Mistress of the Sun

by Sandra Gulland

  And both of us with child, Petite thought, like broodmares with a stallion.

  “And Queen makes three,” Athénaïs said cheerily, raising her glass.

  “I don’t feel well,” Petite said, abruptly rising.

  PETITE WENT TO BED as soon as she got back to her apartment. By the time Blucher arrived, it was clear she was miscarrying. Six and a quarter hours later, the ordeal was over.

  “I’ll inform the King, Mademoiselle de la Vallière?”

  Petite nodded, tearfully. She had wanted this child.

  ON THE THIRD DAY, Petite began to run a fever. On the fourth, she suffered visions, the surface of things giving way, demons emerging out of the shadows, their reptilian tails flicking, eyes glowing.

  O Lord, punish me not.

  Clorine, praying out loud, applied cooling compresses to Petite’s forehead, under her arms, between her legs.

  “This happens, Your Majesty,” Blucher explained to Louis. “The bringing forth of fruit before it is ripe causes disorder.”

  “Is she in danger?” Louis demanded, his voice betraying fear.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Louis called in his doctor, who in turn called in two others—grave men in black robes and tall, pointed hats. They stood beside Petite’s bed frowning. On only one thing did they agree: she was dying.

  O Lord, my sins are beyond my strength, I am bowed down, I am crushed, my strength forsakes me…

  “It is time to call in a priest, Your Majesty,” Blucher informed Louis.

  Help me, O Lord…

  Soon Petite was surrounded by men in black—priests on one side of her bed, doctors on the other. The smell of incense filled the room, the sounds of monotonous intoning.

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” Blucher told Louis as the doctors bowed out. “There is nothing more we can do.” There was sadness in his voice, as well as resignation.

  Forsake me not, O Lord!

  Louis returned to Petite’s bedside, pressed her hand to his lips. “I must leave you,” he said.

  Petite looked into his soft hazel eyes. I loved you. Once upon a time.

  He laid his head on her belly, his back heaving. She ran her fingers through his hair. “Go,” she whispered, her mouth dry, her lips cracked and swollen. A king must not be present when Death was near, not when the Devil was known to hover.

  PETITE LOOKED DOWN at her body. She was lying on the daybed, her mouth hanging open, her eyes open too, but unseeing. She was in her old chemise, the worn one edged at the neck with laces made by her aunt Angélique. One foot, the misshapen left one, was exposed. Clorine was on her knees by the bed, sobbing her heart out.

  I’ve died, Petite thought with surprise. She felt clear, like the sparkling of a crystal. She looked about the room at the dusty candelabra, her beloved books, the statue of the Virgin on the prie-dieu.

  Then, as if in a fever, she seemed to see the walls give way, and behind them was her father walking toward her, leading Diablo through a flowering meadow. He was wearing his stained leather jerkin.

  “It’s not yet time, little one,” he told her, and turned away.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  PETITE FOLLOWED A WINDING PATH across the meadow. She paused, reveling in the sounds of the crickets and bees, a solitary songbird singing. Clusters of butterflies zigzagged over tall grasses, waving in a breeze.

  She surveyed the hills in the distance, the arc of the sun. It had been a long time since she had come this way, beyond the realm of the Court. Beyond the sound of hammers on stone, the whirling dust, the army of workers cursing, pushing wheelbarrows, cart wheels screeching. Beyond the reach of the stone monument Versaie was becoming. Had become.

  Gray moss hung from the limbs of a solitary apple tree, its trunk humped with knots, one low branch splintered and reaching to the ground. She remembered the ancient tree: remembered reaching for its fruit. Remembered taking a bite, the flesh crisp and sweet. Long ago. She remembered handing an apple to Louis. He had laughed, juice on his chin. She remembered the passion of their embrace.

  Had passion corrupted them? she wondered, making her way through the long grass. Corrupted him? Had passion led Louis into the Devil’s realm of insatiable desire?

