Mistress of the Sun

by Sandra Gulland

  “And so rich,” Françoise said with awe. “She has three country manors. Jean is going to take me to visit each one of them.”

  Petite nodded. She and Jean had thought it wise for their mother to be out of Paris until after Petite’s baby was born.

  “And each one furnished,” her mother went on.

  Petite put a finger to her lips. She could feel the dagger eyes of the courtiers in the pews behind. Envy was a lethal emotion at Court. Louis had bestowed his royal beneficence on the Vallière family. She knew that the puzzled courtiers would be trying to figure out how this had come about. Why would Gabrielle Glé de la Cotardais—noble, beautiful, young (seventeen), and rich (worth forty thousand livres a year) give her hand to a nobody?

  Jean and his bride knelt at the altar as the priest intoned benedictions and prayers.

  “But then, Jean is charming and handsome. Who can resist him?”

  “Hush, Mother.” Petite inclined her head toward the crowd of courtiers behind.

  “Why should I care?” Françoise said, tipping up her chin. “We’re richer than most of them now—thanks to Jean.”

  Petite glanced up to see Louis and the Queen taking their seats in the tribune above. She thought with sick apprehension of the baby she was carrying. The sooner she went into hiding, the better.

  PETITE WAS QUITE FAR along by the time Monsieur Colbert, the new minister of finance, managed to find her a hideaway. He’d been busy, he explained, preoccupied by the responsibilities of his new position.

  Petite sympathized, but it had become increasingly difficult to hide her condition. Clorine laced her painfully tight, and the bone-chilling cold allowed her to wear layers of heavy woolens, but even so she feared discovery. It had helped that Henriette (at Louis’s command) provided a cover—enlisting Petite to perform the quieter tasks, not asking her to perform in her ballets, and, ultimately, letting everyone know that she was giving her maid of honor leave for reasons of health—but the time, “her” time, was drawing near. She was greatly relieved when, at last, a house was secured.

  “Two floors, twenty-four paces long, eight wide,” Monsieur Colbert said, unlocking the door to the Hôtel Brion. “Small, but sufficient.”

  Petite entered, followed by Clorine. The entry was basic, it pleased her, and the location, looking onto the park of the Palais Royale, was excellent, hidden yet close. Louis would be able to see her often.

  “Guard room and kitchen are on the ground floor,” Monsieur Colbert said, leading Petite up a circular stair. “There are four chambers for domestics beyond the kitchen, but your personal maid will have a chamber near you, on the floor above.”

  The sitting room was bright, looking down upon the garden on one side and a small courtyard on the other. The furnishings were opulent, the chairs gilded, the lemon-yellow damask curtains tasseled and fringed. A bookshelf was filled with classics: Aristophanes, Homer, Plutarch.

  “Cardinal Richelieu used this little house as his library,” Colbert said, breathless from the climb up the stairs. “Hence all the shelves.”

  The sitting room was lined with books. A handsome white marble figure of a horse was used as a bookend. Petite touched its cool, smooth surface. Diablo, she thought with sorrow: for her lost youth.

  She ran her hand over the spines of the tooled leather covers. She was not due for two months, so she would have time to read. “There’s even a set of Virgil,” she said. Abbé Patin would have been pleased, she thought, recalling his lessons at Blois when she was a girl. She wondered where Abbé Patin was now, and then shame filled her, thinking of where she herself was now, and why.

  A large rosewood and ivory lute—a theorbo with a long neck—was set on a stand in a corner, a guitar propped beside it. Notation for a duet by Robert de Visée was on a stand. Petite ran a finger over the theorbo’s many strings. Later, she would tune it.

  “His Majesty thought he would like to practice here with you. The guitar was made by Checchucci of Livorno in the reign of Henry the Great. His Majesty selected it for you himself.”

  The slender instrument had a vaulted rosewood back with ebony fluted ribs. The peg box, circled in ebony, opened into a layered rosette. Petite strummed the gut strings; the tones were rich, resonating.

  “Fit for a king,” Colbert said matter-of-factly, opening the door to the bedchamber.

