes following her every move.

  “I’ve been taking their letters back and forth,” Nicole confessed.

  “Nicole, you already have two transgressions,” Petite said with alarm. One for being drunk at Mass and the other for sneaking out after curfew. “You must stop intriguing. You’re going to end up banished.”

  “Promise not to tell Ludmilla,” Nicole said, suddenly sober.

  TWO DAYS LATER, Louis lay beside Petite in Gautier’s chamber. It was the second day of Lent, and they had made a vow to abstain. It wasn’t easy being together thus, but for Petite it was better than being apart. They chastely embraced as they talked of his son, of his horses and dogs, of the financial reforms he was attempting to make, the duel trial, Henriette’s health (his concern about the quantity of laudanum she took, her high and low spirits).

  “She’s cheerful when Armand’s around, I’ve noticed,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder…”

  Petite held her breath. Armand de Guiche was being dangerously open in his passion for Henriette.

  “Why are you flushing?” he asked, studying her face.

  “No reason.” Petite smiled—falsely, she feared. She had no talent for dissembling.

  “Do you know something?” he asked teasingly. “You’re red as a pulpit cushion.”

  Petite faced the wall.

  “Louise, you must tell me if you know.” He turned her toward him. “Do you?” He was not teasing now.

  “Louis, I can’t.”

  “You know something—and you’re not going to tell me?” He sat up. “Are you serious?”

  She did not answer.

  “Henriette is the King of England’s sister,” he said evenly. “What she does is not a private matter. It’s of national concern.”

  “Louis, I promised I wouldn’t,” Petite said, not meeting his gaze.


  “And this promise—to who-knows-who—is more important?” he demanded, his voice rising and his jaw muscles clenched.

  Petite was dismayed. Didn’t he understand?

  “If you loved me, you’d tell,” he said, standing, his hands on his hips.

  Petite smiled, hoping to soften the mood. His voice was cold and commanding, his tone imperious—threatening even. “Of course I love you,” she said, sitting on the edge of the high bed, “but I made a promise.”

  “You defy me?”

  “I’m not defying you.”

  “Yet you refuse to tell me.” He stood before her, his arms crossed, staring down at her. “I command you to tell me.”

  “Louis, don’t be like that.”

  “I am King, Louise.” He stood for a long moment staring at her, his face muscles quivering. Then—with an expletive—he banged the wall with his fist. Two framed prints fell to the floor. He kicked one, sending it flying. It shattered against the wall.

  “Louis, don’t!” She had never seen him give way to rage. He was always so contained, so controlled—so masked. But now, suddenly, he looked like the Devil himself. She fell to her knees and began to pray, her eyes clenched shut. O Mary.

  “Damn you!”

  She watched Louis in horror as he took up a silver candlestick and raised it—as if to strike her. “In the name of God,” she whispered, instinctively cowering. The blow could kill her.

  Louis threw the candlestick against the curio cabinet with all his might. Artifacts and curios fell to the floor: shells, stones, bones. He stood in the wreckage, breathing heavily. “Whore,” he said under his breath, then rushed from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Petite curled up on Gautier’s bed, sobbing. She didn’t know what to do. Soon Gautier would return. Mercy—the room. Shakily, she got to her feet and began picking things up, but she was too stunned to think. How could Louis have said what he said? He might have struck her. She closed her eyes, but his angry face was always before her. He did not love her. There was no love in him. She wept again as she reached for her clothes, her silly hat-maker disguise hanging on a wooden peg next to Louis’s butler cloak. He’d stormed out without a thought to caution.