  It looked as if deer had nested under the tree—or possibly unicorn, she thought, although they were rare. The apples were small yet. She picked one touched with rose, but it was too tart to eat. She remembered watering horses at a stream nearby, and spotted the path into the woods. Entering the cool of the shade, she heard water, smelled the fragrant wild mint that often clung to mossy banks. She followed the path through ferns to a stream overhung with tree branches, its banks flowered with purple loosestrife. There, she crouched and drank deeply, then plunged her face into the clear water.

  Gone to the river.

  Sitting back, drying her face with her skirt, she noticed horse tracks in the mud—wild horses, possibly: they were not shod. And rabbit, of course, deer. A hunter’s paradise, she had called it. Our paradise, he had said.

  No longer. Where forest had been, trees stood in tubs. Where brooks had meandered musically over rocks, fountains shot arrows of water into the air.

  Quenched, Petite stood. She traced her path back onto the sunlit meadow. Following her shadow east, she emerged onto a rutted cart trail. Ducks quacked by a pond. Cows nearby grazed knee-deep in flowers. In the misty distance, she saw someone approaching.

  Petite sat in the dandelions, watching from under the brim of her straw hat as the figure moved toward her. It was a black man, clothed in blue. “Azeem?” she called out to the gentler, standing.

  He stopped before her and bowed. “It’s not to do with your children,” he said, seeing the alarm in her eyes. “It’s something else.”

  He’d aged, but his skin was still smooth, unwrinkled. His build, although slight, had density now. He’d lost only one of his teeth, which were white as whalebone. He’d acquired a long, curly black beard, the ends of which he clasped with one hand as he spoke, reminding Petite of the way one held the tail of a medicined horse as it walked, to keep it from toppling.

  “You came all this way,” she said. Louis was taking the waters nearby at Encausse, so it hadn’t to do with him, either.

  “There’s something you must see,” he said gravely.

  PETITE HEARD THE HORSE’S scream as they approached the royal stables. Yearlings in a far field were stampeding, running in a tight cluster. In a paddock, broodmares were snorting, circling their foals. A colt still wobbly on its stiltlike legs got knocked off its feet. The wagon used to haul horses was on its side in the stud paddock. A howling dog lay by the gate, struggling to rise.

  The big stable doors gaped open. Petite heard the scream again, followed by the sound of splintered timbers, men shouting. She could feel the pounding of the horse’s hooves through the walls.

  Azeem gestured back, back: stay behind him.

  The scene inside was one of pandemonium. The horses in their stalls snorted, their mouths tight, necks rigid with fear, ears pricked and swiveling this way and that. Against a wall, two grooms huddled over a man stretched out on the stone floor. His face was bloodied, his nose askew. At the far end men were yelling over the pounding strikes of a horse’s hooves as they tried to secure a thick beam against the bars.

  The head of a White reared up and lunged, teeth bared.

  Petite stepped closer, her heart faint. The horse had the thick neck of a stallion. He was of an imposing size, yet he moved with lightning agility, biting and kicking with fury.

  “It’s him, isn’t it,” Azeem said.

  Petite nodded.

  “He was caught in the wild,” he said, “out beyond Chaillot. But now we can’t get near him.”

  “Get me a musket,” a man commanded.

  It was the master of the horse. Petite stepped forward, her mouth dry. Azeem took hold of her arm. “I just want to look,” she said.

  She stood at the gate, staring through the iron bars.
He was back in the shadows, pawing the boards. He was scarred across the chest, above the fetlock on his right foreleg and on his nose. He looked like an old warrior, the sole survivor of a thousand wars.

  “Beloved,” she whispered.

  He pricked his ears, then snorted, tossing his head.

  He was still a fine and fearsome creature, Petite thought, in awe of his savage beauty. “He needs to smell me,” she said, turning back to Azeem.

  “You can’t go in there,” he said with urgency.

  I must, Petite thought.

  “Shoot him,” the master of the horse told the livestock man. A ragtag boy stood behind lugging a coil of hemp rope.

  Before the man could load his gun—and before Azeem could stop her—Petite unbolted the gate and stepped into the stall.

  The stallion stood in the shadows, legs splayed, head lowered, his ears pinned back. His chest was slick with sweat and blood. He regarded Petite with a fiery eye.