  A gold perfume burner, set on a tripod in one corner, scented the air with attar of rose. Petite could see elm trees through the window facing the massive poster bed. Our child will be born in this room, Petite thought, feeling the baby stir.

  Clorine pushed open the double doors to the dressing room. A small basin on claw-and-ball feet was set on the black and white marble floor.

  “For washing feet,” Colbert explained, pushing open a door to a small chamber. “And this is your maid’s room.”

  “Zut.” Clorine had never had a room of her own.

  “It’s lovely, Monsieur Colbert,” Petite said, following the minister of finance back into the sitting room. She lowered herself onto the chaise longue, her hand on her corseted belly. A fire had been lit to ward off the fall chill. “You’ve gone to such trouble.”

  Monsieur Colbert had been nicknamed “The North” by the courtiers because of his cold demeanor, but Petite found his manner refreshingly direct. He was from the mercantile class—his grandfather had been in trade, a cloth merchant—yet she respected him.

  “My wife helped me,” the finance minister said, pacing, his hands clasped behind his back. “The brocades and linens are of the finest quality.”

  “His Majesty will be pleased,” Petite assured him.

  There was a pounding at the door on the ground floor. “It’s likely the men with your belongings,” Monsieur Colbert said as Clorine headed down the stairs. “I suggest you withdraw from view,” he told Petite. “One of the movers might recognize you.”

  Petite found the necessary closet in the dressing room. She sat perched on the seat, listening to the sound of men grunting. A few minutes later there was silence.

  “You can come out now,” Clorine said through the slatted door. “Monsieur Colbert left with the movers.”

  “Did they bring everything?” Petite asked, emerging.

  “Even the dirty laundry,” Clorine said. She was going through Petite’s trunk.

  Petite saw, with relief, the statue of the Virgin and her keepsake box. She looped her rosary around the Virgin and set it on the prie-dieu. “I’m famished,” she said, opening the keepsake box and taking out the branch (only two leaves on it now). She wedged it into the frame of a mirror.

  “Monsieur Colbert said his wife will be back in one hour with a cook. In the morning one of his maids will come with more linens. She’s to be our chambermaid.”

  A staff: Petite now had servants to manage. She would have to make sure that they didn’t drink or gamble and that they said their prayers. She winced, realizing that she was hardly in any condition to insist on the religious piety of others.

  Madame Colbert arrived promptly. Petite waited upstairs as the finance minister’s wife installed the cook in the rooms below. Petite was not to be introduced, she’d been informed. Only Clorine and the chambermaid would ever be allowed to actually see “Mademoiselle du Canard,” the consort of a noble who would always arrive masked.

  “There now,” Madame Colbert exclaimed, as breathless after climbing the stairs as her husband had been. “The cook’s nothing to look at, but she appears to know the pots from the pans, so I doubt that she’ll poison you.” The finance minister’s wife was a short, round woman adorned with frivolous gewgaws. The daughter of a wealthy family from the Tours region, she still spoke with a Touraine accent.

  “I remember meeting you at Blois,” Petite said. “Long ago, during one of la Grande Mademoiselle’s visits.” It had been quite early on, during Petite’s first Easter there.

  “Were you the skinny little girl with a limp?” Madame Colbert gave Petite a warm embrace. Her cheek was
creamy soft.

  “Has Colby explained everything? He can be a bit terse.”

  Petite couldn’t imagine this outgoing woman in the embrace of the stern finance minister, yet they’d produced five children, the eldest thirteen and the youngest only a few months old. “He told me you were a big help.”

  “I do what I can. He works sixteen hours a day, every day of the week, even feast days.”

  “The King speaks highly of him.” The honest, hardworking and frugal new finance minister was performing miracles—creating a new Rome, it was said, without the corrupt dealings of the past.

  “It’s a wonder he’s had time to give me any children at all.” Madame Colbert chortled. “So he leaves the fiddle-faddle to me.”

  Petite stood at the window. The sky was gray and a cold drizzle was falling. Louis had gone to Saint-Germain-en-Laye to make the rounds with his keepers in preparation for a fall battue. In Paris, he became restless. She was growing accustomed to his moods.