  She took a step toward him. He pinned back his ears and reared, warning her clearly: Do not come near. I will kill you.

  She bowed her head. He was cornered: she must not threaten him. She crouched down against the stall wall. “Nec cesso, nec erro,” she whispered. I do not slacken, I do not lose my way.

  DIABLO DIDN’T ATTACK her—that was a victory, of sorts—but he was a wild creature, wilder than ever before. He wouldn’t let her near, threatening to strike if she dared to approach.

  In the days that followed, Petite sat for hours in a corner of his stall, tempting him with fragrant cut grass, handfuls of grain, bits of fruit. She tried to provoke his curiosity by curling into a ball in the sodden sawdust and holding very still, not breathing. The last Sunday in June, she took a different tack, nickering and blowing, talking to him in his language. He turned away with flattened ears.

  Discouraged, she returned to her rooms in the château, to the suite she shared with Athénaïs. Patience is the companion of wisdom, her father had often said, quoting Saint Augustine. Diablo was stubborn, but she was stubborn too.

  “You have a caller,” Clorine announced as Petite came in the door. She was leaning over the two children, fastening their shoe buckles. “Madame Colbert isn’t returning for Marie-Anne and Tito until later this afternoon,” she said, standing, “so I thought I’d take them down to the canal.”

  “It’s beautiful out,” Petite said. She could hear Athénaïs’s parrot through the wall. As in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Fontaine Beleau and even in Paris now, they lived side by side, linked by a door. The King’s harem. His seraglio. His private brothel.

  “We’re going to sail the boat,” Marie-Anne announced, holding the elaborate wood construction Louis had given the children.

  “And climb rocks,” Tito said, climbing down off the bench and running into Petite’s embrace, tolerating her kiss. “You smell good, Mother,” he said, “like horses.”

  “There’s a priest in there,” Marie-Anne whispered. “I told him he could sit, but not in Father’s chair.”

  “Remember Abbé Patin?” Clorine tied bonnets on the children.

  “My tutor at Blois?” Petite asked, shaking out the hay and wood chips that always seemed to find a way into her petticoats. The Thunderer?

  “C’EST MOI,” Abbé Patin said, standing as Petite entered the sitting room. He was wearing a coarsely woven hooded tunic over a cowl, his graying hair covered by a crested linen cap.

  “This is such a wonderful surprise,” Petite told him. “I wouldn’t have recognized you. You look like a monk.”

  “I am a monk,” he said, laughing heartily.

  “Please, sit.” The sitting room was the only one that did not share a wall with Athénaïs. Consequently, it was the room Petite loved best. She had lined the walls with books.

  “I couldn’t. You’re a duchess.”

  “Abbé Patin, please. We are all of us equals in the eyes of the Lord. Wasn’t that one of your sermons? If anyone should be standing in reverence, it should be me. Make yourself comfortable and tell me how you came about this transformation.”

  He refused the armchair, instead pulling up the cherry-wood chair and straddling it backward, resting his chin on the back of his hands. “I inherited a dissolute ruin of a monastery in Soligny-la-Trappe.”

  “North of Paris?”

  “A day’s journey. I have been putting it in shape ever since, and in the process my soul, it would appear. I became a Cistercian about three years ago.”

  “Is that not a silent order?”

  “Are you suggesting I’m talkative?” He grinned impishly.

  He was a tall man, and his coarse brown habit was short on him, exposing dusty riding boots and spurs. “You still ride, Abbé Patin?” Petite asked, recalling the gallops they had enjoyed at Blois.

  “Every chance I get. And you?”

  “Health permitting.”

  “You were only a girl, yet you were the most daring rider I’ve ever known. I’m told there’s a wild stallion here that no one but you dare approach.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Your fame goes before you.”

  Petite smiled wanly. At least it was not fame of another sort. “What brings you to Versaie?”