  “You’ll be happy to know that Monsieur and Madame Beauchamp, a couple who have been in our employ for some time, have agreed to look after the baby.”

  Petite, heart heavy, pulled the drapes against the cold and returned to her guest. “Do they know?” That they would be caring for the King’s child?

  “Of course not! Nobody must know. His Majesty made that very clear. Colby told them that his brother’s fiancée had found herself in a delicate condition, and that the family was under obligation to look after the child. As soon as your pains begin, a courier will be sent to alert them. They live in the parish of Saint-Leu, out near porte Saint-Denis. Their rooms are not far from the church.”

  Petite put down her dish of tea, lest it spill. She had come to accept that the child would never be hers, but she hadn’t realized that he would be taken from her immediately. She recalled the stories she’d been told of the various mistresses of the kings of times past: Diane de Poitiers, mistress to King Henry II; Agnès Sorel, mistress to Charles VII; Gabrielle d’Estrées, mistress to Henry IV. Perhaps they too had had to hide away, give up their babies. Petite felt a sudden sympathy for these women who were regarded with such contempt.

  “They will hire a coach?” she asked finally, her voice unsteady. The nights were bitter; a newborn could die in such weather.

  “They will be provided with one. And a charcoal foot-warmer, as well.” Madame Colbert appeared to be as gifted in organization as her husband. “You don’t need to worry about a thing, my dear. Madame Beauchamp was wet nurse to two of my own babies. She is clean and her milk is excellent.”

  “Porte Saint-Denis isn’t far,” Petite said hopefully. “I could walk.”

  “You’d have to go through the cemetery to get there and the stink of the dead would make you faint—or worse. If you wish, I can make arrangements for you to see the infant, but frankly, it’s best not to think of it. I send all my babies out, and look—” She proudly raised her paps with her hands. “It will be difficult for one week, but soon you will feel your normal self again.”

  Petite smiled grimly, concealing her dismay. Madame Colbert may have sent her children out to a wet nurse, but she got them back after a time and raised them herself. Didn’t she understand the difference?

  Madame Colbert reached over to pat Petite on the shoulder. “Think of the King, my dear girl, think of his needs. Think of the glorious service you have the honor to provide.”

  Petite put a rein on her tongue. It appalled her to think of her time with Louis as “service.”

  “You’ve met with Monsieur Blucher, the midwife?”

  “Yesterday—” Petite faltered. She had not liked talking to a man about such an intimate matter.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. He attended my last lying-in, and he’s very, very good. He has promised the King that you’ll stay nice and tight.” Madame Colbert grinned, forming three chins.

  PETITE WAS BORED, desperate to go outside. “At least to Mass,” she told Clorine. “The help go to church at seven. I’ll leave shortly after. Notre-Dame de Recouvrance is not far.” It was a shabby little church—not even the servants went there. She would not be seen.

  “And leave the house empty?” Clorine asked, considering. “What if one of them comes back?”

  “I’ll go alone, in disguise—in your old clothes. People will take me for a servant.”

  At last, Clorine relented, though she fretted. “Are you sure about this?” she asked as she tucked Petite’s curls under the crown of a bonnet.

  “If I feel even a twinge, I will return.”

  GOING TO MASS regularly greatly improved Petite’s spirits and she continued to go out even when the November weather turned icy. On the twenty-fourth, a Friday, she went to Confession (“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I am about to give birth to a bastard”), staying to pray two Hail Marys and three Our Fathers before taking Communion. She had been worried about going into childbed unconfessed. Women sometimes died in childbed, and she couldn’t help but fear what lay ahead. She’d begun to recall the whispered stories of her youth, stories of deformed babies, of women torn asunder. She remembered hearing cries of women in terrible pain. The more pleasure a woman experienced during congress, the more pain she suffered giving birth—and Petite had certainly experienced pleasure with Louis.