  “Other than the sinful pleasure of a vigorous gallop on a summer Sabbath?” He held out his hands, palms up, as if supplicating Heaven. “In truth I came to see you. I’m in Paris fairly regularly on monastery business, and I learned, recently, that you very nearly passed away. I was so relieved to learn that you were still among us, I felt I should come to tell you so myself.”

  Petite was warmed by the Abbé’s smile. He’d always been someone she could talk to openly—and she had the same feeling about him even now, after so much time had passed. “I believe I did die, in fact, Abbé Patin. I felt a radiant light.”

  “Ah,” he said with interest.

  “I saw my father.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “And my horse—my beautiful White.”

  “You talked of this horse in your first Confession.”

  “You have a good memory. This horse has come back to me.”

  “The wild stallion people talk of?”

  “Strange, don’t you think?” Strange and miraculous, frightening and wonderful. “I’m so confused. You have come at a good time.” Indeed, it struck her that he’d been sent as well. “After this—this vision, would you call it?—I feel a need for spiritual guidance. My confessor is—” She paused. Her confessor was more concerned with the King’s pleasure than her salvation. “I need more than perpetual forgiveness,” she said.

  “You don’t think I’d be forgiving?”

  “I know you would be honest.”

  He sat back, frowning. “This is a grave request, you understand.”

  “Abbé Patin, you have been a good friend to me. I trust you—and I can’t tell you how much that means to me right now.”

  “As your spiritual adviser I may be called to speak unpleasant truths.”

  “I understand.” Petite began to choke up, and paused before asking, “You are, no doubt, aware of my…situation?”

  “You mean with respect to His Majesty?”

  It shamed her. Maîtresse en titre was a polite name for concubine, in truth. “I fear the Devil, Abbé Patin.”

  “As everyone should,” he said. “He’s a wily opponent, certainly, but—” He hesitated a moment before saying, with an exhale of breath, “But I believe you are mistaken: it’s not the Devil you need to fear.”

  Petite was taken aback. She watched as he stood, suddenly restless.

  “May I presume to speak in the capacity of your adviser now?” he asked finally, his hands clasped behind his back.

  Petite nodded, curious yet apprehensive. There was an urgency in his manner.

  “I have not been entirely candid with you, I confess,” he said, turning the chair to face her and sitting down, like a schoolboy facing an examiner. “I came to Versaie to see you today because I’ve something to tell you—somet
hing of concern.”

  He touched the tips of his fingers together, his thumbs tucked under his chin. “There have been rumors among the Religious that magic is being used at Court. Not so much charms and chants, the often innocent nonsense lovesick girls indulge in, but truly evil doings—Black Masses, human sacrifices, poison…that type of thing.”

  “Human sacrifices?”

  “Of a newborn,” he said. “One prays it’s only a story. Do you recall the arrest several years ago of a priest at Saint-Séverin in Paris?”

  “I don’t,” Petite said, but uncertainly.

  “It was in the twenty-fifth year of the King’s reign,” Abbé Patin said. “In the summer.”

  Petite frowned, recalling that there had been talk of a priest’s arrest shortly before the fateful trip to Chambord. “Vaguely,” she said. Saint-Séverin was a large church, not far from Notre-Dame in the Latin Quarter. She remembered thinking it impossible for such evil things to go on there.

  “He was a wizard-priest, a poisoner as well as a sorcerer, eventually convicted of demonic practices—blood sacrifice of doves, incantations of the Gospel in the Bois de Boulogne, that type of thing. Punishable by death, of course, but he got off rather lightly—he was of the nobility and the judge was a cousin.” Abbé Patin gave her a look of disgust. “He was condemned to a disciplinary establishment for priests, but even that was too harsh for him, apparently. With the help of a diviner in Paris—a woman by the name la Voisin—he managed to escape and hid in a monastery in the south, in Toulouse.”

  Madame la Voisin, the teller of fortunes. “Remember Nicole, Abbé Patin?”

  “That noisy, charming scamp?” he asked with amused affection. “Of course.”

  “I’m told she’s a Religious now, at a convent somewhere in the south.”

  Abbé Patin sputtered with surprise. “I could easily imagine you in such a vocation—but not Mademoiselle de Montalais.”