  It was past eight of the clock by the time Petite stepped out of the musty church into the bright winter light. Boys were playing noisily in the church square, kicking an inflated pig bladder filled with pebbles. She kicked it back to them and hurried on, taking care where she stepped: the frozen mud was slippery and she dared not fall.

  As she neared the gate into the Palais Royale gardens, she felt a hand touch her shoulder. She turned to see a woman of middle age in a stiff figure-of-eight ruff and powdered wig, tightly frizzled and covered by a net of black beads.

  Her mother.

  At first Petite was confused. Was Françoise not in the country with Jean and his wife? And was it truly her mother? This woman had paled her face with white lead and painted her cheeks red. A servant girl Petite didn’t recognize hovered several feet behind, laden with parcels.

  But yes, it was her.

  “Forgive me, Madame,” Françoise said, taking in Petite’s condition, which was impossible to hide, even under her felt cloak. “I mistook you for my daughter.”

  Petite backed away, nearly tumbling into a pit of sewage. She shook her head, not daring to speak for fear of discovery. She was masked as well as veiled—how could she be recognized?

  Françoise glanced down at Petite’s boot, its thick sole. “Aye,” she said slowly, looking Petite up and down with a cynical smile. “You are not my daughter—for I have disowned her.”

  And with that, she turned and walked briskly away, followed by the servant girl, who, smirking, stared back at Petite over her shoulder.

  Petite stood watching until they disappeared around a corner. Disowned. She fought back angry tears. She thought of running after her mother, rebuking her, throwing herself into her mother’s arms. Begging mercy: demanding it. She was nineteen, and sinfully with child—yes—but Louis was her only link to the world, and he was so rarely with her. She had chosen her path, but it was not an easy one. Now especially, approaching childbed, she longed for a mother’s counsel and protection—but that was never to be.

  Church bells rang. A beggar woman hobbled up to her, leaning on a stick. “A sou?” She poked her dirty fingers into Petite’s belly. “For a blessing on it.”

  Petite shook her head, alarmed by the old woman’s evil eye.

  “A curse, then?” the woman cackled as Petite turned away and hurried back to the safety of her hideaway house.

  “You’re late,” Clorine exclaimed, opening the door. “What happened?” she demanded, helping Petite up the stairs.

  The air smelled of jasmine. “I need to lie down,” Petite said, faltering. Disowned. She could still hear the contempt in her mother’s voice.

  “Is there a problem?” I
t was a man speaking.

  “Louis?” Petite asked, groping. Why was it so dark? She touched a wall, felt the flock-work design of the wall covering. “Thank God, you’re here.”

  “What’s happened?” he asked. “Is it your time?”

  “I don’t know, Your Majesty,” Petite heard Clorine say, from behind her. “She’s unsteady.”

  Petite felt Louis’s hand on her arm, his reassuring strength. “Why is it so dark in here?” she asked, shivering. How could her mother have abandoned her?

  “Dark?” Louis sounded close.

  “I can’t see you,” Petite said, stumbling.

  Louis held her steady. “What do you mean?”

  Petite reached out her hand, ran her fingers over his face, felt his nose, his angular cheeks, the stubble on his chin. This was not the dark of night. This dark was deeper.

  “It’s…it’s daylight,” she heard him say.

  There was concern in his voice, and that frightened her. Saint Michel, I pray to you, help me in this world of darkness, defend me against the spirits of wickedness.

  “Come. Lie down,” he said, urging her forward.

  Petite took a cautious step, and another, until she felt the bed at her knees. She leaned over, groping for the pillows. Louis’s hand at her elbow, she let herself down.

  “Louis, I can’t see a thing,” she said, her voice breaking.

  WITH REPEATED BLEEDING and herbal infusions, Petite’s vision slowly returned, but she suffered debilitating headaches and dizziness. Louis, alarmed by the episode, made her promise not to leave her hideaway until after the birth of their child. “You should not have been going out at all. Look what you risked.”

  “Can’t you heal me?” Petite asked him in a moment of weakness. His touch alone cured hundreds of the Evil.

  He smiled sadly. “My love, that’s for the people. I can’t really—” He shrugged and threw up his hands. “I’m mortal.”